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ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA
SEVENTH EDITION.
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THE
ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA
OR
DICTIONARY
OF
ARTS, SCIENCES, AND GENERAL LITERATURE.
SEVENTH EDITION,
WITH PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS ON THE HISTORY OF THE SCIENCES,
AND
OTHER EXTENSIVE IMPROVEMENTS AND ADDITIONS;
INCLUDING THE LATE SUPPLEMENT.
A GENERAL INDEX,
AND NUMEROUS ENGRAVINGS.
VOLUME X.
ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK, EDINBURGH;
M.DCCC.XLII.
ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA
FRANCE.
Tntroduc- x N treating of France, a subject in itself of great magni-
tion. A tude, but one which, in a work like this, embracing the
entire circle of human knowledge, can only be delineated
in outline, we shall endeavour to observe the same method
which was followed in treating of England, and to place
before our readers condensed abstracts of the History, Sta- Introduc-
tistics, Government and Laws of that great country, long bon.
remarkable for its high civilization, and now happily bless-
ed with political institutions in some measure adapted to
the opinions and wants of its people.
I. HISTORY.
Merovin- About half a century before the commencement of our
gians and era, Gaul, then inhabited by a race of Celtic origin and
Carlovin- descent, was subdued by Caesar, and for the space of near-
gians. 1 y five centuries continued under the sway of the Romans.
During the first half of this period, which was in a great
measure one of repose, the country made considerable ad¬
vances in improvement, and in fact received its full share
in that civilization with which Rome usually repaid the
turbulent independence destroyed by her conquests. Po¬
litical union, internal tranquillity, and the security result¬
ing from the firm and impartial administration of an admir¬
able system of laws, were amongst the direct advantages
which the people derived from their subjugation ; whilst,
collaterally, agriculture was improved, commerce extend¬
ed, industry encouraged, wealth accumulated, and the
general happiness promoted. To the wild and pernicious
liberty enjoyed by warlike savages had succeeded the vigor¬
ous but wise government of an enlightened conqueror,
whose policy it was to efface the recollection of indepen¬
dence by positive benefits conferred, and to secure to the
people those substantial advantages without the enjoyment
of which liberty is no better than an empty name. Even
the climate was ameliorated in proportion as industry ex¬
tended its dominion ; and the soil, rendered capable of pro¬
ducing and maturing the choicest fruits, amply repaid the
labour employed in its cultivation. The vine, the olive,
and other useful plants, were introduced by the Romans ;
and even Christianity itself was amongst the boons which
this people latterly conferred on the subject nations in return
for their political independence. But during the latter half
of the period above mentioned, when the ancient Roman
valour and discipline had begun to decline, and degeneracy
VOL. x.
of manners had sapped the foundations of Roman power,
the province of Gaul became exposed to the incursions,
and was finally overwhelmed by the settlement, of barba¬
rian invaders.
Of the natural boundaries of the Roman province of
Gaul, the Rhine was by far the most important, as forming
the line of demarcation between the empire on the one
hand, and the multitudinous tribes of savage nations which
swarmed beyond the stream on the other. On one side
were wealth and civilization; on the other, want and bar¬
barism. Principles the most irreconcilable, and inveterately
hostile, were only separated by the breadth of the river.
But the genius of barbarism,, hanging on the outskirts of ci¬
vilization, is essentially aggressive, and continually seeking
to destroy the monuments which the latter has reared. In
a word, the natural state between such neighbours is one of
war. As long, however, as the Roman legions preserved
their ancient discipline and spirit, the turbulence of the
German tribes was repressed, and the barrier of the em¬
pire maintained; one or two defeats, which imprudence or
temerity had entailed, were severely avenged; and the
Roman generals, penetrating at different intervals into the
country of the barbarians, chastised their audacity, and
taught them to regard with salutary awe the power which
they had dared to defy. But the Germans, though little
versed in policy, began in time to be sensible that their fre¬
quent defeats were owing to their disunion; that whilst
dispersed in different tribes, without any solid or permanent
bond of connection, they could never hope to contend with
success against the disciplined force of a great empire, im¬
pelled by and obedient to one supreme directing mind.
They now perceived that their former leagues, hastily
A
2 FRANCE.
History, formed, were as easily dissolved ; that something more than
  ^ a sort of wild, irregular co-operation was necessary; and
254-355. that, without coherence and consistence, it would be vain
to expect success in any offensive enterprise. The con¬
sciousness of this defect produced in the third century those
extensive confederacies in which many tribes united perma¬
nently under one common name, and frequently under one
chief or sovereign, some assuming the appellation of Ale-
manni, descriptive of the combination which had been
formed, and others taking that of Franks, indicative of the
spirit or freedom in which they rejoiced.
The first mention made of the Franks by the historians
of the empire is about the middle of the third century. Of
their origin various and discordant accounts have been
given; but the most probable supposition seems to be that,
about the time of the emperor Goi'dian, the people inha¬
biting the banks of the Lower Rhine entered into a con¬
federacy with those who dwelt on the Weser, and that the
tribes thus united assumed the name of Franks or Free¬
men. The chief seat of this confederacy, therefore, ap¬
pears to have been the marshy territory overflowed and
divided into islets by the Rhine, from the spot where the
river begins to run in a westerly direction, to its junction
with the sea. Their first irruption took place in the year
254, and the second in the reign of Valerian. On the lat¬
ter occasion they were but few in number, and were easily
repulsed by Valerian, who afterwards became emperor. Not
discouraged by this check, however, they returned in great¬
er numbers about two years afterwards, and were again de¬
feated by Gallienus, whom Valerian had now chosen as his
associate in the empire. But as fresh swarms still continued
to pour in from their native fastnesses, Gallienus, being no
longer in a condition to expel them by force of arms, adopt¬
ed the perilous expedient of negotiation, and, by means of
advantageous offers, engaged one of their chiefs to defend
the frontier against his own countrymen as well as against
other invaders. Such an admission of weakness, however,
could only have the effect of provoking further aggression.
In the year 260 the Franks, taking advantage of the defeat
and captivity of Valerian in Persia, broke into Gaul, and af¬
terwards into Italy, committing everywhere the most dread¬
ful ravages ; and five years afterwards they invaded Spain,
which they occupied, or rather desolated, for the space of
twelve years. But in the year 275 they were completely
overthrown and driven out of Gaul by the emperor Probus,
who pursued them into their own country, and there built
several forts to keep them in awe. Intimidated by this de¬
feat, they remained quiet until 287, when, in conjunction
with Saxon pirates, they plundered the coasts of Gaul, and
carried off from thence an immense booty. To revenge
this insult the emperor Maximian, the following year, en¬
tered their country, which he laid waste with fire and sword,
at the same time compelling two of their chiefs to submit
to his arms; whilst to such of the common people as chose
t(i remain in Gaul he allotted lands in the neighbourhood
of Treves and Cambray. The restless disposition of the
r ranks, however, did not suffer them to remain long at
peace; and about the year 293 they made themselves mas¬
ters of Batavia and part of Flanders; but they were once
more entirely defeated, and compelled to surrender at dis¬
cretion, by Constantius, the father of Constantine the Great,
who allotted them settlements in Gaul. In 306 their coun-
trymen in Germany renewed their depredations, though
with little success; for having been overtaken by Constan-
tme, they were completely routed, and two of their kings
who fell into his hands were thrown to wild beasts during
the sports exhibited in honour of the victory. All these
reverses, however, were insufficient to prevent the incur¬
sions of this restless and turbulent people. In the year
355 they again invaded Gaul, and made themselves mas¬
ters of forty cities in that province. But they were soon
afterwards defeated by the emperor Julian, who also drove History,
the Alemanni within their ancient boundaries; and again
by Theodosius, father of the emperor of that name, who 355-487.
expelled the invaders, and pursued them with great slaugh¬
ter. They returned, however, in the year 388, when they
ravaged the province with greater fury than ever, cut off the
Roman army which was sent against them, and in some
measure established themselves in the country which they
had so frequently overrun. In fact, the western empire
was now reduced to so low an ebb that the Franks, until
their progress was checked by Altius, experienced more
interruption from other barbarians roving in quest of new
settlements, than from the armies of Rome, which had so
often repulsed preceding invaders.
The commencement of the fifth century was marked by
an overwhelming irruption into Gaul of the barbarian hosts,
who, pouring in from different points, rolled on like a sud¬
den inundation, sweeping away every thing in their destruc¬
tive course. The church alone towered aloft above the ge¬
neral desolation ; her bulwarks were strong enough to resist
the shock of that fierce torrent of barbarism by which they
were assailed; and had it not been for this circumstance,
all the records and traditions of the past must have perished
amidst the general ruin. But the progress of the invaders
was nevertheless destined to experience a vigorous check.
When the contest with Aldus commenced, the Franks were
governed by Pharamond, the first of their kings or leaders
of whom any distinct account has been preserved. This chief
or prince is supposed to have reigned from the year 417 or
418 to 428, and is generally believed to have been killed in
the war with Aldus. He is understood to have compiled the
Salic laws, with the assistance of four sages named Wisegast,
Losegast, Widegast, and Solegast; but Valesius is of opi¬
nion that the Franks had no written laws until the time of
Clovis. Pharamond was succeeded by his son Clodio, who
is said to have received a terrible overthrow from Aldus near
the city of Lens. But notwithstanding this defeat he advan¬
ced to Cambray, of which he made himself master, extend¬
ed his conquests as far as the river Somme, and destroy¬
ed the cities of Treves and Cologne, Tournay and Amiens.
He died in the year 448, and was succeeded by Merovseus.
It is uncertain whether the new king was brother, or son,
or in fact any relation at all, to Clodio; it seems probable,
indeed, that he was of a different family, as from him the
first race of French kings were styled Merovingian. He
was honoured and respected by his people, but did not
greatly enlarge the boundaries of his kingdom. Merovaeus,
who died in 458, was succeeded by his son Childeric, who
being no longer kept in check by Altius, made war upon
the Romans, extended his conquests as far as the river Loire,
and took the city of Paris after a lengthened siege. Chil¬
deric was succeeded by Clodovaeus, Clovis, or Louis; and
as the Roman power in Italy had now been totally destroyed,
the latter &et himself to make an entire conquest of Gaul.
Part of the province was still retained by a Roman named
Syagrius, the son of Algidius, who, like his father, governed
and was even said to have reigned at Soissons, where the
former had established himself on the downfall of the west¬
ern empire in 476. But Syagrius was defeated and taken
prisoner by Clovis, who afterwards caused him to be be¬
headed, and soon reduced his dominions under subjection.
The French monarchy was thus established in the year Establish-
487 by Clovis, who possessed all the country situated be- ment; of
tween the Rhine and the Loire. The secret of the rise oft^e^renc^
this conqueror, originally the chief or king of a small colony
of franks established at Tournay, may be easily explained. ' 0V1S*
Of all the nations which overran Gaul, that which eventu¬
ally subdued all the others, and gave its name both to the
country and the people, was the most disunited and the
least advanced in the arts of life. The Goths and the Bur¬
gundians were much more civilized than the Franks ; for,
FRA
History, whilst the former constituted each a separate nation and
race, which obeyed one monarch or family of monarchs,
487-49G. the latter consisted of different tribes united in a species
of temporary confederacy, the ties of which became more
and more relaxed in proportion as they advanced from the
Rhine. Each town or territory had its petty independent
sovereign ; and, anterior to the time of Clovis, they do not
appear to have had any supreme chief or a general capital.
Whether this was or was not an advantage, we do not pre¬
tend to determine. But it obviously left them in a great
measure free to engage in any enterprise in which they chose
to embark ; and it also laid open the chieftaincy to the ambi¬
tion of the first leader distinguished for boldness and pre¬
eminent talents ; whilst, on the other hand, the vague com¬
prehensiveness of their name was calculated to congregate
under their banner such roving bands as might be in search
of either plunder or establishments. The principle of their
confederacy was such that any tribe or race might easily
be admitted within its pale. Of this Clovis skilfully took
advantage, and, by availing himself of its elasticity (if we
may be allowed the expression), became the founder of the
French monarchy.
Clovis had been educated in paganism, and continued to
profess it until the thirtieth year of his age ; but notwith¬
standing this circumstance, he allowed his subjects full liber¬
ty of conscience. When he married Clotilda, daughter of the
Duke of Burgundy, this princess, who was a zealous Chris¬
tian, used all her influence to persuade him to embrace her
religion. For some time, however, he continued to waver
between Christianity and paganism ; but having gained a
battle against the Germans near Cologne, where, when in
great danger, he had invoked the God of Clotilda and the
Christians, he afterwards lent a favourable ear to the dis¬
courses of Remigius bishop of Rheims, and having declar¬
ed himself a convert, was baptized in the year 496. But
his acknowledgment of the truths of Christianity was not
followed by any amendment of life ; on the contrary, he em¬
ployed the remainder of his life in aggrandizing himself, and
extending his dominions, by means of treachery, fraud, and
violence. In his attacks on Armorica or Bretagne, however,
he proved unsuccessful. The inhabitants of this country,
which comprehended the maritime part of ancient Gaul, had
united for their common defence, and, though abandoned by
the Romans, made a vigorous resistance against the bar¬
barians, who assaulted them on all sides. Clovis, finding
them too powerful to be subdued by force, proposed an
union w ith his people, which they readily accepted, chiefly
on account of his professing Christianity. Thus the new
religion of Clovis proved subservient to the purposes of
his ambition, and his power became gradually formidable.
At this time the Burgundians, under Gondebaud, the uncle
of Clotilda, possessed all the country from the forest of
Vosges to the sea at Marseilles; and their chief, to secure
his own authority, had put to death two of his brothers,
one of whom was the father of the French queen. But
the third brother, Godagesil, whom he had spared and al¬
lowed to possess the principality of Geneva, conspired with
Clovis to expel Gondebaud from his dominions. A war
accordingly commenced between the French and Burgun¬
dian monarchs, and the latter being deserted in battle by
the faithless Godagesil, was obliged to fly to Avignon, leav¬
ing his antagonist undisputed master of the cities of Lyons
and Vienne. The conqueror next laid siege to Avignon ;
but the place was defended with such vigour, that Clovis
thought proper to accept of a large sum of money and an
annual tribute from Gondebaud, who was likewise obliged
to cede to Godagesil the city of Vienne, and several other
places taken during the war. Gondebaud, however, no
sooner found himself at liberty from his enemies, than he
assembled a powerful army, with which he advanced to¬
wards V ienne, where Godagesil then resided. The place
N C E. 3
was garrisoned by five thousand Franks, and might have History,
made considerable resistance ; but Gondebaud being ad-
mitted into the city through an aqueduct, massacred most 496-511.
of the Franks, sent the rest as prisoners to the king of the
Visigoths, and put Godagesil to death. This was speedily
followed by the submission of all the other places which
had owned the authority of Godagesil; and Gondebaud
considering himself in a condition to resist the power of
Clovis, intimated his determination to withhold the pro¬
mised tribute ; a defection which Clovis, though exceed¬
ingly mortified, found himself obliged for the present to
overlook.
The next expedition undertaken by Clovis was directed
against the Visigoths, who possessed considerable territo¬
ries on both sides of the Pyrenean mountains. His motives
for this enterprise were expressed in a speech which he de¬
livered to his nobility when assembled in the city of Paris,
which he considered as the capital of his dominions. “ It is
with concern,” said the monarch, “ that I suffer the Arians
to possess the most fertile part of Gaul; let us, with the aid
of God, march against them, and, having conquered them,
annex their kingdom to our dominions.” The nobility ap¬
proved of the scheme ; and Clovis marched against a prince
for whom he had lately professed the greatest regard, vow¬
ing to erect a church in honour of the holy apostles if he
succeeded in his unrighteous enterprise. Alaric the king
of the Visigoths, though personally brave, was destitute
of military experience, and therefore hesitated not to en¬
gage with his antagonist; but, unable to contend with the
veteran troops of Clovis, his army was utterly defeated
on the banks of the Clain, near Poictiers, in the year 507,
and Alaric himself slain. After this victory the province
of Aquitaine submitted; Toulouse soon afterwards surren¬
dered, and the royal treasures of the Visigoths were trans¬
ported to Paris. Angouleme was next reduced, and the
city of Arles invested. But here the victorious career of
Clovis was stopped by Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths,
w ho had overturned the dominion of Odoacer in Italy. He
had married the sister of Clovis, but having also given his
ow n daughter in marriage to the king of the Visigoths, he
had endeavoured, as far as possible, to preserve a good un¬
derstanding between the two sovereigns. This, however,
he found to be impossible ; and, convinced that no bounds
could be set to the ambition of Clovis by peaceful means,
he sent against him orie of his generals with a powerful army,
by which the French monarch was defeated with the loss of
thirty thousand men. This discomfiture obliged Clovis to
raise the siege of Arles; but the Franks still retained the
greater part bf their conquests, and the province of Aqui¬
taine was indissolubly annexed to their empire. In 509 Clo¬
vis received the title of Roman consul, and was thus sup¬
posed to be invested with a just title to all his conquests, in
whatsoever manner they had been acquired. He was so¬
lemnly invested with the new dignity in the church of St
Martin, in the city of Tours. Clovis now proceeded to
confirm his power by the murder of his kinsmen the princes
of the Merovingian race. Amongst those who perished in
virtue of this bloody policy were Sigebert king of Cologne,
with his son Cloderic ; Cararic, another prince whose do¬
minions have not been accurately pointed out by historians ;
Ranacaire, who governed the diocese of Cambray ; and
Renomer, king of the territory of Maine. All these mur¬
ders, however, were supposed to be expiated by the zeal
which he expressed in behalf of Christianity, and his libe¬
rality towards the church. Clovis died in the year 511, af¬
ter having reformed and published the Salic laws; a few
lines of which, excluding women from inheriting any part
of the Salic lands, have been extended so far as to deprive
the females of the royal family of France of their right of
succession to the throne of that kingdom.
Clovis has been compared to Constantine, and they had
FRANCE.
History, certainly this in common, that each embraced Christianity
in circumstances nearly similar, and from motives much
J “ ' more closely allied to self-interest than conviction. In
both cases, too, the change of religion, instead of temper¬
ing their passions, or exercising a benign influence over
their conduct, appears rather to have exasperated their na¬
tural ferocity and blood-thirstiness. The domestic mur¬
ders committed by Constantine find their parallel in the
assassinations perpetrated by Clovis, who equalled the Ro¬
man emperor in cruelty, and perhaps surpassed him in per¬
fidy. In the abuse of the doctrines of confession and ab¬
solution each found an opiate to lull the remonstrances of
conscience; and as the church encouraged errors calcu¬
lated to augment its wealth and extend its power, the na¬
tural obstacles to the commission of crime were thus re¬
moved, and eventual impunity secured to the greatest of¬
fender, provided his means bore any proportion to his cri¬
minality. The founder of the French monarchy, therefore,
is to be regarded rather as a daring and fortunate ruffian
than as a great conqueror or an able leader; one who
reaped the fruits of the crimes he had committed, and
around whom success had thrown that false glare which so
much misleads the moral judgments of men.
The dominions of Clovis were divided amongst his four
sons. Thierri, or Theodoric, the eldest, received the east¬
ern part of the empire, and as he made the city of Metz
his capital, he is commonly styled the king of Metz ; Clo-
domir, the eldest son by Clotilda, obtained the kingdom of
Orleans; whilst to Childebert and Clotaire, both infants,
were allotted the kingdoms of Paris and Soissons, under
the tutelage of their mother. During eight years the pru¬
dence of Clotilda maintained tranquillity in all parts of the
empire; but about the year 520 a numerous fleet of Danes
arrived at the mouth of the Meuse, and their king Cochi-
liac having landed his forces, began to desolate the coun¬
try with fire and sword. Against the invaders Thierri sent
his son Theodobert, who defeated the Danish army, killed
their king, and forced the remainder to retire with precipi¬
tation. In 522 Hermanfroi, king of Thuringia, having put
to death one of his brothers named Berthaire, and seized
on his dominions, applied to Thierri for assistance against
his other brother Balderic, whom he intended to dispose of
in the same manner. Thierri assented, and embarked in
this creditable enterprise, upon condition that he should
have one half of Balderic’s dominions; but after the un¬
happy prince had been overcome and killed in battle, Her¬
manfroi, forgetting or despising the compact, seized upon
all his dominions. Thierri had no opportunity of reveng¬
ing' himself till the year 531, when, perceiving that the
power of the Ostrogoths, whom he greatly dreaded, had
been considerably lessened by the death of king Theodoric,
he engaged his brother Clotaire to assist him. They ac¬
cordingly entered Thuringia with two powerful armies,
which formed a junction as soon as they had passed the
Rhine, and were soon afterwards reinforced by a consider¬
able body of troops under the command of Theodobert.
The army of Hermanfroi was advantageously posted ; but
being attacked by a superior force, it was totally defeated,
and Hermanfroi himself forced to fly from place to place
in disguise. His capital was soon afterwards taken, and
Hermanfroi himself being invited to a conference by Thier¬
ri, was treacherously murdered ; after which his extensive
dominions became feudatory to the murderer. In the mean
time Clotilda had excited her children to make war on the
Burgundians, in order to avenge the death of her father
Chilperic, whom Gondebaud, king of Burgundy, had caused
to be murdered. Gondebaud, who was now dead, had left
his dominions to his sons Sigismund and Godemar. The
former was speedily defeated, and soon afterwards delivered
up to Clodomir, who caused him to be thrown into a pit,
where he perished miserably. Clodomir now marched
against Godemar, who, by the death of his brother, had be- History,
come sole master of Burgundy, and completely defeated him v——v-w'
also; but having pursued his victory too eagerly, he was 531-567.
surrounded by his enemies and slain. After the reduction
of Thuringia, however, Childebert and Clotaire entered the
kingdom of Burgundy at the head of a powerful army, and
in 534 completed the conquest of that country.
In 560 Clotaire having murdered the sons of Clodomir, Clotaire
who had been killed in Burgundy as already related, and s°le m°-
Thierri and his children, as also Childebert, being now "arch of
dead, became sole heir to the dominions of Clovis. He1 rance'
had five sons, the eldest of whom, named Chramnes, had
some time previously rebelled against his father in Au¬
vergne. As long as Childebert lived he had supported the
young prince; but on his death Chramnes was obliged to
implore the clemency of his father, by whom he was par¬
doned. But he soon began to cabal afresh, and engaged
the Count of Bretagne to assist him in another rebellion.
The Bretons, however, were defeated, and Chramnes re¬
solved to make his escape; but perceiving that his wife
and children were surrounded by his father’s troops, he
made an effort to rescue them. In this attempt, however,
he failed, and being taken prisoner, he was with his family
thrust into a thatched cottage near the field of battle,
which the king commanded to be set on fire, and all that
were in it perished in the flames.
Clotaire did not long survive this barbarous execution, The em-
but died in 562, and after his death the French empire pire again
was divided amongst his four remaining sons, Caribert, (hv'<lecl-
Gontran, Sigebert, and Chilperic. Caribert, the eldest, re¬
ceived the kingdom of Paris; Gontran, the second, obtained
Orleans; Sigebert got Metz, or Austrasia; and Chilperic
had Soissons; whilst Provence and Aquitaine were pos¬
sessed by all of them in common. The peace of the em¬
pire was first disturbed in 563 by an invasion of the Abares,
a barbarous nation, believed to have been the remains of
the Huns. They entered Thuringia, which belonged to
the dominions of Sigebert, but were totally defeated, and
obliged to repass the Elbe. Sigebert pursued them closely,
but on hearing that his brother Chilperic had invaded his
dominions, and taken Rheims, with some other places in
the neighbourhood, he concluded a peace with the van¬
quished barbarians. Sigebert then marched with his victo¬
rious army against Chilperic, made himself master of Sois¬
sons, and seized his eldest son Theodobert. He then de¬
feated Chilperic in battle, recovered the places which he
had seized, and conquered the greater part of his domi¬
nions ; but, on the mediation of the other two brothers,
Sigebert abandoned all his conquests, set Theodobert at
liberty, and thus restored peace to the empire.
Soon after this event Sigebert married Burnehaut,
daughter to Athanagilde, king of the Visigoths in Spain;
and Caribert, king of Paris, having died, his dominions were
divided amongst his three brothers. In 567 Chilperic mar¬
ried Galswintha, Brunehaut’s eldest sister, and before her
arrival dismissed his mistress, Fredegonde, a woman of great
ability and firmness of mind, but ambitious, and capable of
committing the darkest crimes to gratify her ambition. The
queen, who had brought with her immense treasures from
Spain, and who made it her sole study to please the king,
was for some time entirely acceptable to him. But by degrees
Chilperic suffered Fredegonde to re-appear at court, and
was even suspected of having renewed his intercourse with
this profligate woman ; a circumstance which gave such of¬
fence to the queen, that she desired permission to return to
her own country, at the same time promising to leave be¬
hind her all the wealth she had brought. Aware that this
would render him extremely odious, the king found means
to dissipate his wife’s suspicions, and soon afterwards caused
her to be privately strangled, upon which he publicly mar¬
ried the harlot Fredegonde. Such an atrocious action could
FRA
History, not fail to excite the greatest indignation against Chilperic.
His dominions were immediately invaded by Sigebert and
567-593. Gontran, who conquered the greater part of them ; but
having effected this, they suddenly made peace, on Chilpe¬
ric consenting that Brunehaut should enjoy those places
which he had bestowed upon Galswintha, namely, Bordeaux,
Limoges, Cahors, Bigorre, and the town of Bearn. The
French princes, however, did not long continue at peace
among themselves; and a war having ensued, Gontran and
Chilperic made common cause against Sigebert. But the
latter prevailed, and, having forced Gontran to conclude a
separate peace, seemed determined to make Chilperic pay
dear for his perfidy, when he was assassinated by a contri¬
vance of Fredegonde, who thus saved herself and Chilperic
from the most imminent danger. Immediately on his death
Brunehaut fell into the hands of Chilperic; but Gondebaud,
one of Sigebert’s best generals, having made his escape into
Austrasia with Childebert, the only son of Sigebert, an in¬
fant of about five years of age, the latter was immediately
proclaimed king. In a short time, however, Merovseus,
eldest son to Chilperic, fell in love with Brunehaut, and
married her without acquainting his father. On receiving
information of this, Chilperic went to Rouen, where Mero-
vaeus and his consort were living; and having seized them,
sent Brunehaut and her two daughters to Metz, and car¬
ried Merovaeus to Soissons. Soon afterwards one of his
generals being defeated by Gontran, who had espoused
Brunehaut’s cause, Chilperic in a fit of rage caused Mero¬
vaeus to be shaved and confined in a monastery. From this
he found means to make his escape, and arrived in Aus¬
trasia, where Brunehaut would gladly have protected him;
but the jealousy of the nobles proved so strong that he
was forced to leave that country; and being betrayed into
the hands of his father’s forces, he was murdered at the in¬
stigation of Fredegonde.
The French empire was at this time divided between Gon¬
tran king of Orleans, called also king of Burgundy, Chil¬
peric king of Soissons, and Childebert king of Austrasia.
But Chilperic found his affairs in a very disagreeable situ¬
ation. In 579, having a dispute with Varoc count of Bre¬
tagne, who refused to do him homage, he dispatched against
his vassal a body of troops, who were defeated, and he was
in consequence forced to submit to a disadvantageous peace.
Meanwhile his brother and nephew, whom he had reason
to dread, lived in the strictest union; his subjects, oppres¬
sed with heavy taxes, were poor and discontented; Clovis,
his son by a former queen named Andovera, hated Frede¬
gonde, and made no secret ot his aversion; and, to add to
his embarrassment, the seasons were for a long time so un¬
favourable that the country was threatened with famine and
pestilence. The king and queen were both attacked by an
epidemic which then raged; and though they recovered,
their three sons Clodobert, Samson, and Dagobert, all died.
After this, the sight of Clovis became so hateful to Frede¬
gonde that she caused him to be murdered, as she likewise
did his mother Andovera, lest Chilperic’s affection for that
lady should return after the tragical death of her son. In 583
Chilperic himself was murdered by some unknown assassins,
when his dominions were on the point of being conquered
by Gontran and Childebert. After his death Fredegonde
implored the protection of Gontran, which he readily grant¬
ed, and obliged Childebert to put an end to the war. Gon¬
tran died on the 28th of March 593, having lived upwards
of sixty years, and reigned thirty-two ; and Childebert suc¬
ceeded to the kingdom without opposition, but did not long
enjoy it. His dominions were on his death divided be¬
tween his two sons Theodobert and Thierri; the former
being declared king of Austrasia, and the latter king of
Burgundy. But as Theodobert was only in his eleventh,
and Thierri in his tenth year, Brunehaut governed both
kingdoms with absolute sway. Fredegonde, however, avail-
N C E. 5
ing herself of the opportunity offered by the death of Chil- History.
debert, made herself mistress of Paris and some other places
on the Seine; upon which Brunehaut sent against her the 533-612.
best part of the forces in Austrasia. The latter, however,
were totally defeated; but Fredegonde died before she had
time to improve her victory, leaving her son Clotaire heir
to her dominions.
For some time Brunehaut preserved her kingdom in
peace; but her own ambition in the end proved her ruin.
Instead of instructing Theodobert in what was necessary
for a prince to know, she took care to keep him in igno¬
rance, and even suffered him to marry a young and hand¬
some slave of his father’s. But the new queen being pos¬
sessed of ability and good nature, so gained the aftection
of her husband that he consented to the banishment of
Brunehaut. Upon this disgrace she in 599 fled to Thierri
king of Burgundy, by whom she was kindly received; and,
instead of exciting jealousies or misunderstandings between
the two brothers, she engaged Thierri to attempt the re¬
covery of Paris and the other places which had been wrest¬
ed from their family by Fredegonde. This measure was so
acceptable to Theodobert, that he likewise raised a nume¬
rous army, arid in conjunction with his brother invaded
Clotaire’s dominions. A battle ensued, in which the for¬
ces of Clotaire were completely defeated, and he himself
obliged to sue for peace, which was not granted except on
condition of his yielding up the best part of his dominions.
This treaty was concluded in the year 600 ; but three years
afterwards it was broken by Clotaire, who was again at¬
tacked by the two brothers. The war was carried on with
great vigour until the next spring, when Thierri having
forced Landri, Clotaire’s general, to accept battle, over¬
threw him, and put to death the king’s infant son Mero¬
vseus, whom he had sent with Landri. After this victory,
Thierri, intent on the destruction of his cousin, marched
directly to Paris. But Theodobert no sooner heard of the
victory gained by Thierri, than, becoming jealous of his
success, he offered Clotaire such conditions as speedily
compelled Thierri also to listen to terms of accommoda¬
tion. This conduct of Theodobert greatly provoked his
brother; and his resentment was still more inflamed by
Brunehaut, who never forgot the disgrace of having been
banished from his court. A war was therefore commenced
in 605 ; but being disapproved of by the nobility, Thierri
found himself obliged to put an end to it. The tranquil¬
lity which ensued, however, was again disturbed in 607,
when Theodobert sent an embassy to demand part of Chil-
debert’s dominions, which by the will of that monarch had
been added to those of Burgundy. But the nobility of both
kingdoms were exceedingly averse to war, and constrained
their kings to consent to a conference, attended by an equal
number of troops. By a scandalous breach of faith, how¬
ever, Theodobert brought double the number agreed on,
and compelled his brother to submit to whatever terms he
pleased to dictate. This act of treachery instantly brought
on a war. Thierri was bent on revenge, and his nobility
no longer opposed him. Having secured the neutrality of
Clotaire by a promise of restoring those parts of his domi¬
nions of which he had formerly been despoiled, Thierri en¬
tered Theodobert’s territories, defeated him in two battles,
took him prisoner, and treated him with the greatest in¬
dignity. Meanwhile Clotaire, thinking that the best me¬
thod of making Thierri keep his word was to seize upon
those places which the latter had promised to restore to
him as the price of his neutrality, did so accordingly ; upon
which Thierri sent to him a messenger to require him to
withdraw his forces, and in the event of a refusal, to de¬
clare war. Clotaire was prepared for such a proceeding,
and immediately assembled his forces. But before Thierri
could reach his enemies, he was seized with a dysentery,
of which he died, in the year 612.
6 FRA
History. On the death of Thierri, Brunehaut immediately caused
his eldest son Sigisbert, then in the tenth year of his age,
612-714. t0 be proclaimed king. It is probable that she intended
to govern in his name with an absolute sway; but Clotaire
did not allow her time to discover her intentions. Know¬
ing that the nobility both in Burgundy and Metz were dis¬
affected to Brunehaut, he declared war against her; and
the unfortunate queen having been betrayed by her gene¬
rals, fell into the hands of her enemies. Clotaire gave her
up to the nobles, who generally hated her, and treated their
Brunehaut captive in the most barbarous manner; for, after having led
put to her about the camp, exposed to the insults of all who had
death. meanness to insult her, she was tied by the leg and
arm to the tail of an untamed horse, which, setting off at
full speed, quickly dashed out her brains. Thus, in the
year 613, Clotaire became sole monarch of France, and
quietly enjoyed his kingdom till his death, which happened
in 628.
This prince was succeeded by Dagobert, who proved a
great and powerful sovereign, and raised the kingdom of
France to a high degree of splendour. Dagobert was suc¬
ceeded by his sons Sigebert and Clovis ; the former of whom
obtained the kingdom of Austrasia, and the latter that of
Burgundy. Both the kings were minors at the time of
their accession to the throne, which gave an opportunity
to the mayors of the palace, the highest officers under the
crown, to usurp the whole authority of the state. Sige¬
bert died in 640, after a short reign of one year, leaving
behind him an infant son named Dagobert, whom he
strongly recommended to the care of Grimoalde, his mayor
of the palace. The minister caused Dagobert to be im¬
mediately proclaimed king, but did not long suffer him
to enjoy that honour. He had not the cruelty, however,
to put him to death, but sent him to a monastery in one
of the western islands of Scotland; and then, giving out
that he was dead, advanced his own son Childebert to
the throne. Childebert was expelled by Clovis king of
Burgundy, who placed on the throne Childeric, the second
son of Sigebert. Clovis died soon after the revolution, and
was succeeded in his dominions by his son Clotaire, who
also died in a short time without issue. He was succeed¬
ed by his brother Childeric, who, after a brief reign, was
murdered, with his queen, at that time big with child, and
an infant son named Dagobert, though another, named Da¬
niel, had the good fortune to escape.
Miserable The affairs of the French were now in the mostdeplora-
situatien ble situation. The princes of the Merovingian race had
ot r ranee. been for some time entirely deprived of their power by their
officers called mayors of the palace. In Austrasia the ad¬
ministration had been totally engrossed by Pepin and his
son Grimaulde, whilst Archambaud and Ebroin followed
the same course in Neustria and Burgundy. On the reunion
of Neustria and Burgundy with the rest of the French do¬
minions, this minister ruled with such despotic sway that the
nobility of Austrasia, provoked to a revolt, elected as their
dukes two chiefs named Martin and Pepin. The forces of
the confederates, however, were defeated by Ebroin; and
Martin having surrendered upon a promise of safety, was
treacherously put to death. Pepin lost no time in recruit¬
ing his shattered forces; but before he had an opportunity
of trying his fortune a second time in battle, the assas¬
sination of Ebroin delivered him from all apprehensions in
that quarter. Pepin now carried every thing before him;
overthrew the royal army under the command of the new
minister Bertaire; and having obtained possession of the
capital, caused himself to be declared mayor of the pa¬
lace, in which station he continued to govern with abso¬
lute sway during the remainder of his life. Pepin, who had
obtained the surname of Heristal, from his palace on the
Meuse, died in the year 714, having enjoyed unlimited
power for twenty-six years; and appointed his grandson
N C E.
Theudobalde, then only six years of age, to succeed him History,
in his post of mayor of the palace. This happened during '
the reign of Dagobert already mentioned; but as the latter 714-717.
had too much spirit to suffer himself to be deprived of his
authority by an infant, the adherents of the young mayor
were defeated in battle ; and this discomfiture was soon fol¬
lowed by his death.
But Charles, the illegitimate son of Pepin, was now raised Charles
to the dignity of duke by the Austrasians ; and by his great Martel,
qualities he seemed in every respect worthy of this honour.
The murder of Dagobert freed him from a powerful oppo¬
nent ; and the young king Chilperic, who after Dagobert’s
death had been brought from a cloister to the throne, was
not qualified to cope with so experienced an antagonist.
On the 19th of March 717, Charles had the good fortune
to surprise the royal camp as he passed through the forest
of Ardennes; and soon afterwards a battle ensued, in
which the king’s forces were entirely defeated. Upon this
Chilperic entered into an alliance with Eudes duke of
Aquitaine, whose friendship he purchased by the final ces¬
sion of all the country which Eudes had seized for himself.
Charles, however, having placed on the throne another of
the royal family, named Clotaire, advanced against Chilpe¬
ric and his associate, whom he entirely defeated near Sois-
sons. After this disaster Eudes, despairing of success, de¬
livered up Chilperic into the hands of his antagonist; hav¬
ing stipulated for himself the same terms which had been
formerly granted him by the captive monarch. Charles be¬
ing now advanced to the summit of power, treated Chilpe¬
ric with the greatest respect, and on the death of Clotaire
caused him to be proclaimed king of Austrasia; but by
this proceeding his own power was in no degree diminished,
and henceforth the authority of the kings of France became
merely nominal; indeed so inactive and indolent were they
accounted, that historians have bestowed upon them the
epithet of rois faineam, indolent or lazy kings. Charles,
however, had still one competitor to contend with. This
was Rainfroy, who had been appointed mayor of the palace,
and who made so vigorous a resistance, that Charles was
obliged to allow him to retain peaceable possession of the
country of Anjou. But no sooner had he thus set himself
at liberty from domestic enemies, than he was threatened
with destruction by foreign invaders. The Suevians, Fri¬
sians, and Alemanni, were successively encountered and de¬
feated ; Eudes also, who had perfidiously violated the trea¬
ties by which he had bound himself, was twice repulsed;
after which Charles invaded Aquitaine, and obliged the
treacherous duke to hearken to reason. This however had
scarcely been accomplished when he found himself engaged
with a more formidable enemy than any he had yet en¬
countered. The Saracens having overrun the greater part
of Asia, now turned their victorious arms westward, and
threatened Europe with total subjugation. Spain had al¬
ready received their yoke ; and having crossed the Pyrenees,
they next invaded France, appearing in vast numbers un¬
der the walls of Toulouse. Here they were encountered
and defeated by Eudes; but this proved only a partial
check. The barbarians having once more passed the Py¬
renees, entered France with a powerful army, which Eudes
was no longer able to resist. He encountered them indeed
with his accustomed valour; but being obliged to yield to
superior force, he solicited the protection and assistance of
Charles. Upon this occasion the latter, on account of his
valour and personal strength, acquired the name of Martel,
or the Hammer, in allusion to the violence of the strokes
which he bestowed on his enemies. Three hundred and
seventy-five thousand Infidels, amongst whom was their
commander Abderrahman himself, are said to have perish¬
ed in a single battle fought near Poictiers. But notwith¬
standing this slaughter, they soon made another irruption,
though with no better success, being again defeated by
FRANCE.
11
History. Louis subdued the neighbouring diocese of Rennes ; after
which the latter assumed the title of king. By this bold
857-877- usurper Charles was totally defeated; and his subjects,
perceiving the weakness of their monarch, put themselves
under the protection of Louis the German, whose ambi¬
tion prompted him to give a ready ear to the proposal.
Taking the opportunity of Charles’s absence in repelling
an invasion of the Danes, he marched with a formidable
army into France, and was solemnly crowned by the Arch¬
bishop of Sens in the year 857. But being too confident
of success, and fancying himself already established on the
throne, he was persuaded to dismiss his German forces ;
upon which Charles marched against him with an army, and
compelled Louis to abandon his new kingdom. Notwith¬
standing this success, however, the kingdom of Charles
still continued in a very tottering condition. Harassed by
the Normans on one side, and by the king of Bretagne on
another, he marched against the latter in 860; but had
the misfortune to sustain a total defeat, after an engage¬
ment which lasted two days. The victory was chiefly
owing to a noted warrior named Robert le Fort, or the
Strong, who commanded the Bretons; but Charles found
means to gain over the latter to his interest, and for some
time the abilities of Robert afforded support to his tottering
throne. The difficulties, however, returned on the death
of that hero, who was killed in repelling an invasion of the
Danes. Some amends were indeed made for his loss by
the death of the king of Lorraine in 869, by which event
the territories of Charles were augmented by the cities of
Lyons, Vienne, Toul, Besan^on, Verdun, Cambray, Viviers,
and Urez, together with the territories of Hainault, Zea¬
land, and Holland; wrhilst Cologne, Utrecht, Treves, Mentz,
Strasburg, with the rest of the territories of Lothaire, were
assigned to Louis the German.
All this time the Normans still continued their incur¬
sions ; but Solomon king of Bretagne having joined his
forces to those of Charles, in order to repel the common
enemy, the Normans were besieged in Anglers, and oblig¬
ed to purchase leave to depart by relinquishing all the spoil
they had taken. Thus freed from a formidable enemy,
Charles began to aspire to the imperial crown, which soon
became vacant by the death of Louis. This indeed be¬
longed of right to Louis the German; but Charles, having
assembled a powerful army, marched into Italy ; and being
favourably received at Rome, the imperial crown was placed
on his head by the pope, in the year 873. Enraged at his
disappointment, Louis discharged his fury on the defence¬
less country of Champagne; and though the approach of
Charles obliged him to retire, he continued his preparations
with such vigour that Charles would probably have found him
a formidable adversary, had he not been removed by death
in 877. Informed of his brother’s decease, Charles invad¬
ed the dominions of his son Louis, who possessed Fran¬
conia, Thuringia, and Lower Lorraine, with some other ter¬
ritories. But the enterprise proved unsuccessful. Charles,
though at the head of superior numbers, was defeated with
great slaughter, and had scarcely time to reunite his scat¬
tered forces when he received information that the Normans
had invaded his territories, laid waste partof thecountry, and
taken possession of Rouen. These disasters affected him
so deeply that he fell dangerously ill, and he had scarcely
, recovered when he was called into Italy to assist the pope
against the Saracens. Charles passed into Italy with a few
followers ; but when he arrived at Pavia, where the pontiff
had appointed to meet him, he was informed that Carlo-
man, king of Bavaria, son of Louis the German, was already
in Italy with a powerful army, and laid claim to the impe¬
rial title. Charles accordingly prepared to oppose him by
force of arms ; but his generals conspired against him, and
the soldiers declared their resolution not to pass the Alps.
This obliged him to retire to France at the moment when
877-987.
Carloman, dreading his power, was preparing to return to History.
Germany. This was the last enterprise of Charles. His
journey brought on a relapse of illness, which was rendered
fatal through the treachery of a Jewish physician named
Zedechius, who administered poison to him under the pre¬
tence of curing his malady; and he expired in a miserable
cottage upon Mount Cenis, in the fifty-fourth year of his
age, and thirty-eighth of his reign over the kingdom of
France.
The ambition of Charles had been productive of much Louis the
distress both to himself and to his subjects. His son Louis, Stammer-
surnamed the Stammerer, from a defect in his speech, was er‘
of a different disposition ; but his feeble administration
was ill calculated to retrieve the fortunes of his country.
He died on the 10th of April 879, whilst on a march to
suppress some insurrections in Burgundy, leaving his queen
Adelaide pregnant; and some time after his decease the
latter was delivered of a son, named Charles. His death
was followed by an interregnum, during which a faction
was formed for setting aside the children of Louis the
Stammerer, in favour of the German princes, sons to Louis
the brother of Charles the Bald. But this scheme proved
abortive; and the two sons of the late king, Louis and
Carloman, were crowned kings of France. But in 881
both princes died; Louis, as was suspected, of poison ;
and Carloman of a wound he had received whilst hunt¬
ing. This produced a second interregnum, which ended
in calling in Charles the Gross, emperor of Germany, whose
reign was even more unfortunate than that of any of his
predecessors. The Normans, whom he had allowed to set¬
tle in Friesland, having sailed up the Seine with a fleet,
and laid siege to Paris, Charles, unable to force them to
abandon their undertaking, prevailed on them to depart by
a large sum of money. But as he could not advance the
money at once, he permitted them to remain during the
winter in the neighbourhood of Paris, which they in return
plundered without mercy. After this disgraceful transac¬
tion Charles returned to Germany in a declining state of
health ; and having quarrelled with his empress, he was
abandoned by all his friends, deposed, and reduced to the
greatest distress.
On the deposition of Charles the Gross, Eudes count of Charles
Paris, chosen king by the nobility during the minority of ^ie Simple.
Charles son of Adelaide, afterwards named Charles the
Simple, defeated the Normans, and repressed the power
of the nobility. On this account a party was formed in
favour of Charles, who was sent for from England; but
Eudes having peaceably resigned the greater part of the
kingdom, consented to do homage for the remainder, and
died soon after the agreement, in 898. During the reign
of Charles the Simple, the French government declined.
By the introduction of fiefs, those noblemen who had ob¬
tained the possession of governments, and got these con¬
firmed to themselves and their heirs for ever, became in a
manner independent sovereigns ; and as the great lords had
others under them, and these in like manner others who
again had their vassals, instead of the easy and equal go¬
vernment which formerly prevailed, a vast number of in¬
supportable little tyrannies was erected. The Normans,
too, ravaged the country, and desolated some of the finest
provinces of France. But Charles at length ceded the
duchy of Neustria to Rollo, the chief of these barbarians,
who having become a Christian, changed his own name to
Robert, and that of his principality to Normandy.
During the remainder of the reign of Charles the Simple, Hugh
and the entire reigns of Louis IV. surnamed the Stranger, Capet.
Lothaire, and Louis V. the power of the Carlovingian race
continually declined, till at last they were supplanted by
Hugh Capet, who had been created Duke of France by
Lothaire. This revolution happened in the year 987, and
was brought about much in the same manner as the former
12 FRA
History, one had been by Pepin. Capet proved an active and pru-
^ent monarch, and possessed other qualities requisite for
7- om. keeping his tumultuous subjects in awe. He died on the
24th of October 997, leaving his dominions in perfect quiet
to his son Robert.
Robert. The new king inherited the eminent qualities of his af-
ther. In his reign the kingdom was enlarged by the death
of Henry duke of Burgundy, to whom he became heir.
This new accession of territory, however, was not obtain¬
ed without a war of several years continuance ; and had it
not been for the assistance of the Duke of Normandy, it
is doubtful whether the king would have succeeded. As
Robert was of opinion that peace and tranquillity were pre¬
ferable to wide and extended dominions held by a precari¬
ous tenure, he refused the kingdom of Italy and the im¬
perial crown of Germany, both which were offered him, and
died on the 20th of July 1030.
Henry I. Robert was succeeded by his eldest son Henry I. In
the beginning of his reign he met with great opposition
from his mother, who had always hated him, and preferred
his younger brother Robert, in whose favour she now rais¬
ed an insurrection. With the assistance of Robert duke of
Normandy, however, Henry overcame all his enemies, and
established himself firmly upon the throne. In return for
this service he supported William, Robert’s natural son,
and subsequently king of England, in the possession of the
duchy of Normandy. Afterwards, however, having become
jealous of the power of the future conqueror, he not only
supported secretly the pretenders to the duchy of Nor¬
mandy, but actually invaded that country. This enter¬
prise, however, proved unsuccessful, and Henry was oblig¬
ed to make peace ; but no sincere reconciliation ever fol¬
lowed ; for the king retained a deep sense of the disgrace he
had met w ith, and the duke never forgave him for invading
his dominions. The treaty was therefore speedily broken ;
and Henry once more invaded Normandy with two armies,
one commanded by himself, and the other by his brother.
The first was harassed by continual skirmishes, and the
last totally defeated ; after which Henry was obliged to
agree to such terms as the duke thought proper to dictate.
But the rancour which had been generated between them
never ceased, and was in reality the cause of that impla¬
cable aversion which for a long series of years produced
perpetual quarrels between the kings of France and those
of the Norman race in England.
Philip. Henry died in 1059, not without suspicion of being poi¬
soned, and was succeeded by his eldest son Philip, at that
time in the eighth year of his age. Baldwin earl of Flan¬
ders was appointed his guardian, and died in the year
1066, about the time that William of Normandy became
king of England. After the death of his tutor, Philip began
to show an insincere, haughty, and oppressive disposition.
He engaged in a war with William the Conqueror, and sup¬
ported his son Robert in a rebellion against him. (See
article England.) But after the death of William, he as¬
sisted Robert’s brothers against him, by which means the
latter was forced to consent to a partition of his dominions.
In 1092, Philip, being wearied of his queen Bertha, pro¬
cured a divorce under pretence of consanguinity, and af¬
terwards demanded in marriage Emma, daughter of Roger,
count of Calabria. The treaty of marriage was conclud¬
ed ; and the princess was sent over, with jewels and a con¬
siderable sum in ready money. But the king, instead of
espousing her, retained her fortune ; dismissed the princess
herself; carried oft the countess of Anjou, esteemed the
handsomest woman in France, from her husband, and, not
satisfied with the illegal possession of her person, procured
a divorce from her husband, whilst he prevailed upon some
Norman bishops to solemnize a marriage with her. But
these transactions were so scandalous, that the pope, hav¬
ing caused them to be revised in a council held at Autun
N C E.
in the year 1094, pronounced sentence of excommunica- .History,
tion against Philip in case he did not part with the countess. v—
On his professing repentance, however, the censure was 1094-1108-
taken off; but as the king paid no regard to his promises,
he was in 1095 excommunicated a second time. He again
professed repentance, and was again absolved ; but as he still
lived with the Countess of Anjou as formerly, he was soon
afterwards excommunicated a third time. This unworthy
conduct exposed him to the contempt of the people. But
too many of the nobility followed his example, at the same
time that they despised his authority. In the year 1100
Philip prevailed on the court of Rome to have this affair
reviewed in an assembly at Poictiers ; where, notwithstand¬
ing his utmost efforts, sentence of excommunication was a
fourth time pronounced against him. Yet, in spite of all
these sentences, as Bertha was now dead, and the Count of
Anjou offered, for a large sum of money, to give whatever
assistance might be requisite for procuring a dispensation,
Philip at last prevailed, and the countess was proclaimed
queen of France. But though his domestic concerns were
now in some measure arranged, his negligence in public mat¬
ters had thrown the affairs of the nation into the greatest
disorder. He therefore associated with him in the govern¬
ment his eldest son Louis, a prince the reverse of his fa¬
ther, and who by his activity and resolution kept constant¬
ly in the field with a considerable body of forces, reduced
the rebellious nobility to subjection, and saved the state
from being utterly subverted. For these services the queen
looked upon the prince with so jealous an eye, that he
found it necessary to retire for a time into England; but
he had not been long at the English court before Henry
I. received a letter from Philip, urging him, for certain
important reasons, to throw his son into close confinement,
or even to dispatch him. The king of England, however,
instead of complying with this infamous request, showed
the letter to Louis, and sent him home with all imaginable
marks of respect. Immediately on his return he demand¬
ed justice ; but the queen caused poison to be administered
to him, which operated so violently that his life was for a
time despaired of. A stranger, however, undertook the
cure, and succeeded. On his recovery, the prince was on
the point of avenging his quarrel by force of arms ; but his
father having caused the queen to make the most humble
submissions to him, his resentment was appeased, and a re¬
conciliation took place.
Philip died in the year 1108, and was succeeded by his Louis the
son Louis, surnamed the Gross. The first years of his Gross,
reign were disturbed by insurrections of his lords, which
proved the more troublesome as they were secretly fomented
by Henry I. of England, that by weakening the power of
France his duchy of Normandy might be the more secure.
This quickly brought on a war, in which Henry was de¬
feated, and his son William obliged to do homage for Nor¬
mandy. As the kings of England and France, however,
were rivals, the latter espoused the cause of William the
son of Robert duke of Normandy, whom Henry had unjust¬
ly deprived of that duchy ; and this brought on a new war,
in which Louis, having sustained a defeat, was obliged to
make peace upon such terms as his antagonist thought pro¬
per to prescribe. The pacification, however, was but of
short duration. Louis renewed his intrigues in favour of
William, and endeavoured to form a confederacy against
Henry; but the latter found means not only to dissipate
this confederacy, but to prevail upon Henry V. emperor
of Germany to invade France with the whole strength of
the empire on one side, whilst he prepared to attack it on
the other. But Louis having collected an army of two
hundred thousand men, both thought proper to desist from
the attempt. Upon this the king of France desired to
march into Normandy to put William in possession of that
duchy; but his great vassals refused to assist in such an
FRANCE.
13
History, enterprise, alleging that they had assembled to defend the
—territories of France from the invasion of a foreign prince,
108-1270. an(j not to enlarge his power by destroying the balance
produced by the king of England possessing Normandy,
which they reckoned necessary for their own safety. This
was followed by a peace, which was concluded on pretty
equal terms, and maintained during the life of Louis, wdio
died in 1137, leaving the kingdom to his son Louis VII.
,ouis VII. The young king was not endowed with any of those qua¬
lities which constitute a great monarch. From the super¬
stition of the age in which he lived, he undertook an expe¬
dition into the Holy Land, whence he returned without
glory. In this expedition he took his queen Eleanor along
with him ; but was so much offended with her gallantries
during her stay in Palestine, as well as her behaviour after¬
wards, that he divorced her, and returned the duchy of
Guienne, which he had received as her portion. Six weeks
after this she married Henry duke of Normandy, count of
Anjou and Maine, and heir apparent to the crown of Eng¬
land. This marriage proved a very great mortification to
Louis, and, on account of the folly of his conduct, procured
him an unenviable cognomen. His reign was wholly un¬
distinguished. He died on the 18th of September 1180,
leaving the kingdom to his son Philip.
'hilip the This prince, surnamed The Gift of God, The Magnani-
freat. mous, and The Conqueror, during his life-time, and styled
Augustus after his death, is reckoned by some historians
one of the greatest princes who ever sat on the throne of
France. It does not appear, however, that these titles were
at all deserved. In the beginning of his reign he was
opposed by a strong faction excited by his mother, which
he suppressed with a vigour and spirit that did him honour ;
but his having taken part with the children of Henry II.
of England, in their unnatural contests with their father,
and his treacherous combination with John to seize his
brother’s kingdom when he was detained in prison by the
emperor of Germany, are indelible stains in his character.
In military skill and personal valour he was inferior to
Richard I. of England; nor can his recovering the pro¬
vinces held by the English in France from such a mean
and dastardly prince as John entitle him with any justice
to the surname of Conqueror. In politics he was evident¬
ly the dupe of the pope, who made use of him to intimidate
John into a submission, by promising him the kingdom of
England, which he never meant that he should enjoy. For
an account of these transactions, see the article England.
teign of Philip died in 1223, and was succeeded by his son Louis
Louis IX. VIII. who, again, was, in 1226, succeeded by Louis IX. af¬
terwards styled St Louis. This prince was certainly pos¬
sessed of many good qualities, but deeply tinctured with the
superstition of the times, which induced him to engage in
two crusades. In the first of these, against the Saracens
of Egypt, he was taken prisoner, and treated with great
cruelty ; but ultimately obtained his deliverance, on con¬
dition of paying a million of pieces of gold, and surrender¬
ing the city of Damietta. No sooner had he regained his
liberty than he entered Syria with a view of doing some¬
thing worthy of his character. But from this expedition
he was obliged to return sooner than he intended, by the
news of the decease of his mother, Queen Blanch, whom
he had appointed regent in his absence, and who had
managed the national aftairs with great prudence. Upon
his return, however, the king found many and great dis¬
orders in the kingdom, which he set himself to reform with
the utmost diligence. The reputation of this monarch for
candour and justice was so great that the barons of Eng¬
land, as well as King Henry III. consented to make him
umpire of the differences which subsisted between them.
But though he decided this matter justly, his decision was
not productive of any good. At last the king, having set¬
tled every thing relating to his kingdom, set out on another
crusade for Africa, where he died of the plague, on the History.
25th of August 1270.
Notwithstanding the misfortunes of Louis, his successor 1270-1085.
Philip, surnamed the Hardy, continued the war against the Philip the
Infidels with great vigour. Being reinforced by his uncle Hardy.
Charles king of Sicily, he brought the contest to a more for¬
tunate conclusion than his predecessor ; the Saracens were
defeated in two engagements ; and the king of Tunis was
obliged to sue for peace, offering at the same time to dou¬
ble the tribute which he formerly paid to the crown of Si¬
cily, to reimburse the expenses of the war, and to permit the
Christian religion to be freely propagated throughout his
dominions. Having accomplished this, the two princes
set sail for Europe; but the distemper which had infect¬
ed the army in Africa not being eradicated, it broke forth
on their arrival in Sicily, and for some time raged with
great violence. On his return to France, Philip took posses¬
sion of the counties of Provence and Toulouse ; married his
second son, though then very young, to the only daughter of
the king of Navarre ; and himself espoused Mary the daugh¬
ter of the Duke of Brabant, reckoned one of the most beau¬
tiful princesses of the age. He steadily enforced the re¬
gulations of his predecessor, who had prohibited the barons
from making private wars upon one another; secured the
friendship of Edward I. of England, by ceding to him the
county of Agenois; and entered into a war with Spain in
support of the pretensions of his nephews, the Infants de
la Cerda, to the throne of Castille. The events of this
war were of no great importance; and the king’s attention
was quickly called away from them by the death of his eld¬
est son Louis at the age of twelve years. This event hap¬
pened in the year 1275, not without a suspicion of poison,
which is common enough when princes are cut off by sud¬
den deaths, and the king and queen were themselves loudly
condemned. Meanwhile the Sicilians, over whom Charles
of Anjou had established his authority, instigated by John
of Procida, a noble exile, came to a determination of freeing
themselves from the French yoke by a general massacre.
This resolution was accordingly carried into execution, and
the French, to the number of eight thousand, were mur¬
dered in one night; after which Pedro of Aragon sailed to
the island, where he was received by the ^habitants as their
king and deliverer. Charles was sensibly affected by this
misfortune; and having laid siege to Messina, sailed di¬
rectly to Marseilles, where he obtained a powerful rein¬
forcement. But during his absence, his son, to whom he
had entrusted the conduct of the siege, having rashly ven¬
tured an engagement with the Spanish fleet, was entirely
defeated and taken prisoner. This so much affected the
father that he died of grief, and Sicily became inseparably
attached to the house of Aragon. The misfortunes of
Charles were followed by others which equally affected
Philip himself. Pope Martin IV. in the warmth of his zeal
for the cause of the Duke of Anjou, had excommunicated
Pedro of Aragon, and bestowed his kingdom on Charles of
Valois, a younger son of the king of France. In attempt¬
ing to defend himself against the execution of this unjust
sentence, Pedro was mortally wounded; but, soon after¬
wards, the French fleet being defeated by that of Aragon,
the king was so much affected by the misfortune that he
fell sick, and expired at Perpignan, in 1285, in the forty-
first year of his age and sixteenth of his reign.
By the death of Philip the Hardy, the French crown de-Philip the
volved on his second son Philip the Fair, who had espoused Fair-
the princess of Navarre, and who at the time of his accession
was in his seventeenth year. By the marriage with this prin-
ce-ss he had obtained the counties of Champagne and Brie ;
yet even with this increase of territory he found himself un¬
able to support the war in which his predecessor had engaged,
for which reason he abandoned the interest of the Infants
de la Cerda, and settled the differences with Castille. The
14 FRANC E.
^istory. treaty was concluded through the mediation of Edward I. the implacable enemies of Boniface. Irritated at this de- History
1285 °c .u rfi b/ Awhose intercession Charles the Lame, son cided proceeding, his holiness sent an abusive letter to v—
ot the JJuke ot Anjou, was released from captivity, Edward Philip, and then summoned the clergy of France to attend 1305-13h
himself paying part of his ransom. Charles consented to a council at Rome. Philip retaliated, by seizing the tem-
renounce his claim on Sicily ; and Philip himself promised poralities of those who obeyed the summons, and recallino-
that his kinsman Philip of Valois should renounce all pre- his brother Charles of Valois, who was styled the pone’s
tensions to the crown of Aragon. The tranquillity result- general. Sensible of the danger which attended this con-
ing trom this treaty was, however, soon interrupted by test, however, Philip dispatched two emissaries under the
differences with Edward, Pope Boniface VIII. and Guyde pretence of conciliating differences, but in reality to levy
Dampier, count of Flanders. The difference with Eng- a body of troops sufficient to execute his hostile purposes
land arose by accident. A Norman and an English ves- against the holy father ; and with these he suddenly invest-
sel having met off the coast of Bayonne, and having both ed the pope in his native city of Anegnia ; so that whilst the
occasion to water, the crews met and quarrelled at the same bull was preparing to excommunicate Philip, and release his
spring, and in the squabble a Norman was killed with his subjects from their obedience, the pope himself was obliged
own weapon by an Englishman, whom it was alleged he to surrender to the troops of the prince whom he intended to
had assaulted with it. But however this may have been, anathematize. But although Boniface had been delivered
a complaint was made by the Normans to Philip, who, up to the troops of Philip through the treachery of the
without giving himself much trouble to inquire into the people of Anegnia, he was no sooner taken prisoner, and
merits of the cause, instantly allowed them to redress their reduced to distress, than they rescued him from his guards
supposed injuries. The consequence was, that a kind of and conveyed him to Rome, where he soon afterwards died
piratical war commenced between the two nations ; the of chagrin and disappointment. Benedict, his successor
Irish and Dutch seamen taking part with the English, and revoked the excommunication prepared by Boniface, and
those of blunders and Genoa with the French. Thus the attempted to conciliate the good-will of Philip ; but, before
force on both sides was gradually augmented, until at last this could be effected, he was himself cut off by death, not
the affair became so serious that in one engagement fifteen without strong suspicions of poison. After the decease of
thousand French are said to have perished. Alarmed at Benedict, Philip offered to procure the papal chair for Ber-
such a carnage, Philip summoned the king of England as trand, archbishop of Bordeaux, provided the latter would
his vassal to attend ; and, on his refusal, declared his estates condemn the memory of Boniface, restore the honours and
in b ranee forf eited. After a great deal of negotiation, how- estates of the Colonnas, which had been forfeited, allow him
ever, 1 hilip declared that he would be satisfied with the the tenths of the clergy of France fir ffve years, and -rant
nominal cession of the province of Guienne ; and Edward other concessions which at that time it was not thought p^o-
comphed with his demands ; but no sooner had the French per to divulge. Bertrand complied with the terms proposed
monarch obtained possession of that country than he per- by the king, and ascended the papal throne by the name
sisted in the forfeiture of the English possessions in France; of Clement V.; but narrowly escaped being killed on his
and this treacherous proceeding instantly produced a war return from the cathedral of Lyons, by the fallino- of a wall
between the two nations. Edward, that he might the by which accident the Duke of Bretagne was killed, and
better defend himself against so formidable an adversary, the king and Count of Valois were considerably bruised,
concluded a treaty with the emperor Adolphus, and the The new pope fixed his residence at Avignon, where he
courts of Bretagne, Holland, Bar, Juliers, Gueldres, and punctually complied with all the conditions of the treaty,
r landers ; whilst Philip strengthened himself by an alliance except that of condemning the memory of Boniface, which,
wuth John Baliol of Scotland, and thus laid the foundation instead of attainting, he vindicated with much solemnity,
of that intimate lypion which subsisted between France and The condition which Philip had at first concealed was dis-
Scotland for about two centuries. During this war the covered by the death of the emperor Albert of Austria,
french made a descent upon the coast of England, and de- after which he sought the assistance of Clement to place
stroyed the town of Dover; whilst Edward, in revenge, his brother Charles of Valois on the imperial throne. But
landed in Gascony with a powerful army. But no great his holiness, apprehensive of the danger which might arise
exploits were performed with this armament; and the bel- from being surrounded with the powerful relations of Phi-
hgerents, finding themselves equally matched, consented to lip, urged the diet to proceed instantly to an election, and
a suspension of arms for two years, during which time a recommended to them Henry of Luxemburg as a proper
peace was finally concluded through the mediation of Boni- person to fill the imperial throne. This scheme succeeded,
face V III. Guienne was restored ; Edward espoused Mar- and the election was concluded before Philip could arrive
garet the sister of Philip; and his daughter Isabelle was at Avignon; but, as some consolation for his disappoint-
given in marriage to the prince of Wales. Philip and Ed- ment, the latter took possession of the city of Lyons, which
ward treated the allies whom they had engaged in their had hitherto been independent, but which was now induced
cause with equal perfidy. Baliol was abandoned by Philip to submit to the authority of Philip.
to the resentment of Edward ; and Guy, earl of Flanders, In the mean time, Guy earl of Flanders having been Expedition
was left equally exposed to the vengeance of Philip. abandoned by his ally Edward king of England, was obliged against the
I lie reconciliation between the French and English mo- to throw himself on the clemency of the French monarch, Lari of
narchs was soon followed by a difference with Pope Boni- who had sent his brother, Charles of Valois, with a power-Flan<lers-
face, whom they had appointed mediator between them, ful army to invade his dominions. From the latter indeed
hensible of his assuming disposition, they had inserted in he had obtained a promise, that if he could not, within a
the reference made to him a provision, to the effect that year, settle the differences subsisting between him and
he was chosen as a private individual, and not as the sue- Philip, he should be at liberty to retire and pursue whatever
cessor ox St Peter. The pontiff, however, soon showed measures he pleased. But Philip, to gratify the resent-
that he was not to be treated as a private person ; and a ment of his queen against the captive prince, detained him
contest with Philip quickly ensued. Boniface began with with two of his sons, in close confinement; whilst he him-
lorbidding the clergy, under pain of excommunication, to self, having entered Flanders in triumph, was everywhere
grant the king any subsidies, without first obtaining the received as sovereign of the country, and at his departure
consent of the Holy See; and Philip revenged himself by appointed John de Chatillon, a relative of the queen, as
prohibiting ecclesiastics from sending money out of the governor of the newly-acquired territory. This person
kingdom without his leave, and by protecting the Colonnas, however, being of a haughty and tyrannical disposition,’
FRA
History, treated the people so harshly that an insurrection speedily
broke out. The commotion, nevertheless, was not general,
1314. an(] would have been effectually quelled by the diligence
of the magistrates, had not Chatillon entered Bruges, and
publicly displayed two hogsheads of ropes, which he threat¬
ened to employ in the execution of the inhabitants. Upon
this the people flew to arms, and massacred fifteen hundred
French, whilst Chatillon himself escaped their fury only
by swimming across the town ditch. The insurgents daily
gathered strength, and having assembled an army of sixty
thousand men, laid siege to Courtray. Here they were
rashly attacked in their trenches by the Count d’Artois,
who met the reward of his temerity in being cut off, with
twenty thousand of his troops. Determined on revenge,
Philip, by debasing the coin of the kingdom, raised ano¬
ther army, and was thus enabled to enter Flanders with a
force which would probably have subdued the whole coun¬
try, had not Edward artfully communicated to the queen
of France, as a secret, a feigned correspondence between
the French nobility and the court of Rome; by which
false intelligence the king was induced to abandon the en¬
terprise without performing any thing worthy of the pre¬
parations he had made. The war wras continued some time
longer, but the attempts of Philip were constantly defeat¬
ed by the steady valour of the Flemings ; and the only re¬
compense Philip obtained for all his trouble and expense
was the city of Courtray.
The other remarkable transactions of this reign were the
expulsion and confiscation of the estates of the Templars,
who at that time enjoyed immense possessions in France.
These confiscations took place without any form of trial, and
upwards of fifty of the knights were put to death in a cruel
manner. The grand master, with three of his principal
officers, were burned by a slow fire in the presence of the
king and his attendants. The whole body of these unfortu¬
nate knights had been accused of the most gross and abo¬
minable sensualities. The particulars were revealed, or
pretended to be so, by two criminals, who received their
pardon for the discoveries they made; and these discove¬
ries were confirmed by the confession of the Templars them¬
selves. But this confession was afterwards retracted, as
being extorted from them by the fear of absolute destruc¬
tion ; and those who suffered asserted their purity to the
last; so that, on the whole, it was believed that Philip con¬
sulted his avarice more than his justice by this cruel exe¬
cution.
The latter part of his life was embittered by domestic
misfortunes. His three daughters-in-law wrere accused of
infidelity to their husbands, and, after a severe examination,
two of them were condemned to perpetual imprisonment,
whilst their paramours were flayed alive, and afterwards
hung upon a gibbet, together with an usher of the cham¬
ber, who had been their confidant. The uneasiness of
mind which Philip suffered on this account is supposed to
have impaired his health, and he died of a consumption in
the year 1314, being the forty-seventh of his age and thir¬
tieth of his reign.
iouis the On the accession of Louis surnamed the Boisterous, he
loisterous. found his treasury so much exhausted that he was obliged
to delay for some time the ceremony of his coronation, and
that of his queen Clemence, daughter of the king of Hun¬
gary. Having found the kingdom otherwise in a distracted
state, he applied himself diligently to appease the discon¬
tents of his subjects, and conciliate their affection by every
means in his power; and in this he was assisted by his uncle
Charles of Valois, on w hom he at length entirely devolved
the government of the kingdom. This regent, however, be¬
haved with a degree of cruelty which is supposed to have
proved fatal to the king himself; for having put to death a
nobleman who had enjoyed the confidence of the former
king, this act was so much resented by his friends that they
N C E. 15
were thought to have administered poison to the king, who History,
expired suddenly after drinking a glass of cold water, in
the twenty-sixth year of his age and second of his reign. l314-1325.
Immediately after his death, Charles prepared to dispute
the sovereignty with the brothers of the deceased sovereign.
Philip count of Poitou, the eldest brother, was at that
time at Rome assisting in the election of a new pope ; but
on his arrival in France, the throne was assigned to him
by the unanimous voice of the people. His prospects,
however, were for a short time clouded by the queen do¬
wager Clemence being delivered of a son, who has been
enrolled amongst the kings of France under the name of
John I.
The death of this infant in three weeks secured the Philip the
throne to Philip. The conduct of this monarch, who, on Long,
account of his stature, was surnamed the Long, proved
superior to that of his predecessor, who had unsuccessfully
attempted to subdue the Flemings, and had even suffered
himself to be duped by their count. By his vigorous policy
Philip compelled their sovereign to consent to a peace upon
honourable terms. He also summoned Edward II. of Eng¬
land to do homage for his possessions in France; but that
monarch finding himself involved in difficulties which ren¬
dered the visit inconvenient, sent excuses to Philip, which
the latter was pleased to sustain. As the French monarch
had formerly taken the cross during the life-time of his fa¬
ther, he now proposed to perform his vow; but he wras dis¬
suaded by the pope himself; and, at the instance of the
pontiff, he sent an army into Italy to put an end to the con¬
tending factions of the Guelphs and Ghibelines, who had
long filled the country with violence and bloodshed. The
event proved unfortunate ; and the disgrace was rendered
the more mortifying by a contagious distemper, which swept
off many thousands of the French. The remaining part of
the reign of Philip was spent in attempting to regulate the
internal concerns of his kingdom. A design having been
formed by his predecessors of establishing a certain stand¬
ard for the coin, and also of weights and measures, through¬
out France, this was adopted by Philip, who, in order the
more effectually to carry it into execution, purchased from
the Counts of Valois, Clermont, and Bourbon, the right of
coinage within their respective dominions. But notwith¬
standing all his endeavours the scheme misgave, and hav¬
ing failed to conciliate the affection of his subjects, he died
of a fever and dysentery in the year 1322, being then in the
twenty-eighth year of his age and sixth of his reign.
By the death of Philip the crown of France devolved on Charles
his brother Charles IV., who had obtained the surname of the Fair,
the Fair. After settling some disputes with the Duke of
Burgundy, he obtained the dissolution of his marriage with
Blanch, who still continued in prison, and espoused Mary
the daughter of Henry emperor of Germany. This mar¬
riage was contracted with a view to the imperial crown,
which had been so long separated from that of France; and
in 1325 an opportunity for Charles to gratify his ambition
presented itself. At that time the imperial dignity was dis¬
puted between Louis of Bavaria and Frederic of Austria,
the latter of w hom had been taken prisoner in a battle with
Louis. But Pope John, who entertained an implacable
hatred towards Louis, fulminated sentence of excommuni¬
cation against him ; and the king of France wTas induced
to embark in the same cause, by a promise of the spoils of
Bavaria ; whilst Frederic consented to relinquish his pre¬
tensions. Louis, however, by instantly releasing his pri¬
soner, and dismissing him in an honourable manner, secur¬
ed his friendship, and disarmed his most formidable anta¬
gonist. But the pope was not to be disappointed. A con¬
siderable sum of money induced Leopold, who had been in¬
trusted with the execution of the excommunication, to per¬
severe in hostilities; and it was determined that a new council
of electors should be held in order to transfer the imperial
FRANCE.
16
History, crown to Charles. In pursuit of this scheme, the king of
France set out with a splendid army for the frontiers of Ger-
1325-1337. many; but he soon found it impossible to attain the object
of his ambition. Leopold alone remained his friend, from
motives of interest; the others showed the greatest indif¬
ference, and even his brother in-law, the king of Bohemia,
absented himself from the diet; whilst in a short time the
death of the queen put an end to all connection with that
crown. On the decease of Mary, Charles espoused Joanna,
daughter of the Count d’Evreux, and, to avert the cala¬
mity of an infant succession, he entered into an alliance
with Robert, king of Scotland, by which it was provided,
that should either of the sovereigns die without an heir
apparent, the states of the kingdom should fill the vacant
throne, and the survivor of the two kings should with his
whole force support the legality of such nomination against
any other competitor. But even this proved insufficient
to avert the danger which now threatened the kingdom.
The re- Charles died in the year 1328, leaving his queen preg-
gencv. nant; and as the succession depended on the fruit of the
Philip the queen’s pregnancy, a regent was in the mean time neces-
ortunate. sary. Two candidates accordingly appeared for this im¬
portant office, urging at the same time their right to the
crown as well as to the regency. These were, Philip of
Valois, cousin-german of the deceased king ; and Edward
III., king of England, who aspired to the throne in right
of his mother, and as nephew of Charles the Fair. The
pretensions of the latter, however, were easily set aside,
and Philip was confirmed in the regency ; from which,
on the queen being delivered of a daughter, he soon step¬
ped on the throne, and acquired the surname of For¬
tunate. But though the pretensions of Edward, both to
the regency and the crown, were rejected by the people,
it was still impossible for Philip to think of the claims of
such a formidable rival without uneasiness. He therefore
summoned the English monarch to do homage for his pos¬
sessions in France ; and, upon the latter not answering his
summons, forfeited them, and seized his revenues. This
at last induced Edward to cross the sea and pay homage,
which Philip consented to receive in any form, upon con¬
dition of a proper explanation being afterwards given ; but
as this was studiously delayed after the return of the king
of England, the province of Guienne was again seized by
the French monarch. Unwilling to lose his continental
dominions, or involve himself in a war for the sake of a
mere ceremony, Edward sent over a formal deed, by which
he acknowledged that he owed liege homage to France.
The flame was thus smothered for the present, and would
perhaps have been entirely extinguished, had it not been
for the intrigues of Robert of Artois, brother-in-law to the
king of France himself, who had been expelled his coun¬
try, and had taken refuge in England. For some time,
indeed, neither party made any open declaration of hosti¬
lity ; but as both monarchs possessed great sagacity, they
soon penetrated each other’s designs. Philip, under pre¬
tence of taking the cross, began to make great preparations,
strengthening himself at the same time by alliances on
every side; whilst Edward, determined to renew his claim
to the crown of France, projected the conquest of Scot¬
land. This, however, he failed to accomplish ; and in the
mean time Philip, in order to favour the Scotch, with
whom he was in alliance, suffered his subjects to make ir¬
ruptions into Guienne.
Edward’s But at length, in 1337, the war broke out in earnest. Phi-
first expe- lip having detached a squadron of his fleet against the Infi-
dltlon- dels, employed the rest, consisting chieflyof Genoese vessels,
against the English. In this contest the Flemings, whose
aid was of importance, were courted by both parties. Louis
count of Flanders declared for Philip, but his subjects
were more inclined to Edward. James Arteville, a brewer,
the most able and artful man in the country, governed
them at that time as if he had been their prince ; and as History
the advantages arising from the English commerce deter-
mined him in favour of Edward, that prince, at his request, 1337-134',
embarked with a numerous army for Sluys, where he ar¬
rived in 1338. Upon his landing it was resolved that the
German princes in alliance with him should act against
France. But for this a pretext was wanting. The vassals
of the empire could notact by Edward’s orders, nor even as
his allies, without directions from the emperor, and he was
in league with France. This difficulty, however, was soon
overcome. The French had made themselves masters of
Cambray, and the emperor resolved that it should be re¬
taken. With this view he created Edward vicar-general of
the empire ; an empty title, but one which seemed to give
him a right to command the services of the princes of Ger¬
many. The Flemings, who were vassals of France, likewise
pretended scruples at invading the territories of their liege
lord; but, to allay these, Edward, by the advice of Arte¬
ville, assumed the title of king of France, and in virtue of
this claim challenged their assistance to dethx-one Philip of
Valois, the usurper of his kingdom. Such a step, which
could scarcely fail to beget endless jealousies and animosi¬
ties, Edward did not take without hesitation ; and from
this time may be dated the commencement of that animo¬
sity which the English have until very recently borne to¬
wards the French. Edward’s first attempt was upon the
city of Cambray, to which he laid siege; but in a short
time he was prevailed upon by Robert of Artois to raise the
siege and march into Picardy, which he entered with an army
of about fifty thousand men, composed chiefly of foreigners.
Philip came in sight with an army of nearly a hundred thou¬
sand men, composed chiefly of native subjects; and it was
daily expected that a battle would ensue. But the English
monarch was averse to engage against a force so greatly
superior ; and Philip thought it sufficient to elude the at¬
tacks of his enemy, without running any unnecessary hazard.
The two armies faced each other for several days, and mu¬
tual defiances wex-e exchanged; but Edward at last retired
into Flanders, and dispersed his army. Such was the fruit¬
less and almost ridiculous conclusion of Edward’s first ex¬
pedition, which had plunged him into the greatest difficul¬
ties. He had contracted nearly L.300,000 of debt; he had
anticipated all his revenue ; he had pledged every thing of
value which belonged either to himself or his queen ; and
he was obliged in some measure even to pawn himself to
his creditors, by desiring their permission to go over to Eng¬
land in order to procure supplies, and by promising on his
word of honour to return in person if he did not remit
their money. On his arrival in England, however, he ob¬
tained a large supply, sufficient to enable him to make all
the necessary preparations for a new invasion ; and so cer¬
tain were the English that France would now be conquer¬
ed, that the parliament, before Edward’s departure, protest¬
ed that they owed him no obedience as king of France,
and that the two kingdoms must remain for every distinct
and independent.
The king of England set out on his second expedition Edward’s
with a fleet of two hundred and forty vessels. Philip had second ex
prepared a fleet of four hundred vessels, manned with forty pedition.
thousand men ; which he stationed off Sluys, in order to
intercept Edward on his passage. The two fleets met on
the 13th of June 1340 ; but the English, either by the su¬
perior abilities of Edward, or the greater dexterity of his
seamen, gained the wind of the enemy, and with this ad¬
vantage began the action. The battle w as fierce and bloody.
The English archers, whose force and address were now
much celebrated, galled the French on their approach ;
and when the ships grappled together, the example of the
king and his nobility so animated the seamen and soldiers,
that they maintained everywhere a superiority over the ene¬
my. Meanwhile the Flemings observing the battle, hurried
FRA
History, out of their ports, and brought a reinforcement to the Eng-
''-'-V’*-’' lish, which contributed to decide the fate of the action. Two
1340-1341. hundred and thirty ships were taken, and thirty thousand
Frenchmen, including two of their admirals, were killed ;
whilst the loss of the English was inconsiderable compared
to the greatness and importance of the victory. After this
brilliant victory Edward landed his forces and laid siege
to Tournay. Philip marched to its relief with a numer¬
ous army, but acted with so much caution that Edward
found himself in a manner blocked up in his camp. At
length the Countess Dowager of Hainault, sister of Philip,
and mother-in-law of Edward, interposed with so much
spirit and address, that she engaged all parties to agree to a
truce for a year, and might perhaps have brought about a
peace if she had survived.
France In 1341, however, Edward’s ambition was once more
invaded a excited by the invitation of the Count de Montfort, who
third tune. had p0SSessed himself of the province of Bretagne, and
applied to Edward to second his claims. An offer of this
kind entirely coincided with Edward’s views. He was
happy in the promised assistance of Montfort, which thus
opened to him an entrance into the heart of France. But
this flattering prospect was for a time damped by the impri¬
sonment of Montfort, who, on the discovery of his inten¬
tions, was besieged in the city of Nantes, and taken prisoner.
But Jane of Flanders, his wife, courageously undertook to
support the falling fortunes of her family. Having assembled
the inhabitants of Rennes, where she then resided, she
appeared before them carrying her infant son in her arms,
and having deplored her misfortunes, attempted to inspire
the citizens with an affection for her cause. The inhabi¬
tants of Nantes instantly espoused her interests, and all the
other fortresses of Bretagne embraced the same resolution.
The king of England being apprised of her exertions, was
entreated to send succour with all possible expedition to
the town of Hennebone, in which place she had resolv¬
ed to sustain the attack of the enemy. Charles de Blois,
Philip’s general, anxious to make himself master of so im¬
portant a fortress as Hennebone, and still more to take
the countess prisoner, sat down before the place with a
large army, and conducted the siege with indefatigable in¬
dustry. But the defence was not less vigorous than the
attack, and several sallies were made by the garrison, in
which the countess herself led the assailants. But at length
the besiegers made several breaches in the walls, and a
general assault was hourly expected. A capitulation was
therefore proposed, and a conference already commenced,
when the countess, who had ascended a high tower, and
wras looking with great impatience towards the sea, descried
some ships in the distance, and, immediately exclaiming
that reinforcements had arrived, forbade any further ne¬
gotiation. Nor was she disappointed. The fleet which she
had descried carried a body of English gentlemen, with six
thousand archers, whom Edward had prepared for the re¬
lief of Hennebone, but who had been long detained by
contrary winds. This seasonable relief entered the har¬
bour under the conduct of Sir Walter Manny, one of the
most gallant commanders of his time, and served to keep
up the spirits of the Bretons until the expiration of the
truce, when Edward would be at liberty to renew the war
in regular form.
The succours under Sir Walter Manny were speedily
followed by a more considerable reinforcement command¬
ed by Robert of Artois, who soon after his arrival made
himself master of Vannes; but the French speedily reco¬
vered that city, and Robert was compelled to relinquish
his prize after receiving a mortal wound. Edward, eager
to revenge the death of his ally, soon landed at Morbihan,
near Vannes, at the head of an army of twelve thousand
men; and with this small force he undertook at once the
siege of Vannes, Nantes, and Rennes; but having divided
VOL. x.
N C E. ■ 17
his troops, he failed in every enterprise, and gave John History,
duke of Normandy, the king of France’s eldest son, an op-
portunity of besieging him in his camp. In this situation 1341-1346.
his provisions began to fail; and, notwithstanding all his
valour, Edward wmuld have been obliged to surrender, had
he not, by a train of artful negotiations, induced Philip to
relinquish the advantage he had obtained, and consent to
a truce of three years, which was brought about by the me¬
diation of the court of Rome.
Philip now endeavoured to secure himself against the
power of his rival by alliances, and by purchasing the city
of Montpellier from the king of Majorca. But in the mean
time the English, under the command of the Earl of Derby,
invaded Guienne, and, having twice defeated the French
army, commanded by the Count de Lisle, made themselves
masters of a great number of towns. Pliilip, by reason of
the exhausted state of his treasury, was for some time in¬
capable of making any opposition ; and, to recruit his finan¬
ces, he was obliged to impose a duty on salt, which gave
great offence to his subjects. But when these discontents
were allayed, he soon raised an army of a hundred thou¬
sand men, whose courage was excited by the presence of the
Dukes of Normandy and Burgundy. The English general
was therefore compelled to act on the defensive, and one
fortress after another surrendered to the French, until at
length the total extinction of the power of England upon
the Continent appeared inevitable. In this situation Ed¬
ward resolved to bring relief in person to his distressed
subjects and allies; and accordingly embarked in 1346, at
Southampton, on board a fleet of near a thousand sail. Be¬
sides the chief nobility of England, he carried along with
him his eldest son the prince of Wales, afterwards sur-
named the Black Prince, from the colour of his armour, a
youth of about fifteen years old, and already remarkable for
understanding and valour far above his age. His army,
which consisted of four thousand men at arms, ten thou¬
sand archers, ten thousand Welsh infantry, and six thou¬
sand Irish, were all landed in safety at La Hogue, a port
in Normandy. The intelligence of Edward’s landing, and
the devastation caused by his troops, who dispersed them¬
selves over the whole country, soon spread consternation in
the French court. The rich city of Caen was taken and
plundered by the English; the villages and towns as far as
Paris shared the same fate ; and the French had no other
resource but to break down the bridges, in order to check
the advance of the invader. In the mean time Philip was
not idle in making preparations to oppose the enemy. Hav¬
ing stationed one of his generals, Godemar de Faye, with
an army on the opposite side of the river Somme, which
Edward had to cross, whilst he himself, at the head of a
hundred and twenty thousand fighting men, advanced to
give the English battle, he so hemmed in Edward that the
latter found himself exposed to the danger of being en¬
closed and starved in an enemy’s country. In this dilem¬
ma he offered a large reward to any one who should bring
him information of a passage across the river Somme ; and
a peasant of the country, named Gobin Agace, having dis¬
covered a ford, Edward had just time to get his whole army
across the river, when Philip appeared in his rear. A battle
ensued, in which the French were overthrown with great
slaughter, and which, under the name of Crescy, the place
where it was fought, is equally memorable in the annals of
England and France. Edward next laid siege to Calais,
which was then defended by John de Vienne, an experien¬
ced commander, and supplied with every thing necessary
for defence ; but it was nevertheless taken, after a twelve¬
month’s siege, the defenders having been reduced to the
last extremity by fatigue and famine.
From the beginning of this unfortunate war, Philip had
invariably showed himself desirous of peace, and the victory
of Crescy rendered him still more so. Edward also, not-
c
18
History.
FRANCE.
King John.
withstanding his successes, found himself unable any long-
1346^1350 er t0 suPP0r,t the expenses of the war. The mediation of
' the court ot Rome was therefore readily accepted, and a
truce for three years concluded. At the same time, Philip
met with some recompense for the losses he had sustained,
by the acquisition of Dauphine, which afterwards gave the
title of Dauphin to the eldest son of the king of France.
The subsequent events of his reign are unimportant, and
he expired in the year 1350, at the age of fifty-seven.
On the death of Philip, his eldest son John took posses¬
sion of the kingdom; but scarcely was he seated on the
throne when he disgusted his nobility by a most unseason-
.able act of severity. Robert de Brienne, count of Eu and
Guisnes, had been taken prisoner by the king of England
at Caen, and, under pretence of negotiating his ransom,
had passed several times between France and England;
but being accused of maintaining a treasonable correspon¬
dence with Edward, he was suddenly arrested, condemned,
and beheaded, without any form of trial. At his death he
is said to have confessed his treasonable practices, but this
has not been authenticated by any historian of credit.
Having been constable of France, the sword, the badge of
his office, was delivered to Charles de la Carda; but the
fate of the latter was not less unfortunate than that of his
predecessor, inasmuch as he was soon afterwards assassinat¬
ed by Charles king of Navarre, surnamed The Wicked.
This prince, celebrated for his personal qualifications, but
detested for his crimes, was the son-in-law of John. He
had demanded the duchy of Angouleme of the king ; but
as the latter had thought proper to bestow it upon Carda,
he sought to revenge himself by assassinating his rival.
John did not fail to show a proper resentment; but such
was the weakness of his government, that the king of Na¬
varre set him at defiance, and would not even condescend
to go through the ceremony of asking pardon until John
had sent him his second son as an hostage for his personal
security. To these offences the king of Navarre added
another still more atrocious, namely, that of aiming at the
crown of France, to which, as grandson by the female side
to Louis the Boisterous, he pretended a title in right of his
mother. But his more immediate demand was that the
countries of Champagne and Brie should be given up to
im. J o obviate all difficulties on this head, however, John
bestowed the duchy of Normandy on his eldest son Charles,
and commanded him to seize the estates of the king of Na¬
varre ; upon which the latter soon made his appearance at
Pans, and John found himself obliged to appease his op¬
position at the expense of a hundred thousand crowns.
•u , ^ t^s truce with England had been but
ill observed on both sides ; the French had possessed them¬
selves of the port of St Jean d’Angeli, and the English had
surprised the town of Guisnes. The rival houses of Mont-
tort and Biois also indulged their animosities, whilst Ed¬
ward continued to threaten war. The king of Navarre
also persevered in his intrigues, and even the dauphin was
drawn into a confederacy against his father; but John,
emg inform^ of their machinations, found means to de-
tcat them. The dauphin was reclaimed by pointing out to
him the impropriety of his conduct, and the disadvantage
which must unavoidably ensue to himself from the con¬
nections which he had formed. The king of Navarre, with
his principal adherents, were invited to an entertainment,
where they were unexpectedly arrested ; the former being
sent pnsoner o Chateau Gaillard, and several of the most
obnoxious of the latter put to death. But the rest of the
conspirators, instead of being dismayed by this check, im¬
mediately broke out in open rebellion ; and finding them¬
selves unable to gain their point without further assistance,
land immediate y mvited Edward to come over from Eng-
1350-135.
France
again in¬
vaded by
Edward.
That warlike and enterprising monarch had never lost
sight of the object which he had originally contemplated ; Histon
and on the expiration of the truce had sent his son, the
prince of Wales, surnamed the Black Prince, wuth a squa¬
dron towards the coast of France. With this force the
prince entered the mouth of the Garonne, burned the towns
and villages of Languedoc, and then retired with his plun¬
der into the country of Guienne, whilst Edward himself, who
had likewise passed over to the Continent, wasted the coun¬
try as far as St Omer ; but the French king, notwithstand¬
ing all these provocations, determined to avoid a battle, and
accordingly prohibited his general, the constable of Bour¬
bon, from coming to an engagement, though his army was
much superior to that of the prince of Wales. With the
flower of his troops, however, he pursued Edward from St
Omer to Hesdin, where he defied him to a pitched battle;
but the latter, without minding his bravadoes, continued
his march towards Calais, whence he embarked for England.
After his departure, John called an assembly of the states
at Paris, where he explained the distressed situation of his
finances, and showed so fully the necessity of their assist¬
ing him in the defence of the kingdom, that they consented
to maintain an army of thirty thousand men during the war.
To supply the other exigencies of government, they reviv¬
ed the duty upon salt, and added a variety of other imposts ;
but at the same time appointed a committee of their own
’number to take care that the money should be strictly ap¬
propriated to the public service. But the satisfaction which
John received from these grants, and from the suppres¬
sion of some disturbances which happened about this time,
was soon overcast by the news that the prince of Wales
had marched with an army of twelve thousand men from
Boideaux, and, after ravaging the Agenois, Quercy, and
the Limousin, had entered the province of Berry. The
young warrior had penetrated into the heart of France with
this trifling body of forces, in hopes of joining the Duke of
Lancaster in Guienne. But he soon found that his scheme
was impracticable. The country before him was too well
guarded to permit him to advance further; and all the
bridges behind were broken down, which effectually barred
a retreat. In this embarrassing situation his perplexity
was increased by being informed that the king of France
was actually marching at the head of sixty thousand men to
intercept him. He at first thought of retreating ; but soon
finding it impossible to retrograde, he determined calmly to
wait the approach of the enemy, and, notwithstanding the
disparity of forces, to commit all to the hazard of a battle.
At a place called Maupertuis, near Poitiers, both armies
arrived in sight of each other. I he French king might
easily have starved the English into terms ; but such was
the impatient valour of the French nobility, and such their
confidence of success, that it might have been equally fatal
to attempt repressing their ardour to engage. In the mean
time, whilst both armies were drawn up in order of battle,
and expecting the signal to advance, they were stopped by
the appearance of the Cardinal of Perigord, who attempted
to act as mediator between them. But as John, who made
himself suie of victory, would listen to no terms which did
not include the restitution of Calais, the Black Prince re¬
fused to listen to such a proposition, and the combat was
deferred till the next morning, for which both sides wait¬
ed in anxious suspense. During this interval the young
prince strengthened his position with new intrenchments,
and placed three hundred men in ambush, with as many
archers, who were commanded to attack the enemy in flank
during the heat of the engagement. Having taken these
precautions to ensure success, he drew up his army in three
divisions; the van commanded by the Earl of Warw ick,
tie rear by the Earls of Salisbury and Suffolk, and the main
° y y nmself. The king of France also arranged his
forces in three divisions; the first commanded by the Duke
0 r eans> and the second by the dauphin, attended by
FRA
History, his younger brothers, whilst he himself directed the main
body, seconded by his youngest son, then about fourteen
1356. years of age. As the English could be attacked only by
marching along a narrow defile, the French suffered great¬
ly from the English archers, who were posted on each side
behind the hedges. Nor were they in a better situation
upon emerging from this pass, being met by the Black
Prince himself, at the head of a chosen body of troops,
who made a furious onset upon their troops, already in
great disorder. A dreadful overthrow ensued. Those who
were as yet in the defile recoiled upon their own forces;
whilst the English troops who had been placed in an am¬
bush took the opportunity, by a flank attack, to increase
the confusion and confirm the victory. The dauphin and
the Duke of Orleans were amongst the first who fled. The
king of France himself made great efforts to retrieve by
valour what rashness had forfeited; but his courage was
unable to check that panic which had now become gene¬
ral throughout his army; and his cavalry soon flying, he
found himself exposed to the whole fury of the enemy. At
length, overpowered with fatigue, and despairing of suc¬
cess, he thought of yielding himself a prisoner, and fre¬
quently cried out that he was ready to deliver himself to
his cousin the prince of Wales. But the honour of taking
him was reserved for a more ignoble hand ; he was seized
by Dennis de Morbec, a knight of Arras, who had been
obliged to fly from his country for murder.
This defeat, which happened in the year 1356, almost
entirely ruined the French affairs; and the miseries which
ensued were greatly augmented by internal commotions.
The dauphin, who had now assumed the government, was
altogether unfit to govern a turbulent and seditious people
at a crisis like this. An assembly of the states, which he
called, took the opportunity to limit the power of the prince,
to impeach the former ministers, and to demand the liberty
of the king of Navarre ; and the treasurer of the crown
was basely murdered by one Marcel, a partisan of that
worthless prince, who had filled the city of Paris with con¬
fusion by his intrigues. The public disorders were also
augmented by the escape of the king of Navarre; and,
though the dauphin was even assured that this royal ruffian
had administered poison to him, he was nevertheless oblig¬
ed to pay him some appearance of regard. A scheme was
even formed by the chiefs of the sedition to change the
government, to vest all the power in the commons, and to
leave the king no more than an empty title; but though
this was favourably received by the city of Paris, the other
cities of the kingdom refused to concur in the project.
The dauphin was likewise recognised as regent by the
states-general, and the inhabitants of Picardy and Cham¬
pagne took up arms in his cause. In this disastrous state
of affairs, the miseries of the people were heightened by a
new and unexpected evil. The peasants, who had all along
been oppressed by the nobles, were now treated in such a
manner that, having risen in great numbers to revenge
themselves, the castles of the nobility were razed to the
ground, their wives and daughters ravished, and themselves
put to the most cruel torments. At last they were obliged
to arm in their own defence. The Duke of Orleans cut off
ten thousand of the insurgents in the neighbourhood of
Paris ; twelve thousand were massacred by the king of Na¬
varre ; and nine thousand who had laid siege to the town
of Meaux, where the dauphiness and three other ladies of
the first rank resided, were routed and pursued with dread¬
ful slaughter by an officer in the service of Edward.
Amidst these confusions, Marcel, the seditious leader al¬
ready mentioned, perished in a tumult of his own raising ;
and the most virtuous and prudent people of the nation
supported the pretensions of the dauphin. But his most
dangerous enemy was the king of Navarre, who had enticed
to his standard numbers of those Norman and English ad-
N C E. 19
venturers who had followed Edward into France, and re- History,
mained there to seek their fortunes, having associated
themselves under the name of the Companions. By this 135C-I3C0-
formidable competitor the dauphin was reduced almost to
the last extremity, when his hopes were revived by an
unexpected proposal of peace upon equitable and moderate
terms. Historians in general have ascribed this to the
natural levity of the king of Navarre ; but some have been
of opinion that he acted from prudential motives, and that
he justly supposed it would be more easy to deal with the
dauphin, who was his own kinsman, and humbled by so
many misfortunes, than with a haughty and imperious con¬
queror like Edward.
On the expiration of the truce in the year 1359, Ed--A new in¬
ward, having again set sail for France, anchored before™8™™
Calais with a fleet of eleven hundred sail, assumed the title ptiwar(i.
of King of France, and augmented his army to a hun¬
dred thousand men. The dauphin, finding himself unable
to oppose so great a force, was obliged to act upon the
defensive ; and having chosen the city of Paris as his sta¬
tion, he allowed the English to ravage the open country.
Thus they were suffered to penetrate through Picardy into
Champagne; but the city of Rheims, where Edward de¬
signed to have been crowned king of France, baffled his
utmost efforts. From Champagne, therefore, which had
already been laid waste, the English monarch marched into
Burgundy, pillaging Tonnere, Gaillon, and Avalon. Bur¬
gundy was saved by the payment of a hundred thousand
merks, and an equal sum was paid for Nivernois. At last,
after a long and destructive march, Edward arrived at the
gates of Paris ; but the prudence of the dauphin and the
citizens had rendered it impregnable to the attacks of fa¬
mine as well as the assaults of an army. The war proceed¬
ed, however, till the year 1360, when the king of Eng¬
land showed himself inclined for peace. Notwithstanding
all the victories he had gained, the French nation evinced
not the least favour to his claim of succession ; the king ot
Navarre was a dangerous rival; and the caution of the dau¬
phin, in avoiding an engagement, deprived him of the ad¬
vantages he expected from his valour and military skill.
Conferences for a peace were accordingly opened at Bre-
tigny in the Chartraine, and it was at last concluded, on
the conditions that King John should pay for his ransom,
at different periods, three millions of crowns of gold, or
about a million and a half of our money; and that Edward
should for ever renounce all claim to the kingdom of
France, and remain possessed of the territories of Poitou,
Xaintonge, 1’Agenois, Perigord, the Limousin, Quercy,
Rouvergne, I’Angoumois, and other districts in that quar¬
ter, together with Calais, Guisnes, Montreuil, and the
county of Ponthieu. Some other stipulations were also
made in favour of the allies of England, as a security for the
execution of these conditions. But, upon John’s return to
his dominions, he found himself unable to ratify the terms
of peace which had just been concluded. At the head of an
exhausted state, his soldiers were without discipline, and
his peasants without subordination. The latter had in fact
risen in great numbers, and one of their chiefs had assum¬
ed the title of The Friend of God and the Terror of Man.
A citizen of Sens, named John Gouge, also got himself
acknowledged king, by means of his robberies, and soon
caused almost as many calamities by his depredations as
the real king had brought on by his misfortunes. Such
was the state of France on the return of its captive mo¬
narch ; yet so incredible was his absurdity, that he had
scarcely been replaced on the throne when he prepared
for a crusade into the Holy Land. But this folly was pre¬
vented by the exhausted state of the country, and the mi¬
sery of the people, who, in fact, were even unable to pay
the king’s ransom. In these circumstances, however, the
conduct of John was truly noble. “ Though good faith
20
FRANCE.
Charles
the Pru¬
dent.
History, should be banished from the rest of the earth,” said he,
IsTfTnr: “ ye.t she ou"ht sti11 to retain her habitation in the breasts
*'°f kings.” He accordingly returned once more to Eng¬
land, and yielded himself a prisoner, since he could not be
honourably free. It has indeed been said by some, that
his passion for the Countess of Salisbury was the real cause
of his journey ; but there seems to be no foundation for a
report so injurious to his honour. During his captivity he
resided in the Savoy, and afterwards closed a long and un¬
fortunate reign by his death, which happened in'the year
1364.
Charles, surnamed the Prudent, succeeded his father upon
the throne of France ; and by a finely-conducted policy,
even though he suffered some defeats, restored his coun¬
try once more to tranquillity and power. He dispers¬
ed a horde of banditti, who having associated themselves
under the name of Companions, had long been a terror to
the peaceable inhabitants. He had them even enrolled
into a body, and led them into the kingdom of Castille
against Peter, surnamed the Cruel, whom his subjects had
dethroned, and who, by means of an alliance with the
English, endeavoured to get himself reinstated in power.
The consequence was, that the English and French again
came to an engagement; the army of the former being
commanded by the Black Prince, and that of the latter by
Henry of Transtamarre, and Bertrand du Guesclin, one of
the most consummate generals and accomplished men of
the age in which he lived. The usual good fortune of the
English prince however prevailed, and the French lost
above twenty thousand men, whilst only four knights and
forty private men were slain on the side of the English.
Nevertheless these victories were attended with but little
effect. 1 he English, by frequent levies, had become quite
exhausted, and were unable to continue an army in the
field. Charles, on the other hand, cautiously avoided coming
to a decisive engagement, but contented himself with al¬
lowing his enemies to waste their strength in attempts to
plunder a fortified country; and when they retired, he then
sallied forth, possessing himself of such places as they
were not strong enough to defend. He first fell upon Pon-
thieu ; the citizens of Abbeville opened their gates to re¬
ceive him; those of St Valois, Rue, and Crotoy, imitated
the example; and the whole country was in a little time
reduced to submission. The southern provinces were in
the same manner invaded by his generals with equal suc¬
cess ; whilst the Black Prince, destitute of supplies from
England, and wasted by a cruel disorder, was obliged to
return to his native country, leaving affairs in the south of
France in a desperate condition. In this exigency the re¬
sentment of the king of England was excited to the utmost
pitch, and he resolved to take signal vengeance on his ene¬
mies of the Continent. But the fortunate occasion had now
passed, and all his succeeding designs were unsuccessful,
he Earl of Pembroke and his whole army were intercept-
tiIken pris1oners> l)y Heni7 king of Castille.
So- Robert Knolles, at the head of thirty thousand men,
was defeated by Bertrand du Guesclin ; and the Duke of
Lancaster, at the head of twenty-five thousand men, had
the mortification of seeing his troops diminished without
ZVnT? t0 a batule- At len^th’ When the Of
the English were totally ruined by the death of the Black
SX Fntl0 Kinglf mard’ armies of Charles attack-
the Dnbpgnf Vn ^ ?deS' °ne’ Under the command of
the Duke of Burgundy, entered Artois; another, under
the command of the Duke of Berry, penetrated into An-
the^rf L Ah-Ch aCtied !n Guienne was commanded by
the Duke of Anjou; the forces in Bretagne were under
the constable Guesclin; and the king pufhimself at the
head of a powerful body of troops, that he might be able
to repair any accident to which the chance of war mmht
give nse. The constable having found it difficult to Op¬
pose Sir Thomas Felton and the seneschal of Bordeaux, History,
was joined by the Duke of Burgundy, and soon afterwards
attacked and defeated both, making them prisoners of war. 1377-138
At the close of the campaign of 1377, Bayonne and Bor¬
deaux, with the surrounding districts, and the fortress of
Calais with its dependencies, were all that England had
now left on the Continent. But Charles having thus once
more established the house of Valois on the throne of
France, did not long live to enjoy his good fortune, tie
died in the year 1379, at the age of forty-four, in conse¬
quence of the poison formerly administered to him by the
king of Navarre, and the immediate operation of which had
been suspended by the skill of a physician sent by the em¬
peror Charles IV.
Charles V. was succeeded by his son Charles VI. sur-Charles
named the Well-beloved, who, at the time of his acces-VI.
sion to the throne, was only twelve years of age. The
Duke of Anjou, eldest brother to the late king, had been
appointed guardian during the minority of the prince ; but
being totally unfit for the office, and distinguished only for
his ambition and rapacity, he resigned his charge to the
Dukes of Burgundy and Bourbon, the former being uncle
to the king by his father’s side, the latter by his mother’s.
None of these tutors, however, proved faithful to the trust
reposed in them. At this time Joan, infamous for her pro¬
fligacy, reigned in Naples, where she had appointed one
Charles Durazzo, her relation, to succeed her on the throne ;
but the inhuman wretch murdered his benefactress, who
with her last breath revoked her grant of the kingdom to
him, and bestowed it upon the Duke of Anjou. The in¬
fluence of the latter at the French court enabled him to
waste the treasures of the kingdom in support of his preten¬
sions ; but he proved ultimately unsuccessful, his forces having
been defeated, and his designs frustrated, by the superior
skill of his adversary. Meanwhile the citizens of Paris, op¬
pressed with taxes, broke out into tumults, and were with
difficulty quelled ; and the mal-administration of the duke
soon involved the nation in hostilities with the Flemings,
w hose country he invaded at the head of an army of eighty
thousand men, accompanied by the young king and by5the
principal nobility of France. The first operations of the war
were favourable to the Flemings; but they were at length
totally defeated on the banks of the river Lis, where their
leader, with twenty-five thousand men, perished in the
field. This victory was followed by the submission of the
whole country ; but the satisfaction which this event af¬
forded the king was disturbed by new seditions and revolts
in Paris and other great towns. His return, however, at
the head of a victorious army soon reduced them to their
duty, and several of the revolted cities were severely pun-
ished; at the same time that the death of the Duke of
Anjou having freed him from the immediate dependence
on his tutors, enabled him to assume the reins of govern¬
ment, in the year 1384.
The genius which Charles displayed in his early years
laised the hopes of the nation ; but these were soon over¬
cast, and greater misfortunes than any which had yet oc¬
curred were in reserve. His administration was for some
time prudent and vigorous. He conciliated the affections
ot Ins people by restoring their privileges, punishing their
oppressors, and relieving them from the taxes which had
been imposed in his minority. He compelled the Flemings
to submit to the authority of his uncle the Duke of Bur¬
gundy, and detached fifteen thousand archers and fifteen
nundred men-at-arms to assist the Scotch in their incur¬
sions into England. Lastly, in 138b he fitted out a mighty
armament against England. A vast fleet assembled in the
narbour ot Sluys, and a numerous army was collected in
le neig i lourhood. According to some writers, the arma¬
ment consisted of twelve hundred ships, twenty thousand
oo vai ions y armed, twenty thousand cavalry, and twenty
FRA
History, thousand cross-bow men. There was besides a vast wooden
edifice or floating town, which had been contrived for the
1335-1393. protection of the soldiers when landed. But all these pre¬
parations came to nothing through the obstinacy of the
Duke of Berry, who, having been originally opposed to the
expedition, conducted his part of the armament so slowly
that he did not arrive at Sluys till the middle of September,
when the season was too far advanced, and an invasion im¬
practicable. In addition to this, a storm which happened
soon afterwards drove the greater part of the fleet on shore,
and beat down the wooden edifice, and completely ship¬
wrecked the whole project.
But the destruction of the French fleet was only a pre¬
lude to calamities of a more extraordinary description.
The Sieur de Craon, a profligate nobleman, having been
intrusted by the court of France with a considerable sum
destined for the support of the Duke of Anjou during his
Italian expedition, had dissipated this money at Venice;
but, by the credit of the Duke of Orleans, the king’s bro¬
ther, he had obtained his pardon, and even returned to court,
where he sought to gratify his private resentment by the
assassination of the constable Oliver Clisson, whom he sus¬
pected of having promoted his disgrace. The latter was
attacked on his return from the Hotel de St Pol, by a band
of twenty ruffians, against whom he defended himself with
wonderful intrepidity, but at last fell, after receiving more
than fifty wounds. Happily, however, the veteran recover¬
ed from his wounds ; and the assassin, in order to screen
himself from vengeance, fled for protection to the Duke of
Bretagne. The king demanded the surrender of Craon;
and the duke having professed that he knew nothing of
him, he marched with all his forces into Bretagne. But
when the army had arrived at Mons, the king was seized
with a slow fever, during which he became delirious, and
killed several persons with his own hand. When the ex¬
citement subsided he fell down and lay as if he had been
dead; upon which he was taken up, bound in a waggon,
and carried back to Mons, where he lay two days in a le¬
thargy, from which he recovered a little, and expressed
reat sorrow on account of the blood he had shed in his
elirium. But it was soon discovered that he no longer
possessed that strength of judgment and understanding for
which he had formerly been remarkable; and hence a re¬
gency became indispensably necessary. The competition
for this office brought to light the characters of the queen
and the Duke of Orleans, which had not hitherto been dis¬
played to public view. The former was a beautiful and
accomplished princess, but vindictive, suspicious, and in¬
triguing, insensible to natural affection, but easily accessible
to flattery, and ready to yield to every impulse of lawless
passion. The latter was equally remarkable for personal
accomplishments, and had married Valentina, daughter of
the Duke of Milan ; but his engagements with that prin¬
cess did not prevent him from engaging in a number of
licentious amours, and amongst the rest, as was supposed,
with his sister-in-law Isabelle. During the king’s illness
he openly aspired to the regency ; but his pretensions were
overruled by the states, and the administration of affairs for
the present conferred on the Duke off Burgundy. In a few
months indeed the health and understanding of the king
seemed to be sufficiently restored; but in the year 1393
it was again disturbed by a sudden alarm, which occasioned
a relapse, and he continued delirious at intervals as long as
he lived. During his lucid intervals Charles frequently as¬
sumed the government into his own hands ; and as the war
with England still continued, though in a languid manner,
the French monarch in one of those intervals of reason had
an interview with Richard of England, in order to put an
end to hostilities. But their respective claims were so dif¬
ficult of adjustment, that, as an intermediate arrangement,
they concluded a truce for twenty-five years ; during which
NCR 21
time it was hoped that a lasting peace might be establish- History,
ed. Richard gave up Cherbourg to Charles, and Brest to
the Duke of Bretagne ; and a marriage was also conclud- 13^3-1405.
ed between the king of England and Isabelle the daughter
of Charles, but, by reason of the tender age of the princess,
this marriage was never consummated. During this reign
France was still further weakened by the succours sent to
the Hungarians against the Turks. On this expedition
upwards of one thousand of the bravest and most experi¬
enced knights were sent under the conduct of John count
of Nevers, eldest son of the Duke of Burgundy ; the Count
of Eu, constable of France; John de Vienne, admiral of
France ; and the Count of Marche, a prince of the blood
royal; together with De Courcy, one of the most experi¬
enced captains in Christendom. But the prudent counsels
of this veteran were not obeyed by the youthful warriors
by whom he was accompanied, and who, having attacked
the enemy rashly, whilst heated with wine, were all either
killed or taken prisoners. Notwithstanding this disaster,
however, assistance was in the year 1400 sent to Wances-
laus, emperor of Germany; and the Duke of Orleans, who
commanded the army on this occasion, acquitted himself
so well that he acquired the duchy of Luxembourg for him¬
self, and left his ally satisfied.
But whilst the friendship of France was thus courted by
foreign powers, the kingdom itself was in the most miserable
situation. The king’s distemper daily gained ground ; and
the discordant interests of the contending parties kept the
whole nation in a ferment. The most violent animosity
broke out between the Dukes of Orleans and Burgundy.
The former, by means of his interest with the queen, and
the ascendency which his duchess possessed over the king,
had for some time got the advantage of his rival, and was
made lieutenant-general and governor of the kingdom ; but
presuming on his power to levy new imposts on the people,
and oppress the churchmen, whom in that age he ought
to have conciliated, he was deprived of his authority, and
obliged to yield to the Duke of Burgundy. For some time,
however, these powerful rivals were kept within some
bounds by the mediation of the Duke of Bourbon, the only
grandee who appears to have maintained a pure and un¬
spotted character ; but by his death in 1404, the unhappy
nation was left totally exposed to their relentless fury. In
1405 the queen and the Duke of Orleans again seized on
the administration, which, however, they were soon deprived
of by the unanimous voice of the people. During this period
Charles and his children were neglected and abandoned to
distress ; but they were relieved by the Duke of Burgundy
on his obtaining the regency, whilst Isabelle and the Duke
of Orleans were obliged to retire from Milan. But a sud¬
den return of the king’s reason now deprived both parties
of power, and the administration was vested in the queen
and a council composed of princes of the blood. The rival
dukes being thus prevented from interfering in public af¬
fairs, exercised themselves in committing hostilities against
the English, with whom the truce had lately been conclud¬
ed. They were encouraged to commit this infraction of
the treaty by the unsettled situation of affairs under Henry
IV.; but their attempts having proved unsuccessful, the
truce was renewed after obtaining the restoration of the
princess, who, as has already been mentioned, had been
betrothed to Richard II. The failure of their enterprises
produced a new scene of discord between the dukes, and
led to mutual recriminations. By the interposition of
the Duke of Berry they were apparently reconciled; but
the Duke of Burgundy pretended friendship only in order
to take a more signal vengeance, to which he was now in¬
flamed by jealousy as well as by political animosity. The
Duke of Orleans was accordingly attacked one evening by
eighteen ruffians hired for the purpose, who set upon him
whilst attended by only two pages. A Norman gentleman
22
FRANCE.
History, who had been deprived of an employment headed the as-
sassins, and in person attacked the duke; at the first blow
140;>-1415. he cut off his grace’s hand, at the second he struck him
from his mule, and at the third put an end to his life. The
Duke of Burgundy escaped to Flanders ; and the whole na¬
tion was rent into two factions, called the Burgundians and
Armagnacs, the latter being the title of the party of the
Duke of Orleans, from Armagnac, the father-in-law of that
prince. A state of dreadful confusion and anarchy ensued.
The Duke of Burgundy soon returned into France, and ex¬
torted a pardon from the unhappy king, who was now no
longer able to resist him ; and some notion may be form¬
ed of the state of the kingdom from the circumstance that
two thousand people perished in one tumult in the capital.
The king himself was alternately the prisoner of both par¬
ties, and transferred the power from the one to the other
as he happened to fall into their hands.
Henry V. of England judged this a favourable opportu¬
nity to recover from France those possessions that had been
formerly surrendered by treaty. But, in order to give his
intended expedition the appearance of justice, he sent am¬
bassadors to Paris, offering perpetual peace and alliance,
on condition of being put in possession of all those pro¬
vinces which had been ravished from the English during
former reigns, and of espousing Catharine, daughter of the
French king, with a suitable dowry. Though the French
court was at this time extremely averse to war, yet these
demands were too extravagant to be complied with ; and
Henry probably made them in hopes of meeting a refusal.
He therefore assembled a fleet and army at Southampton,
and having drawn all the military men of the kingdom to
his standard, he put to sea, and landed at Harfleur at the
head of an army of six thousand men-at-arms, and twenty-
four thousand foot, mostly archers. His first operations
were directed against Harfleur, which being hard pressed,
promised to surrender by a certain day, unless relieved be¬
fore that time. When the day arrived, and the garrison,
unmindful of their engagement, resolved to defend the
place, Henry ordered an assault, took the town by storm,
and put the garrison to the sword. The victor then advan¬
ced further into the country, which had been already ren¬
dered desolate by factions, and which he now laid totally
waste. But although the enemy made a feeble resistance,
the climate seemed to fight against the English ; and a con-
tagious dysentery carried off three fourths of Henry’s army.
In this situation he had recourse to an expedient common
enough in that age, in order to inspire his troops with con¬
fidence in their general. He challenged to single combat
the dauphin, who commanded the French army, offering to
stake his pretensions on the event. But this challenge, as
might have been expected, was refused ; and the French,
notwithstanding their internal dissensions, at last seemed to
unite at the appearance of a common danger. A numerous
army of fourteen thousand men-at-arms and forty thousand
foot had by this time assembled under the command of Count
Albert, and been placed so as to intercept Henry’s weakened
forces on their return. The English monarch, when it was
too late, began to repent of his rash inroad into a country
where disease and a powerful army everywhere threatened
destruction, and he therefore determined to retire on Ca¬
lais. In this retreat, which was at once painful and dan¬
gerous, Henry took every precaution to inspire his troops
with patience and perseverance, and showed them in his
own person the brightest example of fortitude and resiana-
tiom He was continually harassed on his march by flying
parties of the enemy ; and when he attempted to cross the
river Somme, he observed troops on the other side ready to
oppose his passage. He was, however, fortunate enough to
seize by surprise, near St Quintin, a passage which had not
been sufhciently guarded, and thus carried over his army
in safety. But the enemy being still resolved to intercept
his retreat, after he had passed the river Tertrois, at Blangi,
he was surprised to observe from the heights the whole
French army drawn up in the plains of Agincourt, and so
posted that it was impossible for him to proceed on his
march without coming to an engagement. A battle ac¬
cordingly took place, in which the English gained a victory,
the most remarkable perhaps of any recorded in history
(see Agincourt), and which deserves to be classed with
the triumphs achieved at Crescy and Poitiers. This vic¬
tory, gained on the 25th of October 1415, was however
attended with no immediate effects. Henry still continu¬
ed to retreat after the battle of Agincourt, and carried his
prisoners first to Calais and thence to England.
In 1417, the king of England once more landed an army
of twenty-five thousand men in Normandy, and prepared
to strike a decisive blow for the crown of France, to which
the English monarchs had long made pretensions. That
wretched country was now reduced to a most deplorable
condition. The whole kingdom appeared one vast theatre
of murder, injustice, and devastation. The Duke of Or¬
leans had been assassinated by the Duke of Burgundy ; and
the Duke of Burgundy, in his turn, fell by the treachery
of the dauphin. At the same time the son of the duke, de¬
sirous of revenging his father’s death, entered into secret
negotiations writh the English ; and a league was imme¬
diately concluded at Arras, between Henry and the young
Duke of Burgundy, in which the king promised to revenge
the murder of the late duke, and the son appeared to in¬
sist on no further stipulations. Henry therefore proceeded
in his conquests without much opposition from any quar¬
ter. Several towns and provinces submitted on his ap¬
proach ; the city of Ilouen was besieged and taken; and
he soon became master of Pontoise and Gisors. He even
threatened Paris, and obliged the court to remove to Troyes,
where the Duke of Burgundy, who had taken upon him
the protection of the French king, met Henry in order to
ratify the treaty by which the crown of France was to be
tiansferred to a stranger. The imbecility into which Charles
had fallen made him passive in regard to this treaty, and
Henry dictated the terms throughout the whole negotiation.
The principal articles of the treaty were, that Henry should
espouse the Princess Catharine ; that King Charles should
enjoy the title and dignity of king for life, but that Henry
should be declared heir to the crown, and intrusted with
the present administration of the government; that France
and England should be for ever united under one king, but
should still retain their respective laws and privileges; and
that Henry should unite his arms with those of King Charles
and the Duke of Burgundy, to depress and subdue the dau¬
phin and his partisans. Not long after this treaty had been
concluded, Henry married the Princess Catharine; upon
which he carried his father-in-law to Paris, and took formal
possession of the capital. He next obtained from the estates
of the kingdom a ratification of the late compact, and then
turned his arms with success against the adherents of the
dauphin, who now wandered about a stranger in his own
country, and to the success obtained by his enemies op¬
posed only fruitless expostulations.
But Henry’s supplies were not provided in such abun¬
dance as to enable him to carry on the war without return¬
ing in person to prevail with his parliament to grant fresh
aid; and on his arrival in England, although he found his
subjects highly pleased with the splendour of his conquests,
t icy seemed somewhat doubtful as to the advantage to be
derived from them. A treaty, which in its consequences
was likely to transfer the seat of empire from England, was
not much relished by the parliament, which, therefore, on
various pretences, refused his majesty a supply equal to his
exigencies. But he was bent on pursuing his schemes of
ambition ; and, having joined the supplies granted at home
to the contributions levied on the conquered provinces, he
History.
1415-142(
FRANCE.
23
1420-1428.
Charles
VII.
History, was able once more to assemble an army of twenty-eight
thousand men, with which he landed safely at Calais.
In the mean while, the dauphin omitted no opportunity
of repairing his ruined fortunes. Taking advantage of
Henry’s absence from France, he prevailed upon the re¬
gent of Scotland to send him a body of eight thousand
men ; and with these, and some few forces of his own, he
attacked the Duke of Clarence, who commanded the Eng¬
lish troops in the king’s absence, and gained a complete
victory. This was the first action which turned the tide
of success against the English. But it was of short dura¬
tion ; for Henry having soon afterwards appeared with a
considerable army, the dauphin fled at his approach ; and
many of the places which held out for the latter in the
neighbourhood of Paris surrendered to the conqueror.
Henry, everywhere victorious, now fixed his residence
at Paris ; and whilst Charles had only a small court, he
was attended with one of great magnificence. In the mean
while the dauphin, driven beyond the Loire, and almost to¬
tally dispossessed of the northern provinces, was pursued
into the south by the united arms of the English and Bur¬
gundians, and threatened with total destruction. In this
exigency, he found it necessary to protract the war, and to
evade all hazardous actions with a rival who had long been
accustomed to victory. His prudence was everywhere re¬
markable ; and, after a train of persecutions from fortune,
he found her at length willing to declare in his favour by
the death of the king of England. Charles VI. died a
short time afterwards ; and Charles VII. succeeded his
father on a nominal throne.
Nothing could be more deplorable than the situation of
France when this monarch assumed his title to the crown.
The English were masters of almost all France ; and Henry
VI. though yet an infant, was solemnly invested with regal
power by legates from Paris. The Duke of Bedford was
at the head of a numerous army in the heart of the king¬
dom, ready to oppose every insurrection ; whilst the Duke of
Burgundy, wdio had entered into a firm confederacy with the
English commander, still remained stedfast, and seconded
his claims. Yet notwithstanding these unfavourable appear¬
ances, Charles found means to break the leagues formed
against him, and to bring back his subjects to their natural
interest and duty. His first attempts, however, were
totally destitute of success. Wherever he endeavoured to
face the enemy he was overthrown, and he could scarcely
rely even on the friends next his person. His authority
was insulted by his own servants; advantage after advan¬
tage was gained over him ; and a battle fought near Ver-
neuil, in which he was totally defeated by the Duke of
Bedford, seemed to render his affairs altogether desperate.
But, from the impossibility of the English keeping the field
without new supplies, Bedford was obliged to retire into
England ; and in the absence of this commander his vigi¬
lant enemy began to recover from his late consternation.
Dunois, one of his generals, at the head of a thousand
men, compelled the‘Earl of Warwick to raise the siege of
Montargis ; and this advantage, slight as it was, served to
convince the French that the English were’not invincible.
But they had soon still greater reason to triumph in
their change of fortune, and a new revolution was pro¬
duced, by means apparently the most unlikely to bring about
such a result. In the village of Domremi, near Vaucou-
leurs, on the borders of Lorraine, there lived a country girl,
about twenty-seven years of age, called Joan d’Arc. This
girl had been a servant in a cabaret or small inn, and in
that humble station had submitted to those hardy employ¬
ments which fit the body for the fatigues of war. She was
of an irreproachable life, and had hitherto exhibited none
of those enterprising qualities which she soon afterwards
displayed. She contentedly fulfilled the duties of her sta¬
tion, and was remarkable only for her modesty and love
Joan
d’Arc.
of religion. But the miseries of her country seemed to History,
have occupied the thoughts of this lowly maiden ; and her
mind, inflamed by the subject, and brooding with melan- 142*.
choly stedfastness thereon, began to feel impulses, which
she was willing to mistake for inspirations of heaven. Con¬
vinced of the reality of her own visions, she had recourse to
one Baudricourt, governor of Yaucouleurs, whom she in¬
formed of her destination by heaven to free her native
country from its fierce invaders. Baudricourt treated her
at first with neglect; but her importunities at length pre¬
vailed, and, willing to make trial of her pretensions, he gave
her some attendants, who conducted her to the court, which
at that time resided at Chinon. The French courtiers were
probably sensible of the weakness of her pretensions, but
they were willing to make use of every artifice to support
their declining fortunes. It wTas therefore given out that
Joan was actually inspired; that she had been able to disco¬
ver the king amongst the number of his courtiers, although
he had laid aside all the distinctions of his authority; that
she had told him some secrets, which were only known to
himself; and that she had demanded, and minutely described,
a sword in the church of St Catharine de Fierbois, which
she had never seen. The minds of the vulgar being thus
prepared, she appeared armed cap-d-pied, and was shown
in that martial dress to the people. She was then brought
before the doctors of the university, who, tinctured with
the credulity of the times, or willing to second the impos¬
ture, declared that she had actually received her commis¬
sion from above. When the preparations for her mission
had been completely blazoned, the next object w?as to send
her against the enemy. The English w^ere at this time
besieging the city of Orleans, the last resource of Charles,
and every thing promised them a speedy conquest. Joan
undertook to raise the siege ; and, in order to render her¬
self still more remarkable, girded herself with the miracu¬
lous sword, of which she had before had such extraordinary
notices. Thus equipped, she ordered all the soldiers to
confess themselves before they set out, displayed in her
hand a consecrated banner, and assured the troops of
certain success. Such confidence on her side soon raised
the spirits of the French army ; and even the English, who
pretended to despise her efforts, felt themselves secretly
influenced with the terrors of her mission. A supply of
provisions was to be conveyed into the town; Joan, at
the head of some French troops, covered the embarkation,
and entered Orleans at the head of the convoy which she
had safely protected. Whilst she was leading her troops
along, silence and astonishment reigned amongst the Eng¬
lish ; and they regarded with religious awe that temerity,
which they thought nothing but supernatural assistance
could inspire. But they were soon roused from their state
of amazement by a sally from the town; Joan led on the
besieged, bearing the sacred standard in her hand, encou¬
raging them with her words and actions, bringing them to
the trenches, and overpowering the besiegers in their own
redoubts. In the attack of one of the forts, she was wound¬
ed in the neck with an arrow; but instantly pulling out
the weapon with her own hands, and getting the wound
promptly dressed, she hastened back to head the troops, and
to plant her victorious banner on the hostile ramparts. As
these successes continued, the English found it impossible
to resist troops who w^ere animated by such superior energy ;
and Suffolk, who conducted the attack, thinking that it
might prove extremely dangerous to remain any longer in
the presence of such an enemy, raised the siege, and re¬
treated with all imaginable precaution. From being at¬
tacked, the French now became in turn the aggressors.
Charles formed a body of six thousand men, and sent them
to besiege Jergeau, whither the English, commanded by
the Earl of Suffolk, had retired. The city was taken;
Suffolk yielded himself a prisoner ; and Joan marched into
24
FRANCE.
History, the place in triumph at the head of the army. A battle
was soon after fought near Patay, where the English were
14^8-1430. again worsted, and Generals Scales and Talbot were taken
prisoners.
The raising of the siege of Orleans formed one part
of the promise which the maid had made to the king of
France, the crowning him at Rheims was the other; and
as she now declared that it was time to complete that
ceremony, Charles, in pursuance of her advice, set out
for Rheims at the head of twelve thousand men. The
towns through which he passed opened their gates to re¬
ceive him; and Rheims sent him a deputation, with its
keys, upon his approach. The ceremony of his corona¬
tion was there performed with the utmost solemnity; and
the Maid of Orleans, as she was now called, seeing the
completion of her mission, desired leave to retire, alleging
that she had now accomplished the end of her calling. But
her services had been so great that the king could not think
of parting with her; he pressed her earnestly to remain,
and she at length complied with his request. A train of
success followed the performance of this solemnity; Laon,
Soissons, Chateau-Thierri, Provins, and many other for¬
tresses in that neighbourhood, submitted to him on the first
summons.
On the other hand, the English, discomfited and dispi¬
rited, fled in every direction, not knowing whether to as¬
cribe their misfortunes to the power of sorcery or to a ce¬
lestial influence, but equally terrified at both. They now
found themselves deprived of the conquests they had gained,
in the same manner as the French had formerly submitted
to their power. Their own divisions, both abroad and at
home, unfitted them entirely for carrying on the war; and
the Duke of Bedford, notwithstanding all his prudence, saw
himself divested of his strongholds in the country, without
being able to arrest the enemy’s progress. In order, there¬
fore, to revive the declining state of his affairs, he resolved
to have Henry crowned king at Paris, knowing that the
natives would be allured to obedience by the splendour of
the ceremony. In 1430 Henry was accordingly crowned,
all the vassals who still continued under the English power
swearing fealty and homage. But it was now too late to
give a turn to the affairs of the English by the ceremonies
of a coronation ; the generality of the kingdom had declared
against them, and the remainder only waited a convenient
opportunity to follow the example. An accident which
soon afterwards occurred, though it promised to advance
the English cause in France, served in the end to render
it odious, and conduced to the total evacuation of that
country. The Duke of Burgundy, at the head of a power¬
ful army, had laid siege to Compeigne ; and the Maid of
Orleans had thrown herself into the place, contrary to
the wishes of the governor, who desired not the com¬
pany of one whose authority would be greater than his
own. The garrison, however, were rejoiced at her appear¬
ance, and believed themselves invincible under her protec¬
tion. But their joy was of short duration ; for Joan having
the day after her arrival headed a sally, and twice driven
the enemy from their intrenchments, was at last obliged
to retire, placing herself in the rear, to cover the retreat of
her forces. But in the end, attempting to follow the troops
into the city, she found the gates shut, and the bridge
raised, by order of the governor, who is said to have long
wished for an opportunity of delivering her up to the ene¬
my. Nothing could exceed the joy of the besiegers, in
having taken a person who had been so long a terror to
their arms. The service of Jh Deum was publicly cele-
brated on the occasion; and it was hoped that the capture
of this extraordinary person would restore to the English
their former victories and successes. The Duke of Bed¬
ford was no sooner informed of her being taken, than he
purchased the heroine of the Count Vendome, who had
made her his prisoner, and ordered her to be committed History
to close confinement.
The credulity of both nations was at this time so great, 1430-144
that any thing which coincided with their passions was not
too absurd to gain belief. As Joan had a little before,
when successful, been regarded as a saint, she was now, on
her captivity, considered as a sorceress, forsaken by the
demon who had given her a temporary and fallacious as¬
sistance. It was accordingly resolved in council to send
her to Rouen to be tried for witchcraft; and the Bishop of
Beauvais, a man wholly devoted to the English interest,
having presented a petition against her, the university of
Paris was mean enough to join in the request. Several pre¬
lates, amongst whom the Cardinal of Winchester was the
only Englishman, were appointed her judges, and held their
court at Rouen, where Henry then resided; whilst the
maid, clothed in her military apparel, but loaded with irons,
was produced before the tribunal. Her behaviour on this
occasion in no way disgraced her former gallantry; she
betrayed neither weakness nor womanish submission, but
appealed to God and the pope for the truth of her former
revelations. Nevertheless she was found guilty of heresy
and witchcraft, and sentenced to be burned alive, the com¬
mon punishment for such offences. But previously to the
execution of this sentence, they resolved to make her ab¬
jure her former errors; and at length, by terror and rigo¬
rous treatment, so far prevailed, that her spirits were en¬
tirely broken by the hardships she was forced to endure.
Her former visionary dreams began to vanish, and a gloomy
distrust took place of her late inspirations; she publicly
declared herself willing to recant, and promised never more
to give way to the vain delusions which had hitherto mis¬
led her, and imposed upon the people. This was what her
oppressors desired; and, willing to show some appearance
of mercy, they changed her sentence into that of perpetual
imprisonment, and to be fed for life on bread and water.
But the rage of her enemies was not yet satiated. Sus¬
pecting that the female dress, which she had consented to
wear, was disagreeable to her, they purposely placed in her
apartment a suit of men’s apparel, and watched the effect of
this temptation. The despicable artifice succeeded. Joan,
struck with the sight of a dress in which she had gained
so much glory, immediately threw off her penitent robes,
and put on the forbidden garment. Her enemies caught
her equipped in this fashion ; and her imprudence was
considered as a relapse into her former transgressions. No
recantation would now suffice, no pardon could now be
granted. She was condemned to be burned alive in the
market-place of Rouen ; and this disgraceful sentence was
executed with most rigorous severity.
One of the first misfortunes which befel the English
after this sacrifice was the defection of the Duke of Bur¬
gundy, who had for some time seen the error of his con¬
duct, and wished to break an unnatural connection, which
only served to involve his country in ruin. A treaty was
therefore concluded between him and Charles, in which
the former agreed to assist him in driving the English out
of France. This proved a mortal blow to the cause of the
latter; and such were its effects upon the populace of Lon¬
don when informed of it, that they killed several of the
Duke of Burgundy’s subjects who happened at the time to be
living amongst them. It might perhaps also have hastened
the Duke of Bedford’s death, who died at Rouen a few days
after the treaty had been concluded; and the Earl of Cam¬
bridge was appointed his successor to the regency of France.
From this period the English affairs were irretrievably
ruined. The city of Paris returned once more to a sense
of its duty, and Lord Willoughby, who commanded it, was
contented to stipulate for the safe retreat of his troops to
Normandy. Ihus ground was continually, though slowly,
gained by the French ; and notwithstanding that their fields
F RANGE.
2
5
History, were laid waste, and their towns depopulated, they yet found
protection in the weakness and divisions of the English.
1443-1401. iength both parties began to grow weary of a war,
which, though carried on feebly, was still a burden greater
than either could support. But the terms of peace insisted
upon by both were so exorbitant that little hopes of an
accommodation could reasonably be entertained. In 1443,
therefore, a truce for twenty-two months was concluded,
which left every thing between the parties on the footing
upon which it actually stood. And no sooner had this
been agreed upon, than Charles applied himself with great
industry and judgment to repair the numberless evils to
which, from the continuance of wars both foreign and do¬
mestic, his kingdom had so long been exposed. He esta¬
blished discipline amongst his troops, and justice amongst
his governors; he revived agriculture, and repressed fac¬
tion. Having prepared once more for taking the field, he
seized the first favourable opportunity to break the truce.
Normandy was at the same time invaded by four powerful
armies; one commanded by Charles himself, a second by
the Duke of Bretagne, a third by the Count of Alen^on,
and a fourth by the Count Dunois. Every place opened
its gates almost as soon as the French appeared before
them. Rouen was the only city which threatened to hold
out; but the inhabitants clamoured so loudly for a surren¬
der, that the Duke of Somerset, who commanded the gar¬
rison, was obliged to capitulate. The battle, or rather skir¬
mish, of Fourmingi, was the last stand which the English
made in defence of their French dominions ; but here they
were put to the rout, and above a thousand slain. Nor¬
mandy and Guienne, which had so long acknowledged
subjection to England, were lost in the space of a year;
and the English saw themselves entirely dispossessed of a
country which for above three centuries they had consi¬
dered as annexed to their native dominions. Of all their
conquests Calais alone remained to them ; but this was a
small compensation for the blood and treasure which had
been lavished in France.
In the year 1450, accordingly, the power of the English
in France was entirely destroyed ; and Charles obtained the
surname of Victorious, on account of the vigour which he
had shown in expelling the invaders of his country. But
his satisfaction was greatly diminished by domestic misfor¬
tunes. The dauphin, forgetting the allegiance and filial duty
which he owed to his father, had already impeded his con¬
quests by his seditious intrigues. He had used every ef¬
fort to thwart the designs of the king’s ministers, and it
was even supposed that he had destroyed by poison Agnes
Soreille, his father’s favourite mistress. He had also mar¬
ried Charlotte, daughter of the. Duke of Savoy, which
Charles had' resented by a declaration of war against the
duke; but he had been persuaded to recall this denuncia¬
tion, in order to prosecute the war against Guienne. At
length, weary of the disobedience of his son, he command¬
ed him to be arrested; but Louis, informed of his design,
withdrew to Franche Comte, and afterwards to Brabant,
where the Duke of Burgundy, then sovereign of the coun¬
try, ordered him to be supplied with every necessary, and
treated with all imaginable respect. The duke, however,
refused to see him until he had obtained the approbation
of his father ; upon which Louis employed himself in sow¬
ing dissension between his benefactor and the Count of
Charolois, his son, at the very time that he himself was re¬
ceiving a pension of twelve thousand crowns annually from
the father. He thus destroyed the domestic peace of his
benefactor, whilst his unnatural conduct created continual
suspicions in the mind of his father. Being repeatedly in¬
formed that his own domestics, along with his undutiful
son, were in a conspiracy against his life, the miserable
monarch lived in continual fear of being poisoned, and,
having none in whom he could repose confidence, obsti-
vol. x.
,1461-!465.
nately refused for some days to receive any sustenance ; and History,
when at last prevailed upon by the importunities of his at¬
tendants to take some food, his stomach had become inca¬
pable of receiving it, and he died of inanition, in the year
1461. His body, neglected by his unnatural son, was in¬
terred at the expense of Tannegui de Chastel, who had ever
been his faithful companion.
On the death of Charles, his son Louis succeeded to the Louis XI.
throne to which he had so long aspired. Fie was reckoned
one of the greatest politicians that ever existed, though his
character was not upon that account the more amiable ; on
the contrary, there are few princes whose character appears
in a more detestable light. So destitute was he of natural
affection, that he did not even attempt to conceal his joy
at his father’s death. He pretended much friendship for
the Count of Charolois, son to the Duke of Burgundy, on
account of the protection which he had received at his
father’s court, and even conferred upon him a pension of
twelve thousand crowns annually. But all this show of af¬
fection soon degenerated into a mortal aversion upon both
sides. Some differences which took place between the
courts of France and Castille produced an interview be¬
tween the two monarchs, Louis, and Flenry surnamed the
Impotent.' They met at Mauleon, on the confines of Na¬
varre ; but their negotiations came to nothing, and they
parted with a feeling of mutual contempt; Henry despis¬
ing the mean and sordid appearance of Louis, and the latter
in his turn deriding the gaudy magnificence of Henry. In
his negotiations with the Duke of Burgundy, Louis proved
more successful, having persuaded him to restore some
towns situated on the river Somme which had been ceded
by Charles VII., and by the possession of which the duke
was in effect master of Picardy. This cession was op¬
posed by the Count of Charolois; but Louis, by corrupt¬
ing John de Croy, the duke’s minister, succeeded in his
object, and for the sum of four hundred thousand crowns
the cities were delivered to him. In this transaction, by
which he effectually ensured the hatred of Charolois, the
duplicity of Louis was eminently displayed ; for though he
had agrfeed to retain in those towns tbe officers appointed
by the duke, he had no sooner obtained possession than
he displaced all of them, and appointed others in their
stead.
The duchy of Bretagne was at this time governed by
Francis, a weak but generous prince, whose defect of capa¬
city was supplied by the abilities of his ministers. This
prince Louis had insulted in the grossest manner ; and as
Francis found himself unable alone to oppose such a power¬
ful adversary, he formed a close alliance with the Duke of
Burgundy and the Count of Charolois, who had also been
grievously offended by Louis. The confederacy was joined
by several of the principal F’rench nobility, who had been
oppressed by the king ; and though the secret was confid¬
ed to upwards of five hundred persons, not one of them
ever divulged it. Finding matters becoming very critical,
Louis marched with an army towards the capital, which
the Count of Charolois had already threatened ; and a battle
ensued, in which both princes exerted themselves to the
utmost, though their valour was but ill seconded by the bra¬
very of their troops. A bout fifteen hundred men perished
on each side, but the Count of Charolois remained master
of the field. Louis, however, after this engagement enter¬
ed the capital, where he endeavoured, by every kind con¬
cession, to conciliate the affection of his subjects ; and in
this he succeeded so well, that though the army of the insur¬
gents was soon augmented to a hundred thousand men, they
were unable to make themselves masters of the city. At
last a treaty was concluded between Louis and the Count
of Charolois, by which the latter obtained the towns which
had been formerly ceded, with the districts of Boulogne,
Guisne, Peronne, Mondidior, and Roye, as a perpetual in-
D
26
FRANCE.
History.^ heritance for himself; and by granting favours to the other
confederates, the league was completely broken. But as
0~ * soon as Louis found himself freed from danger, he protest¬
ed against the whole treaty, as contrary to the interest of
his crown; and therefore waited the first favourable op¬
portunity to crush one by one those who by their united
efforts had been ready to destroy him. The Duke of
Bourbon, one of the most able of the confederates, was
gained over, by bestowing upon him in marriage, Jane,
a natural daughter of the king, with the dowry of Usson in
Auvergne, together with Moras, Beaurepaire, and Cormil-
lon in Dauphine ; and, by the discontents between the
Dukes of Bretagne and Normandy, he was enabled to
secure the neutrality of the former, and to recover from
the latter some territories which had been unwillingly
ceded to him.
In 1467, Philip duke of Burgundy, surnamed from his
amiable qualities the Good, died, and left his dominions to
his son Charles, count of Charolois. That fiery and im-
jjetuous prince, jealous of the growing power of France,
and an implacable enemy of Louis, had entered into a se¬
cret treaty with Francis ; but Louis had driven the Bre¬
tons from the posts which they had occupied in Normandy
before the Duke of Burgundy could pass the Somme. The
king, however, alarmed at the power of the confederates,
concluded a peace with Bretagne; and, confiding in his
talents for negotiation, determined to risk a personal confe¬
rence with the Duke of Burgundy. This memorable inter¬
view took place in the year 1468; and Peronne, a fortified
tow n of Picardy, belonging to the Duke of Burgundy, was
appointed as the place of rendezvous. Thither the politic
Louis repaired with a slender train, being attended only by
Cardinal Balue, the Duke of Bourbon, and the Count de
St Pol, constable of France ; apparently without reflecting
that he was entering a hostile city, where he might be con-
fined for any length of time, or treated at the pleasure of
the duke, who was his mortal enemy. Nor had he been
long in the place when he began to perceive the extent
of his error; and, by the daily concourse of Burgundian
lords and other persons of rank, his avowed enehiies, he
became alarmed for his personal safety. His fears even
suggested to him more serious apprehensions ; and he
requested apartments in the castle, where it was in the
Power of his rival in a moment to make him a close pri¬
soner. This event accordingly took place, through the
machinations of Louis himself. From the first his no-
icy had been to keep the Duke of Burgundy constantly
employed in domestic wars; and with this view he had,
immediately before his interview with Charles, excited the
inhabitants of Liege, who were subject to the Duke of Bur¬
gundy, to revolt against their sovereign. It is probable,
indeed, that he did not anticipate that the effects of this
treachery would so soon begin to manifest themselves. But
at the very time when Louis v'as in the castle of Peronne,
the people of Liege revolted, seized the bishop and gover-
nor, and having massacred many of the adherents of
Charles, retired with their prisoners to the capital. Charles
was soon informed of this massacre, with the additional
circumstance that the emissaries of Louis were seen ani-
matmg the insurgents to their work of destruction. Trans¬
ported with rage, he commanded the gates of the castle to
be shut and strictly guarded, and denounced the severest
vengeance on the perfidious monarch who had so often de¬
ceived him. Louis, however, though justly alarmed for
the consequences of this premature explosion, did not ne-
g ect to take the proper methods for securing himself. He
distributed large sums of money amongst those officers to
whom he imagined the duke was most inclined to pay any
regard and by splendid promises and presents endeavour¬
ed to allay the resentment of his other enemies. The re¬
sentment of Charles, as short-lived as it was violent, quick¬
ly subsided, and he entered into a treaty wdth the king,
upon much the same terms as those which had been agreed
to before. He insisted, however, that Louis should be
present at the punishment he inflicted upon the inhabitants
of Liege for the massacre they had committed; and this
being acceded to, these princes in conjunction formed the
siege of the city, which, notwithstanding the obstinate de¬
fence of the people, was at length taken by storm, and de¬
livered over to a general massacre.
But, as might have been foreseen, the new alliance was
soon dissolved. A confederacy against Louis, whom neither
promises nor treaties could bind, was formed between his
own brother the Duke of Normandy and the Duke of Bur¬
gundy ; but before their measures were ripe for execution
Louis had already commenced hostilities. The Duke of
Burgundy, as a peer of France, was summoned to parlia¬
ment, and on his refusal the Constable St Pol made him¬
self master of St Quintin. Several other cities were also
reduced; and Baldwin, the natural brother of Charles
having, at the instigation of Louis, deserted his cause, the
duke, notwithstanding his haughty spirit, was at last ob¬
liged to solicit a peace. This, however, was not of lono-
duration. Charles, encouraged by the success of Edward
IV. of England, his brother-in-law, began once more to
league against Louis, with the Dukes of Bretagne and Gui-
enne, the king’s brother, and formerly Duke of Normandy
but who had exchanged that duchy for the territory of
Guienne. But whilst the affairs of the confederates seem¬
ed likely to prosper, their prospects were suddenly over¬
cast by the death of the Duke of Guienne, who was univer¬
sally supposed to have been poisoned by order of Louis.
The abbot of St Jean d’Angeli was fixed upon as the im¬
mediate perpetrator of the deed; but upon the day ap¬
pointed for his trial he was found strangled in his cell; and
as the dead tell no tales, Louis escaped the ignominy which
the trial would probably have fixed on him, and was en¬
abled to seize upon the territory of Guienne, which he an¬
nexed to the dominions of France.
By this unexampled villany Charles was so much ex¬
asperated that he vowed the most dreadful vengeance
against the people of France, and threatened to sacrifice
to the memory of the Duke of Guienne every one who fell
into his hands. The citizens of Nesle were massacred
without distinction of sex or age; but Beauvis resisted
his attacks, after which Charles wreaked his fury on other
places. Having entered the country of Caux, he reduced
the cities of Eu and St Valery, burned Longueville, and
wasted the whole country as far as Rouen. Louis, on the
other hand, steady and constant in his designs, determin¬
ed to dissolve the league between the Duke of Bretagne
and Edward IV. of England, encamped with his army on
the frontiers of Bretagne; whilst the duke, not meeting
with the assistance promised by Edward, was obliged to
consent to a truce for a year. In a little time, however,
lie began again to conspire with the king of England
against Louis, and a powerful invasion was determined
upon. Edward was to cross the sea with an army often
thousand men, whilst Charles assembled all his forces to
join in the attack. The former was also to set up a claim
to the crown of France, and at all events to obtain the
provinces of Normandy and Guienne; whilst the duke
was to have Champagne, with some adjacent districts, and
to free his dominions from homage; and neither party
was to make peace without the consent of the other. It
was supposed that the Duke of Bretagne would naturally
J.0^116 confederacy; and the Count de St Pol, con-
stable of France, had engaged to deliver up the town of
St Quin tin and others which he occupied on the river
Somme. Louis, however, had still the good fortune to
!lharuleS' instead «f advancing to the as-
s stance of Edward, who had entered France at the head
FRANCE.
History, of fifteen thousand archers and fifteen hundred men-at-
arms, laid siege to the city of Nuiz on the Rhine; whilst
1468-1477-j-jjg Constable St Pol, instead of delivering up the towns
as he had promised, deceived his allies, and enabled Louis
to dissolve a confederacy, which, had it been vigorously
maintained, might have involved him in the greatest dif¬
ficulties. To procure the departure of Edward, however,
he was obliged to consent to a tribute of seventy-five
thousand crowns, as well as to settle on the king himself
fifty thousand crowns for life, and also to betrothe the
dauphin to the eldest daughter of the king of England.
The Duke of Burgundy exclaimed loudly against this
treaty; but Edward presisting in his resolution, it was exe¬
cuted, at a place called Pecquigny, near Amiens, though
in such a manner as showed the little confidence which
the two sovereigns reposed in each other. A power was
reserved by Edward for the Duke of Burgundy to accede
to the treaty; but the latter haughtily replied, that he
was able to support himself without the assistance of Eng¬
land, and that he would make no peace with Louis until
three months after the return of Edward to his own coun¬
try. To this resolution he adhered ; but no sooner had
the term expired than he concluded a truce with Louis
for nine years. The Constable St Pol having rendered
himself obnoxious to all parties by his complicated treach¬
ery, fled to Mons in Hainault; but the Duke of Bur¬
gundy had already consented to deliver him up, upon
condition of receiving his estates and moveables as the
price of his treachery.
Thus had Louis, without any other remarkable qualifi¬
cation than the mere arts of dissimulation and falsehood,
got rid of all his enemies excepting the Duke of Burgun¬
dy, whose growing power rendered him a constant object
of jealousy and terror. The imprudence and temerity of
the latter, however, soon proved his ruin. Plaving rash-
ly engaged in a war with the Swiss, he was defeated in
the first encounter, with the loss of his military chest and
baggage, and of his plate and jewels, supposed to be the
richest in Europe. His disappointment on this occasion
was so great that he was seized with a severe sickness;
but he had hardly recovered when he resumed his insane
scheme of conquering the Swiss. Another battle ensued,
in which, after an obstinate struggle, Charles was defeat¬
ed with the loss of eighteen thousand men; a disaster which
was followed by the defection of most of his allies. The
Duke of Lorraine recovered the city of Nancy, and the
greater part of his dominions, which Charles had seized;
whilst the latter, overwhelmed with shame and disap¬
pointment, spent his time in solitude and inactivity. But
from this state he was at length roused by the misfortunes
which fell upon him in rapid succession. He now invest¬
ed the city of Nancjs acting in this, as in every other in¬
stance, against the advice of his best officers. The Duke
of Lorraine advanced with a strong body of Germans to
the relief of the city, whilst Charles had scarcely four
thousand men to oppose him. His troops were therefore
defeated, and he himself, notwithstanding the most he¬
roic efforts of valour, was hurried away in the crowd. The
Count de Campobasso, an Italian nobleman, in whom he
put great confidence, but who was in reality a traitor, had
deserted with about eighty men at the commencement of
the action ; but he left twelve or fifteen fellows about the
duke s person, with strict orders to assassinate him in the
tumult; and this order they punctually obeyed. The body
of Charles was found two days after the battle, pierced with
three wounds. This occurred in the year 1477.
Ihe news of Charles’s death was received with the
most unfeigned joy by Louis, whose sole object it now
was to unite the territories of the Duke of Burgundy to
those of his ow n. I his might be done in two ways ; ei¬
ther by a match between the dauphin and Mary, the heir-
27
ess of Burgundy, or by marrying this lady to the Duke History,
of Angouleme, a prince of the blood royal of France. The's-
king, however, to whom duplicity and falsehood seem to 14?7-
have been absolutely necessary, chose a third method,
which was more agreeable to his character. The match
with the dauphin, for various reasons, might be considered
as impracticable. The disparity of age was great, the dau¬
phin being only eight years old, and the princess twenty ;
the Flemings were besides averse to submit to a prince
whose powerful resources would enable him to oppress
their liberties. But, notwithstanding these difficulties,
Louis chose to insist upon the match, at the same time
that he endeavoured to make himself master of her domi¬
nions by force of arms. He addressed circular letters to
the principal cities of Burgundy, representing that the
duchy had been given by King John to the heirs male of
his son Philip, and that now, when these were extinct by
the death of Charles, the territory reverted of course to
the crown; and, to render this argument more effectual,
he corrupted the governors of some towns, and seduced
the inhabitants of others, whilst he himself at the head
of an army prepared to enforce obedience from those who
could not be worked upon by other methods. And by
these means the province of Burgundy was entirely re¬
duced. But Flanders could not be brought under subjec¬
tion either by fraud or force. In this, as on almost all
other occasions, Louis displayed the most detestable false¬
hood, and the meanest treachery. In order to render
Mary odious to her subjects, he negotiated with her mi¬
nisters, and having prevailed on them to disclose the most
important state secrets, he communicated their letters to
the states of I landers. Jhis double treachery, however,
did not answer his purpose. The two ministers he had
betrayed were indeed put to death in the presence of
their sovereign ; but Mary was induced to bestow her
hand upon the emperor Maximilian, and Louis had the
mortification to find that all his arts had contributed only
to aggrandise a rival power, whom he had already suffi¬
cient cause to dread. To repair this oversight, he entered
into an alliance with Edward IV. of England, whom he
had inspired with a jealousy of his brother Clarence; and
thus a peace was concluded between the two monarchs,
intended to continue during the life of each, and a year
thereafter. Meanwhile the marriage of Mary with Maxi¬
milian secured the independence of Flanders ; whilst the
return of the prince of Orange to the party of that princess
once more extended the war to the cities of Burgundj7,
and the French were on the point of being expelled from
that country. But Maximilian unexpectedly made pro¬
posals of peace, and a truce was concluded, but without
any term fixed for its duration, or without stipulations in
favour of the Burgundians; so that the whole country was
soon afterwards reduced by Louis.
The king being now freed from the apprehensions of
foreign enemies, turned his vindictive disposition against
his own subjects, and, under pretence of former rebellions,
exercised the most insupportable tyranny. The princi¬
pal victim of his sanguinary disposition was James d’Ar-
magnac, duke of Nemours, one of the first noblemen in
the kingdom, who had formerly been a zealous confede¬
rate in the league with Edward and Charles. This un¬
fortunate nobleman, knowing that vengeance was deter¬
mined on, fled to the fortress of Carlat, in the mountains
of Auvergne, where he was besieged by the Seigneur de
Beaujeu, who had married Anne the daughter of Louis.
Ihe place, however, being almost impregnable, his ene¬
mies were obliged to make the most solemn promises of
safety in order to induce him to surrender, and he was at
last persuaded to trust himself in the hands of the faithless
tyrant. But no sooner had the latter got the unfortunate
nobleman in his power than he shut him up in an iron cage
28
FRANCE.
History, in the Bastille, and reprimanded the judges for having re-
1 ^easec^ from this close confinement during his exami-
‘7~ ^‘nation. He was condemned to be beheaded; but the
king’s cruelty extended beyond the sentence, for he or¬
dered the two sons of the duke, though yet in childhood,
to be placed directly under the scaffold, that they might
be covered with the blood of their father. Four thou¬
sand persons are supposed to have perished upon this oc¬
casion without any form or trial; and were it not for the
concurring testimony of the historians of that age, the
inhuman barbarities of this monster would scarcely be cre¬
dited. By these means he broke the spirit of the French
nobility, and gradually extended the power of the crown,
until at last it was limited only by the pleasure of the
sovereign.
In 1479, the emperor Maximilian, who had lightlyaban-
doned the duchy of Burgundy when he might have re¬
duced it, now renewed his claims when it was no longer
in his power to enforce them. After a variety of actions
of little note, and the destruction of cities on both sides,
a battle was fought at Guinegate, where the Flemings
were routed; but as the French pursued with too great
ardour, the infantry of the enemy rallied, and the battle
was renewed with great slaughter on both sides. A more
decisive advantage was afterwards gained by the capture
of eighty Flemish vessels, which induced that commercial
people to think of peace.
In the mean time, Louis, after a life spent in continual
deceit, hypocrisy, and cruelty, received warningof his ap¬
proaching end by a fit of apoplexy, with which he was
seized in the year 1480. He lay speechless and motion¬
less for two days; after which he in some degree recover¬
ed, but never completely regained his health and strength.
His illness, however, neither prevented him pursuing the
schemes ot his ambition, nor using the same methods as
formerly to attain them. He seized, without any pre¬
tence, the estates of the Duke of Bourbon, the only no¬
bleman in the kingdom whose power gave him any cause
of suspicion ; and, notwithstanding his assiduity for the
interest of the dauphin, kept him a kind of prisoner in the
castle of Amboise. He banished his own consort, the
mother of the dauphin, to Savoy, and endeavoured to in¬
spire the prince with aversion for her. By the death of
Charles, titular king of Naples, and the last of the second
house of Anjou, he became master of the county of Pro¬
vence ; but his satisfaction on this occasion was marred
by a second stroke of apoplexy. Still, however, he re¬
vived, and again began to pursue his ambitious intrigues.
Ihe death of Mary of Burgundy, wlio perished by a fall
from her horse, inspired him with new views; and he be¬
trothed his son to the infant daughter of the emperor, by
which means he deeply offended Edward IV. whose eldest
daughter had previously been contracted to the dauphin,
and a war would in consequence have ensued, had it not
been for the death of the king of England. This event
was ere long followed by that of Louis himself, who had
in vain exhausted the skill of his physician, and wearied
tne clergy with prayers and processions to avert the im¬
pending stroke. He expired in the year 1483, after a
reign of twenty-three years, during which he was detest¬
ed by his subjects, whom he had continually oppressed,
and equally dreaded and hated by his neighbours, whom
he had constantly deceived. But, in spite of all this, he
obtained from his holiness the title of Most Christian King,
which his successors retained until the year 1830 when
a sudden revolution placed a new and more popular dy¬
nasty on the throne. Notwithstanding the dark character
of this prince, it must be allowed that he laid the founda¬
tions of the future greatness of the French monarchy. By
his arts he deprived the common people of their liberty
depressed the power of the nobility, established a stand¬
ing army, and even induced the states to render many History
taxes perpetual which formerly were only temporary.
From this time the people became accustomed to submit 1483-
entirely to the voice of their sovereign as their only legis¬
lator ; and being always obedient in matters of the great¬
est consequence, they cheerfully contributed whatever
sums were required to fulfil the king’s pleasure/*
Charles VIII. who succeeded his father Louis XL in Charles
1483, was only fourteen years of age at the time of his^DL
father’s death. But though he might, even at that age,
have ascended the throne without any material violation
of the laws of France, yet it was judged necessary to ap¬
point a regent, on account of the king’s delicacy of con¬
stitution and want of education. Three competitors ap¬
peared as candidates for this important trust: John duke
of Bourbon, a prince of the blood, and who had, till the
age of sixty, maintained the most unblemished character;
Louis duke of Orleans, presumptive heir to the crown,
but who from his youth seemed incapable of undertaking
so important an office ; and Anne, the eldest daughter of
Louis, to whom he had in the last moments of his life
committed the charge of the kingdom. The claim of this
lady was supported by the assembly of the states-general
at fours; and though she had only entered the twenty-
second year of her age, the office, it appears, could not
have been more properly bestowed. Being married to
Peter of Bourbon, seigneur of Beaujeu, she was styled the
Lady of Beaujeu ; but she seems to have acted indepen¬
dently of her husband, who was a man but of moderate
capacity.
Her first step was to ingratiate herself with the people
by some popular acts, and particularly by punishing the
instruments of her father’s cruelties. One of these, Oli¬
ver le Dian, who, from the humble station of barber, had
raised himself to the confidence and favour of the king,
and had distinguished himself by the invention of new
modes of torture, was publicly hanged. Another, named
Jean Doyac, who by continual acts of violence and rapacity
had oppressed the people, after being whipped in all the
public places and squares of Paris, was condemned to have
one of his ears cut off, and his tongue pierced through
with a hot iron; upon which he was conveyed to his na¬
tive city of Montferrand, where he was again whipped,
and had his other ear cut off. Jacques Coitier, the phy¬
sician of Louis, who had availed himself of the terror of
death, with which the king was strongly influenced, to ex¬
tort large sums of money from him, was ordered to account
for the immense wealth he had acquired ; but he prudent¬
ly averted the danger by paying a fine of fifty thousand
crowns. Thus the Lady of Beaujeu secured the affection
of the people at large, and was equally successful in gain¬
ing those who had at first been averse to her government.
The Duke of Bourbon was made constable, an office which
he had long desired ; the Duke of Orleans having behaved
in such a manner as to exclude all hopes of favour. Incens¬
ed at the determination against him of a trifling dispute
at tennis by the Lady of Beaujeu, he furiously had ex-
claimed, that whoever had decided in that manner was a
liar if a man, or a strumpet if a woman. After this inso¬
lent declaration he fled to the castle of Beaujency, where,
however, he was soon forced to surrender. He then ap¬
plied to Henry VII. who had newly ascended the throne
of England; but that prince, naturally cautious and deli¬
berate, paid little attention to his application. On this he
next made application to the court of Bretagne, where
he was received with great marks of esteem, and began
to entertain hopes of marrying the daughter of the duke ;
but he was looked upon with a jealous eye by the nobility,
who entered into secret negotiations with Anne, and even
solicited her to invade the country, stipulating that only a
ceitain number of troops should enter the province, and
FRANCE.
29
History, that no fortified place should remain in the hands of the thousand foot and six thousand horse, the greater part History.
French; conditions which were indeed agreed to by the of which consisted of regular troops, he obtained the most
1483-1491. regent, though she determined to keep them no longer surprising success, traversing the whole country in six
than it suited her purpose so to do. Bretagne was there- weeks, and rendering himself master of the kingdom of
fore invaded by four armies, each superior to the stipu- Naples in less than a fortnight. To vulgar observers, his ex-
lated number, who quickly made themselves masters of traordinary good fortune seemed miraculous; and he was
the most important places in the country; whilst the troops reckoned an instrument raised up by God to destroy the
of the duke retired in disgust, leaving the invaders to pur- execrable tyrants by which Italy was at that time afflict-
sue their conquests as they pleased. Finding, however, ed ; and had Charles availed himself of this prepossession
that the entire subjection of their country was determin- in his favour, and acted up to the character generally us¬
ed upon, the nobility at last began to exert themselves cribed to him, he might have raised his name as high as
in its defence, and, inflamed by the enthusiasm of liberty, that of any hero of antiquity. But his conduct was^of a
they raised an army of sixty thousand men, by which the very different description. Instead of following up his
French were compelled to abandon the siege of Nantes, successes, he amused himself with feasts and shows, leav-
But this proved only a transient gleam of success. Anne ing his power in the hands of favourites, who abandoned
persevered in her design of completing the conquest of it to such as chose to purchase titles, places, or authority,
the country, and the state of Europe was at that time at the rates imposed; and the whole force he proposed to
favourable to the design. Of all the European nations, leave in his newly conquered dominions amounted to no
England alone was then capable of affording effectual as- more than four thousand men. But whilst Charles was
sistance ; but the slow caution of Henry prevented him thus idly losing precious time, a league was forming
from giving the aid which in this case he ought to have against him at Venice, to which the pope, the emperor
afforded. The Bretons were thus left to defend them- Maximilian, the archduke Philip, Ludovico Sforza, and
selves as they best could; and having ventured a battle, the Venetians, were all parties. The confederates assem-
they were entirely defeated, most of their leaders being bled an army of forty thousand men, commanded by Fran-
taken prisoners, whilst a small body of English who assist- cis marquis of Mantua, and waited for the king in the val¬
ley of Fornova, in the duchy of Parma, into which he had
descended with nine thousand men. On the 6th of July
1495 he attacked the allies, and, notwithstanding their
great superiority of numbers, defeated them, with but lit¬
tle loss on his part. By this victory he got safe to France ;
but his Italian dominions were lost almost as soon as he
departed. Some schemes were proposed for recovering
ed them were entirely cut to pieces. The duke soon af¬
terwards died by a fall from his horse, leaving his domi¬
nions to his daughter Anne, at that time only thirteen
years of age. A marriage was now negotiated between
this princess and Maximilian king of the Romans, who
had previously been married to Mary of Burgundy; but,
by reason of the poverty of that prince, it was never com¬
pleted. The Lady of Beaujeu then determined to con- these conquests, but they were never put in execution;
elude a marriage between the }7oung king of France and
the duchess, though the former had already been married
to Margaret of Austria, the daughter of Maximilian. But
this marriage was not consummated, by reason of the ten¬
der age of the princess, who had been sent to Paris for
and the king died of an apoplexy in 1498.
By the death of Charles VIII. the crown of France Louis XII.
passed from the direct line of the house of Valois, and
Louis duke of Orleans succeeded to the throne. At the
time of his accession he was in his thirty-sixth year, and
her education, and for several years treated as queen of had long been taught prudence in the school of adver-
4ranee ; and in 1491 Margaret was returned, like rejected sity. During the administration of the Lady of Beaujeu
goods, to her father. Anne of Bretagne, however, long he had been constantly in disgrace, and, after his connec-
refused to violate the engagement into which she had tions with the Duke of Bretagne, had spent a consider-
entered; but at last, finding herself pressed on all sides, able time in prison; and though afterwards set at liber-
and incapable of resisting the numerous forces of France, ty by Charles, he had never possessed any share of that
she reluctantly consented to the match. Maximilian, monarch’s confidence or favour. Towards the close of the
whose proverty had prevented him from giving any as- preceding reign he fell under the displeasure of the queen ;
sistance to his bride, or even from coming to see her, and afterwards continued at his castle of Blois till he was
enraged at the double disgrace which he had suffered, be¬
gan, when too late, to bethink himself of revenge. France
was now threatened with an invasion by the united for¬
ces of Austria, Spain, and England. But this formidable
confederacy was soon dissipated. Henry, whose natural
avarice had induced him to withhold the necessary assist¬
ance, was bought off with the immediate payment of
745,000 crowns, and the promise of 25,000 annually ever
called thence to take possession of the throne. He had
been married in early life, against his will, to Jane, the
youngest daughter of Louis XI. a princess of an amiable
disposition, but deformed in person, and supposed to be
incapable of bearing children. He afterwards entertain¬
ed thoughts of having his marriage dissolved, and was
supposed to possess the affections of the Duchess of Bre¬
tagne before she became queen of France. After the death
afterwards; Ferdinand king of Spain had the counties of of her husband, that princess retired to Bretagne, where
Roussillon and Cerdagne restored to him; wdiilst Maxi- she pretended to assume independent sovereignty; but
milian was gratified by the cession of that part of Artois Louis having got his marriage with Jane dissolved by
which had been acquired by Louis XL Pope Alexander VI. made proposals to the queen dowa-
The young king of France agreed to these terms the ger, which were accepted without hesitation, though it was
more readily, that he was impatient to undertake an ex- stipulated that, if she had two sons, the younger should
pedition into Italy, in order to conquer the kingdom of inherit the duchy of Bretagne.
Naples, to which he laid claim. Most of his counsellors As Louis, while Duke of Orleans, had some pretensions
were opposed to this expedition ; but the king was inflexi- to the crown of Naples, he now set about realizing them
hie, even though Ferdinand king of Naples offered to do by conquest, and found circumstances favourable to'his de¬
homage for his kingdom, and to pay him a tribute of sign. The pope, Alexander VI. was devoted to his interests,
fifty thousand crowns a year. He appointed the Duke in the hope of getting his son Caesar Borgia provided for.
of Bourbon regent in his absence, and then set out for
Italy, with few troops, and but little money. On the
march he fell ill of the small-pox, but in a short time re¬
covered, and having entered Italy with a force of twelve
Louis had conciliated the friendship of the Venetians by
promising them a part of the Milanese ; he had also con¬
cluded a truce with the archduke Philip, and renewed his
alliances with the crowns of England, Scotland, and Den-
30
FRANCE.
History, mark. He then entered Italy with an army of twenty
thousand men ; and, being assisted by the Venetians, con-
1498-1524. qUerecl one part 0f t]ie duchy, whilst they conquered the
other, the archduke himself being obliged to fly with his
family to Inspruck. He then attacked Ferdinand of Spain
with three armies simultaneously; but as none of these
performed any thing remarkable, he was obliged to eva¬
cuate the kingdom of Naples in 1504i. But in 1506 the
people of Genoa revolted, drove out the nobility, chose
eight tribunes, and declared Paul Nuova, a silk dyer, their
duke ; after which they expelled the French governor, and
reduced a great part of the Riviera. This induced Louis
to return into Italy, where, in 1507, he obliged the Ge¬
noese to surrender at discretion, and in 1508 entered into
a league with the other princes who at that time desired
to reduce the overgrown power of the Venetians. But
Pope Julius II. who had been the first contriver of this
league, soon repented of his contrivance, and declared
that if the Venetians would restore the cities of Faenza
and Rimini, which had been unjustly taken from him, he
would be contented. This was refused, and in 1509 the
forces of the republic received an entire defeat from Louis,
in consequence of which they agreed to restore not only
the two cities demanded by Pope Julius, but whatever
else the allies required. The pope, instead of executing
his treaties with his allies, made war on the king of
France. Upon this Louis convoked an assembly of his
clergy, at which it was determined that in some cases it
was lawful to make war upon the pope. The king there¬
fore declared war against his holiness, and committed the
command of his army to the Marshal de Trivulce, who soon
obliged the pope to retire to Ravenna. In 1511, Gaston
de Foix, duke of Nemours, gained a great victory at Ra¬
venna, but was himself killed in the engagement. After
his death the army was disbanded for want of pay; and
the French affairs in Italy, and indeed everywhere else,
fell into great confusion. The duchy of Milan was reco¬
vered and lost again in a few weeks. Henry VIII. of Eng¬
land invaded trance, and took Terruenne and Tournay ;
whilst the Swiss invaded Burgundy with an army of twen¬
ty-five thousand men. In this desperate situation of affairs
the queen died, and Louis put an end to the opposition of
his most dangerous enemies by negotiating marriages. To
Ferdinand of Spain he offered his second daughter for
either of his grandsons, Charles or Ferdinand, and pro¬
mised to renounce, in favour of that marriage, his claims
on Milan and Genoa. This proposal was accepted ; and
Louis himself married the princess Mary, sister of Henry
VIII. of England. But he did not long survive this mar¬
riage ; and having died on the 2d of January 1514, he was
succeeded by Francis I. count of Angouleme and duke
of Bretagne and Valois.
fiancis I. The new king had no sooner been seated on the throne
than he resolved to undertake an expedition into Italy. In
this he was at first successful, having defeated the Swiss
at Mangnon, and reduced the duchy of Milan. In 1518
the emperor Maximilian having died, Francis showed him¬
self ambitious of becoming his successor, and thereby re¬
storing to France a splendid title which had been so long
lost. But Maximilian, before his death, had exerted him¬
self so much in favour of Charles V. of Spain, that Francis
found it impossible to succeed; and from that time an
irreconcilable hatred took place between these two mo-
narchs. In 1521 this bad feeling produced a war, which,
however, might perhaps have been terminated, if Francis
could have been prevailed upon to restore the town of Font-
arabia, which had been taken by his admiral Bonivet But
this being refused, hostilities were renewed with greater
vigour than ever ; nor were they concluded till France had
been brought to the very brink of destruction. The war
was continued with various success until the year 1524
when Francis having invaded Italy, and laid siege to History
Pavia, was utterly defeated before that city, and taken
prisoner, on the 24th of February. This disaster threw 1624’ l52-
the whole kingdom into the utmost confusion. The Fle¬
mish troops made continual inroads ; many thousand boors
assembled in Alsace, in order to invade the country from
that quarter; Henry VIII.had assembled an army, and also
threatened France on the side of the Channel; and a party
was formed in the kingdom to dispossess the duchess of the
regency, and confer it upon the Duke de Vendome. This
prince, however, who after the constable was the head of
the house of Bourbon, proceeded to Lyons, where he as¬
sured the regent that he had no view but for her service
and that of his country; and he then formed a council of
the ablest men of the kingdom, of which the queen appoint¬
ed him president. Henry VIII. acting under the influence
of Cardinal Wolsey, resolved not to oppress the oppressed,
and therefore assured the regent that she had nothing to
fear from him ; at the same time that he advised her not to
consent to any treaty by which France was to be dismem¬
bered. To the emperor, however, he is said to have held
different language, telling him that the time had now
arrived when this puissant monarchy lay at their mercy,
and that therefore an opportunity so favourable should
not be lost; that, for his part, he would be content with
Normandy, Guienne, and Gascony; that he trusted the
empire would make no scruple of owning him as king of
I ranee; and that he expected the emperor would make
a right use of his victory, by entering Guienne in person,
in which case he was ready to bear half the expenses of
the war. Alarmed at these proposed conditions, and not
caring to have Henry as a neighbour, the emperor agreed
to a truce with the regent for six months. In Picardy
the Flemings were repulsed; whilst the Count de Guise
and the Duke of Lorraine, with a handful of troops, de¬
feated and cut to pieces the German peasants.
In the mean time Francis was detained a captive in
Italy ; but being wearied of his confinement in that coun¬
try, and the princes of Italy having begun to cabal for
his deliverance, he was carried to Madrid, where, on the
14th of January 1525, he signed a treaty, the principal
articles of which were, that he should resign to the em¬
peror the duchy of Burgundy in full sovereignty ; desist
from the homage which the emperor owed him for Artois
and Flanders ; renounce all claim to Naples, Milan, Asti,
lournay, Lisle, and Hesdin, and certain other places;
persuade Henry d’Albert to resign the kingdom of Na¬
varre to the emperor, or at least to give him no assistance ;
restore within forty daj's the Duke of Bourbon and all his
pai ty to their estates ; pay the king of England five hun¬
dred thousand crowns which the emperor owed him ; and,
when the emperor went to Italy to receive the imperial
crown, to lend him twelve galleys, four large ships, and a
land force, or instead of it two hundred thousand crowns.
All these articles the king of France promised on the faith
and honour of a prince to execute, or, in case of non-per¬
formance, to return as a prisoner into Spain. But, notwith¬
standing these professions, Francis had already protested,
before certain notaries and witnesses in whom he could
confide, that the treaty he was about to sign was compulsory,
and therefore null and void. On the 21st of February
the emperor released him from his prison, in which he had
been closely confined ever since his arrival in Spain ; and,
a ter receiving from his own lips the strongest assurances
that he would literally fulfil the terms of the treaty, sent
nm under a strong guard to the frontiers, where he was
exchanged for his two eldest sons, who were to remain as
hostages for his fidelity.
But when the king returned to his dominions, his first
care was to get himself absolved by the pope from the oaths
winch he had taken; and when this had been accomplished
FRANCE.
History, he entered into a league with the pontifF, the Venetians,
the Duke of Milan, and the king of England, for preserv-
1525-lo2f). ing Jhg peace of Italy. In the month of June he received
publicly remonstrances from the states of Burgundy, in
which they told him without ceremony, that by the treaty
of Madrid he had done what he had no right to do, in
breach of the laws and his coronation oath ; and that if he
persisted in his resolution of placing them under a foreign
yoke, they must appeal to the general states of the king¬
dom. The viceroy of Naples and the Spanish ministers
were present at these remonstrances, and, perceiving
the end at which the king aimed, expostulated with him
in pretty warm terms. The viceroy, in fact, told him
that he had now nothing left but to keep his royal word
in returning to the castle of Madrid, as his predeces¬
sor John had done in a similar case. To this Francis
replied, that John acted rightly, because he returned to a
king who had treated him like a king ; but that at Madrid
he had received such usage as would have been unbe¬
coming to a gentleman, and he had often declared to the
emperor’s ministers that the terms they extorted from
him were unjust and impracticable. However, he was
still willing to do all that was fit and reasonable, and to
ransom his sons at the rate of two millions of gold in lieu
of the duchy of Burgundy.
Hitherto the treaty for tranquillizing Italy had been
kept secret, in hopes that some mitigation of the treaty of
Madrid would have been obtained ; but now it was judged
expedient to publish it, though the viceroy of Naples and
the Spanish lords still remained at the French court. The
emperor was to be admitted as a party to this treaty, pro¬
vided he accepted the king’s offer of two millions for the re¬
lease of his children, and left the Duke of Milan and other
Italian princes in quiet possession of their dominions. But it
is the common misfortune of all leagues, that the powers
which enter into them keep only their own particular inte¬
rests in view, and thus defeat the general intention of the
confederacy. In the present instance, the king’s great
aim was to obtain his children upon the terms he had pro¬
posed ; and he was desirous of knowing what hopes there
were of accomplishing that object, before he acted against
the monarch who had them in his power. Thus the Duke
of Milan and the pope were both sacrificed. The former
was obliged to surrender to the Duke of Bourbon, and
the latter was surprised by the Colonnas; disasters which
would have been prevented if the French succours had
entered Italy in time. See Italy.
According to an agreement which had been entered into
between Francis and Henry, their ambassadors entered
Spain, attended each of them by a herald, to summon the
emperor to accept the terms which had been offered him,
or in case of refusal to declare war. But as the emperor’s
answer was foreseen in the court of France, the king had
previously called together an assembly of the Notables, to
whom he proposed the question, whether he was bound
to perform the treaty of Madrid ? or whether, if he did
not perform it, he was obliged in honour to return to
Spain ? Io both these questions the assembly answered
in the negative, declaring that Burgundy was united to
the crown of France, and could not be separated by the
kings own authority; that his person also was the pro¬
perty of the public, of which therefore he could not dis¬
pose ; but as to the two millions, which they looked upon
as a just equivalent, they undertook to raise it for his ser¬
vice. \\ hen the ambassadors delivered their propositions,
Charles treated the English herald with respect, and the
trench herald with contempt; a circumstance which in¬
duced Francis to challenge the emperor. But all differ¬
ences were at length adjusted, and a treaty concluded at
Cambray on the 5th of August 1528. By this treaty, in¬
stead of actual possession, the emperor contented himself
31
with reserving his right to the duchy of Burgundy, and the History,
payment of the two millions of crowns already mentioned.
Of these, he was to receive one million two hundred thou-1528~1550*
sand in ready money; the lands in Flanders belonging to
the house of Bourbon, valued at four hundred thousand,
were to be delivered up; and the remaining four hundred
thousand were to be paid by France in discharge of the
emperor’s debt to England. Francis was likewise to pay
the penalty of five hundred thousand crowns which the
emperor had incurred by not marrying his niece the Prin¬
cess Mary of England, and further to release a rich jewel
which many years before had been pawned by the house
of Burgundy for fifty thousand crowns. The town and
castle of Hesdin were also surrendered, together with the
sovereignty of Flanders and Artois, and all the king’s pre¬
tensions in Italy. As for the allies of France, they were,
as usually happens, abandoned to the emperor’s mercy,
without the least stipulation in their favour; but Francis
consoled himself for this disgraceful dereliction by pro¬
testing against the validity of the treaty before he ratified
it, as did also his attorney-general before he registered it
in parliament, though in both instances with the greatest
secrecy imaginable. The remainder of this reign was not
distinguished by any events of consequence. The war
was renewed by Charles, who invaded France, though with¬
out success; nor was peace fully established until the death
of the French king, which happened on the 3d of March
1547.
Francis was succeeded by his son Henry II. who ascend- Henry II.
ed the throne at the age of twenty-nine. In the beginning
of his reign an insurrection broke out in Guienne, owing
to the oppressive conduct of the officers who levied the
salt-tax, and was not put down without considerable dif¬
ficulty. In 1548 the king began to enforce the edicts
issued against the Protestants with the utmost severity;
and, thinking even the clergy too mild in the prosecution of
heresy, he for that purpose erected a chamber composed
of members of the parliament of Paris. At the queen’s
coronation, which happened this year, he caused a num¬
ber of Protestants to be burned, and was himself present
at the horrid spectacle, which, however, shocked him so
much that he never forgot it. In 1549 a peace was con¬
cluded with England, and Henry purchased from the lat¬
ter Boulogne, for the sum of four hundred thousand crowns,
one half to be paid on the day of restitution, and the other
half a few months afterwards. Scotland was included in
the treaty, and the English restored some places which
they had taken in that country. This was the most advan¬
tageous peace which France had hitherto concluded with
England; the vast arrears due to that crown being in ef¬
fect remitted, and the pension, which looked so like tribute,
being tacitly extinguished. The Earl of Warwick himself,
who had concluded the peace, was in fact so sensible of
the disgrace suffered by this nation on this occasion, that
he pretended to be sick, in order to avoid setting his hand
to so scandalous a compact. This year, also, an edict was
made to restrain the extravagant remittances which the
clergy had been in use to make to Rome, and for correct¬
ing other abuses committed by the papal notaries. With
this edict Pope Julius III. was highly displeased ; and the
following year, 1550, war was declared by the king of
France against the pope and the emperor, on the ground
that Henry protected Octavio Farnese, duke of Parma,
whom the pope was desirous of depriving of his dominions.
In this war the king was threatened with the censures of
the church ; but as the emperor soon found himself in
such danger from these new enemies, that he could not
support the pope as he intended, the latter was obliged to
sue for peace. Henry continued the war against the em¬
peror with success; and having reduced the cities of Toul,
Verdun, and Metz, entered the country of Alsace, and
32 FRA
History, reduced all the fortresses between Hagenau and Wissen-
v7T*i ^urS* failed, however, in his attempt on Strasburg ;
oo - o7t.ancj was soon afterwards obliged by the German princes
and the Swiss to desist from all further conquests on that
side. This war continued with little interruption, and but
small success upon the part of the French, till the year
1557, when a peace was concluded ; and soon afterwards
the king was killed at a tournament by the Count de Mont¬
gomery, one of the strongest knights in France, who had
done all he could to avoid this encounter.
The reign of his successor Francis II. was remarkable
only for the persecution of the Protestants, which became
so grievous that they were obliged to take up arms in their
Charles own defence. This occasioned several civil wars, the first
IX. of which commenced in the reign of Charles IX. who suc¬
ceeded to the throne in 1560. This contest continued
until the year 1562, when a peace was concluded, by which
the Protestants were to have a complete amnesty, and
enjoy entire liberty of conscience. But in 1565 the war
broke out afresh, and was continued with little interrup¬
tion until 1569, when peace was again concluded, upon
terms advantageous to the Protestants.
After this, Charles, who had now taken the government
into his hands, caressed and flattered the Protestants in
an extraordinary manner. Their destruction had been re¬
solved on, but as they were too powerful to be openly at¬
tacked, it was judged necessary to lull them into security
by means of systematic dissimulation, and to fall upon them
w hen off their guard. With this view the king invited to
court Admiral de Coligni, the head of the Huguenot
party, and so effectually cajoled him, that the gallant ve¬
teran was lulled into a fatal security, notwithstanding the
warnings given by his friends that the king’s fair speeches
were by no means to be trusted. And he had soon reason
to repent his confidence. On the 22d of August 1571, as
he was returning from court to his lodgings, he received
a shot from a window, which carried away the second
finger of his right hand, and wounded him grievously in
the left arm. This he himself ascribed to the malice of
the Duke of Guise, the head of the Catholic party. After
dinner, the king went to pay him a visit, and amongst
other things observed, “ you have received the wound,
but it is I who sufferat the same time desiring that he
would order his friends to establish themselves around his
residence, and promising to prohibit the Catholics from
entering that quarter after dark. This satisfied the admi¬
ral of the king’s sincerity, and prevented him from com¬
plying with the wishes of his friends, who desired to car¬
ry him away, and were strong enough to have forced a
passage out of Paris if they had attempted it.
In the evening of the same day, the queen-mother, Ca¬
tharine de’ Medicis, held a cabinet council to fix the exe¬
cution of the massacre of the Protestants, which had long
been meditated. The persons of whom this council was
composed, were Henry duke of Anjou, the king’s brother;
Gonzagua duke of Nevers; Henry of Angouleme, grand
prior of France, the bastard brother of the king : Marshal
de Favannes; and Albert de Gondi, count de Retz: and
the direction of the whole was intrusted to the Duke of
Guise, to whom the administration had during the for-
mei reign been entirely confided. The guards were ap¬
pointed to be in arms, and the city officers were ordered
to predispose the militia to execute the king’s orders, of
which the signal was to be the ringing of a bell near the
Louvre. It is said, indeed, that when the fatal hour,
which was that of midnight, approached, the king grew
undetermined, and expressed great horror at the idea of
shedding so much blood, especially considering that the
people about to be destroyed were his subjects, wdio had
come to the capital at his command, and in dependence
on his word, and particularly the admiral, whom he had
N C E.
so lately detained by his caresses. The queen-mother, History
however, reproached him with cowardice, and represent-
ing to him the danger which he incurred from the Protes- 157!•
tants, at last induced him to consent. According to others,
the king himself urged on the massacre, and, when it
was proposed to him only to take off a few of the leaders,
exclaimed, “ If any are to die, let there not be one left to
reproach me with breach of faith.”
As soon as the signal had been given, a body of Swiss
troops, headed by the Duke of Guise and the Chevalier
d’Angouleme, accompanied by many persons of quality,
attacked the admiral’s house ; and having forced open the
doors, the foremost of the assassins rushed into the apart¬
ment. One of them asked if he was Coligni; to which he
answered that he was, adding, “ Young man, respect these
gray hairs.” The assassin replied by running him through
the body with a sword. The Duke of Guise and the cheva¬
lier growing impatient below stairs, loudly demanded if the
business was done; and being answered in the affirmative,
commanded the body to be thrown out at the window. As
soon as it fell on the ground, the chevalier, or, as some say,
the Duke of Guise, wiped the blood from the face, and
kicked it with his foot. The body was then abandoned to
the fury of the populace, who, after a series of indignities,
dragged it to the common gallows, to which they chained
it by the foot, whilst the head, being cut off, was carried to
the queen-mother, who, it is said, caused it to be embalmed
and transmitted to Rome. The king himself went to see
the body hanging upon the gibbet, where a fire being kin¬
dled under it, part was burned, and the rest scorched. In
the Louvre, the gentlemen belonging to the king of Navarre
and the prince of Conde were murdered under the king's
own eye. Two of them, wounded and pursued by the as¬
sassins, fled into the bedchamber of the queen of Navarre,
and jumped upon her bed, beseeching her to save their
lives; and as she proceeded to solicit this favour of the
queen-mother, two more, under the same circumstances,
rushed into the room, and threw themselves at her feet.
The queen-mother repaired to the window to enjoy these
dreadful scenes; and the king, seeing the Protestants
who lodged on the other side of the river flying for their
lives, called for his long gun, and fired upon them. In
the space of three or four days many thousands were de¬
stroyed in the city of Paris alone. Peter Ramus, professor
of philosophy and mathematics, after being robbed of all
he had, was cruelly mutilated in the abdomen, and thrown
from a window. During the first two days, the king de¬
nied that the massacre was done by his orders, and threw
the whole blame upon the house of Guise; but on the
28th of August he went to the parliament, avowed the in¬
comparable atrocity, was complimented on it, and directed
a process against the admiral, by which he was stigmatiz¬
ed as a traitor. Two innocent gentlemen suffered as his ac¬
complices in a pretended plot against the life of the king, in
order, as was alleged, to place the crown on the head of the
prince of Conde. They were executed by torch light; and •
the king and the queen-mother, together with the king of
Navarre and the prince of Conde, who were forced to be
present, were spectators of the horrid deed. Nor was the
massacre confined to the city of Paris alone. On the eve
of St Bartholomew, orders had been sent to the gover¬
nors of provinces, either to fall upon the Protestants them¬
selves, or to let loose the people on them ; and though an
edict was published before the end of the week, assuring
them of the king’s protection, and protesting that he by
no means designed to exterminate them on account of
their religion, yet private orders were issued of a directly
contrary nature, in consequence of which the Matins of
Paris were repeated in Meaux, Orleans, Troyes, Angers,
loulouse, Rouen, and Lyons; so that in the space of
about two months thirty thousand Protestants were but-
FRANCE.
History, chered in cold blood.1 The next year Rochelle, the only
fortress which the Protestants occupied in France, was
1571-1588. besieged and taken, but not until twenty-four thousand
of the besiegers had fallen before its walls. After this a
pacification ensued, on terms nominally favourable to the
Protestants ; but as a body they had been destroyed ; St
Bartholomew had completely broken their power; and
those who survived the massacre had no alternative but
to accept whatever terms were offered them.
This year the Duke of Anjou was elected king of Po¬
land, and soon afterwards set out to take possession of his
new kingdom. Charles accompanied him to the frontiers ;
but during the journey he was seized with a slow fever,
which from the commencement portended death. He
lingered for some time under the most terrible agonies
both of mind and body; and at last expired on the 30th
of May 1572. It is said that ever after the massacre of St
Bartholomew, this prince had a fierceness in his looks, and
a deadly paleness in his cheeks ; he slept little, but never
soundly, and waked frequently in agonies, which the soft
music employed to lull him into repose often failed to allay.
The sting of remorse was deeply infixed in his soul, and
in a little time its poison drank up his spirit.
Henry During the first years of the reign of Henry III. who
111- succeeded his brother Charles IX. the war with the Pro¬
testants was carried on with indifferent success upon the
part of the Catholics. In 1575 a peace was concluded,
which by way of eminence was called the Edict of Pacifi¬
cation. The treaty consisted of no fewer than sixty-three
articles, the substance of which was, that liberty of con¬
science, and the public exercise of religion, were granted
to the reformed, without any restriction except that they
were not to preach within two leagues of Paris, nor in any
other part where the court might be. The judgments
against the admiral, and others who had either fallen in
the war or been executed, were also reversed ; and eight
cautionary towns were given up to the Protestants.
This edict induced the Guises to form an association in
defence (as was pretended) of the Catholic religion, wdiich
afterwards became known by the name of the Catholic
League. This confederacy, though the king was men¬
tioned with respect, struck at the very root of his autho¬
rity; for, as the Protestants had their leaders, so the Ca¬
tholics were in future to be entirely dependent on the
chief of the league, and to execute whatever he com¬
manded, for the good of the cause, without exception of
persons. In order to neutralize the bad effects of this as¬
sociation, the king, by the advice of his council, declared
himself the head of the league ; and in this character he
recommenced the war against the Protestants, which was
not extinguished as long as he lived. In the mean time
the faction of the Duke of Guise resolved to support
Charles cardinal of Bourbon, a weak old man, as presump¬
tive heir of the crown; and having entered into a league
with Spain, they in 1584 took up arms against the king; and
though peace was concluded the same year, yet in 1587
they again proceeded to such extremities that the king
was forced to fly from Paris. Another reconciliation vras
soon afterwards effected ; but it is generally believed that
the king from this time resolved on the destruction of the
Duke of Guise. Accordingly, finding that this nobleman
still behaved with his usual haughtiness, the king caused
him to be stabbed by his guards on the 23d of December
1587. But Henry himself did not long survive this deed,
being stabbed by one Jacques Clement, a Jacobin monk,
on the first of August 1588. His wound was not at first
33
thought mortal; but his frequent swooning quickly dis- History,
covered his danger, and he died the following morning, v—
in the thirty-ninth year of his age and sixteenth of his 1588-1608.
reign.
Before the king’s death he had nominated Henry Bour- Henry IV.
bon, king of Navarre, as his successor on the throne of
France; but as the latter was a Protestant, or at least
one who greatly favoured their cause, he was at first
owned by very few except those of the Protestant party.
He met with the most violent opposition from the mem¬
bers of the Catholic League, and was often reduced to
such extremities that he went to people’s houses under
colour of visits, when in reality he had not a dinner in his
own. By his activity and perseverance, however, he was
at last acknowledged by the whole kingdom, a consum¬
mation to which his abjuration of the Protestant religion
not a, little contributed. As the king of Spain had laid
claim to the crown of France, Henry no sooner found him¬
self in a fair way of being firmly seated on the throne, than
he formally declared war against that kingdom ; and hav¬
ing proved successful, he, in 1597, entered upon the quiet
possession of his kingdom.
The king’s first care was to put an end to the religious
disputes which had so long distracted the kingdom. For
this purpose he passed the famous edict, dated at Nantes,
13th April 1598, which re-established in a solid and effec¬
tual manner all the favours which had been granted to
the reformed, and added some which had not been thought
of before, particularly that of allowing them a free admis¬
sion to all employments of trust, profit, and honour, esta¬
blishing chambers in which the members of the two re¬
ligions were equal, and- the permitting their children to
be educated without restraint in any of the universities.
Soon afterwards he concluded peace with Spain upon ad¬
vantageous terms; an event which afforded him an op¬
portunity of restoring order and justice throughout his do¬
minions, repairing the ravages occasioned by the civil war,
and abolishing all those innovations which had been made,
either to the prejudice of the prerogatives of the crown or
the welfare of the people. His schemes of reformation,
indeed, he intended to have carried much beyond the boun¬
daries of France. If we may believe the Duke of Sully, he
had in view no less a design than the new-modelling of all
Europe. He imagined that the European powers might
be formed into a kind of Christian republic, by rendering
them as nearly as possible of equal strength ; and that this
republic might be maintained in perpetual peace, by bring¬
ing all their differences to be decided before a senate of
wise, disinterested, and able judges. The number of these
powers was to be fifteen, the Papacy, the empire of Ger¬
many, France, Spain, Hungary, Great Britain, Bohemia,
Lombardy, Poland, Sweden, Denmark, the republic of
Venice, the States General, the Swiss Cantons, and the
Italian commonwealth, comprehending the states of Flo¬
rence, Genoa, Lucca, Modena, Parma, Mantua, and Mo¬
naco. In order to render the states equal, the empire
was to be given to the Duke of Bavaria; the kingdom of
Naples to the pope ; that of Sicily to the Venetians; Milan
to the Duke of Savoy, who, by this acquisition, was to
become king of Lombardy; the Austrian Low Countries
were to be added to the Dutch republic; and Franche
Comte, Alsace, and the country of Trent, were to be
given to the Swiss. With the view, it is now thought, of
executing this grand project, but under pretence of redu¬
cing the exorbitant power of the house of Austria, Henry
made immense preparations both by sea and land; but
in * Lingar4 haf in vain atty*npted to extenuate the guilt and dispute the leading facts of this atrocious massacre. All his learn-
£ , ingenuity have been foiled in the attempt; and the result of his controversy with Mr Allen has only been to confirm and
e genera. belief on the subject. Ihe “ Vindication” of the able writer last mentioned is a masterpiece of historical research and
stiong reasoning. ‘ r
VOL. X.
£
34 FRA
History, jf he really entertained such a design, he was prevented
I'rnjT’Tr"-* ^eath from attempting its execution. He was stabbed
4*J’in his coach by Ravaillac, on the 12th of May 1608.
Louis On the death of Henry IV. the queen-mother assumed
XIII. the regency. Ravaillac was executed, after suffering the
most exquisite tortures. It is said that he made a con¬
fession, which was so written by the person who took it,
that not a word of it could be read, and thus his instiga¬
tors and accomplices were never discovered. The regen¬
cy, during the minority of Louis XIII. was only remark¬
able for the cabals and intrigues of the courtiers. In 1617
the king assumed the government, banished the queen-
mother to Blois, caused Marshal d’Ancre, her favourite, to
be put to death, and chose as his minister the celebrated
Cardinal Richelieu. In 1620 a new war broke out be¬
tween the Catholics and Protestants, which was carried
on with the greatest fury on both sides. Of this we have
an instance in what took place at Negreplisse, a town in
Quercy. This place was besieged by the king’s troops,
and it was resolved to make an example of the inhabitants,
who had absolutely refused to surrender upon any terms.
They defended themselves with desperate valour; and
when at last the city was taken by storm, they were all
massacred, without distinction of rank, sex, or age. But
both parties soon became weary of so destructive a war;
and a peace was concluded in 1621, by which the edict
of Nantes was confirmed. This treaty, however, was not
of long duration. A new war broke out, which lasted till
the year 1628, when the edict of Nantes was again con¬
firmed ; but the Protestants were deprived of their cau¬
tionary towns, and consequently of the power of defend¬
ing themselves in time to come. This put an end to the
civil wars on account of religion, in which a million of men
lost their lives, 150,000,000 livres were expended, and
nine cities, four hundred villages, two thousand churches,
two thousand monasteries, and ten thousand houses, were
burned or otherwise destroyed. The next year the king
was attacked with a slow fever, extreme depression of
spirits, and swelling in the stomach and abdomen. But
the year following he recovered, to the great disappoint¬
ment of his mother, who had hopes of regaining her power.
Meanwhile Richelieu, by a masterly system of policy,
supported the Protestants of Germany and Gustavus Adol¬
phus against the house of Austria; and, after suppressing
all the rebellions and conspiracies which had been formed
against him in France, died some months before Louis
XIII. in 1643.
Louis Louis XIV. surnamed the Great, succeeded to the
XIV. throne of France when he was only five years of age. Du¬
ring his minority, the kingdom, under the administration of
his mother, Anne of Austria, was thrown into confusion by
the factions of the great, and the divisions between the
court and parliament. The prince of Conde blazed like an
erratic star; sometimes a patriot, sometimes a courtier,
sometimes a rebel. He was opposed by Turenne, who
from being a Protestant had become Catholic. The king¬
dom of France was involved both in civil and domestTc
wars; but the queen-mother having made choice of Cardi¬
nal Mazarin as her first minister, the latter found means
to turn the arms even of Cromwell against the Spaniards,
and so effectually divided the domestic enemies of the
court, that when Louis assumed the reins of government
he found himself the most absolute monarch who had ever
sat upon the throne of France. On the death of Maza-
rm he had the good fortune to put the administration of
affairs into the hands of Colbert, a minister who formed
new systems for improving the commerce and manufac¬
tures of France, which he carried to a surprising height
of prosperity. The king himself, ignorant and vain, was
biuwl to every patriotic duty, promoting the interests of
his subjects only that they might the better answer the
N C E.
purposes of his greatness; and, actuated by an overween- Histor
ing ambition, embroiled himself with all his neighbours,
and wantonly rendered Germany a scene of devastation.1643-1?-.
By his impolitic and unjust revocation of the edict of
Nantes in the year 1685, with the dragonade which follow¬
ed it, he obliged the Protestants to take shelter in Eng¬
land, Holland, and different parts of Germany, where they
established the silk manufacture, to the great prejudice
of their own country. He was so blinded by flattery,
that he arrogated to himself the heathen honours paid to
the emperors of Rome ; he made and violated treaties for
his convenience ; and in the end raised up against himself
a confederacy of almost all the princes of Europe, at the
head of which was King William III. of England. He
was so well served, however, that for some years he made
head against this alliance ; and France seemed to have
attained the highest pitch of military glory. But having
provoked the English by his repeated perfidy, their arms
under the Duke of Marlborough, and those of the Aus^
trians under Prince Eugene, rendered the latter part of
his life as miserable as the beginning of it had been splen¬
did. From 1702 to 1711 his reign was one continued se¬
ries of defeats and disasters ; and he had the mortification
of seeing those places reduced, which in the former part
of his reign were acquired at an enormous expense of
blood and treasure. But when Marlborough and Eugene
were preparing to invade France at the head of their vic¬
torious troops, and to march directly to the capital, Louis,
now tottering on the verge of destruction, was saved from
ruin by the English Tory ministry deserting the cause,
withdrawing from their allies, and concluding the inglo¬
rious peace of Utrecht in 1713. (See article Britain.)
The last years of Louis were also embittered by domestic
misfortunes, which, added to those of a public nature
which had befallen him, impressed him with a deep me¬
lancholy. He had been for some time afflicted with a
fistula, which, though successfully cut, ever afterwards
affected his health. The year before the peace was con¬
cluded, his only son, the Duke of Burgundy, died ; a blow
which was the more severely felt because it admitted of
no alleviation. The king himself survived till the month
of September 1715, when he expired, leaving the kingdom
to his grandson Louis, then a minor. The reign of Louis
XIV. is considered as the Augustan age of French litera¬
ture.
By the last will of Louis XIV. the regency during theLouisX\
minority of the young king devolved upon a council, at
the head of which was the Duke of Orleans. That no¬
bleman, however, disgusted with an arrangement which
gave him only a casting vote, appealed to the parliament
of Paris, who set aside the will of the late king, and de¬
clared him sole regent. His first acts were extremely
popular, and gave a favourable impression of his govern¬
ment and character. He restored to the parliament the
right which had been taken from them of remonstrating
against the edicts of the crown, and compelled those who
had enriched themselves during the former reign to re¬
store their ill-gotten wealth. He also took every method
to efface the calamities occasioned by the unsuccessful
wars in which his predecessor had engaged; promoted
commerce and agriculture; and, by a close alliance with
Great Britain and the United Provinces; seemed anxious
to lay the foundation of lasting tranquillity. But this hap¬
py prospect was soon overcast by the intrigues of Albe-
roni the Spanish minister, who had formed a design of
recovering Sardinia from the emperor, and Sicily from
the Duke of Savoy, and also of establishing the Pretender
on the throne of Britain. To accomplish these objects
he negotiated with the Ottoman Porte, Peter the Great
of Russia, and Charles XII. of Sweden; the Turks were
to resume the war against the emperor, and the two latter
FRANCE.
History, powers to invade Great Britain. But, as long as the Duke
of Orleans retained the administration of France, he found
1715-1/23. it impossible to bring his schemes into play. To remove
this obstacle, therefore, he fomented divisions in the king¬
dom. An insurrection having taken place in Bretagne,
Alberoni sent small parties into the country in disguise
to support the insurgents, and even laid plots to seize the
regent himself. But the intrigues of the Spanish minister
misgave in every direction. His partisans in France were
put to death ; the king of Sweden was killed at Frede-
rickshall in Norway; the Czar, intent on improving his
own institutions, could not be persuaded to make war upon
Britain ; and the Turks refused to engage in a war with
a power from which they had recently suffered so deeply.
The cardinal, however, persevered in his intrigues, which
soon produced a war between Spain on the one hand, and
France and Britain on the other. But the Spaniards,
unable to resist the union of two such formidable powers,
were soon reduced to the necessity of suing for peace;
and the terms were dictated by the regent of France, one
of which was the dismission of Alberoni.
The spirit of conquest having now in a great measure
subsided, that of commerce came in its stead, and France
became the scene of as remarkable a project as ever was
known in any country. John Law, a Scotchman, who
had found it convenient to leave his own country, formed
the plan of a company which by its notes was to pay off
the debt of the nation, and reimburse itself by the profits.
Law had wandered throughout various parts of Europe,
and had successively endeavoured to engage the attention
of various courts. The same proposal had been made to
Victor Amadeus, king of. Sicily ; but the latter dismissed
Law with the reply, that he was not rich enough to ruin
himself. In France, however, it was looked upon in a more
favourable light; and as the nation was at this time in¬
volved in a debt of two hundred millions, the regent and
the people in general were ready to embark in almost any
new scheme which might be proposed. The bank thus
established proceeded at first with some degree of cau¬
tion ; but having gradually extended its credit to more
than eighty times its real stock, it soon became unable to
answer the demands made upon it, and the company was
dissolved the very same year in which it had been insti¬
tuted. The confusion into which the kingdom was thrown
by this fatal scheme required the utmost exertions of the
regent to put a stop to it; and scarcely had this been ac¬
complished when the king, in the year 1723, took the go¬
vernment into his own hands. The duke then became mi¬
nister, but did not long enjoy this office. His irregulari¬
ties had broken his constitution, and brought on a num¬
ber of maladies, under which he in a short time sunk,
and was succeeded in the administration by the Duke of
Bourbon. 1 he king, as we have already remarked, had
been married when young to the infanta of Spain, though
by reason of his tender years the marriage had never been
completed. This princess, however, had been brought to
Paris, and for some time treated as queen of France; but
as Louis grew up, it was easy to perceive that he had con¬
tracted an inveterate hatred against the intended partner
of his bed. The minister, therefore, at last consented
that the princess should be sent back ; an affront so much
resented by the queen her mother, that it had almost pro¬
duced a war between the two nations. The dissolution
of the marriage of Louis was the last act of Conde’s ad¬
ministration, and the negotiating a new match was the
first act of his successor Cardinal Fleury. The princess
pitched upon was the daughter of Stanislaus Leczinski,
king of Poland, who had been deposed by Charles XII. of
Sweden. This princess was destitute of personal charms,
hut of an amiable disposition; and though it is probable
that she never possessed the affections of her husband,
35
her excellent qualities could not but extort his esteem; History,
whilst the bimh of a prince soon after their marriage re-
moved all the fears of the people, if they had any, con- 1723_1748.
cerning the succession.
Cardinal Fleury continued the pacific policy pursued
by his predecessors, though it was somewhat interrupted
by the war which took place in the year 1733. But not¬
withstanding the connection between the sovereign of
Poland and the French nation, Fleury was so parsimo¬
nious of his assistance, that only fifteen hundred soldiers
were sent to relieve Dantzick, where Stanislaus was at
that time besieged by the Russians. This pitiful rein¬
forcement was soon overpowered by the Russians; and
Stanislaus was at last obliged to renounce all thoughts of
the crown of Poland, though he was permitted to°retain
the title of king. Fleury so steadily pursued his pacific
plans, that the disputes between Spain and England in
1737 but little affected the peace of France; and it should
be lemembered to his praise, that instead of fomenting
quarrels between the neighbouring potentates, he laboured
incessantly to maintain peace and concord. He recon¬
ciled the Genoese and Corsicans, who we?e at war; and
his mediation was accepted by the Ottoman Porte, which,
through his intercession, concluded a treaty with the em-
peior. But all his endeavours to preserve the general
peace proved at last ineffectual. The death of the em¬
peror Charles VI. in 1740, the last prince of the house of
Austria, set all Europe in a flame. His eldest daughter,
Maria Theresa, claimed the Austrian succession, compre¬
hending the kingdoms of Hungary and Bohemia, the
duchy of Silesia, Austrian Suabia, Upper and Lower Aus¬
tria, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, the four forest towns,
Burgau, Brisgau, the Low Countries, Friuli, Tyrol, the
duchy of Milan, and the duchies of Parma and Placen¬
tia. Amongst the many competitors who pretended a
right to share, or wholly to inherit, these extensive do¬
minions, the king of France was one. But as he cared
not to awaken the jealousy of the European princes by
preferring directly his own pretensions, he chose rather
to support those of Frederick III., who laid claim to the
duchy of Silesia. This brought on the war of 1740 (see
articles Britain and Prussia), which was terminated in
1748 by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. But Louis, who
had secretly meditated a severe vengeance against Britain,
only consented to give his aid, that he might have time
to repair his fleet, and put himself somewhat more upon
an equality with so formidable a power. Meanwhile the
internal tranquillity of the kingdom was disturbed by
violent disputes between the clergy and parliaments of
France. In the reign of Louis XIV. there had been vehe¬
ment contests between the Jansenists and Jesuits, con¬
cerning free will, and other obscure points of theology;
and the opinions of the Jansenists had been declared he¬
retical by the celebrated bull Unigenitus, the reception of
which was enforced by the king, in opposition to the par¬
liaments, the Archbishop of Paris, and the great body of
the people. The archbishop, with fifteen other prelates,
protested against it as an infringement of the rights of
the Gallican church and the laws of the realm, and also
as an infringement of the rights of the people themselves.
The Duke of Orleans favoured the bull by inducing the
bishops to submit to it, but at the same time he stopped
a persecution which had been commenced against its op¬
ponents. Matters continued in this state until the con¬
clusion of the peace. But a short time afterwards the
jealousy of the clergy was awakened by an attempt of the
minister to inquire into the wealth of individuals of their
order. To prevent this they revived the contest about
the bull Unigenitus, and it was resolved that confessional
notes should be obtained of dying persons; that these
notes should be signed by priests who maintained the au-
36 FRA
History, thority of the bull; and that, without such notes, no per-
son could obtain the viaticum, or extreme unction. On this
1748-1756. occasion the new Archbishop of Paris and the parliament
of that city having taken opposite sides, the latter imprison¬
ed such of the clergy as refused to administer the sacra¬
ments. Other parliaments followed the example of that
of Paris; and a contest was instantly kindled up between
the civil and ecclesiastical departments of the state. But
the king having interfered in the dispute, forbade the par¬
liaments to take cognizance of ecclesiastical proceedings,
and commanded them to suspend all prosecutions relative
to the refusal of the sacraments. Instead of acquiescing,
however, the parliaments presented new remonstrances,
refused to attend to any other business, and resolved that
they could not obey this injunction without violating their
duty as well as their oath. They cited the Bishop of Or¬
leans before their tribunal, and ordered all writings in
which its jurisdiction was disputed to be burned by the
executioner. With the assistance of the military they
enforced the administration of the sacraments to the sick,
and ceased to distribute that justice to the subject for
which they had been originally instituted. Enraged at
their obstinacy, the king arrested and imprisoned four of
the members who had been most obstinate, and banished
the remainder to Bourges, Poitiers, and Auvergne;
whilst, to prevent any impediment to the administration
of justice in their absence, he issued letters patent, by
which a royal chamber for the prosecution of civil and
criminal suits was instituted. But the counsellors refused
to plead before these new courts; and the king, finding
that the whole nation was about to fall into a state of an¬
archy, thought proper to recall the parliament. The ba¬
nished members entered Paris amidst the acclamations
of the inhabitants ; and the archbishop, who still conti¬
nued to encourage the priests in refusing the sacraments,
was banished to his seat at Conflans, as were also the Bi¬
shops of Orleans and Troyes ; and for the present tranquil¬
lity was restored to the kingdom.
But the tranquillity thus established was not of long
duration. In the year 1756, the parliaments again fell
under the displeasure of the king, by their imprudent per¬
secution of those who adhered to the bull Unigenitus, and
even proceeded so far in this opposition as to refuse to
register certain taxes absolutely necessary for carrying
on the war. Louis was so provoked at this, that he sup¬
pressed the fourth and fifth chambers of inquests, the
members of which had distinguished themselves by their
opposition to his will. He commanded the bull Unigeni¬
tus to be respected, and prohibited the secular judges
from ordering the administration of the sacraments. On
this, fifteen counsellors of the great chamber resigned
their offices, and a hundred and twenty-four members of
the different parliaments followed their example; and the
most grievous discontent pervaded the kingdom. Mean¬
while an attempt was made by a fanatic, named Damien,
to assassinate the king; and he was actually wounded,
though slightly, in the midst of his guards. The assassin
was put to the most exquisite tortures, under which he
persisted in declaring that he had no intention to kill the
king, but that his design was only to wound him, that
trod might touch his heart, and incline him to restore
peace to his dominions. But these expressions, which
undoubtedly indicated insanity, had no effect on his
judges, who consigned him to one of the most horrid deaths
which the ingenuity of man ever invented. This attempt,
however, seems to have produced some effect upon the
king; for he soon afterwards banished the Archbishop of
Pans, who had been recalled, and once more accommodated
matters with his parliament.
The unfortunate issue of the war of 1755 had brought
the nation to the brink of ruin, when Louis implored the
N C E.
assistance of Spain; and upon this occasion was signed the History
celebrated Family Compact, by which, with the single
exception of the American trade, the subjects of France 1756-176.
and Spain were naturalized in both kingdoms, and the
enemy of the one sovereign was to be invariably looked
upon as the enemy of the other. At this time, however,
the assistance of Spain availed but little, for both powers
were reduced to the lowest ebb, and the arms of Britain
were triumphant in every quarter of the globe. See the
article Britain.
The peace which was concluded at Paris in the year
1763, though it freed the nation from a most destructive
and bloody war, did not restore internal tranquillity. The
parliament, eager to pursue the victory which they had
formerly gained over their religious enemies, now directed
their efforts against the Jesuits, who had obtained and en¬
forced the bull Unigenitus. But that once powerful order
was now on the brink of destruction. A detestation of
its principles, and even of its members, had for some time
prevailed ; and a conspiracy, formed, or said to have been
formed, by this order against the king of Portugal, and
from which he narrowly escaped, roused the indignation of
Europe, which was still further inflamed by some fraudulent
practices of which they had been guilty in France. La
Valette, the chief of their missionaries in Martinico, had,
ever since the peace at Aix-la-Chapelle, carried on an ex¬
tensive commerce, insomuch that when the war with Great
Britain commenced in 1755, he even aspired to monopolize
the whole West India trade. Leonay and Gouffre, mer¬
chants at Marseilles, in expectation of receiving from
him merchandise to the value of two millions, had ac¬
cepted bills drawn by the Jesuits to the amount of a mil¬
lion and a half. But unhappily, owing to the vast num¬
ber of captures made by the British, the returns were not
made; in consequence of which the missionaries were
obliged to apply to the society of Jesuits at large. But
the latter, either ignorant of their true interest, or too
tardy in giving assistance, suffered the merchants to stop
payment, and thus not only to bring ruin upon themselves,
but to involve a great many others in the same calamity.
Their creditors demanded indemnification from the society
at large, and, upon the refusal of the latter to satisfy them,
brought the cause before the parliament of Paris. And
that body, again, being eager to avenge itself on such pow¬
erful adversaries, carried on the most violent persecutions
against them, in the course of which the volume contain¬
ing the constitution and government of the order itself
was appealed to, and produced in court. It then appeared
that the order of Jesuits formed a distinct body in the
state, submitting implicitly to their chief, who alone was
absolute over their lives and fortunes; and it was like¬
wise discovered that, after a former expulsion, they had
been admitted into the kingdom upon conditions which
they had never fulfilled, and to which their chief had ob¬
stinately refused to subscribe; and consequently, that their
actual existence in the nation was merely the effect of
sufferance. The result was, that the writings of the Je¬
suits were found to contain doctrines subversive of all
civil government, and injurious to the security of the sa¬
cred persons of sovereigns; the attempt of Damien against
the king was attributed to this body; and every thing
seemed to prognosticate their speedy dissolution. At this
critical moment, however, the king interfered, and by his
royal mandate suspended all proceedings against them for
a year. A plan of accommodation was then drawn up, and
submitted to the pope and the general of the order; but
the latter, by his ill-timed haughtiness, entirely destroyed
all hope of reconciliation. The king withdrew his protec¬
tion, and the parliament redoubled its efforts against them.
Ihe bulls, briefs, constitutions, and other regulations of
the society, were declared to be encroachments on the
FRA
History, public authority, and abuses of government; the society
itself was finally dissolved, and its members were declared
1763-1771- incapable of holding any clerical or municipal offices ; their
colleges were seized, their effects confiscated, and the or¬
der itself in fact annihilated.
The parliament, having gained this victory, next made
an attempt to set bounds to the power of the king him¬
self. They now refused to enregister an edict which
Louis had issued for the continuation of some taxes which
should have ended with the war, and likewise to conform
to another by which the king was enabled to redeem his
debts at an inadequate rate. The court attempted to get
the edicts enregistered by force, but the parliaments
everywhere showed a disposition to resist to the uttermost.
In 1766, the parliament of Bretagne having refused the
crown a gift of seven hundred thousand livres, were in
consequence singled out for royal vengeance; but whilst
matters were on the point of coming to extremities, the
king thought proper to drop the process altogether, and to
publish a general amnesty. The parliaments, however,
now affected to despise the royal clemency; a circum¬
stance which exasperated the king so much that he or¬
dered the counsellors of the parliament of Bretagne who
had refused to resume the functions of which he deprived
them, to be included in the list of those who were to be
drafted for militia, which was accordingly done. "The par¬
liament of Paris remonstrated so freely against this pro¬
ceeding that they also fell under the royal censure ; but
Louis in the most explicit manner declared that he would
suffer no earthly power to interfere with his will.
The interval of domestic tranquillity which now ensued
was employed by the king in humbling the pride of the
pope. The French monarch reclaimed the territories of
Avignon and Venaissin ; and whilst the pontiff denounced
his unavailing censures, the Marquis de Rochecouart, with
a single regiment of soldiers, drove out the troops of his
holiness, and took possession of these territories. But a
much more formidable opposition was made by the natives
of the small island of Corsica, the sovereignty of which
had been transferred to France by the Genoese, its former
masters, on condition of Louis reinstating them in posses¬
sion of the island of Caprala, which the Corsicans had late¬
ly reduced. These islanders defended themselves with
desperate intrepidity; and it was only after two campaigns,
in which several thousands of the bravest troops of France
were killed, that they could be brought under subjection.
The satisfaction which this unimportant conquest af¬
forded to Louis was clouded by the distress of the nation.
The East India Company had totally failed, and most of
the principal commercial houses in the kingdom were in¬
volved in the same calamity. The minister, the Due de
Choiseul, by one desperate stroke, reduced the interest
of the funds one half, and at the same time took away the
benefit of survivorship in the tontines, by which means
the national credit was greatly affected; the altercation
between the king and his parliaments also revived, and
the dissensions became worse than ever. The Due de
Choiseul attempted in vain to conciliate these differences ;
but his efforts tended only to bring misfortunes upon him¬
self, and in 1771 he was banished by the king, who sus¬
pected him of favouring the popular party. This was
soon afterwards followed by the banishment of the parlia¬
ment of Paris, and by that of a number of others ; new par¬
liaments being chosen in the room of those which had been
expelled. But the people were by no means disposed to
pay the same regard to these new parliaments as they
had done to the old ones, though every appearance of
opposition was at last silenced by the absolute authority
of the king. In the midst of this plenitude of power,
however, his majesty’s health daily declined, and the end
of his days was evidently at no great distance. As he had
N C E. 37
all along indulged himself to excess in sensual pleasures, History,
so now these proved the immediate means of his destruc-
tion. His favourite mistress, Madame de Pompadour, 1771-1774.
who for a considerable time governed him with an abso¬
lute sway, had been long dead, and the king had become
equally enslaved by the charms of Madame du Barry.
But even her beauty at length proved insufficient to ex¬
cite desire; and a succession of mistresses became neces¬
sary to rouse the languid appetites of the king. One of
these, who happened to be infected with the small-pox,
communicated the disease to the king, who in a short time
died of it, notwithstanding all the assistance which could
be afforded him by the physicians.
The new king, Louis XVI., grandson to the former, as- Louis
cended the throne in the year 1774, in the twentieth year XVI.
of his age ; and, to secure himself against the disease which
had proved fatal to his predecessor, submitted to inocula¬
tion, together with several other members of the royal fa¬
mily. Their quick and easy recovery contributed much to
extend the practice throughout the kingdom, and to re¬
move the prejudices which had been entertained against it.
The king had no sooner regained his health than he ap¬
plied himself diligently to extinguish the differences which
had arisen between his predecessor and the people. He
removed from their employments those persons who had
given just cause of complaint by their arbitrary and op¬
pressive conduct; and he conciliated the affection of his
subjects by discharging the new and recalling the old par¬
liaments. But though the prudence of Louis had suggest¬
ed to him these compliances, he still endeavoured to pre¬
serve entire the royal authority. He explained his inten¬
tions in a speech delivered in the great chamber of par¬
liament. The step which he had taken to ensure the tran¬
quillity and happiness of his subjects ought not, he ob¬
served, to invalidate his own authority; and he hoped,
from the zeal and attachment of the assembly, an example
of submission to the rest of his subjects. Their repeated
resistance to the commands of his grandfather had com¬
pelled that monarch to maintain his prerogative by their
banishment; but they were now recalled in the expec¬
tation that they would quietly exercise their functions,
and display their gratitude by their obedience. He de¬
clared that it was his desire to bury in oblivion all past
grievances ; that he should ever behold with extreme dis¬
approbation whatever might tend to create divisions and
disturb the general tranquillity; and that the chancellor
would read an ordonnance to the assembly, from which they
might be assured he would not suffer the smallest devia¬
tion to be made. This ordonnance was conceived in the
most explicit terms, and immediately registered. It li¬
mited within narrow bounds the pretensions of the parlia¬
ment of Paris. The members were forbidden to look upon
themselves as one body with the other parliaments of the
kingdom, or to take any step or assume any title which
might tend towards or imply such an union. They were
enjoined never to relinquish the administration of public
justice, excepting in cases of absolute necessity, for which
the first president was to be responsible to the king; and
it was provided, that in the event of disobedience, the
grand council might replace the parliament without any
new edict for the purpose. They were still, however, per¬
mitted to exercise the right of remonstrating before the re¬
gistering of edicts or letters-patent which they might con*
ceive injurious to the welfare of the people, provided they
preserved in their representations the respect due to the
throne. But these remonstrances were not to be repeated,
and if they proved ineffectual, the parliament were to en¬
register the edict objected to within a month at furthest
from the day of its publication. They were forbidden to
issue any arrets which might tend to excite trouble, or in
any manner retard the execution of the king’s ordonnances;
38
FRANCE.
History, and they were assured that, as long as they adhered to
the bounds prescribed, they might depend upon the coun-
17<4-1776. tcnance and protection of the sovereign. In short, the
terms on which Louis consented to re-establish the par¬
liaments were such that they were reduced to mere ci¬
phers, and the will of the king still continued to be the
only law in the kingdom. The Archbishop of Paris, who
had likewise presumed to raise some commotions regard¬
ing the bull Unigenitus, was obliged to submit, and se¬
verely threatened if he should afterwards interfere in such
a matter.
The final conquest of the Corsicans, who had once more
attempted to regain their former liberty, was the first
event of importance which took place after the restora¬
tion of tranquillity. But, from various causes, the kingdom
was still filled with disorder. A scarcity of corn having taken
place at the time when some regulations had been made
by M. Turgot, the new minister of finance, the populace
rose in great numbers, and committed such outrages that
a military force became necessary to quell them ; and it
was not until upwards of five hundred of these starving
creatures were destroyed that they could be reduced. The
king, however, by his prudent and vigorous conduct on
this occasion, put a stop to all riots, and displayed his cle¬
mency as well as prudence in the methods which he adopt¬
ed for the restoration of the public tranquillity. He also
seized the first moments of peace to fulfil those promises
of economy which on his accession he had given to the
people. Particular attention was likewise paid to the state
of the marine. TheappointmentofM.de Sartine in 1776
to the naval department did honour to the penetration of
the sovereign. That minister, fruitful in resources, and
unwearied in application, was incessantly engaged in aug¬
menting the naval strength of his country ; and the vari¬
ous preparations which filled the ports and docks created
no small uneasiness on the other side of the Channel. The
next appointment made by the king was equally fortunate,
and in one respect singular and unprecedented. M. Tur¬
got, though possessed of integrity and industry, had not
been able to command the public confidence. On his
retreat, M. Clugny, intendant-general of Bordeaux, had
been elevated to the vacant office; but the latter having
soon afterwards died, M. Taboureau des Reaux was ap¬
pointed his successor; and the king associated with him
in the management of the finances M. Neckar, who was
a Swiss and a Protestant. In the preceding reign that
gentleman had been chosen to adjust some differences
between the East India Company and the crown, and had
discharged his trust in a manner which gained him the
approbation of both parties. Possessed of distinguished
abilities, his appointment would have excited no surprise,
had it not been contrary to the constant policy of France,
which had carefully excluded the aliens from exercising
any control in matters of revenue.
Conduct of Although the French monarch was of a pacific disposi-
riardYo1 ^ an? ^ destitute of generosity of sentiment, yet his
S own fnd the public exultation had been openly and con¬
stantly proportioned to the success of the Americans in
then'contest with Britain. The princes of the blood and
the chief nobility were eager to embark in support of the
cause of freedom ; and the prudence of the king and his
most confidential ministers alone restrained their ardour.
The fatal events of the former war were still impressed
on the mind of Louis; and he could not readily consent
to expose his rising marine in a contest with a nation
which had so frequently asserted the dominion of the
seas, and had so lately broken the united strength of the
house of Bourbon. At the same time he waf sensible
that the opportunity of humbling England should not be
entirely neglected, and that some advantage should be
taken of the present commotions in America. Two agents
rom the United States, Silas Deane and Dr Benjamin
regard to
America.
Franklin, had successively arrived at Paris; and though History
all audience was denied them in a public capacity, still
they were privately encouraged to hope that France only U76-178.
waited for a favourable opportunity to assist in conquering
the independence of America. In the mean while, the
American cruisers were hospitably received in the French
ports ; artillery and all kinds of warlike stores were freely
sold or liberally granted to the colonists; and, with the
connivance of government, French officers and engineers
entered their service.
Some changes were about this time introduced into the
different departments of state. The conduct of M. Nec¬
kar in the finances had given general satisfaction; and
M. Taboureau des Reaux, his colleague, had resigned his
situation, but still retained the dignity of counsellor of
state. To afford full scope to the genius of M. Neckar,
Louis determined that he should no longer be clogged with
an associate, and, with the title of director-general of the
finances, submitted to him the entire management of the
revenue of France. In the ensuing year the Count de St
Germains, secretary at war, died; and the Prince de
Montbarey, who had already filled an inferior situation
in that department, was now appointed to succeed him.
In the mean time negotiations with foreign courts were
not neglected. Louis concluded a new treaty of alliance
with Switzerland; and, on the death of the elector of
Bavaria, vigilantly observed the motions of the different
princes of Germany. When closely questioned by the
English ambassador, Lord Stormont, respecting the war¬
like preparations which were diligently continued through¬
out the kingdom, he replied, that at a time when the seas
were covered with English fleets and American cruisers,
and when such armies were sent to the New World as
had never before appeared there, it became prudent for
him also to arm for the security of his colonies and the
protection of the commerce of France. The king was not
ignorant that the remonstrances of Great Britain, and the
importunities of the agents of the United States, would
soon compel him to adopt some decisive line of conduct;
and this was accelerated by an event most disastrous to
Britain, namely, the failure of General Burgoyne s expe¬
dition, and the capture of his army. The news of that
calamity was received at Paris with unbounded exultation.
M. Sartine, the minister of marine, was eager to measure
the naval strength of France with that of Great Britain ;
the queen, who had long seconded the applications of the
American agents, now espoused their cause with fresh
ardour; and the pacific inclinations of Louis being over¬
borne by the suggestions of his ministers and the influ¬
ence of his queen, it was at length determined openly to
acknowledge the independence of the United States. Ac¬
cordingly Dr Franklin and Silas Deane, who had hitherto
acted as private agents, were now acknowledged as public
ambassadors from those states to the court of Versailles ;
and a treaty of amity and commerce was signed between
the insurgent colonists and France in the month of Feb¬
ruary 1778. The Duke of Noailles, ambassador to the
court of London, was in the month of March instructed
to acquaint that court with the above treaty, and at the
same time to declare that the contracting parties had not
stipulated any exclusive advantages in favour of France,
and that the United States had reserved the liberty of
treating with every nation whatsoever upon the footing of
equality and reciprocity. But this declaration was treat¬
ed with contempt by the British; and the recall of Lord
Stormont became the signal for the commencement of
hostilities.
In the year 1780 new changes took place in the French Removal
ministry. M. Berlin had resigned the office of secretary of M. de
of state; and the Prince de Montbarey had retired from®art'ine*
the office of secretary at war, in which he was succeeded
by the Marquis de Segur. But the most important re-
FRA
History, moval was that of M. Sartine, who had for several years
presided over the marine department, and whose ability
1780-1783. and unwearied application had raised the naval power of
France to a height which astonished Europe. His col¬
leagues in the cabinet, however, had loudly arraigned a
profusion which would have diverted into one channel the
whole resources of the kingdom; and his retreat open¬
ed a road to the ambition of the Marquis de Castries,
who was appointed in his stead. This year the king abo¬
lished the inhuman custom of putting the question by tor¬
ture ? a custom which had been so established by long
practice that it seemed an inseparable part of the consti¬
tution of courts of justice in France. At the same time,
in order to defray the charges of war, he diminished his
own expenditure ; and sacrificing splendour to popularity,
dismissed at once above four hundred officers belonging
to his court.
Dismission But unhappily the popular discontents were next year
of Neckar. excited by the dismission of M. Neckar. He had con¬
ceived the arduous but popular project of supporting a
war by means of loans without taxes ; and the rigid eco¬
nomy which he had introduced into all the departments
of the royal household, together with the various resources
which were thus rendered available, had supported him
amidst the difficulties that attended this system. But his
austerity of temper had not rendered him equally accept¬
able to the sovereign and his subjects; and the repeated
reforms which he had recommended were represented as
inconsistent with the dignity of the crown. He was there¬
fore, in 1781, dismissed from his office of comptroller-ge¬
neral ; and M. Joli de Fleury, counsellor of state, was ap¬
pointed to that important department. But the defeat of
the Count de Grasse, which happened the following year,
produced general grief and consternation. The victory
of Rodney was indeed the most severe blow which the navy
of France had ever yet sustained, and its effects were felt
in every part of the kingdom. Immense preparations
were, however, made for the operations of 1783; and, in
conjunction with the courts of Madrid and the Hague,
Louis determined this year to make the most powerful
efforts to bring the war to a conclusion. But in the midst
of these preparations the voice of peace was again heard ;
and Louis was induced to listen to the proffered media¬
tion of the emperor of Germany and of the empress of
Russia. The Count de Vergennes, who still held the
portfolio of foreign affairs, was appointed to treat with Mr
Fitzherbert, the British minister at Brussels, who had late¬
ly proceeded to Paris to conduct this important negotia¬
tion. The way was already smoothed by provisional ar¬
ticles, which had been signed at the close of the preced¬
ing year between Great Britain and the states of Ame¬
rica, and which were now to constitute the basis of a treaty
of peace between Great Britain and France. Prelimi¬
naries were accordingly agreed upon and signed at Ver¬
sailles ; and these were soon afterwards succeeded by a de¬
finitive treaty, so that France, throughout her extensive
dominions, beheld peace once more established. Though
the war had been attended by the most brilliant success,
and the independence of America seemed to strike deep
at the sources of British power, yet France herself had not
by any means been free from difficulties. The retreat
ot Neckar had diminished the public confidence, and the
failure of the celebrated caisse d'escompte completed the
consternation of the people.
Caisse d’es- ^The bank of this name had been established in the year
conipte. i /7g> | jle plan of it was formed by a company of private
adventurers, and its capital was fixed at L.500,000 ster¬
ling. The professed design of the company was to dis¬
count bills at short dates, at the rate of four per cent, per
annum ; but as this interest was not an equivalent for the
capital sunk by the proprietors, they were intrusted with
N c E. 3c
the additional power of issuing notes to the amount of History,
their capital, which, as these were made convertible into
specie, might often be voluntarily taken instead of cash. H83.
The reputation acquired by the bank soon caused its
stock to rise above par; and its credit still continued un¬
impaired, when, to the astonishment of the nation, it sud¬
denly stopped payment on the 2d of October 1783. The
cause assigned was an uncommon scarcity of specie. But
the public suspected that the failure arose from a loan
secretly made to government; and what confirmed the
suspicion was, that government about the same time stop¬
ped payment of the bills drawn upon them by their army
in America. But, whatever was the cause of this catas¬
trophe, the king was prevailed on to extend his protec¬
tion to the company. By four successive edicts the banks
in Paris were ordered to receive the notes of the caisse
descompte as currency ; and a lottery with a capital of one
million sterling, redeemable in eight years, was establish¬
ed, the tickets of which were made purchasable in notes
of the caisse d escompte. By these expedients the pub¬
lic confidence in the bank was in some measure revived,
while its business increased, and its stock rose to above
double the original subscription; the bills from America
were at the same time put in a train of payment, and
public credit was in a great degree restored throughout
the kingdom. Some compensation also for the expenses
which had been incurred during the war was derived from
a treaty concluded with the United States of America.
The latter engaged to reimburse France in the sum of
eighteen millions of livres, which had been advanced in
the hour ot their need ; and Louis, for the convenience of
the States, consented to receive the money, in the space
of twelve years, by twelve equal annual payments.
Ihe general peace was soon afterwards followed by a Treaty-
particular treaty between France and Holland, which was between
effected by the Count de Vergennes. It included all the France and
principles which can serve to cement nations in the closestHolland-
union, and by which, in peace or in war, they may mutually
participate in good or evil, and in all cases administer to
each other the most perfect aid, counsel, and succour. If
their united good offices for the preservation of peace should
prove ineffectual, it also fixed the assistance which they
were to afford each other by sea and land. France was to
furnish Holland with ten thousand effective infantry and
two thousand cavalry, and with twelve ships of the line and
six frigates. Their high mightinesses, on the other hand,
in case of a naval war, or of France being attacked by sea,
were to contribute to her defence six ships of the line and
three frigates; and in the event of an attack on the terri¬
tory of h ranee, the States General were to have the option
of furnishing their land contingent either in money or
troops, at the rate of five thousand infantry and one thou¬
sand cavalry. And further, if the stipulated succours should
prove insufficient for the defence of the party attacked, or
for procuring a proper peace, they engaged to assist each
other with all their forces if necessary; but it was never¬
theless provided, that the contingent of troops to be fur¬
nished by the States General should not exceed twenty
thousand infantry and four thousand cavalry. Finally, it
was agreed that neither of the contracting parties should
disarm, or make or receive proposals of peace or even truce,
without the consent of the other, nor directly or indirectly
contract any future alliance or engagement whatsoever,
contrary to the present treaty; and if any treaties or nego¬
tiations which might prove detrimental toi their joint inte¬
rest were proposed, they pledged their faith to give notice
to each other of such proposals as soon as made. Thus
Holland was converted into the firm ally of that power
against the encroaching spirit of which she had formerly
armed the most powerful kingdoms of Europe; whilst
France having asserted the independence of America
FRANCE.
40
History, against Great Britain, and converted an ancient and for-
/ midable foe into an useful friend, seemed to have attained
1783-1785. an influence over the nations of Europe which she had
never before been possessed of.
But, however exalted her present situation might appear,
the seeds of future commotion had already been extensive¬
ly sown. The applause which had attended the parliament
of Paris in their protracted struggles with the late king
might be considered as the first dawn of freedom; the
language of that assembly had boldly indicated to their
countrymen their natural rights, and taught them to look
with a less enraptured eye upon the splendour which en¬
compassed the throne. The war in America had contri¬
buted to enlarge the political ideas of the French; they
had on that occasion stood forth as the champions of liberty,
in opposition to regal power; and the officers who had
served in the struggle for independence, accustomed to
think and speak without restraint, and familiarized with re¬
publican institutions, on their return imparted to the pro¬
vinces of France a portion of the spirit which had been
kindled in the wilds of America. From that moment the
French, instead of silently acquiescing in the edicts of their
sovereign, canvassed each action with bold inquisition;
whilst the attachment of the army, which has ever been
considered as the sole foundation of despotism, gave way to
the noble enthusiasm of liberty.
We have already noticed the public dissatisfaction which
had attended the dismission of Neckar. His successor, M.
de Fleury, had retired from the management of the finances
in 1783, and the still more short-lived administration of M,
d’Ormesson had expired in the same year which gave it
birth. Upon the retreat of the latter, M. de Calonne, who
had successively filled with acknowledged reputation the
office of intendant of Mentz, and afterwards of the pro¬
vinces of Flanders and Artois, was nominated to the office
of comptroller-general. This person, who was flexible and
insinuating, eloquent in conversation and polished in his
manners, fertile in resources and liberal in the disposal of
the public money, soon rendered himself acceptable to the
sovereign. But he did not enter upon his new and ardu¬
ous station favoured by the breath of popularity; he was,
in fact, reported to be more able than consistent, and not
to have tempered the ardour of his spirit by the severity of
deep research ; and the people, amidst repeated loans, re¬
gretted that severe simplicity which had characterized the
administration of Neckar. It was, however, by the bold
and judicious measures of Calonne that credit was restored
to the caisse d’escompte, which had stopped payment a few
weeks before his accession. His next measure, in 1784,
the establishment of the caisse d'amortissement, or sinking
fund, was entitled to a ■still higher degree of applause.
The plan of that fund was simple and moderate. It was,
that government should pay annually into the hands of a
board set apart for that purpose, the entire interest of the
national debt, whether in stock or annuities, together with
an additional sum of L.120,000. The annuities which
would thus be extinguished every year were estimated at
L.50,000, and in that proportion the sum set apart for the
redemption of the national debt would annually increase.
The operation of this new fund was limited to the term of
twenty-five years; and during that period the annual re¬
ceipt of the caisse d'amortissement was declared unalter¬
able, and incapable of being diverted to any other object.
4 he principal measure of the following year was the esta¬
blishment of a new East India Company, a measure which
did not fail to excite violent complaints. The time, how¬
ever, was now approaching, when the necessities of the state
compelled the king to adopt measures still more unpopu¬
lar, and destined to undergo a severer scrutiny. Although
peace had for three years been re-established throughout
Europe, yet the finances of France seemed scarcely affect¬
ed by this interval of tranquillity, and it was found requi¬
site to close every year with a loan. The public expendi- Histoi,
ture of 1785, indeed, seemed to sanction this measure ; for
it had been thought proper to fortify Cherbourg upon a1?85’1!5-
grand scale ; the claim of the emperor to the navigation of
the Scheldt had obliged the French to increase their land
forces; and the Marquis de Castries, fond of war, and pro¬
fuse in his designs, had not suffered the navy which M.
Sartine had surrendered into his hands to decline during
the interval of peace. The treaty of commerce concluded
with Great Britain in the year 1786 was also a new source
of discontent. Though regarded by the English manufac¬
turers as far from advantageous, it excited in France still
louder murmurs, and was represented as likely to extin¬
guish those infant establishments, which were yet unable to
compete with the manufactures of England, that had attained
to maturity. The market which it held out for the wines
and oils of France was passed over in silence, whilst the
distress of the artisan was painted in the most striking co^
lours. But when the edict for registering the loan of the
preceding year, amounting to three millions three hundred
and thirty thousand pounds, was presented to the parlia¬
ment of Paris, the murmurs of the people, through the re¬
monstrances of that assembly, assumed a more legal and
formidable aspect. The king, however, signified to the
select deputation commissioned to convey to him their re¬
monstrances, that he expected to be obeyed without further
delay. The ceremony of the registration accordingly took
place on the following day; but it was accompanied with a
resolution, importing, that public economy was the only ge¬
nuine source of abundant revenue, the only means of pro¬
viding for the necessities of the state, and of restoring that
credit which borrowing had reduced to the brink of ruin.
The king was no sooner informed of this step than he com¬
manded the attendance of the grand deputation of parlia¬
ment, when he crazed from their records the resolution
which had been adopted; and observed, that though it was
his pleasure that the parliament Should communicate, by
its respectful representations, whatever might concern the
good of the public, yet he never would permit them so far
to abuse his clemency as to erect themselves into the cen¬
sors of his government. At the same time, in order the
more strongly to mark his displeasure at their expostula¬
tions, he superseded one of their officers, who had appeared
most active in forwarding the obnoxious resolution.
M. de Calonne, however, though gratified by the appro¬
bation of his sovereign, could not but feel himself deeply
mortified by the opposition of the parliament. His at¬
tempts to conciliate that assembly had proved ineffectual;
and he experienced their inflexible aversion at the critical
juncture when their acquiescence might have proved of the
most essential service. An anxious inquiry into the state
of the public finances had convinced him that the expen¬
diture far exceeded the revenue. In this situation, to im¬
pose new taxes was impracticable, to continue the method
of borrowing was ruinous, to have recourse to economical
reforms would be found wholly inadequate; and he hesi¬
tated not to declare, that it would be impossible to place the
finances upon a solid basis, except by the reformation of
whatever was vicious in the constitution of the state. But,
to give weight to this reform, M. de Calonne was sensible that
something more was necessary than even the royal autho¬
rity ; he perceived that the parliament was neither a fit
instrument for introducing a new order into public affairs,
nor would submit to be a passive machine for sanctioning
the plans of a minister, even if those plans were the ema¬
nations of perfect wisdom. Though originally a body of
lawyers, indebted for their appointment to the king, there
was not an attribute of a legislative assembly which they
did not seem desirous to engross to themselves; and they
had been supported in their pretensions by the approbation
of the people, who were sensible that there was no other
body in the nation which could plead their cause against
FRANCE.
41
ables.
History, either royal or ministerial oppression. To suppress, there-
-w fore, the only power of control that remained, and to render
1786,1787-the government more arbitrary, was deemed too perilous a
measure; yet to leave the parliament in the full possession
of an influence which the minister was convinced would be
exerted against him, was at once to render his whole sys¬
tem abortive. In this dilemma, the only expedient which
suggested itself was to have recourse to some other assem¬
bly, more dignified and solemn in its character, and which
should in a greater degree consist of members selected
from the various orders of the state and the different pro¬
vinces of the kingdom. This promised to be a popular mea¬
sure ; it implied a deference to the people at large, and
might be expected to prove highly acceptable.
Assembly But the true and legitimate assembly of the nation, the
of the Not- States General, had not met since the year 1614, nor could
the minister flatter himself with the hope of obtaining the
royal assent to a meeting which a despotic sovereign could
not but regard with secret jealousy. Another assembly had
occasionally been substituted in the room of the States Ge¬
neral. This was distinguished by the title of the Notables,
and consisted of a number of persons from all parts of the
kingdom, chiefly selected from the higher orders of the
state, and nominated by the king himself. This assembly,
which had been convened by Henry IV. and also by Louis
XIII. was now once more summoned by the authority of
Louis XVI. The writs for calling them together were
dated the 29th of December 1786, and addressed to seven
princes of the blood, nine dukes and peers of France, eight
field-marshals, twenty-two nobles, eight counsellors of state,
four masters of requests, eleven archbishops and bishops,
thirty-seven of the heads of the law, twelve deputies of the
pays d'etats, the civil lieutenant, and twenty-five magistrates
of the different towns of the kingdom. The number of
members was thus a hundred and forty-four ; and the 29th
of January 1787 was the period appointed for their meeting.
Upon the arrival of the Notables at Paris, however, the
minister found himself as yet unprepared to submit his
system for their consideration, and therefore postponed
the opening of the assembly until the 7th of February.
A second delay until the 14th of the same month was oc¬
casioned by the indisposition of M. de Calonne, and that
of the Count de Vergennes, president of the council of
finance and first secretary of state; and a third procras¬
tination necessarily resulted from the death of the count
on the day previous to that which had been fixed for the
opening of the assembly. M. de Vergennes was succeed¬
ed in the department of foreign affairs by the Count de
Montmorin, a nobleman of unblemished character; but
his loss at this critical juncture was severely felt by M. de
Calonne, as he alone, of all the ministers, had entered
with warmth and sincerity into the plans of the comp¬
troller-general. The Chevalier de Miromesnil, keeper of
the seals, was avowedly the rival and enemy of Calonne;
the Marshal de Castries, secretary for the department of
marine, was personally attached to M. Neckar; and the
Baron de Breteuil, secretary for the household, was the
creature of the queen, and deeply engaged in what was
called the Austrian system.
It was under these difficulties that M. de Calonne, on
the 22d of February, first met the Assembly of the Nota¬
bles, and unfolded his long-expected plan. He began by
stating, that the public expenditure had for centuries past
exceeded the revenue, and that a very considerable defi¬
ciency had of course existed ; that the Mississippi scheme
of 1720 had not, as might have been expected, restored
the balance ; that under the economical administration of
Cardinal Fleury the deficit still existed ; that the progress
of this derangement under the last reign had been extreme,
the deficiency amounting to three millions sterling at the
appointment of the Abbe Terray, who, however, reduced
VOL. x.
it to one million six hundred and seventy-five thousand History,
pounds ; that it decreased a little under the short adminis-
trations which followed, but rose again, in consequence of 1787-
the war, under the administration of M. Neckar; and that
upon his own accession to office it amounted to three mil¬
lions three hundred and thirty thousand pounds. In or¬
der to remedy this growing evil, M. Calonne recommend¬
ed a territorial impost, of the nature of the English land-
tax, from which no rank or order of men was to be ex¬
empted ; and an inquiry into the possessions of the clergy,
who hitherto had been exempted from bearing their
proportion of the public burdens. It was also proposed
that the various branches of internal taxation should un¬
dergo a strict examination; and a considerable resource
was anticipated in mortgaging the demesne lands of the
crown.
The necessity for these reforms, however, was combated
with a degree of boldness and force of reasoning which
could not fail to make a deep impression on the assembly;
and, instead of meeting with a ready acquiescence, the
comptroller-general found that he had launched into the
boundless ocean of political controversy. M. Neckar,
previously to his retirement, had published his compte
rendu au roi, in which France was represented as possess¬
ing a clear surplus of above four hundred thousand pounds
sterling. This performance had been read with avidity,
and probably contributed to deprive the author of the
royal favour; but the credit of the work was ably vindi¬
cated by M. de Brienne, archbishop of Toulouse. M. de
Calonne met with a still more formidable adversary in the
Count de Mirabeau. This extraordinary man, restless in
disposition, licentious in morals, but bold, penetrating, and
enterprising, had occasionally visited every court in Eu¬
rope. He had been admitted at one time to the confidence
of the minister, and had been directed, though not in an
ostensible character, to observe at Berlin the disposition
of the successor of the great Frederick; but whilst em¬
ployed in this capacity he was frequently exposed to ne¬
glect and disappointment, and his letters were often left
unanswered. Disgust succeeded to admiration; and he
who had entered the Prussian court the intimate fHend,
returned to Paris the declared enemy, of M. de Calonne.
Accordingly, whilst the archbishop arraigned the under¬
standing, Mirabeau impeached the integrity, of the comp¬
troller-general.
The eloquence of M. de Calonne, however, might have
successfully vindicated his system and reputation against
the calculations of Brienne and the invectives of Mira¬
beau ; but he could not support himself against the influ¬
ence of the three great bodies of the nation. The ancient
nobility and the clergy had ever been free from all public
assessments; and had the evil gone no further, it might
still perhaps have been borne with patience ; but, through
the shameful custom of selling patents of nobility, such
crowds of new noblesse started up, that every province in
the kingdom was filled with them. The first object with
those who had rapidly acquired fortunes, was to purchase
a patent, which, besides gratifying their vanity, afforded
an exemption to them and their posterity from contribut¬
ing to the exigencies of the state. The magistracies like¬
wise throughout the kingdom enjoyed their share of these
exemptions; so that the whole weight of taxation fell upon
those classes who were least able to bear it. Hence the
minister’s design of equalizing the public burdens, and
diminishing the load borne by the lower and most useful
classes of the people, by rendering the taxes general,
though undoubtedly great and patriotic, at once united
against him the nobility, the clergy, and the magistracy.
And the result was such as might have been expected.
The intrigues of these three bodies raised against him so
loud a clamour, that finding it impossible to stem the tor-
42
FRANCE.
ren<:> he not only resigned his office on the 12th of April,
1787 kut soon afterwards withdrew to England from the storm
of persecution which now impended over him.
Disturb- In the midst of these domestic transactions, the atten-
HoUand t'°n ^J'ou*s was cahed to the state of affairs in Holland.
The prince of Orange having been stripped of all autho-
by the aristocratic party, had retired from the Hague,
and now maintained the shadow of a court at Nimeguen.
But his brother-indaw, the new king of Prussia, exerted
himself to promote the interests of the stadtholder, and
offered, in concert with France, to undertake the arduous
task of composing the differences which distracted the re¬
public. The proposal was received with much apparent
cordiality by the court of Versailles. At the same time it
was scarcely to be expected that France would become the
instrument of restoring the prince of Orange to that share
of power which he had previously enjoyed,"and thus aban¬
don a favourite object of policy, namely, establishing a su¬
preme and permanent control in the councils of Holland.
In fact, the conditions framed as the basis of reconciliation
by the Louvestein faction, were such as plainly indicated
their design of reducing within very narrow limits the in¬
fluence and authority of the stadtholder. On his renoun¬
cing the right of filling up occasional vacancies in the town
senates, he was to be restored to the nominal office of cap¬
tain-general ; but he was to be restrained from marching
troops into any province, or out of it, without leave from
the respective provinces concerned ; and he was also to
subscribe a resolution passed some time previously by the
senate of Amsterdam, that the command should at all
times be revocable at the pleasure of the states. Had
the prince acquiesced in these preliminaries, France would
have completely attained the object of her lengthened
negotiations, and by means of the Louvestein faction ac¬
quired the ascendency which she had repeatedly sought
to obtain in the councils of Holland. But, under the dif¬
ficulties which surrounded him, the prince of Orange was
admirably supported and assisted by the genius, spirit,
and abilities of his consort, who firmly rejected every
measure tending to abridge the rights attached to the
office of stadtholder; and M. de Rayneval, the French
negotiator, having in vain endeavoured to overcome her
resolution, broke off the correspondence between the
Hague and Nimeguen, and returned to Paris about the
middle of January 1787.
But the republican party were totally disappointed in
the hopes which they had formed of assistance from France.
The com t of Versailles had indeed long trusted to the
natural strength of this party, and had been assiduous
during the summer in endeavouring to second them by
every species of succour which could be privately afforded.
Crowds of French officers arrived daily in Holland, and
either received commissions in the service of the states
or acted as volunteers in their troops; several hundreds
of tried and experienced soldiers were selected from dif¬
ferent regiments, furnished with money for their journey
and dispatched in small parties to join the troops, and
assist in disciplining the burghers and volunteers; and a
considerable corps of engineers were also directed to pro¬
ceed in disguise towards Amsterdam, in order to assist in'
strengthening the works of that city. But these aids,
which might have proved effectual had the contest been
confined to the states of Holland and the stadtholder,
were rendered unavailing by the rapid invasion of the Prus¬
sians • the court of Berlin had taken its measures with so
much celerity, and the situation of the republicans had al-
ready become so desperate, that it was doubtful whether
their affairs could be restored by any assistance which
France was capable of immediately affording. Neverthe¬
less, on Great Britain fitting out a strong squadron of men
of war at 1 ortsmouth, to give confidence to the operations
1787
of the king of Prussia, the court of Versailles sent orders Histor
to equip sixteen sail of the line at Brest, and recalled a
small squadron which had been commissioned to cruise
on the coast of Portugal. But in these preparations Louis
seemed rather to regard his own dignity, than to be ac¬
tuated by any purpose of effectually relieving his allies.
All opposition in Holland might already be considered as
extinguished. The states assembled at the Hague had
officially notified to the court of Versailles, that the dis¬
putes between them and the stadtholder were now happily
terminated; and as the circumstances which gave occa¬
sion to their application to that court no longer existed,
they intimated that the succours which they had former¬
ly requested would not now be necessary. Under these
circumstances, as the chief concern of France was to ex¬
tricate herself with honour from her present difficulty, she
readily listened to a memorial from the British minister at
Paris, in which it was proposed that, in order to preserve
a good understanding between the two crowns, all warlike
preparations should be discontinued, and that the navies
of both kingdoms should again be reduced to the footing
of a peace establishment; a proposition which was gladly
acceded to by the court of Versailles, and the harmony
which had been transiently interrupted was thus restored.
But though the French king could not but sensibly feel Assembl
the mortification of thus relinquishing the ascendency Nt
which he had obtained in the councils of Holland, the in-ab,les dis
ternal situation of his kingdom furnished matter for moreso^vet*'
serious reflection. The dismission of M. de Calonne had
left France without a minister, and almost without a sys¬
tem of government; and though the king bore the oppo¬
sition of the Notables with temper, yet the disappoint¬
ment he had experienced sunk deep in his mind. With¬
out obtaining any relief for his most urgent necessities, he
perceived when too late that he had opened a way for the
restoration of the ancient constitution of France, which
had been undermined by the craft of Louis XL and near¬
ly extinguished^ by the daring councils of Richelieu under
Louis XIII. The Notables had .indeed conducted them¬
selves with respect and moderation, but at the same time
they had not been deficient in firmness. The appointment
of the Archbishop of Toulouse, the avowed adversary of M.
de Calonne, to the office of comptroller-general, probably
contributed to preserve the appearance of good humour
in that assembly; but notwithstanding this, the proposed
territorial impost or general land-tax, an object so ardent¬
ly desired by the court, was rejected. Deprived of all
hope of rendering the convention subservient to the relief
of his embarrassments, and also dreading the spirit which
it had on several occasions evinced, Louis determined to
dissolve the assembly, which he did accordingly, in a mo¬
derate and conciliatory speech addressed to the members
on their dismission.
Being thus disappointed of the advantage which he had
hoped to derive from the acquiescence of the Notables,
the king was now obliged to revert to the usual mode of
raising money by royal edicts; and amongst the measures
proposed for this purpose were the doubling of the poll-
tax, the re-establishment of the third-twentieth, and a
stamp duty. But, as might have been expected, this sum¬
mary method was strongly disapproved by the parliament
of 1 aris ; and that assembly refused, in the most positive
terms, to register the edict. In the last resort, therefore,
Louis was obliged to have recourse to his absolute autho-
lity ; and, by holding what is called a bed of justice, he
compelled the parliament to register the impost. But
the latter, though defeated, were not subdued; and on
the day after the king had held his bed of justice they
entered a formal protest against the edict, declaring that
it had been registered against their approbation and con¬
sent, by the express command of the king; that it neither
FRANCE.
43
History.
1787-
should nor ought, to have any force; and that the first
person who presumed to carry it into execution would be
adjudged a traitor, and condemned to the galleys. This
spirited declaration left the king no alternative, but either
to proceed to extremities in support of his authority, or to
relinquish for ever afterwards the power of raising money
upon any occasion without the consent of the parliament.
But though naturally of a mild disposition, and averse to
violent measures, Louis determined not to surrender, with¬
out a struggle, that authority which had so long been ex¬
ercised by his predecessors. Ever since the commence¬
ment of the discontents, considerable bodies of troops had
been gradually marched into the capital; and, about a
week after the parliament entered their protest, an officer
of the guards, with a party of soldiers, proceeded at day¬
break to the house of each member, to signify to him the
king’s command, that he should immediately get into his
carriage, and withdraw to Troyes, a city of Champagne,
about seventy miles from Paris, without writing or speak¬
ing to any person out of his own house previously to his
departure. These orders were all served at the same in¬
stant; and before the citizens of Paris became acquainted
with the transaction, their magistrates were already on the
road to their place of banishment. Previously to their re¬
legation, however, they had presented a remonstrance on
the recent measures of government, and the alarming state
of public affairs. In stating their opinions on taxes, they
declared that neither the parliaments nor any other au¬
thority, excepting that of the three estates of the kingdom
collectively, could warrant the imposition of any perma¬
nent tax on the people; and they strongly urged the re¬
newal of those national assemblies which had rendered
the reign of Charlemagne at once so illustrious and bene¬
ficent.
This demand for the convocation of the national coun¬
cil or States General was the more honourable to the par¬
liament, as the latt er assemblies had uniformly sunk under
the influence of the former, and returned to their original
condition of mere courts of registration and law. The
confidence and attachment of the people therefore rose in
proportion to this disinterestedness; their murmurs were
openly expressed in the streets of the capital, and the ge¬
neral dissatisfaction was augmented in consequence of the
stop put to public business by the exile of the parliament.
Meanwhile the cabinet appeared weak, disunited, and
fluctuating; and continual changes took place in every
department of the state. Averse to rigorous counsels,
Louis wished to allay the growing discontent by every con¬
cession consistent with his dignity ; but the queen, it was
believed, strongly dissuaded him from taking any step
which might tend to diminish the royal authority. The in¬
fluence of this princess in the cabinet was undoubtedly
great; but the popularity which she had once enjoyed
was no more, and some imputations of private levity,
which had been scattered through the capital, were far
from rendering her acceptable to the majority of the
people. The Count d’Artois, the king’s brother, who had
expressed himself in the most unguarded terms against
the conduct of the parliament, also stood exposed to all
the consequences of popular hatred. Nor was it in the
capital alone that the flame of liberty burst forth ; it blaz¬
ed with equal strength in the provincial parliaments.
Amongst various instances of this, the parliament of Gre¬
noble passed a decree against lettres de cachet, declaring
the execution of these odious instruments of arbitrary
power, within their jurisdiction, by any person, and under
any authority whatsoever, to be a capital crime.
The king had endeavoured to soothe the Parisians by new
regulations of economy, and by continual retrenchments in
his household; but these proofs of a desire to lessen the
public burdens, though they would at one time have been
received with the loudest acclamations, were now disre- History,
garded, and the absence of the parliament was considered
as an evil for which nothing could atone. In order there- G87-
fore to regain the affections of his subjects, his majesty
consented to restore that assembly, and at the same time
to abandon the stamp duty and the territorial impost,
which had been the chief subjects of dispute. But these
measures were insufficient to establish harmony between
the court and the parliament. The necessities of the
state still remained unprovided for; nor could the defi¬
ciency of the revenue be supplied, except by extraordi¬
nary resources or a long course of rigid frugality. About
the middle of November 1787, in a full meeting of the
parliament, attended by all the princes of the blood and
the peers of France, the king entered the assembly, and
proposed for their approbation two edicts; one for a new
loan of four hundred and fifty millions of francs, or about
nineteen millions sterling, and the other for the re-esta-
blishment of the Protestants in all their ancient civil rights,
a measure w hich had long been warmly recommended by
the parliament, and which was now brought forward to
procure a better reception for the loan. On this occasion
the king delivered a speech of unusual length, filled with
professions of regard for the people, but at the same time
dwelling strongly upon the obedience he expected to his
edicts. An animated debate ensued, and was continued
for nine hours, when the king, wearied by opposition, and
chagrined at some freedoms used in the course of the dis¬
cussion, suddenly rose and commanded the edict to be re¬
gistered without further delay. But this order was most
unexpectedly opposed by the Duke of Orleans, first prince
of the blood, who protested against the whole proceedings
of the day, as an infringement on the rights of parliament,
and therefore null and void. The king, though he could
not conceal his astonishment and displeasure at this deci¬
sive step, contented himself with repeating his commands,
and immediately afterwards left the assembly. On his
departure, the parliament confirmed the protest of the
Duke of Orleans, and declared, that as their deliberations
had been interrupted, they considered the whole business
of that day as of no effect.
But as it could not be supposed that Louis would suffer
so bold an attack on his power to pass with impunity, a
letter was next day delivered to the Duke of Orleans, com¬
manding him to retire to Villars-Cotterel, one of his seats,
about fifteen leagues from Paris, and to receive no company
there except his own family; and at the same time the
Abbe Sabbatiere and M. Freteau, both members of the
parliament, who had distinguished themselves in the de¬
bate, were seized under the authority of lettres de cachet,
and conveyed, the former to the castle of Mont St Michel
in Normandy, and the latter to a prison in Picardy. This
act of despotism immediately roused the indignation of
the parliament, which on the following day waited on the
king, and expressed their astonishment and concern that
a prince of the blood-royal should have been exiled, and
two of their members imprisoned, for having declared in
his presence what their duty and consciences dictated, and
at a time when his majesty had announced that he came
to take the sense of the assembly by a plurality of voices.
The answer of the king was reserved, forbidding, and un¬
satisfactory. But this did not prevent the parliament from
attending to the exigencies of the state; and, convinced
of the emergency, they consented to register the loan for
four hundred and fifty millions of livres, which had been
the principal cause of this unfortunate difference. This
concession contributed to soften the mind of the king;
and the sentence of the two magistrates was in conse¬
quence changed from imprisonment to exile; M. Freteau
being sent to one of his country seats, and the Abbe Sab*
batiere to a convent of Benedictines.
44
History.
FRANCE.
1788.
Assembly
The parliament, however, was not so far propitiated by
this measure as to give up the points against which they
had originally remonstrated. In a petition, conceived with
great freedom, and couched in the most animated language,
they boldly reprobated the late acts of arbitrary violence,
and demanded the entire liberation of the persons against
whom these had been exercised. At the court of Versailles
there was nothing but uncertainty and fluctuation; now
vigour and now weakness ; violence one day and attempts
at conciliation the next; a king without energy or deci¬
sion of character, and counsellors destitute alike of wisdom,
prudence, and moderation. In the beginning of the year
1788, Louis recalled the Duke of Orleans, who soon after¬
wards obtained permission to retire to England ; whilst
the Abbe Sabbatiere and M. Freteau were about the same
time allowed to return to the capital.
But the parliament had not confined their demands to
the liberation of these gentlemen ; they had also echoed
the remonstrances of the parliament of Grenoble, and had
loudly inveighed against the execution of lettres de cachet.
These repeated remonstrances, mingled as they were with
personal reflections, seconded the suggestions of the queen;
and Louis was once more instigated to adopt measures of
severity. MM. d’Espremenil and Monsambert, whose bold
and pointed harangues had given the greatest offence, were
doomed to experience the immediate resentment of the
court. A body of armed troops having surrounded the
hotel in which the parliament were convened, Colonel
Degout entered the assembly and secured the persons of
the obnoxious members, who were instantly conducted to
different prisons. This new instance of arbitrary violence
drew forth a remonstrance from parliament, which in bold¬
ness far exceeded all the former representations made by
that body. They declared they were now more firmly
convinced than ever, that the entire subversion of the
constitution was aimed at; but they added, that the
French nation would never sanction the despotic measures
which the king had been advised to adopt; that the fun¬
damental laws of the kingdom must not be trampled on ;
and that the royal authority could only be esteemed as
long as it was tempered with justice.
Language so pointed and decisive, asserting the con-
ofthe Not-trolling power of the laws above the regal authority, could
again con- 11ut w! t0 a^arm t^ie ; anci> w'th a view to diminish
vened. the influence of the parliament, it was determined again to
convene the Notables. Accordingly, about the beginning
of May, Louis appeared in that assembly, and after con£
plaining of the excesses in which ^the parliament of Paris
had indulged, and which had draiwn down his reluctant
indignation on a few of the members, he declared his re¬
solution, instead of annihilating them as a body, to recall
them to their duty and obedience by a salutary reform.
M. de la Moignon, as keeper of the seals, then explained
his majesty s intention to establish a plenary court, or su¬
preme assembly, composed of princes of the blood, peers
of the realm, great officers of the crown, the clergy, mar¬
shals of France, governors of provinces, knights of differ¬
ent orders, a deputation of one member from every par¬
liament, and two members from the chambers of council,
which should be summoned as often as any public emer-
gency should, m the royal opinion, render it necessary to
But if the Assembly of the Notables listened in silent de-
grence to the project of their sovereign, the parliament of
Pans received it with undisguised aversion. That body
protested in the strongest manner against the establish¬
ment of any other tribunal, and declared their unalterable
resolution not to assist at any deliberations in the supreme
assembly which his majesty proposed to institute. A
more unexpected mortification occurred to the kino- in
the opposition of several peers of the realm, who expressed
their regret at beholding the fundamental principles of Histor
the constitution violated ; and, though lavish in professions
of attachment to the person of the sovereign, concluded 1788.
with apologizing for not entering on the functions assigned
them in the plenary court, which, in their opinion, was in¬
consistent with the true interests of his majesty, no less
than with those of the nation at large. Nor was this op¬
position confined to the parliament. The flame quickly
spread throughout the more distant provinces. At Rennes
in Bretagne, and at Grenoble in Dauphine, the populace
broke out into acts of the most daring outrage. In
the latter city several hundred of the inhabitants perished
in a conflict with the military; but they nevertheless
maintained their ground against the regulars, and the com¬
manding officer, on the entreaty of the first president,
withdrew his troops from a contest into which he had en¬
tered with reluctance. The different parliaments of the
kingdom at the same time expressed their feelings in the
most animated language, strongly urging the necessity of
calling together the States General, the lawful council of
the kingdom, as the only means of restoring public tran¬
quillity and promoting needful reforms.
It now became evident to the king, that a compliance
with the public wishes for the convocation of the States
General was absolutely necessary,, to avoid the calamities
of a civil war, which a refusal would render inevitable. In
such event he must have expected to encounter the ma¬
jority of the people, animated by the exhortations and ex¬
ample of their magistrates ; the peers of the realm had also
expressed the strongest disapprobation of his measures;
nor could he even depend on the support of the princes
of the blood. But what afforded the most serious ground
of alarm, was the spirit recently displayed by the military,
who, during the disturbances in the provinces, had with
difficulty been brought to act against their countrymen;
whilst many of their officers, who had been engaged in as¬
sisting to establish the independence of America, publicly
declared their abhorrence of despotism. It was not. how¬
ever, until after many a painful struggle that Louis could
bring himself to restore an assembly, the influence of which
would naturally overshadow that of the crown, whilst its
jurisdiction would confine within narrow limits the uncon¬
trolled power which he had inherited from his predeces¬
sors. In the two preceding reigns the States General had
been wholly discontinued; and though the queen-regent,
during the troubles attending the minority of Louis XIV.
had frequently expressed her intention of calling them toge¬
ther, she was constantly dissuaded by the representations
of Mazarin. It is probable, however, that Louis XVI. still
flattered himself with the hope of alluring the members
of that assembly to the side of the court, and, having em¬
ployed them to establish some degree of regularity in the
finances, and to curb the spirit of the parliament, of again
dismissing them to obscurity.
But be this as it may, an arret was issued in August, Convoca-
fixing the meeting of the States General for the first day ofbon of th<
x Iay the ensuing year; and, during the interval, every StatesGe.
step was taken to secure the favourable opinion of theliera^"
public. New arrangements took place in the administra¬
tion ; Neckar, who had long enjoyed the confidence of
the people, was again called to the management of the
finances; the torture, which by a former edict had been
m part restricted, was now entirely abolished ; every
person accused was allowed the assistance of counsel, and
permitted to avail himself of any point of law necessary to
Ins defence; and it was decreed, that in future sentence
o eath should not be passed on any person, unless the
leas^threcfjudg60 pr0n0uncetl Suilty by a majority of at
As the time appointed for the convention of the States
General approached, the means of assembling them form-
FRANCE,
History, ed a matter of very grave deliberation in the cabinet.
The last meeting, in 1614, had been convened by appli-
1788. cation to the bailiwicks. But this mode was liable to
strong objections, as the bailiwicks had been increased in
number and jurisdiction, several provinces having since
that period been united to France; and as the numbers
and quality of the members were no less an object of se¬
rious attention, it was not till the close of the year that
the proposal of Neckar, which fixed the number of de¬
puties at a thousand and upwards, and ordained that the
representatives of the third estate or commons should
equal in number those of the nobility and clergy united,
was adopted. Meanwhile the eyes of all Europe were
turned towards the States General; but the moment of
their meeting was far from being auspicious. The minds
of the French had long been agitated by various rumours;
the unanimity which had been expected from the differ¬
ent orders of the states was destroyed by the jarring pre¬
tensions of each; and their mutual jealousies were attri¬
buted by the suspicions of the people to the intrigues of
the court, which, it was supposed, already repented of the
hasty assent which had been extorted from it. A scar¬
city which pervaded the kingdom increased the general
discontent; and the people, pressed by hunger, and in¬
flamed by resentment, were ripe for revolt. The sove¬
reign also, impatient of the obstacles which he continual¬
ly encountered, could not conceal his chagrin; whilst the*
influence of the queen in the cabinet manifested itself by
the immediate removal of Neckar. The dismission of
this minister, who had so long been the favourite of the
public, was the signal of open insurrection. The Parisians
assembled in great numbers; the guards refused to stain
their arms with the blood of their fellow-citizens; the
Count d’Artois and the most obnoxious of the nobility
thought themselves happy in eluding by flight the fury of
the insurgents; and in a moment a revolution was accom¬
plished, which, in all its circumstances, is the most re¬
markable of any recorded in history.
Causes of The moral history of man is always more important than
the Revo- the mere recital of such physical occurrences as diversify
lution. his existence. It is not the fall of a mighty monarch and
the overthrow of his dynasty, it is not the convulsion of
empires, and the rivers of human blood which have been
shed, that render the French Revolution peculiarly inte¬
resting. Such events, however deplorable, are far from
being without example in the history of mankind. In the
populous regions of the East, where superstition and sla¬
very have always prevailed, these are regarded as forming
part of the ordinary course of human affairs, because an
intrepid and skilful usurper always finds it easy to intimi¬
date millions of ignorant and credulous men. But in Eu¬
rope the case is very different indeed. No adventurer can
advance far without encountering thousands as artful and
as daring as himself. Events are not the result either of
blind hazard or of individual skill. Conspiracies or plots
produce but little effect. Like other arts, that of govern¬
ment has been much improved ; and an established con¬
stitution can only be shaken by a strong convulsion pro¬
duced by national passions and national efforts. The won¬
derful spectacle which we are now to contemplate, is that
of an enlightened and polished people becoming in an in¬
stant fierce and sanguinary; a long established government,
fortified by the recollections of ages, and forming as it
were part of the national character, overturned almost
without a struggle ; a whole nation apparently uniting to
destroy every institution which time had hallowed or edu¬
cation had taught them to revere ; a superstitious people
treating the religion of their forefathers with contempt;
a long-enslaved race, whose very chains had become dear
to them, occupied in the discussion of refined and even
visionary schemes of freedom ; in short, twentj'-five mil-
45
lions of men suddenly treading under foot every senti- History,
ment and every prejudice which they themselves had once
regarded as sacred and venerable. 1188.
Like the other nations of Europe, France was anciently
governed by a rude and fierce aristocracy, the different
members of which were feebly united by the authority of
a succession of kings destitute of power or influence. The
nobles, within their own territories, enjoyed privileges
almost royal. They made peace and war; they coined
money; they were judges in the last resort; their vassals
were their slaves, whom they bought and sold along with
the lands ; and the inhabitants of cities, although freemen,
were poor, depressed, and dependent on the protection of
some baron in their neighbourhood. But, by the progress
of the arts, the cities at length rose into importance, and
their inhabitants, along with such freemen of low rank as
resided in the country, were considered as entitled to a
representation in the States General of the kingdom, under
the appellation of tiers etat, or third estate. When in pro¬
cess of time, however, the power of the crown had crushed
that of the barons, and the sovereign became despotic, the
meetings of the States General were discontinued. But
absolute authority on the part of the crown was not ac¬
quired, as it was in England under the house of Tudor, by
abolishing the pernicious privileges of the nobles, and ele¬
vating the commons : it was obtained by skilful encroach¬
ments, by daring exertions of prerogative, and by the em¬
ployment of a regular military force. In France, there¬
fore, the monarch was absolute, whilst the nobles retained
their feudal privileges, and the ecclesiastical hierarchy also
enjoyed its peculiar rights and immunities.
But the kingdom of France, previously to the Revolu¬
tion, had never been reduced to one homogeneous mass.
It consisted of a variety of separate provinces acquired
by different means; some by marriage, others by legacy,
and others again by conquest. Each province retained
its ancient laws and privileges, whether political or civil,
as expressed in the capitularies or conditions by which
it was originally acquired. In one part of his dominions
the French monarch was a count, in another he was a duke,
in a third he was a king; whilst the only bond which unit¬
ed his vast empire was the strong military force by which
it was overawed. Each province had its barriers ; and the
intercourse between one province and another was often
more restricted by local usages than the intercourse of
either with a foreign country. Some of the provinces, as
Bretagne and Dauphine, even retained the right of as¬
sembling periodically their provincial states; but these
constituted no barrier against the power of the court.
The clergy formed the first estate of the kingdom in
point of precedence. In number they amounted to about
a hundred and thirty thousand. The higher orders en¬
joyed immense revenues; but the cures or great body of
the working clergy seldom possessed more than about L.28
sterling a year, whilst their vicaires had only about half
that sum. A.few of the dignified clergy were men of
great piety, who resided constantly in their dioceses, and
attended to the duties of their office; but by far the greater
number passed their lives at Paris and Versailles, immers¬
ed in all the intrigues and dissipation of a corrupt court
and a profligate capital. They were almost exclusively
selected from amongst the younger branches of the fami¬
lies of the high nobility; and it had even come to be ac¬
counted a species of dishonour for any persons of low rank
to be admitted into the episcopal order. The lower clergy,
on the contrary, were for the most part persons of mean
birth, who had little chance of preferment, but who, by
living constantly among the people, naturally participated
in their feelings and opinions. As a body, the clergy
possessed, independently of the tithes, a revenue arising
from their property in land, which amounted to four or
46
FRANCE.
1788.
History, five millions sterling annually, and they were at the same
1 J time exempt from taxation. The crown had latterly at¬
tempted to break down this privilege; but, to avoid the
danger, the clergy had presented to the court, as a free
gift, a sum of money somewhat short of a million sterling
every five years.
The nobility was nominally the second order of the
state, but it was in reality the first. The nobles amounted
to no less than two hundred thousand in number. The
title and rank descended to all the children of the family,
but the property went to the eldest alone; and hence
vast multitudes of penniless nobles were entirely depen¬
dent upon the bounty of the court. They regarded the
useful and commercial arts as dishonourable, and even
the liberal professions of the law and physic they consi¬
dered as in a great measure beneath their dignity, dis¬
daining to intermarry with the families of their profes¬
sors. The feudal system in its purity was favourable to
the production of respectable qualities in the minds of
those who belonged to the order of the nobles; but the
introduction of commerce had rendered its decline equally
unfavourable to that class of persons. Instead of the an¬
cient patriarchal attachment between the feudal chieftain
and his vassals, the nobility had become greedy landlords
in the provinces, that they might appear in splendour at
court and in the capital, where, plunged in intrigue and
sensuality, their characters became frivolous and con¬
temptible. Such of the French nobility, however, as re¬
mained in the provinces, regarded with indignation this
degradation of their order, and still retained a proud sense
of honour and of courage, which has always rendered
them respectable. The order of the nobles was exempted
from the payment of taxes, although the property of some
of them was immense. The estates of the prince of Conde,
for example, were worth L.200,000 a year, and those of
the Duke of Orleans nearly twice as much. The crown
had indeed imposed some trifling taxes upon the nobility,
but these they contrived, in a great measure, to elude.
Next to the nobles, and as a privileged order possessing
a secondary kind of nobility of their own, may be men¬
tioned the parliaments. These consisted of large bodies
of men, in different provinces, and served as courts of law
for the administration of justice. In consequence of the
corruption of the officers of state, the members purchased
their places, which they held for life; but the son was
usually preferred when he offered to purchase his father’s
place. Practising lawyers had but little chance of ever
becoming judges. In courts thus constituted, consisting
of a motley mixture of old and young, learned and igno¬
rant, justice was of course indifferently administered.
The judges allowed their votes in depending causes to be
openly solicited by the parties or their friends. No wise
man ever entered into a litigation against a member of
one of these parliaments, and no lawyer would undertake
to plead his cause; such a suit never came to a success¬
ful issue, and usually came to no issue at all. But after
the States General had fallen into disuse, the parliaments
acquired a certain degree of political consequence, and
oimed the only check upon the absolute power of the
crown. The laws, or royal edicts, before being put in
force, were always^ sent to be registered in the books of
the parliaments, faking advantage of this practice, in
favourable times and circumstances, the latter often delay¬
ed or refused to enregister the royal edicts, and present¬
ed remonstrances against them. And this was done un¬
der cover of a legal fiction. For they pretended that the
obnoxious edict, being injurious to the public welfare,
could not be the will of the king, but must either be a
forgery or an imposition by the ministers. Objections of
this kind were, however, got rid of, either by a positive
order from the king, or by his coming in person and or¬
dering the edict to be registered. The parliaments, ne- History
vertheless, often carried their opposition a great length, v—
indeed even to the ruin of themselves and their families 1788.
as individuals. This rendered them extremely popular
with the nation, and enabled them to embarrass a weak
administration. But, after all, the opposition of the par¬
liaments proved so feeble, that it was not thought worth
while to abolish them entirely till towards the end of the
reign of Louis XV.; and they were restored as a popular
measure at the beginning of that of Louis XVI.
The tiers etat, or commons, formed the lowest order of
the state in France, and they were depressed and miser¬
able in the extreme. To form a conception of their si¬
tuation, it is necessary to observe that the whole pecuni¬
ary burdens of the state were laid on them. They alone
were liable to taxation. An expensive and ambitious
court; an army of two hundred thousand men in time of
peace, and twice that number in war; a considerable ma¬
rine establishment; public roads and works; all were sup¬
ported exclusively by taxes levied from the lowest of the
people. The revenues also were collected in a wasteful
and oppressive manner. They were farmed out at a cer¬
tain estimated sum, over and above which the farmers-
general not only acquired immense fortunes for them¬
selves, but were also enabled to advance enormous pre¬
sents to those favourites or mistresses of the king or the
minister by means of whom they procured their contracts.
In raising all this money from the people, they were guil¬
ty of the most cruel oppression; as they had it in their
power to obtain whatever revenue laws they pleased, and
to execute these in the severest manner, their exactions
were measured by their own cupidity alone. For this pur¬
pose they kept in pay an army of clerks, subalterns, scouts,
and spies, amounting, it is said, to about eighty thousand.
This class of persons were equally detested by the king,
whom they deceived and kept in poverty; by the people,
whom they oppressed; and by the ancient nobility, whom
they eclipsed by the splendour of their establishments and
the prodigality of their expenditure. But the court of
France could never contrive to dispense with these finan¬
cial middle-men. The peasants were also liable to be call¬
ed out by the intendants of the provinces, in what were
called corvees, to work upon the high roads for a certain
number ot days in the year. I his was a source of severe
oppression, as the intendant had the choice of the time
and place of their employment, and was not bound to
accept of any commutation in money. They were more¬
over subject to the nobles in a great variety of ways.
I he latter retained all their ancient manorial or patrimo¬
nial jurisdictions. The common people being anciently
slaves, had obtained their freedom upon different condi¬
tions. In many places they and their posterity remained
bound to pay a perpetual tribute to their feudal lords;
and such tributes formed a considerable part of the re¬
venue of many of the provincial nobles. By a recent re¬
gulation, no man could be appointed an officer of the army
until he had produced proofs of nobility for four genera¬
tions. The parliaments, although originally of the tiers
etat, attempted also to introduce a rule that none but the
nobility should be admitted into their order. It will not
be accounted surprising, therefore, that the common peo¬
ple of trance were extremely ignorant and superstitious.
They were, however, passionately devoted to their mo-
narch, and all that concerned him. In 1754, when Louis
XV. was taken ill at Metz, the whole nation was thrown
into a kind of despair. The courier who brought the news
of his recovery to Paris was almost suffocated by the em¬
braces of the populace, who even extended their loyal en¬
dearments to the horse which had carried him.
The French monarch was, in every sense of the word,
despotic. His power was supported by the army, and by
FRANCE.
History, a watchful police with an infinite host of spies and other
servants in its pay. In France no man was safe. The
1788- secrets of private families were searched into. Nothing,
in fact, escaped the jealous inquisition of the police. Men
were seized by lettres de cachet when they least expected
it, and their families had no means of discovering their
fate. The sentence of a court of law against a nobleman
was usually reversed by the minister. No book could be
published without the license of a censor-general, appoint¬
ed by the court, and the minister was accountable to none
but the king. No account was given of the expenditure
of the public money. Enormous gratifications and pen¬
sions were often bestowed as the reward of the most infa¬
mous services. The supreme power of the state was com¬
monly lodged with a favourite mistress, who was sometimes
a woman taken from the stews. This was not indeed the
case under Louis XVI., but it was nevertheless one of the
misfortunes of his life that he was far from being absolute
in his own family. Still, however, with all its manifold
faults, the French court was the most splendid and po¬
lished in Europe. It was more the resort of men of ta¬
lents and literature of every kind, and there they met
with more ample protection, than anywhere else. The
court was often jealous of their productions; but they met
with the most distinguished attention from men of fortune
and rank; insomuch that for a century previous to this
the French had given the law to Europe in all questions
of taste, literature, and polite accomplishment. The gai¬
ety and elegance which prevailed at court diffused itself
throughout the nation, and, amidst much internal misery,
gave it an external appearance of happiness, or at least of
levity and vanity.
But, such as it was, this government had stood for ages,
and might have continued much longer, had not a con¬
currence of causes contributed to its overthrow. The in¬
ferior orders of the clergy, excluded from all chance of
preferment, regarded their superiors with jealousy and
envy, and were ready to join the laity of their own rank
in any popular commotion. The inferior provincial nobi¬
lity beheld with contempt and indignation the vices and
the power of the courtiers, and the higher nobility desired
to diminish the power of the crown. The practising law¬
yers, being almost entirely excluded from the chance of
becoming judges, wished eagerly for a change of system,
not doubting that their talents and professional skill would
render them necessary amidst any alterations which might
occur ; and accordingly they were the first instruments in
producing the Revolution, and amongst its most active
supporters. The monied interest eagerly longed for the
downfall of the ancient nobility. With respect to the
great mass of the common people, they were too ignorant,
too superstitiously attached to old establishments, and too
much depressed, to have any distinct conception of the
nature of political liberty, or any hope of obtaining it; but
their minds were nevertheless in some measure prepared
for change, by the contagious influence, as it were, of the
passions which were fermenting around them.
For forty years the principles of liberty had been dis¬
seminated with eagerness in France by men of great ta¬
lents, as Rousseau, Voltaire, Helvetius, and Raynal, to
whom the celebrated Montesquieu had led the way. Be¬
sides these, there was in France a vast multitude of what
were called men of letters, or persons who gave this ac¬
count of the manner in which they spent their time; and
all these were deeply engaged on the side of some kind of
political reform. The men of letters in Paris alone are
said to have amounted to twenty thousand. One of the
last acts of the administration of the Archbishop of Tou¬
louse was to publish a resolution of the king in council,
dated 5th July 1780, inviting all his subjects to give him
their advice with regard to the state of affairs. This was
47
considered as the concession of an unlimited liberty of the History,
press; and it is scarcely possible to form an idea of the
infinite variety of political publications which from that 1788.
period diffused amongst the people a dissatisfaction with
the order of things under which they had hitherto lived.
The established religion of France had for some time
past been gradually undermined. It had been solemnly
assaulted by philosophers in various elaborate perform¬
ances ; and the men of wfit, amongst whom Voltaire took
the lead, had attacked it with the dangerous weapon of
ridicule, which in France is so much more effective than
argument. The Roman Catholic religion is much exposed
in this respect, in consequence of the multitude of false mi¬
racles and legendary tales with which its history abounds.
But, without discriminating between the principles on which
it rests, and the superstitious follies by which these had
been defaced, the French nation learned to laugh at the
whole, and rejected instead of reforming the religion of
their fathers. Thus the first order in the state had al¬
ready begun to be regarded as useless, and the minds of
men were prepared for important changes.
Upon the whole, then, it appears that a great variety of
causes contributed, some more and others less directly,
to bring about that grand social and political movement
which, in the early part of its career, dashed in pieces
the oldest monarchy in Europe, and gave to the regene¬
rative principle an impulse which has been felt even in
distant nations, and the ultimate effects of which no one
can as yet compute. In the first place, the destruction of
the power of the great vassals of the crown, and the con¬
solidation of the monarchy into one great kingdom, during
the reigns of Louis XL, Francis I., and Henry IV., was
essential to the Revolution; for, had the central power
been weaker, and the privileges of the great feudatories
remained unimpaired, France, like Germany, would most
probably have been split into a number of independent
principalities, all unity of feeling or national energy would
have been lost in the division of interests, and a revo¬
lution would no more have happened in France than in
Silesia or Saxony. Secondly, the military spirit of the
French, and the native valour which a long series of nation¬
al triumphs had sustained, inspired them with the moral
courage to commence, and the fortitude to maintain, a
conflict, under which a people differently circumstanced
would have speedily sunk. Thirdly, the spirit of free in¬
vestigation which distinguished the eighteenth century,
and which, from expatiating in the regions of taste and
philosophy, passed, by an easy transition, into those of
politics and religion, no doubt contributed powerfully to
produce that change of opinion which sooner or later
brings about important alterations in the institutions of a
country. This freedom of inquiry and discussion, which
assumed its greatest latitude in the writings of Voltaire,
Rousseau, Raynal, and the Encyclopaedists, existed by
sufferance, it is true, and was confined to abstract ques¬
tions alone ; yet the fact of its having been tolerated is a
proof that the minds of men were prepared to re-consider
all received opinions, and that the religious and political
speculations which are commonly supposed to have creat¬
ed the revolutionary spirit, were in reality the symptoms
of a change already operated, but which they contributed
incalculably to extend and confirm. Fourthly, the church
in France experienced the fate of all attempts in an ad¬
vancing age to fetter the human mind by the shackles of
an antiquated creed, or the tyranny of an overgrown and
corrupt hierarchy ; the resistance to its authority became
general, the good and the bad parts of its doctrine were
indiscriminately rejected, and blind belief gave place to
the most uncompromising scepticism. Infidelity became
a test of mental independence ; and the progress of philo¬
sophical speculation, as evinced in the writings of Ray-
4
48
FRANCE.
i ^3t07; na^’ Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau, served more and
more to confirm the tendency to which we have alluded.
' ' Fifthly, the exclusive immunities enjoyed by the nobility,
the grievances which the French nation suffered in conse¬
quence, and the insolence of privileged tyranny, which is
even more keenly resented than the tyranny itself, were
mainly instrumental in bringing about the Revolution.
“ Numerous and serious as the grievances of the French
nation were,” says Rivarol, “ it was not these that occa¬
sioned the Revolution. Neither the taxes, nor the lettres
de cachet, nor the other abuses of authority, nor the vexa¬
tions of the prefects, nor the ruinous delays of justice,
irritated the nation : it was the prestige of nobility which
excited all the ferment, a fact which proves that it was
the shopkeepers, the men of letters, the monied interest,
in a word, all those who were jealous of the nobility, who
roused against them the lower classes in the towns, and
the peasantry in the country. In truth, it was an extra¬
ordinary circumstance that the nation should say to a child
possessed of parchment, ‘ You shall one day be either a
prelate, or a marshal, or an ambassador, as you choose,’
whilst it has nothing to offer to its other children.” And
to all these may be added, as concurring and co-operating
causes, first, the unprecedented inequality of taxation; se¬
condly, the state of the labouring poor, who had been redu¬
ced to the most abject misery; thirdly, the non-residence of
the landed proprietors, drawing after it, as is almost in¬
variably the case, a discontented tenantry and a neglect¬
ed country; fourthly, the local burdens and feudal ser¬
vices due by the tenantry to their feudal superiors, which
were to the last degree vexatious and oppressive; fifth¬
ly, the royal prerogative, which, by a series of successful
usurpations, had reached a height inconsistent with any
thing like real freedom; sixthly, the corruption which
had long tainted the manners of the court, and poisoned
all the sources of influence ; seventhly, the American
war, which, whilst the minds of the people were in a fer¬
ment, lighted a spark that speedily set fire to the train;
eighthly, the state of the army, both in pointof feeling and
discipline; and, lastly, the spirit of innovation, which may
justly be considered as “ the joint effect and full result” of
all the causes we have enumerated. But so many causes
of disaffection did not come all at once into action ; many
of them had long been in operation. During the whole
reign of Louis XV. the discontents of the people were
gradually increasing, and it was already foreseen that the
reign of his successor would be one of anxiety and trou¬
ble. “ I have had great difficulty,” said Louis XV. “ in
extricating myself from the quarrels with the parliaments
during my whole reign; let my grandson take care of
them, for it is more than probable they will endanger his
crown. Subsequently to the peace of 1763, a growin0,
discontent prevailed in the nation; headed, in the firs”
instance, by a portion of the nobility, who were either
impelled by the force of public opinion, or ambitious of
popular applause, and augmented latterly by the number¬
less faults of the government, the corruption of the court,
and the misery of the country.
Ihe immense population of the city of Paris rendered
it an impoitant engine in the hands of the fomenters and
conductors of the Revolution. An overgrown capital has
always proved dangerous to a government which is or at¬
tempts^ to be despotic; as appears from the history of an¬
cient Babylon and Rome, as well as that of modern Con¬
stantinople, London under Charles I., and Paris in the times
o the League and the I ronde. Ihe general scarcity of
grain which occurred about this period also assisted not a
little in producing many of the convulsions attendino- the
Revolution. On Sunday the 13th of July 1788, about
nine in the morning, without any eclipse, darkness sud¬
denly overspread several parts of France; a phenomenon
which formed the prelude to a tempest unexampled in the Histcr.
temperate region of Europe. Wind, rain, hail, and thun-
der, seemed to contend in impetuosity; but the hail proved D88,1^9,
the greatest instrument of destruction. Instead of the
rich prospects of an early autumn, the face of nature in
the space of an hour presented the dreary aspect of uni¬
versal winter. The soil was converted into a morass, and
the standing corn beaten into the quagmire; the vines
were broken to pieces, and the fruit trees demolished;
whilst unmelted hail lay in heaps like rocks of solid ice.
Even the most robust forest trees were unable to with¬
stand the fury of the tempest. The hail was composed of
large, solid, angular pieces of ice, some of them weighing
from eight to ten ounces. The country people, beaten
down in the fields on their way to church, amidst this
concussion of the elements, concluded that the last day had
arrived ; and, scarcely attempting to extricate themselves,
lay despairing and half suffocated amidst the water and
the mud, expecting the immediate dissolution of all things.
But the storm was irregular in its devastations. Whilst
several rich districts were laid entirely waste, some inter¬
mediate portions of country remained comparatively little
injured. One district of sixty square leagues had not a
single ear of corn or fruit of any kind left. Of the sixty-
six parishes in the district of Pontoise, forty-three were
entirely desolated; and of the remaining twenty-three
some lost two thirds and others half their harvest. The
Isle of France, being the district in which Paris is situ¬
ated, and the Orleannois, appear to have suffered most
severely. The damage done there, upon a moderate
computation, amounted to eighty millions of livres, or
between three and four millions sterling. Such a cala¬
mity must at any period have been severely felt; but
occurring on the eve of a great political revolution, and
amidst a general scarcity throughout Europe, it was pe¬
culiarly unfortunate, and occasioned more embarrassment
to the government than perhaps any other event what¬
ever. Numbers of families found it necessary to contract
their mode of living for a time, and to dismiss their ser¬
vants, who were thus left destitute of bread. Added to
the public discontent and political dissensions, this cala¬
mity produced such an effect upon the people in general,
that the nation seemed to have changed its character; and
instead of that levity by which it had ever been distin¬
guished, a deep gloom seemed now to settle down on
every countenance.
The spring of the year 1789 was a period of much po- Attempt
litical anxiety in France. The superior orders wished to to reduci
reduce the power of the crown, but were jealous of their th.e Powe
own privileges, and determined to retain them; whilstot the
the popular philosophers and others were endeavouring cr°'W1
to render them odious, and to rouse the people to a love
of freedom. Still, however, the great body of the com¬
mon people remained careless spectators of the struggle,
and unconscious of the approaching convulsion. Such was
their indifference, indeed, that few of them took the trou¬
ble even to attend and vote at the elections of the depu¬
ties to the States General. In many places where a thou¬
sand voters were expected, scarcely fifty came forward ;
but such of them as did appear showed that a seed had
been sown which might one day produce important fruits.
In the instructions which they gave to their deputies, the
British constitution formed in general the model upon
w hich they wished their government to be reconstructed.
I hey demanded equal taxation, the abolition of lettres de
cachet or arbitrary imprisonment, the responsibility of mi¬
nisters, and the extinction of the feudal privileges of the
nobles; but they washed that the whole three orders of
the state should sit and vote in one house, well knowing
t lat their nobility were not prepared to act the moderate
part of the British House of Lords. The nobles, on the
FRA
History, other hand, though willing to renounce some of their pe-
cuniary immunities, and to sacrifice the power of the
1789. Crown, were most decidedly resolved neither to surrender
their feudal prerogatives, nor to give up the right of sit¬
ting in three separate assemblies; by means of which
each of the orders could easily resist the encroachments
of the two others. M. Neckar has been severely censur¬
ed for not deciding this last and important question pre¬
viously to the meeting of the States General; but it must
be observed, that the very purpose of calling that assem¬
bly together was to overturn, through its medium, and
without any direct interposition on the part of the mini¬
sters, the unjust privileges of the higher orders. Had
the king positively decided in favour of three chambers,
the nobles and the clergy would have retained all those
ancient privileges established in their favour, of which it
was his wish to deprive them, and the crown and its pre¬
rogatives would have been the only objects of sacrifice.
It was therefore thought safer to leave the tiers etat to
fight its own battle; nor was it yet imagined that the
commons of France, depressed, and poor, and dispersed
over a multitude of provinces, could ever unite in enter¬
prises dangerous to the power of the sovereign.
Meeting of The States had been summoned to meet at Versailles
the States. on the 27th of April, and most of the deputies arrived at
that time; but as the elections for the city of Paris were
not concluded, the king deferred the commencement of
their sessions until the 4th of May. During this period
the members, left in idleness, began to find out and form
acquaintance with one another. In particular, a few from
Bretagne formed themselves into a club, into which they
gradually admitted such other deputies as were found to
be zealous in the popular cause, and also many persons
who were not deputies. This society, which took the
name of the Comite Breton, was originally established at
Versailles, and was destined, under the appellation of the
Jacobin Club, to give laws to France, and to diffuse ter¬
ror and alarm throughout Europe. On the other hand,
the aristocratic party established conferences at the house
of Madame de Polignac, for the purpose, as was alleged,
of uniting the nobles and the clergy. An event occur¬
red at this time which all parties ascribed to some mali¬
cious motive. In the populous suburb of St Antoine,
where a person named Reveillon carried on a great paper
manufactory, a false report was spread that this individual
intended to lower the wages of his workmen, and that he
had declared that bread was too good for them, and that
they might subsist well enough on patato-flour. A com¬
motion was raised, Reveillon was burned in effigy, and his
house thereafter burned and pillaged by the mob, who
were not dispersed till the military had been called in,
and many lives lost. The popular party asserted that
this commotion had been artfully excited by the party of
the queen and the Count d’Artois, to afford a pretence
for bringing great bodies of the military to the neigh¬
bourhood, in order to overawe the States General, or in¬
duce the king to resolve on assembling that body at Ver¬
sailles in preference to Paris, where they and the popu¬
lar minister Neckar wished the assemblage to take place.
On the 4th of May the States General assembled at
Versailles, and commenced business by going to church in
solemn procession, preceded by the clergy, and followed
by the king, according to ancient custom, to perform an
act of devotion. The nobles were arrayed in splendid
robes, and, like the higher clergy, glittered in gold and
jewels. The commons appeared in black, the dress be¬
longing to the law. The assembly was thereafter opened
by a short speech from the throne, in which the king con¬
gratulated himself on thus meeting his people assembled ;
alluded to the national debt, and the taxes, which were se¬
verely felt because unequally levied; and noticed the ge-
vol. x.
N C E. 49
neral discontent and spirit of innovation which prevailed, History,
but declared his confidence in the wisdom of the assem-
bly for remedying every evil. M. Barretin, the keeper of 1789.
the seals, next addressed the assembly in a congratulatory
speech, and was followed by Neckar. The latter spoke
for three hours; but though much applauded on account
of the clear financial details which his speech contained, he
encountered a certain degree of censure from all parties,
on account of the cautious ambiguity which he observed
regarding the future proceedings of the States General.
The following day the three orders assembled separate¬
ly. The deputies of the tiers etat amounted to six hun¬
dred in number, and those of the nobles and clergy to three
hundred each. During the earlier sittings much time
was spent in unimportant debates about trifling points of
form ; and the first important question which came under
discussion was the verification of their powers, or produc¬
tion of the commissions of the members, and the investi¬
gation of their authenticity. The commons laid hold of
this as a pretext for opening the grand controversy, whether
the States General should sit in one or in three separate
chambers; and they sent a deputation inviting the nobles
and the clergy to meet along with them in the common-
hall, for the purpose of verifying their powers in one com¬
mon assembly. In the chamber of the clergy a hundred
and fourteen members voted for the performance of this
ceremony in the general assembly, and a hundred and thirty-
three against it; but in the order of the nobles the reso¬
lution for the verification in their own assembly w as carried
by a majority of a hundred and eighty-eight to forty-seven.
The commons, however, paid no regard to this. Conduct¬
ed by bold and skilful leaders, who discerned the import¬
ance of the point in contest, they resolved not to abandon
it. Hence the latter, though fully cognisant of the exigen¬
cies of the state, and aware that, owing to the deficiency in
the revenue, a short delay might lead to the absolute disso¬
lution of the government, suffered five weeks to pass away
in total inactivity. During this period proposals were made
on the part of the ministry for a pacification between the
three orders, and conferences were opened by commission¬
ers from each ; but no art could induce the commons to
abandon their original purpose, or prevail wuth them to
enter upon the business of the state.
The nation having expected much from the assembling Popularity
of the States General, received the intelligence of their in- of the tterg
action with no small degree of concern. But as the tiers etat-
etat was naturally popular, public censure could not readi¬
ly fall upon that favourite order. Besides, from the period
of their assembling, the commons had made every effort to
augment their own popularity. They admitted all persons
promiscuously into the galleries, and even into the body of
their hall; no restraint was attempted to be laid upon the
most vehement marks of popular applause or censure; lists
of the names of the voters were publicly taken and sent to
Paris upon every remarkable occasion ; and thus the mem¬
bers suddenly found that, according to their political senti¬
ments, they became objects of general execration or ap¬
plause. The new and bold notions of liberty which were
daily advanced by the leaders of the tiers etat were re¬
ceived with acclamation by their hearers ; the capital be¬
came interested in the issue of every debate ; and the po¬
litical fervour thus generated thrilled along every nerve and
sinew of society. The commons accused the nobles of ob¬
stinately impeding the business of the state, by refusing to
verify their powers in one common assembly; and the ac¬
cusation wras greedily swallowed by the multitude. The
nobles accordingly became every day more unpopular.
Their persons were insulted; and new publications daily
appeared, in which their order was reviled, and repre¬
sented as an useless or pernicious incumbrance, not to be
tolerated in a free state. Whoever adhered to them was
G
50
FRANCE.
1789.
History, branded with the odious appellation of aristocrat. The
1 ^ clergy, from the influence of the parish cures or parsons,
seemed ready to desert their cause; and they were even
opposed by a minority of their own body, which derived
lustre from having at its head the Duke of Orleans. Still,
however, the majority of the nobles remained firm ; well
aware, that if they once consented to sit in the same as¬
sembly, and to vote promiscuously, with the more numer¬
ous body of the commons, their whole order, with all its
exclusive privileges, must speedily be overthrown.
Meanwhile the leaders of the commons saw that a change
was taking place in the minds of men ; and regarding the
period as at length arrived when they might emerge from
their inactivity, and seize the whole legislative authority,
they declared that the representatives of the nobles and the
clergy were only the deputies of particular incorporations,
who might sit and vote along with them, but who had no
title in a collective capacity to act as the legislators of
France. For conducting business with more facility, twenty
committees were named. On the suggestion of the Abbe
Sieyes, a final message was sent to the privileged orders,
requiring their attendance as individuals, and intimating
that the commons, as the deputies of ninety-six out of
every hundred of their countrymen, were about to assume
the exclusive power of legislation. None of the nobles
obeyed the summons ; but three cures, named Cesve, Bal¬
lard, and Jallot, presented their commissions, and were re¬
ceived with loud acclamations ; and the following day these
were followed by five more, amongst whom were Gregoire,
Dillon, and Bodineau. After some debate concerning the
appellation which they ought to assume, the commons, with
such of the clergy as had joined them, solemnly voted them¬
selves the sovereign legislators of their country, under the
name of the National Assembly. When the result of the
vote was declared, the hall resounded with shouts, from an
immense concourse of spectators, of Vive le Roi et vive
CAssembles Ncttionale. M. Bailly was chosen president
for four days only, MM. Camus and Pison de Galand were
appointed secretaries, and the assembly proceeded to busi¬
ness.
The first acts of the National Assembly were decisively
expressive of its own sovereignty. All taxes imposed with¬
out the consent of the representatives of the people were
declared to be null and void; but a temporary sanction
was given to the existing taxes, though illegal, till the dis¬
solution of the assembly, and no longer ; and it was added,
that as soon as the assembly should be able to fix, in con¬
cert with his majesty, the principles of national regenera¬
tion, it would take into consideration the national debt
and place the creditors of the state under the safeguard of
the national honour.
TJ^ P°Pular cause now gained ground so fast, that on
with thF vf \9 h J,une a majority of the clergy voted for the ve-
commons llficafon of their powers in common with the National As¬
sembly, and resolved to unite with them on the following
day. Affairs had thus come to a crisis, and the nobles per-
ceived that they must instantly make a decisive stand, or
ol TpaS Utterlylost* So g^at indeed was their
a aim, that M. dEsprememl proposed, at one of the sit¬
tings of their order to address the king, entreating him to
dissolve the States General. Hitherto that prince had gone
So? To ! NeCkf m favou™g the popular cause in oppo-
t on to the aristocracy. But every art was now used to
alarm his mind regarding the late assumptions of power on
the part of the commons; and these arts were it length
successful. Repeated councils were held ; and as Neckar
was absent attending a dying sister, the king was prevail-
Bm Iwnter int° the, of the aristocratical leaders,
i, ?. ! fir.St ™ea8ur? Yhlch they adopted was so ill con¬
ducted as to afford little prospect of final success to their
cause. On the 20th of Ju'ne, ihen the presidentTni mem-
Union of
bers were about to enter as usual into their own hall, they Histq r.
found it unexpectedly surrounded by a detachment of the ^
guards, who refused them admission, whilst the herald at *78!
the same time proclaimed a royal session. Alarmed at this
unforeseen event, the meaning of which they knew not, but
apprehending that an immediate dissolution of the assem¬
bly was intended, they instantly retired to a neighbouring
tennis-court, where, in the heat of their enthusiasm, they
took a solemn oath never to separate until the constitution
they had promised the country should be completed. On
the 22d a hew proclamation intimated that the royal ses¬
sion was deferred till the following day. It was now alleg¬
ed that the assembly had been excluded from their hall
merely because the workmen were occupied in preparing
it for the intended solemnity. But this information was
not calculated to excite favourable expectations of the
measures about to be adopted at a royal session, ushered
in by such circumstances of disrespect to the representa¬
tives of the people. The assembly, after wandering about
in quest of a place of meeting, at length entered the church
of St Louis, and were immediately joined by the majority
of the clergy, with their president the Archbishop of Vi¬
enne at their head. Two nobles of Dauphine, the Mar¬
quis de Blaqon and the Count d’Agoult, at the same time
presented their commissions. Encouraged by these events,
and by the applause of the multitude, the assembly now
waited with firmness the measures about to be adopted.
The royal session was held in the most splendid form, Discour;
but altogether in the style of the ancient despotism. Sol-oftheki«;
diers surrounded the hall. The two superior orders were
seated, whilst the representatives of the people, who had
been left standing a full hour in the rain, were in no hu¬
mour, when at last admitted, to receive with much com¬
placency the commands of their sovereign. The king
read a discourse, in which he declared null and void the
resolutions of the 17th, but at the same time presented
the programme of a constitution for France. This scheme
contained many good and patriotic principles, but pre¬
served the distinction of orders, and the exercise of lettres
de cachet; it said nothing about any active share in the
legislative power to be possessed by the States General,
and was silent respecting the responsibility of ministers and
the liberty of the press. The king concluded by command¬
ing the deputies immediately to retire, and to assemble
again on the following day; after which he then withdrew,
and was followed by all the nobles and a part of the clergy.
The commons remained on their seats in gloomy silence;
but this was at length interrupted by the grand master of
the ceremonies, who reminded the president of the inten¬
tions of the king. The words were scarcely uttered when
Mirabeau, starting from his seat, exclaimed, “ The com¬
mons of France have determined to debate. We have
heard the intentions which have been suggested to the king;
and you, who cannot be his agent with the States Gene¬
ral, you, who have here neither seat nor voice, nor a right
to speak, are not the person to remind us of his speech.
Go tell your master, that we are here by the power of the
people, and that nothing shall expel us but the bayonet.”
The applause of the assembly seconded the enthusiasm of
the orator, and the master of the ceremonies withdrew in
silence. M. Camus then rose, and having in a vehement
speech stigmatized the royal session by the obnoxious ap¬
pellation of a bed of justice, he concluded by moving that
the assembly should declare their unqualified adherence to
their former decrees. This motion was followed by ano¬
ther, declaring the persons of the deputies inviolable ; and
oth were unanimously decreed. The assembly according¬
ly continued their sittings in the usual form. On the fol-
owmg day the majority of the clergy attended as members;
T on the 25th the Duke of Orleans, along with forty-nine
o the deputies belonging to the order of nobility, also joined
FRA
History, them. The remaining nobles, as well as the small minority
of the clergy, now found themselves awkwardly situated ;
1789- but whether on this account, or because their leaders had
by this time formed a plan for carrying their point by the
aid of a military force, the king, by a pressing letter, in¬
vited both orders to join the commons; and this request
was immediately complied with, though many of the nobi¬
lity highly disapproved of the measure.
Situation The situation of France had now become truly alarming,
ef France, \yben the king retired from the assembly after the royal
session, he was followed by more than six thousand citi¬
zens, with loud clamours and every mark of disapprobation.
At Versailles all was speedily in an uproar. Neckar had
repeatedly solicited his dismission, the report of which in¬
creased the popular clamour. The court was in consterna¬
tion. The king now discovered that his minister was more
popular than himself. At six o’clock in the evening the
queen sent for M. Neckar ; and when he returned from the
palace, he assured the crowd who waited for him that he
would not abandon them, upon which they retired satisfied.
At the same time the news of the royal session had thrown
the city of Paris into violent agitation. The peace of that
capital was at this time endangered by a variety of causes.
A dreadful famine raged throughout the land, and, as is
usual in such cases, was most severely felt in the capital.
This prepared the minds of men for receiving unfavourable
impressions as to the political state of the country; and,
besides, every effort was made to disorganize the govern¬
ment, and produce a dislike of the ancient order of things.
The press poured forth innumerable publications, filled with
new and seducing, though generally impracticable, theories
of liberty ; and these were not only distributed gratis
amongst the people of Paris, but dispersed in the same man¬
ner throughout the provinces. Philip duke of Orleans,
presumptive heir to the crown after the children and bro¬
thers of the king, is with good reason believed to have sup¬
plied out of his more than princely revenues the expense of
these publications. In the gardens of the Palais Royal,
which belonged to him, an immense multitude was daily
assembled, listening from morning till night to orators
who descanted upon the most exciting topics of popular
politics, and many of whom were suspected to be in his
pay. It was even believed, we wish we could say with¬
out reason, that his money found its way into the pockets
of some of the most distinguished leaders in the National
Assembly. ,
Seduction But the government was, if possible, still more endan-
of the mi- gered by the methods which were now employed to seduce
litoy. tpe military from their duty. Every officer of the French
army belonged to the order of nobility ; and hence it might
have been imagined that but little danger was to be appre¬
hended from a body so commanded. But this very circum¬
stance became the means of disorganizing that great engine
of despotism. As the soldiers could not avoid imbibing
the new opinions, their officers became the first objects of
their jealousy, especially in consequence of the impolitic
edict of Louis XVI. which required every officer to produce
proofs of four degrees of nobility, and thus insulted, by
avowedly excluding, the plebeians from promotion. With
a view to what might eventually occur, the instructions to
the deputies of the tiers etat had recommended an increase
of the pay of the soldiers; and now every art was employed
to gain them to the popular cause. They were conducted
to the Palais Royal, and there caressed and flattered by
the populace, whilst they listened to the popular harangues.
Nor were the arts of corruption unsuccessful. On the 23d
of June* the military refused to fire on the mob in a tumult;
and when some of their number were on the 30th reported
to be in confinement for this offence, a crowd instantly col¬
lected and rescued them, the dragoons who were brought to
suppress the tumult grounding their arms. A deputation
NOE. 51
of the citizens solicited the assembly to obtain the pardon History,
of the prisoners; and the assembly applied to the king, who v—"'y''-''
pardoned them accordingly. 1789'
All these events, together with the tumultuous state of
the capital, which was daily increasing, rendered it neces¬
sary for the king to call out the military force, in order, if
possible, to restore the public peace. That his intentions
were to re-establish order, the actual state of affairs will not
permit us to doubt; but the aristocracy, with the Count
d’Artois at their head, were engaged in bringing forward
other measures, which ultimately contributed to ruin the
king and the monarchy. Crowds of soldiers were collected,
from all parts of the kingdom, around Paris and Versailles;
and it was observed, that these consisted principally of fo¬
reign troops. Camps were traced out, and Marshal Broglio,
an officer of exaggerated reputation, was placed at the head
of the army. The king was supposed- to have entirely
yielded to new counsels, and every thing betokened a des¬
perate effort to restore the energy of the ancient govern¬
ment. This was indeed the most interesting and important
period of the French revolution ; it formed as it were the
pivot on which the whole movement turned; yet the spe¬
cific designs of the leading actors have never been clearly
understood, though their general tendency has always been
perfectly intelligible. It was rumoured at the time, that
Paris was to be subdued by a bombardment, and that the
assembly was to be dissolved, and its leaders put to death.
But although such reports were entitled to small credit,
the crisis of French liberty was at hand, and the existence
of the National Assembly as an independent body, at least
upon any other footing than that proposed by the king on
the 23d of June, was also involved. An able and eloquent
address to the king against the assemblage of foreign troops
in their neighbourhood was in the mean time brought for¬
ward by Mirabeau, and voted by the assembly. The king
replied that the state of the capital was the cause of as¬
sembling the troops, and offered to transfer the States Ge¬
neral to Noyons or Soissons. “ We will remove neither to
Noyons nor to Soissons,” exclaimed Mirabeau ; “ we will
not place ourselves between two hostile armies, that which
is besieging Paris, and that which may fall upon us through
Flanders or Alsace: we have not asked permission to run
away from the troops; we have desired that the troops should
be removed from the capital.”
Thirty-five thousand men were now stationed in the
neighbourhood of Paris and of Versailles. The posts which
commanded the city were occupied, and camps were mark¬
ed out for a greater force. The Count d’Artois and his
party regarded their plans as ripe for execution ; and Nec¬
kar received an order from the king, ordaining him to quit
the kingdom in twenty-four hours. That popular minister
dined with his family after receiving the commands of his
sovereign, and the same evening set out for Brussels. In
his dismission the democratic party perceived that a reso¬
lution had been adopted to accomplish their ruin. The as¬
sembly therefore again addressed the throne, and requested
anew the removal of the troops, offering to become respon¬
sible for the public peace, and to proceed in a body to Paris
to encounter personally every danger which might occur.
But they were coolly told that the king was the best judge
of the mode of employing the troops, and that the presence
of the assembly was necessary at Versailles. On receiving
this reply, it was instantly decreed, on the motion of the
Marquis de Lafayette, that the late ministry had carried
with them the confidence of the assembly; that the troops
ought to be removed ; that the ministry should be held re¬
sponsible to the people for their conduct; that the assem¬
bly persisted in all its former decrees; and that as it had
taken the public debt under the protection of the nation,
no power in France was entitled to pronounce the de¬
grading wrord bankruptcy.
52
FRANCE-
History.
Consterna- Orleans were dressed in mourning, and carried
. tnmnrrli fVio 4-V.^ —1 All 
The city of Paris was thrown into great consternation
by the news of Neckar’s retreat. His bust and that of the
lion in Pa- through the streets. But the royal Allemand, a German
ris. regiment, having broken in pieces the busts, dispersed
the populace; and the Prince de Lambesc, grand-ecuyer
of France, was ordered to advance with his regiment of
cavalry, and take post at the Tuilleries. Being a man of a
violent temper, and enraged at the appearances of disappro¬
bation which were visible around him, the latter furiously
cut down with his sword an old man who was walking
peaceably in the gardens. The consequences of this inhu¬
man act were such as might have been expected. A shout
of execration instantly arose ; the cry to arms was heard ;
the military was assaulted on all sides ; the French guards
joined their countrymen, and compelled the Germans, over¬
powered by numbers, and unsupported by the rest of the
army, to retire. All order was now at an end, and as night
approached universal terror diffused itself throughout the
city. Bands of robbers were collecting ; and from them, or
from the foreign soldiery, a general pillage was expected.
The night passed away in consternation and tumult; and it
was found in the morning that the hospital of St Lazare had
already been plundered. The alarm bells were rung, and
the citizens having assembled at the Hotel de Ville, adopt¬
ed a proposal which was there made for enrolling them¬
selves as a militia, under the appellation of the National
Guard. This day and the succeeding night were spent
in tolerable quietness, without any attempt being made on
the part of the army. But on the morning of the 14th of
July it was discovered that the troops encamped in the
Champs Elisees had moved off, and an immediate assault
was therefore expected. The national guard now amount¬
ed to a hundred and fifty thousand men ; but they were in
general destitute of arms. They assumed a green cockade;
but on recollecting that this was the livery of the Count
d’Artois, they adopted one of red, blue, and white ; and this
was the origin of the tricolor cockade. M. de la Salle was
named commander in chief; officers were chosen ; and de¬
tachments were sent round in quest of arms. In the Hotel
des Invalides were found upwards of thirty thousand stand
of arms, together with twenty pieces of cannon. Avariety of
weapons were also procured from the garde-meuble de la cou-
ronne, and from the shops of armourers, cutlers, and others,
-apture of Ihe too famous fortress of the Bastille was an object of
the Bas- natural hatred to the Parisians. Within its walls, courage
genius, and innocence, had long wept unseen, and its dole¬
ful echoes had often responded to the stifled cries of de-
,At ,eleJen 0’clock in the morning, M. de la Kosiere,
at the head of a numerous deputation, waited upon M. De-
Jaunay, the governor, who promised, along with the officers
o Ins garrison, that they would not fire upon the city unless
they were attacked. But a report was soon spread throurdi-
out Pans that M. Delaunay had a short time thereafter
admitted into the fortress a multitude of persons, and then
treacherously massacred them. The origin of this rumour
has never been discovered. The fact itself has been denied •
Br;tishWnmhteSt^d at thv time by the Duke of Doi'set, then
British ambassador at the court of France. The effect of
i was the adoption of a resolution to assault the Bastille;
in consequence of which an immense and furious multitude
rushed into its outer, and soon forced their way into its
inner, courts, where they received and returned^ severe
fire for the space of an hour. The French guards who
rV'S".;"*0 "f <>"*1 guard, conducted tile
attack with equal skill and coolness. They draaoed three
waggons loaded with straw to the foot of the walls ™d
there set them on fire, by whieh means the garrison were
prevented from taking aim, whilst the smoke proved no
hindrance to the assailants. The besieging multitude
pressed the attack with incredible obstinacy & the “pace
tille.
of four hours; the garrison was thrown in confusion ; the Histor
officers served the cannon in person, and fired muskets in
the ranks; whilst the governor in despair thrice attempt- 1789,
ed to blow up the fortress. A capitulation was at length
sought, but refused to the garrison, and an unconditional
surrender demanded. This at length took place, and the
governor, with M. de Losme Salbrai, his major, became
victims of the popular fury, in spite of every effort which
could be made for their protection ; but the French guards
succeeded in saving the lives of the garrison. Only seven
prisoners were found in the Bastille. A guard was placed
in it, and the keys were sent to the celebrated M. Brissot,
who a few years before had inhabited one of its dungeons.
1 he remaining part of this eventful day was spent at Paris
in a mixture of wild triumph and excessive alarm. In the
pocket of the governor of the Bastille there had been found
a letter written by M. de Flesselles, the prevot des mar-
chands, or chief city magistrate, who had pretended to be
a most zealous patriot, encouraging him to resistance by
the promise of speedy support. This piece of treachery
was punished by instant death ; and the bloody head of
Flesselles was carried through the city on a pole, along
with that of M. Delaunay. On the approach of night a
5,°dy °f troops advanced towards the city by the Barriere
d Enfer ; but the national guard hurried thither, preceded
by a train of artillery, and the troops withdrew upon the
first fire. Barricades were everywhere formed, the alarm-
bells were rung, and a general illumination continued
throughout the night.
In the mean time it was obvious that the new ministry A new m
were entering upon a difficult scene of action, where one false nistry ap
step might lead to ruin, and where their own plans of con- pointed,
duct required to be maturely digested. Marshal Broglio was
appointed minister of war; the Baron de Breteuil, president
of finance ; M. de la Galeziere, comptroller-general; M. de
Laporte, intendant of the war department; and M. Foulon,
ufrendant of the navy: but they were only destined to act as
official men under the Count d’Artois, and the other leaders
of the aristocracy. To the latter there scarcely remained
even a choice of difficulties; in fact no resource was left
but that of overawing by military force the National As¬
sembly and the capital, and risking the desperate measure
of a national bankruptcy, to avoid which the court had con¬
voked the States General. But no trace exists of any at¬
tempt to employ this last and desperate resource. The
evening after the departure of M. Neckar was spent by the
court of Versailles in festivity, as if a victory had been
gained; and the courtiers of both sexes went round among
the soldiery, striving to secure their fidelity by caresses,
and every species of flattering attention. The ministry,
however, not only failed to support the Prince de Lambesc
in the post which he had been sent to occupy, but suffered
the whole of the 13th to pass in indecision, whilst the ca-
pital was in a state of rebellion, an army formally mustering
within its walls, and the names of the principal nobility pub¬
licly exposed in lists of proscription. They accordingly re-
ceived with confusion and dismay the news of the capture
o the Bastille ; and these feelings were increased by infor¬
mation received from Marshal Broglio that the troops re-
tused to act against the Parisians or the National Assem-
y. n this perplexity they adopted the miserable de-
vice of concealing from the king the real state of public
affairs ; and that unfortunate prince was thus perhaps the
01r.y JP6/?011 wko rernained ignorant of the convulsions in
W- iff J1S T?Vntry W?s inv°lved- At length, -about mid-
nig i > ie Duke of Liancourt forced his way into the king’s
apartment, and informed him of the revolt of the capital
tu f iile ai^nu’ °* tbe surrender of the fortress of the
as i e. 1 he Count d’Artois, who was present, still at-
wK-* ?\r?tain the m°narch under the fatal delusion
ic i i had been the object of this communication to de-
FRANCE.
53
History, stroy; but the Duke of Liancourt, turning round, exclaim-
ed, “ As for you, Sir, your life can only be saved by instant
1789. flight; I have seen with horror your name in the bloody list
of the proscribed.” The count, with the members of his
short-lived administration and their adherents, accordingly
fled to the frontiers ; and thus commenced an emigration
which, depriving the throne of its natural supporters, left
the field open to the declared enemies of the monarchy.
This ministry had, no doubt, many difficulties to contend
with ; but an accurate examination of their conduct excites
a suspicion which, whilst it exculpates them from much
that, has been laid to their charge, does little honour either
to their talents or their character, namely, that they had
come into office without having formed any regular plan of
conduct, and that, acting without decision, they became
the sport of events which they wanted skill and vigour to
direct or control.
The king But in spite of all that had occurred, the monarch was
visits the stin personally beloved. Early the following morning the
ami the went to the assembly, though with none of the usual
capital! solemnities. He regretted the commotions of the capital,
disavowed any knowledge of an intention against the per¬
sons of the deputies, and intimated that he had command¬
ed the removal of the troops. A deep silence prevailed for
some moments, but this was succeeded by vehement and
universal shouts of applause. When the king rose to depart,
the whole assembly instantly crowded around him, and at¬
tended him to his palace. The queen appeared at a balco¬
ny with the dauphin in her arms; and the music played the
pathetic air Ou pent on £tre mieux quau sein de sa famille.
The enthusiasm of loyalty communicated itself to the sur¬
rounding multitudes, and nothing was heard but acclama¬
tions of joy. On the following day the king declared his reso¬
lution to visit in person the city of Paris ; and accordingly he
set out, attended by some members of the assembly, and by
the militia of Versailles. He was met by Lafayette at the
head of a body of the national guard, of which he had been
chosen commander in chief; and M. Bailly, in whose per¬
son the ancient office of mayor of Paris had been revived,
received the king at the gates, and delivered to him the
keys. During all this time no shout was heard from the
innumerable crowd of spectators but that of Vive la Nation.
The king advanced to the Hotel de Ville, where the tri¬
color cockade was presented to him, which he put on, and
with this badge on his breast presented himself at the win¬
dow. At the sight of the patriotic emblem an universal
shout of Vive le Roi burst forth from every quarter, and
» Louis returned to Versailles amidst loud demonstrations of
apparent loyalty and attachment. But much confusion
still prevailed in the capital, notwithstanding there was
more appearance of order than might have been expected
at such a crisis. This arose from a casual concurrence of
circumstances. In order to conduct the elections with fa¬
cility, Paris had been divided into sixty districts, each of
which had a separate place of meeting. The people did
not elect the members of the States General, but they chose
delegates, who, under the name of electors, voted for the
members. At the commencement of the disturbances, the
electors, at the request of their fellow-citizens, assumed a
temporary authority; but of this they speedily became weary,
and as soon as possible procured the public election of a
hundred and twenty persons, as municipal officers, for the
government of the city. The citizens, having acquired
the habit of meeting in their districts, grew fond of doing
so; and assembling frequently, they made rules for their
own government, and sent commissioners to communicate
with other districts. The tumultuous nature of these meet-
ings, and the vehemence of debate which prevailed in them,
were incredible; but they gradually ripened into clubs,
which ere long assumed the whole power of the state,
t. The banishment of Neckar was of short duration. He
returned to France in consequence of an invitation by the History,
king, and was received with equal joy by the assembly and
the capital. But on this occasion he committed what has H89.
been considered as a great political error. In deploring s
the late excesses and murders, and in noticing the arrest of e
M. Bezenval, an officer of the Swiss guards, he recommend¬
ed to the electors at the Hotel de Ville, in a solemn ha¬
rangue, that the past should be forgotten, that proscriptions
should cease, and that a general amnesty should be proclaim¬
ed. In a moment of enthusiasm, this was agreed to, and the
electors decreed what unquestionably exceeded their powers.
The districts of Paris were instantly in commotion. The
electors, alarmed, declared that they only meant that hence¬
forth the people would punish no man except according to
law; and to prove that they themselves were free from am¬
bition, they formally renounced all their own powers. The
assembly now took up the question, upon which Lally-To-
lendal, Mounier, Clermont-Tonnerre, Garat, and others,
declared that no person ought to be arrested without a for¬
mal accusation ; whilst Mirabeau, Robespierre, Barnave,
and Gleizen, alleged, on the contrary, that the people were
entitled to lay hold of any man who had publicly appeared
at the head of their enemies. The debate ended by ad¬
mitting the explanation of the electors, and by a declara¬
tion that it was the duty of the assembly to see justice exe¬
cuted in all cases.
The commotions and enthusiasm which distracted the State of
capital were speedily communicated to the provinces. In the coun-
every quarter the people seized upon all the arms which could tr>r-
be found, and the military uniformly refused to act against
them. Many acts of outrage were committed in Bretagne,
at Strasbourg, in the Lyonnois, and elsewhere, in which the
nobility were the sufferers. The mischiefs which occurred
were usually magnified at a distance; but that very cir¬
cumstance constituted an additional evil. It was stated in
the National Assembly that M. de Mesmay, lord of Quin-
cey, had invited to his house a number of patriots, amongst
whom were the officers of a neighbouring garrison, to a
splendid entertainment, in celebration of the happy union
of the three orders; and that in the midst of the feast the
master of the house contrived to withdraw unnoticed, and
to set fire to a train previously laid, which communicated
with a quantity of gunpowder in the cellars, by the explo¬
sion of which the whole company were blown into the air.
On inquiry, however, it was found that the story was ut¬
terly destitute of truth. But before the fact could be as¬
certained, all France had resounded with accounts of the
bloody tragedy; and the whole nobility of the kingdom
suffered in a greater or less degree from the prejudices ex¬
cited by this unhappy report, the origin of which has never
been well explained. It would be vain to state all the idle
rumours to which at this time the blind credulity of the
multitude gave currency. At one time the aristocrats
were cutting down the green corn ; at another they were
burying flour in the common sewers, or casting loaves into
the river Seine. One report had no sooner been proved
to be false than another was invented, and the whole na¬
tion was agitated by suspicion and alarm. The National
Assembly were engaged in framing the declaration of the
Rights of Man, which was to form the basis of the new
constitution, when the alarming accounts, received from
all quarters, of the state of anarchy into which the king¬
dom was falling, obliged them suddenly to turn their at¬
tention to questions of practical necessity. The privileged
orders finding themselves objects of universal jealousy
and hatred, became convinced that something must in¬
stantly be done to save their families and property, which
were menaced on every side with persecution and pillage ;
and regarding the popular torrent as irresistible, they re¬
solved to sacrifice a part in order to save something out
of the general wreck.
54
FRANCE.
History. On the afternoon sitting of the 4th of August the Vis-
count de Noailles, seconded by the Duke d’Aguillon,
1789* opened one of the most important scenes in the French
° Revolution, or in the history of any country. These no-
3 cn ces‘ blemen stated, that the true cause of all the commotions
which had convulsed the kingdom was to be found in the
misery of the people, who groaned under the double op¬
pression of public contributions and of feudal services.
“ For three months,” said M. de Noailles, “ the people
have beheld us engaged in verbal disputes, whilst their
own attention and their wishes are directed only to things.
What is the consequence ? They have armed to reclaim
their rights, and they see no prospect of obtaining them
except by force.” He therefore proposed to do justice,
as the shortest way of restoring tranquillity, and for this
purpose to decree that henceforth every tax should be
imposed in proportion to the wealth of the contributors,
and that no order of the state should be exempted from
the payment of public burdens ; that feudal claims should
be redeemed at a fair valuation, but that such claims as
consisted of personal services on the part of the vassal
should be abolished without compensation, as contrary to
the imprescriptible rights of man. The extensive posses¬
sions of the noblemen with whom these proposals originat¬
ed, added lustre to the disinterested sacrifice which they
had made; the speeches delivered on the occasion were
received with the most enthusiastic applauses by the as¬
sembly and the galleries, and their proposals were decreed
by acclamation. In fact, no nation is so powerfully influ¬
enced by sudden emotions as the French. On this occa¬
sion the patriotic contagion spread with inconceivable ra¬
pidity, and a contest of generosity ensued. The hereditary
jurisdictions possessed by the nobles within their own ter¬
ritories were unconditionally sacrificed. All places and
pensions granted by the court were suppressed, unless given
as the reward of merit or of actual services. The game
laws, which condemned the husbandman, under severe pe¬
nalties, to leave his property a prey to infinite multitudes of
animals preserved for pastime, having always been num¬
bered amongst the most severe grievances of the French
peasantry, were renounced, along with the exclusive rights
of rabbit-warrens, fisheries, and dove-cots. The sale of
offices was abolished, and the fees exacted from the poor,
together with the privilege of holding a plurality of liv¬
ings, were relinquished by the clergy. The deputies of
the Pais d’Etat, or privileged provinces, with the deputies
of Dauphine at their head, next came forward, and offered
to surrender their ancient privileges, requesting that the
kingdom might no longer remain parcelled out amongst
Dauphinois, Bretons, Proven^aux, and others, but that they
should all form one great mass of French citizens. They
were followed by the representatives of Paris, Marseilles,
Lyons, Bordeaux, Strasbourg, and other places, who re¬
quested leave to renounce all their separate privileges as in¬
corporations, for the sake of placing every man and every vil¬
lage in the nation upon a footing of equality. And thus the
assembly proceeded, until every member had exhausted
his imagination upon the subject of reform. To close the
whole, the Duke of Liancourt proposed that a solemn Te
Deum should be performed, and a medal struck in comme-
moration of the events of that night of sacrifices; and that
the title of Restorer of Gallic Liberty should be bestowed
upon the reigning monarch. Several days were neces-
sary to form into laws the decrees of the 4th August, and
committees were appointed to make out reports for the
purpose. But as one of these included the tithes and
revenues of the clergy amongst the abuses which were to
be done away with, and proposed in lieu of these to grant
to the different ministers of religion a certain stipend pay¬
able by the nation, the clergy now attempted to make a
stand in defence of their property; and violent debates
ensued, in which they were ably supported by the Abbe Histor
Sieyes. As the clergy, however, had formerly deserted
the nobles, so they were now in their turn abandoned to 1789
their fate by the hereditary aristocracy; and the popular
party had long regarded the wealth of the church as an
easy resource for supplying the wants of the state. Ne¬
ver, indeed, was there a more complete proof of the in¬
fluence of opinion over the affairs of men. The Catholic
clergy of France, though possessed of more property than
at the time when princes took up arms or laid them down
at their command, now found so few defenders, that they
were terrified into a voluntary surrender of all which they
and their predecessors had enjoyed for ages. In their
overthrow they had not even the barren honour of falling
the last of those privileged orders which had so long
ruled over this ancient kingdom. They, as well as the
nobles and the king, still possessed their former titles and
nominal dignity ; but all of them were now subdued, and
completely at the mercy of the commons of France, who
could now dismiss them at pleasure.
As a short season of tranquillity in the country and in New mi.
the National Assembly succeeded these great popular sacri-nistry.
fices, the king thought it a fit opportunity for the appoint¬
ment of a new ministry, consisting of the Archbishop of
Vienne, the Archbishop of Bordeaux, M. Neckar, the
Count de St Priest, Count de Montmorin, the Count de
la Luzerne, and the Count de la Tour du Pin Paulin.
M. Neckar, as minister of finance, stated the distressed
situation of the revenue, and presented the plan of a loan
of thirty millions of livres. But Mirabeau prevailed with
the assembly to alter and narrow the conditions to such
a degree that very few subscribers were found, and the
loan could not be filled up. This failure involved the as¬
sembly in considerable unpopularity, and they allowed
M. Neckar to prescribe his own terms for the purpose
of obtaining a loan of eighty millions. But the moment
of public confidence had been allowed to pass away,
and the loan was never more than half filled up. Re¬
course was next had to patriotic contributions; and great
numbers of gold rings, silver buckles, and pieces of plate,
were presented to the assembly.. The royal family them¬
selves sent their plate to the mint, either to give counte¬
nance to these donations, or, as Neckar has since assert¬
ed, through absolute necessity, for the purpose of sup¬
porting themselves and their family. The confusion into
which the nation had been thrown by recent events had
produced a suspension in the payment of all taxes. There
existed, in fact, no efticient government; and if society
escaped dissolution, it was only in consequence of those
habits of order which are produced by a state of long-
continued civilization. The business of government could
not be transacted without money, and many vain efforts
were made by the ministry to procure it. At length M.
Neckar was driven to the desperate resource of proposing
a compulsory loan, by which every individual possessed
of property was to advance to the state a sum equal to
one fourth of his annual income. This bold but unwise
proposition was supported by Mirabeau, and adopted by
the assembly; but it does not appear to have ever been
effectually executed.
In the mean time the assembly was busily occupied in Rights o
framing the celebrated declaration of the Rights of Man, Man, ant
which was afterwards prefixed to the new constitution ;^e
and this was followed by the discussion of a point of much vet0,
delicacy and difficulty, namely, what shafe of legislative
authority the king ought to possess under the new con¬
stitution, whether an absolute veto or negative, a sus¬
pensive veto, or no veto at all. This question operated
like a touchstone for trying the sentiments of every per¬
son ; and the assembly, consisting of twelve hundred men,
was now seen to arrange itself into two factions, which
FRA
History, soon came into violent conflict. The debates, which
were vehement and tumultuous, continued for several
1789. days. But as the assembly sat in public, and as multi¬
tudes of people of all descriptions were admitted into the
galleries, and even into the body of the hall among the
members, the public at large became speedily interest¬
ed in the discussion; the city of Paris took a side in op¬
position to the veto; and the whole empire was thrown
into agitation by new and speculative questions. In fact,
rumours of plots were spread throughout the country, and
a new storm was obviously gathering, when the question
was got rid of by a sort of compromise, which, however,
involved an abridgment of the royal authority. Mounier
observed, that the executive power could possess no ne¬
gative against the decrees of the present assembly, which
had been nominated by the nation with supreme powers
for the express purpose of framing a constitution, to re¬
main binding on all orders of men in the state; and with
regard to future legislatures, the king by a message de¬
clared that all he desired to possess was a suspensive ve¬
to. It is not a little remarkable that Mirabeau concluded
a speech in favour of the absolute veto of the crown, by
declaring that it would be better to live in Constanti¬
nople than in France, if laws could be made without the
royal sanction. He is, however, accused of having caus¬
ed a report to be circulated in Paris that he had opposed
the veto with all his influence ; and, to give credit to the
story, he is said to have quitted the assembly immedi¬
ately before the division, that his vote might not appear
on record against him.
Constitu- The month of August was spent in the debates about
ticn ofthc tjie veto; but in the beginning of September a new con-
legislative stitutionai question was presented to the assembly by one
of its numerous committees. This was, whether the le¬
gislative body should consist of one or of two chambers.
Mounier, Lally-Tollendal, Clermont-Tonnerre, and others,
who were zealous lovers of freedom upon moderate prin¬
ciples, supported eagerly the idea of establishing two in¬
dependent chambers, in imitation of the British constitu¬
tion ; but they were deserted both by the democratic and
the aristocratic parties. The former regarded an upper
house or senate as a refuge for the old aristocracy, or
at least as the cradle of a new one; whilst the nobility
and clergy were afraid lest such an arrangement might
prevent the future re-establishment of the ancient division
into three orders. Accordingly, of a thousand members
who voted, only eighty-nine supported the proposal for
dividing the legislature into two chambers. Soon after
this the king gave his sanction to the important decrees
of the 4th of August, though not without hesitation, and
expressing doubts of the wisdom of some of them in a
letter to the assembly. At the same time were decreed
the inviolability of the person of the monarch, the indi¬
visibility of the throne, and its hereditary descent from
male to male in the reigning family.
State of In consequence of the debates on the subject of the
parties. vet0 an[i tj)at 0f tjle tw.0 chambt rs> t}je min(js 0f parties
had become much excited. Paris wore the same threat¬
ening aspect as it had done in the months of June and of
July preceding; and every thing seemed tending towards
a crisis. The aristocratic party accused their antagonists
ot a design to excite new insurrections ; and the charge
was retorted by circulating a report that a plot for con-
veying the king to Metz was already ripe for execution,
from the period ot the defection of the French guards,
who were now in the pay of the capital, the protection of
the royal family had been intrusted to the militia or na¬
tional guard ot Versailles, together with the regiment of
the gardes du corps, which was composed entirely of gen¬
tlemen. But when the report of the intended flight of the
king was circulated, the French guards desired to be re-
n c E. 55
stored to their ancient employment of attending his per- History,
son, in order to prevent any attempt of the kind. This
idea was eagerly caught hold of in the capital; and, not- 1789-
withstanding every effort which M. de Lafayette could use,
the approach of disturbances became every day more ob¬
vious. The popular party perceived the advantage which
they would derive from placing the assembly and the king
in the midst of that turbulent metropolis, which had given
birth to the Revolution, and upon the attachment of which
they could most securely depend; and every encourage¬
ment was therefore given by the most active leaders of
what was now called the democratic party to the project
of establishing the court at Paris. The ministry were
under no small degree of apprehension ; and the Count
d’Estaing, who commanded the national guard of Ver¬
sailles, requested the aid of an additional regiment. The
regiment of Flanders was accordingly sent for, and its ar¬
rival caused no small degree of anxiety; but every artifice
was instantly employed in order to gain over both officers
and soldiers to the popular cause.
On the first of October the gardes du corps, probably for
the purpose of ingratiating themselves with the newly-
arrived corps, and perhaps to attach them more steadi¬
ly to the royal cause, invited the officers of the regiment
of Flanders to a public entertainment; and several offi¬
cers of the national guard, and others of the military,
were also invited. The entertainment was given in the
opera-house adjoining to the palace, and several loyal toasts
were drunk; but it is asserted, that when the favourite
popular toast, The Nation, was given, the gardes du corps
refused to drink it. In ordinary cases, so trifling a circum¬
stance as this would be regarded as unworthy of notice ;
but such was now the position of affairs, that the most
trivial occurrences became instrumental in producing im¬
portant consequences. The queen, having seen from a
window of the palace the gaiety which prevailed amongst
the military, prevailed on the king, who had just return¬
ed from hunting, to visit them, in company with herself
and the dauphin. The sudden appearance of their ma¬
jesties in the saloon kindled in an instant the ancient en¬
thusiasm of French loyalty. The grenadiers of the regi¬
ment of Flanders, along with the Swiss chasseurs, had
been admitted to the dessert; and they, as well as their
officers, drank the health of the king, queen, and dauphin,
with their swords drawn. The royal family then bowed
to the company and retired. As they withdrew, the mu¬
sic played the favourite air, O Ricard, O mon roi, luni-
vers t'abandonne ; and, in the enthusiasm of the moment,
the national cockade was thrown aside, and white cock¬
ades mounted as fast as they could be made by the la¬
dies of the court. When these circumstances were next
day reported in Paris, with the usual amount of exagge¬
ration, they gave rise to the most violent alarm. The ca¬
pital was at that time suffering all the horrors of famine ;
and in such a situation, the news of a feast enjoyed by
others seldom gives much pleasure to hungry men. A ru¬
mour of an intended flight on the part of the royal fami¬
ly was also got up: it was also asserted that a counter
revolution was speedily to be attempted by force of arms ;
and the people were told that the present scarcity had
been artificially created by the court for the purpose of
reducing them to submission. •
For several days no notice was taken in the assembly
of what had passed at the entertainment given by the
gardes du corps ; but on the 5th of October Petion men¬
tioned it for the first time, and a violent debate ensued,
during which Mirabeau rose and exclaimed, “ Declare
that the king’s person alone is sacred, and I myself will
bring forward an impeachmentthereby alluding to the
conduct of the queen. During this debate at Versailles,
Paris was in the most violent commotion. A vast multitude
56 FRA
History, of women of the lowest rank, with some men in women’s
clothes, having assembled at the Hotel de Ville, they
1789. resolved to proceed instantly to Versailles, to demand
bread from the king and from the National Assembly. La¬
fayette in vain opposed them ; for his soldiers refused to
turn their bayonets against the women. Upon this Sta¬
nislaus Maillard, who had distinguished himself at the
taking of the Bastille, having offered himself as leader of
the insurgents, had the address to prevail on them to
lay aside the arms which they had procured; and about
noon he set out for Versailles, having established as much
order amongst his followers as could well be expected in
such a motley assemblage. The mayor and municipality
of Paris also gave orders to Lafayette instantly to set out
for that place at the head of the national guard.
In the mean time Maillard approached Versailles with
his tumultuous band, which he had arranged in three divi¬
sions, and persuaded to behave with tolerable decency.
The king was hunting in the woods of Mendon when he
was informed of the arrival of a formidable band of wo¬
men calling aloud for bread. “ Alas,” replied he, “ if
I had it, I should not wait to be asked.” Maillard enter¬
ed the assembly, accompanied by a deputation of his fol¬
lowers, to state the object of their journey; and, in order
to pacify them, that body sent a deputation of their own
number along with them to lay their complaints before
the king. His majesty received them with great polite¬
ness, and readily agreed to go into any measures which
could be suggested for the supply of the capital. The
„ report of this gracious conduct produced a great effect
upon the multitude collected around the palace, and they
began to disperse; but they were speedily succeeded by
another crowd not less numerous. A sudden resolution
to fly seems now to have beeti proposed by the court,
as the king’s carriages were brought to the gate of the
palace which communicates with the orangery ; but the
national guard of Versailles refused to allow them to pass,
and the king himself declined to remove, or to permit any
blood to be shed in his cause.
At length Lafayette, with his army, arrived, about ten
o clock at night, and found the assembly in a very unplea¬
sant predicament, their hall and galleries being crowded
by the Parisian fishwomen and others of the mob, who at
every instant interrupted the debates. Lafayette waited
upon the king, and informed him of the proceedings of
the day; planted guards in every direction; and, after a
scanty banquet had been procured for the multitude, pre¬
vailed with the assembly to close their sitting for the
night, for this last part of his conduct Lafayette has been
much censured, and not without reason ; for it could scarce¬
ly be expected that such an immense assemblage of turbu¬
lent characters as were now brought together would pass
the night without disorder. All remained tranquil, however,
until about six in the morning of the 6th, when a great num¬
ber of women and desperate persons rushed towards the
palace, and attempted to force their way into it. Two of
the gardes du corps were killed, and the crowd ascended
the staircase leading to the queen’s apartment, but were
bi a\ ely resisted by a sentinel named Miemandre, who gave
the alarm, and defended his post until he fell covered with
wounds, from which, however, he afterwards recovered.
te i ufhans, reeking with blood, rushed into the chamber
ot the queen, and pierced with bayonets and poniards the
bed whence she had scarcely had time to fly almost wholly
undressed, and, through passages unknown to the mur¬
derers, escaped to seek refuge at the feet of the king,
who, already alarmed, had gone to seek her. The tumult
became every moment more violent, and sudden death
seemed to threaten the royal family ; but Lafayette was
by this time at the head of his troops, whom hTearnesBy
beseeched to save the gardes du corps from massacre; and
N C E.
in this he was happily successful. Some who had been Histor.
taken prisoners were surrounded by the grenadiers of the
French guards, who protected them, and the retreat of the 1789.
whole corps was secured. The crowd was speedily driven
from the different parts of the palace, which they had al¬
ready begun to pillage; and the royal family at length
ventured to show themselves at a balcony. A few voices
now exclaimed Le roi d Paris, the king to Paris ; the shout
became general, and the king, after consulting with La¬
fayette, declared that he had no objection to take up his
residence at Paris, provided he was accompanied by the
queen and his children. When this proposal was re¬
ported to the assembly, the popular leaders expressed
much satisfaction ; they ordered a deputation of a hun¬
dred members to attend the king thither, and voted the
National Assembly inseparable from the king. At two
o’clock his majesty set out a prisoner in the custody of a
turbulent mob ; and thus humbled, the royal captives were
conducted so slowly that a short journey of twelve miles
was protracted during six hours. The king, the queen, and
their children, were lodged in the old palace of the Louvre,
whilst Monsieur went to reside at the Luxembourg; the
city was illuminated, and the evening spent in triumph by
the Parisians. I he removal of the king to Paris was justly
regarded as a triumph by the popular party. The higher
order of nobility considered it as completely ruinous to their
hopes; and many men of talents, such as Mounier, Lally-
Tollendal, and others, now regarded every prospect of at¬
taining constitutional freedom as at an end, seeing the na¬
tional representatives would now be exposed to the insults,
and overawed by the influence, of a turbulent capital.
Several members of the assembly accordingly took refuge
in foreign countries, and used every effort to excite other
nations against France. As the Duke of Orleans had
been regarded as the chief promoter of the late disturb¬
ances, Lafayette waited on him, and insisted on his leav¬
ing the kingdom for a time. The duke, not less timid than
intriguing, felt overawed, and, on pretence of public busi¬
ness, proceeded to England, where he remained during
several months.
On the 19th of October the National Assembly held its First ses
first session in Paris. The king was closely guarded insionofti
his own palace ; and no apparent obstacle now remained assemt)b
to prevent the popular party giving to their country suchTn
a constitution as they might judge expedient. Much,
however, was still to be done, and many difficulties, arising
from the habits of men educated under a different order
of things, yet remained to be overcome. Two days after the
assembly had gone to Paris, a baker was publicly murder¬
ed by the mob, upon a charge of having concealed a quan¬
tity of bread. Whilst the assembly was at a distance,
events of this nature had been little attended to, as the lead-
ing party did not attempt to check those ebullitions of po¬
pular fury, from which they had derived so much advan¬
tage ; but that party had now become all-powerful, and so
flagrant an offence committed against the law was regarded
as an insult to the sovereignty of the National Assembly.
Two leaders of the mob were therefore tried and publicly
executed ; and a severe law was passed, of the nature of our
riot act, authorizing the magistrates to act by military force
against any assemblage of persons who should refuse to
disperse when legally required to do so. The peace of the
capital was thus secured for several months; but in the
country no small degree of anxiety and excitement still
existed. 1 he same suspicious temper which had prevailed
at Paris agitated the provinces with the apprehension of
plots and monopolies of grain. Besides, the nobility in the
country were by no means satisfied with the liberality
which their representatives had evinced upon the 4th of
August, in voting away their privileges and their pro¬
perty ; a circumstance which produced violent jealousies
FRANCE.
57
History, between the peasantry and their landlords, and gradual-
ly conveyed to every corner of the kingdom the political
1789. ferment which had commenced at Paris.
The king- The National Assembly being now in tolerable security,
dom divid- proceeded with the arduous task of framing a free consti-
ed into de- tution for the kingdom of France. The Abbe Sieyes pre¬
payments. gente(j a p]an for dividing the kingdom into eighty-three
departments, of about three hundred and twenty-four
square leagues each, the department into several arron-
dissemens or districts, and the district into communes or
cantons, of about four square leagues in extent. Thus
all* the ancient divisions of the kingdom into govern¬
ments, generalities, and bailiwicks, was in an instant over¬
turned. An attempt was also made to simplify in an equal
degree the relative situation of individuals in civil life,
by a decree which put an end to all distinction of or¬
ders and immunities, as far as privileges were concern¬
ed. A bold and important measure was at the same
time adopted, namely, the confiscation of the whole lands
belonging to the church, for the purpose of supplying
the exigencies of the state. In this transaction all regard
to justice was of course thrown aside. The lands of the
church were as certainly the property of those who then
possessed them, as any entailed estate amongst us is the
property of the holder. In the former the clergy had as
clear a life interest as the heir of entail could by possibi¬
lity possess in the latter. The state may have had a right
to appropriate to itself the church lands upon the death
of the incumbents ; but it might with as much justice have
seized on the enormous revenues of the Duke of Orleans,
as confiscated a single acre belonging to the most useless
abbot in the kingdom. This iniquitous measure was pro¬
posed by the Bishop of Autun, M. de Talleyrand Peri-
gord, who had been promoted to the episcopal bench in an
irregular manner, in order to accomplish this premeditated
robbery. On the property thus confiscated it was resolv¬
ed to issue assignats, which were to be received by the
state in payment of taxes, and of church lands when set
up to sale. A provision was at the same time made for
the national clergy, who were in future to be paid by
the state. On the day following that upon which this im¬
portant measure was adopted, a decree was also passed,
suspending the functions of the different parliaments of the
kingdom.
Fruitless But proceedings in which the interests of so great
a multitude of individuals were involved, could not be
liaments1 carr[e^ ‘n*'° effect without opposition. The parliaments in
particular exerted themselves, by protests and other pub¬
lications, to invalidate the decrees of the assembly; but
these privileged bodies, who had long been accustomed
to contend against the despotic administration of their
country, and who on that account had for ages been ob¬
jects of public favour, now found themselves unable to
resist the mandate of a popular assembly; and, after a
few fruitless struggles, they were all of them under the
necessity of submitting to their fate. The assembly then
proceeded to organize the kingdom by the establishment
of municipalities, and by reforming the jurisprudence of
the country. When the parliament of Paris had been
abolished, however, the second court in that city, called
the Ghatelet, was retained for the purpose of trying such
persons as had become obnoxious by their attachment to
the royal cause; and this tribunal had the spirit to acquit
the Baron de Bezenval, Marshal Broglio, and the Prince
de Lambesc. But having incurred much popular odium
by this acquittal, they sought to regain credit by con¬
demning to death the Marquis de Favres, for a pretended
conspiracy to massacre Lafayette, Bailly, and Neckar, and History,
to convey the king to Peronne.
During the whole of this winter the king had been so D89,1790.
strictly watched by numerous guards placed round his
palace, that in other nations he was naturally considered as
in a state of captivity. To do away with this impression, if
possible, and to make the king appear a voluntary agent in
the measures which had lately been adopted, every effort
was employed to prevail on him to repair to the assem¬
bly, and there, as of his own voluntary motion, to declare
his adherence to the measures in question. For some time,
however, he resisted the proposal to take such a step ; but
at length, on the 4th of February, he suddenly appeared
in the National Assembly, where he complained of the at¬
tempts which had been made to shake the new constitu¬
tion, and declared his wish that it should be universally
known that the monarch and the representatives of the
nation were united, and their wishes the same; that he
would defend the constitutional liberty of the state; and
that, in conjunction with the queen, he would early form
the sentiments of his son in strict accordance with the new
order of things which the circumstances of the empire
had introduced. This declaration dispirited the aristo-
cratical party, and increased the unhappy tendency to look
for aid from foreign countries, which they had always been
too prone to indulge. On the 13th of February, monastic
establishments were suppressed, and their lands confis¬
cated ; but the inmates of these establishments were allow¬
ed pensions for their subsistence, and permitted to conti¬
nue the observance of their monastic vows if they thought
fit to do so.1
An event occurred at this time (March 15th), which
tended in no small degree to increase the odium under
which the old government already laboured. This was
the publication of the Red Book, or list of pensions and
donations granted by the crown. After many entreaties
on the one hand, and the most solemn promises of se¬
crecy on the other, it had been communicated by M.
Neckar to a committee of the assembly; but it afforded
too striking an advantage to the popular party not to be
made use of, and in a few days the minister, to his no small
surprise, found this register publicly sold by every book¬
seller in Paris. He ought not, indeed, to have been sur¬
prised ; and, in fact, the giving up of this list forms one
of the many proofs which the transactions of this period
afford of his utter unfitness for the office which he held.
With much indignation, however, he demanded why the
committee had published it without the permission of the
assembly or the king; but he was told, that as to the as¬
sembly, they were sure of its approbation, and as to the
king, they were not his representatives. To give an idea
of the effect of this publication, it is only necessary to re¬
mark, that, under the short administration of Calonne,
the two brothers of the king had received from the public
treasury, independently of their legitimate income, near¬
ly two millions sterling, and that six hundred thousand
pounds had been granted to one individual, merely be¬
cause he was the husband of Madame de Polignac. Nec-
kar’s opposition to the publication of this register tended in
no small degree to injure his popularity, and the rest of
the ministry began to lose the confidence of the public.
Indeed, fertile causes of alarm prevailed on all sides. The
clergy were attempting to revive in the provinces the an¬
cient animosities between the Catholics and the Protes¬
tants, to whom the late decrees of the assembly were
ascribed. The German princes who possessed property
in the north of France complained loudly of the viola-
the niat,Tin °f tl,ie s,uPPression of the monasteries, the Breton Committee began about this time to assume
pp ation of the Jacobin Club, from the hail belonging to the Jacobin friars at Paris, — v-: u  —
VOL. X.
in which their meetings were now held.
H
58
FRANCE.
1790.
History, tion of their rights by the abolition of the feudal system,
although the National Assembly had voted them a com¬
pensation ; and the most melancholy intelligence was re¬
ceived from the colonies in the West Indies. The as¬
sembly had not recognized the right of the free negroes
to enjoy the same privileges with other citizens, but still
they hesitated to go the length of denying these privi¬
leges. This uncertain conduct produced infinite mischief.
The whites contended with those commonly called people
of colour, who again occasionally stood in opposition to
the free negroes or to the slaves ; and hence it sometimes
happened that at the same time, and in the same colonj^,
not less than three hostile assemblies were held, and
made war upon one another with the most inveterate fury;
and each party found protectors in the National Assem¬
bly, because those who favoured or opposed the existence
of distinctions at home, in general followed out the same
principle in reference to the colonies.
Upon the 14th of May M. de Montmorency having
made known to the National Assembly the preparations
for war in which England and Spain were engaged, this
communication gave rise to the constitutional question,
Who ought to possess the power of declaring’ war and
making peace ? Clermont-Tonnerre, Sarent, Yirieu, and
Dupont, supported the royal prerogative; whilst, on the
other side, the exclusive right of the legislative body to
exercise this important prerogative was supported by
D Aiguillon, Garat, Freteau, Jellot, Charles ‘Lameth, Sil-
lery, Petion, Robespierre, and others. Petion proposed
that the French nation should for ever renounce all idea of
conquest, and confine itself entirely to defensive war; and
this was decreed with universal acclamation. But Mira-
beau at length successfully proposed that the right of de¬
claring war or making peace should be vested in the king
and the legislative body conjunctly; and the decree which
was passed on the subject formed a strange farrago of con¬
tradictions and absurdities. It enjoined the king to guard
the state from all external attacks; but it did not say how
this could be done, without repelling any attack which
might be made upon it. In fact, the king could do no¬
thing without previously informing the National Assembly;
and if that body chanced not to be sitting at the time, he
was bound to let the enemy advance without opposition,
until he had convened the deputies, dispersed over twen¬
ty thousand square leagues, and listened to their metaphy¬
sical quibbles in Paris.
. the 16th of June a very singular farce was enacted
in the assembly. A Prussian refugee, called Anacharsis
Clootz, on an evening sitting, which was generally ill at¬
tended by persons of high rank, introduced to the assem-
bly a number of persons dressed in the habits of all the
different countries that could be thought of; and in a for¬
mal harangue told them that he was come, as the orator of
the human race, at the head of the representatives of all
nations, to^congratulate them upon the formation of their
new constitution. He was answered by the president
with much solemnity, upon which he retired with his
motley group. This fantastical piece of folly, which in
any other country would scarcely have excited a smile
was treated by the assembly in a serious light. Alexan-
der Lameth proposed, that the figures of different nations
exhibited in chains at the feet of Louis XIV. should be
destroyed, as an insult to mankind. M. Lambel, a lawyer,
then proposed the abolition of all hereditary titles; and in
this he was supported by Lafayette, St Fargeau, and the
Viscount de Noailles. ihe decree passed, along with ano¬
ther for suppressing all armorial bearings. No part of
the proceedings of the French National Assembly was re¬
ceived with so much indignation as this. The feudal sys¬
tem had been abolished, and the property of the church
wrested from it, with comparatively little notice; but when
Strange
farce.
those nominal distinctions which antiquity had sanctioned Histoi.
and personal vanity rendered dear were attacked, the sur-
rounding nations instantly took the alarm, and beheld with L
terror the levelling precedent which had thus been esta¬
blished. Nor is it a little remarkable, that of all the king’s
ministers, Neckar alone, a plebeian, a republican born, and
bred in a democracy, advised his majesty to refuse his as¬
sent to the decree, as a violent but useless encroachment
upon the prejudices of a powerful order in the state.
In the mean time, the capital was entirely engrossed with
preparations for a grand festival. M. Bailly having pro¬
posed to commemorate the anniversary of the taking of the
Bastille, his plan was adopted, because it flattered the vani¬
ty of the people', by presenting them with a splendid spec¬
tacle, in commemoration of their own exertions. As the
army had been much disorganized, it was also resolved to
attempt to unite all its branches, as wrell as the whole de¬
partments of the state, in one common attachment to the
new order of things, by collecting into one place deputa¬
tions for the purpose of swearing fidelity to the new con¬
stitution. In the middle of the Champ de Mars an altar
was erected, at which the civic oath was to be taken ; and
around the altar an amphitheatre was erected capable of
containing four hundred thousand spectators. All ranks
of persons, the nobility, clergy, and even ladies, with that
eagerness for novelty which is so peculiar to the French
people, united their efforts ; and crowds of foreigners, as
well as natives, hurried to the capital to be present at this
solemnity, which was denominated the Confederation.
The long-expected 14th of July at length arrived. At six
o clock in the morning the procession wras arranged on the
boulevards, and consisted of the electors of the city of Pa¬
ris, the representatives of the commons, the administrators
of the municipality, a battalion of children with a standard
on which w as inscribed The Hopes of the Nation; depu¬
ties from the troops of France W'herever quartered, and of
every order, along with deputies from all the departments ;
to which were added immense detachments of the military
and of the national guards, with an almost infinite multi¬
tude of drums, trumpets, and musical instruments. The
procession was extremely splendid, as every district had
its peculiar decorations. Hie National Assembly passed
through a triumphal arch ; and the king and queen, attend¬
ed by the foreign ministers, were placed in a superb box.
After a solemn invocation to God, the king approached the
altai, and, amidst the deepest silence, took the prescribed
oath to employ the pow'er delegated to him according to
the constitutional lawr of the state, to maintain the consti¬
tution, and to enforce the execution of the law. The pre¬
sident of the National Assembly then went up to the altar,
and took the civic oath, swearing to be faithful to the na¬
tion, the law, and the king, and to maintain the constitu¬
tion as decreed by the National Assembly, and accepted by
the king; and every member of the assembly standing up,
said, “ That I swear.” Lafayette then advanced and°took
the oath, which the other deputies of the national guards
pionounced after him; and the words were solemnly pro¬
nounced by every individual of this immense assembly.
^eum was ^en sung> and the solemnity concluded.
I he performance was altogether sublime. Never before
perhaps was there such an orchestra, or such an audience;
their numbers baffled the eye to reckon, and their shouts
fell on the ear like the noise of many waters. It is impos-
sio.e to enumerate all the means which were employed to
add splendour to this day; it ended with a general illu¬
mination, and no accident disturbed the public tranquillity.
he assembly now proceeded with the formation of the
constitution ; but the public tranquillity was disturbed by
an unhappy event at Nancy. Most of the officers of the
aimy u'ere unfriendly to the late revolution; and every
means had been employed by them to excite disgust in
FRANCE.
History, the minds of the soldiers. At Nancy, in particular, ne-
cessaries had been denied them, and their pay was kept
1790,1791-back, upon the pretence that such was the will of the
National Assembly. Driven to despair, the regiments in
o-arrison broke out in open mutiny; demanded loudly the
regimental accounts ; and having seised the military chest,
sent a deputation to state their case to the National As¬
sembly. But the officers had anticipated their men, and
prepossessed the minister of war against them, and upon
his representation a decree was passed, authorizing the
commander-in-chief of the province, M. Bouille, to reduce
the mutineers by force. This was no sooner known than
the national guard of Nancy assembled, and sent a depu¬
tation to give a fair statement of facts. But Bouille,
without waiting the result of an explanation, hastened to
Nancy at the head of all the troops he could collect; and
having fallen upon the regiments of Chateauvieux and
Mestre de Camp, put a number to the sword, and took
four hundred prisoners. The news of these events filled
Paris with indignation, and the assembly afterwards re¬
versed its own decrees against the mutineers at Nancy ;
but Bouille could not be punished, because he had only
acted in obedience to authority.
As Neckar was unwilling to go all lengths with the rul¬
ing party, his popularity had for some time been gradu¬
ally declining. He therefore tendered his resignation on
the 4th of September, and immediately thereafter left the
kingdom. He was regretted by no party. Regarded, on
the one hand, as having ruined the kingdom, by the con¬
cessions which he had advised the king to make in favour
of the tiers etat, he was despised, on the other, as a politi¬
cian of lukewarm principles, narrow views, and limited un¬
derstanding. He retired, however, with an unblemished
reputation for integrity. This minister does not seem to
have been capable of penetrating deeply into the charac¬
ters of men, or forming any adequate conception of the
effects of that energy which is called forth in a nation
that attempts to make important changes in its ancient
manners and government; and having formed no just esti¬
mate of the important era about to open on the country
of which he was the minister, he was far from being quali¬
fied to direct or control its affairs amidst the violent con¬
vulsions through which it was destined to pass. Unable
to brook the loss of his popularity, he retired to Switzer¬
land, and there published a work, which, whatever it fails
to establish, clearly shows the honest intentions of the
French king, and the boundless ambition of the popular
leaders, whom he himself had armed with power.
The assembly commenced the year 1791 with a decree
announcing the termination of its session, which was to
take place as soon as it should have finished the discus¬
sion of a list of constitutional articles. In the mean time,
hostile appearances began to be exhibited on the side of
Germany, Spain, Italy, and Savoy, and bodies of troops
advanced towards the French frontiers. The Emperor
Leopold was, however, too cautious to announce his inten¬
tions ; and the king soon communicated a letter which he
had received from that potentate, containing protestations
of amicable dispositions, but adding, that the innovations
occasioned by the decrees of the 4th of August ought to
be done away. The king treated this merely as an official
measure on the part of the emperor, in order that he might
not appear to compensate the claims of certain German
princes on Alsace and Lorraine. But the assembly ex¬
pressed some alarm, and voted an augmentation of the na¬
tional force. On the 20th of February public attention
was roused by a circumstance, which in any other state
ot affairs would have been accounted unimportant. The
king announced to the assembly, that his aunts, the
daughters of Louis XV., had that morning left Paris; but
as he did not apprehend that the existing laws laid them
59
under any restraint in this respect, he had not opposed History,
their departure. After some debate, the assembly agreed v^w/
that the king had judged well; and these princesses were
left to pursue their journey to Rome. The kingdom had
thus been gradually deserted by every branch of the royal
family, excepting the king and his eldest brother; the
panic which had seized the nobility, and induced them to
desert the country and the throne at the moment when they
ought to have stuck firm to both, communicated itself to
those most nearly connected with the latter, who also
abandoned their posts. The assembly, however, continued
its labours with unremitting perseverance and amidst tole¬
rable tranquillity.
Towards the end of the month of March, the National Death of
Assembly was deprived by death of its most gifted mem- Mirabeau.
her, and, in one sense, greatest ornament, Mirabeau. The
death of this extraordinary man had in it something su¬
blime. Though sensible of his approaching dissolution, he
was so far from being intimidated by the prospect, that
he gloried in the name which he was to bequeath to pos¬
terity. Towards the close of his illness his sufferings were
acute ; and at one moment, when deprived of the power
of speech, he wrote on a slip of paper the words of Ham¬
let, “ To die, to sleep; no more.” But a few hours be¬
fore his death the commencement of mortification reliev-
ed-his sufferings, without overclouding the brightness of
his faculties. “ Remove from the bed,” said he, “ all that
sad apparatus. Instead of these useless precautions, sur¬
round me with the perfumes and flowers of spring ; dress
my hair with care; let me fall asleep amidst the sounds
of harmonious music.” Aw'are that recovery was hopeless,
he earnestly implored his attendants to give him lauda¬
num, to put a period to his sufferings. 44 When a sick
man is given over,” said he, 44 and he suffers frightful pains,
can a friendly physician refuse to give him opium ?” His
extremities were already cold, and death was fast doing
its work; but his countenance still retained its animation,
his eye its wonted fire, his mind its energies unimpaired.
Feigning to comply with his request, his attendants gave
him a cup containing what they assured him was opium.
He drank it off calmly, fell back on his pillow, and almost
instantly expired. Endowed with a constitution naturally
robust, his physical powers sunk under the combined waste
of boundless ambition, continual excitement, and exces¬
sive indulgence. At his death he received from his coun¬
trymen marks of respect unparalleled in modern history.
During his short illness his door was besieged by anxious
citizens. A mourning of eight days was decreed by the
assembly, and also a grand procession, which was attend¬
ed by all the public functionaries. He was likewise the
first interred in the new Pantheon, consecrated to receive
the remains of illustrious men; but his ashes were after¬
wards removed, in consequence of pretty conclusive proofs
that he had not been incorruptible.
Such was the end of the first commanding spirit which His cha-
arose amidst the troubles of the Revolution. Mirabeau racier,
was upwards of forty years of age when he entered pub¬
lic life; but even at the opening of the States General his
reputation was already great; and notwithstanding the
disfavour produced by his vices, he was regarded as the
tribune who alone could support the cause of the people
against the designs of the court. Nor were these expec¬
tations disappointed, notwithstanding all the defects inhe¬
rent in his character. He was endowed with splendid ta¬
lents, but impelled by insatiable ambition ; gifted with a
penetrating intellect, but the prey of inordinate passions;
sagacious in the perception of truth, but indifferent as to
the means by which distinction was to be acquired; without
great information derived from study, but unrivalled in
the power of converting that which he possessed to the
best possible account; of matchless tact and promptitude,
60
FRANCE.
History, dauntless intrepidity, and unconquerable energy, but of sus-
pepted integrity, and destitute of either moral or religious
principles. His temperament was too ardent and impetuous
to permit him to master any subject; he studied nothing
profoundly, and owed almost all the writings to which his
name was attached, and many of the most effective speeches
he delivered, to Dumont, Duroverai, and Claviere, who
each assisted him in his labours. His strength lay in a vivid
imagination, a nervous elocution, and an unrivalled power
of seizing hold on the spirit of the assembly which he
addressed, and applying the whole force of his mind to
the point whence the resistance proceeded. It was in
moments of the greatest difficulty that his faculties shone
forth in the greatest splendour; it was when apparently
on the verge of annihilation that he shot forth those thun¬
derbolts by which his ascendency was confirmed. But great
as was his influence in the National Assembly, it fell far
short of what it might have been but for the consequences
of his irregular life ; and the general impression of his total
want of principle, combined with his habitual profusion and
extravagance, made the league which he formed with the
court towards the close of his career be ascribed to venal
and corrupt motives. But in undertaking to heal the
wounds of the Revolution, which he believed himself to
hold as it were in the hollow of his hand, he miscalcu¬
lated his own power, great as it undoubtedly was. The
work of destruction had proceeded too far to be suddenly
stopped; a spirit had been unchained which no magic of
genius or talents could allay, until it had spent its force
in levelling with the dust all old and time-honoured dis¬
tinctions. In the character of a mediator, which he pro¬
posed to assume, he would have most probably sunk into
insignificance ; and, with the loss of his influence as a po¬
pular tribune, his power to re-establish the monarchy,
even upon the basis of constitutional freedom, would also
have vanished. Besides, the instruments with which he
proposed to work were not adapted to his handling; and,
after a short trial, he would have found himself obliged
to throw them aside.1
During the whole of this spring great fear was enter¬
tained that attempts were to be made to bring about a
counter revolution. The emigrant army under the prince
of Conde had assembled on the borders of Alsace. The
king also was surrounded by crowds of nonjuring priests,
and other disaffected persons. The popular jealousy, which
in every period of the Revolution strikingly marked the
French character, was thus kept on the alarm, and soon
vented itself in an aggression on the royal family. On
the 18th of April, when the latter were preparing to re¬
move to St Cloud, there to pass some days, a report was
instantly spread that the king was about to fly from the
country. The carriages were immediately surrounded by
people. Lafayette called out the national guard, but
they refused to act. “ We know,” said they, “ that we
are violating the laws, but the safety of our country is the
first law.” The king instantly went to the assembly, and
with much spirit complained of the insult. He was an¬
swered respectfully by the president, and permitted to
continue his journey. As the royal family had enjoyed
for some time a considerable degree of freedom, the pre¬
sent opportunity was embraced to intimate to foreign
courts his acceptance of the constitution ; and all obnoxi- Histo.
ous persons were dismissed from about his person. But "v.'
the breach of discipline on the part of the national guard 179I
was so much resented by Lafayette, that he resigned
his command, and Paris was thrown into consternation;
nor was it until after universal solicitation that he could
be prevailed upon to resume his functions.
About this time M. de Bouille, to whom the protection Flight
of the frontiers had been intrusted, was reported to be em- the kinj
ploying every means in his power in order to render the
country defenceless. The garrisons were left unprovided ;
disunion spread amongst the national troops, who were
removed from the frontiers, and their place occupied by
foreigners; the emigrants abroad, and their friends at
home, were lying in wait for an opportunity to revolt:
such were the rumours in circulation, when suddenly, on
the 21st of June, it was announced from the Tuilleries,
that the king, the queen, the dauphin, with monsieur and
madame, had quitted the palace and the capital, without
leaving any information of their intention or their route.
The feeling excited by this intelligence among the multi¬
tude was a mixture of rage and consternation. The Na¬
tional Assembly, however, acted with much coolness and
piomptitude. -They instantly took upon themselves the
government, and decreed their sittings permanent; and
they at the same time sent messengers in all directions,
to attempt to lay hold of the fugitives. The latter, how¬
ever, had taken different routes; and monsieur and madame
arrived safely at Brussels on the 23d. The king, queen,
and their children, when they reached a considerable dis¬
tance from the capital, were furnished by M. de Bouille
with a guard of dragoons, under pretence of protecting
treasure for the pay of the troops. But, at the distance
of 156 miles from the capital, and when only a few leagues
from the frontier, they were arrested at St Menehould by
the postmaster, M. Drouet, formerly a dragoon in the re¬
giment of Conde. At half past seven o’clock in the even¬
ing, the carriages having stopped at his house to change
horses, Drouet thought that he recognized the queen, and
imagined that the king’s face resembled the impressions
stamped upon the assignats. The escort of dragoons in¬
creased the suspicion. He suffered them to depart at
eleven o’clock without notice; but taking a companion, he
proceeded by a shorter road to Varennes, and with the as¬
sistance of the postmaster of that place, he gave the alarm •
overturned a carriage on the bridge, which detained the’
royal travellers till the national guard of the place had as¬
sembled ; and succeeded, without bloodshed, in effecting
tlie arrest of the whole party, who were brought back to
Fans by a deputation from the assembly. At his departure,
the king had imprudently left behind him a memorial, in
which he declared that he never had thought any sacri¬
fice too great for the restoration of order; but that the
destruction of the kingdom and the triumph of anarchy
being the only reward of all his efforts, he had thought it
necessary to leave it. He then took a review of the faults
ol the new constitution, with the grievances he had suffer¬
ed, and protested against every thing which he had been
compelled to do during his captivity.
Different parties were variously affected by this ill-con-
ducted and unfortunate flight of the king. A republican
Mirabeau fo’reLw, in the cleSrat^anne^ j*08 : Aliso|1’ i- 240, 241, 242. On his death-bed
and the boundless scope thus afforded to popular ambition “ When T am n * ° 116 diction given to the Revolution,
misfortunes which I have arrested will C pouTinT'all sidls on Fmnce tZ’ ^ h,%“ m-V Worth wiI1 become The
will be unbridled. I have before m_y eyes unbounded presentiments of disaster 1 w^riminal fa,ctl0n whtch now trembles before me
the commons from assuming the name of the National Assembly Since thev ' 6 u S6e l0W much we erred in not preventing
themselves unworthy of it. They have chosen tf^vern the £ instead of^ th^ have "ever ceased to show
rule the country, but a vile taction which will overspread it wiK™ » \bu'.Soon neither he nor they will
played in these remarkable words make us cease to wonder that the death of Mirahcan1’ f ib 26 — The sagacity and foresight dis-
pubhc calamity. ‘ tau5 at this crisis, should have been regarded as a
FRANCE.
History, party had already begun to appear; and during the king’s
absence attempts were made to induce the public at large
to consider the royal authority as no necessary part of a
free constitution. But the minds of men were not yet
altogether prepared for the reception of this doctrine. The
idea, however, having been thus publicly proposed, left
impressions which in time contributed to give rise to im¬
portant events. By far the greater number of the leading
men were at this time convinced that it was impossible
to govern a great empire like France without the assist¬
ance of an hereditary chief; and hence they determined
to pass over the journey to Varennes as quietly as possible,
and to hasten the period when the new constitution should
be completed. But their intentions, as will be seen in
the sequel, were rendered abortive ; and there is reason
to believe that this unfortunate journey was, in its conse¬
quences, instrumental in bringing about the tragedy which
consummated the overthrow of the monarchy. The flight
of the king seemed the signal for a general emigration.
Many of the aristocratic party sent in resignations of their
seats in the National Assembly; and troops were levied
on the frontiers in the name of the king, though he took
care to disavow any connection with such proceedings.
The assembly, in sanctioning the detention of the king
at Varennes, and sending commissioners to bring him back
to Paris, yielded to popular clamour, in opposition proba¬
bly to their better judgment; at all events they commit¬
ted a great political error. The leaders of the democra¬
tic party had every reason to rejoice at the near prospect
of a republic which his flight opened up; the constitu¬
tionalists must have desired to see him established at
Montmedy, and emancipated from the state of thral¬
dom in which he had been so long held by the rabble of
Paris ; many of the royalists were not probably displeased
at the retreat of a king whose concessions had brought
the monarchy to the brink of ruin ; and all the better part
of society must have been gratified at his escape from the
iron despotism of the Parisian mob. But all these con¬
siderations went for nothing in opposition to the clamours
of the multitude; and, either from cowardice or a base
love of popularity, the assembly adopted a course which
their own minds must have disapproved, and which men
of all parties have united to condemn. “ The National
Assembly,” says Napoleon, “ never committed so great
an error as in bringing back the king from Varennes. A
fugitive and powerless, he was hastening to the frontier,
and in a few hours would have been out of the French
territory. What should they have done in these circum¬
stances ? Clearly facilitated his escape, and declared the
throne vacant by his desertion: they would thus have
avoided the infamy of a regicide government, and attain-
61
ed their great object of republican institutions. Instead History,
of this, by bringing him back, they embarrassed them-
selves with a sovereign whom they had no just reason for 1791-
destroying, and lost the inestimable advantage of getting
rid of the royal family without an act of cruelty.”1 In
the truth and justice of these observations history must
acquiesce.
A considerable calm followed the events just related, and Treaty of
France might almost be regarded as in a state of tranquilli- Pilnitz.
ty. It contained, indeed, parties who entertained much ani¬
mosity against each other, and man}' citizens had withdrawn
to foreign countries ; but the general peace was not disturb¬
ed, and moderate men hoped that prosperity would succeed
to the late agitations. But this calm was delusive; and in
the midst of it projects were formed which were destined
afterwards to prove fatal to the peace of France and Eu¬
rope. Towards the close of summer the famous meeting
at Pilnitz in Saxony took place between the emperor and
the king of Prussia, and led to the celebrated declaration,
which was conceived in the following terms: “ Their
majesties, the emperor, and king of Prussia, having con¬
sidered the representations of monsieur, brother of the
king, and of his excellency the Count d’Artois, declare
conjointly that they consider the situation of the king of
France as a matter of common interest to all the Euro¬
pean sovereigns. They hope that the reality of that in¬
terest will be duly appreciated by the other powers, whose
assistance they will invoke, and that in consequence they
will not decline to employ their forces conjointly with
their majesties, in order to put the king of France in a
situation to lay the foundation of a monarchical govern¬
ment, conformable alike to the rights of sovereigns and
the wellbeing of the French nation. In that case the
emperor and king are resolved to act promptly with the
forces necessary to attain their common end. In the
mean time they will give the requisite orders for the troops
to hold themselves in immediate readiness for active ser¬
vice.” Such was the celebrated declaration of Pilnitz;
but, either from a cooling of zeal upon the part of the
allied sovereigns, or a sense of the danger which the king
of France wmuld have run, after he had, in consequence
of the flight to Varennes, become a prisoner in the hands
of the assembly, it remained without effect. It was alleged
by the French, however, that there w7as a treaty as well
as a declaration of Pilnitz, or, in other words, that several
secret articles, stipulating the partition of some of the fair¬
est provinces of France, were at the same time agreed to
by the allied sovereigns; but no sufficient evidence has
ever been produced to substantiate the allegation, and it
is now indeed generally agreed that there was no such
thing as a treaty of Pilnitz.2 * * * *
1 Napoleon’s Mtmoires, vol. i. p. 1.
2 The following paper, which has been repeatedly published as the copy of a treaty concluded and signed at Pavia, is generally un¬
derstood to have been identical with, and is therefore known by the name of, the treaty of Pilnitz. We have already stated that its
authenticity is more than questionable. It may have been fabricated by the National Assembly, to unite all parties against the foreign
powers which threatened France with invasion. But, in relating the events of this revolution, it is as necessary, for the purpose of
rendering the actions of men comprehensible, to give an account of what was at the time believed to have occurred, as it is to ascer¬
tain what was actually true. The treaty in question bears, “ That his majesty the emperor will take all that Louis XIV. conquered
in the Austrian Netherlands, will give it to his serene highness the elector palatine; that he will preserve for ever the property and
possession of Bavaria, to form in future an indivisible mass with the domains and hereditary possessions of the house of Austria ; that
the Archduchess Maria Christina shall be, conjointly with her nephew the Archduke Charles, put into hereditary possession of the
duchy of Lorraine; that Alsace shall be restored to'the empire; that if the Swiss Cantons consent to accede to the coalition, it may
be proposed to them to annex to the Helvetic league the bishopric of Porentrui, the defiles of Franche Comte, and even those of Tyrol,
with the neighbouring bailiwicks, as well as the territory of Versoy, which intersects the Pays de Vaud ; that should his majesty the
king of Sardinia subscribe to the coalition, La Bresse, Le Bugey, and the Pays de Gex, usurped by France from Savoy, shall be
restored to him; that in case his Sardinian majesty can make a grand diversion, he shall be suffered to take Dauphine, to belong to
him for ever, as the nearest descendant of the ancient dauphins ; that the king of Spain shall have Roussillon and Bearn, with the
island of Corsica, and also the French part of the island of St Domingo ; that the empress of all the Russias shall take upon herself
the invasion of Poland, and at the same time retain Kaminiech, with that part of Podolia which borders on Moldavia; that the em¬
peror shall oblige the porte to give up Choczim, as well as the small forts of Servia, and those on the river Lurna; that the king of
Prussia, by means of the above-mentioned invasion of Poland, shall make an acquisition of Thorn and Dantzic, and unite the pala¬
tinate on the east to the confines of Silesia; that the king of Prussia shall besides acquire Lusace, and the elector of Saxony shall in
exchange receive the rest of Poland, and occupy the throne as hereditary sovereign ; that the king of Poland shall abdicate the throne
62
History
FRANCE.
1791.
The new
constitu¬
tion.
In the mean time, the National Assembly was hasten¬
ing towards the completion of the new constitution, which
was finished on the 3d of September, and immediately pre¬
sented to the king. It begins with a declaration of the rights
of man ; this is followed by the provisions regarding other
matters. According to it, all men are born, and remain,
free and equal in rights; and social distinctions can only
be founded on common utility. The end of all political as¬
sociations is the preservation of the natural and imprescrip¬
tible rights of man ; and these rights are liberty, property,
security, and resistance against oppression. The principle
of sovereignty resides essentially in the nation ; and no
body of men, no individual, can exercise an authority which
does not emanate expressly from that source. Liberty
consists in the power of doing every thing except that
which is hurtful to another; and hence the exercise of the
natural rights of every man has no other bounds than
those which are necessary to ensure to the other mem¬
bers of society the enjoyment of the same rights ; bounds
which can only be determined by law. The lav/ has a
right to forbid those actions alone which are hurtful to
society. Whatever is not forbidden by the law cannot be
hindered ; and no person can be constrained to do that
which the law does not ordain. The law is the expression
of the general will; and all the citizens have a right to con¬
cur personally, or by their representatives, in the formation
of the law; it ought therefore to be the same for all, whe¬
ther it protect or whether it punish. All citizens being
equal in the eye of the law, are equally admissible to dignities,
places, and public offices, according to their capacity, and
without any other distinction than that of their virtue and
their talents. No man can be accused, arrested, or detained,
except in cases determined by the law, and according to
the forms which the law has prescribed. Those who so¬
licit, dispatch, execute, or cause to be executed, arbitrary
orders, ought to be punished; but every citizen who is
summoned or seized in virtue of the law ought to obey
instantly, otherwise he becomes culpable by resistance.
The law ought to establish such punishments only as are
strictly and evidently necessary; and no person can be
punished except in virtue of a law established and pro¬
mulgated prior to the offence, and legally applied. Every
man being presumed innocent till such time as he has
been declared guilty, if it shall be deemed absolutely ne¬
cessary to arrest a man, every kind of rigour employed,
not necessary to secure his person, ought to be severely
repressed. No person shall be molested for his opinions,
even such as are religious, provided the manifestation of
those opinions does not disturb the public order establish¬
ed by the law. The free communication of thought and of
opinion is one of the most precious rights of man. Every
citizen, therefore, may freely speak, write, and publish his
sentiments; subject, however, to answer for the abuse of
this liberty in the cases determined by the law. The gua¬
rantee ol the rights of men and citizens involves a neces¬
sity of public force; but this force is then instituted for
all, and not for the particular utility of those to whom it
is confided. For the maintenance of the public force, and
oi the expenses ol the administration, a common contribu-
t!on .j lnchspensably necessary; but this contribution
should be equally divided amongst all the citizens in pro¬
portion to their abilities. Every citizen has a right, by
imse or y ns lepresentatives, to decide concerning
the necessity of the public contribution; to consent to it
freely; to look after the employment of it; and to deter¬
mine the quantity, the distribution, the collection, and du¬
ration. Society has a right to demand from every public Histor
agent an account of his administration. Every society in "Y''
which the guarantee of rights is not assured, nor the se-
paration of powers determined, has no constitution. Pro¬
perty being a right inviolable and sacred, no person can
be deprived of it, except when the public necessity, le¬
gally ascertained, shall evidently require it, and on con¬
dition of a just and previous indemnification.
The constitution guarantees, as natural and civil rights,
first, that all citizens are admissible to places and employ¬
ments, without any distinction but that of ability and vir¬
tue ; secondly, that all contributions shall be divided equal¬
ly among all the citizens, in proportion to their means;
thirdly, that the same crimes shall be subject to the same
punishments, without any distinction of persons. The con¬
stitution, in like manner, guarantees, as natural and civil
rights, liberty to all men, of going, staying, or departing,
without being arrested or detained, except according to the
forms prescribed by the constitution ; liberty to all men, of
speaking, writing, printing, and publishing their thoughts,
without having their writings subjected to any examina¬
tion or inspection before publication, and of exercising the
religious worship to which they are attached; liberty to
all citizens, of assembling peaceably, and without arms,
complying with the laws of police ; liberty of addressing
to all constitutional authorities petitions individually sign¬
ed ; and the inviolability of property, or a just and previous
indemnity for that of which public necessity, legally prov¬
ed, shall require the sacrifice. A system of public instruc¬
tion shall be created and organized, common to all citi¬
zens, gratuitous with regard to those parts of tuition in¬
dispensable for all men, and of which the establishment
shall be gradually distributed, in a proportion combined
with the division of the kingdom.
The kingdom is one and indivisible; its territory for
administration is distributed into eighty-three depart¬
ments, each department into districts, each district into
cantons. Those are French citizens who are born in France
of a French father; who, having been born in France of a
foreign father, have fixed their residence in the kingdom ;
who, having been born in a foreign country, of a F rench
father, have returned to settle in France, and have taken
the civic oath ; and, lastly, who, having been born in a fo¬
reign country, being descended in whatever degree from
a Frenchman or Frenchwoman, have left their country
from religious motives, come to reside in France, and
taken the civic oath, ihe right of French citizenship is
lost, first, by naturalization in a foreign country; secondly,
by being condemned to penalties which involve the civic
degradation, provided the person condemned be not rein¬
stated ; thirdly, by a sentence of contumacy, provided the
sentence be not annulled; fourthly, by initiation into any
foreign order or body which supposes either proofs of no-
binty or distinctions of birth, or requires religious vows.
The law considers marriage as only a civil contract.
Ihe sovereignty is one, indivisible, unalienable, and im¬
prescriptible, and it belongs to the nation ; no section of
t ie people, and no individual, can arrogate the exercise of
it. The nation, from which alone flow all powers, cannot
exercise them but by delegation. The French constitu¬
tion is. representative, and the representatives are the
egislative body and the king. The National Assembly,
orming the legislative body, is permanent, and consists of
one chamber only. It shall be formed by new elections
every two years. The legislative body cannot be dissolv-
e by the king. The number of representatives to the
duke of an°the Rut^whowiirbe thffa^fof^L^ceT the iJer^ffita^ kSf ^ ^ younSest son of the grand
Leopold, I rince Nassau, Count Florida Blanca, and Bischoffswerder. 1 ° ^ ^ Llthuania‘” And thi* is signed
FRANCE.
63
History.
legislative body shall be seven hundred and forty-five, on
account of the eighty-three departments of which the
kingdom is composed, and independently of those who
may be granted to the colonies. The representatives shall
be distributed among the departments, according to the
three proportions of land, of population, and of the direct
contributions or taxes. Of the seven hundred and forty-
five representatives, two hundred and forty-seven are at¬
tached to the land. Of these, each department shall no¬
minate three, excepting the department of Paris, which
shall nominate only one. Two hundred and forty-nine
representatives are attached to the population. The total
mass of the active population of the kingdom is divided
into two hundred and forty-nine parts, and each depart¬
ment nominates as many of the deputies as it contains
parts of the population. Two hundred and forty-nine re¬
presentatives are attached to the direct contributions.
The sum total of the direct contributions of the kingdom
is likewise divided into two hundred and forty-nine parts,
and each department nominates as many deputies as it
pays parts of the contribution.
In order to form a Legislative National Assembly, the
active citizens shall convene, in primary assemblies, every
two years in the cities and cantons. The primary assem¬
blies shall meet of full right on the first Sunday of March,
if not convoked sooner by the public officers appointed to
do so by the law. To be an active citizen, it is necessary
to be a Frenchman, or to have become a Frenchman; to
have attained twenty-five years complete; to have resided
in the city or the canton during the time determined by the
law; to pay in any part of the kingdom a direct contribution
or tax, at least equal to the value of three days’ labour, and
to produce the acquittance; not to be in a menial capacity,
namely, that of a servant receiving wages ; to be inscribed
in the municipality of the place of his residence in the
list of the national guards; to have taken the civic oath.
The primary assemblies shall name electors in the pro¬
portion of the number of active citizens residing in the
city or canton. There shall be named one elector to the
assembly or not, according as there shall happen to be
present a hundred active citizens. There shall be named
two when there are present from a hundred and fifty-one
to two hundred and fifty, and so on in this proportion. The
electors named in each department shall convene in order
to choose the number of representatives whose nomination
shall belong to their department, and a number of substi¬
tutes equal to the third of the representatives. The as¬
semblies shall be held of full right on the last Sunday of
March, if they have not been before convoked by the
public officers appointed to do so by law. All active citi¬
zens, whatever be their state, profession, or contribution,
may be chosen representatives of the nation; excepting,
nevertheless, the ministers and other agents of the exe¬
cutive power, and other persons named. The members
of the legislative body may be re-elected to a subsequent
legislature, but not till after an interval of one legislature.
No active citizen can enter or vote in an assembly if he be
armed. The representatives shall meet on the first Mon¬
day of May, in the place of the sittings of the last legisla¬
ture.
The royalty is indivisible, and delegated hereditarily to
the race on the throne from male to male, by order of pri¬
mogeniture, to the perpetual exclusion of women and their
descendants. Nothing is prejudged as to the effect of re¬
nunciations in the race on the throne. The person of the
king is inviolable and sacred; his only title is King of the
French. If the king put himself at the head of an army,
and direct the forces of it against the nation, or if he do not
oppose, by a formal act, any such enterprise undertaken in
his name, he shall be held to have abdicated. If the king,
having gone out of the kingdom, do not return to it, after
an invitation by the legislative body, within the space History,
which shall be fixed by the proclamation, and which can-
not be less than two months, he shall be held to have ab- 1791-
dicated the royalty. After abdication, express or legal,
the king shall be in the class of citizens, and may be ac¬
cused and tried like them for acts posterior to his abdica¬
tion. The nation makes provision for the splendour of.
the throne by a civil list, of which the legislative body shall
fix the amount at the commencement of each reign, for
the whole duration of that reign. The king is a minor till
the age of eighteen complete ; and during his minority
there shall be a regent of the kingdom. The regency
belongs to the relation of the king next in degree accord¬
ing to the order of succession to the throne, who has at¬
tained the age of twenty-five, provided he be a French¬
man resident in the kingdom, and not presumptive heir
to any other crown, and have previously taken the civic
oath. The presumptive heir shall bear the name of Prince
Royal. The members of the king’s family called to the
eventual succession of the throne shall add the denomi¬
nation of French Prince to the name which shall be given
them in the civil act proving their birth ; and this name can
neither be patronymic nor formed of any of the qualifica¬
tions abolished by the present constitution. The denomi¬
nation of prince cannot be given to any individual, and shall
not carry with it any privilege or exception to the com¬
mon right of all French citizens. To the king alone be¬
long the choice and dismission of ministers.
The members of the present National Assembly, and of
the subsequent legislatures, the members of the tribunal
of appeal, and those who shall be of the high jury, can¬
not be advanced to the ministry, nor receive any place,
gift, pension, allowance, or commission of the executive
power, or its agents, during the continuance of their func¬
tions, or during two years after ceasing to exercise them ;
and the same shall be observed respecting those who shall
only be inscribed on the list of high jurors as long as their
inscription shall continue. No order of the king can be
executed if it be not signed by him, and countersigned
by the minister or compti-oller of the department.’ In no
case can the written or verbal order of the king shelter a
minister from responsibility.
The constitution delegates exclusively to the legislative
body the powers and functions following: To propose
and decree laws, as the king can only invite the legisla¬
tive body to take a subject into consideration ; to fix the
public expenses; to establish the public contributions; to
determine the nature of them, the amount of each sort,
the duration, mode of collection, and so forth. War
cannot be resolved on except by a decree of the Na¬
tional Assembly, passed on the formal and necessary pro¬
position of the king, and sanctioned by him. During the
whole course of war the legislative body may require the
king to negotiate peace ; and the king is bound to yield
to this requisition. It belongs to the legislative body to
ratify treaties of peace, alliance, and commerce ; and no
treaty shall have effect but by this ratification.
The deliberations of the legislative body shall be pub¬
lic, and the minutes of the sittings shall be printed. The
legislative body may, however, upon any occasion form
itself into a general committee. The project of a decree or
law shall be read thrice, at three intervals, the shortest of
which cannot be less than eight days. The decrees of the
legislative body are presented to the king, who may re¬
fuse them his consent. In case of a refusal of the royal
consent, that refusal is only suspensive. When the two
following legislatures shall successively present the same
decree in the same terms in which it was originally con¬
ceived, the king shall be deemed to have given his sanc¬
tion. The king is bound to express his consent or refu¬
sal to each decree within two months after its presenta-
64
FRANCE.
1791.
History, tion. No decree to which the king has refused his con¬
sent can be again presented to him by the same legisla¬
ture.
The supreme executive power resides exclusively in the
hands of the king. The king is the supreme head of the
land and sea forces. He names ambassadors, and the
other agents of political negotiations. He bestows the
command of armies and fleets, and the ranks of marshal
of France and admiral: he names two thirds of the rear-
admirals, one half of the lieutenant-generals, major-gene¬
rals, captains of ships, and colonels of the national gen¬
darmerie : he names a third of the colonels and lieute¬
nant-colonels, and a sixth of the lieutenants of ships: he
appoints, in the civil administration of the marine, the di¬
rectors, the comptrollers, the treasurers of the arsenals,
the masters of the works, the under-masters of civil build¬
ings, half of the masters of administration, and the under¬
masters of construction. He appoints the commissaries
of the tribunals; as also the superintendents in chief of
the management of indirect contributions, and the ad¬
ministration of national domains. He superintends the
coinage of money, and appoints officers intrusted with
this superintendence in the general commission and the
mints. The effigy of the king is struck upon all the coinage
of the kingdom. There is in each department a superior
administration, and in each district a subordinate admini¬
stration. The administrators are specially charged with
distributing the direct contributions, and with superin¬
tending the money arising from the contributions, and the
public revenues in their territory. The king has the right
of annulling such acts of the administrators of department
as are contrary to the law or the orders transmitted to
them; and he may, in case of obstinate disobedience, or
of their endangering, by their acts, the safety or peace of
the public, suspend them from their functions. The king
alone can interfere in foreign political connections. Every
declaration of war shall be made in these terms : “ By the
king of the French, in the name of the nation.” The judi¬
cial power can in no case be exercised either by the le¬
gislative body or the king. Justice shall be gratuitously
administered by judges chosen from time to time by the
people, and instituted by letters-patent of the king, who
cannot refuse them. The public accuser shall be nomi¬
nated by the people. The right of citizens to determine
disputes definitively by arbitration, cannot receive any in¬
fringement from the acts of the legislative power. In cri¬
minal matters, no citizens can be judged except on an ac¬
cusation received by jurors, or decreed by the legislative
body in the case in which it belongs to it to prosecute the
accusation. After the accusation shall be admitted, the
facts shall be examined and declared by the jurors. The
person accused shall have the privilege of challenging
twenty jurors, without assigning any reason. The jurors
who declare the fact shall not be fewer than twelve. The
application of the law shall be made by the judges. The
process shall be public; and the person accused cannot
be denied the aid of counsel. No man acquitted by a
legal jury can be apprehended or accused on account of
the same fact.
For the whole kingdom there shall be one tribunal of
appeal, established near the legislative body. A high na¬
tional court, composed of members of the tribunal of ap¬
peal and high jurors, shall take cognizance of the crimes
of ministers, and the principal agents of the executive
power; and of crimes which attack the general safety of
the state, when the legislative body shall pass a decree of
accusation. It shall not assemble except on the proclama¬
tion of the legislative body, and at the distance of thirty
thousand toises at least from the place of meeting of the
legislative body.
The national guards do not form a military body, or an
institution in the state ; they are the citizens themselves Hist ?,
called to assist the public force. Officers are chosen for ''—'v
a time, and cannot again be chosen till after a certain in- H9
terval of service as privates. None shall command the
national guard of more than one district. All the parts of
the public force employed for the safety of the state from
foreign enemies are under the command of the king.
Public contributions shall be debated and fixed every
year by the legislative body, and cannot continue in force
longer than the last day of the following session, if they
are not expressly renewed. Detailed accounts of the ex¬
pense of the ministerial departments, signed and certified
by the ministers or comptrollers-general, shall be printed
and published at the commencement of the sessions of
each legislature; and the same shall be done with the
statements of the receipt of the different taxes, and all
the public revenues.
The French nation renounces the undertaking of any
war with the view of making conquests, and will never
employ its forces against the liberty of any people. And
it is also declared, that the nation has the imprescriptible
right of changing its constitution ; but considering that it
is more conformable to the national interest to employ
only, by means provided in the constitution itself, the right
of reforming those articles of it of which experience shall
have shown the inconveniences, it is further decreed, that
the proceeding by an assembly of revision shall be regu¬
lated in the form following: When three successive legis¬
latures shall have expressed an uniform wish for the change
of any constitutional article, the revision demanded shall
take place. The next legislature, and the following, can¬
not propose the reform of any constitutional article. The
fourth legislature, augmented by two hundred and forty-
nine members, chosen in each department, by doubling
the ordinary number which it furnishes in proportion to
its population, shall form the assembly of revision.
The French colonies and possessions in Asia, Africa,
and America, though they form part of the French em¬
pire, are not included in this constitution.
With respect to the laws made by the National As¬
sembly which are not included in the act of constitution,
and those anterior laws which it has not altered, they shall
be observed as long as they are not revoked or modified
by the legislative power.
On the 13th of September the king announced, by a Constiti
letter to the president of the assembly, his acceptance of tion ac-
this constitution, which, however defective in some points, cepted b
is based upon solid principles of liberty; and the eventthe
was ordered to be notified to all the foreign courts, whilst
the assembly decreed a general amnesty with respect to
the events of the Revolution. On the following day the
king repaired in person to the National Assembly; and
being conducted to a chair of state prepared for him by
the side of the president, he signed the constitutional act,
and took an oath to maintain it. He then withdrew, and
was attended back to the Tuilleries by the whole assem¬
bly, with the president at their head. On the 30th of
September, the National, which has since been known by
the name of the Constituent Assembly, dissolved itself,
and gave place to the Legislative National Assembly,
which had been elected according to the rules prescribed
in the new constitution.
01 the character and labours of the Constituent Assembly, Cbaracte
which contained many men of distinguished talents, andandkbou
not a few of eminent virtue, it is by no means easy, even at of the Co
this distance of time, to form an accurate and altogether sbtuent
dispassionate estimate. Called together at a period of un- i^sse111^
exampled difficulty and distress; intrusted with the perfor¬
mance of duties altogether new to its members; required
at once to regenerate a superannuated monarchy and to
lay the foundations ol constitutional liberty; and placed in
FRANCE.
65
History, the midst of a famishing people, resolved to cast off their
chains, but not yet prepared for the enjoyment of freedom ;
1791- it was expected to reform every abuse which time and mis-
government had engendered, to renovate an empire gray
with feudal corruption, and to direct into safe channels the
recently-excited energy of the people. The convocation
of the States General formed the last resource of the mo¬
narchy overburdened by its own vices, and the first hope
of the nation groaning under the pressure of accumulated
evils ; and to this body, therefore, the court looked for help
in overcoming the difficulties with which it was beset, at
the expense of some concessions in favour of general li¬
berty, and the people for an entire re-organization of the
system of government on a footing adapted to their opi¬
nions and their wants. How it accomplished the task thus
imposed on it, is now matter of experience. That much still
remains in dispute cannot be denied ; but time, the great
expositor of truth, has nevertheless unfolded its errors and
illustrated its virtues.
The principal evils which afflicted France wTere removed
by this assembly. Liberty of religious worship, which had
been but imperfectly provided for in 1787, was secured in
its fullest extent; torture and the punishment of the wheel
were abolished ; trial by jury, publicity of criminal proceed¬
ings, the examination of witnesses in presence of the accus¬
ed, and counsel for his defence, were fixed by law; the an¬
cient parliaments, the fastnesses of prejudice and partiality,
were suppressed, and one uniform system of criminal juris¬
prudence established ; lettres de cachet were abolished for
ever ; the exemption from taxation of the nobility and the
clergy was extinguished, and an equal system of contribu¬
tion established throughout the kingdom ; the most oppres¬
sive imposts, as those on salt and tobacco, together with the
taille and the tithes, were abrogated ; and the privileges of
nobility, with the feudal burdens, were abolished. To the
Constituent Assembly France has also been indebted for
the institution of national guards ; the opening of the army
to the courage and ability of every class of society; and
the division of landed property amongst the middle ranks,
one of the greatest benefits which can be conferred upon
a nation. 1 he same body also had the merit of authorita¬
tively recognising and proclaiming the natural, social, and
civil rights of man ; of establishing that equality in the eye
of the law without which there can be no true liberty ; and
of rendering the whole genius, talent, and virtue of the na¬
tion available to the public service in all its departments.
These were no doubt mighty changes, and their beneficial
effects were demonstrated even amidst all the calamities and
convulsions which ensued. They enabled the nation to
bear up and prosper under a vast accumulation of evils, any
one of which would have exhausted the national strength
under the monarchy ; under public bankruptcy, enormously-
depreciated assignats, civil divisions, political anarchy, the
reign of terror, the wars of Napoleon, foreign invasion, and
subjugation by Europe. In a word, by means of these re¬
forms, F ranee has at length, in spite of every obstacle, be¬
come great, glorious, and free ; the terror of the despots
of continental Europe, and one of the greatest bulwarks of
modern civilization.
The errors of the Constituent Assembly, though scarce¬
ly of less magnitude, have happily not produced conse¬
quences equally lasting. By destroying in a few months
the constitution of a thousand years, they set afloat the
ideas of men, and spread the fever of innovation through¬
out the empire ; by confiscating the property of the church,
they established a precedent for injustice, which was but
too closely followed in subsequent years ; by establishing
the right of universal suffrage, and conferring on the na¬
tion the nomination to all offices of trust, they conceded
t ie exercise of powers incompatible with the monarchical
form of government they themselves had established, and
VOL. x.
which the people were as yet incapable of exercising with History,
advantage. They diminished the influence of the crown -y-O
to such a degree as to render it incapable of controlling the 179L
people; they limited the royal negative in such a man¬
ner as to render it nearly inoperative ; and they thus left
the kingdom a prey to the factions to which the recent
changes had unavoidably given birth. Lastly, by exclud¬
ing themselves from the Legislative Assembly (and this
was their greatest error), they deprived France of the be¬
nefit of their experience, and permitted their successors
to commence the same circle of experimental innovation, to
the extreme hazards of which they had latterly been fully
awakened. But all these were either reparable or termi¬
nable evils, which, though severely felt for a season, have,
in the natural course of events, been either cured or end¬
ed ; and, fortunately for France, the good seed sown by
this body is still producing its fruits, whilst the tares scat¬
tered amongst it have at length withered and died,
l he new assembly was opened by the king in person on The Legis-
the 7th of October, in a speech recommending unanimity lative As-
and confidence between the legislative and the executive sembly.
powers, which speech was received with unbounded applause.
The character of the men who composed the new National
Assembly was inauspicious to the court. At the commence¬
ment of the Revolution, the great body of the people at a
distance from the capital felt little interested in those pro¬
jects of freedom which occupied the more enlightened but
more turbulent inhabitants of Paris. But they had gra¬
dually been roused from their lethargy. The variety of
powers conferred upon the people at large by the new con¬
stitution, and the multiplicity of offices of which it gave
them the patronage, had kindled in the minds of men a
sense of their own importance, and a desire to intermeddle
in public affairs. This attached them to the new order of
things. The love of power, which is perhaps the least dis¬
guised passion in the human heart, and equally strong in the
breast of the meanest and most elevated of mankind, had
thus, under the name of liberty, become a leading passion
throughout tire empire; and they who flattered"it most,
and were loudest in praise of the rights of the people, be¬
came speedily the favourites of the public. The new Na¬
tional Assembly was chiefly composed of country gentle¬
men of principles highly democratic, or of men of letters
who had published popular books or conducted periodical
publications ; and as the members of the Constituent As¬
sembly had by their own act excluded themselves from
holding seats in the Legislative Assembly, the members of
the latter entertained but little regard for a constitution
which they themselves had not framed, and which was not
protected by the sanction of antiquity.
When this assembly first met, it showed much attention
to formalities, and an extreme jealousy of the ministers of
the crown ; and as the treaty of Pilnitz now began to be ru¬
moured abroad, France was thrown into a state of great
anxiety for the safety of its newly-acquired liberties. Al¬
though the Prussians and Germans still continued to tem¬
porize, Sweden and Russia had entered into strict engage¬
ments to restore the old despotism of France. Accordingly,
on the 9th of November a decree was passed, by which it
was provided that the emigrants who, after the first of Janu¬
ary 1792, should be found assembled in a hostile manner be¬
yond the frontiers, should be considered as guilty of a con¬
spiracy, and suffer death ; and that the French princes and
public functionaries who should not return before that pe¬
riod, should be punishable in the same manner, and their
property forfeited during their lives. On the 18th a num¬
ber of severe decrees were also passed against such of the
ejected clergy as still refused to take the civic oath. But to
all these the king opposed his veto or negative. The mode¬
rate party, who were attached to the constitution, rejoiced
at this, as a proof of the freedom of the sovereign ; but,
66 FRANCE.
History, on the other hand, it raised a violent clamour, and became the appearances of peace. To these, and probably also to Histoi.
the means of exciting new suspicions against the court, the undecided character of Louis, M. Delessart, minister
7 , 792. ^kout tjme answers from the different foreign courts of foreign affairs, fell a sacrifice. He was accused by Bris- *792
to the notification sent them of the king having accept- sot of not having given timely notice to the National As-
ed the new constitution were received. These were gene- sembly of the dispositions of foreign powers, and of not
rally conceived in a style of great caution, and avoided pressing proper measures for securing the honour and safety
employing language calculated to produce irritation. The of the nation ; a decree of accusation was passed against
emperor even prohibited all assemblages of emigrants him in his absence; and having been apprehended, tried
within his states; and Louis intimated to the assembly by the high court at Orleans, and convicted, he was exe-
that he had declared to the elector of Treves, that unless
the emigrants ceased before the 15th of January to make
hostile preparations within his territories, he would be con¬
sidered as the enemy of France. All this, however, did
not serve to allay suspicion ; for although the different fo¬
reign courts had openly declared pacific intentions, yet the
French emigrants boldly asserted that all Europe was ac¬
tually arming in their favour, and accordingly ceased not
to solicit such of their friends as still remained within the
country to leave it and join them in what they called the
royal cause. Placed between a republican party which was
gradually gathering strength, and an aristocratical party
which was rousing Europe to arms against a nation of which
he was the constitutional chief, with a combination of princes
suspected of wishing to seize upon part of his dominions,
the unhappy king stood in a situation which would have
perplexed the most skilful statesman ; and it is no proof
of incapacity that he fell a sacrifice to circumstances which
might have overwhelmed any ordinary measure of human
sagacity. Addresses were crowding into the assembly dis¬
approving the conduct of the court. M. Montmorin re¬
signed ; M. Delessart succeeded him; and M. Cahier de
Gerville became minister of the interior. M. Duportail
resigned also, and was succeeded as minister of war by M.
de Narbonne. In the month of November M. Bailly’s may¬
oralty terminated; and the once popular Lafayette ap¬
peared as a candidate for the office. But he was success¬
fully opposed by M. Petion, a declared republican, who
was elected mayor by a great majority.
The Feuil- At this period the moderate men, friends of the consti-
Jants. tution, attempted to counteract the influence of the Jaco¬
bin Club by the establishment of a similar one. This new
club derived its name from the vacant convent of the Feuil-
lants, in which it assembled ; and the most active members
of the Constituent Assembly belonged to it, such as MM.
d’Andre, Barnave, the two Lameths, Duport, Rabaud,
Sieyes, Chapelier, Thouret, Labord, Talleyrand, Montes¬
quieu, Beaumetz, and others. But the Jacobins contrived
to excite a riot at the place of their meeting, which was in
the vicinity of the hall of the National Assembly ; and this
afforded a pretext for applying to the assembly for the re¬
moval of the new club. The assembly complied with the
request, and thereby evinced its favourable disposition to¬
wards the Jacobins.
State of At the close of the year 1791 the kingdom of France
France, -was by no means in a prosperous state. The public re¬
venue had fallen far short of the expenditure; the emi¬
grant nobility had carried out of the kingdom the greater
part of the current coin; and a variety of manufacturers,
who depended upon their ostentatious luxury, were redu¬
ced to much distress. The dispositions of foreign courts
appeared at best doubtful. The year 1792, however, open¬
ed with a delusive prospect of tranquillity. The German
princes seemed to be satisfied with the mode of compensa¬
tion which the French had offered for the loss of their pos¬
sessions in Alsace and Lorraine ; the Prince of Lowenstein
accepted of an indemnification ; the Princes of Hohenlohe
and balm-Salm declared themselves ready to treat upon
the same terms; whilst Prince Maximilian, and the Dukes
of Wirtemberg and Deux-Ponts, also negotiated an ar¬
rangement. It is unnecessary to state in detail the subter¬
fuges employed by Leopold for amusing the French with
cuted in virtue of its sentence.
The unexpected death of Leopold on the first of March
gave rise to a transient hope that peace might still be pre¬
served. On the 16th of the same month the king of Swe¬
den was wounded by a nobleman of the name of Anker-
strbm, and died on the 29th. This enterprising prince,
having overturned the constitution of his own country, had
formed the project of conducting in person his troops to
the frontiers of France, and of commanding or accom¬
panying the combined armies of Europe in their attempt
to avenge the cause of insulted royalty; and it was in a
great measure to counteract this scheme that he was assas¬
sinated.
The sudden fall of these two enemies, however, rather
accelerated than retarded the meditated hostilities. The
young king of Hungary, who succeeded to the empire,
made no secret either of his own intentions or of the ex¬
istence of a concert of princes against France. Dumou-
riez was now at the head of the war office, Roland held
the portfolio of the interior, and Claviere was minister of
finance. The Jacobins were all-powerful, and the court
gave way to the torrent. The property of the emigrants
was confiscated, reserving only the rights of creditors.
Meanwhile the imperial minister, Prince Kaunitz, demand¬
ed three things of France: first, the restitution of all their
feudal rights to the German princes; secondly, the resto¬
ration of Avignon to the pope, the inhabitants of which
had some time previously thrown off their allegiance, and
prevailed with the Constituent Assembly to receive their
country as part of France; and, lastly, a guarantee that
the -neighbouring powers should have no reason for appre¬
hension from the present weakness of the internal govern¬
ment of France. On receiving these demands, the king
proposed a declaration of war, which, on the 20th of April,
was accordingly decreed by the National Assembly against
the king of Hungary and Bohemia.
The French immediately began the contest, by attack-The Aus
ing in three different columns the Austrian Netherlands. trian Ne.
Dillon advanced from Lisle to Tournay, where he found atiierlands
strong body of Austrians ready to receive him. But theatl'ac v°
national force, unaccustomed to sustain the fire of regular
troops, were instantly thrown into confusion, and fled even
to the gates of Lisle. The cry of treason resounded on all
sides; and their commander, an experienced and faithful
officer, was murdered by his own soldiers and the mob. A
second division of ten thousand men, under General Biron,
took possession of Quiverain on the 29th, and marched to¬
wards Mons, at which place he was attacked by the Aus¬
trians, whom he repulsed; but hearing of the defeat of
Dillon, he retreated. A third division advanced to Furnes,
but afterwards withdrew; and Lafayette, who had simul¬
taneously advanced towards Bouvines, half way to Namur,
was also obliged to retire. All these expeditions were ill
contrived, inasmuch as they divided the French undisci¬
plined troops, and exposed them in small bodies to the at¬
tack of veteran forces. Some time elapsed before the Aus¬
trians attempted to retaliate. At length, however, on the
11th of June they attacked Gouvion, who commanded the
advanced guard of Lafayette’s army, near Maubeuge ; but
Lafayette having come to his assistance, the Austrians
abandoned the field.
In the mean time, matters were hastening towards a
FRA
History, violent crisis in Paris. Two parties, both equally hostile
to the present constitution, had been gradually formed, one
1792. of which wished to give more effectual support to the royal
Indica- authority, by establishing a senate, to prevent the king’s
tions of an vote from being the sole check upon popular enthusiasm ;
■^crisis" w^^st ^ie ot^er desired to set aside royalty altogether, and
in^ to hazard the perilous experiment of converting France
into a republic. These last were supported by the Jacobin
Club, which had now contrived to concentrate within itself
an immense mass of influence. In every town and village
of the provinces innumerable popular societies were esta¬
blished ; and with these a regular correspondence was kept
up, both by letters and by emissaries. Every scheme was
thus instantaneously propagated throughout the empire,
and all the violent spirits which it contained were enabled
to act in concert. But the more immediate engine of the
republican party consisted of the immense population of
the metropolis, whom they now endeavoured to keep in a
state of continual alarm. For this purpose, it was alleged
that an Austrian committee, or a conspiracy in favour of
the enemies of the country, existed amongst the friends of
the court; and both Gensonne and Brissot offered in the
assembly to prove the existence of this pretended commit¬
tee. A report was next circulated that the king intended
to abscond from the capital on the 23d of May ; and though
his majesty publicly contradicted the rumour, which he
treated as a calumny, it made no small impression upon the
minds of the public. New decrees were now passed against
the refractory clergy, but these his majesty refused to sanc¬
tion. A proposal was also made and adopted in the assem¬
bly to form a camp of twenty thousand men under the walls
of Paris, and for this purpose to levy from every canton in
the kingdom one horse and four infantry soldiers. But the
national guard of Paris disliked the proposal, and the king
gave it his negative. At this time the king seems to have
come to a resolution of making a stand against the Jacobin
party, to which he had for some time yielded. With the
exception of Dumouriez, therefore, the ministry were dis¬
missed, and others appointed in their stead. Dumouriez
lost the confidence of the Jacobin Club in consequence of
the exception in his favour; but he saw his error, resign¬
ed his office, and immediately joined the army. In the mean
time a decree had been passed, authorizing the manufactory
of pikes for the purpose of arming cheaply the lower class of
citizens. Attempts were also made, by means of inflamma¬
tory writings and harangues, to render the king odious ; and
in both ways Marat, who afterwards acquired such infamous
notoriety, appears to have taken the lead.
On the 20th of June, Roederer, the procureur-general,
informed the assembly that, contrary to law, formidable
bodies of armed men were preparing to present petitions to
the king and to the assembly ; and part of them speedily
made their appearance, with St Huruge, and Santerre, a
brewer, at their head. They marched through the hall in
a procession which lasted two hours, and to the number of
about forty thousand. They then surrounded the Tuille-
ries, the gates of which were thrown open ; and on an at¬
tempt to break open the door of the apartment where the
king was, he ordered them to be admitted. During the
four or five hours that he was surrounded by the multitude,
and compelled to listen to every indignity, his sister the
Princess Elizabeth never departed from his side. All this
time Petion, the mayor of Paris, was most unaccountably
absent; but at length he arrived at the palace, as did also a
deputation from the assembly. The queen, with her chil¬
dren and the Princess de Lamballe, were in the mean while
in the council-chamber, where, though protected from vio¬
lence, they were nevertheless exposed to insult. At last,
on the approach of evening, the multitude, yielding to the
entreaties of Petion, gradually dispersed. The indignities
suffered by the royal family on this occasion were in some
NCR 67
respects not unfavourable to their cause. The respectable History,
inhabitants of the capital, ashamed of such proceedings,
complained of them in a petition which they presented to GOS,
the assembly; and addresses to the same purpose were re¬
ceived from several departments. The directory of the de¬
partment of Paris, at the head of whicli were M. Roche-
foucault and M. Talleyrand, published a declaration, dis¬
approving of the conduct of the mayor, and of Manuel the
procureur of the commune, whom they afterwards suspend¬
ed from their offices, to which however the delinquents
were speedily restored by a decree of the assembly. About
the same time Lafayette having suddenly quitted the army,
appeared at the bar of the assembly, where he declared that
he came to express the indignation with which the whole
army regarded the events of the 20th, and called upon the
assembly to punish the promoters of these excesses, and to
dissolve the factious clubs. The sudden appearance of La¬
fayette threw the Jacobins into consternation, and from
that period they never ceased to calumniate him.
On the 1st of July the assembly, on the motion of Jean
de Brie, ordered a proclamation to be issued that the coun¬
try was in danger ; and on the 6th, Louis intimated that the
king of Prussia was marching with fifty-two thousand men
to operate against France. The French armies had about
this time obtained some successes in the Austrian Nether¬
lands ; but the cabinet thought it necessary to order them
to retreat, a measure which was afterwards publicly cen¬
sured by Marshal Luckner. On the 7th an extraordinary
scene took place in the National Assembly. At the moment
when Brissot was about to commence an oration, M. Lam-
mourette, bishop of Lyons, requested to be heard for a few
minutes, and after expatiating on the necessity of union
amongst the members of the assembly, and of sacrificing
their passions and prejudices on the altar of their country,
concluded an animated address by proposing that all who
held in equal detestation a republic and two chambers, and
who wished to maintain the constitution as it stood, should
immediately rise up. The words were scarcely pronoun¬
ced when the whole assembly started from their seats;
men of all parties solemnly embraced each other, protest¬
ing their adherence to the constitution ; and a deputation
announced the happy event to the king, who came to the
assembly, and congratulated them on what had occurred.
But the only good effect produced by this temporary agree¬
ment was, that the festival of the 14th of July, which
was celebrated with the usual magnificence, passed in tran¬
quillity.
On the 25th of July, the Duke of Brunswick issued at Duke of
Coblentz his celebrated manifesto. It declared that the pur- Bruns-
pose of the intended invasion of France was to restore thewj^c’s ir,a*
French king to full authority; held the national guard re-
sponsible for the preservation of tranquillity ; and threatened
with the punishment of death, as rebels to their king, all those
who should appear in arms against the allied powers. The
same language was employed towards all persons holding
offices, civil as well as military ; whilst the city of Paris and
the National Assembly were declared responsible for every
insult which might be offered to the royal family. It was
added, that if the latter were not immediately placed in
safety, the allies were resolved to inflict upon those who
should deserve it the most exemplary and ever-memo-
rable punishment, by giving up the city of Paris to mili¬
tary execution, and exposing it to total destruction ; and
the same vengeance was denounced against all those who
should be guilty of what was called illegal resistance. This
sanguinary and imprudent manifesto operated almost as a
warrant for the destruction of the unfortunate Louis XVI.
It left no middle party in the nation. All who wished to
preserve freedom in any form, and all who loved the in¬
dependence of their country, were instantly united. The
reproaches cast upon the king by the Jacobins now gained
6S FRA
History, universal credit. The sovereigns of Prussia and of Hungary
announced to the French nation that their monarch was
1792. secretly hostile to the constitution ; and the restoration of
the king and his family to despotic power was made the
sole pretence for a most unjustifiable aggression. The re¬
publican party saw at once the advantage which they had
gained, and resolved on the deposition of the king. The
chief engine which they meant to employ in this service
consisted of about fifteen hundred men, who had come to
Paris at the period of the confederation on the 14th of
July, hence called Federes, and who were also sometimes
denominated Marseillais, from the place which had sent
the greater number; and next to these, dependence was
placed upon the populace of the suburb’s of the capital.
The designs of the republicans were not unknown to the
court, and both parties now formed their plans of operation.
The royal party intended, it is said, that the king and his
family should suddenly leave the capital, and proceed to as
great a distance as the constitution permitted ; whilst the
republicans, on the other hand, are alleged to have medi¬
tated seizing the person of the king, and confining him in
the castle of Vincennes until a national convention should
decide upon his fate. Both assertions are probably true.
Every motive which can influence the mind of man must
have induced Louis to wish to be at a distance from the
factious and sanguinary capital; and the subsequent con¬
duct of the republicans warrants us in believing that they
already contemplated the destruction of the king and the
monarchy.
Lafayette Various charges had at different times been brought for-
accused war{l in the assembly against Lafayette, and the 8th of
and acquit- August was appointed for their discussion. In the mean
time, on the 3d of August, Petion the mayor, at the head
of a deputation from the sections of Paris, appeared at the
bar, and formally demanded the deposition of the king.
The discussion of the accusation against Lafayette was con¬
sidered as a trial of strength between the parties; but he
was acquitted by a majority of nearly two hundred; and
the republican party, despairing of carrying their point by
a vote of the assembly, resolved to have recourse to the
bolder experiment of insurrection.
On the evening of the 9th, about fifteen hundred gen¬
tlemen, officers of the army, and others, repaired to the
palace, resolved to protect the royal family, or to die in
their defence ; and besides these, there were within its
walls seven hundred Swiss guards, with a body of cavalry
amounting to about a thousand. Mandat, the commander
of the national guards, a man firmly attached to the consti¬
tution, had also procured two thousand four hundred of
that body, with twelve pieces of cannon. There can be
no doubt that, with such a force vigorously directed, the
palace, which is a kind of castle, might have been success¬
fully defended ; and that which is now termed a revolution
might have received the name of a rebellion. But, un-
happily for the cause of monarchy in France, its support¬
ers, military as well as civil, were paralysed by the uncer¬
tainty and vacillation which characterized the royal coun¬
sels, and, through indecision, all was lost. Meanwhile the
assembly declared its sittings permanent. Petion was at
the palace late in the evening of the 9th ; and as some
apprehensions were entertained, or pretended to be enter¬
tained for his safety, a deputation from the assembly
brought him away. At midnight the tocsin was sounded,
and the drums beat to arms throughout the city, when a
number of the most active leaders of the republican party
assembled, and elected a new common council. The per¬
sons thus irregularly chosen instantly took possession of the
common-hall, and drove out the lawful members, who, in¬
fected with that weakness which shrinks from stations of
responsibility in perilous times, readily gave place to the
usurpers. The new council then sent repeated messages
N C E.
to Mandat, requiring his attendance upon important busi- Histo-
ness. He was occupied in arranging the troops around the "v.'
palace ; but suspecting nothing, he went to the common-
hall, and was there astonished to find a different assembly
from that which he expected to meet there. He was ab¬
ruptly accused of a plot to massacre the people, and order¬
ed to prison ; but as he descended the stairs he was shot
through the head with a pistol, and Santerre appointed in
his stead to command the national guard. In the palace all
was anxiety and alarm.
About six o’clock in the morning of the 10th the king Tenth ’
descended into the gardens to review the troops. He was August
received with shouts of Vive le roi, excepting from the
artillery, who shouted Vive la nation. The king return¬
ed to the palace, and the multitude continued to assemble.
The national guard seemed undecided what to do, as
they assembled in divisions near the palace ; and had a
steady resistance been made from within, it is probable
they would have joined the royal party. But towards eight
o’clock M. Roederer procured admission into the palace,
and told the king that armed multitudes were assembling
in hostile array around the Tuilleries; that the national
guard was not to be depended upon ; and that, in the
event of resistance, the whole royal family would certainly
be massacred. He therefore advised the king to seek pro¬
tection in the hall of the National Assembly ; and with this
advice the king, with his usual facility of temper, prepared
to comply ; but the queen vehemently opposed the humi¬
liatingproposal. Having, however, become gradually alarm¬
ed for the safety of her children, she at length gave her
consent; and the king, queen, and Princess Elizabeth,
together with the prince and princess royal, went on foot
to the hall of the assembly. “ I am come hither,” said his
majesty, “ to prevent a great crime. Among you, gentle¬
men, I believe myself in safety.” But by an article of the
constitution the assembly could not deliberate in presence
of the king. The royal family were, therefore, placed in a
narrow box separated from the hall by a railing, where they
remained during fourteen hours, without having any place to
winch they could retire for refreshment, excepting a small
closet adjoining ; and here they sat listening to debates in
which the royal character and office were treated with every
species of contumely and insult.
When the king left the palace of the Tuilleries, he un¬
fortunately forgot to order it to be immediately surren¬
dered. This he recollected as soon as he reached the
assembly, and sent orders accordingly; but unhappily it
w'as now too late. The insurgents, amounting to about
twenty thousand in number, were drawn up in tolerable
order by W^estermann, a Prussian by birth, and had with
them thirty pieces of cannon. The gentlemen within the
palace, who had assembled to protect the king’s person,
now became dispirited, and knew not wdiat to do. Afry,
the commander of the Swiss, was absent, and the cap¬
tains were left without orders, whilst, in consequence of
the death of Mandat, the national guard had no leader.
About nine o’clock the outer gates were forced, and the
insurgents formed their line in front of the palace. A
bloody combat now commenced, chiefly between the Mar-
seiHois and the Swiss. But after a brave resistance of
about an hour, the latter were overpowered by numbers,
and gave way. All those found in the palace were mas¬
sacred, some even whilst imploring quarter on their knees;
but others escaped into the city, and were protected by
individuals. Of this brave regiment only two hundred
survived; but every human being, including even the
lowest domestics, found within the palace, was put to
death, I hose of the Swiss who had been made prisoners
in various quarters were conducted to the door of the as¬
sembly, and, by a decree, taken under the protection of
the state; but the sanguinary multitude insisted upon put-
FRANCE.
History, ting them to instant death ; and the assembly would, in
all probability, have been unable to protect them, had not
1792- the Marseillois generously interfered in their favour.
The royal The suspension of the royal authority was now decreed,
authority and the nation invited to elect a convention to determine
suspended, natUre of its future government. On this occasion
all Frenchmen of twenty-one years of age were declared
capable of electing, and of being elected, deputies to the
new National Convention. The same evening commis¬
sioners were dispatched to give to the armies a favour¬
able account of the transactions which had just taken
place. The royal family were sent to the old palace of
the Temple, there to remain under a strict guard; and
all persons of rank who had been attached to them were
seized and committed to different prisons.
As an instance of the temper by which the people of
Paris were at this time actuated, it is proper to mention,
that at the very moment when the multitude were mas¬
sacring the menial servants in the palace, and could
scarcely be restrained from offering violence to the Swiss
who had been made prisoners, they would not suffer an
act of pillage to pass unpunished; and several attempts
of the kind were instantly followed by the death of the
offenders. The plate, jewels, and money found in the
Tuilleries were brought to the National Assembly, and
thrown down in the hall; and one man, whose dress and
appearance bespoke extreme poverty, cast upon the table
a hat full of gold. But the minds of those men were ele¬
vated by enthusiasm; and they conceived themselves at
the moment the champions of freedom, and objects of
terror to the kings of the earth.
In the mean time, the situation of France had become
extremely critical, and it appeared doubtful if the new
Convention would ever be suffered to assemble. Lafay¬
ette having accidentally got early notice of the events of
the tenth of August, advised the magistrates of the town
of Sedan to imprison the commissioners of the National
Assembly as soon as they should arrive there ; and this
was accordingly done. He at the same time published
an address to the army, calling upon them to support the
king and the constitution ; but finding that they were not
to be depended upon, he left the camp in the night of the
19th August, accompanied only by his staff and a few
servants. The party took the route of Rochefort in Liege,
which was a neutral country ; but having been met by a
small body of the enemy, they were made prisoners, and
Lafayette was detained for several years in close confine¬
ment. Ihe severe treatment of this weak but well-mean¬
ing man was a great error in policy upon the part of
the allies. His fidelity to the king and the constitution
is now generally admitted; and though some have enter¬
tained strong suspicions of his conduct towards that un¬
fortunate monarch, and in the British House of Commons
he was even stigmatized as an abandoned ruffian, it is cer¬
tain that he was actuated by the purest motives, and
would have saved the king if it had been in his power to
do so. His errors, in fact, were those of the head ra¬
ther than of the heart; he still fancied that he could
guide a revolution which he had had a share in originat¬
ing, and seemed altogether unconscious that the direction
of the movement had passed into other hands. But, how¬
ever this may be, he should have been protected by the
allies, if for no other reason, at least to encourage deser¬
tion amongst the officers of the republican army. The
69
commissioners arrested at Sedan were soon afterwards set History,
at liberty, and received with applause by the army of La-
fayette. General Arthur Dillon at first entered into the 1?92-
sentiments of Lafayette; but Dumouriez diverted him
from his purpose, and thus regained his credit with the
Jacobins, by whose influence he was appointed comman-
der-in-chief. The other generals, Biron, Montesquieu,
Kellerman, and Custines, offered no opposition to the will
of the National Assembly.
Meanwhile the combined armies of Austria and of Prus- Entry of
sia had entered France. The Duke of Brunswick’s army the allies
was above fifty thousand strong; and General Clairfayt“’to
had joined him with fifteen thousand Austrians and aIrance>
considerable body of Hessians, besides twenty thousand
French emigrants, amounting in all to near ninety thou¬
sand men. To oppose these, Dumouriez had only seven¬
teen thousand men collected near the point from which
the enemy were approaching in Luxembourg. The French
emigrants had given the Duke of Brunswick such an ac¬
count of the distracted state of the country, and of the
alleged disaffection of all orders of men towards the ruling
faction in Paris, that no resistance of any importance was
expected by him ; and, in fact, when the combined forces,
consisting either of steady Austrian or Hungarian batta¬
lions, or of well-trained Prussians, whom Frederick had
inured to the best discipline, were reviewed in Germany
before setting out on their march, the spectators, amongst
whom the French cause was not unpopular, beheld them
with anxiety and regret, pitying the unhappy country
against which this irresistible force was to be directed.
The officers and soldiers considered themselves as depart¬
ing for a hunting match, or an excursion of pleasure ; and
many of the usual accommodations of an army were in con¬
sequence but ill attended to. The commencement of their
invasion of France justified these expectations. Longwy
surrendered after a siege of fifteen hours, although well
fortified, possessed of a garrison of near four thousand
men, and defended by seventy-one pieces of cannon.1 Ver¬
dun was next summoned, and the governor, M. Beaure-
paire, compelled by the municipality to surrender.2 The
news of this second capture, and of the approach of the
Prussians, spread consternation throughout Paris; and it
was proposed to raise a volunteer army, which should set
out immediately to meet the enemy. The municipality,
which was now led by Robespierre, Danton, Marat, and
others of the most sanguinary character, ordered the alarm
guns to be fired, and enjoined the populace to meet in the
Champ de Mars to enroll themselves to march against the
enemy. The people assembled, and, either in consequence
of a premeditated plan, or, which is not very probable, of
an instantaneous movement, a number of voices exclaim¬
ed, that the domestic foes of the nation should be de¬
stroyed before its foreign enemies were attacked.
Parties of armed men proceeded without delay to the Massacres
prisons where the nonjuring clergy, the Swiss officers, °f Septem-
and those confined since the tenth of August on account ber•
of alleged practices against the state, were detained in cus¬
tody. They took out the prisoners one by one, gave them
a kind of mock trial before a jury of their own number, ac¬
quitted some few, and murdered the remainder. Amongst
these was the Princess de Lamballe, who was taken from
bed, dragged before this bloody tribunal, and massacred;
after which her head, stuck on a pike, was carried by the
populace to the Temple, that it might be seen by her
sl'l,?)? t.h,is event feaRy irritated the assembly, who decreed, that when the town was retaken, the houses of the citizens
should I.pWV d li? the groun? 5 and’ distrustful of the officers of the army, they also ordained that the municipal officers of a town
s ti- h^Ve power t0 contro1 the deliberations of the council of war. 1
the PrussianrroopremeredthrtowL"3^11’ himSelf With U PiSt01 “ FeSenCe °f the C°UndI 5 and °n the 2d of SePtember
70
FRANCE.
History, friend the queen. These massacres continued two days,
and upwards of a thousand persons were put to death. In
all history, indeed, there is scarcely any thing to parallel
them ; they were committed, it is believed, by less than
three hundred men, in the midst of an immense city,
which heard of them with horror, and in the vicinity of
the National Assembly, which, by going in a body, could
have put an end to them. But such was the confusion
and dismay which prevailed during these two disgraceful
days, that no man dared to stir from his house; every
one believed that the whole city, excepting his own street,
was involved in massacre and bloodshed. The national
guards were all ready at their respective posts, but no
man directed them to act; and there is good reason to
suspect that Santerre and the chiefs of the commune con¬
nived at, if indeed they were not actually implicated in,
this atrocious butchery.
In the mean time, General Dumouriez was occupied in
taking measures to protract the march of the enemy till
the army of Kellerman, consisting of about twenty thou¬
sand men, could arrive from Lorraine, and that of Bour-
nonville, amounting to thirteen thousand, from Flanders;
together with whatever new levies Luckner might be able
to send from Chalons. The forest of Argonne, extending
from north to south upwards of forty miles, lay directly
in the line of march of the Duke of Brunswick, who had
either to force his way through it, or to make a circuit of
forty miles by the pass of Grandpre on the north, or by
Barleduc on the south. The pass which lay most dir6£tly
in his line of march was that of Biesme. But after exa¬
mining Dillon’s position at this point, the duke left a force
of twenty thousand men to observe it, and with the main
body of his army took the circuitous route by Grandpre on
the north. Here Dumouriez waited to receive him, and
was attacked on the 12th and 13th without success ; but on
the 14th the attack of the Prussians was irresistible, and
Dumouriez abandoned his position. On his retreat he
was so closely pressed by the cavalry of the Prussian ad¬
vanced guard, that his army was seized with a panic, and
fled before fifteen hundred horse, who, if they had pushed
their advantage, might have entirely dispersed it. On the
15th, however, Dumouriez having encamped at St Mene-
hould, began to fortify his position, and Bournonville’s
army joined him on the 17th. The Duke of Brunswick
now resolved to attack Kellerman before he could effect
his junction with Dumouriez; and, accordingly, on the
19th, when that officer had arrived within a mile of the
French camp, the projected attack took place. The
Prussians manoeuvred with their usual coolness and ad¬
dress; but in an attempt to surround Kellerman’s army
they were completely foiled, and, in the face of the ene-
my, Kellerman joined Dumouriez at the close of the ac¬
tion. At the same time that the army of Kellerman was
attacked, an attempt was also made to force Dillon’s camp
at Biesme, by the twenty thousand men who had been left
in its vicinity; but the attempt failed, and this large de¬
tachment was thus prevented from penetrating the forest
of Argonne and joining the Duke of Brunswick. In these
engagements the French owed the advantage they obtain¬
ed chiefly to the superiority of their artillery; a circum¬
stance which served to convince their enemies that they
had to contend with regular military bodies, and not, as
they expected, with undisciplined multitudes.
The Duke of Brunswick now encamped his army at La
Lun, near the position of Dumouriez ; and here the Prus¬
sians began to suffer extreme distress, both from sickness
and from famine. No temptation could induce the inha¬
bitants of the country to carry provisions to the hostile
camp, whilst at the same time the French army was abun¬
dantly supplied; whilst Bournonville, with a body of four
thousand men, had intercepted several herds of cattle and
other convoys of provisions destined for the Prussians.
The rain fell in torrents, and the roads were uncommonly
deep. Exposed to cold and damp, and suffering from
want of provisions, the Prussians ate freely of the grapes
of Champagne; in consequence of which an epidemical
distemper appeared, and spread through the army with
such rapidity, that ten thousand men were at one time
unfit for duty. The Duke of Brunswick, however, was still
at the head of a force more numerous than that of Dumou¬
riez ; and he has therefore been much censured for not
attacking his opponent, and forcing him to receive battle.
It has been said that the numerous and veteran force
which he commanded would have marched to certain vic¬
tory against the raw troops who opposed them; and that,
having defeated Dumouriez’s army, there was nothing to
oppose his march towards Paris. But the Duke of Bruns¬
wick having entered France upon the supposition that in
its present distracted state no regular army could be
brought into the field against him, and that the people at
large were hostile to the ruling faction, felt disconcerted
by discovering that he had been deceived, and that all
his expectations were disappointed. Instead of a friendly
he found himself in the midst of a hostile people ; where
he had expected to meet with nothing but confusion, dis¬
order, and weakness, he observed all enthusiastically unit¬
ed in defence of their country ; and, so far from encoun¬
tering little or no resistance, he saw before him armies,
imperfectly disciplined, it is true, but hourly increasing in
numbers and improving in training, and at the same time
conducted by skilful military chiefs. In such a situation a
defeat would have brought certain ruin on his army; and
even a victory might in its consequences have proved
equally fatal. Accordingly, after proposing a truce for eight
days, which was agreed to, he commenced his.retreat to¬
wards Grandpre, and continued it without molestation.
Verdun was retaken by the French on the 12th of Octo¬
ber, and Longwy on the 18th; and the siege of Thion-
ville, a small but strong fortress under the command of
General Wimpfen, was at the same time raised.
Whilst the Prussians were advancing from the north¬
east, the Austrians under the Duke of Saxe-Teschen laid
siege to Lisle. To the summons of the besiegers the
council-general of the commune answered that they had
just renewed their oath to be faithful to the nation,
and to maintain liberty and equality, or to die at their
post; and that they would not perjure themselves. The
Austrian batteries opened on the 29th, and were chiefly
directed against that quarter of the town which was inha¬
bited by the lower class of citizens, in the hope, no doubt,
of exciting disturbance within. But this proceeding was
exceedingly ill judged. The lower classes of mankind are
always accustomed to hardships, and hence they are pre¬
pared to go much further in support of any principle which
they may have enthusiastically adopted, than those who
have been accustomed to enjoy all the comforts and luxu¬
ries of life. Accordingly, though a great part of the city
was reduced to a heap of ruins, the citizens of Lisle became
daily more obstinate ; every vault and cellar was occupied;
and although upwards of thirty thousand red-hot balls and
six thousand bombs were thrown into the city, not to men¬
tion the effect produced by an immense battering train,
yet the loss sustained by the garrison and people did not
exceed five hundred persons, most of whom were women
and children. After a fortnight of fruitless labour, the
Austrians were therefore obliged to raise the siege. Mean¬
while war had been declared against the king of Sardinia,
whose conduct towards France had for some time assum¬
ed a threatening character. On the 20th of September
General Montesquieu entered the territories of Savoy, and
was received at Chambery, and throughout the whole coun¬
try, with marks of unbounded welcome; and on the 29th
Histo:.
1792’
t
t
1
ft
fn
tii
FRANCE.
71
History. General Anselm, with another body of troops, took posses-
sion of Nice and the surrounding country. On the 30th
1792. General Custines advanced to Spires, where, finding the
Austrians drawn up in order of battle, he attacked and
drove them out of the city, taking three thousand prison¬
ers. The capture of Worms succeeded that of Spires;
Mentz surrendered by capitulation ; and Frankfort fell into
the hands of the French on the 23d. Out of this last
place, however, they were afterwards driven on the 2d of
December.
The Na- On the 20th of September the French National Conven¬
tional Con- tion assembled. This body was found to contain men of all
vention as-c]iaracterSj or(]ers> anJ ranks. Many distinguished mem-
scmje . kers tjie Constituent Assembly were returned as mem¬
bers, and several who had belonged to the Legislative
Assembly were also elected ; whilst even foreigners were
invited to become French legislators. Thomas Paine and
Dr Priestley were elected by certain departments ; and
Clootz, whom we formerly noticed as having appeared at
the bar of the Constituent Assembly at the head of a gro¬
tesque deputation professing to represent all the nations
of the earth, was also chosen. The general aspect of the
new Convention showed that the republican party had ac¬
quired a decided superiority. On the first day of meet¬
ing Collot-d’Herbois, who had formerly been an actor,
ascended the tribune, and proposed the eternal abolition
of royalty in France. This proposition was carried by
acclamation, after which the house adjourned. Messages
were then sent to all parts of the country intimating the
decree, and through the influence of the Jacobins these
were everywhere received with applause. Next day it
was decreed that all public acts should be dated by the
year of the French Republic; and every citizen was de¬
clared eligible to vacant offices and places. Nor was
this all. The rage of republicanism soon proceeded so far
that the ordinary titles of Monsieur and Madame were
abolished, and the appellation of Citizen substituted in
their stead, as more suitable to the principles of liberty
and equality.
Two fac- It was soon discovered that the leading republicans
tions in were divided into two opposite factions. The one of these
vention" WaS ca^e(^ Girondists, because Vergniaud, Gensonne, Gua-
det, and some others of its leaders, were members for the
department of the Gironde. The celebrated Condorcet
also belonged to this party, which was sometimes denomi¬
nated Brissotine, from Brissot their principal leader. The
Girondists supported the ministry now in office, at the
head of which was Roland ; and the majority of the Con¬
vention was obviously attached to them. In opposition
to these was the smaller party of the Mountain, so called
from its members usually sitting on the upper seats of the
hall of the Convention. They were men possessed of less
personal respectability, and inferior literary accomplish¬
ments, but of daring and sanguinary characters. At the
head of this party were Danton and Robespierre, and sub¬
ordinate to these were Couthon, Bazire, Thuriot, Merlin
de Thionville, Saint-Andre, Camille Demoulins, Chabot,
Collot-d’Herbois, Sergent, Legendre, Fabre d’Eglantine,
Panis, Marat, and others. These two parties evinced the
diversity of their characters in the manner in which they
treated the massacres of the 2d and 3d of September.
The Brissotines, with the majority of the Convention,
wished to bring the murderers to trial; but the question
was always eluded by the other party, with the assistance
of the Jacobin Club and of the populace.
Decree of On the 9th of October it was resolved that all emigrants,
uternisa- when taken in arms, should suffer death ; and on the 15th
of November, in consequence of an insurrection in the
duchy of Deux Fonts, and an application for aid upon
the part of the insurgents, a decree was passed, declaring
that “ the National Convention, acting in name of the
French nation, would grant fraternity and assistance to History,
all those people who wished to procure liberty and v—
charging the executive power to send orders to the gene- 1792.
rals to give assistance to such people as had suffered,
or were still suffering, in the cause of liberty. Of this
decree foreign nations loudly complained, as calculated,
if not intended, to provoke insurrection in other states;
and in the rupture which subsequently took place be¬
tween Great Britain and France, it was founded on by
the government of the former country as of itself afford¬
ing a sufficient justification of hostilities, and, in fact, as
rendering war with France a necessary measure of self-
defence.
But it is now time to return to the military affairs of the Battle of
Republic. The final retreat of the allies had left Dumou-*lremrnal>
riez at liberty to carry into execution a project he hadPes‘
long meditated, of invading the Low Countries, rescuing
these fine provinces from the Austrian dominion, and thus
advancing the frontier of the Republic to the Rhine. He
received unlimited powers from the government, and the
losses sustained by the allies during their invasion of
France gave him a great superiority of force. His right
wing consisted of sixteen thousand men, detached from
the Argonne Forest, whilst between it and the centre was
placed General d’Harville with fourteen thousand; Du-
mouriez himself commanded the main body, amounting
to forty thousand men; and the left wing, under Labour-
donnaye, was about thirty thousand strong; in all a hun¬
dred thousand men, filled with enthusiasm, and anticipat¬
ing nothing but victory. To oppose this immense force,
the Austrians had only about forty thousand men, who,
according to the tactics of the time, were disseminated
along an extended line of nearly thirty miles. Their main
body, consisting of about eighteen thousand men, was en¬
trenched in a strong position, which had been deliberate¬
ly chosen by the imperialists, and extended through the
villages of Ausmes and Jemmappes to the heights of Ber-
thaimont on the one hand, and the village of Sifly on
the other, sweeping over a succession of eminences which
commanded the adjacent plain; whilst fourteen redoubts,
strengthened by all the resources of art, and armed with
a hundred pieces of cannon, seemed amply to compensate
for inferiority in point of number. But formidable as this
position undoubtedly was, Dumouriez resolved to assault
it, and to make trial of the new system of accumulating
masses upon one point, which, if thus forced, would ne¬
cessitate the abandonment of the whole.
The battle commenced at day-break on the 6th of No¬
vember, with an attack on the village of Cuesmes, led by
Bournonville; but, after sustaining a severe fire of artille¬
ry, which for some hours arrested his efforts, he at length
succeeded in turning the village of Jemmappes, and the
redoubts on the left of the Austrian position were carried
by the impetuous onset of the French columns. Dumou¬
riez now caused his centre to advance against the front
of Jemmappes, and the column moved forward rapidly to
the attack; but upon approaching the village, they were
taken in flank by some squadrons of horse, which broke
through the column, and drove back the French cavalry
which supported it. The moment was eminently critical;
for whilst the flank of the column was thus maltreated,
the leading battalions, checked by a destructive fire of
grape, were beginning to waver at the foot of the redoubts.
In this extremity, an attendant of the general-in-chief
rallied the disordered troops, and arrested the victorious
squadrons, whilst a young officer restored the front of the
attack. Rallying the disordered regiments into one mass,
which he called the column of Jemmappes, the latter
placed himself at its head, renewed the attack on the re¬
doubts, carried the village, and at length drove the Aus¬
trians from their intrenchments in the centre of the posi-
72
FRANCE.
Contests
between
the Gi¬
rondists
and the
Mountain
The king
brought to
trial.
tion.1 But though thus victorious in the centre, Dumou-
riez had still great cause for anxiety respecting the attack
on the right. Bournonville, though at first successful on
that side, had hesitated when he observed the confusion
in the column of the centre, vacillating between a reluc¬
tance to abandon the ground he had gained, and a desire
to withdraw part of his forces to support the column in
the plain. As soon as this hesitation was perceived by
the enemy, they redoubled their fire, and kept in hand a
large body of cavalry ready to charge on the least appear¬
ance of disorder. Dumouriez flew to the spot, rode along
the front of two brigades of old soldiers from the camp at
Maulde, and succeeded in rallying the squadrons of horse,
who were beginning to fall into confusion. The imperial
horse charged immediately after, but receiving a close and
well-directed volley, they wheeled, and, being instantly
attacked by the French cavalry, were completely routed,
and driven from the field. The victorious brigades now
advanced, chanting the Marseillaise, and entering the re¬
doubts by the gorge, carried every thing before them.
Dumouriez was still uneasy about his centre; but whilst
he was in the act of setting off to that point with a rein¬
forcement of six squadrons of cavalry, he received intel¬
ligence that the battle there was already won, and that
the Austrians were retiring at all points towards Mons.
Sucli was the battle of Jemmappes, the first pitched bat¬
tle which had been gained by the republican armies, and
on that account not only celebrated beyond its real merits,
but most important in its consequences. The loss on both
sides was great, that of the Austrians amounting to five
thousand men, whilst the French lost above six thousand ;
but the results of the victoVy upon the spirits and the mo¬
ral strength of the two parties were incalculably different,
and in fact led to the immediate conquest of the whole
Netherlands. Mons and Brussels surrendered to Dumou¬
riez; Tournay, Malines, Ghent, and Antwerp, were taken
possession of by General Labourdonnaye ; Louvaine and
Namur submitted to General Valence ; and the whole
Austrian Netherlands, Luxembourg only excepted, fell
into the hands of the French. Liege was taken on the
28th of November, after a successful engagement, in which
the Austrians lost five or six hundred men and an im¬
mense train of artillery.
France was now in a situation not unusual in the history
of nations, successful abroad, but distracted by contendin<>-
factions at home. The two parties in the Convention
were engaged in a struggle, which daily became more and
more implacable. The party called the Mountain did not
hesitate to employ any means, however criminal, to effect
the ruin of their antagonists; and they are even suspected
of having, through the medium of the minister of war, re¬
tarded the supplies for the armies, in order to render the
ruling party odious from want of success. But they were
for some time unfortunate in this respect, and the daily
news of victories obtained supported the credit of the
Girondists. A new subject was therefore started, namely,
how the dethroned monarch was to be disposed of. The
moderate party wished to save him, and this was a suffi¬
cient reason for their antagonists resolving on his ruin. A
committee was accordingly appointed to report upon his
conduct; and a variety of charges having in consequence
been brought against him, the Convention resolved to
constitute itself at once prosecutor and judo'e.
On the 11th of December the ill-fated monarch was or¬
dered to the bar of the Convention; and when the act of
accusation had been read, he was summoned by the pre¬
sident Barrere to answer the charges separately. These
consisted of an enumeration of the whole crimes of the
Revolution, from its commencement in 1789, all of which Histoi
were imputed to him. The following is the substance of''■''Y"1
this extraordinary act of accusation :— ^92
“ Louis, the French nation accuses you of having com¬
mitted a multitude of crimes to establish your tyranny, by
destroying her freedom. You, on the 20th of June 1789,
attacked the sovereignty of the people, by suspending the
assemblies of their representatives, and expelling them with
violence from the places of their sittings. This is proved
in the proces-verbal entered at the tennis court of Ver¬
sailles by the members of the Constituent Assembly. On
the 23d of June you wanted to dictate laws to the nation ;
you surrounded their representatives with troops ; you pre¬
sented to them two royal declarations, subversive of all li¬
berty, and ordered them to separate. You ordered an army
to march against the citizens of Paris. Your satellites
have shed the blood of several of them, and you would not
remove this army till the taking of the Bastille and a ge¬
neral insurrection announced to you that the people were
victorious. The speeches you made on the 9th, 12th, and
14th of July, to the deputations of the Constituent Assembly,
show what were your intentions; and the massacres of the
luilleries rise in evidence against you. After these events,
and in spite of the promises which you made on the 15th
in the Constituent Assembly, and on the 17th in the Hotel
de Ville of Paris, you have persisted in your projects against
national liberty. You long eluded the execution of the
decrees of the 11th of August, respecting the abolition of
personal servitude, the feudal government, and the tithes;
you long refused acknowledging the rights of man; you
doubled the number of the life-guards, and called the regi¬
ment of Flanders to Versailles; you permitted, in orgies
held before your eyes, the national cockade to be trampled
under foot, the white cockade to be hoisted, and the nation
to be slandered. At last you rendered necessary a fresh
insurrection, occasioned the death of several citizens, and
did not change your language till after your guards had
been defeated, when you renewed your perfidious promises.
You took an oath at the confederation of the 14th of July,
which you did not keep. You soon tried to corrupt the
public opinion, with the assistance of Talon, who acted in
Paris, and Mirabeau, who was to have excited counter re¬
volutionary movements in the provinces. You lavished
millions of money to effect this corruption, and you even
used your popularity as a means of enslaving the people.
These facts are the result of a memorial of Talon, on which
you have made your marginal comments in your own hand¬
writing ; and of a letter which Laporte wrote to you on the
19th of April, in which, recapitulating a conversation he had
had with Rivarol, he told you, that the millions which you
had been prevailed upon to throw away had been produc¬
tive of nothing.
“ For a long time you had meditated on a plan of escape.
A memorial was delivered to you on the 28th of Febru¬
ary, which pointed out the means for you to effect it; you
approved of it by marginal notes. On the 28th a great
number of the nobles and military came into your apart¬
ments in the castle of the Tuilleries, to favour that escape.
You wanted to quit Paris on the 10th of April, to go to St
Cloud; but the resistance of the citizens made you sensi¬
ble that their distrust was great. You endeavoured to dis¬
credit it, by communicating to the Constituent Assembly
a letter, which you addressed to the agents of the nation
near foreign powers, to announce to them that you had
freely accepted the constitutional articles, which had been
presented to you; and, notwithstanding, on the 21st you
took flight with a false passport. You left behind a pro¬
test against these self-same constitutional articles; you or-
1 This young officer was the Duke de Chartres, then called General Egalitd
and now Louis Philippe, king of the French.
FRA
History, dered the ministers to sign none of the acts issued by the
^ National Assembly; and you forbade the minister of justice
1792- to deliver up the seals of state. The public money was
lavished to ensure the success of this treachery; and the
public force was employed to protect it, under the orders
of Bouille, who shortly before had been charged with the
massacre of Nancy, and to whom you wrote on this head,
‘ to take care of his popularity, because it would be of ser¬
vice to you.’
“ After your detention at Varennes, the exercise of the
executive power was for a moment suspended in yorir hands,
and you again formed a conspiracy. On the 17th of July
the blood of citizens was shed in the Champ de Mars. A
letter, in your own handwriting, written in 1790 to Lafay¬
ette, proves that a criminal coalition subsisted between you
and Lafayette, to which Mirabeau had acceded. The revi¬
sion began under these cruel auspices ; all kinds of corrup¬
tions were made use of. You have paid for libels, pamph¬
lets, and newspapers, designed to corrupt public opinion, to
discredit the assignats, and to support the cause of the emi¬
grants. You seemed to accept the constitution on the 14th
of September; your speeches announced an intention of
supporting it; and you were busy in overturning it, even
before it was completed. A convention was entered into
at Pilnitz on the 24th of July, between Leopold of Aus¬
tria and Frederic-William of Brandenburg, who pledged
themselves to re-erect in France the throne of absolute
monarchy; and you were silent upon this convention till
the moment when it was known by all Europe. Arles had
hoisted the standard of rebellion ; you favoured it by send¬
ing three civil commissaries, who made it their business not
to repress the counter revolutionists, but to justify their
proceedings. Avignon, and the county of Yenaissin, had
been united with France ; you caused the decree to be ex¬
ecuted ; but a month afterwards civil war desolated that
part of the country. The commissaries you s.ent thither
helped to ravage it. Nismes, Montauban, Mende, Jales,
felt great shocks during the first days of freedom. You
did nothing to stifle those germs of counter revolution,
until the moment when Saillant’s conspiracy became noto¬
rious. You sent twenty-two battalions against the Mar¬
seillais, who marched to reduce the counter revolutionists
of Arles. You gave the southern command to Wittgen¬
stein, who wrote to you on the 21st of April 1792, after
he had been recalled: ‘ A few instants more, and I shall
call around the throne of your majesty thousands of French,
who are again become worthy of the wishes you form for
their happiness.’ You paid your late life-guards at Cob-
lentz ; the registers of Septeuil attest this; and general or¬
ders signed by you prove that you sent considerable remit¬
tances to Bouille, Rochefort, Vauguyon, Choiseul, Beau-
pre, Hamilton, and the wife of Polignac. Your brothers,
enemies to the state, caused the emigrants to rally under
their banners ; they raised regiments, contracted for loans,
and concluded alliances in your name ; you did not disclaim
them. The soldiers of the line, who were to be put on the
war establishment, consisted of only a hundred thousand
men at the end of December; you therefore neglected to
provide for the safety of the state from abroad. Narbonne
required a levy of fifty thousand men ; but he stopped the
recruiting at twenty-six thousand, giving assurances that
all was ready; yet there was no truth in these assurances.
Servan proposed after him to form a camp of twenty thou¬
sand men near Paris ; it was decreed by the Legislative As¬
sembly, but you refused your sanction. A spirit of patriotism
made the citizens repair to Paris from all quarters. You
issued a proclamation, tending to stop their march; at the
same time our camps were without soldiers. Dumouriez,
the successor of Servan, declared that the nation had nei¬
ther arms, nor ammunition, nor provisions, and that the posts
were left defenceless. You waited to be urged by a re-
VOL. X.
N C E. 73
quest made to the minister Lajard, when the Legislative As- History,
sembly wished to point out the means of providing for the
external safety of the state, by proposing the levy of forty- 1792.
two battalions. You gave commission to the commanders
of the troops to disband the army, to force whole regiments
to desert, to make them pass the Rhine, and to put them
at the disposal of your brothers, and of Leopold of Austria,
with whom you had intelligence. You charged your di¬
plomatic agents to favour this coalition of foreign powers
and your brothers against France, and especially to cement
the peace between Turkey and Austria, and to procure
thereby a larger number of troops against France from the
latter. The Prussians advanced against our frontiers:
your minister was summoned on the 8th of July to give an
account of the state of our political relations with Prussia;
you answered, on the 10th, that fifty thousand Prussians
were marching against us, and that you gave notice to the
legislative body of the formal acts of the pending hostili¬
ties, in conformity to the constitution. You intrusted Da-
bancourt, the nephew of Calonne, with the department of
war; and such has been the success of your conspiracy,
that the posts of Longwy and Verdun were surrendered to
the enemy at the moment of their appearance. You have
destroyed our navy ; a vast number of officers belonging to
that corps had emigrated; there scarcely remained any to
do duty in the harbours : meanwhile Bertrand was grant¬
ing passports every day ; and when the legislative body re¬
presented to you his criminal conduct on the 8th of March,
you answered that you were satisfied with his services.
“ You have favoured the maintenance of absolute govern¬
ment in the colonies; your agents fomented troubles and
counter revolutions throughout them, which took place at
the same epoch when it was to have been brought about
in France, which indicates plainly that your hand laid this
plot. The interior of the state was convulsed by fanatics ;
you avowed yourself their protector, in manifesting your
evident intention of recovering by them your ancient power.
The legislative body had passed a decree on the 29th of
January, against the factious priests ; you suspended its ex¬
ecution. The troubles had increased ; the minister declared
that he knew nothing in the laws extant upon which to ar¬
raign the guilty. The legislative body enacted a fresh decree,
which you likewise suspended. The uncitizen-like conduct
of the guards whom the constitution had granted you had
rendered it necessary to disband them; the day after, you
sent them a letter expressive of your satisfaction, and con¬
tinued their pay. You kept near your person the Swiss
guards ; the constitution forbade you this, and the Legisla¬
tive Assembly had expressly ordained their departure. You
had private companies at Paris, charged to operate move¬
ments useful to your projects of a counter revolution. You
wished to suborn, with considerable sums, several members
of the Legislative and Constituent Assemblies. You suffered
the French name to be reviled in Germany, Italy, and
Spain, since you omitted to demand satisfaction for the bad
treatment which the French suffered in those countries.
You reviewed the Swiss on the tenth of August, at five
o’clock in the morning; and the Swiss were the first who
fired upon the citizens. You authorized Septeuil to carry
on a considerable trade in corn, sugar, and coffee, at Ham¬
burg.” It was asked, “ Why did you affix a veto on the
decree which ordained the formation of a camp of twenty
thousand men ?” To which Louis answered, “ The con¬
stitution left to me the free right of refusing my sanction
of the decrees; and even from that period I had demanded
the assemblage of a camp at Soissons.”
Valaze, who sat near the bar, now presented and read a
memoir of Laporte and Mirabeau, and some other papers,
containing plans of a counter revolution, which the king,
however, disowned. He then presented a number of other
papers on which the act of accusation was founded, and
E
74
FRANCE.
1792.
Hjstmy. having asked the king if he recognized them, the latter re¬
plied that he did not. By the admission even of his enemies,
the answers of Louis were brief, firm, and for the most
part judicious; he displayed remarkable presence of mind,
and in most cases negatived the charges by the most satis¬
factory replies. The affair of Nancy, the journey to Va-
rennes, the suppression of the revolt in the Champ de Mars,
were justified by the decrees of the assembly; and the catas¬
trophe of the tenth of March, by the power of self-defence
conferred on him by the laws. To every question, in fact,
he replied with clearness and precision; denying some,
showing that the matters referred to in others were the
work of his ministers, and justifying all that had been done
by the powers conferred on him by the constitution. In a
loud voice he repelled the charge of shedding the blood of
the people on the tenth of August, exclaiming, “ No, sir, it
was not I who did it.” But he was careful in his answers
not to implicate any members of the Constituent and Legis¬
lative Assemblies; and many who now sat as his judges
trembled lest he should compromise them with the domi¬
nant faction. The deep impression made on the Conven¬
tion by the simple statements, and temperate but firm de¬
meanour, of the sovereign, struck the Jacobins with such
dismay that the most violent of the party proposed he should
be hanged that very night. But the majority, composed of
the Girondists and the neutrals, decided that he should be
formally tried and defended by counsel. He then returned
to the Temple, where the resolution of the municipality,
that he was no longer to be permitted to see his family,
was communicated to him; or, in other words, that a con¬
solation, which is never withheld even from the most atro¬
cious criminals, was denied him. Next day, however, the
Convention, less inhuman than the commune, decreed that
the unfortunate father might enjoy the society of his chil¬
dren ; but the king thinking them more necessary to the
queen’s comfort than his own, declined to take them from
her, and, after a struggle with feelings which even demons
might have respected, he submitted to the separation with
a resignation which nothing could shake.
Louis had desired to be furnished with copies of the ac¬
cusation, and of the papers upon which it was founded; and
also to have the choice of his own counsel. Both requests
were conceded, and he accordingly chose as his counsel M.
Tronchet and M. Target. The former accepted, and faith¬
fully discharged his duty f the latter basely declined, on the
pretence of age and infirmity. The venerable Malesherbes,
whose official career had been distinguished by many wise
and useful reforms, now came forward and volunteered his
services as counsel for his sovereign. “ I have been twice
honoured, said he, in a letter to the president of the Con¬
vention, “ with a place in the counsels of my sovereign
w-hen it was an object of ambition to all the world; I owe
him the same service when it imposes a duty which manv
consider as dangerous.”2 Malesherbes and Tronchet after¬
wards called in the assistance of M. Deseze, a celebrated
pleader, who had at first embraced the popular side, but
had withdrawn from political life since the Revolution had
assumed a sombre and threatening aspect; and, unlike Tar¬
get, who shrunk from a task which would have immorta¬
lized his name, he entered upon his arduous duties with
great earnestness, and even more than his wonted ability. History
“ I have often wished,” said the king to Malesherbes, “ I
had the means of recompensing the zeal of your colleagues. 1^92.
I have thought of leaving them a legacy; but would it
be respected by the Convention ? would it not endanger
them ?” “ Sire,” replied Malesherbes, “ the legacy is al¬
ready bequeathed; in choosing them for your defenders,
your majesty has immortalized their names.”
On the 26th of December the king was again conducted
to the assembly. He evinced as great serenity and self-
possession as on the former occasion ; discoursed of Seneca,
Livy, and the public hospitals ; and even addressed himself
in a vein of pleasantry to one of the municipality who sat
covered in the carriage. Whilst in the ante-chamber, Males¬
herbes, in conversing with the king, happened to make use
of the words, “ Sire, your majesty.” “ What,” exclaimed
Treilhard, a furious Jacobin, interrupting him, “ what has
rendered you so bold as to pronounce these words, which the
Convention has proscribed ?” “ Contempt of life,” replied
the intrepid old man. When admitted into the assembly,
Louis seated himself between his counsel, surveyed the
crowded benches of his adversaries with perfect composure,
and was even observed sometimes to smile as he conversed
with Malesherbes. M. Deseze then read a defence which
had been prepared by the king’s counsel, and which was
equally admired for the solidity of the argument and the
beauty of the composition. In this address, the inviolabi-
sovereign was ably argued; and it was proved
that, if it were destroyed, the weaker party in the Conven¬
tion would have no security against the stronger; a pro¬
phetic deduction, which the Girondists soon found fatally
verified in their own persons, when conducted to the scaf¬
fold by their implacable enemies. The advocate then exa¬
mined the whole life of the king, and showed that in every
instance he had been actuated by a sincere love of his peo¬
ple. With reference to the tenth of August he observed,
Was the monarch under the necessity of submitting to an
armed multitude ? Was he constrained by law to yield to
force ? Was not the power which he held in the constitu¬
tion a deposit, for the preservation of which he was answer-
able to the nation ? If you yourselves were surrounded by
a furious and misguided rabble, which threatened, without
respect for your sacred character, to tear you from this
sanctuary, what could you do other than what he has done ?
The magistrates themselves authorized all that he did, by
having signed the order to repel force by force. But not¬
withstanding their sanction, the king was unwilling to make
use of his authority, and retired into the bosom of the Con¬
vention, to avoid the shedding of blood. The combat which
rollowed was neither undertaken by him, nor continued by
ns oiders; he interfered only to put a stop to it, as is
proved by the fact that it was in consequence of an order
signed by him that the Swiss abandoned the defence of the
Chateau, and surrendered their lives. There is a crying in¬
justice therefore in reproaching him with the bloodshed on
the tenth of August; in truth, his conduct in that particu-
ar is above reproach.” M. Deseze concluded with these
u oi c s. Louis mounted the throne at the age of twenty,
am even then he set an example of an irreproachable life;
ie was governed by no weak or corrupt passion; he was
°"e mu
7 (Eacretelle, x. 186, 193; Hue, p. 42; Mignet, i. 236 ; Thfers, iir336?, ALon, *
FRANCE.
75
History, economical, just, and severe. He proved himself from the
beginning the friend of his country. The people desired
1792< the removal of a destructive tax; he removed it. They
wished the abolition of servitude; he abolished it in his
domains. They prayed for a reform in the criminal laws;
he reformed it. They demanded that thousands of French¬
men, whom the rigour of our usages had excluded from po¬
litical rights, should enjoy them ; he conceded them. They
longed for liberty ; he gave it. He even anticipated their
wishes; and yet it is the same people who now demand his
punishment.”
When the defence was concluded, the king rose, and
holding a paper in his hand, pronounced, in a calm manner,
and with a firm voice, what follows : “ Citizens, you have
heard my defence, I will not recapitulate it; but when now
addressing you, perhaps for the last time, I declare that my
conscience has nothing to reproach itself with, and that
my defenders have said nothing but the truth. I have no
fears for the public examination of my conduct; but my
heart bleeds at the accusation brought against me of having
caused the misfortunes of my people, and, most of all, of
having shed their blood on the tenth of August. The
multiplied proofs I have given in every period of my reign,
of my love for my people, and the manner in which I have
conducted myself towards them, might, I had hoped, have
saved me from so cruel an imputation.” Having said these
words, he withdrew along with his counsel, and in a tran¬
sport of gratitude he embraced M. Deseze, exclaiming, “ I
am now at ease; I will have an honoured memory; the
French will regret my death.”
A stormy discussion immediately ensued in the assem¬
bly, and Lanjuinais had the boldness to demand a revoca¬
tion of the decree by which the king had been brought to
the bar of the Convention. “ If you insist on being judges,”
said he, in concluding a powerful speech, “ cease to be ac¬
cusers. My blood boils at the thought of seeing in the
judgment-seat men who openly conspired against the throne
on the tenth of August, and who have in such ferocious terms
anticipated the judgment without hearing the defence.”
The delivery of these words was instantly followed by the
most violent agitation; and cries of “ To the Abbaye with
the perjured deputy; let the friends of the tyrant perish
along with him,” resounded through the hall. But the storm
was at length appeased by a proposal to discuss the ques¬
tion, whether an appeal should be made to the people; a pro¬
posal which was adopted, and the discussion that thereupon
ensued lasted twenty days. The most powerful declaimer
against the sovereign was the infamous Saint-Just; the most
vehement and direct, the sanguinary Robespierre. Ver-
gniaud replied in a strain of impassioned eloquence worthy
of his reputation as the first orator of France. But his for¬
cible, nay sublime, appeal was unavailing. At the conclu¬
sion of the debate the assembly unanimously pronounced
the ill-fated Louis guilty of the offences charged against
him, and the appeal to the people was rejected by a ma¬
jority of 423 to 281.1 This unanimous vote upon the ques¬
tion of guilt is one of the most remarkable facts in the his¬
tory of the Revolution. That among seven hundred men
great difference of opinion must have existed on this sub¬
ject, is beyond all doubt; and if any evidence were wanting
to establish the fact, it would be supplied by the division
which immediately followed on the proposal to appeal to
the people, and by the narrow majority which decreed the
punishment of death. But such was the temper of the time,
and the ascendency of democratic influence in the Conven¬
tion, that even the friends of the king were compelled to
commence their efforts for his salvation by voting him guil¬
ty of the crimes which had been charged against him.
The only question which now remained to be decided
was, what punishment should be inflicted. The debate on
this subject lasted forty hours, during which Paris was in
the most violent agitation. The Jacobin Club resounded
with cries for death; the avenues leading to the Conven¬
tion were filled with a ferocious rabble, menacing alike the
supporters of the king and the neutrals; and as the termina¬
tion of the voting drew near, the tumult increased. The
most breathless anxiety pervaded the Convention, when the
president, Vergniaud, at length rose to announce the re¬
sult, which he did in these words : “ Citizens, I announce
the result of the vote; when justice has spoken, humanity
should resume its place; there are seven hundred and
twenty-one votes; a majority of twenty-six have voted for
death. In the name of the Convention, I declare that the
punishment of Louis Capet is death? Without the defec¬
tion of the Girondists on this occasion, the king’s life would
have been saved. Foi’ty-six of their party, including Ver¬
gniaud, voted conditionally or unconditionally for his death.
This was a fatal error, which almost all of them subsequently
expiated on the scaffold. They were really anxious to save
the king ; but, destitute of political courage, and hurried on
by the democratic fury of the times, they trusted to accom¬
plish their object by an appeal to the people. In this-, how¬
ever, they were baffled ; their weak and timid policy ruined
all. The triumph of the Jacobins was complete. They
had committed the Revolution by an act which cut off all
retreat; and they had compelled their most able and dan¬
gerous enemies to participate in the guilt of the bloody
deed.2
When the counsel of the unfortunate monarch were
called in to hear the sentence, they were greatly affected.
Malesherbes attempted to speak, but emotion choked his
utterance. Deseze then read a protest, in which the king
solemnly declared his innocence ; and Tronchet urged the
revocation of a decree which had been passed by so slen¬
der a majority. “ You have either forgotten or destroyed,”
said this celebrated advocate, “ the humane principle of the
criminal law, which requires a majority of two thirds to con¬
stitute a definitive sentence.” “ The laws,” it was answer¬
ed, “ are passed by a simple majority.” “ True,” rejoined
Deseze, “ but the laws may be repealed; and who can
recall human life ?” The Girondists, as a last resource,
then proposed a limited delay ; but in this they also failed,
and the fatal sentence was pronounced. This decisive
step produced an intense sensation in Paris. The mem¬
bers of the Cote Droit, and the royalists, secret or avowed,
were in equal consternation. But the Jacobins, who could
History.
1793.
Light members were absent from bad health ; thirty-seven declared Louis guilty, but voted only for precautionary measures ;
six hundred and eighty-three declared him guilty. (Thiers, iii. 377.)
a Of those who voted for death, there were many, such as the Duke of Orleans, influenced by base or selfish motives; and even
at that moment their characters were appreciated. When Egalite, with a faultering step, and a countenance pale as a corpse, ad¬
vanced to the place where he was to put the seal to his infamy, and read in these terms his vote, “ Exclusively governed by my
duty, and convinced that all those who have resisted the sovereignty of the people deserve death, my vote is for death,” exclama¬
tions of “ Oh, the monster !” and, “ How infamous !” broke forth from all sides, and he returned to his seat amidst the imprecations
even of the assassins of September, and all the wretches of every description who were there assembled. But there were other per¬
sons of a very different character; many men, both great and good, who inclined with sorrow to the side of se^iity, from an
honest opinion of its absolute necessity to annihilate a dangerous enemy, and establish the republic on a settled bacls. Amongst this
number was Carnot, who, when called on for his vote, gave it in these words : “ Death, and never did word weigh so heavily on
my heart.” (Alison, i. 523 ; Carnot, Manoires, p. 97 ; Histone Pittoresgue de la Convention Rationale, tom. ii. p. 143.)
76
FRANCE.
History, hardly believe that so great a victory had been gained, re-
doubled their activity, and put every engine in motion to
keep up an incessant agitation ; they besought their adhe¬
rents to be vigilant for the next two days, and thus secure
the fruits of so mighty a triumph. Nor were their efforts
and entreaties in vain. The greater number were over¬
awed and put to silence by the audacity of their movements;
whilst, by the resolute few, whose minds burned with in¬
dignation at their conduct, nothing could be attempted.
Louis was fully prepared for his fate. When Malesherbes,
dissolved in tears, came to announce the sentence of death,
he found the unhappy king alone, with his elbows resting
on a table, his forehead leaning on his hands, and absorb¬
ed in profound meditation. Without inquiring concerning
his fate, Louis raised himself as his friend approached, and
observed to him, “ For two hours I have been revolving
in my memory whether during my whole reign I have vo¬
luntarily given any cause of complaint to my subjects; and
with perfect sincerity I can declare, when about to appear
in the presence of God, that I deserve no reproach at their
hands, and that I have never formed a wish but for their
happiness.” Malesherbes encouraged him to hope that the
sentence might yet be superseded. Louis shook his head,
and only entreated his friend not to leave him in his last
moments. Malesherbes promised to return, and repeated¬
ly applied at the gate for admission, which however was re¬
fused by order of the municipality. Louis often asked for
his aged friend, and was deeply afflicted at not seeing him
again. He received without emotion the official announce¬
ment of his sentence made by the minister of justice on
the 20th of January, and demanded a respite of three days
to prepare himself for death, and also to be allowed an in¬
terview with his family, and to have the assistance of a con¬
fessor whom he named. The two last requests were alone
conceded by the Convention, and the execution was fixed
for the following morning at ten o’clock. The interview
with his family presented a heart-rending scene, which
lasted nearly two hours, and may be more easily imagined
than described. When the terrible moment of separation
arrived, Louis promised to see them again on the morrow;
and having embraced them all in the tenderest manner,
bade them a mournful adieu; but on entering his cham¬
ber he felt that a second trial would be too much for all
parties, and resolved to spare them the agony of a final se¬
paration. I his was his last struggle; he now only thought
of preparing for death. The remainder of the evening
was therefore spent with his confessor, the Abbe Edge-
worth, who, with heroic devotion, discharged the perilous
duty of administering the last consolations of religion to
his dying sovereign. On the night which preceded his
death, Louis slept tranquilly until five in the morning, when
he was awaked by Clery, whom he had ordered to call him
at that hour. He then gave his last instructions to his
faithful attendant, and put into his hands the little property
which he had at his disposal, a ring, a seal, and a lock of
hair. Already the drums were beating, and the heavy roll
of cannon dragged along the streets, interrupted at inter¬
vals by a confused sound of voices, was also heard.
About nine o’clock, Santerre arrived at the Temple. “ You
come to seek me,” said the king; “ allow me a minute.”
He went into his closet, and immediately returned with his
testament in his hand, which he intrusted to a municipal
officer; after which he asked for his hat, and said with a
firm voice, “ Let us set off.” He calmly seated himself in
the carriage beside his confessor, and during the passage
from the Temple to the Place de la Revolution, which
occupied two hours, he never ceased reciting the psalms
which were pointed out by his spiritual guide. The route
was lined with double files of soldiers; more than forty Historj
thousand men were under arms ; and the aspect of Paris
was mournful. Amongst the citizens who were present at 1793.
the execution there reigned the most profound silence, un-
interrupted by any external manifestation either of appro¬
bation or regret. When the procession arrived at the place
of execution, he descended from the carriage, ascended
the scaffold with a firm step, and received on his knees the
sublime benediction of his confessor, “ Son of St Louis,
ascend to heaven.” He suffered his hands to be bound,
though not without repugnance, nor until after M. Edge-
worth had exclaimed, “ Submit to that outrage, as the last
resemblance to the Saviour who is about to recompense
your sufferingsand advancing quickly to the left of the
scaffold, “ I die innocent,” said he; “I forgive my ene¬
mies, and you, unfortunate people....” At these words his
voice was drowned by the sound of drums placed at the
front of the scaffold to prevent his being heard; three
executioners seized and hurried him to the block ; and in
a few seconds he had ceased to live. One of the assist¬
ants grasped his head, and waved it in the air, whilst the
blood fell on the confessor, who was still on his knees be¬
side the mutilated body of his sovereign.
Thus perished, in the thirty-ninth year of his age, and
seventeenth of his reign, one of the best but at the same time
weakest of sovereigns. He inherited a revolution from his
ancestors, but he was better fitted than any of his prede¬
cessors to prevent or'to terminate it; for he was capable of
being a reforming king before it broke out, and of becom¬
ing a constitutional sovereign under its influence. He was
perhaps the only prince who had no passion, not even that
of power, and who united the two qualities most essential
to a good king, the fear of God and the love of his people.
He perished the victim of passions which he did not parti¬
cipate ; of those of his supporters to which he was a stran¬
ger, and those of the multitude, which he had not excited.
Few kings have left so spotless a memory, and history will
say of him, that, with a little more force of mind and deci¬
sion of character, he would have bequeathed to posterity a
name unique among princes. Such, in the opinion of the
ablest of the republican writers of France,1 was Louis XVI.;
a man better qualified to adorn a private station than to
govern a great people at a period of unexampled excite¬
ment ; one whose virtues ought to have ensured him a dif¬
ferent fate, and whose misfortunes were the result of that
long-continued misrule which he had endeavoured to cor¬
rect.
In a political point of view, this tragical event proved Rupture
injurious to the republican cause throughout Europe. No with Grea
man out of France ventured to justify it; and in all conn-Brita*n-
tries it excited the most violent indignation against the
rulers of the French republic. Accordingly new enemies
now hastened to join the general league against France.
It is unnecessary here to enter into any detail of the poli¬
tical struggles which occurred in other countries, particu¬
larly our own. It is sufficient to remark generally, that at
this time the British government thought itself endanger¬
ed by the propagation of those speculative opinions which
had overturned the French monarchy, and that almost all
toe men of property in the kingdom concurred with the mi¬
nistry in thinking a war with France necessary for the pur¬
pose of securing the constitution, and checking the progress
of levelling doctrines. After the tenth of August the Bri¬
tish minister had been recalled ; but the Republic had still
suffeied the ambassador of France, M. Chauvelin, to remain
in England.
The ostensible grounds of quarrel on the part of Great
Britain were two ; the decree of the 15th of November 1792, '
1 Mignet, Histoire de la Revolution Fran^aise, i. 334.
F R A
History, by which it was considered that encouragement to rebel-
lion had been held out to the subjects of every state, and
17‘J3- war thereby waged against every established government;
and the question relative to the opening of the Scheldt.
Of the decree the French executive council gave explana¬
tions, denying the fairness of the interpretation put upon
it, and alleging that the intention of the Convention was
only to give aid to such countries as had already acquired
their freedom, and by a declaration of the general will re¬
quested aid for its perservation. But this explanation wras
not admitted, inasmuch as the decree expressly says that
the French nation will “ grant assistance to all who wish
to procure liberty and, considering the notions of liberty
then entertained in France, it was not doubted that their
real intention was to excite rebellion in foreign nations.
With regard to the opening of the Scheldt, as this river
runs from Brabant through the Dutch territory to the sea,
the Dutch had shut up its mouth, and thus prevented any
maritime commerce being carried on by the people of Bra¬
bant by means of the river. To render themselves popular
in Brabant, however, the French declared that they would
open the navigation of the Scheldt. But Great Britain
having some time previously become bound by treaty with
the Dutch to assist them in obstructing this navigation, now
intimated to the French government that the project of
opening the Scheldt must be abandoned. The French,
however, alleged that by the law of nations navigable rivers
ought to be open to all who reside upon their banks ; that
nevertheless the point w as of no importance either to France
or to England, and but of little importance even to Hol¬
land ; and that if the people of Brabant themselves chose
to give it up, they would make no objection. In the mean
time the Dutch gave themselves no concern about the mat¬
ter. They did not even solicit the assistance of England ;
and the merchants, when applied to individually, declared
that if the Scheldt was opened, they could conduct their
commerce as well at Antwerp as at Amsterdam. But in
all this there is nothing remarkable. Amongst the Dutch
there were many republicans, who wished for the downfall
of the stadtholder, and rejoiced at every thing which dis¬
tressed him, or had a tendency to render his office useless
in the eyes of the people; whilst others who thought dif¬
ferently were afraid to speak their sentiments, as Dumou-
riez w'as in their neighbourhood at the head of a victorious
army. The result of the whole was, that the British go¬
vernment ordered M. Chauvelin to quit this country. The
French executive council accredited another minister, M.
Maret, who was also invested with powers to negotiate,
and requested that a passport might be given him ; but he
was not even suffered to land. The republicans having
thus far humbled themselves before the British govern¬
ment, were fired with indignation at the manner in which
their envoy was treated; and on the 1st of February 1793
the National Convention, on the motion of Brissot, de¬
creed that George king of England had never ceased, since
the revolution of the tenth of August 1792, to give the
French nation proofs of his attachment to the concert of
crowned heads ; that he had drawn into the same combi¬
nation the stadtholder of the United Provinces ; that, con¬
trary to the treaty of 1783, the English ministry had grant¬
ed protection to the emigrants and others who had openly
appeared in arms against the French ; that they had com¬
mitted an outrage against the French republic, by order¬
ing the ambassador of France to quit Great Britain ; that
the English had stopped different boats and vessels laden
with corn for France, whilst, at the same time, contrary to
the treaty of 1786, they continued the exportation of grain
to other foreign countries ; and that, to thwart more effi¬
caciously the commercial transactions of the republic writh
England, they had by an act of parliament prohibited the
circulation of assignats. The Convention therefore de-
N C E. 77
dared, that in consequence of these acts of hostility and History,
aggression, the French republic wras at war with the king
of England and with the stadtholder of the United Pro- 1793.
vinces. The absurdity of pretending that any treaty with
France made in 1783 could be violated by protecting the
emigrants who fled from the vengeance of the Convention,
must be sufficiently obvious. The Convention itself was a
usurpation of the government with wrhich that treaty had
been concluded. On the other hand, the prohibition of the
assignats was certainly contrary to no law, and -was sanction¬
ed by every motive of expediency, unless the Convention
could prove that all nations were bound by the law of nature
to risk their own credit upon that of the French republic.
About a fortnight after this declaration appeared, war was
likewise declared against Spain ; and in the course of the
summer France was in hostility with all Europe, except¬
ing only Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, and Turkey.
In the mean time General Dumouriez, proceeding agree- Progress of
ably to his orders, made an attack upon Holland ; but in Dumou-
doing so he disseminated his troops in such a manner as toriez*
expose himself to attack upon the side of Germany. He
commanded General Miranda to invest Maestricht, whilst
he advanced to blockade Breda and Bergen-op-Zoom. Bre¬
da, however, surrendered on the 24th of February, Klun-
dert was taken on the 26th, and Gertruydenberg yielded on
the 4th of March. But here the triumphs of Dumouriez
ended. The sieges of Williamstadt and Bergen-op-Zoom,
though vigorously pressed, proved unsuccessful. On the 1st
of March General Clairfayt, having passed the Roer, attack¬
ed the French posts, and compelled them to retreat with
the loss of about two thousand men. The following day the
archduke attacked them anew with considerable success ;
and on the 3d the French were driven from Aix-la-Cha-
pelle, with the loss of four thousand men killed and sixteen
hundred taken prisoners. The siege of Maestricht w'as now
raised, and the French retreated to Tongres, where they
were also attacked, and forced to retreat to St Tron. Here
Dumouriez joined them, but did not bring his army along
with him from Holland. After some skirmishes, a general
engagement took place at Neerwinden, and was contested
on the part of the French with great obstinacy ; but they
were at length overpowered by numbers, and forced to
retreat. This defeat had well nigh proved fatal to the re¬
publican arms. The French lost three thousand men in the
battle, and six thousand immediately afterwards deserted and
returned to their homes. Dumouriez continued to retreat,
and on the 22d he was again attacked near Louvain; but,
through the medium of Colonel Mack, who afterwards be¬
came so unenviably famous, he entered into an arrangement
with the imperialists that his retreat should not be seriously
interrupted. It was also fully agreed that whilst the impe¬
rialists took possession of Conde and Valenciennes, he should
march to Paris, dissolve the Convention, and place the son
of the late king upon the throne.
The rapid retreat and successive defeats of General Du¬
mouriez having rendered his conduct suspicious, commission¬
ers wTere sent by the executive government, for the purpose
of discovering and defeating his designs. The latter dissem¬
bled, and pretended to communicate to him a scheme of a
counter revolution. Dumouriez fell into the snare which
they had laid for him, and confessed his intention of dis¬
solving by force the Convention and the Jacobin Club, and
restoring monarchy. On the report of these commission¬
ers the Convention sent Bournonville, the minister of war,
along with Camus, Blancal, Lamarque, and Quinette, as
commissioners, to supersede and arrest Dumouriez. The
attempt on the part of these functionaries to arrest a gene¬
ral in the midst of his army was certainly hazardous ; and
in fact Dumouriez, on the first of April, sent them prison¬
ers to General Clairfayt’s head-quarters at Tour nay, as host¬
ages for the safety of the royal family. He next attempt-
78
FRANCE.
1793.
State of
France.
History, ed to seduce his army from their fidelity to the Convention;
b}11 be speedily found that he had mistaken the character of
his troops. When the report reached them that their gene¬
ral was to be carried as a criminal to Paris, they were seized
with vehement indignation ; but as soon as they learned that
an attempt was being made to prevail on them to turn their
arms against their country, their sentiments underwent a
sudden alteration, and resentment succeeded to the gene¬
rous feeling of indignation which at first prompted them to
interpose in his behalf. On the 5th of April two procla¬
mations were issued, one by General Dumouriez, and the
other by the Prince of Saxe-Cobourg, declaring that their
only purpose was to restore the constitution of 1789, 1790,
and 1791. The latter announced that the allied powers
wished merely to co-operate with General Dumouriez in
giving to France a constitutional king and the constitution
which she had framed for herself; and he declared, upon
his word of honour, that he came not into the French ter¬
ritory for the purpose of making conquests. On the same
day Dumouriez went to the advanced guard of his own
camp at Maulde; but he there learned that the corps of
artillery had risen upon their general, and were marching
to Valenciennes; and he also found that the whole army
were resolved to stand by their country. Seven hundred
cavalry and eight hundred infantry were all who deserted
with Dumouriez to the Austrians, and many of these after¬
wards returned.
By the defection of Dumouriez, however, the army of
tie north was dissolved, and in part disbanded, in presence
or a numerous, well-disciplined, and victorious enemy. The
russians were at the same time advancing in immense
force, and were about to commence the siege of May-
ence. In the interior of the Republic, evils even more
serious were threatened. In the departments of La Ven¬
dee and La Loire, or the provinces of Bretagne and Poitou,
immense multitudes of emigrants and other royalists had
gradually assembled in the course of the winter, professing
to act in the name of Monsieur, as regent of France ; and
about the middle of March they advanced against Nantes
to the number of about forty thousand. In the beginning of
pnl they defeated the republicans in two pitched battles,
possessed themselves of fifty leagues of country, and even
threatened, by their own efforts, to shake the republic to its
very foundations. On the 8th of April there assembled at
Antwerp a congress °f the combined powers, which was
attended by the Prince of Orange and his two sons, with
his exce lency Vander Spiegel, on the part of Holland ; by
ie Duke of lork and Lord Auckland on the part of
Great Britain ; and by the Prince of Saxe-Cobourg, Counts
Mettermch, Staremberg, and Dargenteau, and the Prus¬
sian, Spanish, and Neapolitan envoys. In this congress
it was definitively determined to commence active opera¬
tions against France; the Prince of Cobourg’s proclama-
turn was recalled, and a scheme of conquest announced.
The repub- Commissioners from the Convention now set un anew
againflocked^ (f the republic> and the scattered battalions
sembled. flocked around it. General Dampierre w as appointed com-
^ °n the 13th he was able to resist a
general attack upon his advanced posts. On the 14th his
advanced guard yielded to superior numbers, but on the
On the^^t^T10"8 ln a long and well_f°ught battle.
1st of AliSSan8 Were aSain ^pulsed, and on the
* * May ^neral Dampierre was himself defeated in an
attack upon the enemy On the 8th another engagement
took place, in which the French general was killed hv a
bvThTaR11' °n tne c 3d r determined attack was made
vlredtlSr UP°? v? f0rtlfied camP of Bamars, which co-
J 7n yaJenciennes. The French made a very
.nUt WGre at length overcome, and in the
night abandoned their camp. By this victory the allies
were enabled to commence the siege of Valenciennes;
Conde having been blockaded since the first of April. Histoi
About the same time General Custines on the Rhine made vv
a vigorous but unsuccessful attack upon the Prussians, 179!
and in consequence they were soon enabled to lay siege to
Mayence. At this period also the Corsican general Paoli
revolted; and the Republic, assaulted from without by the
whole strength of Europe, was undermined by treachery
and faction within.
Whilst the country was in a state verging upon utter Revolu
ruin, the paities in the Convention were gradually waxing Bonar\
fiercer and fiercer in their animosity; and, regardless 0fTribu"
what was passing at a distance, they seemed only anxious
for the extermination of each other. In the month of
March the Revolutionary Tribunal was established, for the
purpose of trying crimes committed against the state ; and
the Girondists, the mildness ot whose administration had
contributed not a little to increase the evils of their coun¬
try, began to see the necessity of adopting measures of se¬
verity. But the public calamities, which now followed in
rapid succession, were ascribed by their countrymen to the
imbecility or perfidy of that party. This gave to the party
ot the Mountain a fatal advantage. On the 15th of April
the communes of the forty-eight sections of Paris present¬
ed a petition, requiring that the chiefs of the Girondists
therein named should be impeached and expelled from the
Convention ; and this was followed on the 1st of May by
another petition of the same description from the faubourg
bt In the mean time the Girondist party im¬
peached Marat, but the miscreant was acquitted by the
jury. With the assistance of the Jacobin Club, the Moun-
tam had now acquired a complete ascendency over the
city of Paris. The Girondists therefore proposed to re¬
move the Convention from the capital; and to prevent
tins, the Mountain resolved to make the same use of the
people of the capital against the Girondist party which
they had formerly done against the monarch on the tenth
ot August. It is unnecessary to relate in detail all the tu¬
mults which occurred either in Paris or in the Convention
during the remaining part of the month of May. On the
Jlst, afc four o’clock in the morning, the tocsin was sound¬
ed, the generale beat, and the alarm guns fired. All was
commotion and terror. The citizens flew to arms, and as¬
sembled round the Convention, where some deputations
demanded a decree of accusation against thirty-five of its
members. The day, however, passed without coming to a
decision. On the afternoon of the 1st of June an armed
orce made the same demand, which was repeated on the
'fd oi June, when the tocsin again sounded, and an hun¬
dred pieces of cannon surrounded the hall of the Conven¬
tion. At length Barrere, who was considered as a mode¬
rate man, and respected by both parties, mounted the tri-
bune; but he now artfully deserted the Girondists, and in¬
vited the denounced members voluntarily to resign their
character of representatives. Some of them complied, and
the president attempted to dissolve the sitting; but the
members now found themselves prisoners in their own hall.
iue Hem iot, commander of the armed force, compelled
lem to remain; and the obnoxious deputies, amounting
to upwards of ninety in number, were put under arrest,
and a decree of accusation passed against them. It is very
obvious that on this occasion the liberties of France were
rodden under foot. The minority of the national repre-
entatives, with the assistance of an armed force raised in
ie capital, had compelled the majority to submit to their
easures, and taken the leading members prisoners. The
i ,f1S assumed to itself the whole powers of the
nc i Republic ; and the nation was no longer governed
by representatives freely chosen, but by a minority of the
Jacobin ?? u wT se,ntimentS the city of Paris and the
Jacobin Club had thought proper to approve. The history
of nations, and, above all, of factions, is a mass of contra-
FRA
History, dictions. The Mountain party came into power by preach-
ing boundless liberty, and by practically violating its fun-
1793. damental principles. How far the plea of political neces¬
sity may serve to excuse their conduct, we shall not ven¬
ture to decide. Certain it is that they soon commenced,
both at home and abroad, a career of the most terrible energy
which is to be found in the records of nations.
The first result of their victory in the capital was cala¬
mitous to the Republic at large. Brissot and some other
deputies escaped, and endeavoured to kindle the flames
of civil war. In general, however, the influence of the
Jacobin Club, and of its various branches, was such, that
the north of France adhered to the Convention; but the
southern departments were speedily in a state of rebel¬
lion. The department of Ljmns declared the Mountain
party outlawed. Marseilles and Toulon followed the ex¬
ample of Lyons, and entered into a confederacy, which
has since been known by the appellation of Federalism.
The departments of La Gironde and Calvados broke out
into open insurrection. In a word, the whole of France
was in a state of violent convulsion. Still, however, the
enthusiastic garrisons of Mayence and Valenciennes pro¬
tected it against the immediate entrance of a foreign force,
and afforded leisure for one of its internal factions to gain
an ascendency, and thereafter to protect its independence.
In fact, the political enthusiasm of all orders of persons
was such, that even the female sex did not escape its con¬
tagion. In the beginning of July a young woman of the
name of Charlotte Corday came from the department of
Calvados to devote her life for what she deemed the cause
of freedom and her country. Having requested an inter¬
view with Marat, the most obnoxious of tbe Mountain
party, she at length contrived to obtain it, and after con¬
versing with him for some time, suddenly plunged a dag¬
ger in his breast, and walked carelessly out of the house.
But she was immediately seized, condemned, and execut¬
ed; behaving throughout with infinite constancy, and with
her last breath shouting Vive la Republique. The party
to which Marat was attached derived advantage from the
manner of his death, as it seemed to fasten the odious
charge of assassination upon their antagonists, and to give
them the appearance of suffering in the cause of liberty;
though the real truth is, that assassination was sanction¬
ed by both parties, under pretence of defending the liber¬
ties of the Republic.
'he con- One of the first -acts of the Mountain party after their
itution triumph was to complete the republican constitution. Pre-
;mtfKfted viously to their fall, the Girondists had brought forward
fountain ^le P^an a constitution, which was chiefly the work of
arty, Condorcet; but it was never sanctioned by the Conven¬
tion, and much too intricate to be practically useful. The
constitution now framed, which was afterwards sanction¬
ed by the nation, but never put in practice, abolished the
former mode of electing the representatives of the people
through the medium of electoral assemblies, and appoint¬
ed them to be chosen immediately by the primary assem¬
blies, which were to consist of from two to six hundred
citizens, whilst each man was to give his suffrage by bal¬
lot or otherwise at his option. One deputy was allowed
for every forty thousand individuals, and population form¬
ed the sole basis of representation. The elections were to
take place every year on the first of May. Electoral as¬
semblies were, however, retained. Every two hundred
citizens in the primary assemblies named one elector, and
an assembly of all the electors of the department was
afterwards held, which chose candidates for the executive
council, or ministry of the Republic; and out of this list
of candidates the legislative body selected the members
N C E. 79
of the executive council. One half of this council was to History,
be renewed by each legislature in the last month of the
session. Every law, after being passed by the legislative H93.
body, was to be sent to the department; and if in more
than half of the departments the tenth of the primary as¬
semblies of each did not object to it, it became effectual.
Trial by jury was also established. National conventions
might be called for altering the constitution, and were to
be summoned, if required, by the tenth of the primary as¬
semblies of each department in a majority of the depart¬
ments. The publication of this constitution secured no
small degree of applause to the Convention and the Moun¬
tain party. The rapidity with which it had been framed1
seemed to cast a reflection upon the slowness of the mo¬
derate party, and was regarded as a proof that its fra¬
mers were decidedly serious in the cause of republicanism.
No regard, however, was paid to it by the Convention,
which declared itself permanent; nor indeed did it seem
possible to carry it into execution.
We have mentioned that Conde was invested ever since
the beginning of April; but it did not yield till the 10th
of July, when the garrison was so much reduced by famine
and disease, that out of four thousand men, of which it
originally consisted, only fifteen hundred were fit for ser¬
vice. The eyes of all Europe were in the mean time fix¬
ed upon the siege of Valenciennes. Colonel Moncrieff
had contended that batteries ought to be placed imme¬
diately under the walls, without approaching it by regular
parallels ; but the imperial engineer Ferraris asserted that
the work of the great Vauban must be treated with more
respect, and his opinion was adopted by the council of
war. The trenches were opened on the I4th of June.
Few sallies were attempted by the garrison, on account
of the smallness of their number. The inhabitants at first
wished to surrender; but the violence of the bombard¬
ment prevented their assembling, or giving much trouble
to General Ferrand, the governor. The principal labour
of the siege consisted of mines and countermines, some of
which having been successfully sprung by the assailants,
the town was surrendered by capitulation on the 27th of
July, and the Duke of York took possession of it in be¬
half of the emperor of Germany. The siege of Mayence
at the same time proceeded, and the place suffered much
from famine; but at last, after an unsuccessful attempt to
raise the siege by the French army of the Rhine, it sur¬
rendered on the 22d of July.
After the termination of the siege of Valenciennes the The allies
allied powers became much divided as to their future divided as
proceedings. The Austrian commanders are understood to their
to have presented two plans; the one to penetrate tofuturePro-
Paris by means of the rivers which fall into the Seine ;ceedlngs‘
the other to take advantage of the consternation occasion¬
ed by the surrender of Valenciennes, and with fifty thou-
sand light troops to penetrate suddenly to Paris, whilst a
descent should be made on the coast of Bretagne to assist
the royalists. The proposal of the British ministry, how¬
ever, to divide the grand army, and to attack West Flan¬
ders, beginning with the siege of Dunkirk, was ultimately
adopted; but this determination proved ruinous to the
allies, as the French found means to vanquish in detail
that army which they were unable to encounter when
united.
It has been asserted that the Duke of York was in secret
correspondence with Omeron, the governor of Dunkirk;
but the latter was removed before any advantage could be
taken of his treachery. On the 24th of August the Duke
of York attacked and drove into the town the French out¬
posts, after an action in which the Austrian general Dal-
1 This constitution was only the work of a fortnight; a short space, no doubt, for so important an undertaking.
80
FRANCE.
History, ton was killed. A naval armament was expected from
Great Britain to co-operate in the siege, but it did not ar-
179.J- rjve jn tjme t0 ijg 0f any avaii# Meanwhile a strong re¬
publican force menaced the covering army of the allies,
commanded by General Freytag ; and, in point of fact, he
was soon afterwards attacked and totally routed, in conse¬
quence of which the siege was raised. The British lost
their heavy cannon and baggage, with several thousand
men ; but the Convention, believing that their general,
Houchard, might have cut off the Duke of York’s retreat,
tried and executed him for this alleged neglect of duty.
In the mean time the Prince of Saxe-Cobourg and Gene¬
ral Clairfayt unsuccessfully attempted to besiege Cam-
bray and Bouchain. Quesnoy was, however, taken by
General Clairfayt on the 11th of September; and here
terminated the success of the allies in the Netherlands
during the present campaign.
A considerable part of the French army of the north
having taken a strong position near Maubeuge, were there
blockaded by Prince Cobourg ; but upon the 15th and
16th of October the latter was repeatedly attacked by the
French troops under General Jourdan, who had succeeded
Houchard in the command. The French having now re¬
covered their vigour, brought into the field a formidable
train of artillery; and commissioners from the Convention
harangued the soldiers, threatening the timid and applaud¬
ing the brave. The attacks were repeated and furious,
and the Austrians had the disadvantage, in consequence
of which the Prince of Saxe-Cobourg retired during the
night. The French now menaced maritime Flanders, took
Furnes, and besieged Nieuport. But a detachment of Bri¬
tish troops ready to sail to the West Indies were hastily
sent to Ostend, and for the present prevented the further
progress of the French.
I^ons. The multiplicity of the events which now occurred in
France was so great, that it is difficult to give an outline
of these with tolerable perspicuity. It has been already
mentioned that violent dissensions occurred throughout
the Republic, in consequence of the triumph of the Moun¬
tain party on the 31st .of May. The department of Cal¬
vados was first in arms against the Convention, under the
command of General Wimpfen ; but before the end of
July the insurrection had been subdued. The federalism of
the cities of Marseilles, Lyons, and Toulon, however, still
remained. On the 8th of August Lyons was attacked by
the Conventional troops ; and several actions followed,
which were attended with great loss both on the part of
the assailants and of the besieged. The city in fact was
reduced almost to ruins; but it held out during the whole
month of September. The besieging general, Kellerman,
was removed from his command on account of his sup¬
posed inactivity; and the city surrendered on the 8th of
October to General Doppet, a man who had lately been
a physician. The walls and public buildings of Lyons
were ordered to be destroyed, and its name changed to
that of Ville Affranchie i many hundreds of its citizens
were dragged to the scaffold on account of their alleged
treasonable resistance to the Convention; and the victo¬
rious party, weary of the slow operation of the guillotine,
at last destroyed their prisoners in multitudes, by dis¬
charges of grape-shot. With the party of the Moun-
Marseilles. tain terror was now the order of the day. In the end
of July General Carteaux was sent against Marseilles.
In the beginning of August he gained some successes
over the advanced guard of the federalist troops; and on
the 24th he took the town of Aix, upon which the Mar-
Toulon. sellois submitted. But the leading persons of the impor¬
tant town of Toulon, one of the first naval stations in France,
entered into a negotiation, which terminated in their sub¬
mitting to the British admiral Lord Hood, upon the con¬
ditions that he would preserve as a deposit the town and
shipping for Louis XVII. and assist in restoring the con¬
stitution of 1789. The siege of Toulon was commenced
by General Carteaux in the beginning of September ; and
it continued without much vigour during that and the suc¬
ceeding month, Neapolitan, Spanish, and English troops
having been brought by sea to assist in its defence. But
in the beginning of November, General Carteaux was re¬
moved to the command of the army in Italy, and General
Dugommier succeeded him in the direction of the siege.
General O’Hara also arrived with reinforcements from
Gibraltar, and assumed the command of the town, under
a commission from his Britannic majesty. Upon the 30th
of November the garrison made a vigorous sally, in order
to destroy some batteries which were erecting upon heights
that commanded the city. The French were surprised,
and the assailants effected their object; but, elated with
this success, the troops rushed onward in pursuit of the ene¬
my, and were unexpectedly met by a strong French force
brought up by the commandant of artillery to check their
advance. General O’Hara now arrived from the city to
endeavour to bring off his troops; but he received a
wound in the arm, and was taken prisoner. The total loss
of the assailants in this affair was estimated at a thousand
men. The French now mustered in great force around
Toulon, and prepared to prosecute the attack with vigour.
It commenced on the 19th of December, and was chiefly
directed against Fort Mulgrave, occupied by the British.
This fort was protected by an intrenched camp, and thir¬
teen pieces of cannon consisting of twenty-four and thir¬
ty-six pounders, with five mortars and three thousand
troops ; but such was the fury of assault, that it was car¬
ried in an hour, and the whole garrison either killed or
taken. The British and their allies now found it impossi¬
ble to defend the place ; and in the course of the day em¬
barked their troops, after having set on fire the arsenal and
the ships. A scene of confusion now ensued, such as has
rarely been exhibited in modern warfare. Crowds of peo¬
ple of every rank, age, and sex, hurried on board the
ships, to escape the vengeance of their enraged country¬
men. Some of the inhabitants began to fire upon their
late allies; others in despair were seen plunging into the
sea, and making a vain effort to reach the ships ; and not
a few put an end at once to their own existence on the
shore. No language, indeed, can do justice to the horrors
of the scene. Mothers clasping their helpless babes, and
old men weighed down with the load of years, might be
seen stretching their hands towards the harbour, shudder¬
ing at every sound behind them, and even rushing into
the waves to escape the less merciful death which awaited
them from their countrymen. Sir Sidney Smith, with
honourable humanity, suspended the retreat until not a
single individual who claimed his assistance remained on
shore, though the total number borne away amounted to
nearly fifteen thousand. Of thirty-one ships of the line
found by the British at Toulon, thirteen were left behind,
ten were burned, and four had been previously sent to
Brest and Rochefort, with five thousand republicans who
could not be trusted; so that Great Britain finally ob¬
tained by this expedition only three ships of the line and
five frigates. The recovery of this important place by
the French was in a great measure, if not altogether, ow¬
ing to the superior genius and conduct of the command¬
ant of artillery, Napoleon Bonaparte, who here made his
first conspicuous essay in arms.
1 he storm which now burst on the devoted heads of
the loulonese was indeed terrible. The infuriated sol¬
diers rushed into the town, and, in their frantic rage, mas¬
sacred two hundred Jacobins who had gone out to wel¬
come their approach. During twenty-four hours the in¬
habitants were left at the mercy of the soldiers, and the
galley slaves, who had been let loose on the city ; and a
FRA
History, stop was only put to these horrors by the citizens redeem-
ing themselves for four millions of francs. Dugommier, a
1793. brave, honourable, and humane soldier, did his utmost to
check the violence of the troops, and to mitigate the se¬
verity of the Convention ; but though he succeeded in re¬
straining the former, nothing could soften the inexorable
hearts of the latter. Several thousand citizens of every
age and both sexes perished in a few weeks, either by
the sword or the guillotine; for a considerable time two
hundred were beheaded daily ; and twelve thousand la¬
bourers were hired from the surrounding departments to
demolish the buildings of the city. On the motion of Bar-
rere, it was decreed that the name of Toulon should be
changed to that of Port de la Montagne, that the houses
should be razed to the foundations, and nothing should be
left but the naval and military establishments; and Bar-
ras, Freron, and Robespierre the younger were chosen
to execute the vengeance of the Convention upon the fal¬
len city. Military commissions were immediately formed,
and a revolutionary tribunal was established ; the prisons
were crowded with the unhappy persons destined for the
guillotine; and the mitraillades of Lyons were imitated
with fearful effect. One of the victims, an aged mer¬
chant, named Hugues, was eighty-four years old, deaf, and
nearly blind. His only crime consisted in the possession
of a fortune of L.800,000, all of which, excepting L.20,000,
he offered, to save his life. The judge, however, deeming
the offer inadequate, sent him to the guillotine, and con¬
fiscated the whole. “ When I beheld this old man exe¬
cuted,” said Napoleon, “ I felt as if the end of the world
was at hand.” It seemed, indeed, as if a legion of evil
spirits had been let loose upon earth, to revel for a season
in crimes hitherto unheard of among the children of men.1
War m La On the side of Spain the war produced nothing of im-
Vend&. portance; and in the mountainous country of Piedmont
little advantage had been gained on either side. But
more terrible scenes were acting in other quarters. In La
Vendee a most fierce and sanguinary contest was main¬
tained by the royalists. In that part of the country the
language of the rest of France was but little understood.
The people were superstitious, and had acquired almost
no knowledge of the new opinions which had recently
been propagated throughout the rest of the country.
They were chiefly headed by priests, and taught to re¬
gard their cause as that of religion. Their usual mode
of warfare was to proceed in their ordinary occupations
as peaceable citizens, but suddenly to assemble in im¬
mense bands at the prescribed rendezvous, when the alarm
was given. At one time, indeed, they were said to amount
to one hundred and fifty thousand men. They besieged
Nantes and Orleans; and even Paris itself was not consi¬
dered altogether safe from their enterprises. The war was
inconceivably bloody; neither party gave quarter; and La
Vendee proved a dreadful drain on the population of
France. On the 28th of June the Conventional general
Biron drove the royalists from Lucon ; and Nantes was re¬
lieved by General Beysser. But after obtaining some suc¬
cess, General Westermann was surprised, and compelled to
retreat to Parthenay. In the beginning of August the
royalists were defeated by General Rossignol; but on the
10th of that month they again, under Charette their com¬
mander-in-chief, attacked Nantes, though without success.
Our limits do not admit of our entering into the details of
this fierce contest, rich as it is in daring actions and heroic
adventures. The royalists were often defeated and ap¬
parently dispersed, but they as often appeared again in
crowds around the astonished republicans. At last, about
the middle of October, they were completely defeated.
N C E. 81
driven from La Vendee, and forced to divide into sepa- History,
rate bodies; one of w'hich threw itself into the island of
Noirmoutier, where they were destroyed, whilst another 1793.
took the road of Maine and Bretagne, where they strug¬
gled for some time against their enemies, and were at last
either cut to pieces or dispersed. The royalists had long
expected assistance from England ; and an armament un¬
der the Earl of Moira was actually fitted out for that ser¬
vice, but it did not arrive till too late, and returned home
without even attempting a landing. The Mountain party
invariably disgraced their successes by the most ferocious
cruelties. Humanity is shocked, and history would almost
cease to obtain credit, were we to state in detail the un¬
relenting barbarities which were exercised against the un¬
fortunate royalists, especially by Carrier, a deputy of the
Convention, who had been sent into this quarter with un¬
limited powers. Multitudes of prisoners were crowded on
board vessels in the Loire, which were afterwards scut¬
tled and sunk. No age or sex was spared; and these exe¬
cutions were performed with every circumstance of wan¬
ton barbarity and insult. The infernal republican mar¬
riages, as they were denominated by the demon who in¬
vented them, usually preceded these noyades.
On the side of the Rhine a great variety of events oc- Progress
curred during the months of August and September. Se- °fthe al*
veral engagements took place, in which the French were the
upon the whole successful. In September, however, Lan¬
dau was invested by the combined powers; and it was
resolved to make every possible effort to drive the French
from their position on the Lauter. They occupied the an¬
cient and celebrated lines of Weissenberg, constructed in
former times for the protection of the Rhenish frontier,
and stretching from the town of Lauterburg on the Rhine,
through the village of Weissenberg to the Vosges Moun¬
tains; and during four months all the resources of art
had been employed in strengthening them- Having ap¬
proached the extreme left of this position, the allies
formed the design of attacking it from left to right, and
thus forcing the French to abandon the whole line of the
intrenchments. Accordingly the Prussians, under the
Duke of Brunswick, assaulted the left orf the lines by the
defiles of the Vosges Mountains, whilst the Austrians
under Prince Waldeck crossed the Rhine to turn the
right, and Wurmser, with the main body, endeavoured to
force the centre. The attack on the right by Lauterburg
obtained only a momentary success; but Wurmser having
carried several redoubts in the centre, soon got possession
of Weissenberg; and the left having been turned and
forced back, the French army retired in confusion, and
some of the fugitives even fled as far as Strasburg. Such
was the tardiness of the allies, however, that the French,
though completely routed, lost only a thousand men;
whereas, if the victory had been improved, the ruin of the
whole army would have been inevitable. The French re¬
treated to Hagenau, from which they were driven on the
18th ; and they suffered two other defeats on the 25th
and 27th. Some of the principal citizens of Strasburg
now sent a private deputation to General Wurmser, offer¬
ing to surrender the town, upon condition that it should
be restored to Louis XVII. But General Wurmser de¬
clined to accede to these terms, and insisted upon an
unconditional surrender. The delay occasioned by this
disagreement led to the discovery of the negotiation, and
those citizens of Strasburg who had been engaged in it
were seized by Saint-Just and Lebas, the commissioners of
the Convention, and brought to the scaffold.
Prodigious efforts were now made by the French in order
to recover the ground which they had lost. On the 9th of
VOL. x.
1 Alison, vol. ii. p. 201, 202 ; Lacretelle, xi. 189, 190.
It
82
FRANCE.
^Hrstoiy. November General Irembert was shot at the head of the
army, upon a charge, probably ill founded, of treachery
in the storming of the lines of Weissenberg. But on
the 14th Fort Louis was taken by the allies, not with¬
out suspicion of treachery on the part of the governor.
With this the success of General WTurmser may be said
to have terminated. On the 21st, the republican army
drove back the Austrians, and penetrated almost to Hao-e-
nau ; whilst the army of the Moselle advanced to co-ope¬
rate with the army of the Rhine. On the 17th the Prus¬
sians were defeated near Sarbruck, and next day their
camp at Bliescastel was stormed ; the French then ad¬
vanced to Deux-Ponts. On the 29th and 30th, however,
the French were repulsed with great loss in two violent
attacks which they made on the Duke of Brunswick near
Lautern. It was obvious, indeed, that they had come into
the field with a determination to conquer, whatever it might
cost. Every day was a day of battle, and torrents of blood
flowed on both sides. The allies had the advantage of the
ground, which is very strong, on account of its inequalities
and morasses; but the French army was far more nume-
ious than theirs ; and although inferior in point of discip*
line, yet it derived great moral force from the enthusiasm
with which the troops were animated. On the 8th of De-
cember the French under Pichegru carried the redoubts
which covered Hagenau at the point of the bayonet. In
a word, the finest troops in Europe were unable to with¬
stand the fury of the republicans, whose determination
seemed only to increase in proportion to the slaughter of
their companions in arms, and who were never more likely
to conquer than immediately after a defeat. On the 22d
the allies were driven with great loss from Hagenau, not¬
withstanding the works which they had thrown up for
their defence. The intrenchments on the heights of
Keishoften were considered as stronger than those of Jem-
mappes ; yet they were stormed by the army of the Mo¬
selle and the Rhine, under Hoche and Pichegru. On the
23d and 24th the allies were pursued to the heights of
YYrotte; and on the 26th the intrenchments which they
had thrown up there were, after a desperate conflict, forced
at the point of the bayonet. On the 27th the republican
army arrived in triumph at Weissenberg. Wurmser re-
WndiM?ri?SSithe Rhil\e’ and the Duke of Brunswick
hastily fell back to cover Mayence. The blockade of Lan¬
dau, which had lasted four months, was raised; Fort Louis
was evacuated by the allies, and Kayserslautern, Germers-
heim, and Spires, submitted to the French. During the
last month of the year 1793 the loss of men on both^ides
^ti?menje,'aind 1Si Said t0 have amounted to between
seventy and eighty thousand.
tEh?Mou0LhpInn?e mrn -ime .violcnt efForts were made at Paris by
tain party. t]le j l^ mimstration, established under the auspices of
The npwrp w °f -the party called the Mountain.
Ihe new republican constitution had been presented to the
people in the primary assemblies, and accepted; so hat he
business for which the Convention had been called to^e!
ter, namely, that of forming a constitution for France was
d ssolverilemser8 therfore ProP°^d that they should now
dissolve themselves, and order a new legislative body to as
semble, according to the rules prescribed by the constitu
tion ; but the dominant party considered it Is hazardous to
vene a new assembly, possessing only limited powers
in the present distracted state of the countrv nn/fn ? ^
it was obvious that France at this time required a dictator
ttthancTe^h!"1 P°STfd of “"^absolute “tho° 1
ty than can ever be enjoyed by one which acts, or pretends
to act, upon constitutional principles It wo- Ju r
determinpfl thot- ^ therefore
until The end rf the T th°ultl remain '“dissolved
until the end of the war; and that a Revolutionnrv Tn
vernment should be established, and invested whh Z °
trolkd power. Committees of its body wSe toe-'
fore elected for the purpose of conducting every depart¬
ment of business. The principal of these was called the
Committee of Public Safety, whose duty it was to superin¬
tend all the others, and to give to the administration all the
secrecy and dispatch which have been accounted peculiar
to a military government, together with a combination of
skill and energy hitherto unknown among mankind. A
correspondence was maintained with all the Jacobin Clubs
throughout tire kingdom; and commissioners appointed
by the Convention were sent into all parts of the coun¬
try, with unlimited authority over every description of per-
s°n.s- „ 1° Biis way a government was established, possessed
of infinite vigilance, and more absolute and uncontrolled
power than was ever enjoyed by any single despot; and
the whole transactions and resources of the country were
known to its rulers. On the 23d of August, Barrere, in
name of the Committee of Public Safety, proposed the ce-
lebiated decree for placing the whole French nation in a
state of requisition for the public service. “ From this
moment,” says the decree, “ till that when every enemy
shall have been driven from the territory of the Republic,
all h renchmen shall be in permanent readiness for the ser¬
vice of the army. The young men shall march to the
combat; the married men shall forge arms, and transport
the provisions; the women shall make tents and clothes,
and attend m the hospitals ; the children shall make lint of
old linen ; the old men shall cause themselves to be carried
to the public squares, to excite the courage of the warriors,
and to preach hatred against the enemies of the Republic ;
the cellars shall be washed to procure saltpetre; the sad¬
dle-horses shall be given up to complete the cavalry ; the
unmarried citizens, from the age of eighteen to twenty-
five, shall march first, and none shall send a substitute;
and ev^Y battalion shall have a banner with this inscrip¬
tion, Ihe French nation risen against tyrants. The Re¬
public is only a great city besieged, and France must there-
fore be converted into a vast camp.” The measures pro¬
posed by Barrere were immediately decreed. All French¬
men from the age of eighteen to twenty-five took the field;
t.ie armies, recruited with requisitions of men, were sup¬
ported with requisitions of provisions; and the Republic
had soon fourteen armies, and twelve hundred thousand
soldiers. France was thus transformed at once into a camp
and arsenal for the supply of the armies, and terror en¬
forced all the provisions of this celebrated decree. The
bayonets of the allies appeared less formidable than the
guillotine of the Convention ; and safety, despaired of every¬
where else, was found only in the armies on the frontier.
In the centre the dictatorial government struck down all
the parties, however elevated, with whom it had been at
war. Ihe condemnation of the queen, Marie-Antoinette,
was directed against Europe generally; that of the Twen¬
ty-one against the Girondists; that of the virtuous Baillv
against the old constitutionalists; and that of the Duke of
Orleans against certain members of the Mountain, who were
supposed to have plotted his elevation to the throne. The
widow of the unfortunate Louis XVI. was sent to the guil¬
lotine on the 16th of October, after a mock trial, in which
justice and humanity were equally disregarded. Her con¬
duct, both during her trial and at the place of execution, was
distingmshecl for calmness and dignity, and she died, amidst
net fwVlT18 °f the mfunated multitude, with a firm-
G?8 ni dld h<TXr \° her race- The dePuties of the
soon fofl P iyLWh° hiad been Proscribedon the 2d of June,
reer on Zl,hfr T,?6 scaff°U’ ‘^y ended their cal
reer on the 31st of the same month. They were in num-
Duar^r^V13^^ Ver£niaud’ Gensonne, Fonfrede,
BeauvfoyDnnh^fr0’ Gardien’ Carra, Duprat,
Antihnul’ V 'hatri’ Muinvielle, Lacaze, Boileau, Lehardy,
■ i . ’ ^ee* Dufriche, and Duperret. Sixty-three of
their colleagues, who had protested against thdr arrest.
FRA
History, were also imprisoned, but the terrorists did not venture to
send these also to the guillotine. During their sham trial
1793. before the Revolutionary Tribunal, which lasted nine days,
they displayed the most sustained and serene courage. For
an instant Vergniaud made his eloquent voice be heard,
but in vain. The vehemence of Brissot was equally una¬
vailing. Their destruction had become necessary to the
ruling party, and they were condemned without being
heard in their own defence. When the sentence was pro¬
nounced, Valaze stabbed himself with a poniard, and ex¬
pired in presence of the court; whilst Lasource, address¬
ing his judges, exclaimed, “ I die at a moment when the
people have lost their reason ; you, you also will perish on
the day when they recover it.” Yergniaud had been pro¬
vided by his friends with a certain and speedy poison ; but
he refused to make use of it, that he might accompany his
friends to the scaffold. The condemned deputies marched
to punishment with all the stoicism of the time, singing as
they went the Marseillaise hymn, which, by a slight change,
they applied to their own situation :
Aliens, enfants de la patrie,
Le jour de glorie est arrive;
Contre nous de la tyrannie
Le qouteau sanglant est levd.
When they arrived at the place of execution they mutu¬
ally embraced, exclaiming, Vive la Republique, and died,
like Romans, protesting with their last breath their attach¬
ment to freedom and the Republic.1
Of the other chiefs of this party, almost all met with an
untimely end. Salles, Guadet, Barbaroux, were discover¬
ed in the caves of Saint-Emilion, near Bordeaux, and pe¬
rished on the popular scaffold. Petion and Buzat, after
having wandered about for some time, committed suicide,
and were found dead in a field, with their bodies half de¬
voured by the wolves. Rabaud Saint-Etienne was betray¬
ed by a wretch in whom he confided. Madame Roland
was also condemned, and died with the courage of a Ro¬
man matron ; her husband, on learning her death, quitted
his asylum, and stabbed himself on the high road between
Paris and Rouen, that he might not betray the generous
friends who had sheltered him in his misfortunes. Condor-
cet, who had been put beyond the protection of the law
since the 2d of June, was discovered when in the act of
concealing himself from his pursuers, and escaped punish¬
ment by taking poison. Louvet, Kervelegan, Lanjuinais,
Henri-la-Riviere, Le Sage, and La Reveillere-Lepeaux,
were the only Girondists who, in secure asylums, waited
for the cessation of this furious tempest. And thus perish¬
ed this celebrated party, blameable for its rashness, but es¬
timable for its intentions, illustrious for its talents, and glo¬
rious in its fall; a party which, embracing all men who
were philanthropists from feeling, or republicans from prin¬
ciple, the brave, the humane, and the benevolent, fell the
victim of a base and despicable faction, composed of men
sprung from the dregs of the populace, and impelled by
coarse and vulgar ambition ; a party, in short, which,
though adorned by the most splendid talents, supported by
the most powerful eloquence, and actuated by the most ge¬
nerous intentions, was destroyed, because its members re¬
fused to countenance the sanguinary violence which alone
commands success in revolutions.
Kxecution The Duke of Orleans was soon afterwards condemned, on
ot Egalitd. a charge of having, from the commencement of the Revolu¬
tion, aspired to the sovereignty. The execution of Egalite
gave satisfaction to all parties. His vote for the death of
the king had done him little honour, even in the opinion of
N C E. 83
the Mountainists, and had rendered him odious to the rest History,
of mankind. It was, in fact, an unparalleled outrage on
humanity. 1793.
The Committee of Public Safety was now remodelled,
conformably to the views of the dictators. Until the 31st
of May, when the decree for the arrest of the Girondists
had passed, it consisted of neutral members of the Conven¬
tion ; now it was composed of the most furious partisans
of the Mountain. Barrere remained, but Robespierre was
elected a member, and, by means of Saint-Just, Couthon,
Collot-dTIerbois, and Billaud-Varennes, his party had a
complete ascendency. He struck off some Dantonists,
such as Herault de Sechelles and Robert Lindet, who still
remained ; gained Barrere; and took under his own ma¬
nagement the departments of the police and public opinion.
His associates also cast their parts. Saint-Just undertook the
surveillance and denunciation of persons suspected ; Cou¬
thon, that of violent propositions, which required to be soft¬
ened in the form of expression: Billaud-Varennes and Col-
lot-d’Herbois directed the proconsulates in the departments;
Carnot the war ; Cambon that of the finances department;
Prieur de la Cote d’Or, Prieur de la Marne, and others, the
administration of the interior; and Barrere was the daily ora¬
tor and ever-ready panegyrist of the dictatorial committee.
Below this was placed as an auxiliary in the details of re¬
volutionary administration and inferior measures the Com¬
mittee of General Safety, constituted in the same spirit as
the great committee, and, like it, consisting of twelve mem¬
bers, re-eligible every three months, and always continued
in their functions. In such hands was the whole revolu¬
tionary force now placed. “ Vous n’avez plus rien a me-
nager contre les ennemis du nouvel ordre des choses,” said
Saint-Just; “ et la liberte doit vaincre a tel prix que ce
soit. Dans les circonstances ou se trouve la Republique,
la constitution ne peut etre etablie; elle deviendrait la
garantie des attentats contre la liberte, parce qu’elle man-
querait de la violence necessaire pour les reprimer. Le
gouvernement present est aussi trop embarrasse. Vous etes
trop loin de tous les attentats ; il taut que le glaive des lois
se promene partout avec rapidite, et que votre bras soit
present partout.” And thus was created that terrible power
which first devoured the enemies of the Mountain, then
devoured both the Mountain and the Commune, and at
length ended by devouring itself. The committee dispos¬
ed of every thing in name of the Convention, which was
merely its tool. It was this body which appointed and dis¬
missed generals, ministers, representative commissioners,
judges, and juries ; which struck down opposing factions ;
which possessed the initiative of all measures. By means
of its commissioners the armies and the generals were kept
under its control; it exercised sovereign power in the de¬
partments ; by the law in regard to suspected persons, it
disposed of the liberty, and by the Revolutionary Tribu¬
nal, of the life, of every one ; by requisitions and the max¬
imum, it had the unlimited disposal of all fortunes; and by
the terrified Convention, it could command decrees of ac¬
cusation against any member of that body. Every thing, in
short, was at its feet, and, supported by the multitude, its
despotism was for the time as complete as it was terrible.
When the human mind is once roused, its activity ex-Weights
tends to every object. At this time a new system of weights and Mea.
and measures, in which the decimal arithmetic alone is em- sures.
ployed, was established by the Convention. The court of
Spain, notwithstanding the war, had the liberality to per¬
mit Mechain to proceed with his operations for measur¬
ing a degree of the meridian in that country; and he ac-
1 Lacretelle, ii. 100 ; Thiers, v. 392 ; Mignet, ii. 294 ; Toulangeon, iv. 115. A young man, named Girey Dufoce, was brought
to the bar of the Revolutionary Tribunal. “ You have been a friend of Brissot,” said the president. “ I had that happiness.
“ What is your opinion of him ?” That he lived like Aristides, and died like Sidney,” was the answer. Dufoce was sent to the
scaffold, where, by his heroic firmness, he vindicated the friendship of Brissot.
84
FRANCE.
1793.
New ka-
lendar.
History, cordingly carried on his system of triangulation from Bar¬
celona to Perpignan, whence the mensuration was conti¬
nued to Paris. Delambre and his pupil La Francois also
measured a degree of latitude in the vicinity of the me¬
tropolis. In all, twelve degrees of the meridian were mea¬
sured, the mean of which is 57,027 toises; and by this the
universal standard of measure was calculated. MM. Bor-
da and Cassini also determined the length of a pendulum
which vibrates seconds in vacuo, and in a mean tempera¬
ture at Paris, to be three feet eight hundred and six lines ;
and MM. Lavoisier and Haiiy found that a cubic foot of
distilled water at the freezing point weighs in vacuo seventy
pounds and sixty gros French weight. From these data
the new table of weights and measures was constructed.
The astronomical circles with which MM. Borda and Cas¬
sini had made their observations were also divided ac¬
cording to the centesimal plan ; so that the quadrant con¬
tains a hundred degrees, and each degree a hundred mi¬
nutes. Hence the minute of a great circle of the sphere
is equal to a milliare or new French mile ; and if, for the
reduction of this measure, we estimate the Paris toise, ac¬
cording to the comparison made with the standard kept in
the Koyal Society of London, at 6*3925 English feet, the
milliare or minute will be equal to 1093*633 yards, and the
metre to 3*280899 feet.
Separated by the war and by their own laws from all
states and forms of government, the innovators sought to
isolate themselves still more. For an unparalleled revolu¬
tion they established an entirely new era; they changed
the divisions of the year, and the names of the months and
days ; they replaced the Christian kalendar by the republi¬
can, the week by the decade, and fixed the day of rest, not
on the Sabbath, but on the tenth day. The new era dated
fiom the 22d September, or autumnal equinox, the epoch
01 the foundation of the Republic. The year was divided
into twelve equal months of thirty days each, which com¬
menced on the 22d September, and were arranged in the
order following, viz. Vendemiaire, Brumaire, Frimaire,
fox autumn ; Nivose, Pluviose, Ventose, for winter; Ger¬
minal, Floreal, Prairial, for spring; and Messidor, Ther-
midor, Fructidor, for summer. Each month had three
decades, each decade ten days, and each day received its
name from its place in the decade; thus, primidi, daodi,
tndi, quartidi, quintidi, sextidi, septidi, octidi, nonidi, deca-
di. Five complementary days were thrown to the end of
the year, or added after the 30th Fructidor, in order to
complete it; these received the name of Sans-culotides,
and were consecrated, the first to the festival of Genius,
the second to that of Labour, the third to that of Actions,
the fourth to that of Recompenses, and the fifth to that of
Opinion. The constitution of 1793 naturally led to the
republican kalendar, and the republican kalendar to the
abolition of the Christian worship. Accordingly, the Com¬
mune and the Committee of Public Safety proposed each
a new kind of religion ; the Commune the worship of Rea-
son, and the Committee that of the Supreme Being.
1 he religion of France had for some time been gradual-
ly losing ground; and on the 7th of November, Gobet,
bishop of Pans, along with a great multitude of other eccle¬
siastics came into the hall of the Convention, and at once
resigned their functions and renounced the Christian reli¬
gion. All the clergymen, whether Protestant or Catholic,
who were members of the Convention, followed this ex¬
ample, excepting only Gregoire, whom we formerly men¬
tioned as having been one of the first of his order to join
the tiers etat after the meeting of the States General, and
who had now the courage to profess himself a Christian,
although the emoluments of his bishopric were, he said at
t« service of the Republic. Amidst the accWons’ of
the Convention, it was decreed that hereafter the only
French deities should be Liberty, Equality, and Reason;
Decay of
religion.
and they would seem to have consecrated these abstractions Histor
as the only objects of worship. What political purpose the ''^v>
leaders of the Convention intended to serve by this pro- 1793.
ceeding does not clearly appear; unless, perhaps, their ob¬
ject was to change so completely the French manners and
habits of thinking, that it should never be in their power
to return to the state from which they had just emerged,
or to unite in intercourse with the other nations of Europe.
The populace, however, could not at once relinquish the
religion of their fathers. The municipality of Paris order¬
ed the churches to be shut up, but the Convention found
it necessary to annul this order; and Robespierre gained
no small degree of popularity by supporting the liberty of
religious worship on this occasion. Hebert and Fabre
d’Eglantine, who led the opposite party, hastened their
own fall by an ill-judged contempt of popular opinion on
the subject of religion.
To the abjuration of Christianity by Gobet, followed as it
was by the apostacy of many of the constitutional bishops
and clergy in the Convention, who joined in the declaration,
that no other national religion was now required but that
of lioerty, equality, and morality, the wildest excesses of
profanity and irreligion succeeded. Drunken artisans and
shameless harlots crowded to the bar of the Convention,
and there trampled under their feet the sacred vases con¬
secrated for ages to the holiest purposes of religion; the
churches were despoiled of their plate and ornaments;
busts of Marat and Lepelletier replaced the images of Christ
and the \ irgin, which were trodden in the mire; and pa-
lodies on Che Hallelujah were sung as an accompaniment
to the Carmagnole dance. Hebert, Chaumette, and their
associates, appeared at the bar of the Convention, and
theie declared that there was no God, and that the wor¬
ship of Reason ought to be substituted instead of his;
whilst an opera singer, known in more than one character
to most of the Convention, was introduced as the personi¬
fication of the new divinity. The services of the Chris¬
tian religion were universally abandoned, and the pulpits
deserted throughout the revolutionized districts; the church
bells were everywhere silent; Sabbath was entirely oblite¬
rated ; baptisms ceased; the burial service was no longer
heard; the sick received no consolation, the dying no
communion ; and the rites of heathenism, blended with the
profanities of the most fanatical infidelity, desecrated the
unhappy land. On every tenth day atheism was publicly
preached to the bew ildered people by some revolutionary
leader; and on all the public seminaries was placed the
inscription, “ Death is an Eternal Sleep.” Marat was dei¬
fied ; God was insulted and defied. Such is the wild re¬
action which follows the overthrow of systems which ex¬
clude all reformation, and cherish the abuses engendered
by time as their most valuable prerogatives and distinc¬
tions. For seven years did the reign of impiety continue
in r ranee; and when at length the worship of Christiani¬
ty was restored by Napoleon, its ruinous effects were ge¬
nerally felt; it had demoralized the old, and left the young
without any impressions of religion.
But now when the Republic saw itself successful in all Dissen-
quarters, when the Mountain party and the Jacobins had sions be-
no rivals at home, and accounted themselves in little imme-tween th(
diate danger from abroad, they began to split into factions, ^ountail
and to entertain the fiercest jealousies. The Jacobin Club jacobins,
was the usual place in which their contests were carried
on ; but at this time Robespierre acted the part of a medi-
ator between all parties, and attempted to turn their atten¬
tion from private animosities to public affairs. Having
spread a report that Great Britain intended speedily to in¬
vade b ranee, he proposed that the Jacobin Club should en¬
deavour to discover the vulnerable parts of the British con¬
stitution and government. They caught at the bait which
dad thus been thrown out to them; made speeches and
FRANCE.
85
History* wrote essays without number; and were in this way occu-
pied and amused for a considerable time.
1794. Xhe winter passed in tolerable tranquillity, and no mili-
Vigour of tary enterprise was undertaken either by the allies or by
he Revo- the French. On the first of February Barrere asserted
utionary in the Convention that the confederate powers were willing
Govern- provisionally to acknowledge the French Republic, to con-
nent' sent to a cessation of hostilities for two years, and at the
end of that time to conclude a lasting peace with the French
people. But this assertion met with no credit, and the
Convention declared itself determined to reject any pro¬
position founded on it, as affording to the other nations of
Europe the means of undermining the new government.
In the mean time the Revolutionary Government was gra¬
dually becoming more vigorous. Thirty committees of
the Convention managed the whole business of the state,
without sharing much of the direct executive government,
which remained in the hands of the Committee of Public
Safety; and these different committees were engaged in a
great variety of matters. The ruling party had no competitors
for power. The most extensive plans were therefore car¬
ried into effect, without confusion or opposition. The Con¬
vention was little more than a court in which every project
was formally registered. At a single sitting thirty decrees
were passed, relating to subjects the most widely different,
and some of them of the greatest importance. The finances
were under a committee, at the head of which was Gam¬
bon, and which found resources for the most lavish expen¬
diture. The assignats were received as money throughout
the state ; so that a paper mill had become more valuable
than a mine of gold. The credit of this paper was sup¬
ported by an arbitrary law regulating the maximum or
highest price of all provisions, and by the immense mass of
wealth which had come into the hands of the Convention
by the seizure of the church-lands, and by the confiscation
of the property of royalists, emigrants, and other persons
condemned by the Revolutionary Tribunal. So unequally,
indeed, had property been divided under the ancient go¬
vernment, that, by means of these confiscations, about
seven tenths of the national territory was supposed to have
been transferred to the state. To this was added the plun¬
der of the churches, consisting of gold and silver images,
and vessels employed in divine worship, along with other
articles of less value, amongst which may be mentioned
the church bells, which were considered as sufficient for the
manufacture of fifteen thousand pieces of cannon. These
resources formed altogether a mass of property such as was
never perhaps possessed by any other government.
Other committees were engaged in very different occupa¬
tions. Highways were constructed, and canals planned. Im¬
mense manufactories of arms were everywhere established.
At Paris alone eleven hundred muskets were fabricated daily,
and a hundred pieces of cannon cast every month. Pub¬
lic schools were instituted, and the French language taught
in its purity from the Pyrenees to the Rhine. The Con¬
vention possessed immense resources, and they did not he¬
sitate to lavish them upon their schemes. Every science
and every art was called upon for aid; and the most accom¬
plished men in every profession were employed in giving
splendour to their country. The chemists, in particular,
gave essential aid by the facility with which they supplied
materials for the manufacture of gunpowder ; and in return
for their services, Lavoisier, the greatest of them all, suf¬
fered death by a most iniquitous sentence. Not fewer than
two hundred new dramatic performances, the object of
which was to attach the people to the existing order of
things, were produced in less than two years. The vigour
with which the committees of subsistence exerted them¬
selves is particularly remarkable. All Europe was at war
with France; and as England, Holland, and Spain, the three
maritime powers, were engaged in the contest, it had been
thought practicable to reduce France to great distress by
famine, especially as it was imagined that the country had
not resources to supply its immense population. But the
rulers of that country acted with the policy of a besieged
garrison. They seized upon the whole provisions of the
country, and carried them to public granaries ; they regis¬
tered the cattle, and made their owners responsible for
them; they provided the armies abundantly ; and, as the
people were accurately numbered, they dealt out in every
district, on stated occasions, what was absolutely necessary
for subsistence, and no more. To all this the people sub¬
mitted; and, indeed, throughout the whole of the mixed
scenes of the Revolution, the calm judgment of the histo¬
rian is not a little perplexed. It is impossible not to ad¬
mire the patience with which they endured every hardship
which wras represented as necessary to the common cause ;
and equally so not to honour the enthusiastic energy with
which they lavished their blood in defence of the indepen¬
dence of their country. On the other hand, no one can
regard without indignation and horror the sanguinary pro¬
ceedings of the factions in the Convention and the capital,
or reconcile with our ordinary knowledge of humanity the
spirit of mutual extermination by which all of them were
in turn actuated.
During the winter the dissensions of the Jacobins in-Increased
creased. They were divided into two clubs, one of which dissensions
(that recently instituted) assembled in a hall which once^^.^ a"
belonged to the Cordeliers. The leaders of this club were
Hebert, Ronsin, Vincent, and others; but that of the Jaco¬
bins still retained its ascendency, and Robespierre had now
become decidedly its leader. This extraordinary man had
gradually combined in his own person the confidence of
the people and the direction of the government. But as
the committees were above the Convention, which had
become little more than a court of record, so that of Pub¬
lic Safety was above the other committees; and Robes¬
pierre was the leader of this dominant committee, Barrere,
Saint-Just, Couthon, and others of its members, only acting
a secondary part. These persons laboured in the business of
the state, but the supreme power was in Robespierre. He
surrounded the members of the Convention with spies, and
being equally jealous and implacable, set no bounds to the
shedding of blood. On the 25th of March he brought to
trial the following active Jacobins, who were condemned
and executed the day after, viz. Hebert, Ronsin, Momoro,
Vincent, Du Croquet, Koch, Laumur, Bourgeois, Mazuel,
Laboureau, Ancard, Leclerc, Proly, Dessieux, Anachar-
sis Clootz, Pereira, Florent, Armand, Descombles, and Du-
buisson. And not satisfied with this, on the 2d of April he
brought to trial nine of those who had once been his most
vigorous associates; Dan ton, Fabre d’Eglantine, Bazire,
Chabot, Philipeaux, Camille Desmoulins, Lacroix, Dela-
may d’Angers, and Herault de Sechelles, all of whom
were executed, along with Westermann, on the evening of
the 5th.
The fall of the Hebertists was regarded with satisfaction The He-
by every one beyond the pale of the municipality of Paris, hertists.
This faction, which had laboured in the Pere Duchene
to popularise obscenity of language, with grovelling and
cruel sentiments, and whose characteristic it was to blend
derision with ferocity, had for some time made redoubtable
progress; and Robespierre, finding it untractable for his
purposes, resolved on its destruction, upon the pretence
that, whilst it corrupted the people, it served the purposes
of foreigners by promoting anarchy. This he effected by
a compromise. His object was to sacrifice both the com¬
mune and the anarchists ; whilst the committees desired to
sacrifice the Mountain and the moderate party. The par¬
ties came to a mutual understanding, in consequence of
which Robespierre gave up Danton, Camille Desmoulins,
and their friends to the members of the committee, and
History.
1794.
FRANCE.
86
History, the members of the committee in return gave up Hebert,
V-^Y   Clootz, Chaumette, Ilonsin, and their accomplices. In
at first favouring the moderate party in the Convention,
he prepared the destruction of the anarchists, and thus at¬
tained two objects advantageous to his power; he ruined
a redoubtable faction, and he disencumbered himself of a
revolutionary reputation which rivalled his own.
But the latter object was, after all, that which he ha,d
probably most at heart, because the party of Danton stood
most in his way. Their principles were, that terror was to be
used only for the establishment of freedom, not made an in¬
strument of destruction in the hands of those who had obtain¬
ed it; they wished above all things that the Republic should
be Consolidated by victory, but that success should be used
with moderation. Hence, whilst they vehemently repro¬
bated the proceedings of the dictators after the 31st of May
had ensured the triumph of the populace, they desired to
humble the anarchists of the municipality, to put down
the Revolutionary Tribunal, to discharge from confinement
those imprisoned as suspected persons, and to dissolve the
despotic committees of government. But these objects
were manifestly opposed to that supreme and undisputed
domination which Robespierre was now labouring to secure
for himself by means of the revolutionary machinery; and,
accordingly, after the understanding already mentioned had
been come to, it was not long ere he commenced hostilities,
by attacking the Jacobin Club, the Vieux Cordelier of Ca¬
mille Desmoulins,1 and indirectly denouncing Danton him¬
self.
Danton, who had not yet discontinued his relations with
Robespierre, demanded an interview, which took place at
the residence of the latter. Both parties were cold and
bitter. Danton complained violently ; Robespierre was
haughty and reserved. “ I know,” said Danton, “ all the
hatred which the committee bear me, but I do not fear it.”
“ You are wrong,” replied Robespierre; “ there are no
bad intentions towards you, but it is well to be explicit.”
“ To„be explicit,” rejoined Danton, “ good faith is neces¬
sary.” But observing Robespierre assume a lowering look,
“ It is doubtless necessary,” he added, “ to coerce the roy¬
alists ; but we ought to strike blows which are useful to
the Republic, and should not confound the innocent with
the guilty. “ Eh ! who has told you,” replied Robespierre
sharply, “ that one innocent person has suffered ?” Danton
turned to the friend who had accompanied him, and with a
bitter smile, “ What say you ? Not one innocent man has
perished !” At* these w ords they parted ; all hope of re¬
conciliation was at end.
The fall of the anarchists ensued. They wrere brought History
before the Revolutionary Tribunal, upon a charge of being
agents of foreigners, and of having conspired to give a ty-
rant to the state. From the time of their arrest, their auda¬
city abandoned them ; and as they had neither talents nor
enthusiasm, they defended themselves without ability, and
died without courage.
It was now time for Danton to look to his own safety ; Fall of
the proscription had reached the commune, and was fast Danton.
approaching him also. His friends urged him to act; but
having failed to shake the dictatorial power by exciting
public opinion and rousing the Convention, where could
he look for support ? The Convention was well disposed
towards him and his cause; but it wras in complete subjection
to the revolutionary power of the committees. Heaving
neither the government, nor the assembly, nor the com¬
mune, nor the clubs, Danton therefore awaited the pro¬
scription without taking any step to ensure his safety. Still
his friends pressed him to act. “ I would rather,” said he,
“ be guillotined than become guillotiner ; besides, my life
is not worth the trouble of preserving; I am weary of exist¬
ence.” “ The members of the committee seek your death.”
“ What!” exclaimed he, in anger ; “ if ever—if Billaud—
if Robespierre... They will be execrated as tyrants ; the
house of Robespierre will be razed; salt will be scattered
on its foundations, and a stake of infamy planted to avenge
the crimes...But my friends will say of me that I have been
a good father, a good friend, a good citizen; they will not for¬
get me.” “ But you may escape.” “ I would rather be
guillotined than become guillotiner.” “ Still it is necessary
to fly.” “ To fly !” exclaimed he with a mixture of anger
and disdain ; “ do you suppose that a man carries his coun¬
try in the soles of his shoes ?” Danton had only one re¬
source ; to lift up his well-known and powerful voice, de¬
nounce Robespierre and the committees, and rouse the
Convention against their tyranny. He was warmly press¬
ed to adopt this course ; but, not to mention the difficulty
of overturning an established domination, however atroci¬
ous, he knew too well the subjugation and terror of that
assembly to trust to the efficacy of such an attempt. He
therefore awaited his fate, in the belief however that his
enemies would shrink from the proscription of one who had
dared so much. He was mistaken. On the 10th Germi¬
nal he received notice that the question of his arrest was
under the consideration of the Committee of Public Safety,
and he was once more urged to fly ; but, after a moment’s
consideration, he answered, “ They dare not.” In the night
his house was surrounded, and he was conducted to the
taire1" His SuTe th?°f the Profound seilse of Machiavel, and of men with the wit of Vol-
became state-crimes • and from this thetmns^tF P-enod 18 dnwn with a powerful hand. “At the present epoch,” said he, “ words
silence itself, are made the ground-wOrk of suspicio^ eaiTa citizenVoDirTb^’ ^ ?ad"ess> co“Passion> sighs, nay even absolute
tions. Does he on the other hand avoid srvdotv r a ^ P°Pular ? He is a rival of the dictator, and might excite commo-
marked, and excites the suspicion that he is meditat'i'ng sTnSrdesLns 6 Are^ou ^khP^Th Se?ludf lifi? him rf-
may be corrupted by your largesses. Are you noor > Vnn A 7 , ch * , ^here 18 imminent Penl that the P^P1*
as those who have nothing to fose Are you of ’, thmio-htfhl^, d1 be.the more closely watched, because there is none so enterprising
because in your opinion p^bbe affairs are ^not fell coS ed! DoStcR* ^ •fT6-’'’ T— a “eSlectfd exterior.? You are afflicted
concealing ambition under the mask of pleasure Is he virtnmi« nnri 1,en 1|ldll!se in dissipation and bring on indigestion ? He is
of the government. Is he a phTlosophel, an ora'tor a n Jt ? He ^1“ so™ 6 “ ‘V5 moraIs ? has. instituted himself the censor
Has he acquired reputation in war ? His talents only rnnke him tim a aC(lulre m°re consideration than the rulers of the state,
the army, perhaps to send him to the scaffold The rmtiiril de-ith f danger°us, and render it indispensable to remove him from
that historians transmit it as ”n event wfthy ofTeco^ distinguished person, particularly if in place, has become so rare,
a less calamity than the insolence and scandalous fortunes of the 1 j6 deatb of 80 many innocent and estimable citizens seems
makes his triumphal entry S the palace oS den.TCed and murdered them* EveiT da? the accuser
protectors of life and property have become mere slaiifrhtpr-hmi-es h (d i?11?6 r^hsuccession ; and the tribunals which were once the
nothing but robbery and murder.” In Camille Desmoulins'the anarchists bnf WhKih bears the n?me of punishment and confiscation is
faction he attacked with unsparing severity and in an esnecial mann ^ abY’ actlve> and redoubted antagonist. This atrocious
as “a miserable intriguer, aLerfr forthe ^ °n ^ head the infamous Hebert, whom he described
thousand francs from the factions of the Republic to calumniate tv ^ rY ’ E vfretcb wbo bad at different times received two hundred
his situation as lacquey in the thea^ adversaries; a thief and robber, who had been expelled from
Such is Desmoulins’ description of the^^ S-An^fn ft drenCh ^ in blood ^ his prostituted journal.”
eufficient to send the Revolutionists themselves to the scaffold^ Antoinette was condemned, and whose evidence was also held
FRANCE.
History. Luxembourg, with Camille Desmoulins, Philipeaux, La-
croix, Herault de Sechelles, and Westermann. On enter-
1794. ing the prison he cordially greeted the captives who pressed
around him. “ Gentlemen,” said he, “ I had hoped to have
been the means of releasing all of you from this place ; but
here I am among you, and I know where all this will end.”
An hour afterwards he was shut up in a solitary cell, which
Hebert had recently before occupied, and which was soon
to be tenanted by Robespierre himself. The past now rose
up to the review of his mind, and, giving way to reflection
and regret, he observed, “ It is just a year since I caused
the Revolutionary Tribunal to be instituted. I ask pardon
of God and man for doing so; but I never imagined that
it would become the scourge of humanity.”
The arrest of Danton and his friends produced a violent
agitation in Paris; the Convention also was stricken with
dismay. Legendre made a powerful appeal in behalf of
his friend, and demanded that, before the report of the
committee was received, Danton should be examined in
their presence. The proposition was favourably received,
and for a moment the assembly seemed disposed to cast
off its fetters. But the spell of the dictatorship of terror
was still strong on that body. Robespierre ascended the
tribune, and having by menace reduced the Convention
to silence, proceeded to mark out for vengeance the intre¬
pid Legendre. “ You affect to be afraid,” said he, in con¬
clusion ; “ but I say, whoever trembles at this moment is
guilty; for never did innocence fear the vigilance of the
public authorities.” None dared to incur the fatal impu¬
tation ; terror had frozen every heart. The assembly
crouched beneath their tyrants, and unanimously sent the
accused to the Revolutionary Tribunal. When brought be¬
fore this Rhadamanthine judgment-seat, they assumed an
attitude of haughty defiance, evincing at once an audacity
of purpose, and a contempt for their judges, altogether ex¬
traordinary. Danton, in answer to the usual interrogato¬
ries as to his name, age, and residence, put by the presi¬
dent Dumas, replied, “ I am Danton, well known in the
Revolution ; I am thirty-five years of age ; my abode will
soon be in nothingness ; and my name will live in the Pan¬
theon of history.” The disdainful and vehement respon¬
ses of Danton, the cool and measured discussion of La¬
croix, the austerity of Philipeaux, and the nervous vigour
of Desmoulins, began to make an impression on the peo¬
ple. The accused were therefore put hors de debats, on
the pretence that they had been wanting in respect to
the court, and they were immediately condemned without
any further hearing. “ We are immolated,” cried Dan¬
ton, “ to the ambition of a few cowardly brigands; but
they will not long enjoy the fruit of their criminal victory.
I pull down Robespierre ; Robespierre follows me.” They
were conducted to the Conciergerie, and thence to the
scaffold. On, their way to the place of execution, they dis¬
played the stoical courage common at that period. A body
of troops had been assembled, and their escort was nume¬
rous ; but the people, who, on such occasions, are usually
clamorous and approving, maintained a profound silence.
Camille Desmoulins, even when on the fatal cart, was still
astonished at his condemnation, and could not compre¬
hend it. “ This, then,” said he, “ is the recompense des¬
tined to the first apostle of liberty.” Danton held his
head erect, and cast a calm and intrepid look around him.
At the foot of the scaffold, however, his feelings for a mo¬
ment overmastered him: “ Oh, my well-beloved,” cried
he; “ oh, my wife, shall I then never see thee more !” But
immediately checking himself, “ Danton, no weakness,”
said he. He ascended the scaffold with a firm step, and
received the blow of the fatal axe with unshaken courage.
And thus perished the tardy but last defenders of huma¬
nity and moderation; men who had desired to establish
peace amongst the conquerors in the revolutionary struggle,
87
and to extend mercy to the vanquished. After their fall History,
no voice was for some time raised against the dictatorship
of terror, which, from one end of France to the other, now 1794.
struck down its victims in silence.
Still, however, the preparations for the ensuing cam-Campaign
paign were pursued with unabated vigour. The commit- D94 ;
tee for military affairs, at the head of which stood Carnot the
and others, were busily occupied in arranging along the
frontiers the immense force which the requisition had called
forth. Plans of operations were drawn out by this com¬
mittee, and, when approved by the Committee of Public
Safety, were sent to the generals to be executed. On the
other hand, the allies were making powerful preparations
for another attempt to subjugate France ; and the emperor
himself took the field at the head of the armies in the
Netherlands. The plan of the campaign is said to have
been framed by Colonel Mack, who afterwards acquired
so much negative celebrity. West Flanders was to be pro¬
tected by a strong body of men; whilst the main army
was to penetrate to Landrecies, get within the line of
French frontier towns, and cut off the armies from the in¬
terior by covering the country from Maubeuge to the sea.
This plan was bold ; but it belongs to military men to judge
whether boldness was not its only merit. In fact, the al¬
lies seem to have had no correct information of the im¬
mense force which the French were collecting against
them. Even the town of Lisle alone, which was capable
of containing a numerous army within its walls, and which
was to be left in their rear, should have seemed an insur¬
mountable obstacle to the execution of this plan.
On the 16th of April, the Austrian, British, and Dutch State of the
armies assembled on the heights above Cateau, where they allied ar-
were reviewed by the emperor ; and on the following daymies*
they advanced in eight columns against the French, drove in
their posts, and penetrated beyond Landrecies. The allied
army now amounted in all to a hundred and eighty-seven
thousand men, who were disposed in the following man¬
ner : Fifteen thousand Dutch and fifteen thousand Aus¬
trians, under the Prince of Orange and General Latour,
formed the siege of Landrecies ; fifteen thousand British
and fifteen thousand Austrians, commanded by the Duke
of York and General Otto, encamped towards Cambray;
the emperor and the Prince of Saxe-Cobourg, at the head
of sixty thousand Austrians, advanced as far as Guise;
twelve thousand Hessians and Austrians, under General
Worms, were stationed near Douai and Bouchain ; Count
Kaunitz, with fifteen thousand Austrians, defended the
Sambre and the country near Maubeuge; and General
Clairfayt, with forty thousand Austrians and Hanoverians,
protected Flanders from Tournay to the sea; whilst sixty
thousand Prussians, for whom a subsidy had been paid by
Great Britain, were expected to take the field, but in fact
never arrived.
The French now commenced active operations. On Fall of
the morning of the 26th of April they attacked, in great Landre-
force, the Duke of York near Cateau ; but after a severe cles; suc-
conflict they were repulsed, and General Chapuy was taken of
prisoner. At the same time they attacked the troopse^ru'
under his imperial majesty, but were again repulsed with
the loss of fifty-seven pieces of cannon. On the same day,
however, Pichegru advanced from Lisle, attacked and de¬
feated Clairfayt, took thirty-two pieces of cannon, and, in
the course of a few days, made himself master of Vervic,
Menin, and Courtray. On the 29th of April the garri¬
son of Landrecies surrendered to the allies. When this
event was known in the Convention, it excited a consider¬
able degree of alarm. But it was the last decided suc¬
cess obtained by the allies during this disastrous cam¬
paign. Clairfayt was again completely defeated by Piche¬
gru in a general engagement, and it was found necessary
to send the Duke of York to his assistance. This move-
88 FRA
History, ment no doubt seems to have been unavoidable; but its
effect was t.o divide tbe allied army into a number of de-
1704. tachments, capable indeed of carrying on a desultory war¬
fare, but unfit for the prosecution of vigorous measures.
On the 10th of May the Duke of York was attacked near
Tournay by a body of the enemy, whom he repulsed ; but
he was unable to effect a junction with Clairfayt, upon
the destruction of whom the French were chiefly bent;
for whilst the Duke of York was occupied with the attack
made on himself, Pichegru fell upon Clairfayt with such
irresistible impetuosity, that the latter was compelled to
retreat in confusion, and part of his army fled to the neigh¬
bourhood of Bruges. Whilst Pichegru was thus advancing
successfully in West Flanders, Jourdan in East Flanders
advanced from Maubeuge, crossed the Sambre, and forced
Kaunitz to retreat. On the 18th, however, Kaunitz suc¬
ceeded in repulsing the enemy in his turn, and in forcing
them to re-cross the Sambre with considerable loss.
The allies now found that no progress could be made
in France whilst General Pichegru was advancing success¬
fully and occupying West Flanders in their rear. The
emperor, therefore, withdrew the greater part of his army
to the neighbourhood of Tournay, and resolved to make
a grand effort to intersect the communications between
Courtray and Lisle, and thus to cut off the retreat of Piche¬
gru. With this view, the army, on the night of the 16th,
moved forward in five columns; and Clairfayt was at the
same time directed to cross the Lys, and if possible to
effect a junction, and complete the plan. The attempt
seemed at first to promise success; but, in the course of
the 17th, the division under the Duke of York was over¬
powered by numbers and defeated. The advance of the
other columns was thus checked, and Clairfayt sustained
another repulse. The plan of the allies had been com¬
pletely frustrated, and their army in consequence with-
* drew to the neighbourhood of Tournay.
Pichegru speedily attempted to retaliate. On the 22d
of May, at day-break, he directed his whole force against
the enemy. The attack commenced with a heavy fire of
artillery, and all the advanced posts were driven in, upon
which the action became general; the attacks were re¬
peatedly renewed on both sides, and the day was spent in
a succession of obstinate battles. All that military skill
could effect was performed on both sides; the French
and the allied soldiers fought with equal courage and ob¬
stinacy ; but at nine o’clock in the evening the assail¬
ants reluctantly withdrew from the attack. The day,
however, on which a vanquished enemy quits the field is
not always that upon which the victory is won. In this
engagement the French were unsuccessful in their imme¬
diate object; but the weight of their fire, their steady
discipline, and the determined obstinacy of their attacks,
raised their military character in the estimation of the offi¬
cers and soldiers of the allied army. And it was soon per¬
ceived that, in addition to these, they possessed other ad¬
vantages. Their numbers were immense ; they implicitly
obeyed their generals; and the generals as implicitly sub¬
mitted to the directions of the Committee of Public Safe¬
ty. A combination of efforts was thus produced, and the
effect was not impaired by divided counsels. On the
other hand, the numbers of the allies were daily declining,
and their leaders were independent princes or powerful
men, whose sentiments and interests were often at vari¬
ance, and whose exertions were consequently disunited.
On the 24th the French again crossed the Sambre, but
were driven back with considerable loss. On the 27th
an attempt was made to besiege Charleroi, but on the 3d
of June the Prince of Orange compelled the enemy to
raise the siege. On the 12th the attempt was renewed,
but with no better success. In West Flanders, however,
Pichegru was sufficiently strong to commence the siege
N C E.
of Ypres, which was garrisoned by seven thousand men. Histoi
General Clairfayt made an attempt to raise it, but without
success. Reinforcements were sent to Clairfayt from the DM
grand army, to enable him to renew his efforts for the re¬
lief of the place, and a series of sanguinary contests en¬
sued, in which that unfortunate general was almost uni¬
formly unsuccessful. Ypres held out till the 17th of June,
when it capitulated. In consequence of this and of other
events, the Duke of York found it necessary to retreat to
Oudenarde ; for Jourdan, after storming the Austrian
camp of Wattignies, now advanced in such strength upon
Charleroi, that its immediate fall was anticipated. But as
this would have enabled the two French armies to encircle
the whole of Flanders, the Prince of Cobourg advanced
to its relief; nevertheless Charleroi surrendered at discre¬
tion on the 25th. This circumstance was not known to
the Prince of Cobourg when he advanced on the 26th to
attack the covering army in their intrenchments near
Fleurus ; but the latter having by this time been reinforced
by the accession of the besieging force, repulsed the as¬
sailants without difficulty. Jourdan then drew his men
out of their intrenchments, attacked the Austrians in his
turn, and, though three times repulsed, was at last suc¬
cessful.
The allies were now obliged to retreat at all points. Furthei
Nieuport, Ostend, and Bruges, were taken; and Tournay,successe
Mons, Oudenarde, and Brussels, at which place the French ^
armies of East and West Flanders formed a junction, rench‘
opened their gates. The allied troops having evacuated
Namur, formed a line from Antwerp to Liege, in order
to protect the country behind. But the French having
advanced in force, attacked General Clairfayt, cut to pieces
half the troops which now remained under his orders, and
broke the line, upon which the allies retreated before them.
The Duke of York was joined by some reinforcements
under the Earl of Moira, which had with much difficulty
made their way from Ostend; and with these and the
Dutch troops he retired to the neighbourhood of Bergen-
op-Zoom and Breda for the protection of Holland. The
Prince of Cobourg evacuated Liege, crossed the Maese,
and threw a garrison into Maestricht; but he soon found
it necessary to send back part of his troops to the neigh¬
bourhood of Tongres. Here the French armies, to the as¬
tonishment of all Europe, made a voluntary pause in their
career of victory, and ceased to pursue their retiring foes.
The war on the Rhine was equally successful on the part
of the French. On the 12th, 13th, and 14th of July, re¬
peated battles were fought, in which the French obtained
their usual success. As their armies were numerous, their
practice was to fight in great bodies day after day till their
object was accomplished. The Palatinate was next over¬
run, and Treves taken, by General Michaud. Flanders
and the Palatinate have always been accounted the gra¬
naries of Germany, and both of them, at the commence¬
ment of the harvest, now fell into the hands of the French.
During the four months which succeeded the fall ofExecu-
Danton, the power of the committees was exercised with-tions in !
out opposition and without reserve. Death became thecrease^:
only instrument of government, and the Republic was^r™risi]
abandoned to daily and systematic executions. Then were height,
invented the conspiracies of the prisons, which had been
crowded by the operation of the law in regard to suspected
persons, and which were emptied by that of the 22d
Prairial, which might be called the law of the condemn¬
ed : it was then that the emissaries of the Committee of
Public Safety suddenly replaced those of the Mountain;
that Carrier, the creature of Billaud, appeared in the
west; Maignet, the creature of Couthon, in the south;
and Joseph Lebon, the creature of Robespierre, in the
north. I he extermination en masse of the enemies of
the democratic dictatorship, which had been practised at
FRANCE.
89
History. Lyons and Toulon by means of the mitraillades, became
still more horrible when effected by means of the noyades
1794. 0f Nantes and the scaffolds of Paris, Arras, and Orange.
The terrorists were now so completely united, that they
seemed to have but one body and one soul, in which all
feelings, sentiments, and desires, had merged in a craving
and insatiable appetite for blood. Posterity will find it diffi¬
cult to credit the extent to which this appetite had grown
by what it fed on. “ The more the social body perspires,
the sounder it becomes,” said Collot-d’Herbois. “ It is the
dead only who never return,” said Barrere. “ The vessel
of the Revolution can only arrive in port on a sea redden¬
ed with torrents of blood,” said Saint-Just. “ A nation
is only regenerated on heaps of dead bodies,” rejoined
Robespierre. Nor were their actions at variance with the
creed they professed. For months together these prin¬
ciples were daily carried into practice in every town in
France. Alone and unopposed, the Committee of Public
Safety struck numberless blows from one end of the king¬
dom to the other. The mandates of death issued from
the capital, and the guillotine was immediately set to work
in almost every town and village of France. Amidst the
roaring of cannon, the roll of drums, and the sound of the
tocsin, the suspected were everywhere arrested, whilst
the young and active were marched off to the frontiers;
fifteen hundred bastilles, spread throughout the depart¬
ments, were found insufficient to contain the multitude of
captives; and the monasteries, the palaces, the chateaux,
were in consequence converted into prisons. Rapidly as
the guillotine did its work, however, it reaped not the
harvest of death which everywhere presented itself. But
disease came to its assistance, and contagious fevers, pro¬
duced by the crowded state of the prisons, swept off thou¬
sands who had been destined to perish by the revolution¬
ary axe. Over the portals of these dread abodes might
have been written the inscription which Dante has placed
over the entrance of the infernal regions; hope never
crossed their thresholds, and despair of life produced its
usual diversified effects on the minds of the unhappy cap¬
tives. Some sunk into sullen indifference ; others indulged
in immoderate gaiety ; many became frantic with horror;
not a few sought to amuse life even at the foot of the
scaffold. Rising in one wild and heart-rending chorus
might be heard raving, blasphemy, lamentation, com¬
mingled with the loud shouts of obstreperous laughter; in
short, all the varied sounds which intimate the absence
of hope, and a desperate recklessness of the future. Ter¬
ror was now in its zenith, and death at every door.
On the 10th of May, Madame Elizabeth, sister of the
late king, was sacrificed by the Revolutionary Tribunal;
and multitudes of every rank and both sexes daily shared
the same fate. The rich were naturally the great objects
of persecution, because the confiscation of their property
added to the strength of the ruling powers ; but neither
were the poor safe in their poverty from the vengeance of
this ferocious and sanguinary government. No security
was to be found in any station of life, however humble or
mean; a word, a look, a gesture, might excite suspicion,
and suspicion was death. By the instrumentality of the
guillotine Robespierre had contrived to destroy every
avowed rival. The constituted authorities consisted of
persons nominated by him, or with his approbation; the
committees which conducted the business of the state
were at his disposal, and his will was irresistible through¬
out the Republic. In the Convention he met with no op¬
position ; for that body had ceased to be the turbulent
popular assembly which it once appeared, and had become
little more than a name employed to give a sort of sanction
to such schemes as were proposed to it. But notwithstand¬
ing all this, the dictator was fast approaching the crisis of
his fate, and at the very culminating point of his power
VOL. x.
destruction awaited both his system and himself. All
hope would indeed have been lost if the issue had de¬
pended on the efforts of the virtuous classes ; these were
completely subdued by terror; but as it is the natural
effect of suffering to induce a remedy, so it was in the
shock of the wicked among themselves that the only hope
of salvation remained. From the beginning of 1794, in¬
deed, men gifted with foresight had entertained the con¬
viction that, in pity to an afflicted land, heaven would
throw the apple of discord among the tyrants themselves,
and strike them with that judicial blindness which is the
instrument it makes use of to punish men and nations.
Nor was this expectation disappointed. The Girondist
party, it is true, was indeed subdued and silent; its illus¬
trious leaders were no more ; but many members of the
Convention still remained attached to its principles, and
deeply repented having ever deserted them. The party
of the Mountain, too, by means of which Robespierre had
risen to power, now found itself not only disregarded, but
ready at every instant to fall a sacrifice to that system of
terror which they had contributed to erect. And even
the Jacobins themselves, though neither timid nor scru¬
pulous in the shedding of blood, began to murmur when
they saw that fearful privilege confined to a few, or rather
monopolized by one man.
For a time things remained in this state, during which it
was seen howpossible it is foran individual to govern agreat
nation, even when that nation is hostile to his authority.
It is far easier, indeed, to uphold the worst form of govern¬
ment, than to establish the best which human genius or pa¬
triotism ever devised. But still the power of Robespierre
rested upon no solid foundation, and his fall was therefore
inevitable. He had no organized force; his partisans, though
numerous, were not organized ; he was sustained only by
terror and a great force of opinion; and hence, not being able
to overpower his enemies by an act of violence, he sought
to strike them with dismay. And for a time he succeeded.
But such a system soon attains the utmost limit to which
it can be urged, and when the tension becomes extreme,
the recoil is near at hand. On the day after the festival
of the Supreme Being, when the power of the tyrant had
reached its apex, his sanguinary intentions were fully dis¬
closed. By the decree of the 22d Prairial, passed on the
motion of Couthon, every form, delay, or usage, calculated
to protect the accused, was at one fell swoop annihilated.
“ Every delay,” said Couthon, “ is a crime; every forma¬
lity indulgent to the accused is a crime ; the delay in
punishing the enemies of the country should not be greater
than the time requisite for identifying them.” Accus¬
tomed as the Convention had been to blind obedience, a
project calculated to place every member of that body at
the mercy of the dictator startled its apathy. “ If this
law passes,” said Ruamps, “ nothing remains but to blow
out our brains.” But the hour of deliverance had not yet
arrived. Robespierre mounted the tribune, and demanded,
that instead of pausing on the proposal of adjournment,
the assembly should sit until the project of the law was
discussed. The assembly felt its weakness, and in thirty
minutes the decree was unanimously adopted. From
this moment, however, may be dated the commence¬
ment of the re-action. Proscriptions increased with fear¬
ful rapidity, and the cruelties committed in the provinces
equalled, if not exceeded, those perpetrated in the capi¬
tal. Lebon at Arras, and Carrier at Nantes, revelled in
horrors such as the world had never before witnessed.
Since the law of the 22d Prairial, heads fell at the rate of
fifty or sixty a day; yet the Committee of Public Safety,
not satisfied with this dreadful amount of carnage, inces¬
santly urged the public accuser, Fouquier Tinville, to ac¬
celerate the executions. But whilst the apprehensions of
the terrorists themselves inflamed and maddened their
M
90
FRANCE.
History, ferocity, discord arose in their conclave; the active mem-
hers of the committees were divided; on one side were
175)4. Robespierre, Saint-Just, and Couthon; on the other Bil-
laud-Varennes, Collot-d’Herbois, Barrere, and the mem¬
bers of the Committee of General Safety. After several
fruitless attempts to regain his ascendency, Robespierre
absented himself from the committees, and threw himself
on the Jacobins and the commune, where his influence
was still paramount. Meanwhile his more furious parti¬
sans urged the immediate adoption of the most vigorous
measures. Henriot and the mayor of Paris were ready
to commence a new massacre, and three thousand young
assassins were provided for the purpose. “ Strike soon
and strongly,” said Saint-Just. “ Dare ; that is the sole
secret of revolutions.” Tallien, Bourdon de 1’Oise, Thu-
riot, Rovere, Lecombre, Panis, Monestier, Legendre, Fre-
ron, Barras, Cambon, were marked out as the first vic¬
tims. But as the conspirators had no armed force at their
command, as the Jacobin Club was only powerful from its
influence on public opinion, and as the committees of
government were all arrayed upon the other side, Robes¬
pierre was compelled to commence the attack in the Con¬
vention, which he hoped to sway by the terror of his
voice, or at all events to overwhelm by a popular insur¬
rection similar to that which had proved so successful on
the 31st of May. Nor were the leaders of the Conven¬
tion and the committees idle on their side. The imme¬
diate pressure of danger united all parties against the
tju-ant, who, in the popular society, had made no secret
of his resolution to decimate the assembly.
At length, on the 8th Thermidor (26th July), the con¬
test commenced in the National Convention. The dis¬
course of Robespierre was dark and enigmatical, but its
real object was not doubtful. The dictator was listened to
with breathless attention ; not a sound interrupted the
delivery of his speech ; not a whisper of applause followed
its close. On the proposal that it should be printed, the
first symptoms of resistance showed themselves. Bour¬
don de 1’Oise opposed its publication; but Barrere sup¬
ported it, and the assembly, fearful of prematurely com¬
mitting itself, agreed to the proposal. Seeing the majority
wavering, the Committee of General Safety now deemed
it necessary to take decisive steps. The time for dissem¬
bling had passed. “ One man paralyses the assembly, and
that man is Robespierre,” said Cambon. “ I would rather
that my carcass served for a throne to the tyrant,” said
Billaud-Varennes, “ than render myself by my silence the
accomplice of his crimes.” Freron proposed to throw off
the hated yoke of the committees, and to reverse the de¬
cree which permitted the arrest of the representatives of
the people ; but as Robespierre was still too powerful to be
overthrown by the Convention unaided by the committees,
this proposal was rejected, and the assembly contented
itself with reversing the decree for the publication of his
address, which was sent to the committees for examina¬
tion. In the evening the tyrant, attended by Henriot,
Dumas, Coffinhal, and his other satellites, repaired to the
popular society, where he was received with enthusiasm ;
and during the night he made arrangements for disposing
his partisans on the following day. The two committees,
on their side, were not idle. They sat in deliberation du¬
ring the whole night; and it was felt by every one that a
combination of all parties was requisite to shake the power
of the tyrant. rlo this object, accordingly, all their ef¬
forts were directed; and, by unremitting exertions, the
Jacobins oi the Mountain succeeded in forming a coali¬
tion with the leaders of the centre and the right. “ Do
not flatter yourselves,” said Tallien to the Girondists,
that he will ever spare you; you have committed an
unpardonable offence in being freemen. Let us bury our
ruinous divisions in oblivion. You weep for Yergniaud ^
we weep for Danton. Let us unite their shades by strik- Histoi
ing Robespierre.” Before daybreak all the assembly had
united for the overthrow of the tyrant. 1794
At an early hour on the morning of the 9th Thermidor
(27th July), the benches of the Convention were crowded
with members, and the leaders walked about in the pas¬
sages confirming one another in their generous resolution.
At noon Saint-Just ascended the tribune, and Robespierre
took his seat on a bench directly opposite, to intimidate
his adversaries by that look which had so often stricken
them with terror. But its spell was powerless; fear had
now changed sides. As he proceeded to take his seat his
knees trembled, and the colour fled from his lips ; the hos¬
tile appearance of the assembly already gave him an an¬
ticipation of his fate. Saint-Just began by declaring that
he belonged to no party, and would combat them all.
“ The course of events has possibly determined,” said he,
“ that this tribune shall become the Tarpeian rock for him
who now tells you that the members of the committees
have strayed from the path of wisdom.” Here he was
vehemently interrupted by Tallien, the intrepid leader of
the revolt. “ Shall the speaker,” said he, “ for ever arro¬
gate to himself, with the tyrant of whom he is the satellite,
the privilege of denouncing, accusing, and proscribing the
members of the assembly ? Shall he for ever go on amus¬
ing us with imaginary perils, when real and pressing dan¬
gers are before our eyes ? After the enigmatical expres¬
sions which fell from the tyrant yesterday, can we doubt
what Saint-Just is about to propose ? You are about,”
added he, “ to raise the veil; I will rend it asunder. Yes,
I will exhibit the danger in its full extent; the tyrant in
his true colours. It is the whole Convention which he
now proposes to destroy; he knows well, since his over¬
throw yesterday, that however much he may mutilate
that great body, he will no longer find it the instrument
of his tyrannical designs.” Loud applauses followed this
intrepid declaration. “ Two thousand assassins,” he pro¬
ceeded, “ are sworn to execute his designs; I myself last
night heard their oaths, and fifty of my colleagues heard
them with me. The massacre was to have commenced in
the night, with the Committees of Public Safety and Ge¬
neral Security, all of whom were to have been sacrificed,
excepting a few creatures of the tyrant. Let us instant¬
ly take measures commensurate with the magnitude of
the danger; let us declare our sittings permanent, until
the conspiracy is broken and its chiefs arrested.” Bil¬
laud-Varennes gave fuller details of the conspiracy which
had been matured in the society of the Jacobins, and de¬
nounced Robespierre as its chief; at the same time de¬
claring that the assembly would perish if it showed the
least symptom of weakness. “ We will never perish,” ex¬
claimed the members, rising in a transport of enthusiasm.
Tallien then resumed, and in impassioned language called
upon the assembly to pass the decree of accusation. Du¬
ring this agitating scene Robespierre sat motionless from
terror. The Convention, amidst violent uproar, decreed
the arrest of Dumas, president of the Revolutionary Tri¬
bunal, Henriot, commander of the national guard, and
their associate conspirators ; it also declared its sittings
permanent, and numerous measures of precaution were
suggested. But as the main object of destroying Robes¬
pierre was in danger of being lost sight of amidst these
multifarious proposals, Tallien again ascended the tribune,
and, in the most emphatic terms, demanded that the dic¬
tator should be declared hors la loi. “ Let there be no
formalities with the accused,” said he; “ you cannot too
much abridge his punishment, he has told you so himself
a hundred times.” Robespierre now attempted to obtain
a hearing, but in vain. His voice was drowned by the in¬
cessant ringing of the president’s bell, and by shouts of
“ Down with the tyrant,” which resounded throughout
FRA
History, the halls. A moment of silence ensued, during which he
made a last effort to be heard. “ For the last time, pre-
1794. sident of assassins,” exclaimed he, turning to the chair,
“will you allow me to speak?” But Thuriot recom¬
menced ringing his bell; and, amidst renewed cries of
“ Down with the tyrant,” he sunk on his seat exhausted
with fatigue and rage. The foam now issued from his
mouth, and his speech failed. “ Wretch,” exclaimed a
voice from the Mountain, “ the blood of Danton chokes
thee!” The act of accusation was then passed amidst
the most violent agitation ; the two liobespierres, Lebas,
Couthon, Saint-Just, Dumas, and some others, were una¬
nimously put under arrest, and sent to prison ; and, after a
scene perhaps unexampled in history, the assembly broke
up at five o’clock.
The Jacobins, who had fully expected that Robespierre
would be victorious in the Convention, no sooner heard of
his arrest than they instantly gave orders to sound the
tocsin, to close the barriers, to convoke the council-general,
and assemble the sections; they also declared their sit¬
tings permanent, and established the most rapid means of
communication between the two centres of insurrection.
Meanwhile Henriot endeavoured to excite the people to
revolt, by parading the streets, at the head of his staff,
with a sabre in his hand, exclaiming, “ To arms to save
the country.” But having been met by two deputies who
prevailed upon some horsemen to obey the orders of the
Convention, he was seized, handcuffed, and sent to the
Committee of General Safety. Peyan, the national agent,
was about the same time arrested; and the Convention
seemed triumphant. But between six and seven o’clock
the insurgents regained the advantage, chiefly in conse¬
quence of the energetic measures of the municipality.
Robespierre having been sent to the Conciergerie, and
the rest of the conspirators to the other prisons of Paris,
the commune sent detachments to deliver them ; and
Robespierre was speedily brought in triumph to the Hotel
de Ville, where he was joined by his brother and Saint-
Just; whilst Coffinhal, at the head of two hundred canno-
niers, forced the guard of the Convention, penetrated to
the rooms of the Committee of General Safety, and deli¬
vered Henriot. The assembly met again at seven o’clock,
when it received intelligence of the success of the insur¬
gents, the liberation of the terrorists, the assemblage at
the Hotel de Ville, and the convocation of revolutionary
committees, and of the sections. In a short time the de¬
livery of Henriot, and the presence of an armed force
around the Convention, were also communicated; and
when the agitation was at its height, Amar entered and
announced that the cannoniers had pointed their guns
against the hall of the assembly. The moment was truly
terrible. But in this extremity Tallien and his friends
acted with that dauntless intrepidity which so often proves
successful in revolutions. Henriot was declared hors la
loi, and Barras appointed to the command of the military,
whilst Freron, Bourdon de 1’Oise, and other determined
men, were associated with him in this perilous duty; the
Committee of Public Safety was fixed on as the centre of
operations; and emissaries were instantly dispatched to
all the sections to summon them to the defence of the
Convention. Fortunately for this body, Henriot in vain
attempted to induce the cannoniers to fire. They had
obeyed his orders in marching from the Hotel de Ville,
and to this they limited their obedience. The refusal of
the cannoniers decided the fortune of this day. Dispirited
and alarmed, Henriot withdrew to the Hotel de Ville ; the
armed forced followed his example; and the Convention,
which had just been besieged in its hall, became the as¬
sailing party.
The battalions of the sections, who had been convoked
by the emissaries of the Convention, now began to arrive
N C E. 91
at the Tuileries; and in a short time a considerable force History,
assembled. The night was dark, the moon being in the
first quarter; but the public anxiety had supplied this 17y4*
defect by a general illumination. The defenders of the
National Convention took the line of the quay, carrying
with them several pieces of cannon ; they marched in si¬
lence, sustaining their courage without the aid of those
vociferations and exclamations which are the resource of
men who march to pillage and disorder. The space in
front of the Hotel de Ville was filled with detachments of
the national guard, who had obeyed the summons of the
municipality, companies of cannoniers, squadrons of gen¬
darmerie, and a multitude of individuals, some armed,
and others not, but all apparently inflamed with the most
violent spirit of Jacobinism, though perhaps in secret ac¬
tuated by fear alone. At midnight a rumour began to cir¬
culate through the ranks of the insurgents that the mu¬
nicipality had been declared hors la loi; that the sections
had joined the Convention; and that their forces were
advancing to attack the Hotel de Ville. In the Place de
Greve there were stationed about two thousand insur¬
gents, with a powerful train of artillery; but their firm¬
ness was much shaken when the light of the torches
showed the heads of the columns of the national guards
appearing in all the avenues which lead into the square,
and thus made obvious the defection of their fellow-citi¬
zens. Still it was a fearful moment. Ten pieces of
artillery had been placed in battery by the troops of the
Convention ; and the cannoniers of the municipality, with
burning matches in their hands, stood beside their guns
on the opposite side. But happily the authority of the le¬
gislature prevailed; its decree which declared the com¬
mune hors la loi was read by torch-light, and in an instant
the Place de Greve was deserted. A few moments after¬
wards, Henriot descended the stair of the Hotel de Ville,
with a sabre in his hand, and finding no one, “ How !” ex¬
claimed he, “ is it possible? These scoundrels of can¬
noniers who saved my life five hours ago, thus abandon me
now!”
With terror in his looks and imprecations in his mouth,
Henriot re-ascended the stair, and announced the total de¬
fection of the troops. Instantly despair took possession of
that band of assassins ; every one turned his fury on his
neighbour ; nothing but mutual execrations could be heard.
In a transport of rage Coffinhal seized Henriot in his arms,
and exclaiming, “ Vile wretch, your cowardice has undone
us all,” hurled him headlong down the stair. Saint-Just
implored Lebas to put an end to his life. “ Coward, follow
my example,” exclaimed the latter, and blew out his brains.
Robespierre tried to imitate him; but his hand trembled,
and he only broke his under jaw, which disfigured him in
a frightful manner. Couthon was found under a table,
feebly attempting to strike with a knife, which he wanted
courage to plunge into his heart; Coffinhal and the young¬
er Robespierre threw themselves from the windows, and
were seized in the inner court of the building; Henriot,
bruised and mutilated, had contrived to crawl into the en¬
trance of a sewer, out of which he was dragged by the
troops of the Convention. Robespierre and Couthon, being
thought dead, were dragged by the heels to the Quai Pel¬
letier, where it was proposed to throw them into the river ;
but when daylight appeared, and it was found that they
still breathed, they were stretched on a board and carried
to the Committee of General Safety. There, extended-on
a table, with his visage disfigured and bloody, the fallen
tyrant lay for some hours exposed to invectives and execra¬
tions, saw men of every party rejoicing in his overthrow,
and heard himself charged with all the crimes which had
been committed. “ II montra,” says Mignet, “ beaucoup
d’insensibilite pendant son agonie.” He was then convey¬
ed to the Conciergerie, where for a brief space he occupied
92 FRA
History, the same cell in which Danton, Hebert, and Chaumette
had been confined. When brought with his associates be-
1/94' fore the Revolutionary Tribunal, the process was short; as
soon as the identity of their persons had been established,
they were ordered for execution. About five in the morn¬
ing of the 29th July, he was placed on the death-cart, be¬
tween Henriot and Couthon, who were as mutilated as him¬
self. A linen bandage soaked in blood supported his bro¬
ken jaw ; his countenance was livid, and his eye almost
extinct. An immense multitude crowded around the cart,
testifying their feelings in loud and reiterated shouts of
exultation ; some shed tears of joy, others embraced, and
others again poured forth execrations against the tyrant,
whom, from time to time, the gendarmes pointed out to
the people with their sabres. Saint-Just was the only one
who evinced any firmness or self-possession ; the others,
to the number of twenty-two, were excessively dejected.
Robespierre was executed the last; when the fatal axe de¬
scended, an exulting shout arose, which was prolonged for
several minutes after the tyrant was no more.
With the fall of Robespierre ended the system of terror,
of which however he was not the most zealous partisan of
his party. Aspiring to supreme power, moderation would
have become necessary to him had he succeeded, and ter¬
ror, which ceased by his fall, would have equally ceased
by his triumph. But his destruction was inevitable. He
had no organized force ; his partisans, though numerous,
were not embodied and disciplined; he had only the force
of opinion and terror; and being thus unable to surprise
his enemies by a sudden act of violence, he sought to strike
them with dismay. When fear did not succeed he attempt¬
ed insurrection; but as the Convention, when supported
by the committees, had become courageous, so the sections,
reckoning on the courage of the Convention, declared
against the insurgents. In attacking the government, he
roused the assembly ; in rousing the assembly, he let loose
the people ; and this coalition proved his ruin. The Con¬
tention, on the 9th Thermidor, was no longer what it had
been on the 31st May ; divided and undecided, in the pre¬
sence of a compact, numerous, and daring faction. All par¬
ties were united by defeat, misfortune, and an ever-menacing
proscription, and under the pressure of common danger
N C E.
they were prepared to combat together. The overthrow of Histor
Robespierre was therefore inevitable. He could not avoid
separating himself from the committees. “ Au point ou l794.
il etait arrive, on veut etre seul, on est devore par ses pas¬
sions, trompe par ses esperances et par sa fortune jusque-
la heureuse ; et, la guerre une fois declaree, la paix, le re¬
pos, le partage du pouvoir ne sont pas plus possibles que la
justice et la clemence lorsque les echaufauds ont ete une
fois dresses.”1 A man so circumstanced must ultimately
fall by the means which have contributed to his elevation;
and as conquerors are at length destroyed by war, so the
leaders of factions naturally terminate their career on the
scaffolds, by which they had sought to establish their power.
We may add, that the 9th Thermidor was the first day of
the Revolution in which those who attacked had failed.
The ascending revolutionary movement had reached its
term, and the contrary movement now commenced.2
After the fall of Robespierre the Convention exhibited Terror
a remarkable change of appearance. Instead of the silence gives pla
which had formerly prevailed, all was now bustle and acti-to tllat 0
vity. The success of the general rising of all the parties ^odera'
against one man destroyed the compression under which 1Sm'
they had laboured ; but the momentary union which had en¬
sured the victory was soon at an end, and the conquerors
speedily arranged themselves into two parties, namely, that
of the committees, and that consisting of partisans of the
Mountain, which received the name of parti Thermidorien.
But the committees were vanquished with Robespierre,
and their government lost the prestige of terror which con¬
stituted its whole force. Besides the loss of their chief,
they had no longer the commune, whose insurgent members,
to the number of seventy-two, were sent to the scaffold,
and which, after its double defeat under Hebert and under
Robespierre, was not re-organized, and lost in consequence
all its influence. The democratic power of the commit¬
tees accordingly declined, and the Thermidorian party, in¬
cluding a great majority of the Convention, prevailed;
whilst a new character was given to that assembly by the
coalition of the moderates, Boissy-d’Anglas, Sieyes, Cam
baceres, Chenier, Thibaudeau, with the Dantonists Tal-
lien, Freron, Legendre, Barras, Bourdon de 1’Oise, Rovere,
Bentabold, Dumont, and the two Merlins. The former
1 Mignet, Hlstoire de la Revolution Francaise, ii. 479, 480.
2 The quantity of blood which was shed in France during the regime of terror will hardly be credited in future ages. Prudhomme
who, as a republican, could scarcely be disposed to exaggerate the crimes committed by the popular party, gives the following' anmr
ling enumeration of the victims of the Revolution: r
There were guillotined by sentences of the Revolutionary Tribunals,
Nobility of both sexes  2,028
Wives oflabourers and artisans  1,467
Priests  1,135
Religieuses  350
Common persons 13,623
Women died in premature childbirth, and from grief...
Women killed in La Vende'e 
Children killed in La Vendde 
Men slain in La Vendee 
Victims of Carrier at Nantes 
Killed at Lyons 
18,603
3,748
15,000
22,000
900,000
32,000
31,000
t _ Total   .....1 022 351
nrSts^w^re'shot8 andRiTdroL^Tinn00 h!lildren "7* ^7 ^ l^° ^^7264 women were shot, and 500 drowned; 300
priests were snot, ana 460 drowned ; 1400 nobles were drowned; and 5300 artisans were drowned.
1 he general results of this enumeration are strikingly curious. The nobles and priests guillotined are only 2413 whilst the ner
ceefliOsjO, the mfants drowned and shot amount exactly to this number, and the artisans drowned exceed 5000 It thus anneal
r ed on^xclusivefy3^their intm-est”^6^^^^!^6^tSlJ^erei,S b'\the Involution, which professed to have been undertaken aml car-
number guiZined hi viAue of tS' iodZiml t number of persons destroyed at Nantes and Lyons alone exceeded the total
iiumoer gumotinea in virtue ot the judgments pronounced by the Revolutionary Tribunals, by no less than 4? 307
teMbe, 'S uTvST orthTohcibl „f A”"'8 V S' ^ *he *»4 other p" if™!™ the 2d of Sep.
temoei , Uie victims ot the Glaciere of Avignon; those shot at Toulon and Marseilles; nor the nersons slain in the little
) alm°St enUrelj deP°Pula^ (Prudhomme, Victime* dc la Revolution; clauteaubi; S
i
FRA
History, system of terror was consequently declared to be at an end,
and a new system of moderatism succeeded, which was
1794. carried to as great a height as that of terror had formerly
been ; and all means were taken to render popular the fall
of the tyrant. The committees were organized anew, and
their members ordered to be frequently changed. The
correspondence between the affiliated Jacobin Clubs was
prohibited, and the Jacobin Club itself was at length abo¬
lished. This last event was accomplished without difficulty,
and that society which had been the great engine of the
Revolution was overturned almost without resistance. Se¬
venty-one deputies of the Girondist party, who had been
imprisoned since the 31st of May 1793, w ere set at liberty.
The name of Lyons was restored. Some of the agents of
Robespierre, particularly Lebon and Carrier, the former of
whom had signalized himself by unheard-of cruelties at
Arras and Cambray, and the latter at Nantes, were brought
before the Revolutionary Tribunal, condemned, and exe¬
cuted, with the greater part of their accomplices.1 Still,
however, the Convention appeared so little decided with
regard to objects of the first importance, that in all proba¬
bility they would not have conducted the important strug¬
gle against the nations of Europe with more success than
the Girondist party had formerly done, if the revolutionary
government and the late system of terror had not already
accumulated in their hands vast resources, and traced out
a plan of procedure, which rendered it comparatively an
easy matter to preserve their numerous armies in the train
of success to which they were now habituated.
"he The allies in their retreat having left strong garrisons in
rench the French towns Conde, Valenciennes, Quesnoi, and Lan-
enderSUr" ^recies> which had surrendered to them, these now surren-
•ithout ^ere(lt0 the republican armies with so little resistance, that
esistance. the conduct of the emperor began to be considered as am¬
biguous, and he was even suspected of having entered into
some kind of compromise with the French. But this sus¬
picion proved groundless ; and as soon as the army which
had besieged these towns was able to join the grand army
under Pichegru and Jourdan, the operations of the campaign
were resumed after a suspension of almost two months.
The French army divided itself into two bodies. One of
these under Jourdan advanced against General Clairfayt,
who had succeeded the Prince of Cobourg in the command
in the neighbourhood of Maestricht. On the 15th of Sep¬
tember the French attacked the whole Austrian posts, ex¬
tending along a line of five leagues from Liege to Maes¬
tricht ; and on the following day the attack was renewed
with nearly an equal loss on both sides. On the 17th the
French, with fifty pieces of cannon, attacked General
Kray in his intrenched camp before Maestricht; and the
latter was already retiring when General Clairfayt arriv¬
ed with a strong reinforcement, and, after a severe com¬
bat, compelled the French once more to fall back. On the
18th the French having renewed the attack with increased
fury upon every part of the Austrian line, obliged the
N c E. 93
whole to fall back to the neighbourhood of Aix-la-Cha- History,
pelle. General Clairfayt now took up a strong position
on the banks of the Roer, where he declared it to be his 094.
wish that he might be attacked ; but by this time the spi¬
rit of his army had been humbled, desertions were nume¬
rous, and discipline became extremely relaxed. On the
first of October the French crossed the Maese and the Roer,
attacked the whole Austrian positions from Ruremond to
Juliers, and, after a bloody engagement, compelled the
brave and active though unfortunate Clairfayt hastily to
repass the Rhine with the loss of ten or twelve thousand
men. The French general did not attempt to cross that
river; but one detachment of his army took possession of
Coblentz, whilst others laid siege to Venlo and Maestricht,
which soon afterwards surrendered.
In the mean time the French army under Pichegru Progress of
entered Holland, and having attacked the allied army the French
under the Duke of York between Bois-le-Duc and Grave,in t^ie con'
forced the advanced post of Boxtel. Lieutenant-general
Abercromby was sent to attempt to recover this post, on
the 15th of September; but he found the French in such
force that he was obliged to retreat. They were in fact
discovered to be nearly eighty thousand strong; and
the Duke of York, unable to contend against a force
so greatly superior, retired across the Maese with the loss
of about fifteen hundred men. Pichegru immediately laid
siege to Bois-le-Duc. On the 30th of September, Creve-
cceur was taken, and Bois-le-Duc surrendered in ten days
thereafter.
The French now followed the Duke of York across
the Maese; whereupon the greater part of the allied
army under his royal highness crossed the Rhine and
took post at Arnheim, whither the remainder followed
soon afterwards. Nimeguen was occupied by the French
on the 7th of November. At this time the Duke of Bruns¬
wick was requested to assume the command of the allied
army, and if possible to protect Holland; and with that
view he proceeded to Arnheim ; but after attentively ex¬
amining the state of affairs, he declined undertaking the
heavy responsibility which such a command would in¬
volve. The allied troops had now so often fled before
their victorious enemies, they had so long been in want
of almost every necessary, and had been received so ill
by the inhabitants of the countries through which they
passed, amongst whom the French cause was extremely
popular, that they had lost that regularity of conduct and
discipline which alone can afford a reasonable prospect of
success in military affairs. The French, on the contrary,
well received, abundantly supplied with every thing, and
proud of fighting in a popular cause, now conducted them¬
selves with much order, and submitted to the strictest
discipline ; and, in addition to all these advantages, their
leaders had the dexterity to persuade the world that new
and unknown arts were employed to give aid to their
cause.2 In human affairs, and more especially in military
1 Lebon was a young man of a feeble constitution, and apparently mild in his disposition. In his first mission he had been
humane; but he was reproached by the committee for his lenity, and sent to Arras with orders to show himself a little more
revolutionary. Determined not to disappoint the inexorable policy of the committee, he now abandoned himself to the most
unheard-of excess; combined debauchery with extermination; had the guillotine, which he called holy, always in his presence ;
and made an habitual companion of the executioner, whom he admitted to his table. But Carrier having more victims to destroy,
surpassed Lebon in the art of extermination. Bilious, fanatical, and naturally sanguinary, he wanted only an opportunity to execute
all which the imagination of Marat would have dared to conceive. Sent to "the borders of an insurgent country, he condemned to
death the whole hostile population, priests, women, children, old men, and young girls. As the scaffolds were not sufficient for his
purpose, he had replaced the Revolutionary Tribunal by a company of assassins, called the company of Marat, and the guillotine by
scuttled boats, in which he drowned his victims in the Loire. Immediately after the 9th Thermidor, loud cries of vengeance and of
justice for these crimes were raised in the Convention. Lebon was first attacked, as he had been more particularly the agent of
Robespierre; the proceedings against Carrier, who had been the agent of the Committee of Public Safety, and whose conduct had
been disapproved by Robespierre, were not instituted until some time thereafter; but both happily met the fate which their unparal¬
leled crimes so richly merited.
2 At this period the telegraph was first used for conveying intelligence from the frontiers to the capital, and from the capital
to the frontiers. Balloons were also employed by the French during this campaign, to procure knowledge of the position of the ene-
94
FRANCE.
Successes
in Spain.
The con¬
quest of
Holland
completed
transactions, opinion or moral force is all-powerful. The
French soldiers confided in their officers as men possess¬
ed of a kind of omniscience, whilst the allied troops attri¬
buted their misfortunes to the incapacity of those in com¬
mand, and beheld with anxiety new contrivances em¬
ployed against them, the importance of which was magni¬
fied by ignorance, or exaggerated by fear.
Whilst these events were occurring in the north, the
French arms were scarcely less successful on the side of
Spain. Bellegarde was taken, Fontarabia and St Sebas¬
tian surrendered, and the whole kingdom of Spain seem¬
ed panic-stricken. That feeble government, with an al¬
most impregnable frontier and the most powerful fortress¬
es, made but little resistance; and the difficult nature of
their country seemed now their only protection. The his¬
tory of this war is merely a list of victories gained by the
French. On the 17th of November the French general Du-
gommier was killed in an engagement fought in the East¬
ern Pyrenees, where, however, his army was successful.
On the 20th of the same month the French again attack¬
ed the Spaniards, and routed them with the bayonet,
without firing a single shot. Tents, baggage, and cannon,
for an army of fifty thousand men, fell into the hands of
the conquerors, along with the greater part of the province
of Navarre. Towards the end of the year an army of forty
thousand Spaniards, intrenched behind eighty redoubts,
the work of six months, suffered themselves to be com¬
pletely defeated ; their general was found dead upon the
field of battle, and the whole Spanish artillery was taken.
Three days afterwards, Figueiras, containing a garrison
of above nine thousand men, surrendered, although it
mounted a hundred and seventy-one pieces of cannon,
and possessed abundance of provisions. The French con¬
tinued their conquests; Rosas surrendered, and the whole
province of Catalonia was left at the mercy of the in¬
vaders.
But the successes of this wonderful campaign were not
yet terminated ; the last, and perhaps the most important,
although no great effort was necessary to its execution,
yet remains to be noticed. The winter had now set in
with uncommon severity. For some years past the sea¬
sons of Europe had been uncommonly mild; there had
been little frost in winter, and no intense heat in summer.
But during the preceding season the weather had been
remarkably dry until the latter part of the harvest, when
t ere fell a considerable, though by no means an un¬
usual, quantity of rain. Towards the end of December a
severe frost bound up the whole of the rivers and lakes of
Holland, and in the beginning of January the Waal was
frozen oyer, which had not occurred for fourteen years
past, faking advantage of this circumstance, the French
crossed that river on the ice, and seized with little opposi¬
tion the important pass of Bommell, which at other seasons
is so strong by reason of its inundations. The allied army,
having been joined by seventeen thousand Austrians, had
it0 defend Holland to the last extremity.
Ihey did so, and were successful in repulsing the French
for some days between the Waal and the Leek; but the
aiimy’ a?°T^nSt0 seventy thousand men, hav-
mg at last advanced in full force, the allied troops were com¬
pelled to retire across the Yssel into Westphalia. In the
midstenf1 eir rrch this desert country, in the
hl/h! f rVere f^0.St and deep Snow? they suffered incredi¬
ble hardships, and lost a great number of men. The French
ad™ced,rapidly across the country to
the Zuyder-Zee, to prevent the inhabitants from flying and
carrying off their property. On the 16th of January 1795 Histo
a party of horse, without resistance, took possession of
Amsterdam. The other towns surrendered at discretion ; D9
and in consequence of an order from the States-General,
Bergen-op-Zoom, Williamstadt, Breda, and other strong
places, opened their gates to the French. By the intense
frost, thefleet and the shipping were fixed in their stations,
and became a prey to the enemy, who thus, with little ef¬
fort, made a complete conquest of this rich and highly-
defensible country. The people were almost everywhere
favourable to their cause; and in fact the power of the
stadtholder had been supported solely by the influence of
Prussia and England. Through hatred of this office,
which had now become odious chiefly to the mercantile
aristocracy of Holland, the people were unfriendly to the
allies, and, during the war, gave them as little support
as possible. The stadtholder and his family now fled to
England. And thus terminated a campaign, in the course
of which, even before the conquest of Holland, the French
had taken two thousand pieces of cannon and sixty thou¬
sand prisoners ; whilst after that event the conquered ter¬
ritories added a population of nearly fourteen millions to
the Republic. Luxembourg and Mayence were the only
places on the Rhine which resisted them. But the for¬
mer was closely blockaded ; and the latter, though several
times assaulted, successfully held out.
As the constitution which had been framed in the year Anewc
1793 was justly deemed impracticable, a committee wasstitutio1
appointed to frame a new one. It was composed of Sieves,
Cambaceres, Merlin de Douai, Thibaudeau, Mathieu,
Lesage de 1’Eure, and Latouche. On the 19th of April
Cambaceres reported that, in the opinion of the commit¬
tee, a commission should be appointed for this important
purpose ; and a number of qualified persons were accord¬
ingly chosen, whilst all citizens were invited to commu¬
nicate their sentiments upon the subject, and the commit¬
tee was instructed to order the best plans to be published.
The feelings of the nation at large received additional
gratification from the conduct of the Convention towards
houquier-Tinville, the public accuser,1 and fifteen judges
and jurors of the Revolutionary Tribunal. Having been
fully convicted on the 8th of May, they were executed on
the 9th, amidst the loud execrations of a vast multitude
of spectators.
But although the Jacobins were defeated on the 1st and Insurrec
2d of April, they did not consider themselves as entirely ^on °!d
subdued. On the contrary, they were now plotting aJacoblIls
more extensive insurrection, which was not to be confined
to the capital alone, and they had fixed upon the 20th of
May as the period of revolt. In truth, the Convention had
been borne along too rapidly by the force of the re-action,
and, in its desire at once to repair and to punish, it fell into
a most imprudent excess of justice. In this way it drove
to despair a numerous party, which had ceased to be for¬
midable, and by threatening it with vast and eternal repri¬
sals, left it no resource but in insurrection, to which many
were but too well disposed from other causes, including
famine. The arrest of Billaud-Varennes, Collot-d’Her-
bois, Barrere, and Yadier, not to mention other circum¬
stances, convinced the Jacobins that their whole party
was doomed to destruction. Accordingly, on the morning
of the day fixed on, the tocsin sounded, and the drums
beat to arms in the faubourgs of Saint Antoine and Saint
ilarceau, in which the Jacobins had always enjoyed the
greatest influence. The Convention met on the first
a arm ; but although the insurrection was far from being a
FRANCE.
1795.
History, secret, the Committee of Public Safety did not appear to
have taken any measures to prevent it; and it was only
at the moment when the insurgents were approaching
that General Hoche was appointed to the command of
the armed force, and sent to collect the military and citi¬
zens for the protection of the Convention. The hall was
presently surrounded, the guards were overpowered, and
the mob forced their way into the midst of the assembly.
The multitudes of women who appeared on this occasion
shouted for bread and the constitution of 1793. Vernier,
the president, a man far advanced in years, quitted the
chair to Boissy*d Anglas, who kept it with unexampled
fortitude during the remainder of the day. The mob had
written on their hats with chalk, “ Bread, the constitu¬
tion of 1793, and the liberation of the patriots.” One of
the party attached to the Convention having imprudent¬
ly torn off the hat of one of the insurgents, the multitude
attacked him with swords; and he was killed by a musket
shot as he fled for protection towards the chair of the pre¬
sident. The majority of the members gradually retired
from this scene of lawless intrusion, and left the multitude
masters of the hall; but several of the members who re¬
mained espoused the cause of the insurgents. The triumph
of the latter, however, was but of very short continuance.
In the evening they were overpowered by a large body of
military, aided by the citizens ; the powers of the Conven¬
tion were restored; and the deputies who had espoused
the cause of the mob were put under arrest. But this day
decided nothing.
It would appear, indeed, that the Convention and the
citizens of Paris considered their triumph as complete; at
all events no measures were adopted sufficient to prevent
the repetition of a similar outrage. The Jacobins, how¬
ever, were by no means disposed to consider their cause
as desperate. Next day they collected their forces in the
suburbs, and in the afternoon made a second attempt to re¬
gain the ascendency. The Place de Carrousel was taken
without opposition, and some pieces of cannon were even
pointed against the hall of the Convention. The mem¬
bers, being wholly unprotected, now endeavoured to gain
over the mob by flattery; they fraternised w ith the fau¬
bourgs, without however making them any positive pro¬
mise ; and the intruders retired on receiving an assurance
that the Convention was solicitously occupied with the
means of procuring subsistence, and that it w'ould soon pub¬
lish the organic laws of the constitution of 1793. On the
J'jd, the citizens assembled, and proceeded to the Tuileries
to defend the Convention from insult and violence. The mi¬
litary also collected in considerable force ; and the Conven¬
tion, at length encouraged to act on the offensive, decreed
that if the faubourg of fSaint Antoine did not immediately
surrender its arms and cannon, together with the assassin
of Feraud, who had been murdered in the very hall whilst
covering the president with his body, it would be declared
in a state of rebellion. The generals of the Convention at
the same time received orders to reduce it by force if ne¬
cessary; and the insurgents, finding themselves unequal
to the conflict, were forced to surrender unconditionally,
in order to preserve their property from the depredations
of the military. All soldiers found amongst the prisoners
were put to death. Six members of the Convention who
had been concerned in the insurrection were also tried by
a military commission, and condemned. These were Gou¬
jon, Bourbotte, Romme, Duroy, Duquesnoy, and Soubrany,
all democrats of the Mountain party. When they heard
the sentence pronounced they all stabbed themselves with
the same knife, which they passed from one to another,
exclaiming Vive la Kepublique. Romme, Goujon, and
Guquesnoy were fortunate enough to strike home; the
other three were conducted to the scaffold in a dying
state, but with their countenances still serene.
95
In the south of trance, the Jacobins, equally turbulent History,
with their brethren in Paris, excited an insurrection at
Toulon on the 20th of May; seized on the gates, which 1793-
they planted with cannon; set at liberty such of their as¬
sociates as had been incarcerated; and detained the fleet
which was about to put to sea. From Toulon they pro¬
ceeded to Marseilles, forming in all a body about three
thousand strong, with twelve pieces of cannon; but on
their march they were encountered by Generals Charton
and Pactod, by whom they were defeated, and three hun¬
dred sent as prisoners to Marseilles.
Ihe Mountain party were now much reduced, and ex¬
posed in many places to violent persecution ; indeed as¬
sociations were formed for the purpose of avenging the
crimes committed by them during the continuance of their
power. Ihe character of Robespierre’s government, and
the amount of suffering which it inflicted on persons of
all ranks and parties, renders it truly astonishing that any
number of men should hazard their lives in attempting its
restoration. The party was of course gradually abandon¬
ed on the fall of the tyrant; but there still remained a
small number of its adherents, men of superior activity
and enterprise, but uncompromising republicans, who fan¬
cied they beheld the revival of royalty and aristocracy
in every attempt to establish a mild, sober, and regular
government. Hence, even amidst the universal odium
cast upon them, the Jacobins expected to rise once more
into power; and, what is more singular, the revival of their
strength may be dated from the unsuccessful insurrec¬
tion to which we have just adverted. Their unpopularity
began to affect even the Convention, for the people re¬
membered how tamely that body had submitted to the
tyranny of Robespierre, and how the majority of its mem¬
bers had been the servile instruments of his power. The
press being now free, the most hideous picture of their
conduct was accordingly held up to the public; and the
greater number began to repent of their victory over the
Jacobins, which they foresaw might in the end prove fatal
to themselves.
On the 23d of June, Boissy-d’Anglas presented the report New con-
of the committee relative to the project of a new constitu- stitution.
tion. Like its predecessors, it was prefaced with a declara¬
tion of the rights of man, and, besides, consisted of fourteen
chapters on as many different subjects, viz. the extent of
the republican territories; the political state of citizens;
primary assemblies; electoral assemblies; the legislature;
the judicial authority; the public force; public instruc¬
tion; the finances; foreign treaties; the mode of revising
the constitution ; with a provision that no rank or superio¬
rity should exist amongst citizens except such as might
arise from the exercise of public functions. The legislature
was composed of two assemblies ; the Council of the An¬
cients, consisting of two hundred and fifty members, into
which none but married men and widowers turned of forty
could be admitted; and the Council of Five Hundred,
consisting of as many members, who enjoyed the exclusive
privilege of proposing the laws, whilst the Council of An¬
cients might reject or oppose, but without having power
to alter, the bills or projects of law submitted to them.
The executive power was intrusted to five persons, who
were required to be forty years of age at least, and de¬
nominated the Executive Directory. The two coun¬
cils had the power of electing its members; the Council
of Five Hundred proposing ten times as many candidates
as could be chosen, whilst the Council of Ancients se¬
lected the five directors from amongst the fifty candi¬
dates thus designed. One member of the Directory was
to go out of office annually, by which means they would
all be changed in the course of five years. In enacting
laws the Directory had no vote, being appointed merely
to superintend their execution, to regulate the coining
96 FRA
History, of money, and to dispose of the armed force. The trea-
ties made by the Directory with foreign courts were not
1795. binding without the sanction of the legislature, and war
could not be declared without a decree of the two assem¬
blies. All the articles of the new constitution underwent
each a separate discussion, after which they were ordered
to be transmitted to the primary assemblies for their appro¬
bation. Previously to this event, however, the Convention,
in order to avert the danger which now threatened it from
the loss of public favour, decreed that at the approaching
general election the electors should be bound to return
two thirds of the present members ; and if this failed, that
the Convention might themselves fill up the vacancies.
Decrees to this effect accompanied the constitution; but
at Paris the idea of re-electing two thirds of the old mem¬
bers was rejected with indignation, and the absurdity of
doing so pointed out with every expression of acrimony
* and contempt.
The Convention, however, did not fail to publish the
approbation of the decrees, as well as of the constitution,
by the primary assemblies; although it is pretty certain that
great numbers had confounded the one with the other,
and given their approbation accordingly. Such, indeed,
was the rage of many against the Convention, on account
of the decrees already mentioned, that it was even proposed
to try all the members before a new revolutionary tribu¬
nal, and to punish each according to his crimes. The sec¬
tions remonstrated to the Convention against the decrees,
and the more eager they appeared in the matter, the more
persuaded was the Convention of its own imminent dan¬
ger. Every remonstrance was accordingly disregarded,
and the contending parties formed the resolution of set¬
tling the question by force.
The 13th About a hundred electors of Paris met in the hall of the
Vendemi- theatre in the suburb of St Germain, before the day of meet¬
ing which had been appointed by the Convention, and hav¬
ing chosen the Duke de Nivernois as their president, began
their debates, absurdly concluding that the sovereignty was
vested in the hands of the electors after these had been
chosen by the primary sections. A body of troops wras
sent to dissolve them as an illegal assembly, and this was
accomplished without any difficulty, because the citizens
had not been unanimous in their sentiments respecting it.
This, however, did not prevent the sections from presum¬
ing that, by steady perseverance, they would finally prove
victorious ; they had always found that the party favoured
by the co-operation of the Parisian populace had carried
their point ever since the commencement of the Revolu¬
tion. The armed force with which the Convention was
surrounded gave the people but little concern, as they had
persuaded themselves that the military could never be
brought to act against the citizens. The members of the
Convention also appeared to suspect their fidelity, and
therefore applied for assistance to those very Jacobins whom
they had humbled on the 24th of May. If the sections
of Paris detested the members for their connection with
the atrocities of Robespierre, the Jacobins admired them
tor this very reason ; and from fifteen to eighteen hundred
of the latter, released from prison, were put in a state of
requisition for assisting the legislative body, and regiment¬
ed under the denomination of “ Battalion of the Patriots of
Eighty-nine.” The sections of Paris beholding the Conven¬
tion surrounded by men who had justly obtained the appel¬
lations of terrorists and men of blood, now exhibited the
strongest desire to engage them. Their leaders designed
to make the members prisoners till they could be conve¬
niently brought to trial, and in the interval to conduct
public affairs by committees of the sections, till a new le¬
gislative body could be chosen. General Miranda was to
have the command of the armed force after the overthrow
of the Convention; but as it was still problematical which
N C E.
party would be triumphant, he retired to the country till Histo
the event should declare it, ready to share the reward of
a conquest to which he had resolved to contribute nothing. 1
The superior officers of the Convention were not to be de¬
pended on; but the subalterns and the soldiers continued
firm, to which they were strongly exhorted by their Ja¬
cobin auxiliaries. It was also greatly in favour of the
Convention, that the first moments of enthusiasm were
permitted to pass away; this was a fatal error, which no
subsequent vigour could repair.
As the danger, however, was imminent, the Convention
had declared its sittings permanent; called around its en¬
ceinte the troops in the camp at Sablons; and concen¬
trated its powers in a committee of five persons, instruct¬
ed to adopt such measures as they should judge necessary
for the public safety. These members were Colombel,
Barras, Daunou, Letourneur, and Merlin de Douai. In
the night of the 11th Vendemiaire the decree which dis¬
solved the college of electors, and armed the battalion of
the patriots of 1789, excited the greatest agitation; the
generale was beaten ; the section Lepelletier thundered
against the despotism of the Convention, and the return of
terror; and during the whole day of the 12th it was oc¬
cupied in disposing the other sections to combat. In the
evening, the Convention, not less agitated itself, resolved
to assume the initiative, surround the disaffected section,
and terminate the crisis by disarming it. The general of
the interior, Menou, and the representative Laporte, were
charged with this mission. The head-quarters of the sec-
tionaries was in the convent of the Filles-Saint-Thomas,
before which they were drawn up in order of battle to the
number of six or seven hundred. They were surrounded
by superior forces, on flank by the boulevards, and in front
on the side of the Rue Vivienne. Instead of disarming,
however, the chiefs of the expedition parleyed with them ;
and it was at length agreed that both parties should retire.
But scarcely had the troops of the Convention withdrawn
when the sectionaries returned in greater force than be¬
fore. This was to them a real victory, which, being exag¬
gerated in Paris, excited their partisans, augmented their
number, and gave them courage to attack the Convention
the following day. At eleven o’clock, the latter received
information of the issue of this expedition, and the danger¬
ous effect which it had produced. Menou was immediate¬
ly deprived of the command, which was conferred on Bar¬
ras ; and the latter demanded of the committee of five the
appointment, as his second in command, of a young officer
who had distinguished himself at the siege of Toulon ; “ a
man,” said he, “ of head and resolution, and capable of
serving the Republic at such a moment of peril.” This
young officer was Bonaparte, who immediately presented
himself before the committee ; but nothing in his appear¬
ance or demeanour yet indicated his astonishing destinies.
Little connected with party, and called for the first time to
perform a part on a great scene, his countenance betray¬
ed something of timidity and want of confidence, which,
however, he lost in the preparations for action and in the
heat of the battle. He caused the artillery to be brought
in all haste from the camp of Sablons, and disposed the
guns as well as the troops, amounting to five thousand
men, on the different points of attack. On the 13th of
Vendemiaire (5th October), about mid-day, the enceinte
of the Convention had the appearance of a strong place,
which could only be taken by assault. The line of de¬
fence extended, on the left of the Tuileries, along the
river, from the Pont-Neuf to the Pont Louis XV., and on
the right occupied all the little streets which debouch
into that of Saint-Honore, from those of Rohan, L’Echelle,
and the cul-de-sac Dauphin, to that of the Revolution.
In front, the Louvre, the garden of the Infanta, and the
Carrousel were planted with cannon; and behind, the
FRA
Historv. Pont-Tournant and the Place de la Revolution formed a
park of reserve.
17i»5. Thus prepared, the Convention waited for the insur¬
gents, who soon advanced upon several points. They had
about forty thousand men under arms, commanded by
Generals Danican and Duboux, and an ex-garde-du-corps
named Lafond. The thirty-two sections which formed
the majority had furnished their military contingents ; but
of the sixteen others, several sections of the faubourgs
had their troops in the battalion of 1789 ; some sent re¬
inforcements during the action, others, though well dis¬
posed, were unable to do so, and a few remained neutral.
About three o’clock General Carteaux, who occupied the
Pont-Neuf with four hundred men and two four pounders,
was overpowered by several columns of sectionaries, and
obliged to fall back as far as the Louvre. This advantage
emboldened the insurgents, who were in force upon all
points, and General Danican now summoned the Conven¬
tion to withdraw the troops and to disarm the terrorists.
Several members declared for conciliatory measures.
Boissy-d’Anglas was for entering into a conference with
Danican; Gamon proposed a proclamation, in which, on
the citizens engaging to retire, the Convention should
promise to disarm the battalion of 1789; and Lanjuinais,
after some observations on the imminence of the danger,
and the miseries of civil war, supported this proposition.
But Chenier having declared that there was now nothing
for the National Convention but victory or death, that
body, on the motion of Fermoud, passed to the order of
the day. Seven hundred muskets were now brought in,
and the members of the Convention armed themselves as
a corps de reserve. The combat began in the Rue Saint-
Honore, of which the insurgents were masters ; the first
shots proceeded from the Hotel de Noailles, and a heavy
fire was instantly opened along the whole of that line. On
the other flank, two columns of sectionaries, about four
thousand strong, commanded by Count de Maulevrier,
debouched by the quays a few minutes afterwards, and
attacked the Pont-Royal. The battle now became general;
but it could not last long, as the place was too formidably
defended to be taken by assault. After an hour’s hard
fighting the sectionaries were driven out of Saint-Roch and
the Rue Saint-Honore, by the cannon of the Convention
and the battalion of 1789. The column of the Pont-
Royal received three discharges of artillery, directly along
the bridge, and obliquely from the quays, by which means
it was completely shattered, and driven back in the great¬
est disorder. At seven o’clock, the troops of the Con¬
vention, victorious at all points, assumed the offensive ;
and at nine they had dislodged the sectionaries from the
theatre of the Republic, and the posts which they occu¬
pied in the neighbourhood of the Palais-Royal. The
latter had prepared to form barricades during the night;
but several discharges of round shot fired along the Rue
Richelieu prevented them. On the morning of the 14th
the Conventional troops disarmed the section Lepelletier,
and re-established order in the others. The victory was
used with moderation. The assembly had only combated
in its own defence, and had no vengeance to gratify.
The victors attributed this insurrection to the influence
of the royalists; but whether they were right in this
opinion or not, it is certain that the cause of royalty had
now become less odious to the people generally than the
bloody extravagance of republicanism; though, as to the
mob, they seem to have looked no further than the dis¬
arming of the Jacobins, and obtaining new representatives.
The sittings of the Convention terminated on the 27th of
October, and it was succeeded by the new legislature, in
terms of the constitution. Amongst its last decrees was
one granting a general amnesty for all crimes and pro¬
ceedings of a revolutionary nature; but the emigrants,
VOL. X.
N C E. ' . 97
transported priests, and every one concerned in the last History,
insurrection, were excluded from the benefit of it.
The first step of the new legislature was to divide it-AI DSS.
self into two councils, and proceed to the election of an of the'nTw
Executive Directory. The Council of Five Hundred wasiegisia,
bound to present to the other council fifty candidates, andture.
a list was accordingly made out; but it consisted of no
more than the five whom the council wished to be chosen,
the other forty-five being obscure persons, farmers and
peasants, so that the Council of Ancients, deprived of all
power of election, were obliged to appoint Sieyes, Barras,
Rewbell, Lareveillere-Lepeaux, and Letourneur de la
Mancbe, none of the others being qualified for the office.
Sieyes, however, did not deem it prudent to become one
of the five republican kings; and on his declining to ac¬
cept of the new dignity, Carnot was appointed in his
stead. The form of government now established did not
promise to be productive of much happiness or tranquil¬
lity, as the most important offices in the state were filled
by men odious to the people. The members of the Exe¬
cutive Directory, excepting only Lareveillere-Lepeaux,
had always been connected with the party of the Mountain,
and employed the Jacobins in almost every official depart¬
ment ; a circumstance which could scarcely fail to render
the government peculiarly obnoxious. It was feared that
a directory chosen by the Jacobins, and new legislators
appointed by the people, might one day be the means of
totally subverting the constitution; and the result show¬
ed that this apprehension was not groundless.
On the 10th of April a treaty of peace with the king ofTreaty of
Prussia was presented to the Convention, in order to bePeace.wit^
ratified. By virtue of this treaty, it was agreed that the*russ‘a'
republican troops should be immediately withdrawn from
the territories of Prussia on the right bank of the Rhine,
but that the territories which France then possessed on
the left bank of that river should be retained till a gene¬
ral peace. A mutual exchange of prisoners of war was
agreed on, and the intercourse between the two countries
placed on its former footing. Measures were also adopt¬
ed to transfer the theatre of hostilities from the northern
parts of Germany. The king of Sweden at the same time
acknowledged the French Republic, and his ambassador
was received at Paris with great solemnity. In the month
of May another treaty was concluded with Prussia, which
had a special reference to the line of neutrality. The
cantons of Switzerland followed the example of the king of
Sweden ; and on the 22d of July a treaty of peace was also
concluded at Basle, between the Republic and the court
of Spain, in consequence of which France gave up all the
conquests she had made in that country, and the original
frontier was restored; whilst, in return, the Republic re¬
ceived all the Spanish part of St Domingo. In this treaty
the Dutch Republic was included, and the mediation of
the king of Spain, in favour of Portugal and the Italian
princes, was accepted by France.
On the 9th of June, the dauphin, the heir to the throne Death of
of the unfortunate Louis XVL, and also his only son, died Louis
in the prison of the Temple, where he had been confined-^
with his sister since the death of his father. His death
interested the French nation so deeply in favour of his
family, that the Convention found it prudent to liberate
the princess. The Committee of Public Safety proposed
to the emperor to give her in exchange for the commis¬
sioners whom Dumouriez had sent as prisoners to the
Austrians, together with Semonville and another person,
who had been seized on their way to Turkey as envoys
extraordinary from the French Republic. This proposi¬
tion was agreed to, and the exchange took place in con¬
sequence, at Basle in Switzerland.
If Britain was unfortunate upon the Continent, she still Expedi-
retained her superiority on her own element. On thetionto
VT Quiberon,
98 FRA
History. 14th of March a fleet under Admiral Hotham engaged a
French fleet, and took two sail of the line, the Ca Ira
' and Censeur ; but this was nearly counterbalanced by the
loss of the Berwick and Illustrious. Three French ships of
the line were captured by Lord Bridport on the 23d of
June, in an attack on the enemy’s fleet off Port L’Orient;
the rest effected their escape. Britain having thus evin¬
ced her usual superiority by sea, advantage was taken of
this circumstance to send assistance to the royalists in
the western departments ; but unfortunately for them it
came too late. The Convention had offered them a treaty,
which was accepted and signed at Nantes on the 3d of
March, by deputies from the Convention on the one part,
and, on the other, by Charette, Sapineau, and the rest of
the chiefs of La Vendee, and by Cormartin, as represen¬
tatives of the party called Chouans. Stofflet also submit¬
ted to the Republic on the 20th of April. But the coun¬
tenance given by Britain to the royalists induced them to
disregard these treaties. The troops sent to their aid
were composed of emigrants in the pay of Great Britain,
and a number of prisoners who had agreed to join the
royal cause. Puisaye commanded this motley army, and
the Count de Sombreuil afterwards joined him with an
inconsiderable reinforcement. The expedition arrived in
the bay of Quiberon on the 25th of June, and arms were
put into the hands of the inhabitants of the country; but
it was soon found that the latter could not be of much
advantage to regular troops. A resolution was therefore
adopted to withdraw the emigrant army within the penin¬
sula of Quiberon ; and the fort of the same name, with a
garrison consisting of about six hundred men, was taken
on the 3d of July, and occupied by the emigrants. But
all the posts without the peninsula were carried by an
army under General Hoche, the emigrants and Chouans
escaping in the boats of the British fleet, or flying for
protection under the cannon of the fort. The republi¬
cans then began to erect formidable works on the heights
of St Barbe, which commanded the entrance of the pe¬
ninsula. To prevent these operations, a sally was made
from the fort on the 7th, but without effect; and another
in still greater force had no better success. The whole
forces in the peninsula, including Chouans, amounted to
about twelve thousand men, five thousand of whom were
sent to attack the heights of St Barbe. On this position
the republicans were intrenched in three camps, two of
which were taken without difficulty ; but as the emigrants
rushed forward to attack the third, a masked battery was
opened upon them with grape shot, which caused a dread¬
ful slaughter, and few of the emigrants would have effect¬
ed their escape, had not the fire of the British ships com¬
pelled the republicans to abandon the pursuit.
Failure of It was now evident what would be the fate of this ex-
theQuibe-pedition, and desertion amongst the emigrants became
ditionXpe' Jery fr?fluent> especially those who had been liberated
from prison on condition of serving against the Republic.
On the evening of the 20th, the weather was tempestu¬
ous, and this induced the emigrants to indulge in a fa¬
tal security. Ihe troops of the Republic were conducted
in silence along an unguarded part of the shore, and sur¬
prised one of the posts, where they found the artillery¬
men asleep. They extinguished the lanthorn which was
intended to give the British fleet the alarm, and seized
on their matches. Some of the emigrants threw down
their arms and joined the republicans, whilst others main¬
tained an obstinate contest before they surrendered. The
Count de Sombreuil was taken and put to death, together
with the Bishop of Dol and his clergy; none being spared
but such as pretended that their appearing in arms against
the republicans was purely owing to compulsion.
Continen- But it is time to return to the affairs of the Continent,
tal affairs. After a protracted siege Luxembourg surrendered on the
NCR
7th of June, and put the French in possession of the whole Histor]
left bank of the Rhine, excepting Mayence, which the
Austrians could conveniently supply with every necessary 1795.
from the opposite bank of the river. The republicans
therefore determined to cross the river, and to invest it
on every side ; but the attempt was delayed until the re¬
sult of the Quiberon expedition should be fully known. In
the month of August, the passage of the Rhine at Dus-
seldorf was effected by Jourdan, who had been appointed
commander-in-chief of the army of the Sambre and Meuse.
Having driven in the Austrian posts, he crossed the Maine,
and invested Mayence and Cassel; whilst Pichegru, hav¬
ing crossed the river near Manheim with the army of the
Rhine and Moselle, at the same time took possession of
that city. But a strong detachment of this army having
driven Wurmser from an important post, began to plun¬
der, and getting into confusion, the Austrians took prompt
advantage of the circumstance, returned to the charge,
and defeated the republicans. Jourdan was pursued by
Clairfayt as far as Dusseldorf, where he made a stand ;
and Pichegru recrossed the Rhine near Manheim, leav¬
ing in that city a garrison of eight thousand men. But
after a vigorous siege it surrendered to the Austrians;
and the republicans were also driven from the vicinity of
Mayence, upon which an armistice of three months was
agreed to.
The Directory, however, still resolved to prosecute the Conduct
war with vigour, and therefore, during the winter, madelh0 Pirei
great preparations for another campaign. But the Moun-tor-v-
tain party being again possessed of power, now began to
discover their restless and turbulent disposition; inca¬
pable of long submitting peaceably to any government,
they soon became disgusted with the Directory which they
themselves had established, and were continually disturb¬
ing the public tranquillity. After the 5th of October, the
people of Paris durst not openly avow their abhorrence
of the Jacobins; but as it was understood that wearing
green cravats was a token of contempt for these parti¬
sans, this piece of dress was prohibited by the Directory,
on the pretence of its being a mark of attachment to roy¬
alty. Ashamed of this absurdity, however, they in a few
weeks recalled their edict, and the proscription of green
cravats ceased. In the south of France, the authority of
the Jacobins produced very serious effects. Freron, by
whom they had been abandoned after the death of Robes¬
pierre, rejoined them before the 5th of October, and was
sent with full administrative powers to Toulon, where he
dismissed the municipality which had been chosen by the
people, restored the Jacobin clubs, and caused to be im¬
prisoned every person whom he suspected. Alarmed at
the numerous complaints which were made from every
quarter against the conduct of these turbulent men, the
Directory resolved to obtain the confidence and affections
of the people by deserting them entirely. Freron was
recalled from Toulon, and moderate men replaced the Ja¬
cobins in most public employments. The Directory also
issued a public declaration that its confidence had been
abused. The minister of police was charged to remove
from Paris the members of former revolutionary tribunals,
and such as had been active leaders of the Jacobins ; and
ten thousand men, called the Legion of Police, who had
acted against the Parisians on the 5th of October, and
were decidedly favourable to the Jacobins, received orders
to join the armies on the frontiers. This induced the vio¬
lent Jacobins to concert a plan for the ruin of the Direc¬
tory and the majority of the councils, who had now aban¬
doned them. But their designs were discovered and com¬
pletely defeated. On the 10th of May the guards were
increased, and large bodies of cavalry were stationed
round the Luxembourg and Tuileries. The Council of
Five Hundred was informed by the Directory that a ter-
FRANCE.
99
History, riblc plot was ready to break forth on the ensuing morn-
ing. The conspirators, at the ringing of the morning bell,
1796. were to proceed in small parties of three or four, to the
houses of those persons whom they had singled out for
destruction; and having murdered these, they were then
to unite in one body against the Directory, whose guard
they conceived themselves able to overpower. Some of
the leaders of this conspiracy were arrested, amongst
whom was Drouet, postmaster of Varennes, who had stop¬
ped the unfortunate Louis on his way to the frontiers:
with ten others, he was condemned at Vendome, but he
subsequently contrived to make his escape. The defeats
which the Jacobins thus experienced, and the disgrace
into which they had fallen, determined the moderate party
in the two councils to attempt to procure the repeal of
the decrees of the Convention, which had granted them
an amnesty, and confirmed the laws against emigrants.
A number of days were occupied in the discussion of these
topics, but the moderate party gained nothing in favour of
the emigrants; and with respect to the Jacobins, all they
obtained was, that such of that party as had owed their
preservation to the amnesty, should be deemed incompe¬
tent to hold any public offices.
ateofthe Another matter of no less serious a nature now called
lances, for the attention of the republican government. This
was the deplorable state of the finances. Whilst the us¬
urpation of Robespierre continued, terror supported the
credit of the assignats, which, joined to the sale of the
church lands and the property of the emigrants, furnished
ample resources; but no provision was at all thought of
for future exigencies. If money was wanted, more as¬
signats were fabricated, and no inquiry was made con¬
cerning the public expenditure, as no taxes were demand¬
ed from the people. The Directory having complained
to the councils of the great distress under which they la¬
boured, and of the want of sufficient funds to meet the
unavoidable expenses of the ensuing campaign, a law was
passed on the 25th of March, giving authority to dispose
of the remainder of the church lands at the value former¬
ly fixed on them, namely, twenty-two years’ purchase. A
new paper currency, termed mandats, was also to be issued,
and to be received in payment; but government had now
lost all credit, and the mandats became rapidly depre¬
ciated in value, which increased the demand for national
property. To prevent this, the legislature decreed that
one fourth of every purchase should be paid in cash; a
provision which obstructed the sale of the national pro¬
perty, and increased the circulation of mandats,
itional During the preparations for the approaching campaign,
stitute the Directory attempted to render themselves popular at
ablished. home, by establishing, under the protection of government,
the French National Institute. Every man of science or
learning who had escaped the persecution of the Moun¬
tain party was invited to become a member; and it was
opened on the 4th of April, in the hall of the Louvre,
when the ambassadors of Spain, Prussia, Sweden, Den¬
mark, Holland, America, Tuscany, Genoa, and Geneva,
were present, and the members of the Directory attended
in their robes of state. The directorial president express¬
ed the determination of the executive government to af¬
ford every encouragement to the improvement of science,
literature, and the arts ; and the president of the Institute
replied that it was the determination of the members to
endeavour to give lustre to the republican government, by
the exercise of their talents, and by their publications.
The speeches w^ere enthusiastically applauded by a multi¬
tude of spectators, and the general expectation was, that
I* ranee would now enter upon a career of glory and pros¬
perity wholly unprecedented in her past history.
About this time an approach towards a negotiation with
France was made on the part of Great Britain, through
Mr Wickham, ambassador to the Swiss Cantons. On the History.
8th of March a note was communicated to M. Barthelemy,
ambassador of the French Republic, in which it was in- D96.
quired, whether France would be willing to send ministers ^OP0831
to a congress to negotiate peace with his Britannic majesty jjL^reat
and his allies ? whether she would be inclined to commu- Britain,
nicate the general grounds upon which she would be will¬
ing to conclude peace, that his majesty and his allies might
consider them in concert ? and, whether she would desire
to communicate any other mode of accomplishing a peace ?
Any answer which might be returned was directed to be
transmitted to the British court; but it was at the same
time intimated that Mr Wickham had no authority to dis¬
cuss these subjects. On the 26th of the same month an
answer was returned by Barthelemy in name of the Direc¬
tory, complaining of the insincerity of the British court in
giving its ambassador no authority to negotiate, and stat¬
ing that the proposal of a congress rendered negotiation
endless. The Directory expressed their wish to obtain peace,
but declared that no portion of territory would be relin¬
quished which, in virtue of the constitutional decree, form¬
ed part of the Republic. To this note no reply was made ;
but it was complained of to the foreign ministers resident
at the court of London, and considered as leaving Britain
no alternative but the prosecution of the war.
During the winter season the Directory found means to Royalists
reduce the western departments. The expedition fromin ^he west
England had tempted the royalists once more to try theirsubclued-
fortune in the field; but after a number of defeats, their
leaders, Charette and Stofflet, were apprehended and put
to death on the 29th of March; and this tended to sup¬
press the insurgents in every quarter. Domestic enemies
being thus subdued, the republican government was en¬
abled to make the most vigorous exertions on the fron¬
tiers. Their military force was divided into three armies :
the army of the Sambre and Meuse under Jourdan, princi¬
pally stationed about Dusseldorf and Coblentz ; the army
of the Rhine and Moselle, commanded by General Moreau,
stationed on the Upper Rhine, from Landau to Treves;
and the army of Italy, which occupied the Italian coast from
Nice towards Genoa, the command of which was now be¬
stowed on General Bonaparte, wrho had so greatly signaliz¬
ed himself on the 13th Vendemiaire.
The army of Italy, which had hitherto operated on the Bonaparte
flank of the Alps, was destitute of every thing, and scarce-assumes
ly thirty thousand strong; but it was full of courage and the corn-
patriotism, and by means of it Bonaparte commenced thatmand of
brilliant career of victory which had nearly terminated in^jf™7
the subjugation of all Europe. His plan was to debouch011 aJ7’
into Italy between the Alps and the Appennines, to turn
the former range, intersect the enemy’s line, and operate on
his flanks. He had before him the allied force, consisting
of ninety thousand men, placed in the centre under Argen-
tau, on the left under Colli, and on the right under Beau¬
lieu ; but in a few days this immense force was dispersed by
prodigies of genius and of courage. On the 9th of April
the campaign was opened by General Beaulieu attacking
the post of Voltri, six leagues from Genoa; the republicans
defended themselves till the evening, when they retreated
to Savona. Next day Beaulieu renewed his attempts, and
penetrated to Montenotte, which was occupied by Colonel
Rampon, with fifteen hundred men. In a moment of en¬
thusiasm, their commander prevailed on them to swear that
they would never abandon their post; and they kept their
oath ; for, in spite of every effort that could be made on the
part of the enemy, they succeeded in arresting the pro¬
gress of the Austrian general during the remaining part of
the day. During the night the right wing of the French
army, under Laharpe, took up a position in rear of the re¬
doubt of Montenotte; whilst Bonaparte, Massena, Berthier,
and Salicetti, advanced by Altara, to take the enemy in
100
FRANC E.
Defiles of
Millesimo
forced.
Dego re¬
taken.
Armistice
with Sar¬
dinia.
flank and rear. Powerful reinforcements were in the mean
time sent to Beaulieu, who, on the morning of the 11th,
again attacked the position of Montenotte; but the obsti¬
nate resistance of Laharpe, and the approach of Massena, at
length forced the Austrians and Sardinians to give way on
all sides ; two of the enemy’s generals were wounded, and
two thousand five hundred men became prisoners. The re¬
publicans pursued them beyond Cairo, which, on the fol¬
lowing day, fell into their hands.
On the 13th April, General Augereau forced the defiles
of Millesimo, and by a rapid movement surrounded General
Provera at the head of fifteen hundred grenadiers; but
instead of surrendering, this brave officer forced his way
through the enemy, and intrenched himself in the ruins of
an old castle situated on the summit of the hill. Augereau
with his artillery endeavoured to dislodge him, but without
success; he then arranged his troops in four columns, and
made an attempt to carry Provera’s intrenchments by storm,
which also proved unsuccessful. In this affair the French
had two generals killed, and Joubert was wounded. A divi¬
sion was now left to continue the blockade of Provera- The
hostile armies continued in presence during the 14th. On
the following day the Austrians made an attack on the re¬
publican centre ; but Massena turned the left flank of their
left wing in the vicinity of Dego, whilst Laharpe turned
the right flank of the same wing; one column kept in check
the centre of the Austrians, another attacked the flank of
their left wing, and a third gained its rear. They were
completely defeated at all points, with the loss, besides
killed and wounded, of eight thousand prisoners. General
Provera also surrendered.
After his defeat at Millesimo, Beaulieu made a vigorous
effort to change the fortune of war. With seven thousand
of his best troops he attacked Dego, where the republicans
after their success were indulging in security, and made
himself master of the village ; but the troops rallied under
Massena, who renewed the combat, and employed the great¬
er part of the day in his efforts to retake it. The repub¬
licans were thrice repulsed, but Bonaparte having arrived
in the evening with reinforcements, the village was retaken,
and fourteen hundred men w ere made prisoners. Bonaparte
had now accomplished his object of separating the Austrian
and Sardinian armies ; for his right wing being secured
against the efforts of Beaulieu by the village of Dego, he was
enabled to act against the Piedmontese troops with the great¬
er part of his force. Augereau powerfully seconded his ex¬
ertions, and having opened a communication with the Ta-
naro, Serrurier was now approaching the town of Ceva, in
the vicinity of which the Piedmontese had an intrenched
camp with eight thousand men. The redoubts which co¬
vered this camp were, on the 16th, attacked by Augereau,
who carried the greater number of them, and thus forced
the Piedmontese, during the night, to evacuate Ceva, which
Serrurier entered in triumph on the morning of the 17th.
Count Colli repulsed Serrurier on the 20th ; but Bonaparte,
on the 22d, defeated the Sardinian general at Mondovi, and
there decided the fate of Piedmont. The beaten army en¬
deavoured to make a stand at Fossano, whilst its wings
rested on Coni and Cherasco; but on the 25th the latter
place wras taken by Massena, Fossano by Serrurier, and
Alba by Augereau.
Previously to these movements, however, Count Colli had
lequested an armistice, which General Bonaparte granted,
on condition that the fortresses of Coni
on condition that the fortresses of Coni, Ceva, and Tortona
should be given up to him, with their magazines and ar¬
tillery, and that he should have permission to cross the Po
at Valentia. The armistice was signed on the 29th of April,
and a definitive treaty was concluded at Paris on the 17th
of May. The conditions, in as far as they concerned his
Sardinian majesty, were unquestionably humiliating. The
duchy of Savoy was given up to France, as were also the
counties of Nice, Tende, and Breteuil; an amnesty was His tor
granted to all his subjects who had been prosecuted for po- ^-’-y
litical opinions; and it was agreed that the French troops Difi
should have free access to Italy through his territory. His
Sardinian majesty also bound himself not to erect fortresses
on the side of France, to demolish those of La Brunette
and Suza, and to confess that his conduct to the last am¬
bassador of the Republic had been disrespectful.
In the mean time, the republican army advanced towards
the Po. Deceived respecting the article of the armistice
which stipulated permission to Bonaparte to pass the river
at Valentia, Beaulieu, concluding that the republican chief
seriously intended to cross at that place, made every pos¬
sible preparation to oppose him ; whilst Bonaparte rapidly
penetrated into Lombardy, and on the 7th of May was
sixty miles down the river towards Piacenza before the
enemy had obtained information of his march. He passed
the river without difficulty. Six thousand infantry and two
thousand cavalry were dispatched by Beaulieu, when it
wTas too late, to oppose the passage of Bonaparte across the
river; but they were met and defeated on the following
day, near the village of Fiombio, whilst five thousand more
who had advanced to their assistance were repulsed by La¬
harpe. On the 9th an armistice was granted by General
Bonaparte to the Duke of Parma, on condition of paying two
millions of francs, and delivering ten thousand quintals of
wheat, five thousand quintals of oats, and two thousand
oxen, for the use of the army. The duke likewise con¬
sented to give up tw'enty of his best paintings, to be se¬
lected by the republicans.
Forced to abandon the Po, General Beaulieu crossed Victory
the Adda at Lodi, Pizzighettone, and Cremona, leaving at Lodi,
some troops to defend the approaches to Lodi. On the
10th, the latter were attacked by the advanced guard of
the republicans, who drove them into the town, and pur¬
sued them so rapidly that they had not time to break down
the bridge on the Adda. The Austrians defended the pas¬
sage with thirty pieces of cannon, and the republican offi¬
cers, after holding a consultation, were of opinion that the
bridge could not be forced. Bonaparte, however, having
addressed his grenadiers, who declared themselves willing
to make the attempt, formed them in close column, and,
waiting a favourable moment, ordered them to advance.
Under cover of the smoke of the enemy’s artillery they
reached the middle of the bridge unobserved ; but the mo¬
ment they were perceived a tremendous fire of grape and
canister shot in a few seconds strewed the bridge with dead
bodies. The republican officers, including the general-in¬
chief, now flew to the head of the column, and, urging on
the troops, broke into the Austrian ranks, took the cannon,
and forced the enemy to fly in all directions.
All that seems to have been expected from the campaign
of Bonaparte in Italy was to induce the different princes
and states to abandon the coalition against France, which
every one of them had assisted, either with troops or with
money and provisions. But this youthful chief far surpass¬
ed all that even the most sanguine had anticipated. The
occupation of Alessandria, which opens the whole of Lom¬
bardy ; the demolition of the fortresses of Suza and La
Brunette on the side of France; the acquisition of the
county of Nice and of Savoy ; and the disengagement of
the other army of the Alps under Kellerman, which was
now rendered disposable; such were the fruits of a cam¬
paign of fifteen days, during which six victories had been
gained. The king of Sardinia was also detached from the
coalition against France, and so humbled and weakened
as to be no longer in a condition to occasion any uneasiness
to that country. Bonaparte likewise made himself master
of Ferrara, Bologna, and Urbino, and granted to his holi¬
ness and the Duke of Modena an armistice on the usual
terms of large contributions in money, as well as in paint-
■
FRA
(istory. ings and curiosities for the national gallery of France. Ter-
A ,**./-**> rifled by his march into the Roman States, the Neapolitan
1796. cabinet, in like manner, requested a peace ; and Bonaparte
agreed to an armistice without any of the humiliating con¬
ditions demanded from the other states of Italy. He next
proceeded to Leghorn, in order to drive out the English,
and confiscate their property; and thus finished the task
assigned him before the campaign on the Rhine had com¬
menced. Mantua, it is true, was still in possession of the
imperial troops ; but that fortress was in a state of siege,
and the rest of Italy had submitted to the French Republic.
Access of With a view to lessen the exertions of the republicans
t • French jn Italy, the contest was renewed in Germany. General
iderma- jour(}an was therefore instructed to denounce the armistice,
1' and renew hostilities on the 31st of May. Jourdan at this
time had to contend with General Wartensleben, whilst
the archduke put himself at the head of the army in the
Hundsruck to oppose Moreau on the Upper Rhine. The
commencement of the campaign on the part of the French
was distinguished by a singular stratagem, employed with
the view of drawing the whole of the Austrian forces to
the Lower Rhine, that an opportunity might thus be afford¬
ed General Moreau of suddenly entering Suabia, and car¬
rying the war into the hereditary dominions of Austria.
Jourdan began to make vigorous exertions, and Moreau re¬
mained inactive. On the 31st of May the lines of Dussel-
dorf were abandoned by the left wing of Jourdan’s army,
under the command of General Kleber, who defeated the
Austrians in his march towards the Sieg. Advancing with
his centre and right wing, Jourdan forced the Austrian posts
on the Nahe, effected the passage of the Rhine, blockaded
Ehrenbreitstein, and hastened forward as if he had intended
to form the siege of Mayence. As these movements brought
the archduke into the perilous situation of having Moreau
in his front and Jourdan in his rear, he therefore crossed
the river in haste, leaving the fortresses of Mayence and
Manheim to retard the advance of Moreau, and attacked
the advanced guard of General Jourdan, which, after an
obstinate conflict, he forced to retire. Jourdan then with¬
drew to his former position, and Kleber on the 20 th en¬
tered the lines of Dusseldorf.
But the archduke had no sooner withdrawn from the pa¬
latinate to force Jburdan down the Rhine, than Moreau
marched speedily towards Strasburg, so that the hostile
armies seemed to be receding from instead of approaching
each other. The passage of the river opposite to Kehl was
effected by Moreau on the 24th of June; an operation at¬
tended with considerable difficulty, owing to a sudden swell,
which prevented the Austrians being taken by surprise, as
appears to have been the original intention of the republi¬
can commander. The intrenchments on the islands occu¬
pied by troops were instantly carried at the point of the
bayonet, and two thousand six hundred republicans effected
a landing on the opposite bank, where they w ere exposed
to the Austrian cannon from the camp of Wilstedt, and also
to the fire of the fort. Still, however, they maintained their
ground, and even acted on the offensive, until the boats
returned with reinforcements, when the fort and redoubts
were carried by storm, and the Austrians retreated towards
Offenburg.
Ilstrians In consequence of the archduke’s departure to the Lower
vjeated by Rhine in pursuit of Jourdan, and the detachments sent to
! reau* Italy to check the victorious career of Bonaparte, Moreau
was in a condition to enter Suabia at the head of a supe¬
rior force. On the 26th of June he succeeded in compel¬
ling the Austrians to abandon their camp at Wilstedt, and
next day proceeded with his army in three columns against
another body of fifteen thousand men posted near Offen-
burg. A strong detachment was sent to their assistance by
W urmser, but the reinforcement was defeated on its march
by two republican columns, and Offenburg was evaluated
NOE. 101
during the night. On the 2d of July a body of die French History,
under General Laroche seized on the loftiest point in the '-v'—'’
ridge of mountains denominated the Black Forest; and U9G.
the Austrians were next day, after an obstinate resistance,
driven from the pass of Friedenstadt, by which their com¬
munication with the emigrants under the Prince of Conde
was entirely cut off. On the 8th the Austrians were at¬
tacked at Rastadt by the left wing of the republican army,
commanded by General Dessaix, and, after a most deter¬
mined resistance, obliged to retreat to Ettingen.
The archduke now arrived with his army on the Lower
Rhine, leaving Wartensleben to check the advance of Ge¬
neral Jourdan, who, as soon as he received information of
the archduke’s departure, resumed the offensive. Kleber,
as before, set out from the lines at Dusseldorf, whilst the
centre and right wing crossed the Rhine in the vicinity of
Coblentz. The French forced the posts of Ukareth and
Altenkirchen ; the whole army under Jourdan crossed the
Lahn on the 9th of July; and next day Wartensleben was
defeated with great slaughter, and the loss of five hundred
prisoners. On the 12th the republicans entered Franckfort.
The two imperial armies were now at no great distance
from each other, being in fact in the centre between those
of Moreau and Jourdan. Had the archduke, therefore,
found it practicable to resist for a time one of these armies,
whilst he fell upon the other with the main body of his
army, it is not improbable that an end might thus have
been put to any further invasion of Germany. But the ac¬
tivity of the republican officers was not to be easily checked,
nor could their progress be arrested by any partial exertions.
His last resource, therefore, was to give battle to Moreau,
which he accordingly did; and the action was obstinately
contested on both sides. The French, in their endeavours
to force the heights of Rollensolhe, were four times re¬
pulsed ; but, after a terrible slaughter, they at length suc¬
ceeded in carrying the position at the point of the bayonet.
In consequence of the loss sustained at the battle of Et¬
tingen, the imperial armies retired eastward, the archduke
retreating through Suabia towards Ulm, where he had
magazines. At every position of any strengtli he made a
stand, in order, as much as possible, to obstruct General Mo¬
reau’s advance ; whilst Wartensleben, in his retreat through
Franconia, offered a similar opposition to Jourdan. The
archduke was forced by Moreau to cross the Neckar, and
afterwards the Danube, by which means the whole circle
of Suabia was in the rear of the republicans; and War¬
tensleben was obliged to retreat through Aschaftenburg,
Wartsburg, Schweihfurt, and to cross the Rednitz, in order
to avoid the army of Jourdan, which was pressing on his
rear. Jourdan continued his advance until his right wing,
commanded by General Bernadotte, reached Neumarck,
and his advanced posts Teining ; and the main body of the
army having pursued Wartensleben beyond the Nab, ar¬
rived at Amberg on the 22d of August.
The three republican armies under Moreau, Jourdan, Great
and Bonaparte, thus commanded an immense tract of coun- alarm in
try, extending from the frontiers of Bohemia to the shores Germanjr*
of the Adriatic (excepting only a part of the mountains of
Tyrol), and caused unspeakable alarm throughout the whole
of Germany. The payment of four millions of francs pro¬
cured a peace for the Duke of Wirtemburg ; and the circle
of Suabia obtained it on condition of paying twelve mil¬
lions of livres, and delivering for the use of the army eight
thousand four hundred horses, five thousand oxen, a hun¬
dred thousand quintals of wheat, fifty thousand quintals of
rye, a hundred thousand sacks of oats, a hundred thou¬
sand pairs of shoes, and a large quantity of hay. Peace
wras granted to the Margrave of Baden upon similar terms ;
and negotiations were also entered into by the Elector
of Bavaria and the circle of Franconia, each party offering
large sums in order to obtain it; and even the diet of Ra-
102
FRANCE.
Able con¬
duct of the
Archduke
Charles.
Moreau’s
situation
and re¬
treat.
tisbon sent a deputation to the republican generals to treat
for a neutrality. About the same time Spain concluded
a treaty offensive and defensive with France, and in con¬
sequence soon afterwards declared war against Great Bri¬
tain. Bonaparte was still detained in Italy; but had it
been in his power to traverse the Tyrol, and reach the
Danube, it is probable that the emperor of Germany would
have been obliged to accept peace upon any terms which
the conquerors thought proper to prescribe. But though
abandoned by every member of the coalition except Bri¬
tain, the pecuniary aid furnished by the latter enabled
the emperor to extricate himself from the dangers which
surrounded him ; with an almost unlimited command of
money, one army after another was raised to check the
career of Bonaparte in Italy, whilst his German armies
were recruited by extensive levies, and by mercenary
troops drawn from the states which had made peace with
France.
The Archduke Charles having received strong reinforce¬
ments, came to the resolution of encountering Moreau at
Umersheim. A battle accordingly ensued, which lasted
seventeen hours, when one of the wings of the Austrian
army succeeded in gaining about four leagues of territory
in the rear of the republican army; but as the archduke
had received information that Wartensleben was unable to
maintain his ground against Jourdan, he deemed it pru¬
dent to retreat, and adopt new measures. On the 17th
of August he left General Latour to keep Moreau in check,
and crossing the Danube at Ingolstadt, marched to the re¬
lief of General Wartensleben, determined with their unit¬
ed forces to fall upon Jourdan. On the 23d he attacked
Bernadotte at Teining, and compelled him to retreat to¬
wards Nuremberg. The archduke having thus placed
himself on Jourdan’s right, whilst Wartensleben menaced
him in front, the French general was forced to fall back,
which he did accordingly on the 24th. The state of the
French finances at the beginning of this campaign was
such that the armies of Jourdan and IMoreau were under
the necessity of making the war support itself, or, in other
words, supplying their immediate wants by means of re¬
quisitions. This was particularly the case with Jourdan’s
army, ■which, when it commenced its retreat, suffered
nearly as much from the exasperated inhabitants as from
the pursuing enemy. The archduke and Wartensleben
having effected a junction of their forces, the former was
enabled to detach General Nauendorf with reinforcements
to Latour, in order to keep Moreau in check, whilst he
continued his pursuit of Jourdan towards Wiirtzbur^.
Here the trench made a stand on the 3d of September,
and a severe engagement ensued, in which Jourdan was
defeated with great loss, and obliged to continue his re¬
treat during the night. Having crossed the Lahn, he made
a feeble resistance, and marched along the banks of the
Rhine, till his army on the 17th arrived at Coblentz and
Dusseldorf, the points from which it had formerly taken
its departure.
The army of Moreau was now in a situation of extreme
peril; yet he maintained his position till the 17th of Sep¬
tember, the day upon which Jourdan reached Dusseldorf.
But he obviously wavered as to his future movements,
and indeed seemed completely at a loss what-course to
pursue. He made an unsuccessful attempt to arrest the
archduke in his pursuit of Jourdan, and frequently attack¬
ed, but without effect; on whatever side he moved, the
Austrian generals gave way before him. But finding that
the retreat of Jourdan was irretrievable, and that Bonaparte
was still detained in Italy, he finally resolved to retire
To prepare for this arduous undertaking, he had crossed Hist.,r,
the Lech, which he suddenly repassed as if fully deter-
mined to penetrate further into Austria, and thus com- HS
pelled Latour to fall back on Lansberg. Having thus ob¬
tained a free passage, he commenced his memorable re¬
treat, passing between the Danube at Ulm and the Lake
of Constance, whilst Latour continued pressing upon his
rear. The defiles of the Black Forest were occupied by
numerous bodies of Austrians and armed peasantry, whilst
his right flank was harassed by Nauendorf and Petrasch
at the head of twenty-four thousand men. To disengage
himself he once more turned upon Latour with terrible
impetuosity, defeated him, and took five thousand prison¬
ers. He then continued his retreat, checking Nauendorf
and Petrasch with the right wing of his army under Ge¬
neral Dessaix, whilst the remainder cleared the passages
in front, till he reached the Valley of Hell. This pass,
which is a narrow defile extending some leagues between
lofty mountains, and in particular places not more than a
few fathoms broad, he forced with the centre of his army
in a mass, whilst the wings opposed the enemy under
Nauendorf and Latour ; and after incredible efforts he ar¬
rived at Fribourg on the 13th of October. The archduke
having discontinued the pursuit of Jourdan, now arrived,
forced Moreau to abandon all his positions on the Suabian
side of the Rhine, excepting the forts of Kehl, and a tete-
de-pont at Hunningen. Ihis memorable retreat has been
severely censured by Napoleon in his Memoires, dictated
at St Helena; but apparently without sufficient reason.
His dislike of Moreau seems to have biassed his judgment,
and sharpened the edge of his criticism.
As the French frontier was at this time in a defence¬
less state, the imperial forces took advantage of the cir¬
cumstance to cross the Rhine at Manheim, and march in
different detachments to Weissenberg, Seitz, and Plage-
nau, almost to the gates of Strasburg, levying contributions
and demanding hostages wherever they went. When these
detachments were recalled, the archduke formed the re¬
solution of terminating the campaign by the reduction of
Kehl and the fortification at Hunningen; but this he found
no easy task. Much of the winter was spent by the Aus¬
trians in endeavouring to reduce these places; but the
French at length agreed to evacuate Kehl on the 10th of
January, and the fortification at Hunningen was surren¬
dered in the month of February.
but although the republicans had experienced consi-Bonapa
derable reverses of fortune in Germany, yet Bonaparte con-victorio
tinned to be victorious in Italy. Having laid the whole ofin Italj
that country under contribution, he had the means of pre¬
serving a vigorous and steady discipline over a well-paid
army. The great secret of his tactics consisted in keeping
his army always in hand, advancing with the utmost rapidi¬
ty, and operating in masses on the decisive point; a system
which could scarcely fail to succeed against that of cordons,
to which it was opposed.1 The style, too, in which he ad¬
dressed his army before any great action, was well calcu¬
lated to inspire them with enthusiasm. He knew the sol¬
dier, and possessed the invaluable art of awakening in his
mind all those feelings which prompt to the performance
t dTn§ a.ctlons- Hls address to the army on entering
Lombardy is a masterpiece of its kind. “ Soldiers,” said
lie, “you have rushed like a torrent from the summit of
the Appennmes, you have driven back and dispersed all
who opposed your march. Your fathers, your mothers,
your wives, your sisters, your mistresses, rejoice in your
success, and boast with pride of being related to you. But
remains there nothing more for you to effect? Shall
1 Napoleon, when asked what he considered the ,
par jour, combattre, et cantonner ensuite en repos.” imp rule or maxim in the art of war, replied, “ Faire douze lieues
FRANCE.
103
1796.
f ge of
[ uitua.
HVat of
Eraser.
posterity reproach us with having found a Capua in Lom¬
bardy ? But I already see you rushing to arms; an un¬
manly repose fatigues you, and the days lost to glory are
lost to your felicity. But let the people be tranquil; we
are the friends of all nations, and more particularly of the
descendants of the Brutuses, the Scipios, and the illustri¬
ous personages whom we have chosen as models. To re¬
store the capitol, to replace with honour the statues of
the heroes who rendered it renowned, and to rouse the
Roman people, become torpid by so many ages of slavery,
such will be the fruit of your victories; they will form an
epoch to posterity, and you will have the immortal glory
of renovating the fairest portion of Europe. The French
nation, free and respected by all the world, will give to
Europe a glorious peace. You will then return to your
homes, and your fellow-citizens, who, when pointing to you,
will say, ‘ He was of the army of Italy.’ ”
During the early part of the month of July Bonaparte
was occupied in commencing the siege of Mantua, a place
of which he expected to become master towards the end
of the month. In this, however, he miscalculated. Aided
by Britain, Austria made great efforts, and poured rein¬
forcements from all points into Italy. Twenty thousand
troops were sent from the Rhine ; large masses arrived
from other quarters ; and Italy had once more to be con¬
quered. Bonaparte was therefore obliged to raise the
siege, in order to make head against fresh masses descend¬
ing from the Tyrol to dispute the possession of Italy with
the youthful conqueror. On the 29th of July Massena
was attacked and driven from his post at La Corona,
whilst fifteen thousand Austrians forced the republicans
to retire, first from Salo, and next from Brescia, with the
loss of all the stores and magazines belonging to the army.
The imperial troops, however, committed a fatal blunder
in dividing into two columns, separated by physical obsta¬
cles, an army which, united, would have been more than
a match for the enemy, and thus exposing themselves to
be beaten in detail. Of this error the republican chief
was fully aware, and did not fail to take advantage of it.
He unexpectedly raised the siege of Mantua, and leaving
only a small body of troops to keep the Austrians in check,
marched rapidly westward, and On the 1st of August retook
Brescia, with all the magazines and hospitals. Carrying
the mass of his army along with him, he exceeded his
enemies in numbers wherever he attacked them. Having
formed a large body of his troops into close columns, he
awaited the Austrians, who, as yet unacquainted with the
new tactics, extended their line with the view of surround¬
ing him. I he result was such as might easily have been
foreseen. He penetrated their line in all directions, threw
them into the utmost confusion, made four thousand pri¬
soners, and took twenty pieces of cannon. A division of
the Austrians finding Salo in possession of the republicans,
wandered about in quest of a road by which to make their
escape, and, believing that the bulk of the French army
had marched in search of Wurmser to give him battle,
summoned Lonato to surrender. Their belief was well
founded, but Bonaparte was still in Lonato, though with
no more than twelve hundred men. His situation was no
doubt critical, but, with great presence of mind, he threa¬
tened to destroy the whole division, for daring to insult
the French army, by summoning its commander-in-chief
to surrender. Persuaded that the whole army was in the
place, the Austrians abandoned all idea of resistance ; and
by this admirable acting on the part of Bonaparte, four
thousand men were induced to lay down their arms.
On the 5th and 6th Wurmser was attacked by Bona¬
parte, and driven from Peschiera and the line of the Min-
cio. But on the 7th the Austrians were obliged to aban¬
don Verona, and again to betake themselves to the moun¬
tains of Tyrol; losing in a contest of a few days upwards of
twenty thousand men, three fourths of whom were prison- History,
ers. The siege of Mantua was again undertaken by the
French ; but as their works had been destroyed by the H96-
enemy in their absence, and the cannon which they had
left behind taken into the city, the French could not un¬
dertake a regular siege ; and by the beginning of Septem¬
ber Wurmser was in a condition to attempt the relief of
the place. Informed of his approach, Bonaparte left a di¬
vision to maintain the blockade of Mantua ; and, directing
his march northward with the main body of his army,
drove the Austrians from Santo Marco and Roveredo to
the pass of Galliano. Here however they made a stand,
and an engagement ensued, in which the Austrians were
defeated with the loss of six thousand prisoners, upon
which the French entered Trent in triumph. But instead
of retiring, Wurmser threw himself into Bassano, upon the
flank and rear of Bonaparte, and then marched with great
rapidity towards Mantua. He endeavoured to make a
stand at Bassano, but was defeated with the loss of five
thousand prisoners. He then crossed the Adige at Porto
Legnago, and entered Mantua with no more than eight
thousand five hundred men, infantry and cavalry. The
loss which Wurmser had sustained was great beyond ex¬
ample, but still it had the effect of detaining Bonaparte
in Italy to watch the numerous garrison of Mantua. He
expected that, owing to its numbers, famine would soon
reduce it to the necessity of capitulating; but the flesh of
more than four thousand horses, which Wurmser carried
into the place, afforded the troops subsistence for a consi¬
derable time, and enabled the gallant veteran to signalize
himself by as brave a defence as any on record.
The emperor now endeavoured to relieve Mantua, by Battle of
sending another army into Italy under the command ofArcole-
General Alvinzi. But having crossed the Piava, Aivinzi
was met by the republicans, and compelled to repass that
river. Davidovich, however, having with his division
driven the French down the Adige towards Verona, Bona¬
parte found it necessary to concentrate his forces. Leav¬
ing General Vaubois to keep Davidovich in check, he there¬
fore marched in person against General Alvinzi, and came
up with the Austrians in position at the village of Arcole.
But as the village could not be speedily turned, on ac¬
count of a canal, the French were obliged to attempt the
passage of a narrow bridge under the fire of the whole
Austrian army. Their officers rushed to the head of the
column, and in vain endeavoured to urge the troops to
advance. Augereau rushed to the end of the bridge with
a standard, but he was followed by no one. At length
the general-in-chief hastened to the bridge, and exclaim¬
ed, “ Grenadiers, follow your general;” the soldiers fol¬
lowed till within thirty yards of the bridge, when they
became intimidated by the tremendous fire of the Aus¬
trians, and Bonaparte judged it prudent to withdraw the
troops. In the evening General Guieux carried the vil¬
lage at the head of two thousand men, but the Austrians
again recovered possession of it. On the 16th of Novem¬
ber a desperate engagement took place in the vicinity of
Arcole; but next day the Austrians, whilst pressing on
the centre of the republican army, were unexpectedly
taken in flank by the left wing of the French army, which
was lying in ambuscade. Bonaparte having sent into
their rear a party of horse with twenty-five trumpeters,
the Austrians concluded from the noise that they were
surrounded, and fled in all directions in the utmost con¬
fusion. Having driven Alvinzi across the Brenta, Bona¬
parte resumed the positions of Rivoli and La Corona,
and Davidovich was driven back into Tyrol. Wurmser
still defended Mantua, which held out during the remain¬
der of the year ; but with these operations the campaign
in Italy terminated.
Whilst such was the fortune of the field of battle, Great
104
FRANCE.
179f).
Negotia-
tions be¬
tween
History. Britain made an. attempt to negotiate with France. Pass¬
ports were obtained from the Directory, and Lord Malmes¬
bury set out as ambassador to Paris. He commenced
negotiations with Lacroix, the minister for foreign affairs ;
tween his lordship soon discovered, or fancied he discovered,
Britainand that the Directory had no serious intention of concluding
France. a peace with Britain. As individuals, the British minis¬
try did not approve of a peace at this time, yet officially
they considered it as prudent to treat; that is, they sought
from policy, what they had no desire, either from interest
or inclination, to obtain. It was proposed by Lord Malmes¬
bury, that the principle of mutual restitution should be
agreed upon as the basis of the treaty ; but the Directory
desired that specifications should be made. Lord Malmes¬
bury therefore proposed that the French should give up the
Austrian Netherlands, in return for which Britain, he said,
would consent to give up the foreign settlements belong¬
ing to the Republic which had been taken during the war.
Many of the Dutch possessions abroad would also be
relinquished, on condition that the authority of the stadt-
holder was acknowledged. His lordship was next requir¬
ed to give in the ultimatum of his government in twenty-
four hours; and when he complained of this demand, he
was informed, on the 19th of December, that the Direc¬
tory would agree to no conditions repugnant to the French
constitution, and that his further residence was unneces¬
sary. During this year Great Britain maintained her ac¬
customed superiority on the ocean. On the 16th of Sep¬
tember 1795 the Cape of Good Hope was taken by Ad¬
miral Elphinstone ; but as the Dutch were extremely anxi¬
ous to recover this settlement, they advanced money to
the French to enable them to fit out a squadron destined
to co-operate in an attempt to reduce it. Seven ships of
the line were accordingly sent out for this purpose, under
the command of Admiral Lucas; but the latter having
been caught between two fires, found it impossible to
escape, and therefore surrendered to the British admiral
without firing a gun.
Unsuccess- But although Britain maintained her superiority by sea,
ful attempt yet an invasion of Ireland was attempted by the French
on Ireland. in ent| 0f jygg . kut; as seemec[ to have concert¬
ed the scheme, it consequently proved abortive. The
command was intrusted to General Hoche, without any
second in command to take his place in the event of acci¬
dent. The disaffected party in Ireland had received no
information of the approach of the expedition, and the fleet
was sent towards a part of the country where the people
were not much disposed to receive them. In this expedition
eighteen sail of the line, thirteen frigates, twelve sloops,
and transports with twenty-five thousand men, were em¬
ployed; but it was detained for some time when ready
for sailing, in consequence of a mutiny. Hoche set sail on
the 10th of December, but in working out of Brest a ship
of the line was lost, and some others were considerably
damaged. The frigate which had on board the command-
ei-in-chief was separated from the fleet in a gale of wind,
and when the latter arrived at Bantry Bay, it found itself
without instructions. The officers and troops desired to
disembark, but Admiral Bouvet refused to comply with
their wishes. After remaining for some days on the coast,
ne sailed for trance, and on the 81st reached Brest with
part of the fleet. General Hoche reached Bantry Bay
when it was too late, and consequently could not land.
One ship of the line and two frigates foundered at sea, a
frigate was captured by the British, and a ship of the line
was run ashore to prevent her being taken.
Advan- In the beginning of the year 1797 the Archduke Charles
edbi the"'TaS f111 en,Ployed m endeavouring to reduce Kehl and
Austrians. the ^'^cations opposite to Hunningen. Moreau con¬
tinued his opponent. Hoche succeeded Jourdan on the
Rhine, and Bonaparte was still occupied with the siege of
Mantua, whilst powerful efforts were making to reinforce Histoi
the army of Alvinzi. The youth of Vienna were request-
ed to lend their assistance, and six thousand of them vo- DOJ
lunteered their services for Italy. By these and other
means Alvinzi’s army was augmented until it became fifty
thousand strong; and with this force he menaced the re¬
publicans in all directions, in order to conceal from them
the plan of his future operations. Bonaparte was at Bo¬
logna, to prevent the escape of Wurmser in that direction,
when, receiving information of the approach of the Aus¬
trian army, he hastened to Mantua, and thence proceed¬
ed to Verona, where the centre of his line had already
come to blows with the Austrians; but as they continued
to attack on all points at once, he was as yet unable to
penetrate the design of Alvinzi. On the 13th of January,
however, the movements of the enemy became more seri¬
ous upon the lower part of his line, near Porto Legnago;
but having been informed in the evening that the upper
extremity under Joubert had been attacked by greatly
superior numbers, he concluded that the Austrians were
there in greatest force. Notwithstanding all the lessons
they had already received, the Austrians still persisted in
dividing their army; experience had not yet taught them
to correct an error which was soon to entail the same
destruction on this as on former armies. Ten thousand
troops, including the Vienna volunteers, received orders
to proceed to Mantua by Porto Legnago, whilst Alvinzi
in person advanced against Joubert, who was forced to
retreat, and in fact reduced to such a situation that the
capture of his whole division on the following day (the
14th) seemed highly probable.
Bonaparte having received information as to the real Defeat c
state of affairs, left Verona on the 13th, having ordered the Aus
Massena to follow him with the centre to Rivoli as fasttrians<
as possible. On the 14th, at the break of day, the divi¬
sion of Joubert attacked the Austrians, a circumstance
which much surprised them, ignorant as they were that
Bonaparte had arrived with reinforcements. But the
superior numbers of the Austrians baffled all the endea¬
vours of the French troops to turn their divisions; and the
two wings of the republican army were forced back upon
the centre in considerable confusion. Alvinzi encounter¬
ed the centre, which with difficulty maintained its ground ;
and the Austrian wings advancing on both sides, entirely
surrounded the French. The victory seemed already
won, and it is even reported that Alvinzi had sent a cou¬
rier to Vienna to announce the approaching capture of
Bonaparte and his army. But the tide was already at the
turn. Forming his troops in three strong columns, Bona¬
parte led them against the right wing of the Austrians,
which they penetrated at various points, and forced to fly
in such confusion that four thousand Austrians laid down
their arms to a party of republicans which had not arriv¬
ed in time to join the army, and surrendered themselves
prisoners of war. Bonaparte, perceiving that this part of
his line was no longer in danger, left Joubert to prosecute
the victory, and proceeded to oppose the march of Pro-
vera. A detachment under General Murat having conti¬
nued their march during the whole night of the 14th, seiz¬
ed on Montebaldo in the rear of the position at La Corona,
to vyhich part of the Austrians retreated; and on the fol¬
lowing morning Joubert attacked them in front. Thus
surrounded, they were thrown into confusion, six thou¬
sand were taken prisoners, and numbers perished in at¬
tempting to cross the Adige.
During this bloody conflict on the upper part of the
Adige, Provera forced his passage across the lower part of
the river, near Porto Legnago, and obliged the republican
general Guieux to retreat towards Ronco. But as Pro¬
vera was marching rapidly to Mantua, Augereau came up
with his rear, and made two thousand prisoners; notwith-
Tt
ftn
iii
leii
w
HE
|sti
FRANCE.
105
History, standing which the Austrian general on the 15th reached
the neighbourhood of that city, which was blockaded at
1797- St George and La Favourite. The Austrian general sum¬
moned the republican commander to surrender; but the
latter having refused to comply, Provera endeavoured,
without success, to carry it by assault. He next made an
attack upon La Favourite, and was seconded by Wurm-
ser with the troops in the garrison, who had observed
his arrival; but as Bonaparte had by this time arrived
with reinforcements, Wurmser was defeated, and Provera
being surrounded by the French, surrendered both himself
and his troops as prisoners of war. In consequence of
these engagements at Rivoli and Mantua, the Austrians
lost twenty-three thousand prisoners and sixty pieces of
cannon. The surrender of Mantua had now become in¬
evitable, and in fact it capitulated from famine on the 2d
of February. That the French emigrants might escape,
Bonaparte allowed Wurmser to select and take out of the
garrison seven hundred men, who were not to be examin¬
ed nor viewed as prisoners of war; and the general him¬
self was permitted to depart unconditionally,
he pope’s The most active and vigorous preparations were now
rcessub- making both by the emperor and the French to recommence
ie(1, the contest on the German frontiers; and it was therefore
of importance that Bonaparte should leave Italy in his
rear in a state of tranquillity. On the 1st of February he
sent General Victor with the legion of Lombardy to enter
the papal territories ; and after the surrender of Mantua,
he himself followed in person. The Lombard legion,
after storming the position occupied by the papal troops,
made a thousand of them prisoners, and took all their can¬
non. General Colli had carried away most of the trea¬
sure from the chapel at Loretto; but the republicans still
found articles of gold and silver worth a million of livres,
and the image of the virgin was sent to Paris as a curiosi¬
ty. At Tolentino the republican chief was met by a mes¬
senger from his holiness, with overtures of peace; and
on the 19th a treaty was concluded, by which the pope pro¬
mised to pay fifteen millions of livres, and to deliver eight
hundred cavalry horses, with an equal number of draught
horses and oxen. He also agreed to pay three hundred
thousand livres to the family of the French ambassador
Basseville, whom the rabble had murdered at Rome, and
to make an apology through his minister at Paris for that
outrage against the law of nations and of humanity,
jinforce- The French having proved unfortunate in their inva-
nts sent sion of Germany through Suabia and Franconia, now de-
Bcma- termined to make their principal attempt from Italy under
the command of General Bonaparte. Considerable bodies
of troops were therefore detached by the Directory from
the divisions which had served under Moreau, and sent
as secretly as possible towards Italy by the way of Sa¬
voy. The impending danger was however perceived by the
court of Vienna, which accordingly conferred the command
on the side of Italy on the Archduke Charles, the only
Austrian general who had hitherto been successful against
the republicans. The war was now about to be carried
into territories where a foe had scarcely ever been seen
by the house of Austria. It was necessary that Bona¬
parte should once more force his way across the Alps;
that he should carry the war into that immense chain of
mountains which, rising in the neighbourhood of Toulon
and stretching northward, obtains the names of Pied¬
mont and Savoy, and which, taking an easterly direction,
forms the countries of Tyrol, Carinthia, and Carniola,
and on the side of the Adriatic constitutes the frontier
of the hereditary states of Austria. As to the fertile and
level tract which belonged to Venice, it is situated be¬
tween the mountains and the sea, and is crossed by many
streams, which are increased by the melting of the Al¬
pine snows, and the peculiar characteristic of which is, that
VOL. x.
rte.
they are greatest in summer and least in winter. But History,
the archduke, instead of being ordered to make a stand
in the defiles of the mountains, was sent into the plain to 1797-
guard the passages of the rivers ; a blunder which entered
into the whole plan of defence adopted by the council of
war at Vienna.
Whilst Bonaparte advanced into the territories of the Progress
pope, the Austrian army was assembling on the eastern of Bona-
bank of the Piava. The republicans were on the opposite Parte’s
side of the river, and Bonaparte, after quitting the papal army‘
territories, hastened to join them. Having effected the
passage of the Piava on the 12th of March, the Austrians
retired, skirmishing for some days, till they crossed the
Tagliamento, where they halted and concentrated their
whole force. On the 17th the republican army reached
Valvesone, on the opposite bank of the river, and after
some hesitation determined to force the passage. The
stream had been diminished by the frost, and though the
banks were high, the operation seemed practicable. After
some sharp fighting, the French accordingly crossed the
river in columns at different points. Joubert, with the
left wing, then received orders to pass along the valley of
the Drave, beyond the highest chain of the Noric Alps;
Massena, at the head of the centre division, entered the
defiles of these mountains; and the right division, com¬
manded by Bonaparte, marched along the coast of the
Adriatic. On the 19th the town of Gradisca, situated
on the river Isonzo, surrendered to the right wing of the
army; and its garrison, consisting of three thousand men,
were made prisoners of war. On the 21st the same divi¬
sion entered Goritz, where it found the principal maga¬
zines and hospitals belonging to the Austrians. Trieste
was taken on the 23d, and quicksilver, worth two millions
of livres, was sent off by the French from the mines of
Idria. On the 24th a large body of Austrians was kept
in check by Massena and part of the right wing under
General Guieux; but having procured reinforcements
from the archduke, they engaged the French next day,
and were defeated with the loss of five thousand prisoners
and from three to four hundred baggage waggons. Equal
success attended the left wing under Joubert, Baraguay-
d’Hilliers, and Delmas. Four thousand prisoners were
taken on the banks of the Lavis, and the enemy was de¬
feated at Clauzen with the loss of fifteen hundred men.
This division then directed its march eastward, along the
valley of the Drave towards Clagenfurt, the metropolis of
Carinthia, where it was met by General Massena, who
had obliged the archduke to evacuate his head-quarters,
and to fall back in order to cover the capital of the em¬
pire, which was now seriously threatened. Thus in fifteen
days General Bonaparte had effected the passage of the
Alps, taken twenty thousand prisoners, and arrived with¬
in twenty-four leagues of Vienna, which was thus com¬
pletely exposed. Yet his own situation was not free from
danger. The rapidity of his advance had rendered it im¬
possible to take the necessary measures for protecting his
line of communications; a hostile population hung upon
his rear; a continued success could alone enable him to
maintain his advanced positions, and the slightest reverse
might lead to ruinous consequences. Bonaparte, there¬
fore, prudently embraced the present moment of unpre¬
cedented success to make overtures of peace. On the 31st
of March he wrote to the archduke, deprecating the conti¬
nuance of the war, and entreating him to use his influence
for putting a period to its ravages. But the prince re¬
plied evasively, that it did not belong to him to investi¬
gate the principles on which the war was carried on, and
that he had no power to negotiate.
In the mean while the Austrians raised the peasantry
of the Tyrol to harass the rear of the French army, and
in consequence gained some advantages under Laudohns
I
106 FRANCE.
History, who drove back the republican troops which had been
left at Botzen and Brixen. The people of the Venetian
’ states also rose against the troops which had been left
amongst them, and, with the assistance of ten Sclavonian
regiments, murdered every Frenchman they could find,
not sparing even the sick in the hospitals, of whom five
hundred were massacred at Verona. The Austrians now
attempted to surround the invading army ; but Bonaparte
knew that the embarrassment of the court of Vienna was
at least equal to his own. He was at the head of a body
of men hitherto irresistible; and to surround his army
was not to vanquish it. For these reasons he continued
his advance, and on the 2d of April, after a bloody con¬
flict, forced the strong defiles between Freisach and Neu-
marck, making six hundred prisoners. On the 4th his
advanced guard reached Hunsmarck, where they again
defeated the Austrians. The cabinet of Vienna, finding
that there was now no place where the army of the arch¬
duke could make a stand, till it reached the mountains in
the vicinity of the capital, thought it high time to treat for
peace. With this view, therefore, Bellegarde and Mor-
veldt requested a suspension of hostilities, to which the
French commander consented, on condition of obtaining
possession of Gratz and Leoben, about fifty miles from
Vienna. This was on the 7th of April, but the armistice,
which would have expired on the 13th, was afterwards
renewed for a longer period. On the 19th a preliminary
treaty was signed, by which the French were to retain the
Austrian Netherlands, and the whole of Lombardy, now
called the Cisalpine Republic, comprehending the Mila¬
nese, Mantua, Modena, Ferrara, and Bologna. Bonaparte
consented to return to Italy, on condition that his army
should be supplied with provisions during its march; and
all further disputes were to be settled by a definitive
treaty of peace. The overthrow of the Venetian govern¬
ment, which had so long been in a state of helpless de¬
crepitude, speedily followed the signature of the prelimi¬
nary treaty of Leoben. Bonaparte had for some time
Wdifcated the dismemberment of the Venetian states, and
a pretext was now afforded him for carrying this design
into execution by the insurrection and massacre above
adverted to. He saw his advantage, and promptly seized
it; announced that the hour of Venice was now come ; de¬
clared war against the unfortunate city of the sea ; brought
up cannon to the edge of the lagoons; and by menaces of
retaliation compelled the senate and the doge to pass a de¬
cree dissolving their ancient constitution, and establishing
a kind of municipal democracy in its stead.
Peace be- During the approach of Bonaparte towards Vienna, the
France rePubl.ican armies on the Rhine were pressing hard on the
and Aus- -Austrians, to prevent their sending reinforcements to the
tria. archduke. An armistice was offered by the Austrians,
but as the French required Ehrenbreitstein as a guaran¬
tee, both parties resolved to prosecute the war. The left
wing of the army of General Hoche marched from Dus-
seldorf, whilst the centre and right wing crossed the Rhine
near Coblentz. On the 18th of April a fierce contest took
place between the hostile armies near the Lahn, in which
the Austrians were beaten with the loss of four thousand
prisoners. General Moreau having forced the passage of
the Upper Rhine near Strasburg, attacked and carried
the village of Diersheim; and next day the conflict was
renewed with such vigour on the part of the republicans,
that the fort of Kehl was taken, and five thousand Aus-
• trians were made prisoners. 1 he French then advanced,
and the Austrians were retiring towards the Danube,
when all military operations were suspended, in conse¬
quence of intelligence received from the archduke and
Bonaparte, that peace had been concluded. On the arri¬
val of this intelligence, the army of General Hoche was
making an attack upon Franckfort-on-the-Maine, which
General Warnecht was employing every effort to defend. Histc J
Both armies received the news about the same time, upon *
which the troops threw down their arms, and congratulat- 179
ed each other on the happy event.
A contest of a: serious nature was now fast approaching chanm
between the legislative and executive branches of the the Dl
French government. The time had arrived when a third tory;s
part of the legislative body was to be changed. On the°^Part
19th of May Letourneur went out of the Directory by lot;
on the 20th the new third took their seats; and on the
21st Barthelemy was chosen a member of the Directory
in the room of Letourneur. Pichegru, Jourdan, and Wil-
lot, were amongst the members of the new third, so that
a decided majority of both councils was of the moderate
party; and two members of the Directory, Carnot and
Barthelemy, were understood to be men of the same de¬
scription. The old conventionalists, therefore, employed
every means which seemed calculated either to render the
Mountain party odious, or to embarrass the Directory. On
the 14th of June Gilbert Desmolieres brought up a report
from a committee on the state of the finances, in which
he inveighed against the prodigality of the Directory, and
censured in the strongest language the conduct of its
agents. On the 18th the same committee proposed a new
plan of finance, which went to deprive the Directory of
the administration of the public money. On the preced¬
ing day Camille Jourdan had presented a report of great
length on the subject of religion, in which he insisted on
the impropriety of forbidding its ceremonies to be publicly
displayed, and the iniquitous nature of that persecution
which its ministers had suffered because they could not
take the oaths prescribed by the legislature. On the 15th
of July the Council of Five Hundred decreed that all the
laws against refractory priests should be repealed; and
on the following' day a decree, requiring from them an oath
of fidelity to the constitution, was carried by a majority
ol no more than six members. Emery, a new member,
proposed the repeal of the laws by which the property of
emigrants had been confiscated and their relations de¬
clared incompetent to succeed them. The discussion
which these topics underwent made the Directory and
the Councils professed enemies to each other. The Coun¬
cils wished the Directory to be changed before the expi¬
ration of the legal time, and the Directory desired to de¬
prive of their seats many new members who had been
elected by the people. As Barras was upon the whole
the most obnoxious member of the Directory, an effort
was made to deprive him of his seat, on the pretence that * Iratt
he was less than the legal age of forty ; but his colleagues fa?
maintained that he had been born in the year 1755, and ljn“
no proof of the contrary could be produced. Still the
Directory did not want a number of adherents. The re¬
solution of the Councils in favour of the priests had the
appearance of a counter revolution, which induced the
royalists to resume courage, and journals were rapidly
published in defence of their cause. On the 20th of July
the Councils received information that a division of the
army under Hoche was within a few leagues of Paris;
whilst the constitution declared that the Directory incur¬
red the penalty of ten years imprisonment, if it brought
troops any nearer the residence of the legislative body,
without its consent, than twelve miles. An explanation
was demanded and given ; the Directory declared their
ignorance of the march, which they said had been under¬
taken without orders from them, and owing to a mistake on
the part of the officer by whom it wras conducted ; but the
Councils paid no regard to an allegation which they evi¬
dently disbelieved. The turbulent suburb of Saint An¬
toine adhered to the majority of the Directory; and this
encouraged them so much that they lost no time in pro¬
ceeding to action.
FRA
Fistory. General Augereau had been sent from Italy, upon the
pretence of delivering to the Directory some standards
1797- taken from the enemy. On the morning of the 4th, the
Tuileries was surrounded by a division of the troops, un¬
der the command of this officer; the guard of the Councils
refused to act against them, and Ramel their commander
was made prisoner. On entering the hall, Augereau seiz¬
ed Pichegruand twelve more of the chiefs of the opposite
faction, whom he immediately sent prisoners to the Tem¬
ple. Carnot made his escape on the preceding evening;
but Barthelemy remained, and was put under arrest.
When several members of the Councils came to the hall
at the usual hour, they were astonished to find that seals
had been put upon the doors, and that they could not ob¬
tain admittance. They were ordered to go to the Sur¬
geons’ Hall, where the Directory, it was said, had ap¬
pointed them to meet; but of both Councils not more than
a hundred and twenty members assembled, who, however,
sent to obtain from the Directory an explanation of the
proceedings which had just taken place. They were given
to understand, that what had been done was absolutely
necessary for the salvation of the Republic, and the Coun¬
cils were congratulated on their escape from the machina¬
tions of the royalists. According to the report of Boulay
de la Meurthe, a great royalist conspiracy, the centre of
which was in the bosom of the Councils, was endeavouring
to subvert the constitution ; but, by the indefatigable dili¬
gence and activity of the Directory, it had been defeated.
It was proposed to banish the conspirators without a trial,
and the Councils were so completely imposed upon, that
they voted the deportation of fifty-three of their own
members, and twelve other persons, amongst whom were
the directors Carnot and Barthelemy. During these trans¬
actions the city of Paris remained tranquil. The unfor¬
tunate issue of the struggle on the 5th of October had so
completely subdued the ardour of the inhabitants, that
they suffered the national representation to be violated
with impunity, and saw liberty trampled underfoot, with¬
out a single exertion in its defence. The Directory ex¬
cused their conduct to the nation, under pretence of the
existence of a royalist conspiracy. Pichegru, it was said,
had offered to join the emigrants under the Prince of
Conde, and the Austrians under Wurmser, and, at the
head of this aggregate force, "to ’march directly to Paris,
and re-establish the monarchy. Moreau was also impli¬
cated in this conspiracy, but, as is alleged, saved himself
by betraying his accomplice,
eaty of The Directory were now powerful; but its members
rapp soon became giddy from the elevated nature of their situ-
rmio. ation, and seemed to act under the dangerous conviction
that there was nothing in which they might not venture to
engage, however great might be their ambition or rapacity.
Whilst contending with the councils, they prolonged the
negotiations with Lord Malmesbury; and, what is more
extraordinary, acted in a similar manner respecting those
which had been entered into between Bonaparte and the
imperial ambassadors at Campo Formio. But the negotia¬
tions with the emperor were at length terminated, and on
the 17th of October a definitive treaty was signed at Cam¬
po Formio. The Netherlands were given up to the French
Republic, and the Milanese to the Cisalpine Republic;
whilst the imperial territories in the Brisgau were surren¬
dered to the Duke of Modena, as a compensation for the
loss of his duchy in Italy. It was likewise agreed by the
emperor that the French should possess the Venetian
islands in the Levant, Corfu, Zante, Cephalonia, Santa
Maura, Cerigo, and others; and, on the other hand, the
emperor was to have the city of Venice, with its remaining
territory, from the extremity of Dalmatia, as far as the
Adige and the Lake of Garda. The Austrians according¬
ly withdrew from the bank of the Rhine, and the repub-
107
licans were thus enabled to retake Mayence and Ehren- History,
breitstein. Venice was at the same time entered by the -v-w'
Austrians; and Bonaparte, when about to take his de- D97-
parture from Italy, left twenty-five thousand men to gar¬
rison Mantua, Brescia, Milan, and some other places, and
to retain the Cisalpine Republic in a state of dependence
upon France.
At this time the empire of the seas was so completely Naval sue-
possessed by Britain that the republican fleets lay block-cesses. of
aded in their own ports during the greater part of the^r^a*n'
year. But as the expedition against Ireland had complete¬
ly failed, the Directory were at a loss how to dispose of
the galley slaves who had formed part of Hoche’s army.
It would have been cruel to send them back to punish¬
ment ; the troops refused to serve with them in the army;
and by the new laws of France they could not receive a
pardon* neither was it prudent to set so many criminals
at liberty. To get rid of the difficulty, the Directory at
last determined to send them over to England; and these
criminals, to the number of about twelve hundred, were
landed from two frigates and some small vessels on the
coast of Wales, with muskets and ammunition, but des¬
titute of artillery. On the evening of the day on which
they landed, however (the 23d of February), they were
made prisoners by a party of militia, yeomanry, cavalry,
colliers, and others, under the command of Lord Cawdor.
But although the navy of France continued in port, and
therefore out of danger, the Spanish and Dutch allies of
that country sustained serious losses by sea. A Spanish
fleet of twenty-seven sail of the line, opposed to a British
fleet of only fifteen sail under Sir John Jervis, was com¬
pletely defeated off Cape St Vincent on the 14th of Fe¬
bruary. The Spanish fleet was on its way to Brest to ef¬
fect a junction with the French fleet; but by the victory
of Jervis this object was rendered unattainable. The
Dutch were, if possible, still more unfortunate. Admiral
Duncan having blockaded the Texel, where their fleet lay
during the summer, a resolution was at length adopted to
risk aff engagement; and De Winter received positive
orders to put to sea. Admiral Duncan was at this time
refitting at Yarmouth; but on receiving intelligence that
the Dutch fleet had sailed, he immediately put to sea in
quest of the enemy, and on the 11th of October came up
with their fleet, consisting of a force rather inferior to his
own. The British admiral having carried his fleet through
the enemy’s line, commenced the attack between them
and their own coast, about nine miles from Camperdown.
The conflict lasted three hours, at the end of which time
the greater part of the Dutch fleet had struck. Eight
ships of the line, two of fifty-six and one of forty-four
guns, were taken, besides a fiigate, which was afterwards
lost near the coast of Britain. See article Britain.
After the ratification of the treaty with the emperor atDistiirb-
Campo Formio, Joseph Bonaparte was sent to Rome asancesat
plenipotentiaryof the French Republic. The pope having Rome,
now no expectation of foreign assistance, submitted to the
demands for the reduction of his troops, and the liberation
of every person confined in prison on account of political
opinions. But on the 26th of December 1797, three men
waited upon the ambassador, and requested the co-operation
of France in bringing about a revolution which a party at
Rome was anxious to effect. He refused to countenance the
project, and did every thing in his power to dissuade them
from embarking in such an enterprise; but unfortunately
he neglected to communicate the intelligence to the papal
government. On the 28th, however, he went to the cardinal
secretary, and showed him a list of persons under his protec¬
tion who had a legal authority to wear the tricolor cockade;
he at the same time consented that all others wearing it should
be punished; and he offered to give up six of the insurgents
who had taken refuge in his palace. In the evening of the
N C E.
108
F R A N C E.
History, same day, a most serious tumult, in its origin not altogether
1798. unknown to his holiness, happened in the courts and vici-
nity of the French ambassador’s palace, and the governor
of the city endeavoured to disperse the rioters by parties
of cavalry and infantry. But in attempting to induce the
military to desist from firing upon the people, General Du-
phot, who belonged to the French mission, was shot by a
petty officer belonging to the troops of his holiness. As
soon as the Spanish ambassador received information of
this event, he sent to the cardinal secretary, and protested
against this daring violation of the privileges of plenipo¬
tentiaries. The palace of the French ambassador was still
surrounded by the military, when he demanded his pass¬
ports, which were granted, accompanied by many protesta¬
tions of the innocence of government, and its sorrow that
such an unfortunate occurrence should have taken place.
Joseph Bonaparte retired to Florence, and thence proceed¬
ed to Paris. The protection of Austria, Spain, Naples, and
Tuscany, was earnestly solicited by the pope ; but all these
powers seemed disinclined to interfere in behalf of the pon¬
tiff. General Berthier experienced little or no opposition
on his march to Rome, where he subverted the dominion
of the pope, proclaimed the sovereignty of the Roman
people, and caused the tree of liberty to be planted on the
very day on which the anniversary of the pope’s election
was being celebrated. Whilst in the Sistine chapel re¬
ceiving the congratulations of the cardinals, the commis¬
sioner-general, and Cervoni, who commanded the troops
within the city, entered the chapel during the ceremony,
and announced to the sovereign pontiff that his reign was
at an end.
Conquest But scenes of a different and more sanguinary character
of Switzer-were in the mean time exhibited in Switzerland, a country
iand. which had preserved its neutrality during the conflict be¬
tween France and the combined powers. About the end
of the year 1797, an insurrection broke out in the Pays de
Vaud, a district subject to the canton of Berne. This oc¬
currence showed the government its critical situation, and
induced it to issue a proclamation on the 5th of January
1798, requiring the people of the Pays de Vaud to appear
in arms, renew their oath of allegiance, and reform all abuses.
A commission of the senate of Berne was also empowered
to examine every complaint, and redress every grievance;
but their motions were considered as too tardy by popular
impatience, and the insurgents endeavoured to make them¬
selves masters of the strong places. Troops were sent against
them by the government of Berne; but General Weiss hav¬
ing acted with hesitation, a body of republicans appeared
under General Menard, who sent an aid-de-camp with two
hussars to negotiate with Weiss. As the messengers return¬
ed, however, one of the hussars was killed, most probably by
accident; but this circumstance was instantly magnified into
a horrid breach of the law of nations. The French, there¬
fore, continued to advance, and by the end of January were
masters of the whole of the Pays de Vaud. The government
of Berne, whilst it used every effort to maintain peace, pre¬
pared for war. But a truce was entered into with General
Lmne, the successor of Menard, and those who had killed
the hussar were delivered up. An army of twenty thousand
T^fr? ^ ejected, the command of which was given to
Frlach, once a field-marshal in the service of France.
But disaffection prevailed in this army, and the people were
far from being united amongst themselves. Of this the
lench wei e well aware, and therefore they demanded a total
change of government. On the other hand, D’Erlach, appre¬
hensive of a still greater defection in his army, requested
permission to put an end to the armistice, the French
now refused to negotiate, and on the 2d of March General
hchawenberg took possession of Soleure at the head of thir¬
teen thousand men; whilst Brune afterwards made himself
master of Friburg, and forced the Swiss army to retreat.
The government of Berne, now greatly alarmed, decreed Histo
the landsturm, or rising in mass, which the ancient cus-
toms of the country justified in the time of necessity. The MSf
people assembled, dissolved the government, and offered
to dismiss the army, if the republican troops would retire.
But this offer was rejected, except upon the condition of
admitting a French garrison into Berne, and therefore the
Swiss continued to advance. About six thousand of the
army of D’Erlach had deserted, leaving him at the head of
little more than fourteen thousand men; and although die
rising had abundantly supplied him with numbers, yet raw
and undisciplined levies, however numerous, were of little
avail against veteran troops, and he was not allowed time
to give them any thing like regular organization. He was
accordingly attacked on the 5th of March, and driven from
Newenbeg and Favenbrun; but having rallied his troops,
he made a stand for some time at Uteren. The conflict
was renewed at Grauholtz, whence the Swiss were driven
four miles nearer the capital; and being at last completely
defeated, they in a fit of fury and despair murdered many
of their officers, amongst whom was their commander-in-
chief. Berne capitulated to the French, and the more
wealthy and populous states followed the example; but the
poorer cantons made a vigorous effort to preserve their small
possessions, and the independence of their country; they
compelled Schawenberg to retire with the loss of three
thousand men, but were at last totally vanquished by the
superior skill and numbers of the republican army. The
public magazines were plundered, and a new constitution,
modelled on that of France, was forced upon them.
As the Directory had made no scruple of violating the Conduc
independence of other nations, it was but reasonable to ex- the Dir
pect that they would pay little regard to the liberties of their tory
own. A third of the legislature was changed in the month
of April; one member of the Directory also went out by
ballot, and Treilhard was chosen to succeed him. Nothing
was left unattempted by the Directory to influence the
elections in favour of their friends; but their success was
not commensurate with their exertions. On the 2d of May,
they made a complaint to the Council of Five Hundred, of
alleged royalist plots, by means of which it was said that
the elections had been made to fall on persons who were ini¬
mical to the interests of the Republic ; and on the 7th it was
proposed by the committee which reported on the message
of the Directory, that many electoral assemblies should be
annulled. But General Jourdan opposed this plan, as in¬
compatible with the freedom of election, and as proceeding
upon the supposition of conspiracies the existence of which
was not proved, and which most probably had no existence
at all.
After peace had been proclaimed between France and Threat'
Germany, the Directory made no secret of their determi- invasion
nation to attempt the invasion of Great Britain. Whe¬
ther this project originated with Bonaparte himself, or was
intended by his kind friends of the Directory as a snare for
him and his victorious army, is a matter which our readers
must be left to determine for themselves. It appears, how¬
ever, that soon after the return of Bonaparte to the capital,
where the Directory received him with all imaginable splen¬
dour, an army was offered him by the government, with
which to invade England; and it is also certain that he ac¬
cepted the command. Barras, indeed, told him not to repose
on his laurels, but to prepare for undertaking the conquest of
the bitterest and most formidable enemy of the Republic; a
mission, however, which it was somewhat more easy to con-
xer than to execute. This came eventually to be the opi¬
nion of the general himself; after calculating all the chances,
e thought it possible to gain a battle on British ground,
!?ut h°Peless to maintain a footing in that country.
But England, though invincible on her own soil, might be
deeply wounded through her commerce and her colonies $
US-
1/1
F R A
Istory. these he considered as the principal sinews of her strength ;
and if he could divert in different channels the main branch
1798. 0f the one, and seize upon the most important of the other,
he doubted not that he would thereby effectually humble
the haughty island. Impressed with the common but
groundless notion that Britain derived incalculable re¬
sources from her Indian dominions, and conceiving that
commercial superiority must ever belong to the nation
which is possessed of the safest and readiest communica¬
tions with the East, Bonaparte thought of restoring the trade
of India to its ancient channel through Egypt and the Le¬
vant. With such views he contemplated the seizure and
conquest of the former, as the first step towards the reali¬
zation of his design; and this once effected, he conceived
that, proceeding from Egypt as from a place of arms, he
might march towards the Euphrates, and in less than four
months reach the Indus, there to dispute with the Eng¬
lish the possession of that country whence he supposed
they derived their inexhaustible resources. An expedi¬
tion to Egypt was therefore resolved on, with the full con¬
currence of the Directory, who were delighted to be rid
of a too fortunate soldier, and to the great satisfaction of
Bonaparte himself, whose imagination seems to have been
carried away with the idea of perhaps founding an eastern
empire.
nch This resolution, however, was kept a profound secret,
e 'edition ancl every artifice employed to mislead the English as to
SJPt* the real destination of the intended expedition. Threats
of invasion were therefore studiously reiterated, and mat¬
ters were so contrived as to give to the necessary prepara¬
tions, which could not escape observation; an appearance
calculated to confirm the idea that an invasion was actually
intended. Prodigious stories were circulated concerning
large rafts of timber, by means of which the Army of Eng¬
land was to be transported to Britain; and, to give the
greater probability to this report, General Bonaparte, the
commander-in-chief, made a journey to the coast oppo¬
site England. Meanwhile, the fleet was getting ready in
the harbour of Toulon, and troops were collected in its
vicinity; and when every thing had been prepared, Bo¬
naparte embarked with forty thousand veteran troops,
and, on the 9th of June, reached Malta. Having land¬
ed his troops in different places, he resolved to make
Jnmself master of this island; and, after a very feeble
opposition, the grand-master capitulated, giving up in a
few days a fortress which might have held out for months
against all the troops of the French Republic. Bona¬
parte left in the island a garrison of four thousand men,
and on the 21st of June sailed for Alexandria. Admiral
Nelson was dispatched in pursuit of the French fleet;
but being wholly ignorant of its destination, he sailed for
Naples, where he obtained information of the attack upon
Malta. To that island accordingly he steered his course,
and on his arrival he found that Bonaparte was gone; but
conjecturing that he had sailed for Alexandria, he imme¬
diately prepared to follow him. The French commander,
however, instead of keeping a direct course towards the
coast of Egypt, stood along that of Greece, until he had
made the easternmost point of the island of Candia; then
steering to the southward, he protracted his voyage, so as
not to reach the Egyptian coast till Admiral Nelson had
left it.
On the 5th of July, Bonaparte landed his troops, and
took by storm the city of Alexandria. The republican
transports were then drawn up within the inner harbour
of Alexandria, and the ships of war were anchored along
the shore of the bay of Aboukir. The republican army
then marched on towards the Nile, and, in proceeding
along the banks of that river, suffered much from the
intense heat of the climate. They soon came to action
with the Mamlukes; but this superb cavalry found itself
N C E.
unequal to contend with European discipline and valour.
Under Murad Bey, their most distinguished chief, they
made a last effort near the Pyramids ; but were routed with
the loss of two thousand men killed, four hundred camels
with baggage taken, and fifty pieces of cannon. Cairo im¬
mediately surrendered.
Bonaparte having proceeded thus far in the conquest of Battle of
Egypt, framed a provisional government, and issued pro-the Nile,
clamations in Arabic, protesting that the French were
friendly to the religion of Mahommed, owned the autho¬
rity of the Grand Signior, and were only come to inflict
punishment on the Mamlukes, the oppressors and spoilers
of Egypt. Thus far the good fortune of Bonaparte seem¬
ed still to attend him. But on the 1st of August the Eng¬
lish fleet under Admiral Nelson appeared off the mouth of
the Nile; and before the sun of the morrow rose, that of
France had been destroyed, and all communication be¬
tween the French army and Europe thus completely cut
off. The action commenced at sunset, and continued, with
occasional intervals, till daybreak, when the morning dis¬
closed to the astounded invaders the extent of the cala¬
mity which had befallen them. (See article Britain.) It
would be difficult to point out any naval engagement of mo¬
dern times, productive of results so important as this. The
military exertions of France had by degrees destroyed
the combination which the princes of Europe had formed
against her; the victories of Bonaparte had humbled the
pride of Austria; the Continent looked with dismay to¬
wards the new Republic; and when the Directory seized
on Rome and Switzerland, no power ventured to inter¬
pose in their behalf. But in consequence of the victory
of the Nile the aspect of affairs suddenly underwent a
remarkable change, and the conqueror of Itafy was shut
up in a distant country, from which the fleets of Britain
might prevent his return. Proposals were therefore made
by Britain to the northern powers, to recommence hosti¬
lities against France; the states of Italy determined to
make a vigorous effort for the recovery of their indepen¬
dence ; and the court of Naples, encouraged by the de¬
struction of the French fleet, threw off the mask which it
had been compelled to wear, and joined the new confede¬
racy against the Republic.
The French, it is well known, had long held out en- General
couragement to the Irish rebels ; but as the expectations Humbert
of the latter were disappointed, they broke out into open
rebellion without the promised assistance; and when the c
spirit of insurrection had been almost wholly extinguished,
the Directory, with its usual imbecility, made a feeble at¬
tempt to revive it. On the 22d of August General Hum¬
bert, with a handful of troops, amounting only to eleven
hundred men, landed at Killala. Yet this force, small as
it was, would have proved formidable a month before. On
landing they were joined by a party of the more desperate
rebels in the vicinity, and defeated General Lake at the
head of a superior force, taking from him six pieces of can¬
non. They sent in different directions to announce their ar¬
rival, advanced a short way into the country, and maintained
their ground for three weeks. But receiving no reinforce¬
ments from France, finding the rebellion in a great mea¬
sure crushed, and being informed that General Corn¬
wallis was about to surround him with twenty-five men,
General Flumbert laid down his arms to a British force
four days after he had dismissed his Irish associates, that
they might provide for their own safety. Active mea¬
sures were now taken by the Directory to send troops to
Ireland when it was too late ; the vigilance of British
cruisers defeated all their endeavours. On the 12th of
October, La Hoche, a ship of eighty-four guns, and four
frigates, were captured by Sir John Borlase Warren, in
attempting to reach Ireland with three thousand men; on
the 20th another frigate, destined for the same country,
110
FRANCE.
1798.
Impru¬
dence of
Naples.
History, was also taken. The Directory therefore abandoned the
" J attempt as hopeless.
The victory of the Nile, important as beyond all doubt
it was in a political point of view, seems nevertheless to
have been over-estimated by the court of Naples, which,
considering the destruction of the army of Egypt as cer¬
tain, now rushed headlong into a new war with France.
Disdaining to wait until the Austrians were ready to take
the field against the republicans, the king prevailed on
General Mack to assume the command of his army, began
the war without any foreign aid excepting that of the Bri¬
tish fleet, and thus brought upon himself the vengeance
of the French Republic. The Directory had no concep¬
tion that he would adopt such an insane line of conduct;
and consequently, when General Mack appeared at the
head of forty-five thousand men, the troops of France in
that quarter were not in a condition to contend with him.
When General Championet complained of the attack made
upon his posts, he was informed that his Neapolitan ma¬
jesty had resolved to take possession of the Roman terri¬
tory, advised to retire quietly into the Cisalpine states, and
further apprised that his entrance into Tuscany would be
considered as a declaration of war. Championet having
no force sufficient to contend with the Neapolitan army,
accordingly evacuated Rome; but he left a garrison in
the castle of St Angelo, and concentrated what troops he
could collect in the northern parts of the Roman states.
In the end of November General Mack entered Rome
without opposition. When these transactions became
known at Paris, war was immediately declared against the
king of Naples and the king of Sardinia. The latter had
committed no act of hostility against the French ; but he
was accused of disaffection towards the Republic. This
charge could scarcely fail to be true. For, ever since the
entrance of Bonaparte into Italy, he had been reduced
to a most humiliating condition ; his strongest fortresses
were in the possession of the French ; a garrison had been
placed in his capital; contributions were levied from his
subjects at the pleasure of the conquerors; and he was
reduced to such a situation, that, unable to protect him¬
self, he made a voluntary surrender of his continental do¬
minions, and agreed to retire to the island of Sardinia.
But a period was soon put to the dispute with Naples.
As the French retreated, the people of the country gave
them infinite trouble and uneasiness, and the Neapoli¬
tan troops scarcely observed the rules of modern warfare
towards such as they made prisoners. When, by orders
from General Mack, Bouchard summoned the castle of St
Angelo to surrender, he declared that he would view the
prisoners in the light of hostages for the conduct of the
garrison, and that a man should be put to death for every
gun which was fired from the castle. It is not to be ima¬
gined that the Neapolitan officers would have dared to
hold such language if they had not calculated on the vigo¬
rous co-operation of the Austrian forces; but in this ex¬
pectation they found themselves grievously disappointed,
and were ere long obliged to change their tone. The
Neapolitan troops were defeated by one fourth of their
number, at Terni, Porto Fermo, Civita Castellana, Otri-
coh, and Calvi; and as the army of Mack was speedily
reduced by defeat and desertion to less than twelve thou¬
sand men, he advised the king and his family to take re¬
fuge on board the British fleet which was then lying at Leg-
j1*?' This advice was adopted, and the royal family reach¬
ed Palermo in Sicily on the 27th of December. General
Mack now requested an armistice, which was refused •
and being driven from Capua, the only remaining post of
any importance in the Neapolitan territory, and in danger
16 ^lsa™cl-lon h*s troops, he surrendered himself
and the officers of his staff as prisoners to the republican
general. And such was the lame and impotent conclu-
Vr;
sion of a campaign undertaken in contempt of all prudence, Hist v
commenced with gasconading and cruelty, and carried on v,—^y i ^
in such a manner as to leave it exceedingly doubtful which 1%
was more remarkable, the utter incapacity of the officers,
or the abject cowardice of the troops.
In Naples there had long been a numerous body of men Condi
called Lazzaroni, who subsisted entirely on charity. These °f the
vagabonds frequently threatened the state if their wantszaroni
were not immediately supplied, and their submission was
often purchased by liberal contributions. Having been in¬
formed that the French, wherever they came, destroyed all
the monasteries and other sources of charity, this immense
gang of sturdy beggars determined to oppose them to the
utmost, and to appear forsooth as the advocates of royal go¬
vernment. In the beginning of January 1799 they exhi¬
bited marks of discontent, and at last broke out into open
insurrection. They appointed as their commander-in-chief
Prince Militorni, who, however, did his utmost to restrain
their violence and love of plunder. But all his efforts were
unavailing. They declared war against the French, forced
open the prisons, and murdered all who had been incarce¬
rated for disaffection to the government. Their ravages
now became so dreadful and boundless, that Prince Mfli-
torni abandoned them, and proceeded to Capua, where he
requested Championet to take possession of the city, in
order to rescue it from utter destruction. It was accord¬
ingly agreed that a column of French troops should ad¬
vance against the capital by a circuitous route, and endea¬
vour to enter the city from the opposite quarter. But be¬
fore this plan could be carried into execution, a great body
of the Lazzaroni marched out (on the 19th and 20th of Ja¬
nuary) to attack the French in the fortifications of Capua.
This daring attempt failed, as might have been expected,
and multitudes perished by the fire of the French artillery ;
but in order to favour the capture of Naples by the de¬
tachment sent for that purpose, Championet continued on
the defensive. On the 21st the Lazzaroni, informed that
a French column had marched for Naples, returned to the
city; and although Championet closely pursued them, they
arrived in time to barricade the streets, and prepare for the
defence of different quarters. A fierce conflict now com¬
menced, and lasted from the morning of the 22d till the
evening of the 23d of January, when, having been driven
from street to street, they finally rallied at one of the gates,
where they were almost totally cut off.
This advantage may be considered as the last which the Unpop
Directory obtained ; for the consequences of their past mis- rity of
conduct were now rapidly gathering around them. They f>irect(
were justly unpopular at home, both from their mode of
conducting public affairs, and their repeated violations of
the constitution. Their profusion was boundless, and the
demands which they made upon conquered countries exor¬
bitant. Championet was so ashamed of their proceedings,
that he refused to enforce their orders in Italy, and was
in consequence deprived of his command, and thrown into
prison ; whilst Scherer, the war minister, was appointed
his successor. Under the latter the rapacity of the govern¬
ment agents, and the embezzlement of the public stores,
were carried to an incredible extent. Still France continued
to be dreaded by foreign nations, to whom the true state
of her internal affairs was but imperfectly known. A
Russian army had arrived, but the cabinet of Vienna was
at a loss whether to declare war or temporise a little
Jonger. Britain solicited the aid of Prussia with an offer
of large subsidies; but Sieyes, the French plenipotentiary
at Berlin, artfully contrived to defeat the negotiation, and
counteract the unpopularity of his country in Germany,
Y giving to the world the secret convention of Campo
r ormio, which determined the greater number of the Ger¬
man princes to observe neutrality under the guardianship
oi a mssicU
FRANCE.
Ill
Kfsl
tperor.
|atory. On the 2d of January a note was presented to the congress
-Jvnr-' at Rastadt, by the French plenipotentiaries, intimating, that
% 1799. if the entrance of Russian troops into Germany was not pre-
Vir de- vented, it would be considered as tantamount to a declaration
^ the °fwar* To this no satisfactory answer was returned. On the
c' 26th of the same month the strong fortress of Ehrenbreit-
stein, which had been blockaded since the treaty of Campo
Formio, surrendered ; and the possession of this place, to¬
gether with that of Mayence and Dusseldorf, rendered the
French powerful on the Rhine. Switzerland and all the for¬
tified places of Italy were also in their hands, so that they
were fully prepared to commence active operations. At
this period Jourdan commanded on the Upper Rhine from
Mayence to Hunningen ; the eastern frontier of Switzer¬
land was occupied by Massena; Scherer commanded in
chief in Italy, with Moreau under him ; and Macdonald was
at the head of the troops in the Roman and Neapolitan ter¬
ritories. But these armies thus disseminated did not ex¬
ceed a hundred and seventy thousand men, a force greatly
inferior to that of Austria, independently altogether of the
Russian army. The Directory, however, trusting to the
unity of its own plans, the wavering politics of the court
of Vienna, and the slow movements of the imperial armies,
was anxious to renew the contest; and, accordingly, on the
13th of March war was declared against the emperor of
Germany and the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Jourdan had
actually crossed the Rhine at Strasburg on the first of that
month, and occupied strong positions in Suabia. Man-
heim was taken, and General Bernadotte summoned Phi-
lipsburg, whilst General St Cyr entered Stutgardt. To op¬
pose the march of this army, the Archduke Charles cross¬
ed the Lech upon the 4th of March ; whilst, on the other
side, Massena entered the territory of the Grisons, surpris¬
ed a strong body of Austrians, made the whole prisoners,
with their general and his staff.
But the plan of campaign could not be carried into
operation without the junction of Massena’s and Jour dan’s
armies; and to accomplish this it was necessary to carry
the important post of Feldkirch, which was occupied by
General Hotze. Defeated in his first attempt, Massena re¬
newed the attack five times with fresh troops; but the de¬
termined bravery of the Austrians rendered all his efforts
ineffectual. As the French, however, were in possession
of the Grisons, this facilitated the invasion of the Engadine,
where the Austrians being too weak to resist, retreated into
the Tyrol, and were pursued by the republicans, who for-
rt] ced some of the defiles, and pushed forward their flying
parties as far as Glurentz and Nauders.
The vanguard of the principal Austrian army now ad¬
vanced to meet the French, and on the 20th of March was
attacked by Jourdan, who drove in the enemy’s outposts ;
but on the following day the centre of the French army
was attacked, and forced to retire to Stockach during the
night. The archduke encamped before Stockach on the
24th, and the republicans again attacked him on the fol¬
lowing day. Their main object of attack was his right wing
under General Meerfeldt, which they succeeded in driving
into a wood between Liptingen and Stockach. Meerfeldt
renewed the conflict without success. But the left wing
having maintained its ground, sent reinforcements to Ge¬
neral Meerfeldt, who in his turn obliged the French to
retire. The French, however, made four thousand prison¬
ers during the various movements of the day. Yet their
loss was so great, and the Austrian force so much superior,
that Jourdan durst not hazard another engagement. He
therefore retreated on the following day, and, finding that
he was not a match for the enemy, sent part of his army to
cover Kehl and Strasburg, and marched with the remain¬
der towards Switzerland. By this event General Massena,
who was forcing his way into the Tyrol and Engadine, was
obliged to return to the protection of Switzerland. He
fiitle of
Sllkach.
was now appointed to the chief command in this quarter, History,
and Jourdan was removed.
The Austrians were not less successful in Italy, not- USQ-
withstanding they had been attacked by the French before *taly-
the termination of the armistice. General Kray obtained
a complete victory at Legnago, and forced the enemy to
fly for protection under the walls of Mantua. On the
15th of April they were again attacked by the Austrians
at Memiruolo, and forced to retreat after an obstinate re¬
sistance. The loss sustained by the French in these dif¬
ferent engagements was certainly great; but the Austrians
also purchased their success at a costly rate. Scherer at
first gained some advantages over them, but he wanted
the skill necessary to improve them. The Austrian posts
were forced by a division of his army on the 26th of
March, and four thousand men made prisoners; but ano¬
ther division being repulsed, Scherer withdrew his troops,
and thus relinquished the advantages he had obtained.
On the 5th of April the division under Moreau was again
successful, and took three thousand prisoners ; but, by the
unskilful measures of Scherer, he was not supported, and
the triumph of the Austrians was therefore complete.
A short time previous to this, the Russians had effected Suwarof.
a junction with the imperialists, and the command of the
combined army was given to Field-marshal Suwarof. The
Russian commander on the 24th of April advanced to¬
wards the Adda, and after carrying the outposts of Mo¬
reau, determined to attack him in his intrenchments. Su¬
warof maintained a show of attack along the whole line
of Moreau, whilst he secretly threw a bridge amongst the
rocks at the upper part of the river, where such an opera¬
tion had been considered as impossible. By this bridge
part of the combined army next morning turned the re¬
publican fortifications, and attacked their flank and rear,
whilst the remainder forced the passage of the river at
different points. The French fought with their usual in¬
trepidity, but were soon driven from all their positions,
and forced to retreat towards Pavia, with the loss of six
thousand men killed, five thousand prisoners including
four generals, and eighty pieces of cannon.
General Moreau now established the remains of his
army, amounting to about twelve thousand men, upon the
Po, between Alessandria and Valentia, where, on the 11th
of May, he forced a body of Austrians to retreat, and
took a number of prisoners. On the 12th about seven
thousand Russians crossed the Po at Basignano, and
marched towards Pecetto, when Moreau fell upon them
with incredible fury ; and as they obstinately refused to
lay down their arms, about two thousand of their number
were drowned in repassing the river, and a few taken pri¬
soners. On the advance of Suwarof, General Moreau was
under the necessity of retiring to occupy the Bochetta,
as well as other passes leading to the territory of Genoa,
when the combined army commenced the sieges of the
fortified places in Italy then occupied by the French.
Bellegarde drove the French from the Engadine; Massena,
pressed by the archduke, was obliged to retire to the vici¬
nity of Zurich; and nearly the whole of Piedmont had
risen against the republicans. The armies received no re¬
inforcements from the interior of France, and their officers
were obliged to act upon the defensive. In one instance
only they had the power of acting on the offensive, and it
was certainly done with great vigour. General Macdonald
had still a considerable army in the territories of Naples
and of Rome; and the combined powers had made no
effort to cut off his retreat, which, indeed, could scarcely
be accomplished in the mountainous countries of Tuscany
and Genoa. Knowing his situation secure, he was in no
haste to withdraw, although nearly the whole of the coun¬
try between him and France was occupied by the allies.
His army amounted to about thirty thousand men, and he
112
FRANCE.
1799.
History, had received orders from the Directory to leave the terri-
' tories of Rome and Naples, and unite, if possible, with the
army of Moreau. From the situation of the allies, how¬
ever, he resolved to hazard an action by himself. With
Moreau he had concerted a plan for dividing the enemy,
and vanquishing them in detail, as Bonaparte had pre¬
viously done with so much success. Macdonald alone was
in a situation to strike an important blow; but it was never-
by a small garrison. But Sir Sidney Smith received the Histoi
command, and detained Bonaparte sixty days before Acre, ''■"Y'l
although the number of the garrison by whom it was de- 1799
fended scarcely exceeded three thousand men. The French
commander made eleven successive attempts to carry the
place by assault; but in all these he proved unsuccessful,
and was at last obliged to raise the siege, after he had
lost eight generals, eighty-five inferior officers, and nearly
theless necessary that Moreau should draw upon himself one half of his army. The successful defence of this place
as many of the Austro-Russian forces as possible, in order destroyed \X\e prestige of invincibility, and mainly contri-
that the remainder might be the more completely exposed buted to decide the fate of the French army in Egypt,
to the attack of Macdonald. Whilst France experienced such reverses abroad, she Murder
Stratagem Moreau artfully availed himself of the circumstance was much disturbed also by internal commotions, and thetheFrei
of Moreau. 0f tjie French and Spanish fleets being in the vicinity of Directory now found itself in a most critical situation. amtass&
Genoa, to spread a report that they had brought him The new elections were still unfavourable to their inte-clorsat
powerful reinforcements, intending thereby to withdraw rest, and they could no longer command a majority in the^sta^
the attention of Suwarof from Macdonald. The Russian Councils. When they sought money they met with re¬
general was at Turin, and his advanced posts were at Susa,
Fignerol, and the Col d’Assiette, whilst General Flohen-
zollern was stationed at Modena with a considerable force,
and General Ott occupied Reggio with ten thousand men.
General Macdonald began his operations on the 12th of
June, when his advanced divisions attacked and defeated
Hohenzollern, and made two thousand prisoners. Gene¬
ral Ott was also attacked, and compelled to retreat, upon
which the French made their entry into Parma on the
proaches for their profusion ; and royalist insurrections in
the west and south were with difficulty subdued, on ac¬
count of the absence of the military. But in the midst of
these difficulties an event occurred which seemed to pro¬
mise the Directory the return of their former influence.
On the 28th of April the French plenipotentiaries having
received orders to quit Rastadt in twenty-four hours,
demanded passports from Colonel Barbasey, but were in¬
formed that none could grant these excepting the comman
14th. The Austrian general was again attacked on the der-in-chief. They accordingly set out without passports.
17th, and forced to retire towards Giovanni; but here the The three ministers, Bonnier, Roberjot, and Jean Debry,
progress of the French was arrested by a more powerful
and determined antagonist.
French de- Suwarof having received information of the approach
feated by an(j successes of Macdonald, left Turin on the 15th of
auwaror.
were in separate carriages, Roberjot having his wife, and
Jean Debry his wife and daughters along with him ; and
they were attended by the ministers of the Cisalpine Re¬
public. At a short distance from Rastadt, however, they
June, at the head of twenty thousand men, and came up were met by fifty Austrian hussars, who stopped the car-
with the enemy upon the banks of the Tidone. The centre riage of Jean Debry, and fiercely demanded his name,
and right wing of Suwarof’s army were commanded by Debry gave them the information required, adding, that
Rosenberg and Forster; the Austrian general, Melas, he was a French minister returning to his own country,
commanded the left wing; Prince Bagration was at the He was immediately torn from his carriage, desperately
head of the advanced guard; and Prince Lichtenstein
commanded the reserve. An action immediately ensued,
and was continued with desperate fury for three succes¬
sive days, when victory at length declared in favour of Su¬
warof. Driven from the Tidone to the Trebbia, the French
were finally defeated on the 19th, after a greater slaugh
wounded with sabres, and thrown into a ditch for dead ;
whilst Bonnier and Roberjot were murdered outright on
the spot. When the ruffians departed, the carriages re¬
turned to Rastadt, and Jean Debry wandered all night in
the woods. Next day he retraced his steps, and demand¬
ed the restitution of the papers which the assassins had
ter on both sides than the oldest officer ever recollected carried off when they plundered the carriages; but these
to lave witnessed. \ ictqry had remained doubtful until were refused. Rastadt and its vicinity had been occu¬
pied by French troops during the sitting of the congress,
and the Austrians had obtained possession of the place
only a few days before. In any view, therefore, this event
General Kray arrived with large reinforcements from the
army besieging Mantua, and, in direct contempt of his
orders, decided the fortune of this protracted and terrible
battle. The republicans retreated during the night, and
were next day pursued by the army of Suwarof formed in
two columns. Seldom could the French be overtaken in
retreat; but this the victorious barbarian accomplished,
was a severe reproach to the discipline of the Austrian
army; but it is probable that more than the want of su¬
bordination was at the bottom of a crime so atrocious, in¬
deed unprecedented in the history of civilized nations.
and having surrounded the rear-guard, obliged them to The archduke, it is true, lost no time in declaring his ut-
lay down their arms. The rest of the army defended ter ignorance of the matter, in a letter addressed to Mas-
themselves in the passes of the Appennmes and territory sena; but this was far from giving satisfaction to the Di-
o Genoa, after losing nearly half their numbers in killed, rectory or to France. In a message to the Councils on the
™dL;d; f,1^ 1^area^,’ ^ ^le inieanLtirne5 gave 5th of May, they accordingly described it as a premedi-
battle to the Austrians under Bellegarde who, though tated act o^
greatly superior in numbers, were totally defeated. But to insult France by the murder of her ambassadors.
11s empoiary a vantage proved of little avail. Suwarof The introduction of a new third this year into the legis-Sieyes clu
Moreau wa^rnmnl^11! Pursu^p.0* Macdonald, and lature was the commencement of a violent opposition to the sci/a
nMowZrIna : ’ • 16 f(\rtrfses ofuItaly directory. Sieyes, who had been ambassador at Berlin, ber of the
C““b.1”ed a?d possessed considerable influence over all parties, was™**-'
Siege of
Acre.
P°TheS ‘n luat C°Unt7: e,ected a member of the Directory. This station he re-
Palestine. fos?d,t0 °„ccuPy on the establishment of the constitution,
made himselfmaTter uf tbe Mamhjkes> anti and therefore his acceptance of it at such a critical junc-
ffid an ar7v fn7pale«Bnt A tUre excited surPrise- Treilhard was removed upon the pre-
men wtth^ffirers Imiientl ° 7 tll0usfnd ^nce that he held an office in the state within less
men, with officers eminently skilled in war, he reached than a year previously to his election • and Merlin and Re-
Acre on the sea-coast, and laid siege in due form to this veillere-Lepeaux we/e under the neces^ty of restning m
town, winch was but .nifferently iortified, and defended avoid a threatened impeachment. Barras, however” itffl
kirof
FRANCE.
1 story, retained his place, and Moulins, Gohier, and Ducos, men
Wv—little known, were chosen members of the Directory. An at-
7y9, tempt was made to revive public spirit by the establishment
of clubs ; a proceeding of which the Jacobins were the first
to take advantage. They soon proposed violent measures,
and began to denounce the members as well as the conduct
of government. But their intemperance having alarmed
the Directory, permission was at length obtained from the
Councils to suppress their meetings.
B;fle of The Directory now employed every effort to reinforce
N rfi. the armies which had lately suffered such dreadful losses.
In the beginning of August the army of Italy amounted to
forty-five thousand men, and General Joubert was promot¬
ed to the chief command. Turin, Alessandria, Milan, Pes-
chiera, and Ferrara, were captured by the allies with as¬
tonishing rapidity. Turin sustained a bombardment of
only three days, Alessandria held out seven, and Mantua
only fourteen ; the latter place contained thirteen thousand
men, who were dismissed on their parole. The combined
forces next laid siege to Tortona; but General Joubert re¬
solved to attempt its relief, which he expected to accom¬
plish before the arrival of Kray with reinforcements. On
the 13th of August, the whole of the Austrian posts were
driven in by the republicans, who took possession of Novi.
But on the 15th they were attacked by Suwarofr who had
by this time received reinforcements from Mantua under
General Kray. The right wing was commanded by Kray,
the left by Melas, and the centre by Prince Bagration
and Suwarof in person. The engagement commenced
about five o’clock in the morning ; but soon afterwards Ge¬
neral Joubert, whilst urging his troops forward to charge
with the bayonet, received a musket shot in his body, and
falling from his horse, immediately expired. Moreau now
assumed the command, and after a bloody conflict the allied
army gave way in all directions. The Russians in particu¬
lar suffered severely from the obstinate manner in which
they fought. The French line was attacked at three in
the afternoon, but remained unbroken; and the whole
would have terminated in the defeat of the allies if Gene¬
ral Melas had not turned the right flank of the republican
line, and, following up his advantages, obtained posses¬
sion of Novi, when the French army began to retire under
the direction of General Moreau. The French now lost
all hope of being able to defend Genoa, and therefore pre¬
pared to evacuate that city and territory. The Directory
fully expected that the south of France would immediately
he invaded; but in this they were happily deceived. The
conquered army was astonished to find itself unmolested
after so signal a defeat, and in a few days sent back parties
to reconnoitre the movements of the allies. Championet,
the successor of Joubert, was amazed to discover that they
had rather retreated than advanced, on which account he
resumed the positions which the army had occupied before
the battle of Novi.
Su rof So far from prosecuting the advantages which he had
thetuef0 °^taine^ in Italy, Suwarof was persuaded to abandon that
Of I -itzer- country with the Russian troops, and to march to the de¬
liverance of Switzerland. In the month of August, the
army of Massena in this quarter amounted to seventy thou¬
sand men, a force which not only prevented the archduke
from pursuing his advantages, but even enabled the French
to threaten his position ; and the right wing under General
Lecourbe had carried Mount St Gothard, the great pass
leading from the eastern parts of Switzerland into Italy.
Suwarof’s expectations were no doubt high, as he had
never yet been beaten; and he felt flattered in being called
upon to undertake an enterprise in which the Austrians
had hitherto failed, even under their most fortunate general.
But when he was ready to march, the Austrian commander
in Italy refused to furnish him with mules for transporting
his baggage, and asserted that he would be furnished with a
VOL. x.
] 13
competent number at Bellinzone, where, however, none were History,
to be found. Suwarof had therefore no alternative but to dis-
mount his cavalry, and make use of their horses to drag along 1799.
the baggage. In spite of all obstacles, however, he arrived,
by forced marches, on the frontiers of Switzerland, upon the
very day which he had stipulated with the archduke. But the
archduke, either supposing that it would demean a prince
of the house of Austria to serve under a Russian general,
or not having courage enough to require the most expe¬
rienced general in Europe to receive orders from one so
much his junior, immediately marched into Suabia, and car¬
ried with him a large body of troops. It is not easy to con¬
ceive upon what principle the council of war at Vienna
could imagine that so very able an officer as Massena would
continue inactive at the head of an army almost double
that which had been sent to oppose him. The archduke
marched against the French in Suabia, who resisted him
as long as the small number of their troops would permit;
but they were gradually driven towards the Rhine. To
carry on the deception, however, they made a serious stand
in the vicinity of Manheim, where they lost nearly eighteen
hundred men.
In the mean time Switzerland was completely exposed
to the army of Massena. The right wing of the combined
army was commanded by General Hotze ; the centre, com¬
posed of the newly arrived Russians, was headed by Kor-
sakof, and the left wing by General Nauendorf. As soon
as Massena understood that the archduke had entered Man¬
heim, and that Suwarof was approaching Switzerland by
St Gothard, he commenced his movements, and, as St Go¬
thard was defended by Lecourbe, determined to anticipate
the Russian general. Having by a false attack, on the 24th
of September, drawn the attention of the Russians to an¬
other quarter, he suddenly crossed the Limmat, three leagues
from Zurich. Some French divisions now engaged the
Austrians, but the main body of the army marched against
the Russians. Hotze fell in the beginning of the action,
and Petrasch, who succeeded him, saved himself from a
total defeat by retiring in the night with the loss of four
thousand men. The Russians fought with singular obsti¬
nacy, though in a mountainous country to which they were
strangers, and contending against the ablest commanders
in Europe. It was in vain to attempt to put them to flight,
for even when surrounded they refused to lay down their
arms, and stood to be slaughtered on the spot. But the
Austrians having retreated on the 25th, the Russians on
the 28th followed their example, retiring in good order
under General Korsakof, but with the loss of three thousand
men, which, considering their perilous situation, was not
very great.
During these transactions General Suwarof was advan- Suwarof
cing from Italy with an army of from fifteen to eighteen disgusted
thousand men. Having carried the pass of St Gothard, he^jj^^f
descended into the valley of Urseren, drove Lecourbe be- Austria. °
fore him with great slaughter, and advanced as far as Al-
torf. He next day reached the canton of Glaris, and made a
thousand prisoners, whilst General Linken defeated another
corps of thirteen hundred men. Massena now turned upon
Suwarof, and surrounding him on all sides, expected to
take both the field-marshal himself and the grand duke
Constantine prisoners. But Suwarof defended himself in
a masterly manner, and there being one pass in the moun¬
tains which the republicans had left unoccupied, the vete¬
ran discovered it, and thus effected his escape, but lost his
cannon and baggage amongst the dreadful precipices with
which the country abounds. He made his way through the
country of the Grisons, and arrived at Coire with only about
six thousand men. When Suwarof discovered in what man¬
ner affairs had been conducted, when he ascertained the
perilous situation in which the Russians had been left
by the archduke, and saw the destruction which had in
P
114
History
1799.
FRANCE.
British in
vasion of
Holland.
consequence overtaken them, his indignation knew no
bounds ; he considered himself and his men as betrayed,
complained bitterly of the commander of the allies in Swit¬
zerland, publicly charged the council of war at Vienna with
selfishness and injustice, and refused any longer to co-ope¬
rate with the Austrian army. He transmitted an account
of the whole to Petersburg, and withdrew his forces to the
vicinity of Augsburg, there to wait for further orders from
his court.
In the mean time Great Britain made active preparations
to invade Holland, with an army of forty thousand men,
composed of British troops and Russian auxiliaries. The
first division, under General Sir Ralph Abercromby, sailed
in the month of August, protected by a fleet under Admi¬
ral Duncan; but bad weather prevented any attempt to
land the troops till the morning of the 27th, when the dis¬
embarkation was effected without opposition, at the Helder
Point. As the invaders had not been expected to land in
North Holland, there were but few troops in that neighbour¬
hood to oppose them. But before the British had proceeded
far they were met by a considerable body of infantry, caval-
ry, and artillery, hastily collected from the adjacent towns.
The Dutch fought with great obstinacy, but, fatigued by the
steady opposition of their antagonists, they fell back about
two leagues, and in the night evacuated the fort of Helder,
which was taken possession of by the British on the morn¬
ing of the 28th. Admiral Mitchell now entered the Zuyder-
Zee with a detachment of the British fleet, in order to give
battle to the Dutch under Admiral Story ; but the latter,
instead of retiring to the shallow water with which that sea
abounds, surrendered his whole fleet, on the 30th of August,
without firing a gun, pretending that from the mutinous
disposition of his seamen he could not prevail upon them
to fight. If the expedition had terminated here it would
have been fortunate. This success, however, was followed
up by an attempt to restore the authority of the stadtholder,
and to re-establish the ancient form of government. But as
no more than the first division had arrived, the terror of
invasion began to be dissipated, the enemies of the new go¬
vernment became disheartened, and time was allowed to pre¬
pare for defence. Nor were these the only errors chargeable
against the expedition. The British troops were landed in
the worst place which could possibly have been selected, in
a part of the country everywhere intersected by ditches
and canals, and abounding more than any other with per¬
sons disaffected to the person and government of the stadt¬
holder ; and this unfortunate expedition was undertaken to¬
wards the approach of the rainy season, when a campaign
in Holland is next to impossible. An invasion of Holland
seemed so natural an operation on the part of Britain, and
one too which might be undertaken with so many advan¬
tages by a power which had the command of the sea, that
when it was first talked of the French Directory hesitated
to undertake the defence of that country; but when the
time and the place of disembarkation came to be known, the
prospect of an almost certain success put an end to every
doubt on the subject; and General Brune was accordingly
sent with such troops as could be hastily collected, to co-ope¬
rate with General Daendels. In the mean while, as no rein¬
forcement had arrived, General Abercromby could only act
on the defensive; and the enemy, encouraged by his want
of activity, ventured to attack him on the 10th of Septem¬
ber. Two columns of Dutch and one of republicans advan¬
ced against the invaders, but were repulsed in every direc¬
tion, and forced to retreat to Alkmaer. On the 13th addi¬
tional troops an-ived under the Duke of York, who now as¬
sumed the chief command ; and the Russians having also ar¬
rived, the army, upon the 19th, assumed the offensive. The
left wing under General Abercromby advanced along the
shore of the Zuyder-Zee to attack Hoorne ; Generals Dun-
das and Pulteney commanded the centre columns; and the
Russians were led by their own general D’Herman. But, His™
owing to some misconception, the Russians advanced to
attack the enemy about three o’clock in the morning, some D
hours before the rest of the army had begun its march. Their
first efforts, however, were crowned with success, and they
made themselves masters of the village of Bergen ; but as
they pressed too eagerly forward, without waiting for the co¬
operation of the other columns, the enemy nearly surround¬
ed them ; their general was made prisoner; and notwith¬
standing that the British troops came up in time to cover
their retreat, they lost upwards of three thousand men.
This defeat of the right wing induced the commander-in-
chief to recall his troops from their advanced positions, not¬
withstanding Abercromby had by this time made himself
master of Hoorne and its garrison, and Pulteney had carried
by assault the chief position of the Dutch army. The seve¬
rity of the weather prevented any fresh attack being made
till the 2d of October. On that day, however, an action
was fought between the British and the united Dutch and
French troops, which was warmly contested, and did not
terminate till late in the evening, when the British regain¬
ed possession of Alkmaer and the neighbouring villages.
But as this engagement had taken place among the sand¬
hills near the sea, the fatigue which the troops had under¬
gone prevented them from profiting by their victory ; and
the fugitives were enabled to take up a position between
Baverwyck and Wyck-op-Zee. Here they were again at¬
tacked on the 6th by the Duke of York, who after a san¬
guinary contest kept possession of the field. This, however,
was the last success gained by the invading army. The
Duke of York, finding that he could make no further pro¬
gress, that the enemy had been rapidly reinforced, and that
the difficulties presented by the face of the country and the
badness of the weather also conspired against him, retired
to Schager Brug, where he waited for fresh orders from
England. But being closely pressed by the enemy, the em¬
barkation of the troops must have been effected with great
difficulty, had he not entered into a convention with the
Dutch and French that his retreat should not be molested,
in return for which he engaged not to injure the country
by demolishing any of the dikes which defended it against
the sea, and also to restore to France and Holland eight
thousand prisoners taken before the present campaign.
The aftairs of the French Republic now began to wear a FrencI
more favourable aspect. Championet, it is true, had been affairs,
defeated in Italy, and Ancona surrendered on the 13th of
November to General Frolich; but the French were still
masters of the Genoese territory, Switzerland, and Hol¬
land ; and the new combination formed against them seem¬
ed about to be dissolved. Prussia withdrew at an early pe¬
riod, and still preserved a neutrality ; and, from the fate of
Suwarof’s army, it was reasonable to conclude that the em¬
peror of Russia would also desert the cause of the allies.
But the crisis of the directorial government was now fast Itevolu
approaching. Bonaparte, on his retreat from Syria, had of the 1
received intelligence that a Turkish army, supported by a Brumai
fleet, was about to invade Egypt. He hastened his return
across the desert, and arrived in the vicinity of the Pyra¬
mids on the 11th of July, when he found that an army
consisting of eighteen thousand Moslemins had landed at
Aboukir, carried that place by assault, and put the garri¬
son, consisting of five hundred men, to the sword. On the
15th he marched against these new invaders, and ten days
afterwards not only defeated, but annihilated, their whole
force, slaying about half their number, and driving the re¬
mainder into the sea. On the 10th of October the Direc¬
tory received a dispatch announcing this victory; and on
the 14th of the same month the less agreeable intelligence
was communicated, that Bonaparte, accompanied with his
principal officers, had landed on the shores of Provence.
Ihe state to which France had been reduced under the
FRANCE.
^history, directorial regime was truly deplorable. Not to mention
u-v''-1' the disastrous defeats which had been sustained by the
799. French army, the loss of Italy, and of all the advantages se¬
cured to the Republic by the treaty of Campo Formio, the
provinces had fallen into a state of extreme disorganization ;
the roads were infested with brigands ; and, by the law of
hostages, all persons nobly born, or related to the nobility,
were obliged either to skulk in concealment, or to join the
insurgent bands. The rich were vexed with the same ex¬
actions as in the early period of the Revolution, when the
country was menaced with invasion; the great mass of
the population had been decimated by the consumption of
the armies ; the fields in many places remained uncultivat¬
ed ; disorder and misery everywhere prevailed. The ne¬
cessity of a change was every day becoming more and more
obvious ; and whatever difference of opinion there might
be in the capital, the provinces were prepared to submit
to any government which might supersede the Directory.
Even the members of this body itself had become convin¬
ced that the period of its demise was at no great distance.
Barras treated with the Bourbons ; Sieyes had repeatedly
remarked that the chief thing wanting was a head; others
held similar language ; and the minds of all, excepting the
extreme democrats, were prepared for a change.
Bonaparte, on his arrival, repaired to the Luxembourg.
The Directory praised and feared, but dared not reproach
him with the bold step he had taken in returning to France.
He had evidently come to watch the course of events, and
with this view shut himself up in a modest mansion in the
Rue Chantereine. But it soon appeared that he was the
loadstone which drew to it all interests and all ambition ;
ministers, generals, deputies, men in office who desired to re¬
tain their places, and men out of office who desired to dis¬
possess the actual occupants, flocked in crowds to General
Bonaparte. All parties in fact made overtures to him ; the
extreme democrats, who sought in him an instrument, and
the moderates, who desired the re-establishment of order at
almost any price. Not to have picked up the fragments of
sovereign power which thus crumbled and fell «t his feet,
would have been an act of self-denial unexampled in the
annals of ambition. The country had despaired of obtaia-
ing at once a free and an efficient government; and, torn
by the violence of contending factions, it now languished for
repose. Bonaparte took several days to mature his plans,
and decide on the course which he was to adopt. The de¬
mocrats and moderates were equally eager in their advan¬
ces. But his revolutionary connections inclined him to the
former; and as his brother Lucien had, in compliment to
him, been chosen president of the Council of Five Hundred,
Bonaparte proposed, through this party, to become Director
in room of Sieyes. Gohier and Moulins w ere accordingly
sounded, but these pragmatical blockheads objected on the
ground of the law wdiich required that a director should
be forty years of age. The facility of getting a dispensa¬
tion voted was hinted at; but they persisted, not seeing the
inevitable consequences of their obstinacy ; and Bonaparte
instantly joined Sieyes and the moderates, with whom he
planned a change, not only in the members, but also in the
form of government. But to effect this, it was necessary
to commence with a coup d'etat, or revolution; and the
success of the latter must in a great measure depend on
the support of the military. Of that order Bonaparte was
the natural representative, and great exertions were now
employed to secure its co-operation. He could reckon on
the inferior officers and the troops ; their idol is always a
victorious leader. But three of the generals, Moreau, Au-
gereau, and Bernadette, were either too high in rank to
stoop to a comrade, or too republican in principle to ac¬
quiesce in a project of revolution which might terminate
in establishing a despotism. Moreau, however, was irre¬
solute, and being discontented with the Directory, suffer¬
ed himself to be neutralized, if not gained over; Augereau,
brave in the field of battle, wanted political courage and
conduct; and even Bernadette, who had both, and argued
stoutly against Bonaparte, was stilled, awed, or duped by
his address.
On the 18th of Brumaire, the day fixed for this revolu¬
tion, Bonaparte summoned all the generals and officers in
Paris to an early breakfast. It was a kind of levee ; some
regiments were to be reviewed; and it was necessary to
harangue the troops. The Directors Barras, Moulins,
and Gohier, were kept in ignorance of the plot; they in¬
habited the same palace, that of the Luxembourg, and,
forming a majority of the Directory, might have done mis¬
chief. The first step, however, had all the forms of le¬
gality. The Council of Ancients, in which the influence
of Sieyes predominated, met at six in the morning, and
passed the preconcerted decree removing the sittings of
the legislative body to Saint Cloud, and conferring upon
Bonaparte the command of the troops in the capital. The
decree was brought to Bonaparte in the midst of his levee,
and immediately communicated to the officers present,
whom he also addressed. The moment for action had
now arrived. Seizing Lefebvre by the arm, he presented
him with a sword, and won the rough soldier by a few
magical words. The decree of the Legislative Assem¬
bly secured the obedience of Moreau. Bernadette alone
stood firm, but he was not permitted to retire, until he
had given a promise not to raise agitations, harangue the
soldiers, or act in any way until legally summoned. Hav¬
ing thus made himself certain of the military, Bonaparte
rode to the Tuileries, reviewed the troops, and watched
the course of events. Talleyrand had been sent to the
Luxembourg to induce Barras to resign, and the latter had
sent his secretary to the Tuileries to collect tidings. The
directorial emissary was brought to Bonaparte, who in¬
stantly addressed him as if he had been the Directory it¬
self : “ What have you done with France, which I left so
brilliant ? I left peace and I find war, victories and I find
reverses ; I left you the millions of Italy, and I find nothing
but spoliation and misery. WTere are the hundred thou¬
sand soldiers, my companions in glory ? They are dead.”
This was spoken to excite the officers around, and to dis¬
pose them to march against the Luxembourg, which he was
now prepared to do. But the prudence of Barras rendered
such a step unnecessary. Having received from Talleyrand
a promise of oblivion for the past, wealth and impunity for
the future, he signed his resignation, and left the capital
for his house in the country, attended by an escort of dra¬
goons. Moulins and Gohier, less accommodating, were
ordered to be put under a guard in the Luxembourg, and
Moreau was charged with this invidious duty. As Sieyes
and Ducos had also resigned, the Directory was now vir¬
tually dissolved; and all that remained to be done was to
replace it with a new executive government.
On the following day, being the 19th of Brumaire, the
members of the two Councils met at Saint Cloud. Bona¬
parte had occupied the road and the environs of the cha¬
teau with troops ; but his project was still far from being-
accomplished. The democratic majority in the Council of
Five Hundred were indignant; the moderate majority in
the Council of Ancients wavered as the crisis approached ;
and whilst the one prepared for extremities, the other be¬
gan to repent their own act, and to be apprehensive of the
intentions of Bonaparte. When the Councils met, the
greatest agitation prevailed. In the Five Hundred the oath
of fidelity to the constitution was renewed ; and it was fear¬
ed that some similar demonstration would be made by the
Ancients. Informed of this dangerous spirit of resistance,
Bonaparte resolved to confront, and if possible put it down
by his presence. Surrounded by his staff”, he accordingly
entered the Council of the Ancients, and addressed their
115
History.
116
FRANCE.
1799.
History, president, but with so much confusion both of language
and of manner that his partisans began to despair. “ Re¬
presentatives,” said he, “ you are on a volcano. I was
tranquil yesterday when your decree was brought me, and
I have come with my comrades to your aid. On this ac¬
count I am recompensed with calumnies. I am stigma¬
tized as a Cromwell and a Caesar. If such were my cha¬
racter, I had no need of coming here.” He then mention¬
ed the resignation of the Directors, the distress of the coun¬
try, and the agitated state of the Council of Five Hun¬
dred, upon which, he said, no dependence could be pla¬
ced ; and he besought the Ancients to save the Revolution,
liberty, and equality. “ And the constitution,” exclaimed
a voice. “ The constitution!” repeated Bonaparte, paus¬
ing and collecting himself; “ I tell you, you have no con¬
stitution. You violated it in Fructidor, in Floreal, and in
Prairial, when you seized by force and condemned the na¬
tional representatives, when you annulled the popular elec¬
tions, when you compelled three directors to resign. The
constitution, forsooth ! a name at once invoked and violat¬
ed by every faction in turn. What force can it possess,
when it has ceased to command even respect ? The govern¬
ment, if you would have such a thing, must be fixed on a
new basis.” Having thus shown the necessity of the re¬
volution, he then proceeded to re-assure his partisans, by
promising it success; and, pointing to the glittering bayo¬
nets of the soldiers, “ I am accompanied,” added he, “ by
the god of fortune and of war.” The Ancients applauded
this speech, and Bonaparte, satisfied with the effect it had
produced, hurried to the other wing of the chateau, where,
in the Orangery, the Council of Five Hundred were in a
state of extreme excitement. Leaving his staff behind, he
advanced into the hall, whilst the grenadiers who followed
him remained at the door. As he proceeded towards the
chair, which was occupied by his brother Lucien, a violent
tumult ensued, and the epithets “ Cromwell,” “ Caesar,”
“ Usurper,” were freely applied to him from all parts of
the house. Had the assembly heard him calmly, and then
voted him a traitor or outlaw, his career might have been
speedily closed; for Jourdan and Augereau were both
without, and might easily have withheld or drawn off the
soldiers. Instead of this, however, the exasperated depu¬
ties sprang from their seats as soon as he appeared, and
pressing upon him, collared, hustled, and maltreated him,
whilst Arena Corsican endeavoured to dispatch him with a
dagger. The grenadiers flew to his assistance, and rescued
him from their fury. “Let us outlaw him ; a vote of out¬
lawry,” was the instant cry of the assembly ; “ let him be
treated like Robespierre, let him be put /tors la loi” But
Lucien refused to put the decree to the vote; he resisted,
gained time, and at length, when about to be overpowered,
was borne out of the hall by the grenadiers whom Napoleon
sent to his assistance. Throughout the whole of this trying
scene the civilian showed more courage and presence of
mind than the soldier. Divesting himself of his robes, Lu¬
cien mounted a horse and harangued the troops, telling
them that the majority of the Council of Five Hundred
were held in terror by a few democrats armed with poni¬
ards, who menaced them, and attempted to assassinate the
general. This declaration produced a great impression ;
and the demand whether they might be reckoned on was
answered with acclamations by the troops. A company of
grenadiers was instantly ordered to clear the Orangery.
They advanced from the one end to the other with fixed
bayonets, whilst the deputies escaped by the wfindows and
through the woods, leaving in their retreat fragments of
their robes upon almost every bush. In the evening of the
same day the Council of Ancients, and about fifty mem¬
bers of the dispersed Council of Five Hundred, passed a
decree abolishing the Directory, and establishing in its
room three consuls, Bonaparte, Sieyes, and Roger Ducos,
1111;
as a provisional government, which, in concert with two Hist
committees chosen from each council, was authorized to v—
prepare a constitution. 18(
The plan of a new constitution was presented to the A con
public by the consuls in the month of December 1799.gover
According to this plan, eighty men, who had the power of ment
nominating their own successors, and were called the Con-tablisl
servative Senate, had likewise authority to elect the whole
of the legislators and executive rulers of the state, whilst
none of these offices could be held by themselves. One
man, called the chief or first consul, was to possess the so¬
vereign authority, to hold his office for ten years, and to be
competent to be re-elected ; and other two consuls were to
assist in his deliberations, but to have no power to control
his will. The legislative power was divided into two as¬
semblies ; the Tribunate, composed of a hundred members,
and the Conservative Senate, of three hundred. When the
first consul thought proper to propose a law, the Tribunate
might debate upon it, without having authority to vote
either for or against it, whilst the members of the Senate
might vote, but were not entitled to debate. The consuls
and the members of the legislative body, as well as of the
Conservative Senate, were not responsible for their con¬
duct ; but the ministers of state employed by them were
understood to be accountable. The committees which
framed the constitution nominated the persons who were
to execute the functions of government. Bonaparte was
appointed first consul, and Cambaceres and Lebrun second
and third consuls. Sieyes, as formerly, declined taking
any active part in the administration of public affairs, and
received, as a gratuity for his services, an estate belonging
to the nation, called Crosne, in the department of the
Seine and Oisne.
Bonaparte had not been long in possession of the reins Bonapi
of government, when he made overtures for negotiating Pr°posf
peace with the allied powers at war with France. Separate
proposals were made to the different belligerent powers, ^rit™
no doubt with a view to dissolve the coalition ; but the de¬
crees of the Convention which had declared war against all
the powers of Lurope still remained unrepealed. Departing
fjjom the forms sanctioned by the custom of nations in car¬
rying on diplomatic correspondence, he addressed a letter
directly to his Britannic majesty, the substance of which
was, whether the war, which had for eight years ravaged
the four quarters of the globe, was to be eternal ? and whe¬
ther there were no means by which Britain and France
might come to a good understanding ? To these questions
the British ministry made a formal and elaborate reply,
in which they dwelt much on the bad faith of the revolu-
tionaiy rulers, and the instability of the governments of
France since the subversion of the monarchy. The over-
tuie transmitted to Vienna was of a similar description, and
experienced similar treatment; but, irritated by the shame¬
ful treatment of Suwarof while carrying on the war in Italy
and Switzerland, the emperor of Russia abandoned the coa¬
lition.
1
On the 7th of March Bonaparte sent a message to the
egislative body, containing his ideas as to the conduct and
designs of the British cabinet, and assuring them that he
would invoke peace in the midst of battles and triumphs,
and fight only for the happiness of France and the repose
of the world. This message was followed by two decrees ;
tie one calling, in the name of honour, upon every soldier
absent upon leave from the armies of Italy and the Rhine,
to join them before the 5th of April; and the other appoint¬
ing a fresh army of reserve to be assembled at Dijon, un-
dei the immediate command of the first consul.
bout this time the belligerent powers were nearly ready Affairs 1
to open the campaign both in Italy and on the Rhine. Laly,
the Genoese Republic formed the only territory of anv
importance in Italy, which remained in the hands of the
FRANCE.
117
i- (story. French ; but the army by which it was defended had been
very much reduced since the preceding year, and might be
800.
CM paign
onine
11 ie-
considered as in a state of mutiny, from the want of pay,
clothes, and provisions. The Austrians were most anxious
to obtain possession of Genoa and its dependencies ; and in
this they were seconded by the Genoese themselves, who
regarded the republicans as the destroyers of their com¬
merce. Massena received the command of the army in
Genoa, with extraordinary powers, and by his conduct
proved himself a general of consummate abilities. Carrying
with him a reinforcement of troops from Lyons and Mar¬
seilles, and reducing to order and obedience all whom he
had found ready to desert their standards, he was soon at
the head of a force sufficient to check the progress of the
Austrians, and to keep the Genoese in subjection. But
after a number of battles, all of them most vigorously con¬
tested, he was at length obliged to retire within the city,
where he had soon an opportunity of distinguishing him¬
self by one of the ablest and most obstinate defences on
record. The appearance of the British fleet on the 5th
of April was the preconcerted signal for Melas to attack
Genoa, the communication between which and France
was thus cut off. But previously to the arrival of Lord
Keith, a quantity of wheat and other provisions had been
thrown into the city, by which means the army and the
inhabitants were rescued from immediate famine. The sur¬
rounding country was soon occupied by the Austrians ;
but as Massena still lived in the expectation of supplies
from France, he obstinately refused to surrender the city.
General Melas having nothing to apprehend from the army
shut up in Genoa, left General Ott to continue the block¬
ade, and with the remainder of his forces marched against
Suchet, who commanded another division of the French
army. On the 7th of May a battle was fought, between
Ceva and St Lorenzo, in which the republicans were de¬
feated with the loss of twelve hundred prisoners and ten
pieces of cannon. The consequences of this defeat, which
in the circumstances was perhaps inevitable, proved emi¬
nently disastrous to the French. Suchet was obliged to
abandon his strong position on the Col di Tende, where he
left behind him four pieces of cannon and two hundred pri¬
soners ; and though he disputed every defensible point on
his retreat, the Austrians drove him from one post to ano¬
ther, till he was finally obliged to take refuge behind the
Var; by which means General Melas became master of
the whole department of the Maritime Alps.
But the campaign on the Rhine did not open in so fa¬
vourable a manner for the Austrians as that of Italy. The
court of Vienna directed the Archduke Charles to resign
the command of the army to General Kray, who had emi¬
nently distinguished himself during the Italian campaign
of 1799. Of his military talents there could be only one
opinion, and his integrity and zeal had been sufficiently
tried; but he had the misfortune not to be noble, and in
the Austrian dominions the want of high birth cannot be
compensated by the possession of great talents. It could
scarcely be expected, therefore, that a divided army, com¬
manded by an officer without birth, though possessed of
ability, would make head against the united veterans of
France, led on by a general under whom they had been
accustomed to conquer ; and, in fact, the Hungarian troops,
finding themselves ready to be sacrificed to the dissen¬
sions of their officers, refused to fight against the enemy.
At the opening of the campaign, the council of war at
Vienna had sent General Kray instructions how to dis¬
pose of his forces; and having no general under him to
support his views, he was under the necessity of obeying
his instructions whether he approved of them or not. In¬
structions of a similar nature had been transmitted to Mo¬
reau by the chief consul, but he refused to fight under re¬
straint. Conscious that in knowledge of the military art he
was not inferior to Bonaparte himself, whilst he possessed History,
the advantage of being infinitely better acquainted with the
country, he sent a courier to Paris to inform the first con- 1800.
sul, that if the orders sent him were to be rigidly obeyed,
he should feel it his duty to resign his command, and ac¬
cept of an inferior station. He accompanied his resigna¬
tion with a plan of the campaign which he had framed for
himself; and as the propriety of his suggestions forcibly
struck the mind of the first consul, he was ordered to act
according to his own judgment.
Being thus judiciously left to adopt and execute his own
measures, General Moreau crossed the Rhine, and drove
the Austrians from one post to another, till General Kray,
finding it impracticable to adopt offensive measures with a
mutinous army and disaffected officers, resolved to main¬
tain his position at Ulm, and wait for reinforcements from
Vienna. He had been defeated at Stockach, at Engen, and
at Moskirch, although on almost every occasion he gave
proofs of ability and determination; but no talents, how¬
ever great, can counteract the pernicious effects of treach¬
ery and disaffection, to say nothing of an absurd and im¬
practicable plan of operations. At one time, indeed, seven
thousand men, when ordered to advance, instantly threw
down their arms. Convinced that it was absolutely vain to
attempt any offensive operation, Kray intrenched himself
strongly at Ulm, which, as it commands both sides of the
Danube, is consequently a place of great importance. But
Moreau, perceiving his intentions, resolved to attempt the
passage of the Danube, and force Kray to a general en¬
gagement, by cutting him off from his magazines at Dona-
wert; and with this view he ordered Lecourbe, with one of
the wings of his army, to take possession of a bridge between
Donawert and Dillingen. This was not effected without
difficulty and loss; but it fully disclosed the intentions of
the French general. The Austrians, in fact, perceived
their danger in all its magnitude, and accordingly disputed
every inch of ground with the enemy. Kray sent rein¬
forcements to the left bank to oppose the passage, and a
battle in consequence ensued at Hochstet, in the vicinity
of Blenheim, where victory again declared for the French,
who made four thousand prisoners. Sensible that his situ¬
ation had now become perilous in the extreme, Kray left a
strong garrison at Ulm, and marched against the enemy,
whom he attacked at Neuburg. The troops on both sides
fought with determined bravery ; but, after a severe contest,
the Austrians were obliged to fall back on Ingolstadt. This
battle may be said to have decided the fate of Germany.
The electorate of Bavaria was now in the possession of the
French, besides other territories of less extent; and as they
approached the hereditary dominions of the emperor, re¬
publican sentiments were loudly expressed, whilst the peo¬
ple in many parts evinced such a leaning towards the ene¬
my, as to convince the court that no dependence could be
placed on armies composed of such persons. The imperial
family, and the British ambassador, were openly insulted
in the theatre, and the cry of “ Peace, peace,” resounded
from every part of the house.
“ A new dynasty must be baptized in blood.” This was vjews and
the careless remark of a rhetorician, but Napoleon deeply wants of
felt its truth. His authority, which wanted the sanction ofNapoleon.
time, required the support of victory. It was necessary for
his own sake, as well as for that of the country which had
placed its destinies in his hands, that he should strike a blow
which would at once humble the enemy, and impress the
world with an idea of his irresistible power. With this
view, he had caused to be assembled at Dijon, and organiz¬
ed by Berthier, an army of reserve (as it was called), which
was thought to have no other destination than that of de¬
fending the course of the Rhine, but which was in reality
intended to perform a conspicuous part on an independent
theatre of action. The object of Napoleon was to reconquer
118
FRANCE.
History, Italy, which, with the exception of Genoa, where Massena and Bonaparte, having cleared an obstacle which at first Histi
still held out, the Austrians now occupied to the foot of the appeared insuperable, followed the course of the Doria and ^ i
liiOO. Alps. And every thing seemed to favour the project which the Po, entered Milan and Pavia, and thus accomplished 180(
had been so boldly conceived. His preparations had been his first object, namely, that of placing himself on the
so skilfully masked, that when the government ostentati- communications of Melas.
ously announced the real strength of the army of reserve,
the statement was universally discredited; and Melas, who
commanded the imperial forces in Italy, so little dreamed
of being called upon to contend for the possession of that
country with the most fortunate and enterprising general
of his time, that his whole attention was directed towards
the pursuit of Suchet, who was now retreating over the
Alps of Savoy. In his head-quarters at Alessandria,. he
never suspected that he would have to oppose an invading
force descending into Italy by the pass of the Great St Ber¬
nard. The real views of Bonaparte were too bold to enter
into the conception of the Austrian general. These were,
to traverse Switzerland by the lake of Geneva and the val¬
ley of the Rhone as far as Martigny, and thence to cross the
Great St Bernard, and descend into the plains of Lombardy
in rear of Melas; in other words, to intersect the commu¬
nications of the Austrian general, disarrange all his plans,
oblige him to countermarch and take up new positions, and,
lastly, impose on him the necessity of receiving battle in a
situation where defeat would be total ruin. He expected
to reap the benefit of a complete surprise, and at all events
to take the enemy in flagranti delicto.
Passage of On the 6th of May the first consul left Paris, and pro-
invasion^of Cee^e^ t0 *ake t^e command of an army the strength and
Italy!0” ° ^est'na^on which had given rise to so many conjectures.
This army, which had been reinforced from the Rhine,
and amounted to about forty thousand men, immediately
began its march into Switzerland, and on the 20th cross¬
ed the Great St Bernard. The passage of this mountain
is justly accounted one of the most extraordinary achieve¬
ments in modern warfare, and is not inferior in any of its
circumstances to the celebrated passage of the Alps by
Hannibal. The French army now advanced by a path
which had hitherto been considered as practicable only
for mules and foot passengers ; they removed their cannon
from the carriages, placed the guns in the hollowed trunks
of trees, and thus dragged them up the steep ascent. In
May winter still reigns with unmitigated severity in these
regions ; and the rigours of a northern climate, snow, ice,
and whirlwinds, increased the dangers of the march ; but
all difficulties were overcome by the enthusiasm and per¬
severance of the troops. On reaching the summit, refresh¬
ments awaited them at the convent, to the monks of which
large sums had been transmitted for the purpose; and in
that cloud-capped habitation of peace, the soldiers as they
passed received a cordial welcome, and enjoyed some
needful rest. The division which crossed the Simplon
encountered still greater difficulties than that which pass¬
ed the Great St Bernard, having to clear deep fissures in
Indian file, and sometimes clinging to a single rope. In
descendingfrom Mount St Bernard into the valley of Aoste,
the road passes under the fort of Bard, by which it is
completely commanded. Here, then, was a lion in the
path. . The troops might avoid it by clambering over the
adjoining precipices, but for the artillery this was impos¬
sible. The fort was summoned and cannonaded, but in
vain ; the governor disregarded the menaces of the invad¬
ers, and his little citadel was secure against a coup-de-
main. What was to be done ? The case seemed desperate,
but ingenuity at length triumphed. The street of the
village immediately below was covered with straw and
small branches, and the cannon were dragged past during
a dark night without attracting the attention of the gar^
risen. Had the fort opened its fire, and delayed the army
longer, all the advantages of this bold march would have
been lost. But fortune still remained true to her favourite ;
The Austrian general had already retrograded; he could
not credit the report of Bonaparte being in Italy, but still
he had taken the precaution to fall back. WThat above all
astonished him, was to hear that the French had cannon ;
how had they passed the Alps ? Bonaparte arrived at
Milan on the 2d of June, and there expected Moncey to
join him with reinforcements from the army of Switzer¬
land. In the mean time he dispatched his lieutenants to
seize the towns on the Po; which was promptly effected.
In occupying Piacenza, Murat intercepted a courier on
his way to the Austrian head-quarters, with tidings of the
fall of Genoa. This event, which disengaged and render¬
ed disposable a large Austrian force, left Napoleon no al¬
ternative but either to fall back and wait for his expected
reinforcements, or to march against Melas, and put all to
the hazard of a battle. He chose the latter course, and
trusting that his own genius and fortune would compen¬
sate for his deficiency in effective force, resolved to anti¬
cipate the enemy. Melas had concentrated his whole
force at Alessandria, on the Bormida; and General Ott,
having reduced Genoa, was rapidly advancing, with the
intention of surprising the French advanced posts on the
Po, and at the same time combining his operations with
those of the principal army in a grand effort against the
enemy. But Ott was himself surprised by Lannes at
Montebello, and after a severe action completely defeated
with the loss of five thousand men. The French army
now advanced to Stradella, where it took up an advanta¬
geous position, and remained several days to allow Suchet
to close upon the enemy’s rear, and Massena, with the
liberated garrison of Genoa, to join from the south. The
Austrians in the mean while made no movement; and Na¬
poleon, apprehensive that Melas might escape him, either
by marching north towards Turin or south towards Genoa,
advanced into the plains of Marengo; thus giving a pro¬
digious advantage to the enemy. But although Melas
was greatly superior in cavalry, and might at his option
either attack the French, or defend the course of the Bor¬
mida, behind which his army was concentrated, Bonaparte
was still so apprehensive that he might file off’ towards
Genoa, that he detached Dessaix, who had just arrived
from Egypt and taken the command of a division, to coun¬
teract any movement in retreat, and to compel the Aus¬
trians to receive battle. But this measure, which in its
consequences had nearly proved fatal to the French army,
proceeded on a total miscalculation; for at the very mo¬
ment when Napoleon was thinking of preventing the flight
of Melas, it was decided in a council of war that the only
mode of securing Genoa was to give battle to the French.
On the morning of the 14th, which Melas had fixed on Battle of
for the attack, the French were echelloned in an oblique Marengo,
formation, extending from Marengo, the village next the
Bormida, which was occupied by their advanced guard, to
San Giuliano, where the head-quarters were established,
with considerable intervals between the divisions. The
Austrians passed the Bormida in three columns, by as
many bridges, which they had thrown across the river.
One cause of the want of preparation on the part of Napo¬
leon, was the assurance he had received that the principal
bridge had been broken down ; and this was perfectly true;
but the Austrians had not lost a moment in re-establish¬
ing the bridge, and thus restoring their communications
with the opposite bank of the stream. The first burst of
the attack was directed against the French at Marengo.
But instead of advancing boldly to the charge, and storm¬
ing the key of the position, the imperialists deployed,
Hi
✓
1
FRANCE.
istory
1«00.
planted batteries, and waited to effect tardily by their
^ fire what an assault might have at once accomplished.
This afforded the French time, which they so much want¬
ed, and enabled Napoleon to recall Dessaix. The right and
left of the Austrians had scarcely an enemy to contend
with ; for being composed chiefly of cavalry, in which arm
the Austrian army was eminently powerful, they swept
every thing before them; and at length, turning towards
the centre, drove the enemy from the village of Marengo,
across a swampy rivulet in the rear. At mid-day, the
plain presented an extraordinary spectacle. The French
in disordered masses were in half retreat, yet still main¬
taining a vigorous resistance ; whole columns of wounded
and stragglers were pressing towards the rear, and throw¬
ing into confusion the ranks which still held firm; the
Austrian cavalry domineered in the plain, and threatened
at every moment to break in among the disordered troops ;
the fate of the day seemed already decided. Seeing him¬
self victorious at Marengo, General Melas retired to Ales¬
sandria to write his dispatches, leaving the chief of his
staff, Baron Zach, to complete the victory. He had al¬
ready withdrawn from the field a considerable body of ca¬
valry, which he deemed it necessary to send against Su-
chet; a fatal error, which he had soon reason to repent. But
whilst Melas thus indulged in the security of an assured
triumph, Bonaparte was preparing to make a stand at San
Giuliano, and to avenge the defeat of the morning by
fighting a fresh battle in the evening. Dessaix had now
joined, and highly applauded the resolution of the gene-
ral-in-chief. The artillery was at the same time placed
in battery upon an eminence commanding the high road,
along which the Austrians shortly afterwards advanced
in column. But success had rendered them as impru¬
dently confident in the evening as the French were in the
morning, and they came on less to dispute the victory than
to gather up the fruits of one which had been already
gained. Bonaparte now rode leisurely along his newly-
formed line. “ Soldiers,” said he, “ we have retreated
enough for to-day ; you know it is my custom to sleep on
the field of battle.” When the imperialists led on by
Zach approached San Giuliano, the battery, unmasked,
opened its fire; Dessaix led on bis fresh division of in¬
fantry to the attack; Kellerman, with a brigade of light
horse, watching the favourable moment, charged and broke
through the advancing column, then wheeling round,
chaiged back and again penetrated it* Thus surprised and
enveloped, the head of the column laid down its arms, and
the remainder scarcely attempted to make a stand; bein<>-
speedily routed and put to flight, it communicated its
panic to the troops in the rear, which, had they come up
with suitable determination, might have repeated at San
Giuliano the success of Marengo. All was now lost. The
impel ialists fled across the plain of Marengo towards the
bridges, pursued by the French, who slaughtered the fu¬
gitives in all directions. The carnage was dreadful, and
continued until nightfall, when the victors, weary of slay¬
ing and oppressed by fatigue, slowly withdrew. Thus the
batt e of Marengo, which a vigorous charge of cavalry
would for ever have decided, was restored and gained
by six o clock in the evening. Dessaix fell early in the
second battle, to which the brilliant charge so opportunely
executed by young Kellerman gave the decisive turn.1
Italy was thus conquered at Marengo; and France by
one battle regained her superiority in the field. An ar¬
mistice was now agreed to, the terms of which were, that
119
Piedmont and Genoa were to be given up to the French, History,
and that the Austrians should retire behind the Mincio;
thus abandoning at once all the conquests of Suwarofi lso°-
The convention with Melas was considered as preparatory
to a treaty; and, in fact, Bonaparte offered to Austria the
terms of Campo Formio; but the cabinet of Vienna, more
resolute in adversity than in prosperity, pleaded her en¬
gagements with Britain, as precluding her from treating
excepting in conjunction with that power, her ally. PIo^
henlinden was destined to add its glories to that of Maren¬
go, before peace could be conquered.
General Kray was anxious to avail himself of the armis¬
tice concluded in Italy in order to arrest the progress of
iloreau; but that able general refused to listen to any
overtures upon the subject, until he should have received
instructions from Paris. Count St Julien, however, arriv¬
ed with proposals of peace from the imperial cabinet, in
consequence of which the armistice was extended to Ger¬
many ; and the posts then occupied by the respective ar¬
mies vveie considered as constituting the line of demarca¬
tion. But, in opposition to the spirit of the stipulations
with General Melas, the French reinforced their army in
Italy, levied immense contributions, and raised troops in
different states which they themselves had declared inde¬
pendent.
Whilst France was thus victorious in Europe, her troops Distress
m Egypt were subjected to the greatest hardships. The of the
circumstance of their being abandoned by their chief mave French
rise to bitter complaints ; and Kleber is said to have de-in Egyi>U
dared that the same universe should not contain him and
Bonaparte. Under the auspices of the latter, a convention
for the evacuation of Egypt by the French was concluded
at El Arisch on the 24th of January 1800, between the
Grand Vizier on the part of Turkey, and Sir Sidney Smith
on that of Great Britain. By virtue of this convention,
the republican army, with its baggage and effects, were to
be collected at Alexandria, Rosetta, and Aboukir, and to
be conveyed to France in vessels belonging the Repub¬
lic, Gi such as might be furnished for that purpose by the
Sublime Porte.
Towards the close of the year 1799 the British ministry Kleber as-
had reason to believe that an arrangement would be en-sassinated.
tered into between the Grand Vizier and General Kleber
for the evacuation of Egypt by the French ; and as such
an event was much to be desired, Lord Keith received
orders to accede to it, but only on condition that Kleber
and his army should be detained as prisoners of war. The
convention of El Arisch accordingly fell to the ground ;
and, but for the honourable conduct of Sir Sidney Smith’
Kleber would have been treacherously attacked by the
Grand Vizier whilst resting upon his arms, in reliance that
the treaty would be ratified. But the Turks paid dear for
their meditated perfidy. On the 20th of March, Kleber
attacked and totally routed them at Heliopolis, near Cairo,
with the loss of more than eight thousand men killed and
wounded on the field of battle. This victory restored to
the French Cairo, which in terms of the convention of El
Aiisch they had abandoned. Kleber again proposed to
evacuate Egypt, upon the terms agreed to by the Grand
Vizier and Sir Sidney Smith ; and Lord Keith being now
empowered to agree to them, a suspension of hostilities
took place, and the Turks were about to be delivered from
an enemy whom they were not able to expel, when Gene¬
ral Kleber was suddenly assassinated. Both parties had
reason to regret this event, as Kleber was not only one of
Mlennan, supported b? ahuost aU «he
omission of all notice of this achievement in the official account of the battle° ti,a h °* ,resflltment was excited in his mind by the
be acknowledged. “ That charge of vours was onnnrtnnA a xt 11 i l e "ervice thus rendered was perhaps too great to
Opportune indeed,” replied Kellerman; “ it has placed the crown on yourVead." ^ ^ battle’ in a t0ne °f lukew£um i,raise-
.120
FRANCE.
History, the most able, but also one of the most upright and hon-
ourable men ever intrusted with the command of an army.
Resok/ ' Menou succeeded Kleber in the command of the French
ofTh^Bri1 army 'n Egypt, but refused to quit that country by capitu-
tish go- lation; in consequence of which the British government
vernment. formed the resolution of expelling him by force. Sir James
Pulteneyhad received the command of twelve thousand men
in the Mediterranean, with orders to act in such a manner
as might most effectually annoy the enemy ; but as this plan
had been disconcerted by the result of the battle of Marengo,
he was superseded by Sir Ralph Abercromby, who carried
out with him reinforcements, together with a train of ar¬
tillery from Gibraltar. Having touched at Minorca and
Malta, Sir Ralph steered his course thence for the coast of
Egypt, which he reached on the first of March 1801, and
next day anchored in the Bay of Aboukir. But the
weather prevented him from attempting to land till the
8th, when the first division effected a landing in the face
of the French, to the amount of four thousand men, and
the disembarkation was continued during that and the
following day. The army moved forward on the 12th, and
coming in sight of the enemy, gave them battle on the 13th.
The conflict was obstinate on both sides, and the loss very
considerable; but victory in the end declared for the Bri¬
tish. This advantage was followed up with vigour, and on
the 21st a more decisive battle was fought about four miles
from Alexandria, where, after various turns of fortune, the
British were finally victorious. In the heat of the action.
General Abercromby received a mortal wound, and died
on the 28th. The loss on both sides was severe.
The north- As the fate of Egypt was in a great measure decided by
ern con e- (j^gg two battles, we shall nowr advert to affairs of great im-
■y’ portance which about this time took place in Europe. The
northern powers, jealous of the maritime superiority of Bri¬
tain, and acting under the influence of the Emperor Paul,
resolved to revive the armed neutrality of Catharine II.
established during the American war, and to claim the
right of trading to the ports of France without being sub¬
jected to what they conceived the intolerable evil of having
their vessels searched. The ministry of Great Britain had
determined to break up this confederacy; but, to the asto¬
nishment of the nation, which was not prepared for such
an occurrence, they suddenly resigned.
Change of Various causes have been assigned for an event so un-
Britain7 m exPecte^ ’ ljut tlie ostensible reason was a difference in the
cabinet relative to Catholic emancipation. After the union
of Ireland with Britain, the minister appears to have pro¬
posed this subject in the cabinet; but his majesty, from
some conscientious scruples founded on his coronation oath,
gave it his direct negative, and in consequence Mr Pitt and
his friends tendered their resignation. They were succeed¬
ed by men, however, who had generally supported Mr Pitt’s
administration during the war, and who were entirely of
the same school in politics. Mr Addington was appointed
first lord of the treasury and chancellor of the exchequer;
Lord Eldon, lord high chancellor; the Earl of St Vincent,
first lord of the admiralty ; Lords Hawkesbury and Pelham,
secretaries of state ; and the Honourable Colonel Yorke,
secretary at war. The former ministry was dissolved on
the 11th of February ; but owing to the indisposition of the
king, the new ministry did not enter upon office until the
middle of March, during which interval Mr Pitt and his
associates had the chief management of public affairs. The
new ministry commenced their career by solemnly pledg¬
ing themselves to the nation that they would employ their
united efforts in procuring a safe and honourable peace with
France, which in fact was loudly demanded by the nation.
Proceed- About this time measures the most hostile were adopted
mgs of the towards Britain, by the powers composing the northern con-
coidedera- federacy* The city of Hamburg was taken by a Danish
cy. force under the Prince of Hesse ; and the king of Prussia
180
likewise sent a numerous army into the electorate of Ha- Hist
nover, all with the view of injuring British commerce. To ’w-v
punish this audacious conduct, and dissolve the northern
confederacy, a fleet of seventeen sail of the line, four fri¬
gates, four sloops, and some bomb vessels, was fitted out
in the ports of Britain, and sailed from Yarmouth on the
12th of March, under the command of Admiral Sir Hyde
Parker, Lord Nelson, and Rear-admiral Graves; and hav¬
ing passed the Sound, appeared before Copenhagen on the
30th of the same month. The Danes did not appear in the
smallest degree moved by this display of force, thinking it
impossible to molest either their fleet or their city without
passing through a channel so extremely intricate that it was
once believed hardly safe to attempt it even with a single
ship unopposed by an enemy. But this channel was sound¬
ed by Lord Nelson, who undertook to conduct through it
a large division of the fleet; and having requested from Sir
Hyde Parker the command of the squadron, it was accord-
ingly given him, and Rear-admiral Graves was appointed
his second in command. As the largest ships drew too
much water for being employed in so hazardous an attempt,
his lordship selected twelve of from seventy-four to fifty
guns, together with four frigates, four sloops, two fire-ships,
and seven bombs. 1 o this a prodigious force was oppos¬
ed, consisting of six sail cf the line, eleven floating batte¬
ries, each mounting from eighteen to twenty-eight heavy
guns, one bomb-ship, and a number of schooners ; and these
were supported by the Crown Batteries, mounting eighty-
eight pieces of cannon, by four sail of the line, moored in
the mouth of the harbour, and by a few batteries on the
island of Amak. On the 2d of April, Lord Nelson attack¬
ed this tremendous force, and after an obstinate and bloody
action, which lasted four hours, silenced the fire of the bat¬
teries, taking, burning, and sinking about seventeen sail,
including seven ships of the line. A suspension of hostili¬
ties was the immediate consequence of this brilliant victo-
ry, and the armed neutrality was in fact dissolved.
When the armistice was signed between the Austrian Battle o
and French generals in the year 1800, the troops of the lat-Hohenli:
ter were in possession of Germany almost to the banks ofdei1,
the Inn, and of Italy to the frontiers of Venice; but the
spirit of the emperor was yet unsubdued, and he declined
abandoning his allies by ratifying the preliminaries of peace
wLich Count St Julien had agreed to at Paris, more espe¬
cially as the latter was alleged to have exceeded his powers.
Kray having retired from the army, the Archduke John suc¬
ceeded him in the command, and with the emperor in per¬
son repaired to the army; but they soon found it imprac¬
ticable to undertake any offensive operation against Mo¬
reau, and therefore another armistice, comprehending Italy,
was agreed to. The emperor wished to include Britain in
any treaty which might be entered into with France; but
as Bonaparte refused to admit any plenipotentiary from
that power until a naval armistice had been agreed to,
Moreau received orders to resume his military operations.
The command of the Austrian divisions was now given
to generals whose very names vrere unknown beyond the
confines of their own country, and who had shown them¬
selves but little acquainted with the military art. Moreau
was on the banks of the Iser, with his troops considerably
disseminated; the Austrians were on those of the Inn,
occupying a good line of defence rf they had understood
its importance, or had the prudence to maintain it. But
whilst the French general-in-chief was meditating the plan
of his winter campaign, the right wing of his army was
attacked and driven back by the Austrians ; and had they
known how to make a judicious use of their advantage,
the French commander would in all probability have been
reduced to act on the defensive. Elated with success,
however, they unaccountably abandoned their position on
the Inn, and marched to attack the French along wretched
FRANCE.
121
1 story.
Gise-
roads, rendered nearly impassable by November weather.
Moreau was with his army at Hohenlinden, behind the fo¬
rest of Ebersberg, where he awaited the approach of the
enemy. The archduke ordered his army to advance in se¬
parate columns by the roads and paths leading through the
forest, on the exterior edge of which he intended to de¬
ploy and give battle. His centre, under Kollowrath, took
the principal road, but was encountered as it debouched
from the forest by the divisions of Ney and Grouchy; whilst
another division of the French under Richepanse turned
the flank of the Austrians, and fell with great fury upon its
rear at the other side of the forest. This double attack
was attended with complete success. The centre was en¬
tirely routed, with the loss of no less than eight thousand
prisoners, besides killed and wounded; and the defeat of
the rest of the army followed as an inevitable consequence.
Had the Archduke Charles commanded on this occasion,
a defeat caused by such a blunder would have been impos¬
sible ; but this prince was now in disgrace for having coun¬
selled peace. At Hohenlinden the Austrians lost in all
eighty pieces of cannon, two hundred caissons, and ten
thousand prisoners.
Moreau allowed the enemy no time to rally, but march-
qi ices of ing directly towards the Inn, crossed that river on the 9th
thi battle. 0f December, drove the enemy before him, and struck the
court of Vienna with consternation and dismay. Prince
Charles was recalled and invested with the command of the
army; but after many fruitless efforts to retrieve its honour,
he on the 27th of December proposed an armistice, which
was acceded to by the French commander, upon condition
that it should be immediately followed by a definitive treaty.
If the archduke could have placed any dependence upon his
army, this armistice would not in all probability have taken
place. The position of Moreau was, in fact, perilous in the
extreme. Having advanced into the very heart of the
Austrian states, he had behind him on his right about thir¬
ty thousand men in the Tyrol, and upwards of fifty thou¬
sand on his left. But Austrian valour was now well nigh
extinguished by so many reverses of fortune; the officers
were discontented; and the army was not in a condition to
make head for a single day against so able and enterprising
an enemy. Accordingly, the armistice was followed by a
treaty of peace, which was signed at Luneville on the 9th
of February 1801, betw een the emperor for himself and the
Germanic body on the one hand, and the first consul of the
French Republic, in name of the people of France, on the
other. By this treaty the emperor ceded the Brisgau to the
Duke of Modena, in lieu of the territories lost by that prince
in Italy, and bound himself to find indemnities in the Ger¬
manic empire to all those princes whom the fate of war had
deprived of their dominions. The Grand Duke of Tusca¬
ny renounced his dukedom, with its dependencies in the
isle of Elba, in favour of the Duke of Parma, who assumed
the title of king of Etruria; and for this the empire was to
provide him with an adequate indemnification. Italy re¬
sumed its republican forms and divisions of governments
under French influence and protection ; and the Rhine still
continued the boundary of France on the side of Germany.
On the 28th of March, peace was also concluded between
the French Republic and the king of the Two Sicilies.
By this treaty his majesty obliged himself to shut the ports
of Naples and Sicily against ships of every description be¬
longing either to the British or the Turks ; and he renoun¬
ced for ever Porto Longano in the island of Elba, his states
in Tuscany, and the principality of Piombino, to be dis¬
posed of in such manner as the French Republic might think
proper.
Great Britain had now no ally left to aid her in the contest
thjjitened with France, excepting the Turks in Egypt and the Portu-
*ii n a" 8uese 'n Europe, powers which rather diminished than in¬
creased her strength. At the desire of France the Spa-
vol. x.
B :;un
niards had made an attack upon Portugal, and conquered History,
some of its provinces ; but a treaty of peace was conclud-
ed on the 6th of June, by which the king of Spain restor- 1802.
ed all his conquests excepting the fortress of Olivenza; and
the prince regent of Portugal and the Algarves promised to
shut the ports of his territories against the ships of Great
Britain, and to make indemnification to his Catholic majesty
for all losses and damages sustained by his subjects during
the war. When the first consul had made peace with all his
other enemies, he threatened Great Britain with an imme¬
diate invasion ; a circumstance which at first gave great un¬
easiness to a considerable part of the nation. But in order
to assuage this alarm, Lord Nelson w'as sent to destroy the
shipping in the harbour of Boulogne ; and though his suc¬
cess fell short of what had been expected by many, he
nevertheless made such an impression on the enemy as
showed that Britain could annoy the coast of France with
greater facility than France could molest that of Britain.
During the summer of 1801, attempts were again made Treaty
by Britain to negotiate with France. From the total dis-with
solution of the northern confederacy, the first consul could France ’
not fail to perceive that it was impossible for him to ruin Bri- Amiens
tish commerce, and consequently that all the treaties which
he might make for excluding our ships from neutral ports
would signify nothing. He seemed determined, however,
to keep possession of Egypt; and Britain, on the other
hand, was as fully resolved to wrest it from him. On this
account the negotiations were protracted till the conquest
of that country became known both at London and Paris.
On the death of Rir Ralph Abercromby, General Hutchin¬
son succeeded to the command of the British forces in
Egypt, and as he was acquainted with the designs of his
predecessor, one spirit seemed to actuate both. Rosetta
surrendered, and this was soon followed by the capitulation
of Cairo ; and Menou having accepted of similar terms for
Alexandria, the whole of Egypt fell into the hands of the
allies, and the republican troops with their baggage were
conveyed to the nearest French ports in the Mediterranean,
in ships furnished by the allies. After these events, the
negotiations between Britain and France proceeded more
agreeably ; and, on the 1st of October, the preliminary trea¬
ty was signed at London by Lord Hawkesbury on the part
of his Britannic majesty, and by M. Otto on that of the
French Republic. By this treaty Great Britain engaged to
give up all the conquests made by her during the continuance
of the war, excepting the islands of Ceylon and Trinidad,
whilst France was in fact to restore nothing. The Cape
of Good Hope was to be free to all the contracting par¬
ties ; the island of Malta was to be given up to the knights
of the order of St John of Jerusalem ; Egypt was to be re¬
stored to the Ottoman Porte; Portugal was to be main¬
tained in its integrity, excepting what had been ceded to
the king of Spain by the prince regent; Naples and the
Roman States were to be evacuated by the French, and
Porto Fcrrajo by the British, together with all the ports and
islands occupied by them in the Mediterranean. Plenipo¬
tentiaries were also appointed to meet at Amiens, for the
purpose of drawing up and concluding a definitive treaty^
This accordingly took place on the 22d of March 1802,
and the French Republic was thus acknowledged by the
whole of Europe.
Having thus arrived at the period when the dogs of war Itetrospec-
were during a brief interval chained up, and the nations of tiy6 vie'v
Europe allowed to respire a little after the fierce contest
in which they had been engaged, it may not be uninstruc- !’'
tive or uninteresting to pause for a moment and pass in
review that extraordinary series of revolutions in France
which overthrew the monarchy to make way for the Re¬
public, and in turn destroyed the Republic to make way
for the Consulate and the Empire.
Popular insurrections, and an army, have hitherto been
Q
122
FRANCE.
1802.
History, the usual means, or chief instruments, of every revolution ;
but insurrections of this description have generally been
fomented by a certain number of factious men, devoted to
and dependent upon some ambitious chief, daring, brave,
possessed of military talents, the absolute conductor of
every step of the revolt, and the master of all the means of
the insurrection. In the hands of such a chief, the soldiers,
or people armed, are mere machines, set in motion or re¬
strained according to his pleasure, and are always employ¬
ed to put an end to revolutionary disorders and crimes, as
soon as the object of the revolution has been attained. Thus
Caesar and Cromwell, after they had usurped the supreme
power, lost no time in securing it, by placing it upon the
basis of a wise and well-regulated government; and they
employed in quelling the troubles which had favoured their
usurpation, those very legions which they had used to ex¬
cite them.
But this was not the case in France. In that country
the revolution, or rather the first of those revolutions it ex¬
perienced, and of which the others were the inevitable
consequence, does not seem to have been the result of a
conspiracy or preconcerted plan to overturn the monarchy
and to establish a republic in its place. It was unexpect¬
edly engendered by a mixture of weakness, ignorance, ne¬
gligence, and numberless errors in the government. The
States General, however imprudent their convocation may
have been, would have produced only useful reforms, if
they had found the limits of their power marked out by a
hand sufficiently firm to keep them within their natural
boundaries. It was but too evident, however, that even
before their opening they were dreaded, and that conse¬
quently they might attempt almost any thing they pleased.
From that time, under the name of Clubs, various associa¬
tions and factions sprang up; some more violent than others,
but all tending to the subversion of the existing government,
without agreeing upon the form of that which was to be
substituted in its stead: and at this period also the projects
of the faction whose views were to get the Duke of Or¬
leans appointed lieutenant-general of the kingdom began
to manifest themselves.
This faction, or, as some call it, this conspiracy, was, in
truth, of the same nature with those which had produced all
former revolutions, and might have been attended with the
same consequences had the Duke of Orleans been posses¬
sed of the energy and courage requisite in the leader of a
party. The people had already declared in his favour, and
he might easily have corrupted and brought over a great
pai t of the army had he been equal to the command of it;
but, on the very first occasion of personal risk, he discover¬
ed such cowardice and meanness that he defeated his owm
conspiracy, and convinced all those who had entered into
it that it was impossible to continue the Revolution, either
in his favour or in conjunction with him. The enthusiasm
which the people had felt for him ended with the efforts of
those who had excited it.
Neckar, whom the multitude had associated with this
prince in their homage, still preserved for some time his
worshippers, and that little cabal was for ever exalting him
to the skies. But inferior even to Orleans in the talents
and dispositions necessary to influence the army in his fa¬
vour, he was as little calculated to be the leader of a re¬
volution ; and for this reason his panegyrists confined them¬
selves, in the pamphlets and placards with which they
inundated the capital, to insinuating that the only means
of saving the state was to declare Neckar dictator, or at
least to confer upon him, under some title more consistent
with the monarchy, the authority and powers attached to
that republican office. In fact, if after his dismission in
the month of July 1789, he had dared to make this a con¬
dition of his return to the ministry, it is more than probable
that the king would have been under the necessity of agree-
First revo
lution.
ing to it, and perhaps of re-establishing in his person the Histo
office of mayor of the palace. At that moment he might
have demanded any thing ; eight days later he might have 1802
been refused every thing ; and soon afterwards he was re¬
duced to the humiliating necessity of sneaking out of the
kingdom like an outlaw, to escape the effects of the general
contempt and censure which he had brought upon himself.
General Lafayette, who then commanded the Parisian
national guard, gathered the wrecks of all this popularity,
and might have turned them to the greatest advantage, if
he had possessed that resolute character and heroic judg¬
ment of which Cardinal de Retz speaks, and which serves
to distinguish what is truly honourable and useful from
that which is only extraordinary, and what is extraordinary
from that which is impossible. With the genius, the talents,
and the ambition of Cromwell, he might have gone as
great a length ; with a less criminal ambition, he might at
least have made himself master of the Revolution, and di¬
rected it at his pleasure ; in a word, he might have secured
the triumph of whatever party he chose to declare himself
the leader. But, as unfit for supporting the character of
Monk as that of Cromwell, he soon betrayed the secret of
his incapacity to all the world, and was distinguished
amongst the crowd of constitutional leaders only by his
tri-coloured plume, his epaulettes, his white horse, and his
saying that insurrection is the most sacred of duties when
oppression is at its height.
The Revolution, at the period when the faction which had
begun it for the Duke of Orleans became sensible that he
was too much a coward to become a leader, and when La¬
fayette discovered his inability to conduct it, w^as too far ad¬
vanced either to recede or to stop ; and hence it continued
its progress, but in a line which no other revolution had
ever taken, namely, without a military chief, or the inter¬
vention of the army ; and it gained triumphs, not for any
ambitious conspirator, but for political and moral innovations
of the most extraordinary kind, innovations the most suited
to mislead the multitude, who were incapable of compre¬
hending them, and to let loose those passions which are
most dangerous to the repose and happiness of nations. The
more violent combined to destroy every thing; and their
fatal coalition gave birth to Jacobinism, a revolutionary pro¬
duct till then unknown, and till now not sufficiently unmask¬
ed. This new creation took upon itself alone to carry on the
Revolution; it directed and executed all its operations, all
the explosions and the outrages which occurred ; it every¬
where appointed the most active leaders, and employed as
instruments the profligates of every country. Its power far
surpassed that which has been attributed to the inquisition,
and other similar tribunals, by those who have spoken of
them with the greatest exaggeration. Its centre was at
Paris ; and its ramifications, formed by means of clubs in
every town and little borough, overspread the whole sur¬
face of the kingdom. The constant correspondence kept
up between those clubs and that of the capital, or, to use
their own expressions, between the affiliated popular socie¬
ties and the parent society, was as secret and as speedy as
that of free-masons. In a word, the Jacobin clubs had
succeeded in causing themselves to be looked up to as the
real national representation. Under that assumed charac¬
ter they censured all the authorities in the most imperious
manner; and whenever their denunciations, petitions, or
addresses failed to produce an immediate effect, they gained
their point by having recourse to insurrection and assassi¬
nation. Whilst Jacobinism thus subjected all France to
its control, an immense number of emissaries propagated
its doctrines amongst foreign nations, and prepared for it
new conquests in distant countries.
Ihe National Assembly, the capital, indeed all France,
was divided into three distinct parties. The most con¬
siderable in number, but unhappily, through a deficiency
FRANCE.
123
story, of plan and resolution, the weakest, was the party purely
royal; it was adverse to every kind of revolution, and was
J02, solely desirous of some improvements, with the reform of
abuses and pecuniary privileges. The most able and most
intriguing was the constitutional party, or that which was
desirous of giving France a new monarchical constitution,
but modified after the manner of the English, or even the
American, by a house of representatives. The third party
was the most dangerous of all, by its daring spirit, by its
power, and by the number of proselytes it daily acquired
in all quarters of the kingdom ; it comprehended the demo¬
crats of every description, from the Jacobin clubs, calling
themselves Friends of the Constitution, to the anarchists
and plunderers of the school of Hebert and Chaumette.
The democratic party, which at first was only auxiliary
to the constitutional one, in the end annihilated it, and
became itself subdivided into several parties, whose fatal
struggles produced all the subsequent revolutions. But in
principle the constitutionalists and the democrats formed
two distinct though confederate factions; both were desi¬
rous of a revolution, and employed all the usual means of
accomplishing it, except troops, which could be of no use
to them, for neither of them had a leader to put at the
head of the army. But as it was of equal importance to
both that the king should be deprived of the power of
making use of it against them, they laboured in concert to
disorganize it; and the complete success of that manoeuvre
was but too fully proved by the fatal issue of the departure
of the royal family for Montmedy. The revolution then
took a more daring and rapid stride, which was concluded
by the constitutional act of 1791. But the incoherence of
its principles, and the defects of its institutions, present a
faithful picture of the disunion of its authors, and of the
opposite interests by which they were swayed. It was,
properly speaking, a compact or compromise between the
party of the constitutionalists and that of the democrats,
in which, to secure co-operation, mutual concessions and
sacrifices were made. But this absurd constitution, the
everlasting source of sorrow and remorse to all who had a
part in framing it, might have been got over without a shock,
and led back to the old principles of monarchical govern¬
ment, if the assembly who framed it had not separated be¬
fore they witnessed its execution; if, in imposing on the
king the obligation to maintain it, they had not deprived
him of the power and the means ; and if the certain conse¬
quence of the new mode of proceeding at the elections had
not been to secure, in the second assembly, a considerable
majority of the democratic against the constitutional party.
The second assembly was likewise divided into three
factions, the weakest of which was the one that desired to
maintain the constitution. The two others were for a new
revolution and a republic; but they differed in this, that
the former, composed of the Brissotines or Girondists, was
for effecting it gradually, by beginning with divesting the
king of popularity, and allowing the public mind time to
wean itself from its natural attachment to monarchy ; and
the latter, which was the least numerous, was eager to have
the republic established as speedily as possible. These
two factions, having the same object in view, though tak¬
ing different roads, were necessarily auxiliaries to each
other; and the pamphlets, excitations to commotion, and
revolutionary measures of both, equally tended to over¬
throw the constitution of 1791.
Those different factions, composed of advocates, attor¬
neys, apostate priests, doctors, and a few literary men, hav¬
ing no military chief capable of taking the command of the
army, dreaded the troops who had sworn allegiance to the
constitution and obedience to the king, and who moreover
might be influenced by their officers, amongst whom there
still remained some royalists. The surest way to get rid
of all uneasiness on the subject, was to employ the army in
defending the frontiers. For this purpose a foreign war History,
was necessary, to which it was known that the king and
his council were equally averse. Nothing more was want- 1802-
ing to determine the attack which was directed, almost at
the same time, against all the ministers, in order to compel
them to retire, and to put the king under the necessity of
appointing others more disposed to second the views of the
parties. Unhappily this attempt was attended with all the
success which its authors had promised themselves; and
one of the first acts of the new ministry was to declare war
against the emperor. At the same time, the emigration
which had been provoked, and which was almost every¬
where applauded, even by the lowest class of people, drained
off the flower of the royalist party, and left the king, de¬
prived of his best defenders, exposed to the suspicions and
insults which sprung from innumerable calumnies, for
which the disasters at the beginning of the war furnished
but too many opportunities.
In this manner was prepared and accelerated the new
revolution, which was accomplished on the tenth of August
1792, by the deposition and imprisonment of the king, and
by the most flagrant violation of the constitution of 1791.
The latter, however, was not entirely abandoned on that
day; for the project of the Girondists, who had laid the
plot of that fatal conspiracy, was then only to declare the
king’s deposition, in order to place the prince royal upon
the throne, under the guidance of a regency composed of
their own creatures ; but they were hurried on much fur¬
ther than they meant to go, by the violence with which
the Jacobins, who took the lead in the insurrection, con¬
ducted all their enterprises. The prince royal, instead
of being crowned, was shut up in the Temple ; and if
France at that moment was not declared a republic, this
was less owing to any remaining respect for the constitu¬
tion, than to the fear the legislative body entertained of
raising up against it the majority of the nation, who could
scarcely fail to be astonished and exasperated at finding a
constitution fenced by so many oaths thus precipitately over¬
thrown. It was on these grounds that the opinion was adopt¬
ed, that a National Convention should be convoked, in or¬
der to determine the fate of royalty.
From this moment the Girondists daily lost ground, and Second re-
the most furious members of the democratic party, sup- volution,
ported as they were by the Jacobin club, by the new com¬
mune of Paris, and by the tribunes, made themselves mas¬
ters of every debate. It was of the utmost importance to
them to control the ensuing elections ; and this was effected
by the horrible consternation which the massacres of Sep¬
tember excited throughout the kingdom. The terror of
being assassinated, or at least maltreated, drove from all the
primary assemblies not only the royalists and constitution¬
alists, but moderate men of all parties ; those assemblies
became entirely composed of the weakest men and most
desperate characters to be found in France; and from
amongst the most frantic of these a large proportion of the
members of the Convention was chosen. Accordingly,
this third assembly, in the first quarter of an hour of its
first sitting, was heard shouting for the abolition of royalty,
and proclaiming the Republic, upon the motion of a mem¬
ber who had formerly been a player.
Such an opening but too plainly showed what was to be
expected from that horde of plunderers who composed the
majority of the National Convention, and of whom Robe¬
spierre, Danton, Marat, and the other leaders, formed their
party. That of the Girondists still existed, and was the
only one really republican. Glutted with the horrors al¬
ready committed, they seemed desirous of arresting the tor¬
rent, and laboured to introduce into the assembly the mo¬
deration necessary to give to the new Republic a wise and
solid organization. But the superiority of their knowledge,
talents, and eloquence, which their opponents could not
124
FRANCE,
1802.
Third re
volution.
History^ dispute, had no power over men thirsting for blood, and
determined to rule by the instrumentality of terror alone.
They had no doubt occasion for atrocities, to prepare the
terror-stricken nation to suffer them to commit, in its
name, the murder of the unfortunate Louis XVI.; and that
sacrifice was necessary to commit the Revolution beyond
all possibility of retreat, and bring about a third revolution,
which Robespierre and his associates were already prepar¬
ing. Fear had greatly contributed to the two former ; but
this was effected by terror alone, without popular tumults,
or the intervention of the armies, which, being now drawn
by their conquests beyond the frontiers, never heard any
thing of the revolutions at home till they were accomplish¬
ed, and always obeyed the prevailing faction, by whom
they were either paid or allowed to pay themselves.
By the degree of ferocity discovered by the members of
the Convention in passing sentence upon the king, and in
the debates relative to the constitution of 1793, Robespierre
was enabled to mark which of the deputies were most likely
to second his views, and which of them it was necessary to
sacrifice. As to the people, they could not but receive with
transport a constitution which seemed to realise the chi¬
mera of their sovereignty, but which would only have given
a kind of construction to anarchy, if the execution of this
new code had not been suspended, on the pretence common
to all acts of despotism and tyranny, that the safety of the
state is the supreme law. This suspension was effected by
establishing the provisional government, which, under the
title of revolutionary government, concentrated all the
powers in the National Convention until there should be
an end to the war, and to all intestine troubles.
Although the faction which acknowledged Robespierre
as its head possessed a decided majority in the assembly,
and might consequently have considered themselves as ex¬
clusively exercising the sovereign power, he was a dema¬
gogue of too despotic a nature to endure even the ap¬
pearance of sharing the empire with his associates. Hence
he greatly reduced their number, by causing all the powers
invested in the National Assembly by the decrees which
had established the revolutionary government, to be trans¬
ferred to a committee, of which he got himself appointed a
member, and in which he was certain to rule, by obtaining
as colleagues men less daring, but if possible even more
wicked, than himself; such as Couthon, Saint-Just, Bar-
rere, and others of the same stamp. This committee, styled
the Committee of Public Safety, soon seized upon both the
legislative and executive powers, and exercised them with
the most sanguinary tyranny ever heard of amongst men.
ihe ministers were merely their clerks ; and the subjugat¬
ed assembly, without murmur or objection, passed all the
revolutionary laws which were proposed, or rather dictated,
by them. One of their most decisive proceedings was the
establishment of those revolutionary tribunals which cover¬
ed I ranee with scaffolds, on which victims of" every rank
age, and sex, were daily sacrificed ; so that no class of men
should be beyond the influence of that stupifying and ge¬
neral terror which Robespierre found it necessary to spread
in order to establish his power. Nor was this all. He soon
dragged some members of his own party, such as Danton,
Caimlle Desmoulins, and others, whose energy and popu-
anty had offended him, before one of those tribunals, where
he had them condemned to death. By the same means he
had got rid of the leaders of the Girondists; and had caused
all the moderate republican party, who were still members
of the assembly, except those who had time and address to
escape, to be sent to prison, in order to be sentenced and
executed on the first opportunity.
In this manner ended the third revolution, in which the
people, frozen with terror, dared not take a part. Instead
of an army of soldiers, Robespierre employed an army of
executioners and assassins, set up as revolutionary judges ;
and the guillotine, striking or menacing all indiscrimi- HistoJ
nately, rendered France submissive from one end to the
/AfVlOT* A r\ofir»r» /-»■**! /-I 4-rx   „ £* * * J 802
other. A nation, formerly proud, even to idolatry, of its
kings, was thus seen to expiate, by rivers of blood, the
crime of having suffered the most virtuous of all their mo-
narchs to be murdered on a scaffold. In the room of the
famous Bastille, whose capture and demolition had set only
seven prisoners at liberty, two of whom had long been in a
state of lunacy, the colleges, the seminaries, and all the re¬
ligious houses of the kingdom, were converted into so many
state prisons, into which were incessantly crowded the vic¬
tims devoted to feed the ever-working guillotines, at once
the chief resource of supplies for the government, and the
instrument of its ferocity. “ The guillotine coins money
for the republic,” said Barrere. In fact, according to the
jurisprudence of the revolutionary tribunals, the rich of
every class were declared suspected persons, and received
sentence of death for no other reason but that of giving to
the confiscation of their property a show of judicial form.
But still blood flowed too slowly to satisfy Robespierre; F„urlll,
his aim was but partly attained by the proscription of the volution,
nobles, the priests, and the wealthy. He fancied not only
an aristocracy of talents and knowledge, but of the virtues,
none of which however his orators and journalists would
admit, save that horrid “ patriotism” which was estimated
according to the enormity of the crimes committed in fa¬
vour of the Revolution. His plan was to reduce the French
people to a mere plantation of slaves, too ignorant, too
stupid, or too pusillanimous, to conceive the idea of break¬
ing the chains with which he would have loaded them in
the name of liberty; and he might perhaps have succeed¬
ed, had not his ambition, as impatient as it was jealous, too
soon unveiled his intention of resorting to the guillotine to
strike off the shackles with which an assembly of national
representatives fettered or might fetter his power. He
was about to give the decisive blow, which he had con¬
certed with the Commune of Paris, the Revolutionary Tri¬
bunal, the Jacobin Club, and the principal officers of the na¬
tional guard, when the members of the Convention, who
were marked out to be the first sacrificed, anticipated him
at a moment when he least expected it, by attacking him¬
self in the assembly, with energy sufficient to rouse against
him and the Jacobins all the sections of the capital. The
paities came to blows, and for several hours victory re¬
mained uncertain, but at length it declared in favour of the
Convention. In the space of a day that execrable monster
was dragged from the highest pitch of power ever attained
by any tyrant, to the very scaffold which was still reeking
with the blood of his last victims. His principal accom¬
plices in the Committee of Public Safety, in the Commune,
in the national guard, in the Revolutionary Tribunal, and
many of his agents in the provinces, met the same fate.
The revolutionary tribunals were suppressed, the prisons
thrown open, and the terrorists hunted down wherever they
could be found.
I his fourth revolution, in which the faction which was
then esteemed the moderate party overthrew the terrorists,
and seized the supreme power, was no less complete than
t preceded it, and produced the constitution
of 179o. All France received as a great blessing a constitu¬
tion which delivered them from the revolutionary govern¬
ment and its infernal policy. Besides, in spite of great de¬
fects, it had the merit of coming nearer than the two pre¬
ceding ones to the principles of order, justice, and real li-
erty, the violation of which had, during the five preceding
years, been the source of so many crimes and disasters.
le royalists, considering it as a step towards monarchy,
were imprudent enough to triumph in it; and their joy, as
premature as it was indiscreet, so alarmed the assembly,
e^7 Passed the famous law, ordaining the primary as¬
semblies to return two thirds of the members of the Con-
k
! 1»
jsllirev
FRA
istory. vention to the legislative body destined to succeed that
assembly. It was thus that the spirit of the Convention
1S02. continued, for the first year, to be displayed in the two coun¬
cils. In the year following, the bias of the public mind, too
hastily turned towards royalty, showed itself, in the elec¬
tions of the members for the new third, so clearly as to
alarm the regicides who composed the Directory, and the
conventionalists who still formed a third of the legislative
body ; nor did they lose a moment in devising means for
their defence. That which appeared to them the surest,
was to publish notices of plots amongst the royalists, and an¬
nex one or more denunciations, in terms so vague as to leave
room for implicating, when necessary, all their adversaries ;
whilst by the help of this imposture they procured some se¬
cret information, ever easily obtained by those who have
at command the guillotine and the exchequer. This mask¬
ed battery was ready to be opened before the members of
the new third took their seats. These at first confined
themselves to the object of securing a constant majority in
the two councils in favour of moderate opinions; but in a
little time every sitting was marked by the repeal of some
revolutionary law, or by some decree tending to restrain
the executive authority within the limits fixed by the con¬
stitution.
Fill and Alarmed at the abridgment of their power, and dreading
siihrevo-gti]! more serious attacks, the Directory came to the reso-
luians. iution 0f no longer postponing the blow which they had been
meditating against the Legislative Assembly; and in the
manner already related they accomplished a fifth revolu¬
tion, as complete as any of those by which it was preceded.
It differed indeed from them essentially in the facility and
promptness with which it was effected; although the party
which prevailed, that is to say, the majority of the Directo¬
ry, and the minority of the legislative body, had to combat,
not only against the constitution, but against the opinion,
and even against the indignation, of the public. That mo¬
ral force, on which the majority of the two councils had
unluckily placed all their reliance, vanished in an instant
before the physical force of a detachment of troops con¬
sisting of six or seven hundred men. The Directory, com¬
pelled to withdraw the larger body of troops which they
had thought necessary to ensure the revolution they were
meditating, discovered great ability in securing the two
councils, by appearing to dread them ; but it was chiefly to
the energy of their measures, and to the concentration and
promptness with which they were executed, that they owed
their success. Two days before, the legislative body might
without obstruction have impeached, arrested, and even
outlawed, the majority of the Directory, who were execrat¬
ed by the public under the title of the triumvirate; and,
if requisite, they would have been supported by more than
thirty thousand armed citizens, who, with Pichegru and
N C E. 125
Willot at their head, would soon have dispersed, and per- History,
haps brought over, the feeble detachments of troops of the -y-^
line which the Directory had at their command. But the 1802.
legislative body, relying too much upon its popularity, did
not sufficiently consider that the people, whose impetuosi¬
ty is commonly decisive when allowed to take advantage
in attack, are always feeble when acting on the defensive,
and totally unable to withstand any assault made previous¬
ly to an insurrection, seeing it is always easy to prevent
their assembling. It was on this principle that the Direc¬
tory founded their operations, and the 5th of September
too well proves how justly. That day reduced the legisla¬
tive body to the most degrading subjugation, a mere cari¬
cature of national representation; it invested the Direc¬
tory with the most arbitrary and tyrannical power, and re¬
stored the system of Robespierre, under a form less bloody,
but not less pernicious; for the revolutionary tribunals which
that monster had established were scarcely more expediti¬
ous than the military commissions of the Directory. The
power of arbitrary and unlimited transportation is, in time,
as destructive as the guillotine, without possessing, like
that, the advantage of exciting a salutary horror, which, by
recovering the people from the state of stupor and apathy,
the first effects of terror, gives them both recollection and
force to break their chains. Though, in violating the most
essential regulations of the constitution, the Directory ob¬
tained a temporary confirmation of their power, their ex¬
ample pointed out to Bonaparte and Sieyes the path which
they pursued with infinite address, and in which they ac¬
complished a sixth revolution, by the establishment of the
consulate, the character of which will be sufficiently unfold¬
ed in the sequel.
The truce of Amiens having been concluded (it had none Policy of
of the characteristics of a solid peace), Bonaparte pursued Bonaparte,
his plans of internal organization with an evident view to the
re-establishment of monarchy in France. A church had
already been reared up, and the Catholic religion, with a
suitable hierarchy, re-constituted by the state. With this
view the pope had been spared when the course of events
placed him at the mercy of the conqueror; and the year
1801 was spent in negotiating a “ concordat” with Rome,
by which, in return for a decree declaring the Catholic re¬
ligion that of the great majority of the French, and under¬
taking to grant salaries to the clergy, the pontiff agreed to
consecrate such bishops as should be nominated by the
French government, to give up all claim to the lands which
had belonged to the church, and to order a public form of
prayer for the consuls. At the desire of Bonaparte, the
court of Rome further consented to secularize Talleyrand,
and to make certain other concessions, all indicating an ac¬
commodating, if not an obsequious spirit towards the ruler of
France.1 The next desideratum was an aristocracy, which,
1 In re-establishing religion in France, Bonaparte encountered much opposition from the prejudiced incredulity of those around
him. “ Hearken,” said he to one of his councillors during a promenade at Malmaison; “ I was here last Sunday, walking in this so¬
litude amidst the silence of nature. The sound of the church bells of Ruel suddenly struck upon my ears. I was moved, and said,
if I am thus affected, what must be the influence of those ideas on the simple and credulous mass. The people must have a religion,
and that religion must be in the hands of the government.” The councillor, thus addressed, waiving the broad question of religion or no
religion, objected to Catholicism. “ It is intolerant; its clergy are counter-revolutionary; the spirit of the present time is entirely op¬
posed to it. And, after all, we, in our thoughts and principles, are nearer to the true spirit of the gospel than the Catholics, who affect
to reverence it.” Bonaparte urged, that by his leaning to Protestantism the government would be weakened, not strengthened; one
half of France might embrace it, but the other half would remain Catholic. “ Let them call me papist if they will. I am no such
thing. I was a Mahommedan in Egypt, and I will be a Catholic here for the good of the people.” This was certainly very accom¬
modating ; but, notwithstanding, considerable resistance was experienced. The theophilanthropists raised the cry of no popery.
The soldiers, too, were excessively indignant. In commemoration of the re-establishment of the church, Cardinal Caprara celebrat¬
ed Tc Deurn in Notre Dame on Easter Sunday 1802, when the first consul attended, surrounded by his officers. On his return he
asked several of them their opinion, and, in particular, addressing General Delmas, said, “ Well, general, we have just witnessed a
very imposing ceremony ; I hope you are satisfied.” “ Yes,” replied Delmas, “ a pretty capucinade ; there was only wanting the
million of men who have perished in overthrowing all you have built up. We must now, I presume, fasten beads to our swords.”
Lannes expressed his resentment in still stronger terms. Perceiving in the hall of the Tuileries Cardinal Caprara and several bi¬
shops, he accosted them in the rudest manner; then entering without ceremony the cabinet of Bonaparte, he exclaimed, “ Eh ! que
fais-tu de ce tas de pretres dans tes antichambres ; chasse-moi toute cette canaille ; est-ce avec des soldats de cette espece que tu as
gagne la bataille de Marengo ? A quoi diable songes-tu done ? Tu verras qu’un beau jour ils te jetteront bas.” Delmas received orders
126 FRA
History, after the conclusion of the peace, every effort was used to
supply. The ancient nobility were allowed, nay even en-
1802. couraged, to return to France ; Napoleon seemed anxious
to gather around him the fragments of a monarchy sanc¬
tioned by time, though at last overthrown by the force of
opinion and circumstances; but, stripped of their proper¬
ties, and alike disinclined to the Revolution and its repre¬
sentatives, they refused to abandon the cause of legitimacy
for an equivocal or anomalous place in the consular court.
In one sense they judged rightly; for, even if they had
availed themselves of the permission granted by the French
government, it would still have been necessary to counter¬
balance the old nobility by elevating to the same rank those
who had attained to distinction during the wars and strug¬
gles of the Revolution, in short, warriors and civilians, who
had earned their honours in the school of democracy. Ac¬
cordingly Napoleon, obliged for a time to abandon this idea,
formed a scheme eminently calculated to attach to him a
nation which, with all its professed republicanism, still re¬
tained a strong predilection for the trappings of monarchy.
This was the institution of the Legion of Honour, by which,
at the expense of red ribbons and very moderate pensions,
an order of merit was created, into which every man of am¬
bition or enterprise might hope one day to gain admission,
and which was calculated to ensure the attachment of all
the men of courage and ability in the country. But when
the project was communicated to the council and the le¬
gislative body, an instant outcry was raised against it. “ It
destroys equality, it contradicts the principles of the Re¬
volution. The legion of honour contains all the elements
of hereditary nobility; privileges, powers, honours, titles
and pensions. It is sowing the seeds of an aristocracy.”
Bonaparte combated these objections, of which he must
nevertheless have felt the force. “ You cite the Roman
republicans against me; the Romans, amongst whom dis¬
tinctions were perhaps more marked than amongst any other
people. Observe the consequence when the noble class of
patricians was destroyed at Rome; the Republic, left at
the mercy of the populace and its leaders, ran straight
through anarchy and proscription to despotism.” And was
not this also the case in France ? Did not the re-action
which followed the reign of terror prepare the way for that
despotism which Napoleon himself was so soon to establish
over France? In one respect, however, the first consul
acted with equal firmness and justice. When Mathieu Du¬
mas proposed to confine the decorations of the legion of ho¬
nour to the military, he peremptorily refused to admit any
such exclusive limitations, and persisted in his determina¬
tion to render the new order equally accessible to the sol¬
dier and the civilian.
Plans for But whilst Napoleon was thus reconstructing the sup-
5°,tS and Providing the ornaments of monarchical power, he
vereignty . ,!?ot ne»!ect the necessary means for raising the edifice
in his fa- 1^sen ; that is, the establishment of a permanent sovereign-
mily. ty in his own person and family, on a basis involving a full
recognition of the rights and interests created by the Re¬
volution. In this, accordingly, he laboured with equal skill
and perseverance, advancing step by step towards his ob¬
ject. It was at first hoped indeed that he would be con¬
tented with the second place, and restore the crown to the
Bourbons; and, on this supposition, Louis XVIII. twice
addressed him in terms which might perhaps have conciliat¬
ed ordinary ambition. But although Josephine exhorted him
to imitate the conduct of Monk, and there were not want-
N C E.
ing others to insinuate the same advice, Bonaparte, satisfied History,
that there were more difficulties in the way of restoring the
Bourbons than of founding a new dynasty, and that the l8°2.
men of the Revolution would more readily tolerate as sove¬
reign one who had risen from its ranks, than receive back
any member of a family who had so many wrongs to avenge,
resolved to put on his head the crown which genius and
fortune had enabled him to win. Accordingly, he began by
feeling the pulse of the nation in a pamphlet, which, it is
said, was written by his brother Lucien, and corrected by
himself. But as the public mind was not yet prepared for
so violent a transition, the experiment failed; ridicule was
provoked at the idea of an Emperor of the Gauls ; and the
first consul, throwing the blame of this alleged imprudence
on his brother, deprived him of his office of minister of the in¬
terior, and sent him as envoy into Spain. Meanwhile, the
Tribunate, or representative body, had been remodelled, and
the most froward patriots excluded; an “ epuration” which
materially facilitated the development of his plans. In May
1802, Bonaparte was declared first consul for another ten
years; and, after a short interval, this was amended into a
vote by which he was appointed first consul for life. Under
a republican designation, he thus became the acknowledged
sovereign of France ; and it is not less remarkable than in¬
structive that this surrender of the liberties of the country
encountered much less opposition in the council than the
institution of the legion of honour had done. The history
of the Revolution shows, indeed, that it is not liberty which
the French prize, but equality and military glory.
The views of the consular government in concluding the Effects of
peace of Amiens were now sufficiently indicated by the the peace
course which Napoleon pursued in extending his influence^Amiens'
over the neighbouring states. The Cisalpine Republic
had been remodelled to suit his views, and the first consul
elected as president of its legislature. The Batavian and
Ligurian Republics were obliged to submit to similar modi¬
fications ; Piedmont was formally annexed to France, and
divided into departments ; and the stipulations of the treaty
of Luneville, which guaranteed the independence of the
republics of Italy and Holland, thus became void. Britain
began to show alarm and distrust, though the grounds for
such a feeling were scarcely stronger now than at the time
when the treaty of Amiens had been concluded. Bonaparte
was merely following out the system which he had pre¬
viously adopted. Remonstrances were made against these
encroachments and usurpations ; but the answer was ready
and conclusive. “ You must have foreseen all this. The
C isalpine Republic chose the first consul as its president in
.January 1802, two months before the signature of the pre¬
liminary treaty of Amiens; you could not be ignorant of
the fact. And why should England complain of the infrac¬
tion of the treaty of Luneville, when Austria, with whom
it was concluded, remains silent ?” This seems wholly un¬
answerable. Great Britain was neither a party to nor the
guarantee of the treaty of Luneville, and no stipulation
had been included in that of Amiens, that the articles of
the treaty of Luneville should be observed. She had ob¬
viously, therefore, no right whatever to interfere. Accord¬
ing to the admission of Lord Castlereagh, she had made
u a peace to try France;” but then this trial should in
justice and fairness have been confined to the treaty which
she had actually concluded, and not extended to a differ¬
ent one in which she could not even pretend to have any
concern, excepting upon the assumption that she held Aus-
know,” said Napoleon, “ howTo0 govern^hesemen’ and °n ^ ad™°"ished to show a httle more patience, and less vivacity. “ I shall
pray you in future to’be more L^ved"” Moreau BerSue Ou^nnrrT^^vT distu/bance- What 1 do is Pessary ; I
ments as Lannes and Delmas; and the armv mir,Lroi].. , f If01, Folaud, Victor, and others, entertained the same senti-
clergy. (Montgaillard, Histoire de France, tome v. p. 445.) ^ decidedly 0PP0sed to the concordat, and the re-establishment of the
FRANCE.
] story, tria in tutelage. On the other hand, it was equally futile
^ to complain of interference with the Helvetian Republic,
yf)2- because, in concluding a peace with France, it must have
been foreseen that Napoleon would inevitably act by it
as he had already done by the Cisalpine Republic. In treat¬
ing, the object of both powers was most probably the same,
namely, to display to Europe a readiness to make peace,
and thus cast on each other the blame of the inevitable
and speedy rupture. But in playing this difficult and not
very creditable game, English diplomacy was completely at
fault. The French observed the treaty to the letter; by
the English it was decidedly violated. The former conti¬
nually appealed to the compact which had been entered into
between the two countries; the latter were obliged to tra¬
vel out of the bond in quest of reasons or pretexts to justify
the nonfulfilment of its stipulations. The British ministry
may have had rational grounds for their mistrust; indeed
it is certain that they had such; but in withholding Malta
and the Cape of Good Hope, merely because France had
increased her territories and encroachments in Europe, they
took up an indefensible position, and consequently were
under the necessity of supporting their cause with vague
and unstatesmanlike recrimination.
Fifh But whilst the peace which had so recently been con-
cf'-3 .of eluded was thus endangered by the hesitation of the Bri¬
an ation. tish g0vernment t0 surrencJer Malta, and the transmission
of counter orders not to deliver up the Cape of Good Hope
to the Batavian Republic, other sources of division and ali¬
enation were unhappily opened up. Sensitive at all times
to public opinion, and peculiarly so at this time when em¬
ployed in rearing the fabric of his power, the first consul
felt deeply the unsparing attacks which were now made
upon him by the English press, and re-echoed by the pa¬
pers of the French royalists in England. To him this was a
species of warfare at once more dangerous and more galling
than any other. A formal demand was therefore made by
the French ambassador in London that this torrent of abuse
should be checked; and further, that the press should be
prohibited from indulging, in future, in strictures offensive
to the head of the French government. The ministry re¬
plied that the press in this country was free; that so far
from having any control over its conduct, they were them¬
selves daily exposed to the utmost severity of remark; and
that all persons aggrieved by it must seek redress in the
ordinary courts of law. Nevertheless, to avoid the appear¬
ance of conniving at or encouraging such attacks, they con¬
sented to gratify him as far as might be done in a constitu¬
tional way, by sending one of the libels complained of to
a jury. But this made matters ten times worse. Peltier
was acquitted, and an obscure libel received consequence
from the prosecution, and notoriety, if not fame, from the
incomparable splendour of the defence. Another demand,
that the Bourbons and their partisans should be expelled
from England, met with a firm and generous refusal. Cha¬
grined and exasperated, Bonaparte now condescended to
enter into a personal quarrel with the English press, and
employed his time in dictating articles for the Moniteur,
filled with acrimony and insult. About the same time also
appeared a report by Sebastian! (who had been employed
in a mission to the Levant), in which, amongst other things,
it was stated that six thousand French soldiers could re¬
conquer Egypt, and that England durst not renew the war
against France. I o say that intemperate paragraphs in
newspapers, and silly vaunting in reports, could ever be¬
come a reasonable ground of war, is preposterous. But
the English government, by its want of foresight and pre¬
caution, if not also by its want of faith, was reduced to the
humiliating necessity of appealing to such authorities in
vindication of its conduct. The first consul now demanded
why Malta had not been evacuated according to stipula¬
tion. The English ministry replied by a claim to retain it,
127
on the ground that France had increased her territory in History.
Europe, and that Egypt was threatened. But the first ob-
jectionwas irrelevant, and the second ridiculous. Bonaparte, I{K’3-
whose throne was being erected on the basis of national
glory, could never consent to the retention of Malta by the
English ; to demand it of him was in fact to declare war.
“ England,” said the French minister, shall have the trea¬
ty of Amiens, and nothing more than the treaty of Amiens.”
A rupture was now inevitable, as indeed it had from the a rupture
first been, and accordingly both countries made prepara- inevitable,
tions for war. Napoleon assembled troops in the fortresses
of Holland and the north of France, and dispatched envoys
to Austria and Prussia. Britain was not less active ; in all
her ports and harbours the deep note of preparation was
heard. Still Bonaparte was unwilling to commence war,
and, unavoidable as it now seemed, made a last effort to ward
it off. In an interview with the British ambassador, Lord
Whitworth, he expressed himself with a degree of frank¬
ness and sincerity unusual in diplomacy, but which unhap¬
pily led to no amicable result. “ Why should I wish for
war ? said he. “ A descent upon England is the only mode
I have of combating her ; and this, if compelled, I am re¬
solved to undertake. But why suppose that, arrived at my
present height of power, I should risk my reputation and
life, unless constrained thereto by necessity, in an expedi¬
tion in which myself and the greater part of my army would
most probably go to the bottom of the sea ; for there are
a hundred chances to one against me.” But all this can¬
dour proved unavailing. Napoleon was exceedingly averse
to war at this time, when he had good cause to apprehend
that the basis on which his power was fixed had not yet be¬
come sufficiently consolidated to withstand the rude shock
of a fresh contest. For the same reason England was in¬
exorably bent upon trying again the fortune of arms. A
warlike message from the king to parliament in March
1803 formed the prelude to the storm which was now ready
to burst. Bonaparte replied in a diplomatic note of singu¬
lar ability and unanswerable cogency of reasoning. It was
important to him to cast upon England the whole blame of
the rupture ; he had at once to satisfy the people of France,
and to conciliate the other powers of Europe ; and, besides,
his pride was mortified to find England assume the language
of cold and haughty defiance, if not insult, at the very mo¬
ment when he had almost humbled himself before the mi¬
nister of that country. Hence his keen and quick resent¬
ment prompted him to break through the rules of courtly
decorum, and, at a public levee held on the 13th of March,
to give vent to the bitterness of spirit which this conduct
had excited. “ You are decided on war, it seems you wish
it,” said he, addressing the British ambassador. “ After
fifteen years of combats, we must yet recommence and fight
for fifteen years to come. You force me to it.” Then turning
to the ambassadors of Spain and Russia, he said, “ The Eng¬
lish will have war. They are the first to draw the sword;
I will be the last to put it in the scabbard. They do not
respect treaties, which we must henceforth cover with
black crape. You may destroy France, but you shall not
intimidate her.” “ We do not wish to do either the one
or the other,” replied Lord Whitworth. “ Respect trea¬
ties, then. Wo be to those who do not respect them ;
they shall be responsible to Europe for the consequences.”
At the conclusion of the levee, he again addressed the
British ambassador when near the door: “ The Duchess
of Dorset has passed the unpleasant season at Paris; I
sincerely wish she may pass the pleasant one also; but if
it be true that we are to have war, the responsibility, in the
sight of both God and man, will rest on those who shall re¬
fuse to execute the treaty.” It has been said by some that
this burst of anger was calculated. Why might it not be
natural and sincere ? War at this time was not for the in¬
terest of Napoleon, or of the country which had placed him
128
FRANCE.
1803.
British ul¬
timatum.
History, at its head; he required time to mature his plans of go¬
vernment ; France languished for repose. But the die was
now cast, and all that remained was to abide the hazard of
the throw.
Lord Whitworth was now instructed to demand that the
French forces should evacuate the Batavian and Swiss ter¬
ritories ; that a suitable provision should be made for the
king of Sardinia, and that Britain should be permitted to
retain possession of Malta for ten years. This was called
an ultimatum, and a week was insultingly fixed as the term
beyond which no reply would be received. Yet even now
the French government did not assume a peremptory tone.
Talleyrand was sincerely averse to war, and up to the last
moment used every effort to prevent it; foreseeing, pro¬
bably, the pernicious consequences which would result even
from fresh victories. But the English ministry resisted
every advance towards an accommodation of the points in
dispute, gave wretched and shuffling reasons for a mistrust
which in the main was perhaps not altogether groundless,
and sought to cover the blunders of their diplomacy by
means of sullen pride and defiance. Outwitted, out-argued,
and outdone, both in talents and in good faith, they
had no voice for, no resource in, any thing but war. Or¬
ders had already been issued for seizing the ships of France,
and those of the states dependent on or in close alliance with
that country ; a measure entirely in the spirit of that usur¬
pation which they at once denounced and imitated; and
the first consul retaliated by detaining all the British sub¬
jects whom curiosity or business had induced to visit
France. And thus recommenced between the nations a
quarrel unrivalled for the inveteracy of its spirit and the
variety of its fortunes. “ The rupture was to the first
consul,” says Bignon, “ the decisive point of his destiny.
Henceforth he saw England rise before him like a cape of
storms, which he was for ever forbidden to pass.”
The first step of Napoleon, on the renewal of hostilities,
was to put his armies in motion ; that of Holland to occupy
Hanover, and that of Lombardy to invade Naples, and gar¬
rison Tarentum. Britain, secure from direct attack in her
insular fortress, could only be combated by establishing the
power of France in the sea-ports, and excluding British
commerce from the Continent. To bestride Europe like a
huge colossus, having one foot on the Mediterranean and
the other on the Baltic, was therefore the grand object of
Napoleon; and this menacing attitude he lost no time in
preparing to assume towards England. That power now
reigned supreme as empress of the seas ; but “ her control
stopped with the shore,” which was now about to be closed
against the enterprise of her people. Towards the end of
May 1803, General Mortier marched against Hanover with
an army from Holland, and speedily made himself master
of the country. The troops of the electorate, incapable of
offering any serious resistance, retreated before the enemy,
and at length capitulated, when they were discharged on
condition of not serving against France during the war.
About the same time the kingdom of Naples was re-occu¬
pied with equal facility by a French force. These sudden
conquests, however, excited uneasiness and suspicion on
the part of the northern powers. Russia, which had taken
the bicilian court under its protection, was offended by the
re-occupation of the Neapolitan territory, and still more
seriously displeased to observe the French flag waving on
the shores of the Baltic. Prussia had still greater cause for
alarm at the presence of so formidable a neighbour; more
especially as the French, not satisfied with Hanover, al¬
ready threatened to occupy Hamburg and Bremen, the
possession of which was necessary to enable them to give
the law to the north of Germany, fhe blow aimed at
England thus recoiled on a power whose selfish and tem¬
porising policy had induced her to withdraw from the con¬
test with republican France, and leave her allies to defeat
Renewal
of hostili¬
ties.
and humiliation. But as these proceedings placed the Histo
courts of Berlin and St Petersburg under the necessity of
either humbling themselves before France, or throwing 180;
themselves once more into the arms of Britain, Napoleon
sought by every means to conciliate these powrers, and even
to bribe them to join him in his attempts to destroy the
commercial and maritime superiority of this country. “ The
germ of what was subsequently called the Continental Sys¬
tem,” says Bignon, “ already existed in the mind of the
first consul, and this system reposed upon the support of
Prussia. One of the objects of the usurpation of Hanover
was to make that court feel the inconvenience of a state of
indecision towards France, and the advantages of a close
alliance with her. To render Prussia powerful, in order
that by its union with France it might awe the Continent
to quiet, was the aim of Napoleon. If it be asked why,
towards the close of his reign, Napoleon showed himself
inexorable towards Prussia, the reason is, that Prussia was
the power which wished him most ill, in forcing him to
combat and destroy her, instead of extending and strength¬
ening her monarchy, in order that she and France united
might keep Austria and Russia immoveable, and at the
same time give that development to the continental sys¬
tem which would force England to make peace.” Prussia,
in short, was to be fattened and enriched at the expense of
acting in subservience to the views of France, and Hanover
was offered to her as the price of her submission. The
bribe was tempting, and there was considerable hesitation
in refusing it. All the old ministers were disposed to ac¬
cept the electorate with the French alliance ; Hardenberg
alone was of a contrary opinion, and his view ultimately
prevailed. But the influence which decided the Prussian
court to reject the insidious proposals of Bonaparte was
that of the Emperor Alexander, whose opinions, argu¬
ments, and weight overcame all the representations of
Duroc and the other French envoys, even when on the
point of accomplishing their object.
By a singular turn of opinion and events, every act of Effect of
Bonaparte now told in favour of Britain, the ministry ofNapoleot
which, had he remained on the defensive, could scarcely111 ea8ures
have persisted in a war which had been undertaken with-on.Putlli(
out any adequate object, and in the prosecution of whichOI)ini0”'
there was no reasonable prospect of success. But the oc¬
cupation of Hanover and the south of Italy excited the ap¬
prehensions of Europe ; whilst the army collected on the
northern coasts of France, and destined to invade England,
had the effect of exciting the patriotic energies of that
country, silencing the arguments of the friends of peace,
firing the national pride, and uniting all by the tie of a
supposed common danger. The voice of reason, prudence,
and humanity, was drowned in the tumult of contending
passions ; and the most unjustifiable war in which Britain
had ever engaged, suddenly became, in the broadest sense
of the term, a national one. Meanwhile, as a field of bat¬
tle was denied to Napoleon, he turned his activity towards
military organization, forming the armies and preparing
the resources with which his most brilliant conquests were
afterwards achieved. Alessandria was fortified upon the
most approved principles, at an enormous expense, and ren¬
dered the bulwark of Italy. From Otranto to the Texel
every coast and sea-port was put in a state of defence ; and
the British fleet, whilst blockading every harbour, and me¬
nacing every accessible point, might observe the gigantic
attempt made by the enemy to surround Europe, as it
were, with a wall of iron. The few remaining colonies or
foreign possessions of France now fell into the hands of
Britain ; and Louisiana, which had been wrested from
Spain, was sold to the United States, as the only mode
left of deriving advantage from the acquisition, and at the
same time defeating the views which England might en¬
tertain in regard to the occupation of the province.
If
lolispi
gainst
rstw
i
FRANCE.
129
istory. Whilst public attention was mainly directed to the army
and flotilla assembled at Boulogne, Ambleteuse, and other
1804. places adjoining, for the professed purpose of invading
Qspiracy Brita{n> it was suddenly diverted from military projects
t^inst the^y ^ discovery of a conspiracy against the first consul,
fltt con- rpjjg ]10pes which the royalist party had entertained upon
his first accession to power have already been noticed.
They fancied that, satisfied with military glory, he might
be prevailed on to favour a restoration, if not directly to
assist in bringing it about; and, in two letters, Louis XVIII.
demanded of him this act of disinterestedness, which, how¬
ever, he calmly but firmly declined. His subsequent mea¬
sures for strengthening and perpetuating his power left
no doubt that, occupying the first place in the state, he
would never voluntarily descend to the second, and that
the hopes which they had so hastily formed were entirely
fallacious. Disappointment now gave place to intrigue,
and intrigue became envenomed by the spirit of revenge.
The decree which conferred upon Napoleon the consul¬
ship for life had encountered very considerable opposition.
Lafayette protested against it; Camille Jourdan publish¬
ed a reclamation in favour of the liberty of the press ; and
Madame de Stael opened her brilliant saloon to the most
distinguished opponents of the consular government. Of
all this the royalists now took advantage; and a corre¬
spondence was entered into with Louis XVIII., who pro¬
mised, in the event of his restoration, to respect the prin¬
ciples of liberty, and further to grant a charter in which
these should be fully recognised. The hopes of the roy¬
alists were thus kept alive; the activity and confidence of
their adherents were augmented ; whilst the watchfulness
and jealousy of the government were proportionally in¬
creased. But although the opinions and predilections of
speculative persons seldom lead those who entertain them
to embark in the perilous adventure of conspiracy, the
Bourbons counted amongst their more zealous and active
partisans men eager to strike a blow at the head of the new
government, and to anticipate events rather than to wait for
their tardy development. Of these, General Pichegru was
one. His fortunes were now desperate; and he had many
wrongs, or at least misfortunes, to avenge. Having escaped
from Sinamary, to which he had been banished by the fac¬
tion of the 18th of Fructidor (4th September 1797), the ex¬
patriated general returned to Europe; openly espoused the
cause of the Bourbons ; and, as Bonaparte had now become
master in France, wished to attempt by a coup-de-main to
overturn the principal author of his misfortunes. A plan of
conspiracy, having for its object to overthrow the consu¬
lar government and to restore the Bourbons, was accord¬
ingly arranged at London, in conjunction with Georges
Cadoudal, son of a miller at Morbihan, a determined
Chouan, and other persons well fitted to engage in such
an enterprise. The views of the conspirators can only be
gathered from circumstances, and from the admissions
afterwards made by themselves when arrested by the
French police; but it seems tolerably certain that the as¬
sassination of the first consul was regarded by them as a
preliminary measure, indispensable to the success of the
counter revolution which it was their main object to bring
about. The whole fabric of Bonaparte’s power rested on
the basis of his character and reputation; he was not part
of a system established on a wide and solid foundation, but
the system itself; the existence of the consular govern¬
ment depended entirely on him; and hence the surest as
well as speediest mode of overturning his authority was to
begin by destroying himself. But be this as it may, the
ultimate success of the enterprise depended on providing
betorehand the means of giving it a determinate charac¬
ter, and at the same time acting powerfully on public
opinion.
What the conspirators most wanted, therefore, was a
VOL. x.
name to oppose to that of Bonaparte; a leader of eminence, History,
whose reputation might conciliate public opinion, and bear -y*'*-''
to be put in competition with that of the first consul. Mo- 1804.
reau was precisely such a personage, indeed the very man
they required. Possessing great talents for war, his success
had been commensurate with his ability as a commander,
and die renown of Hohenlinden had equalled, if not eclips¬
ed, the glory of Marengo. Besides, he was discontented, liv¬
ing in affected obscurity, and full of resentment on account
of the unmerited neglect with which he had beeli treated
since the 18th of Brumaire. But though a brave soldier,
Moreau was deficient in moral courage. Fie could not
persuade himself either to yield or resist; he wanted the
strength of mind or the dissimulation necessary to restrain
the expression of his resentment; nature had denied him
that promptitude of volition as well as energy of action
which are so indispensable in the chief of a party; and,
on the 19th of Brumaire, he had not dared to convert
that revolution to his own advantage or that of the na¬
tion, and had even served, though with a bad grace, as
aide-de-camp to his more audacious rival. His wife also
had great influence over him, and having been slighted at
the consular court, now exerted it to induce him to listen
to propositions for overthrowing the tyranny of Bonaparte.
The royalist agents, ever on the watch, took advantage of
these dispositions, effected a reconciliation between him
and Pichegru, and thus entangled him in a scheme des¬
tined to prove his ruin. Pichegru arrived from England
in January 1804; Georges Cadoudal had preceded him
by several months. They both saw Moreau, who was dis¬
gusted with the ferocity of the Chouan ; but their scheme,
whatever it was, made little progress towards maturity.
From the first, indeed, Fouche had spread his toils around
them ; numbers of their accomplices were already arrest¬
ed ; and if Pichegru and Cadoudal were still allowed to
remain at large, it was only that they might gain over
Moreau, and effectually implicate him in their schemes.
Meanwhile the conspirators were unable to come to any
decision. At their last interview Pichegru showed much
hesitation ; Moreau possessed ambition which he could
not conceal, but was totally wanting in character; Geor¬
ges, and especially Pichegru, perceived that he had per¬
sonal views. Cadoudal, endowed with great energy, and
devoted to the cause of the Bourbons, pressed, conjured,
threatened Moreau, but could not decide him to act;. and
Pichegru ended by proposing to adjourn the execution of
the plot for four days. But in the night fixed for action,
the conspirators, whilst impatiently waiting the signal
agreed on, received counter orders, and dispersed; some
indulging in the most violent proposals, others resolved
to mix no longer in such intrigues. The police was on
the alert; the most inquisitorial means were employed ;
all kinds of seduction were had recourse to; Moreau,
Pichegru, and Georges were successively arrested. When
interrogated as to the project of assassination, the Chouan
answered frankly, “ I came to Paris to attack the first
consul openly by force ; by the same means, in short, which
he takes to protect himself. We waited to act until a
French prince arrived in Paris.” This prince was, it
seems, the Duke d’Enghien; and the voluntary confes¬
sion of the Chouan sealed his fate.
But in the interval between the arrest and trial of Piche-Murder of
gru and his associates, Bonaparte struck a blow which the Duke
stunned all Europe, and was no doubt intended to strike d,£nghien*
terror into the hearts of those who had so often plotted
his destruction. We allude to the seizure and military exe¬
cution of the Duke d’Enghien. This young prince, a son
of the Duke de Bourbon, and grandson of the last Prince
of Conde, inhabited the chateau of Ettenheim, belonging to
the elector of Baden, and only four leagues distant from
Strasburg, where he had lived for some time in perfect
130
FRANCE.
1804.
History.^ security. The proximity of his residence to the French
frontier, the fact of which the consular government had
received information that Dumouriez was at Ettenheim,1
and, above all, the confession of Cadoudal that he and his
brother conspirators only waited for the arrival of a French
prince in order to commence operations, satisfied the first
consul that the duke was not only aware of, but deeply
implicated in, the counter-revolutionary movement which
had been concerted in Paris ; and this conviction was much
strengthened by the reports of the police, all of which re¬
presented the conspiracy as having assassination for its
principal object. “ The air,” said Fouche, “ is full of po¬
niards.” The life of the first consul had already been at¬
tempted by means of the infernal machine ; and although,
on that occasion, he had escaped as it were by miracle,
he could not always hope that the hand of the assassin
would miss its aim, or that his machinations would fail of
success. The law of self-preservation, which gives to
every man, when his life is in jeopardy, the right of de¬
fending it by all the means in his power, seemed there¬
fore to sanction the adoption of measures calculated not
merely to ward off the present danger, but also to strike a
salutary terror, which might in future prevent the renewal
of such attempts. Accordingly a detachment of French
gensdarmes, under the order of Captain Chariot, was di¬
rected by General Ordener to surprise the castle of Etten¬
heim, and carry off the Duke d’Enghien ; whilst another
expedition, under General Caulincourt, moved upon Kehl
and Offemburg to seize some emigrants at those places.2
But the gensdarmes advanced so rapidly, that on the night
of the 15th of March the prince was seized in his bed, and
hmried off to Strasburg. I he tidings of his capture were
immediately conveyed to Paris by the telegraph, and
through the same channel orders were received on the
morning of the 18th, in consequence of which the pri¬
soner was rapidly transported to the castle of Vincennes,
but without traversing the capital. He reached Vin¬
cennes at nine o’clock in the evening, much fatigued with
his journey, and the same night was brought before a
military commission, specially appointed to try, or rather
to condemn him.
The charges brought against him were six in number ;
first, having borne arms against the Republic ; secondly’
having offered his services to England, the eternal enemy
of France ; thirdly, having received accredited agents of
that country, facilitated their correspondence in France,
and conspired against the internal and external safety of
the state; fourthly, having placed himself at the head of
a corps of French emigrants in the pay of England, which
had been formed in the Brisgau and in Baden ; fifthly, hav¬
ing maintained a correspondence in Strasburg, with the in¬
tention of raising the adjoining departments, and operat¬
ing a diversion in favour of England; and, lastly, havino-
entered into the conspiracy formed by that power for the
assassination of the first consul, and held himself in readi¬
ness, in the event of success, to enter France with arms
m his hands. Interrogated on each of these heads, the
prince made the best defence which circumstances ad¬
mitted of, oppressed as he was with fatigue, and exhaust-
i - uT Waj1 ?f food and rest? but> after a sham trial,
which lasted about three hours, he was found guilty upon
a the counts, and condemned, although not a single docu¬
ment had been produced, nor a witness examined in evi¬
dence against him. It is said that the commission which
so summarily tried and convicted the young prince, did so
under the impression that the punishment of death would
not be inflicted ; but if they entertained any such belief
the event speedily showed that it was entirely groundless!
I he pi ince requested to see and speak with Bonaparte,
and begged that this request might be communicated to
the first consul. Savary, however, who had positive orders
to see the judgment carried into execution, refused to
giant any indulgence; and at daybreak the prince was
conducted to the fosse of the chateau, where, beside a
new-made grave, destined to receive his remains, he was
shot by a party of gensdarmes, and died with a courage
worthy of his I’ace. &
Whatever excuse Napoleon may have had for seizing
and detaining the Duke d’Enghien as a hostao-e, he had
none whatever for putting him to death; whilst the cir¬
cumstances attending this tragedy, the rapid journey, the
nocturnal trial, the shameful conviction without evidence
and the immediate execution of the sentence, gave to it
the character of a premeditated assassination. In this light
accordingly, it was regarded throughout Europe, men of
all parties uniting in execrating the deed as a foul mid¬
night murder, only rendered more revolting by the mock-
ery of justice with which it was accompanied. It has in¬
deed been said, that in accelerating the catastrophe, and
condemning the prince clandestinely by night, the fermen¬
tation which might have arisen had the procedure been
prolonged was avoided ; and that the circumstances which
had created the necessity for a great example, also required
that it should be promptly made. But is the policy of him
who seeks to profit by a crime, any justification of the
crime itself. or can mere expediency ever sanction a pro¬
ceeding by which justice is trampled on, and the door shut
against mercy ? It is no doubt true that the life of the first
consul was aimed at, and that the principle of self-preser¬
vation warranted him to take some measures for his own
protection ; but the law of self-defence requires of him who
resorts to such a plea, proof that he has not exceeded the
moderamen inculpates tutelce, or, in other words, that the
measures he had recourse to did not go beyond the neces¬
sity of the occasion. Had Napoleon confined himself to
the seizure and detention of the prince as a hostage for his
own safety, all Europe would probably have thought that
he was justifiable in taking such a precaution ; by acting as
he did, he outraged the sentiments of justice and humanity,
armed public opinion against him, and exhibited himself to
the world in the light of a man capable of committing any
crime, however dark and atrocious. Fouche was right, there¬
fore, in pronouncing the murder of the Duke d’Enghien, a
great political fault, which, in his estimation, was worse than
a crime. Napoleon, in a laboured defence of his own con¬
duct, dictated many years afterwards, endeavours to incul-
Ew AV!ary’by charging him wdh precipitation ; and affirms
that if the request of the prince for an interview had been
communicated to him, it would have been granted, and
might have been followed by a remission of the capital pu¬
nishment. But is it to be believed that in a matter of so
much importance, a subaltern would have ventured to act
as bavary did without positive orders ? or that having such,
ie would dare to disobey them ? On this point, indeed,
Histor
1804
was in reality the Marquis de Thum^y^the^emrn^ronui^irdon^ofw'ffose^1'1^611]11 .represented as General Dumouriez,
Dumouriez. (Montgaillard, Histoire de France, tom. vi p 47T It mLl! 6 ^ led them to confound him with General
?r’,T4c”unt ““ of rmnche.c„mt,, the cosjice“ sr,„prs‘„fatit
tion of the intended mtS’of the Duke dSghien,’ huul^imcertlli whet£r°^sTtt ’ 5™t 1° T ministeroftho a notiflea-
prince, which was so rapidly effected by the gensdarmes under Chariot T.n ? . rea1ched Carlsruhe before the seizure of the
a crime which, he foresaw, would arm public opinion against the new o’rdeT of things eJtabffid^rFrance151'^^1 ^ COmmission ^
FRA
jj-tory. the vindication of Savary is complete ; for, whatever may
be thought generally of the part which he acted in the af-
'04. fair, he has at least established this point, that he merely
obeyed his orders.
The French government had early intimation of the sen¬
timents with which this crime was regarded in other coun¬
tries. The emperor of Russia lost no time in instructing his
charge d’affaires at Paris to notify that he had learned with
equal surprise and grief the event which had taken place at
Ettenheim, the circumstances which followed it, and its
deplorable result; and that the interest felt by his imperial
majesty was the stronger, because he could in no way re¬
concile the violation of the territory of Raden with those
principles of justice and humanity, regarded as sacred by
nations, and which alone protect their mutual relations.
The Russian minister, at the diet of Ratisbon, also present¬
ed a note, in which he forcibly represented this violation of
the Baden territory as endangering the peace and security
of every state in Germany.1 A long diplomatic correspond¬
ence ensued, without leading to any result; and on the 29th
of August the Russian charge d’affaires quitted Paris, after
which all relations ceased between his country and France.2
D( hof Some time after this tragedy, Pichegru, who had been
Pi'iegru. confined in the Temple since the 28th February, was found
strangled in his prison. The operation had been performed
by means of a faggot-stick inserted between the neck and
the cravat, so as to act like a tourniquet, or rather like what
is commonly called a Spanish windlass. Wright, an English
captain, who had landed Cadoudal upon the coast of Nor¬
mandy, and had afterwards been taken prisoner, was also
found with his throat cut. The French government pub¬
lished all the details relative to both suicides ; but the re¬
cent catastrophe of the Duke d’Enghien had produced in
all minds an impression so unfavourable to Bonaparte, that,
without proof, and even without examination, the death of
Pichegru, in particular, was at the first moment imputed
to him. But time has demonstrated the injustice of this
imputation. The circumstances of real evidence connect¬
ed with the deed itself, the clear interest of Napoleon to
bring Piehegru to a public trial, as he afterwards did Mo¬
reau, the situation of that unfortunate man himself, and,
above all, the fact that, even after the fall of Bonaparte,
not a particle of evidence was discovered to contradict the
statement originally published by the government, or to
warrant so much as a suspicion of foul play, all unite to
prove that Pichegru died by his own hand. What possible
motive could the first consul have to order this unhappy
man to be privately assassinated ? The evidence against
him was complete. His negotiations with the Bourbons
could not be disavowed; the agents of Louis XVIII. and
of the English ministers, with whom he had corresponded,
were detained as prisoners in the Temple; and that cor¬
respondence was about to be judicially authenticated by
their respective depositions. Was it not for the interest of
the first consul, and of the government of which he was
the head, that all this should be clearly established in a
court of justice, and that the man who had associated him¬
self with assassins should also be proved to have been a
traitor to his country? But Pichegru appears to have
judged more correctly of his position in the Temple, than
N C E. 131
those who preposterously attempted to invest him with the .History,
honours of martyrdom. He saw himself undone without
resource, and being unable to endure the ignominy of as- d804-
cending the scaffold with brigands, chiefly known by their
exploits on the highway, he put an end to his existence.
Georges Cadoudal, and several of his more guilty asso¬
ciates, were soon afterwards brought to trial, condemned,
and executed, without the slightest manifestation of pub¬
lic feeling in their favour.
The prosecution of Moreau commenced on the 1 Oth of Trial of
June. He was arraigned on a law which declared the con- Moreau,
cealment of proclaimed conspirators an offence punishable
with six years’ imprisonment in fetters ; and the specific fact
charged against him was the harbouring of Georges Ca¬
doudal and his accomplices. His conduct on this occasion
fully justified the opinion which we have previously pro¬
nounced as to his character. The public declared loudly
in his favour; but he did nothing corresponding to the
great interest excited in his behalf. Brave and decided
on the field of battle, he constantly showed himself timid,
and sometimes pusillanimous, on the political arena; nature,
in giving him the bravery of the soldier, had denied him
the courage of the citizen. He must indeed have been
conscious that he was deeply compromised; but, on the
other hand, never did a person accused find so many de¬
fenders in almost every class of society. The enemies of
Bonaparte, and they were numerous/loudly expressed the
interest with which Moreau had inspired them ; a crowd
of military men, who had served under his orders, prepared
to defend him by open force, nay, even to rescue him from
the tribunal; and the very gensdarmes appointed to guard
him turned towards him the hilts of their sabres in token
of their readiness to assist in his deliverance. But always
feeble, and incapable of taking a decided part, Moreau had
recourse to supplications addressed to the first consul, to
whom, in a letter from his prison in the Temple, he pre¬
sented the most humble excuses, at the same time implor¬
ing the “ bienveillance” of the head of the government.
Nor was his conduct less humiliating when brought before
his judges. The exigencies of his defence imposed upon
him the dire necessity of denying the statement which he
had written to the Directory, and signed w ith his own hand,
that “ the proofs of the treason of Pichegru were as clear
as day, but that he doubted whether they could be exhi¬
bited in a judicial form.” Accordingly, after having I’epeat-
edly affirmed that “ it was but too true that Pichegru had
betrayed the confidence of the whole nation,” he had now re¬
course to the most miserable shifts in order to invalidate all
the accusations which he had presented against Pichegru,
when the latter commanded the army of the Rhine and Mo¬
selle in 1795 and the beginning of 1796, as guilty of main¬
taining a correspondence with the Prince of Conde and the
enemies of the Republic. But the force of public opinion had
made itself felt even on the bench; and the recollection
that he had gained thirty battles for the Republic, and
saved two armies, created an interest in his favour which
all his weakness and folly could not destroy. The culpa¬
bility of Moreau was evident, and Bonaparte required that
he should be condemned to death, or to some degrading
punishment, intending, as is said, to have remitted the sen-
1 As a proof of the sentiments with which he professed to regard the murder of the Duke d’Enghien, the Emperor Alexander
caused to be erected in the principal church of St Petersburg, a funeral monument in honour of the unfortunate prince, with a Latin
inscription, in which the latter is described as a hopeful scion of the house of Bourbon, quem Corsica bellua immaniter trucidavit. Yet,
four years later, we shall find the autocrat, who on this occasion professed so much hatred and contempt for Bonaparte, loading him
with every mark of regard, priding himself on being acknowledged as a friend by the new emperor of the Gauls, and even exclaiming,
in the words of a French poet, “ L’amitie d’un grand homme est un pre'sent des dieux.” At Erfurt, the Corsica lellua of the inscrip¬
tion was held out, by this Greek of the lower empire, as little short of an angel of light.
2 In replying to the first note of M. d’Oubril, the Ilussian chargd d’affaires, the French minister made a palpable hit : “ Si
lorsque les Anglais concertaient 1’assassinat de Paul Ier., on fut venu avertir 1’Empereur Alexandre que ses assassins n’etaienl qu’k
une lieue de la frontiere Itusse, ne se serait-il pas mis en devoir de les faire arreter ?” This was a home-thrust, which admitted ot no
riposte.
132
FRANCE.
1804.
History, tence, which would have effectually destroyed Moreau in
public opinion. But in vain did he attempt to seduce or
intimidate the judges. Out of twelve, seven feared not to
resist;1 and by a sort of transaction between the govern¬
ment and public opinion, Moreau was declared culpable,
but excusable, and condemned to suffer two years’ impri¬
sonment, which was afterwards commuted into exile.2 Of
forty-six others who were at the same time arraigned,
twenty were condemned to death, five to two years’ impri¬
sonment, and the rest acquitted, but not released. The
Polignacs were spared at the intercession of Josephine,
and Madame Murat, afterwards queen of Naples.
Civil code. In the early part of this year a law was passed which
decreed the re-union of the civil laws in a single code,
under the title of Code Civil des Franqais. The advan¬
tage which a country derives from the establishment of
uniform laws does not need to be proved; but, to appre¬
ciate the full importance of this benefit to France, it is only
necessary to cast a glance at the state of the law under the
old regime. It was divided into two principal systems;
that of written law, and that of the countries governed by
customs or common law. Both systems were subdivided
ieto an infinite number of branches. There were about
three hundred general customs, varying in the extent to
which they prevailed; and these, again, were modified by
a multitude of local usages. The number of commentators
was immense. France was also governed by many other
written institutions, such as ordonnances, edicts, declara¬
tions of the sovereign, and arrets of the parliaments ; each
province, each diocese, each bailliage, each town, each cor¬
poration, had in fact its own usages and its own jurispru¬
dence. “ Besides the forty thousand Roman laws, of which
some one is always cited at random,” says Voltaire, “ we
have five hundred different customs, reckoning the small
towns and burghs, which derogate from the usages of the
principal jurisdiction ; so that a person travelling post in
France changes laws oftener than he changes horses, and
an advocate who is very learned in one city is no better
than an ignoramus in that next adjoining.” This descrip¬
tion is not- in any respect overcharged. Never in any
other country had chicanery and oppression so wide a field
to expatiate in ; never was there so urgent a necessity for
substituting, in the room of conflicting usages and accu¬
mulated anomalies, a comprehensive and uniform system
of laws.
Ihe failure of the royalist plot to overthrow the consular
government, together with the exposure of the follies com¬
mitted by Drake and Smith, the English residents at the
courts of Munich and Stutgardt, materially contributed to
advance the project which Napoleon had for some time
cherished of assuming the imperial purple. A despotism
for life is an absurdity ; and besides it holds out a sort of
premium for assassination. That the first consul’s life
had been aimed at, the infernal machine, and the conspi¬
racy of Pichegru and Georges, placed beyond all doubt;
that similar attempts would be repeated, as long as the
hope xemained that, by taking off a single individual,
a counter revolution would be effected, was indeed most
probable.. According to the logic of the time, a necessi¬
ty had arisen, not for abating the despotism, but for pla-
The.em¬
pire.
cing it on a more solid and permanent foundation ; or, in
other words, for declaring it hereditary in the person and
family of the man who was already invested with absolute
power. Thus reasoned the partisans of Napoleon, and, in
their view of the question, correctly ; because any thing
was preferable to a government which might at any given
instant of time be overthrown. Measures were therefore*
taken to effect the object which was now declared to be so
necessary to the safety and happiness of France. On the
30th of April a motion was made in the Tribunate to con¬
fide the government of the Republic to an emperor, and
to declare the empire hereditary in the family of the first
consul Napoleon Bonaparte. This motion was made by
an obscure member of the legislative chamber, named
Curee, who concluded his speech on the occasion by de¬
claring that the nation desired a chief as illustrious as its
destiny. Ever since the 2d of August 1802, when, by an
organic senatus-consultum, the members of the Tribunate
were reduced to a hundred and fifty, Bonaparte had com¬
pletely controlled the deliberations of that body; indeed
almost all the tribunes were either sold or intimidated,
and scarcely a shadow of representation remained. The
proposition to confer upon Bonaparte the title of emperor
was therefore adopted by the Tribunate; but the unani¬
mity of that body was greatly troubled by the heroic op¬
position of Carnot, who on this occasion expressed the
most noble and generous sentiments. “ I voted,” said he,
“ at the time against the consulate for life; I shall in like
manner vote now against the re-establishment of the mo¬
narchy in France.” He contended that the government of
a single individual was any thing rather than a guarantee
of stability and tranquillity. “ The duration of the Roman
empire,” said he, “ was not longer than that of the Repub¬
lic would have been; the intestine disorders were still
greater, and crimes more multiplied; republican high¬
mindedness, heroism, and all the masculine virtues, were
displaced to make room for the most ridiculous pride, the
vilest adulation, the most insatiable cupidity, and the most
complete disregard of national prosperity. What evil, pray,
was remedied or obviated by declaring the succession to
the throne hereditary? Was not this in fact regarded
as the legitimate inheritance of the house of Augustus ?
Was not Domitian the son of Vespasian, Caligula the son
of Germanicus, Commodus the son of Marcus Aurelius ?”
He concluded a powerful address in the following words,
the beauty and force of which we shall not impair or en¬
feeble by any attempt at translation. “ La liberte fut-elle
done montree a 1’homme pour qu’il ne put jamais en jouir ?
Fut-elle sans cesse offerte a ses veeux comme un fruit
auquel il ne peut porter la main sans etre frappe de mort ?
Ainsi la nature, qui nous fait de cette liberte un besoin
si pressant, aurait voulu nous trailer en maratre ? Non,
je ne puis consentir a regarder ce bien si universellement
prefere a tous les autres, sans lequel tous les autres ne
sont rien, comme une simple illusion ; mon coeur me dit
que la liberte est possible, que le regime en est facile et
plus, stable qu’aucun gouvernement arbitraire, qu’aucune
oligarchie.”
Ihe vote of the Tribunate was communicated to the
Conservative Senate, which, on the 4th of May, decreed,
History.
1804.
meuTCheToWfremiirv’w^n Pausanias’, Lecqurbe, Martineau, Desmaisons, Itigault, Laguillaumie, and De-
vier replied “ Et cmi nous la terT'?6 UI” Bo™Parte only desired the condemnation of Moreau in order to pardon him, Cla-
2 repneo, jtt qui nous la tera, a nous ?” Who will pardon us ? r ?
he avoided1 if bv^retiirninfr ab^np^r01tViUnCe(^ evex'V °1 escaPe was afforded to Moreau ; but, discovering the snare laid for him,
the^hole exnense^the'nrosecution^lf ^ ^ At IenSth a compromise was entered into, and, after having paid
S>>am to 4m.eti“- “ En -entrant un caract&re meins Weis, mofns pu.
xx. xijcixiiaio uit o v tixtXLt-o
(Montgaillard, Hisloire de France,
FRANCE.
133
jiltory. on the motion of the second consul, Cambaceres,1 “ that
it is for the decided interest of the French people to con-
;04, fide the government of the Republic to Napoleon Bona¬
parte as hereditary emperorand fourteen days after¬
wards the same body, without waiting until the vain for¬
mality of obtaining the sanction of the people had been
gbne through, passed another decree, in which the first
consul is styled “ Emperor of the French,” a title which,
according to the mover, “ is only the expression of an
authentic wish already manifested by the nation.” It ap¬
pears, however, that the people were not in any shape
consulted or referred to in the matter. For form’s sake,
they had been admitted to vote respecting the question
of the consulate for life; but on the present occasion the
experiment was not repeated, however advantageous it
might have been to obtain at least a semblance of popu¬
lar assent; and, what is not a little remarkable, this fact
is established by the conclusion of the very discourse in
which it is unblushingly affirmed that the assumption of
the imperial dignity by Napoleon is only the expression
of an authentic wish already manifested by the nation.
“ If it is in the principles of our constitution,” says Cam¬
baceres, in presenting the decree of the senate, “ and al¬
ready several examples have been given, to submit to the
sanction of the people the part of the decree which con¬
cerns the establishment of an hereditary government, the
senate nevertheless conceives that it ought to supplicate
your imperial majesty to consent that the organic dispo¬
sitions should immediately receive their execution ; and,
for the glory as well as for the happiness of the Republic,
it proclaims, on the instant even, Napoleon emperor of the
French.” What, then, becomes of the assertion, so often
advanced, as if it could not be contradicted, that “ the
wish of thirty millions of men had crowned the Emperor
Napoleon ?” By evidence the most conclusive it is here
established that Bonaparte was created emperor by the
senate, consisting entirely of his own creatures, and that
the nation was not consulted or appealed to in the matter.
An organic senatus-consultum next declared the imperial
dignity hereditary in the direct, natural, and legitimate
descendants of Napoleon, from male to male, in the order
of primogeniture, to the perpetual exclusion of women and
their descendants. It provided, however, that the empe¬
ror might adopt the children or grandchildren of his bro¬
thers, if he had no male offspring himself at the moment
of adoption, and that the children who might thus be
adopted should enter into the direct line of descent, but
could only be called to the succession after legitimate and
natural descendants. In default of an heir of Napoleon, the
imperial dignity was to devolve upon Joseph-Napoleon and
his descendants, and, failing the latter, upon Louis Bona¬
parte and his descendants. And thus expired the French
Republic, surnamed indivisible and imperishable by so
many orators and rhetoricians; and thus was monarchy
re-established in France, with even greater facility than it
had been overthrown eleven years before. Having pass¬
ed through a course of representative government, they
now hastened to submit to the government of one man
invested with despotic power; like the ancient slaves, History,
they voluntarily replaced themselves under the yoke which
for a day they had entertained the design of for ever 1804,
shaking off.2 * * *
Having assumed the title of emperor, which the obse- Measures
quious senate had, by a sort of improvisation, bestowed on of Napo-
him, Bonaparte lost no time in exercising the powers be-^e?n t0 °^'
longing to his new dignity. On the 19th of May he cre_ coition6'
ated eighteen of his generals marshals of the empire. 0f]lisnew
This was an act of homage to the army, the real basis of dignity,
his power, and it was performed without even waiting until
the senate had taken the oath of allegiance, which it did
on the 27th. Addresses now flowed in from all parts of
the hundred and eight departments into which the terri¬
tory of the imperial republic was divided. The authori¬
ties, the functionaries, the magistracy, and the army, all
brought to the foot of the throne assurances of the most
profound devotion. Harassed with the convulsions of a
long anarchy, the people now invoked the repose of ser¬
vitude. The despotism of one man seemed to them a
small evil compared with the tyranny of the factions. Of
this disposition Napoleon took full advantage, and, ac¬
cordingly, spent the remainder of the year in employing
every means to get his new dignity confirmed and sanc¬
tioned both at home and abroad. The fact of his assump¬
tion of the imperial dignity was formally announced to all
the states of Europe, Britain alone excepted, and nego¬
tiations were at the same time opened with a view to ob¬
tain its recognition. Austria was the first to acknowledge
the new emperor of the Gauls; and the opportunity was
even chosen by her sovereign for modifying his own title,
to which he now added that of hereditary emperor of Aus¬
tria. But the other powers either hesitated or delayed.
The army, however, formed the true basis of Napoleon’s
power, and their sanction was essential to its stability. To
obtain this with suitable eclat, he visited Boulogne in the
course of the summer, and, soon after his arrival in the
camp, ordered a grand review, during which he distribut¬
ed to the military crosses of the Legion of Honour, which,
created by the law of the 19th May 1802, had been so¬
lemnly inaugurated at Paris a short time before (14th Ju¬
ly). Here, on the 16th of August, seated on a temporary
throne in the midst of his numerous hosts, with the shores
of England and its fleets before him, he received, as it
were in presence of the enemy, the exulting acclamations
with which the troops answered his claim to empire, and
seemed, like another Clovis, raised on their bucklers, to
be the founder of a new dynasty in France. From Bou¬
logne Napoleon hurried to Aix-la-Chapelle, the ancient
capital of Charlemagne, where the acknowledgment of his
new dignity by the Emperor Francis II. awaited his arrival.
Lastly, on the 1st of December, the Conservative Senate
presented to him the plebiscitum, as it was called, which
recognised the imperial dignity as hereditary in his family.
That nothing might be wanting, the church was required His coro-
to give her formal sanction to the new dynasty. The Gal- nation.
lican clergy had already signalised their zeal by proclaim¬
ing Napoleon emperor, and in their discourses styling him
1 He who thus placed the crown on the head of an ambitious soldier was the same person who, in the night of the 19th January-
1793, exclaimed, “ Citoyens representans, en prononcant la mort du dernier Itoi des Franc-ais, vous avez fait un acte dont la
memoire ne passera jamais, et qui seragravd par le burin d’immortalite dans les fastes des nations...Qu’une expedition du ddcret de
mort soit envoye'e, a 1’instant, au conseil executif pour le faire executer dans les vingt-quatre heures de la notification.” In this
cortege of senators was also the minister of justice who, on the 20th January, announced to Louis XYI. the sentence of death.
“ Jamais empereur de Rome,” says Montgaillard, “ ne dut le diademe a de plus vils afiranchis; pose par de telles mains, il eut
souille le front meme de Titus.” {Hist, de France, vi. 94.) In a word, these Conventionalists, who, in 1793, had shown themselves
so eager to hasten the death of Louis XVI., were not less so, in 1804, to accelerate the enthronement of Napoleon Bonaparte.
* How well they verified the words of an Italian poet, the reader will judge :
Torna contento eosi
Schiavo, che usci di pena,
Alla barbara catena
Che detestava un di. (Metastasio.)
134
FRANCE.
1804.
History. Moses and Cyrus, not to mention other impious absurdities.1
In success they discovered divine rightaswell as legitimacy,
and proclaimed the finger of God as the agent of his ele¬
vation. Nor was the successor of St Peter, and the vicar
of God upon earth, less accommodating than the members
of the Gallican church. At the command of Napoleon,
his holiness made a journey to Paris, in order to place the
crown on the head of the new Charlemagne, who had de¬
spoiled the church of the very possessions which had been
bestowed on her by the pious emperor of the Franks. The
sovereign pontiff who thus obsequiously consented to con¬
secrate military usurpation, was no other than that Bishop
of I mol a who, in December 1797, exhorted his flock to
follow the traces of the democratic revolution of France ;
but if the hearts of men are in the hand of the Most High’
infallibility is of course an attribute of the papal tiara. The
ceremony of the coronation took place in the church of
Notre Dame on the second of December; and no labour
or expense had been spared to give splendour and magnifi¬
cence to the spectacle. But notwithstanding all the pomp
and luxury displayed, few acclamations greeted the empe¬
ror on his way to Notre Dame, and still fewer awaited him
on his return. No man said God bless him. The people
genei ally remained passive and silent. During the cere¬
monial, Napoleon, impatient of its slow march, seized the
crown, which he placed on his own head, and next he also
crowned the Empress Josephine. The holy father then
performed the triple unction on the head and the two
hands, after which he recited the following strange for¬
mula of consecration : “ Almighty and eternal God, who
hast established Hazael to govern Syria, and Jehu kino-
of the Jews, in manifesting to them thy will by the oro-an
of the prophet Elias; who hast equally shed the holy
unction of the kings on the head of Saul and of David by
the ministry of the prophet Samuel; shed, by my hands,
the ti ensures of thy grace and of thy benediction on thy
servant Napoleon, whom, notwithstanding our personal
unworthiness, we do this day consecrate emperor in thy
n^.e\” T.his formula explicitly announces the doctrine
ot divme right, a doctrine borrowed from the constitution
ot the Hebrews, and introduced into Europe at a period
ot the grossest ignorance, under the feeble Carlovingians
when the priesthood established the absolute power of
kings over their people, and the absolute power of the
pope over kings.
, ^he ™an-who ha1d tf}118 gathered up out of the wrecks
ot the Revolution the fragments of the sovereignty which
it had broken to pieces, and with these materials, aided
by his own genius, constructed a new empire in France
was, considering his character in its various aspects, the
most extraordinary personage that any age or country
has e^i produced. Gifted by nature with all the general
and efficient elements of greatness, but possessing few or
none of those peculiarities which sometimes mar and some¬
times adorn it, his powers differed from those of ordinary
men not so much in kind, perhaps, as in degree. Grea^
Character
of Napo¬
leon.
good sense, intuitive quickness, unquenchable energy, se¬
vere judgment, untiring perseverance ; such were the ge¬
neral attributes of his mind, to which circumstances af¬
forded lull opportunities of development. He was not one
of those men born to struggle against events, or to create
occasions for the display of his own powers, and for the gra¬
tification of an aspiring ambition. He never anticipated
the course of events, nor ventured forward until every ac¬
cessory had been prepared, until all was ripe for consum¬
mation. His mind was essentially practical, and his su¬
preme excellence consisted in a just appreciation of the
true character of events, united with unexampled promp¬
titude in availing himself of the favours of fortune, and in
turning every propitious circumstance to the utmost pos¬
sible advantage. But his energy was active, not passive ;
with the current of events in his favour, his audacity was
boundless; when the tide turned against him, he evinced
but little fortitude; in prosperity he seemed like a god,
governing all things at his pleasure; in adversity he pined
like a southern exotic under a northern sky. He was not
fitted by nature to play the part either of Cmsar or of
Cromwell, and he would never have descended to that of
Catiline. ^ He was in truth but a bad conspirator; for, as
we have already seen, the revolution of the 18th and 19th
of Brumaire was effected, in spite of his blunders and
hesitation, by the firmness and intrepidity of his brother
Lucien. Further, Napoleon was endowed with great and
commanding intellect, but not with strong passions; he
neither loved nor sympathised with freedom ; and even
his ambition seems to have been after-thought begotten
of events. A little before the 13th ofVendemiaire, when
acciuent first brought him into notice, his views were limit¬
ed to the purchase of a country-house and farm, but not of
confiscated property, so unstable did he then consider the
Revolution. But he had that restless spirit, that craving ac¬
tivity, and that innate consciousness of intellectual power,
out of which ambition springs. He was not without en¬
thusiasm of a certain kind ; but itmever approached the
generous warmth of inspiration, or betrayed him into any
sallies which his judgment condemned; and hence his
compositions and addresses, though full of force and vi-
gour, are deformed by exaggeration, and devoid of natu¬
ral feeling, the essential element of true eloquence. But
the absence of passion and enthusiasm implies selfishness
m the highest degree; and this again naturally produces
the most depreciatory judgments of mankind. The cha¬
racter of Napoleon was deformed by both these vices in
an eminent degree. Himself, his greatness, and that of
Jrance through him, became, if not a passion, at least the
substitute for one ; and, mistrustful of all pretensions to
public virtue or disinterestedness, he regarded mankind
as all governed by their immediate interests, and as ready
to serve any cause by which these might be advanced,
from this nullity of feeling, and strength of intellect, flow¬
ed the virtues and vices of the man. He was neither im¬
posed on by the cant of the Revolution, nor in the slight-
Histort
^Vv
1804.
their order, at least on themselves. The following ■ire sn^'1"'1’' "6? T th? occasion referred to reflects eternal disgrace, if not on
nostn sof Napoleon: “ Le Dieu des dieux,” said Cardinal CamhW^^u VIT with which thcT endeavoured to regale the
mais il a donne de nouveau, comme il avait donne le trone de rETnv deS r01S’aV3lt et 11 avait rePris ? n’a pas rendu,
troUrra nos maximes dans 1’Evangile ” “ Tin d?in it U CharIemaSne, et le trone de celui-ci >i Saint-Louis...L’homme
des Chretiens est le seul digne d’etre adord et obei -’ vous rviln \U“, m°narTJe’ said the Archbishop of Turin, “ comme le Dieu
k cesseront toutes abstractions philosophiques tout deh>CLmi!ft° a eteS G •eu homme diSne de commander aux Francais. Par-
“ qu’elle est admirah e.  F'1:’,l0iu. aepecement du nouvoir.” “ OnVll^ oct •• •- -
autre
Nouveau
ment accompli de Napoleon...La soumission lui est du? rnmmL ith ^ Ce 1>nnce chtn de 1)1011 et des h°mmes, 1’image du gouverne-
proteger le bien et punir lemal, parce que tel est 1’ordre deTTr ^ sartout ’ a ses ministres, comme envoyes par' lui pour
Bus with the language held after the events of 1814 bv some of^h? 6 11 T°uld be at once curious and instructive to compare
to the Jacobin emperor. 4; by SOme of the very men who thus profaned holy writ in order to offer incense
FRANCE.
135
Bitory. est degree tinged with its fanaticism. Indebted for his
promotion to the democracy, he adopted that side which
04, threw command open to talents; he espoused the cause
of the Revolution, and rendered it triumphant; but he
imbibed none of its passions or prejudices against either
the aristocracy or the clergy, both of whom he spared and
even protected. He was not by nature cruel or implaca'
ble; but the supreme command of armies, and the habi¬
tual spectacle of fields of battle, had inspired him with a
contempt of human life, and a disregard for destroying it.
He had no immoral tendencies ; but as he had derived
from education no principle of religion, or, at least, as the
Revolution annihilated any he might have originally im¬
bibed, he was left free to adopt those untempered maxims
of expediency, according to which prudence becomes the
only regulating principle of human actions. Nor does he
seem to have cherished any nice sentiment of honour, or
in general to have possessed those habits and manners
which are characteristic of a gentleman. The one would
have inspired him with a respect for truth, and prevented
an imperial bulletin from becoming synonymous with
falsehood ; and the other would have preserved him from
that habitual rudeness, which at length left around him,
not devoted servants, but servile instruments, alike inca¬
pable of delaying a guilty order or of hastening a generous
one. As to war, Napoleon always found it made to his
hand; if his system provoked it, which it unquestionably
did, this never entered into his calculation, and he could
not imagine why Austria, Britain, or any other power,
should affect to feel any alarm at his aggrandisement. He
. had come in place of the Revolution; he was at once the
representative and the guardian of all the interests and
changes which it had created or effected ; and yet, though
but a Jacobin enthroned, he resented as an indignity and
an insult the mistrust evinced by those very powers which
had previously combined to crush the Revolution of which
he was the representative. This was no doubt the grand
misfortune of his position. He could not stand still, much
less recede. His system was essentially of a progressive
and an encroaching character ; his policy was from neces¬
sity arbitrary and menacing. Wars followed; coalition
aftercoalition was formed and destroyed; and whilst France
only assumed the offensive in order to anticipate enemies
which were preparing to strike her, victory attended her
standards. But the very fruits of success, which no man
knew so well as Napoleon how to gather up, soon accu¬
mulated to such a degree, that a further extension of his
authority became inevitable. The obstinate hostility of
England, which he endeavoured to overcome by means of
what he chose to denominate the continental system, in¬
volved him in the Russian expedition, in which he assum¬
ed a directly aggressive character; and the consequences
were unheard-of disasters and defeats. The elements
warred against him, and in the snows of Russia were
buried those formidable legions which had so often march¬
ed to victory. The tide of events now turned ; and in the
violence of the reflux Napoleon was, after a brief strug¬
gle, overthrown. When he crossed the Niemen to invade
Russia, he had reached the culminating point of his des-
tiny; when he recrossed that stream, the nations of Eu¬
rope were already freed from his grasp. But though una¬
ble to control events, Napoleon was eminently calculated
to rule over masses of men. If he deprived them of liberty,
he at least secured to them equality; in all departments a
boundless field was opened by him to talent and enter¬
prise ; and in pursuing his own schemes of greatness, he
conferred the most substantial and enduring benefits on
the nation which he governed. His was essentially a
popular despotism; one which rested not on the narrow
basis ot castes, but leaned on the general mass. Yet his
power, though it extended widely over the land, did not
strike downwards, but, spreading its roots horizontally History,
and superficially through the soil, wanted that firm hold
which alone could have enabled it to resist the fury of 1805.
the adverse blasts to which it was exposed.
The events of 1804 prepared the way for a new coah-New coali¬
tion against France. The breach with Russia, resulting tion against
ostensibly from the seizure and execution of the Duke Fr£lnce Pre*
d’Enghien, had accomplished the first wish of Great Bri-Parin£‘
tain, which was to find a continental ally. Menaced with
invasion, the mere threat of which, independently of any
danger to be apprehended, was an evil, because an insult,
that power, acting upon the most obvious principles of
policy, naturally sought to find employment on the Con¬
tinent for the legions which frowned defiance on the op¬
posite shores of the Channel; and a prospect of accom¬
plishing this object was unexpectedly opened in conse¬
quence of the event to which we have alluded. But this
prospect was for a time overclouded by an unjustifiable
aggression on the part of Britain. Spain had for several
years been in close alliance with France, which she se¬
cretly aided with subsidies; yet the English government,
though fully aware of the circumstance, pretended not to
observe it, and had hitherto respected Spain as a neutral
power. This policy, however, which, in the circumstan¬
ces, was not less wise than cautious, the English minis¬
try suddenly abandoned, and, by a most unjustifiable act
of aggression, threw Spain into the arms of France.
Without any declaration of war, or the least indication of
a change in the system which had hitherto been pursued
by England, several Spanish vessels, returning laden with
treasure, were attacked by a superior force, and after a
sharp action captured. This proceeding, stamped with all
the characters of violence and treachery, was immediate¬
ly followed by a declaration of war on the part of the
Spanish government; and from this time Britain had not
only to contend with the fleets of France and Spain unit¬
ed, but, in consequence of the gigantic schemes of Napo¬
leon, became seriously exposed to all the perils and mi¬
series of an invasion.
Meanwhile, as the clouds of hostility were gathering Proposal
around him, Napoleon addressed a letter directly to the for peace,
king of Great Britain (14th January), containing overtures
of a peace. “ I attach no dishonour,” said he, “ to making
the first advance. I have, I think, sufficiently proved to the
world that I do not dread any of the chances of war. Peace
is the wish of my heart. I conjure your majesty not to
deny yourself the satisfaction of giving it to the world.
A coalition will never have any effect but to increase the
continental preponderance and grandeur of France.” In
any view, this was a politic proceeding. It served to con¬
ciliate public opinion in France, to throw upon England the
odium of persisting in embroiling the Continent, to mask his
real designs, and at the same time to parade his dignity by
treating on a footing of equality with the proudest and
most powerful monarch in the world. The reply of the
English ministry was cold and repulsive. “ His majesty
is persuaded,” said they in their reply addressed to M.
Talleyrand, “ that the object of peace can only be obtained
by engagements calculated to provide for the future safe¬
ty and tranquillity of Europe, and to prevent the recur¬
rence of the dangers and misfortunes in which it has been
involved. His majesty, therefore, feels that it is impos¬
sible for him to reply more particularly to the overture
which has been made to him, until he has had time to
communicate with the powers of the Continent.” Both
parties were equally insincere. Britain desired to abide
by the fortunes of a third coalition ; Napoleon pursued his
schemes of aggrandisement, and on the 18th of March
announced to the senate that he had accepted the crown
of Italy, in conformity, as he said, with the wishes mani¬
fested by the Italian Republic. At Milan, where he was
136
FRANCE.
1805.
History.^ received with enthusiasm, he had exchanged his title of
— ~ 1 president of the Cisalpine Republic for that of king of Italy,
and placed upon his head the iron crown1 of Charlemagne,
amidst the acclamations of a people charmed with the
idea of a kingdom of Italy. This was followed by an act
of a still more unequivocal character, namely, the incor¬
poration of Genoa, lately the Ligurian Republic, with the
French empire; a measure certain to alarm Austria, and
to furnish Great Britain and Russia with a new and
powerful argument for inducing that power to join the
coalition against France.2
Napoleon’s Many persons have thought, and some gravely main-
plan of in- tained, that Napoleon was not serious in his menace of in¬
vasion. vading England. But the contrary has been proved by the
most incontrovertible evidence. He was well aware, how¬
ever, that without obtaining at least a temporary supe¬
riority of naval force, such a project would be impracti¬
cable; and accordingly all his efforts had, for some time
past, been directed towards the accomplishment of this
preliminary object. His plan was to distract the atten¬
tion of England, by sending a powerful fleet to the West
Indies, which, after threatening her possessions in that
quarter, should suddenly return to Europe, effect a junc¬
tion with the Spanish fleet, then disengage the squadron
blockaded in Brest, and having rallied under its flag ships
from other ports, enter the Channel with an overwhelm¬
ing force of nearly sixty sail of the line. This project was
admirably conceived, and most skilfully combined; and
if the execution had at all corresponded with the de¬
sign, or if Villeneuve had obeyed his orders, or if, even
after his indecisive action with Sir Robert Calder, he had
made sail for Brest, instead of going into Cadiz in the face
of reiterated instructions, enforced even with menaces,
it would beyond all doubt have succeeded. In this splen¬
did conception, almost every contingency had been taken
into the calculation, except the obstinate and infatuat¬
ed disobedience of the admiral, which allowed England
time to collect her means, and enabled Nelson to anni¬
hilate, by one decisive blow, the navies of both France
and Spain. On this occasion fortune was on the side of
England, which was saved from imminent peril, perhaps
fiom a great national calamity, by a degree of infatuation
in the commander of the combined fleets, far beyond all
ordinary experience or reasonable calculation. If, after
his action with Sir Robert Calder, Villeneuve had pro¬
ceeded to Brest, according to his peremptory instructions,
his force would have at once been increased to forty-five
sail of the line, which, with the Rochefort squadron, the
junction of which he could then calculate on, would have
enabled him to enter the Channel with at least fifty sail History
of the line; a force amply sufficient to secure to France
for the time the naval superiority required. And, in such 1805>
an event, what would most probably have followed ? The
troops were in hand, almost on the very beach; the flo¬
tilla was kept in readiness to put to sea at a moment’s
notice; and in ten hours a hundred and fifty thousand
men, with material and ammunition, might have been on
their way to the opposite coast.3 But providence willed it
otherwise.
Whilst Napoleon was thus menacing England with inva-Third
sion from the heights of Boulogne, his looks were at the coalition
same time anxiously directed towards the east and north form€i
of Europe. He was by no means ignorant of the coalition
which was forming against him ; but as the position which
he at present occupied enabled him at once to threaten
England and observe Austria, he waited for the develop¬
ment of events in order to judge whether he should attack
the former upon her own soil, or strike a blow at her in Ger¬
many. Prepared for instant operations, his principal ob¬
ject was to suffer the continental powers to anticipate him
in declaring war, and then in turn to anticipate them, by
promptly assuming the offensive, dashing into the very
heart of Germany, overpowering Austria "before she had
time to concentrate her means of resistance, and thus de¬
stroying the coalition by, as it were, cutting off its head.
And this plan, based on the most accurate prescience of
events, was that wdiich he ultimately carried into execution
with the most astounding success. On the 8th of April
a treaty of alliance was concluded at St Petersburg, be¬
tween Great Britain and Russia, in which the contracting
powers engaged to employ the most prompt and effectual
means to form in Europe a general league, capable of con¬
straining the government of France to consent to the re¬
establishment of peace, and of the equilibrium of power ;
and to attain this object, the force to be employed was
fixed at five hundred thousand effective men, exclusively
of the succours to be furnished by England. The special
objects of the league were, the evacuation of Hanover and
of Germany ; the independence of Holland and of Switzer¬
land ; the re-establishment of the king of Sardinia in Pied¬
mont, with a considerable extension of territory; the se¬
curity of the kingdom of Naples; and the entire evacua¬
tion of Italy by the French. Sweden, having already de¬
cided against France, acceded to these stipulations. Prus¬
sia approved of their spirit, but temporised; and finally
resolved to persevere in that neutrality by which she had
already profited so much. Austria, anxious to redeem
her defeats, and regain her ascendency in Italy, formally
l ™sf'ow,n is,ralled iron' from a nail ofthe true cross, which, it seems, is attached to it
deav„»rd,Tir1i7oiibieTmSgr;LTour rf KsZn 'T ‘““"V” “PP^ed governor, and on-
by the revenue, nor by the land forces she might contribute f In umting Genoa to the empire, I was induced neither
going against the very spirit of mv orders to he IpniVnf r r i* i ' hut one object in view, viz. fifteen thousand seamen. It is. then,
ful. How can you govern peopKthout dLontutW th^^w, ^ Rising this force. You are too mild, too mercil
of a couple of French departments to march to the army ? I tell vou y°1'd° lf ?0U were charff?d w.lth Arcing the conscripts
virtue. (Vous savez Men qu'en fait de gouvernement instil'-nr,,}If}} J t t’ matters ot government, justice means force as well as
the man to listen to such remonstrances Think 'vou T sm 1 r comme ver*u-) As to the discontent of the Genoese, I am not
men. Govern but to collecTsTarn fdream but of them ' u T them ?, answer is’ seamen’ ^amen, still sea-
reason of this extreme urgency will imLdktelv annoar Ae? ^ flU fr°™ me’ but sa? that 1 wil1 have seamen.” The
be converted into a general motto for the historv o/ Ymnl ^ detestabl,e maxim, that justice means force, it might with truth
justice and virtue. 7 oi ^aPoleon s reign. With him the amount of force was ever the measure of
Napoleon on this subj^ctf amlirwSrth^laSis^ade^r^av M‘‘*¥h 1 Ec,u ,!'ienne rePorts a conversation which he had with
are fools. They do not see the thino- in its true Ho-ht T ,°Sf believe in the seriousness of my menace of invasion
fight a great battle, win it; but I must reckon on thiriv H ^ '3,ltIb.<’ut,doubt disembark in England with a hundred thousand men,
battle awaits me ; suppose mra^inTuS Wouaded’ or P™>ners. If I march upon London, a second
reinforcements ? It would be madness. Without naval cnner” I^)ndon’Wlth an. army diminished by three fourths, without hope of
that Bourrienne did not understand the nature of the communioati™ 11 PmJeCt 18 lmPracticable.” This merely shows either
ceal his real intentions from the inquisitive secretary That tl,o to..nm.’ or tbat 11 suited the views of Napoleon to con-
the means already described, a superiority of naval force in the WaS serious” as long as a hope remained of obtaining, by
Dumas has inserted in the Appendix to his seventeenth vein aiineI’ « proved beyond all doubt by the documents which General
“ ^ ^ eq„a% »uai» that, if ViMenauve
[jstflr
ISA*
f. ,er
Fitory. acceded to the treaty of St Petersburg (on the 9th of
r August), notwithstanding the strenuous opposition of the
Archduke Charles, who, foreseeing the peril, earnestly
counselled peace. She engaged not to lay down arms
except with the consent of her allies, and was to receive
from England a subsidy of three millions sterling during
the current year, 1805, and of four millions during each
of the following years. These negotiations did not long
remain a secret from Napoleon, who had anxiously watch¬
ed the gathering storm ; and scarcely had Austria acced¬
ed to the third continental coalition, when the French
army, assembled upon the shores of the Channel, was in
full march towards the Rhine. Bavaria had previously
been secured by a promise of territorial aggrandisement;
the Russians were still in Gallicia; and Austria, as the
Archduke Charles had foreseen, was thus left to contend
single-handed with the whole power of France. In these
circumstances Austria pushed forward her troops, and
peremptorily demanded that the elector of Bavaria should
abandon the alliance of France, and unite with her in
maintaining the independence of Germany. The elector
temporised, pleaded his engagements, gained time, and
succeeded in drawing off his army. The Austrians then
occupied Munich, thereby committing the verjr act of ag¬
gression which Napoleon expected and required.
Selfi and The great object which the English ministry had in
bluliering view in forming a new coalition against France cannot be
F^iind m’sta^en- ®ut 'n t^lus precipitating Austria into hostili-
' r ’ ties before her allies had time to come to her assistance,
in order to remove the French army from Boulogne, Pitt
played into the hands of the very enemy whom he was
so desirous to humble. From the cause already stated,
namely, the failure of Napoleon’s maritime combinations,
through the incapacity of his naval commanders, a de¬
scent upon England had become impossible, and the dan¬
ger, before so imminent, had by this time entirely ceased.
It was already certain that France could not obtain even
a temporary superiority of naval force in the Channel,
without which such an attempt would have been worse
than madness. To obviate a danger, therefore, which no
longer existed, Pitt recklessly sacrificed the principal ally
of England, contributed to extend and consolidate the co¬
lossal power of Napoleon, and enabled him to impose on
Germany those fetters which it afterwards cost so much
blood and treasure to shake off. The blunder of the
English minister was indeed gigantic, and no wonder it
cost him his life. Fie fell into the very snare which had
been so skilfully laid for him ; and by this fatal error placed
Europe at the feet of the man for whom he may with truth
be said to have paved the way to victory. Nor was the
conduct of the campaign itself in any respect unworthy of
the blind and infatuated policy which had hurried on the
contest.
Va:iiom. Ihe Archduke Charles, finding his pacific counsels dis-
urraier reSar(Je(^’ liac* resigned the presidency of the war depart-
ment, and refused to assume the general direction of a
war which, he foresaw, would be attended with ruin to his
house. The command of the Austrian army, therefore,
was in an evil hour intrusted to General Mack, who, it is
said, had been recommended by the English government;
a mere pedantic tactician, without genius or energy, who,
a few years previous to this, had failed to defend Rome
with a numerous army, against General Championnet with
only a few thousand troops; and who, though a tolerable
137
staff-officer, was wholly unequal to the difficult and re- History,
sponsible situation in which he had been placed. Of this
total incapacity he gave early and lamentable proofs. Con- 1805*
ceiving that Napoleon must necessarily advance by the
same road which had formerly been made choice of by
Moreau, he took post at Ulm, and there awaited the ap¬
proach of the enemy. The French emperor, however,
had very different views. His preparations had been made
with such rare ability, and the plan of the campaign so
well digested beforehand, that towards the end of Sep¬
tember the French grand army had arrived on the right
bank of the Rhine. It was divided into seven corps, with
a grand reserve of cavalry. The first corps was command¬
ed by Bernadotte, the second by Marmont, the third by
Davoust, the fourth by Soult, the fifth by Lannes, the
sixth by Ney, the seventh by Augereau, and the cavalry
by Murat, who had under his orders Nansouty, D’Haut-
poul, Klein, Beaumont, and Walcher. Napoleon entered
Germany at the head of about a hundred and sixty thou¬
sand men, including his guard.1 By the 6th of October
Bernadotte and the Bavarians occupied Weissemburg,
twelve leagues south of Nuremberg ; Marmont was in the
vicinity of Neuburg; Davoust was at Oettingen, eight
leagues north of Donawerth; Soult was at Donawerth;
Ney was at Kenssingen, three leagues west of Dona¬
werth ; Lannes was at Neeresheim, two leagues north-
north-west of Donawerth; and Murat with his cavalry
was on the borders of the Danube. In thus placing him¬
self in rear of the enemy, Napoleon accomplished two
grand objects; he avoided exposing his flank to the de¬
bouches of the Tyrol; and by the rapidity of his march he
had completely disconcerted the plans of the Austrians,
whilst, by turning towards the north, he might cut off the
Russians who were advancing from Gallicia towards the
Danube. But in order to operate a prompt re-union of
all his columns, it was necessary that Bernadotte, setting
out from Hanover, and Marmont from Holland, should
traverse the country of Anspach, belonging to Prussia.
Napoleon had secured the neutrality of that power by
the corruption of the Prussian ministry. But this violation
of its territory wounded the self-love of the sovereign, as
well as the pride of several distinguished military men,
who, desiring to see an end put to the humiliation of their
country, loudly demanded war against France. The in¬
dignation inspired by this insult had more effect on the
cabinet of Berlin than all the efforts of England and Rus¬
sia ; and Prussia, when it was too late, renounced the neu¬
trality which she had observed ever since the peace of
Bale, 5th April 1795, to engage single-handed in a contest
with France.
The contest in Germany now advanced, with singular
rapidity, towards a crisis. On the 8th of October a combat
took place at Wertengen, four leagues south-west of Do¬
nawerth, in which Murat, supported by Lannes, enve¬
loped an Austrian division, making a great number of
prisoners. On the 9th the Archduke Ferdinand was de¬
feated by Ney at Guntburg, six leagues east of Ulm, with
considerable loss; and the same day Soult occupied Augs¬
burg. On the 12th Bernadotte occupied Munich; and
on the 14th Memmingen, a considerable place on the II-
ler, surrendered by capitulation to Soult, when four thou¬
sand Austrians were made prisoners. The same day a
combat took place at Elchingen, two leagues north-east
of Ulm, in which Ney signalized himself by the most chi-
FRANCE.
?[,assena’ at tIie ,same time> assumed the command of sixty thousand men assembled in the north of Italy, and advanced towards
domAof Nn 7hei?’ b/ing,,Tnf0rfcd bj tW6,nt-y tllousand tro°Ps’ who, under the conduct of Gouvion-Saint-Cyrfhad evacuated theking-
debouche, of thI'V0111]'1 hlTuel oin f Tdjtlon to contend with the Archduke Charles, and prevent him from operating, through the
loene MavL't °\ he flan^ °f the 8rand arm3r- Three corps d’armee, intended as a reserve, were also assembled at Bou-
gvo r 1 7 ’ and Mrasbur§’ and three flyin£ camPs of grenadiers were marked out at Rennes, in La Vendee, and at Marengo.
s
138
FRANCE.
1805.
History, valrous bravery. Three thousand Austrians were made
prisoners. It had become necessary to obtain possession
of the bridge and position at Elchingen, in order to isolate
on the left bank of the Danube the mass of the Austrian
army confined in Ulm. The bridge and the position, de¬
fended by six thousand men with four pieces of artillery,
were twice carried by the bayonet, and as often recover¬
ed; but a third onset, made with the greatest impetuosity
under Ney in person, proved successful. On the 15th
the head of the first Russian column arrived on the Inn.
The corps of Bernadotte was then in position between
that river and Munich. At the combat of Langenau, three
leagues north east from Ulm, Murat, on the 16th, came
up with the division of Werneck, which had escaped from
Ulm, and made three thousand prisoners.
Thus, by the direction given to his army after the pass¬
age of the Rhine, and by the rapidity of his marches, Na¬
poleon had, as it were, overwhelmed the Austrians, and
reduced all their offensive plans to a defensive without
method. Mack at Ulm was placed in nearly the same
situation in which Melas had found himself before the
battle of Marengo. Both had their retreat cut off; but
Melas tried to break through the enemy in his rear, and had
succeeded in his object, when an accident deprived him of
the reward of his resolution; whilst Mack, closely invested
in Ulm and its immediate vicinity, made no effort to force
his way with his masses united, although continual rains
favoured such an attempt, but preferred risking the es¬
cape of his divisions separately. Thus the Archduke
Rerdinand, nominally general-in-chief, but placed under
the tutelage of Mack, had left Ulm with part of the cavalry;
whilst Mack, who had the title of quarter-master-general,
still remained there. As already stated, he was the same
person who, in the campaign of Naples, had lost his re¬
putation as a tactician, without displaying any talents for
execution; and who, on the 23d January 1799, had sur¬
rendered himself prisoner to General Championnet. His
situation had now become desperate. The French occu¬
pied all the surrounding heights, and he had nothing left
but to capitulate. General Segur, sent to demand his
submission, found every thing in disorder, and the brain
of Mack in a state entirely corresponding. This poor man
had no clear idea of the state of things until the French
themselves informed him; and he did not even know that
Napoleon was his antagonist. He began by demanding
eight days’ truce, or death, and concluded by immediate¬
ly capitulating. Ulm, with all its magazines and artillery,
was surrendered to the French; and thirty thousand
combatants became prisoners of war. The officers, in¬
cluding sixteen generals, were discharged on their parole;
the sub-officers and soldiers were conducted into France.
In less than fifteen days, the Austrians had lost above
fifty thousand prisoners, two hundred pieces of cannon,
many thousand horses, with about eighty colours and
other trophies, and were now forced to shelter themselves
behind the Inn. Never was triumph more rapid or more
complete. Ihe surrender of Ulm took place on the 20th
October, and on the 21st was fought the battle of Trafal-
gar, m which Lord Nelson annihilated the combined fleets
, 1<rance and Spain, and by the results of that glorious
day counterbalanced to England the advantages which
.Napoleon had just reaped in Germany.
tion Of themOhr dlfsters which Austria had sustained at Ulm
campaign!6 been repaired, and the fortune of the war
^ changed, it Prussia, otherwise so well disposed towards
the coalition, had even now struck in. By her hesitating
v!nIi can 116 reSAU 1 P.roved) ruinous policy, a heavy blow
had fallen on Austria; but there was still time to check
the advance of the trench, and even to reduce them to
the necessity of acting on the defensive. On the 25th of
October an interview took place at Berlin, between the
Pro ecu-
Emperor Alexander and Frederick-William III., and, at the
tomb of Frederick II., these two sovereigns promised to
unite their efforts to restrain the ambition of Napoleon.
But this political and sentimental farce ended in nothing.
The favourable moment thus allowed to escape could not
be recalled ; the king of Prussia was ere long at the feet
of Napoleon ; and tbe emperor of all the Russias became
the friend of the man who had granted him his life upon
the field of battle. Very different indeed was the course
pursued by the French emperor. After reconducting
his ally, the elector of Bavaria, to his capital, Napoleon
advanced into the heart of the Austrian states, whilst his
lieutenants continued to drive all before them. On the
1st of October he had crossed the Rhine; on the 20th
Mack and his army were prisoners; and on the 15th of
November he made his public entry into Vienna, which
had capitulated on the 13th. The Austrian court and
army had retired into Moravia ; but in evacuating the capi¬
tal they had neglected to break down the great bridge on
the Danube, of which Lannes, by an act of unexampled
audacity, now made himself master. The Emperor Fran¬
cis had hoped that the Russians would arrive in time to
act on the right bank of the Danube, and thus save his
capital from occupation ; but in this he was disappointed.
The first Russian army under Kutusof having advanced
higher up the Danube than Vienna, immediately fell
back towards Brunn on receiving intelligence of the oc¬
cupation ol the capital. Justly apprehensive of having his
communications with the second army intercepted, which
in fact was the aim of Napoleon, the Russian commander
felt himself compelled to execute this retrograde move¬
ment, which he did with all possible celerity. But being
warmly pursued beyond Vienna, and attacked in the midst
of his movement by Murat with the French cavalry, he
proposed an armistice, with the sole view of gaining time
to receive the reinforcements which were advancing from
Upper Moravia, and to secure his retreat. Murat, who
was already at Uollabrunn, fell into the snare, and accept¬
ed the artful propositions of the Russian commander,
which, however, were immediately rejected by Napoleon.
By "means ol this stratagem Kutusof saved his army from
the imminent perils to which it was exposed, and on the
18th November effected a junction with the second Rus¬
sian army under Buxhowden, at Wischau, six leagues
fiom Liunn, the capital of Moravia, where he assumed
the command in chief of the allied army. Kutusof’s re¬
treat was covered by Prince Bagration, who, with a corps
of six thousand men, made a desperate stand at Junters-
dorf against a greatly superior force under Murat, Soult,
and Lannes, and, in spite of every effort that could be
made to dislodge him, maintained his ground till night,
when he withdrew with the remains of his corps. This
encounter, which saved the army of Kutusof, raised the
courage of the Russians; they were still the soldiers of
Suwarof, and longed to measure swords, in an ampler
field of battle, with an enemy whom that victorious chief
had so often overthrown.
Ihe French now occupied Brunn, a strong place, well Situation
armed and supplied with munitions of war, which theoftlie
Austrians had precipitately evacuated on the evening of ^reIlc^
the 18th November, and on the 19th Napoleon establish-army’
ed his head-quarters at Wischau. Still the situation of
the rrench army was one of imminent hazard. Hurried
°c S the.ardour of' success, it had arrived in the centre
o Moravia, more than two hundred leagues from the
rentiers of France; it had in its rear neither magazines
nor strong places to serve as points dappui; its line of
operations was disproportionately long ; and it was expos-
ed in a space of about ninety leagues of hostile coun¬
try. Bohemia was in a state of insurrection, and threat¬
ened the communications by the left. The warlike
[istof
file of
iyarlitz
FRA
I story. Hungarians had risen in mass upon the right. The Arch-
RyO duke Charles, having escaped from Massena, whom the
• appearance of an Anglo-Russian fleet had retained in
Italy, was within fifty leagues of Vienna, the numerous
population of which was in a state of extreme fermenta¬
tion. Prussia had secretly acceded to the coalition, and
her minister Haugwitz brought to Napoleon an ultimatum,
the rejection of which was to be immediately followed by
an official declaration of war. In a word, all the proba¬
bilities were against the French army, which had no re¬
source but in a prompt and decisive victory, and, without
immediate prodigies of bravery and military science, could
not hope to escape from the numerous enemies by whom
it was about to be enveloped. What Napoleon most
wanted, therefore, was a great battle; but, in proportion
as this had become necessary to him, the clear interest
of the allies recommended for the present a Fabian sys¬
tem of tactics, and at any sacrifice avoiding a decisive ac¬
tion, by the result of which alone could the French army
be saved from destruction. But, in spite of the strong
and urgent reasons for acting upon the defensive, it was
nevertheless resolved at the head-quarters of the allied
emperors to deliver battle.
Baile of On the 2d of December the three emperors with their
Ameilitz. troops were near Austerlitz, a village about two leagues
south of Brunn. The Russian army, reinforced by a second
corps (18th November), reckoned about eighty thousand
effective combatants; and that of Austria amounted to
about twenty-five thousand. The French army did not
exceed eighty thousand men on the field of battle. The
artillery oq both sides was formidable, but the allies had
the advantage in the number of cavalry. The allies no
doubt desired to gain time, in order to await the arrival
of a third Russian corps, now only eight marches distant;
but the manoeuvres of Najwleon, and, we may add, his
artifices, induced, if not compelled them to accept battle.
The immense accumulation of troops around Olmutz, re¬
sulting from the extraordinary rapidity of events, occa¬
sioned such a scarcity of provisions, that the general-in¬
chief, Kutusof, felt himself constrained to precipitate of¬
fensive operations. This determination had, without his
knowledge, entered into the plan of Napoleon, who, three
days before, had withdrawn his advanced guard, in order
to fight upon ground which he had reconnoitred, and all
the accidents of which were consequently known to him..
The hesitation of Kutusof allowed a precious opportunity,
arid circumstances extremely favourable, to escape him.
But not having attacked when the French forces were
scattered, he ought to have continued his retreat, in order
to engage them still more in advance, either by moving
upon Hungary to operate a junction with the Archduke
Charles, or upon Bohemia to communicate with Prussia,
whose army was assembled and in a condition to act; in
short, he ought to have temporised until the simultaneous
co-operation, now close at hand, of all the members of
the coalition had been obtained, in which case the retreat
of the French army towards the Rhine would have been
rendered impossible. But instead of acting in this man¬
ner, by which eventual success would have been placed
almost beyond the reach of accident or fortune, he decid¬
ed to risk the chances of a general battle, when the re¬
spective forces of the combatants were nearly equal.
Marshal Cannes, having under him General Suchet,
commanded the left; Marshal Soult directed the right;
Marshal Bernadotte commanded the centre; Marshal
Davoust kept himself in observation before the left of the
allies; Marshal Murat, with his cavalry, and twenty-four
pieces of light artillery, supported the right under Mar¬
shal Cannes ; and the reserve consisted of ten battalions
of grenadiers under General Oudinot, flanked by ten bat¬
talions of the guard under General Junot, the whole being
N C E. 139
provided with forty pieces of cannon. The action com- History
menced at sun-rise, and continued until night. The sun
rose with unclouded brilliancy, and was long remembered 1805.
as the sun of Austerlitz. Its first rays discovered the
Austrians and Russians disseminated on, around, and be¬
hind the village of Austerlitz, where the allied emperors
had taken post to observe the first efforts of the attack.
This was directed against the French right, and sustain¬
ed by Soult and Davoust with their wonted activity and
skill, aided greatly by.their positions, which were amongst
flooded and marshy ground, where the ice was still too
weak to support the weight of men or horses. AU that
Napoleon required of these officers was to maintain their
ground for a certain number of hours, whilst with his left
and centre he simultaneously attacked that portion of
the enemy’s force in front, which he proposed to cut off
from the wing engaged. This was the decisive movement;
but he delayed long in giving the signal for the premedi¬
tated attack, so little anticipated by the enemy, fearing
lest they might recall their troops from their left, by
which they proposed to assail the French. But as soon
as he heard the sound of battle fully engaged in that di¬
rection, he gave the word; his generals hurried to their
respective posts; and Lannes, Bernadotte, Legrand, St
Hilaire, each at the head of a division, advanced. At this
moment the allied columns were descending from the
heights, and filing off in the direction of their left, where
they expected to find the main strength of the battle.
But it was nearer them than they imagined, even in their
front, where, owing to their ignorance of the true position
of the French army, they had not looked for any serious
opposition. Surprised, and attacked during an oblique
movement, by columns of equal or superior force to their
own, the Russian line was intersected; and the French hav¬
ing gained the heights, drove their adversaries down into
the defiles behind. But between the village of Austerlitz
and the heights thus carried were the Russian reserve,
consisting of chosen troops, including the imperial guard,
commanded by the Grand Duke Constantine. These,
too, were marching towards the left, when, to their asto¬
nishment, the French light troops, supported by cavalry,
broke in amongst them. A scene of surprise and confusion
ensued. But the emperor, aided by Kutusof, rallied the
troops; the Russian guards, assisted by some other regi¬
ments, charged with great fury; the French, victorious a
few moments before, were now driven back; and some
regiments which had formed squares were broken by the
impetuosity of the Russians. Napoleon did not observe
what was taking place, Austerlitz being hidden from his
view by the intervening heights; but his ear having
caught sounds betokening any thing but victorj^, he in-,
stantly ordered General Rapp, one of his aides-de-camp,
to advance at the head of the grenadiers a cheval of the
French imperial guard. Rapp galloped off at the head of
these superb squadrons, rallied the stragglers as he advanced,
and on approaching the immediate scene of conflict, found
the victorious Russians sabring the French as they were
driven from the broken squares. Without hesitating a
moment, he sounded the charge, broke through a superb
regiment of the Russian imperial guard, and made Prince
Repnin, one of its colonels, prisoner. This afforded the
French time to rally ; and, with their usual promptitude
and intelligence, they quickly regained their order. Rapp
returned to the charge, and overpowered the regiment of
the Grand Duke Constantine, who was indebted for his
safety to the swiftness of his horse ; whilst General Gar-
danne, charging with a division of dragoons, completed the
discomfiture of the enemy. From the heights of Austerlitz,
the Emperors Alexander and Francis witnessed the defeat of
the Russian guard. The Emperor Napoleon then direct¬
ed his efforts to the right, where the enemy still continued
140
FRANCE.
1805.
History, to oppose a vigorous resistance; and the Russian corps,
' being at length surrounded and driven from all the heights,
were forced back to the margin of a lake, where the French
artillery made a terrible carnage. From fifteen to eigh¬
teen thousand Russians, attempting to escape over the ice,
were drowned; two columns, each four thousand strong,
laid down their arms; the whole Russian artillery was taken,
whilst forty standards, including those of the imperial guard,
also fell into the hands of the French ; and the remains of
the Russian army, without artillery, without baggage, in a
state of the most frightful disorganization, and surrounded
on all sides, must have surrendered at discretion had they
been vigorously pressed. Even the life of Alexander was
at the mercy of Napoleon, who ordered his artillerymen
not to fire on the emperor of all the Russias, and, from mo¬
tives of generosity or policy, allowed him to escape.1 Such
was Austerlitz, one of the most remarkable battles fought
in modern times. It consisted of a series of manoeuvres,
every one of them successful, by which the Russian army,
surprised in an oblique march, was cut into as many por¬
tions as there were columns directed against it. The loss
sustained by the Russians, in killed, drowned in attempting
to cross the lake on the ice, wounded, and prisoners, has
been estimated at thirty-five thousand men ; fifteen gene¬
rals were either killed or taken ; the general-in-chief, Ku-
tusof, received several wounds ; and a hundred and fifty
pieces of cannon were abandoned. The French appear to
have lost about ten thousand men, including a general of
division and two colonels, who died on the field of battle.
At Austerlitz, masses of the French cuirassiers charged,
for the first time, the enemy’s batteries ; a bold manoeuvre,
which, being rapidly executed and courageously sustained,
during nine hours, by the corps of Marshal Soult, contri¬
buted powerfully to the success of the battle. Marshal
Bernadotte also took an active part in this mighty conflict.
At the moment when the Russian guard was defeated, he
advanced at the head of the centre of the army, and by
means of his cavalry vigorously charged the enemy; whilst
Marshal Lannes, who commanded the left, charged at the
same instant, with rare intrepidity, and thus threw them
into the most frightful disorder.
On the evening of the battle the emperor of Germany
Conse¬
quences of
the battle.
sent to demand an interview with Napoleon. It was ar¬
ranged for the 4th of December, and took place within a few
leagues of Austerlitz, by the fire of a bivouac. “ I receive
you,” said Napoleon, “ in the only palace which I have in¬
habited for two months. “ You made so good use of this
kind of habitation,” replied the emperor of Germany, smil¬
ing, “ that it ought to content you.” Francis took Napo¬
leon by the hand, and saluted him by the name of brother.
From this moment the judgment of Napoleon, usually so
clear, seemed to be bewildered; he changed, so to speak,
his nature; and, in his desire to become at any price a
monarch allied to an old dynasty, he ceased in future to be
any thing but an emperor. The sovereigns remained two
hours in conversation, during which the terms of an agree¬
ment appear to have been arranged.2 Napoleon showed
great forbearance and moderation. The emperor of Russia,
to whom he afterwards restored the portion of his guard
who had been made prisoners, was permitted to retire unmo¬
lested to his dominions, under the protection of an armistice ;
but although the czar professed great admiration of the
man who had so generously spared both himself and the
wrecks of his army, he declined to enter into any treaty,
or even to acknowledge Napoleon as emperor of the French.
The king of Prussia had a more difficult part to perform.
He had been ready openly to join the coalition, to which
he had secretly acceded; and his minister, Count Haug-
witz, had arrived, prepared to employ the language of me¬
nace. But fortune had embarrassed all the calculations of
Prussian policy; and Haugwitz, finding Napoleon success¬
ful, changed his tone, and complimented him on the victory
which he had just gained. “ This is a congratulation,” said
Napoleon, in reply, “ of which fortune has changed the
address.” In proportion as he had shown forbearance to
Austria, he gave way to his indignation against the dupli¬
city and perfidy of Prussia, and so terrified Count Haug¬
witz that the latter concluded a treaty, accepting Hanover
in lieu of Anspach and Bareuth, which were to be given up
to France. The object of Napoleon, no doubt, was to em¬
broil Prussia with Britain, and he thought this would be
most effectually accomplished by an arrangement which im¬
posed on the former power the odious task of seizing upon
Hanover. Nor was this all. At the very moment when
andre UifluAbbfe,,?e M.on^>aillard> “ doit etre considerde, politiquement, comme une trds-grande faute ; Alex-
« Pri“»n^ede gjre, u» grand soulevement derait avoir Men a
favoraHo. „„ A.-.T” ' <*es ?>nsequences d'un tel ordre de choses ; mais dies ne pouvaient qu’dtre
rvffi • {T   l,cir Ie oruiaiu ciesir qu’a JNapoleon d’etre reconnu empdreur et roi; d’entrer dans le ra-
SnT et S polSSfndIrilA'’6 s’“te"'lre I* l» deux plus puis de ces monar^el Sis „„e
paix une veritable naix et nmi imp i,-A ' eij“1Pereuis.’ Alexandre et iranqois, fussent faits pnsonniers et amends en France; la
TAnAeterre n’eut nas re’f'isd dV mUidrm— * e <luel<lues ni01s’ fut ^ selon toute apparence, le prix de la ranqon des deux captifs, et
possession Que ne peut done Pamour ^ fl“e.^aPoleon eut borne son ambition amaintenir, pour la France, 1’dtat actuelde
terlitz, followin^™C<it'diff so rapid 1 'rr1'01! °f sbows tlle cleeP impression made upon his mind bv the battle of Aus-
rienced, ZimKmite y erave was not s^dec ’ * Af the 'T' time clear’ that the check which he had just expe-
the course ofSother campSn The AHidiAe aS ^ deSte)-V ail hoPe’ or to be ^capable of being repaired in
had already put themselves in communication with V' h .U ? n "®re.a(lvancing at the head of eighty thousand fresh troops, and
the Russians were on the eve of beino' off', ,r,fi i, nngary, w ere the insurrection was becoming general; the losses sustained by
of Bohemia had commenced their lev? in ^ A third arm-v) which had arrived in Silesia; the inhabitants
waiting the order to Xnce uume?ous corns W iCstl ^ ^ th°U8and 1Prlussians’ Saxons’ and Hessians, were under arms,
version was on the point ofbeinu opSed J^south ^ A i n;fnac®d the northern frontier of Holland; a formidable di¬
marches and successes, was more than three hundred leagues fromTtsrehifi7’ ^ T™7 °J .NaPoleon’ sensibly weakened by its rapid
which it had followed in its advance from the Rhine to Olmutz A little^ orAkct only occupied the long narrow line
probability have brought about the ruin of Nanolenn nmt l; " httle more tenacity on the part of Austria would therefore in all
away a tlfmsand ch.nL which hi SZe Ll,uSe“ him heZmc i t11i,e„E",Per“,' Fra"™’ ^ his
tide was about to turn, or to prolong hostilities on the eve of n „eoorai / ted tbe .C0lnaSe necessary to support the struggle when the
duce a great amelioration in his position nolHcal os well — S-rt & ebangeof circumstances, which could scarcely have failed to pro-
bly to solicit an armistice, as Darius would hfvTdoneTftlr a??!!^'^!’ «Wlth°Ut Tjting ^calcuIate deliberate, he came hum-
the emperor of Austria, without intending it, twice saved Napoleon hTthe f^T c Ey a s,tranSe and inconceivable destiny,
on both occasions, the French emperor havintr oommlttci btbf heart of his states, namely, at Austerlitz and atWagram;
have his communications with France intercepted and w AA Af ltaY f<)und himself, after gaining two battles, exposed to
r ranee intercepted, and was saved from this danger by an almost immediate suspension of hostilities.
Histor
’»«!■
sflit
; PWi.
net.
FRA
Hi pry- the transfer in question was concluded by Haugwitz, Har-
denberg had required the assistance of Britain, conjunctly
1 with Russia, in case Prussia should be attacked ; and these
incompatible agreements were, to its no small embarrass¬
ment, soon laid before the cabinet of Berlin. The difficul¬
ties thus created were no doubt great; but it endeavoured
to escape from them in the best way it could, by accept¬
ing Hanover as a deposit, and by yielding up Anspach,
together with Cleves, Berg, and Neufchatel, as had been
agreed to by Haugwitz. On the 26th of December, a treaty
of peace was concluded at Presburg, between France and
Austria. The ancient states of Venice, including Dalmatia
and Albania, were ceded to the kingdom of Italy. The
principality of Eichstett, part of the archbishopric of Pas-
sau, the city of Augsburg, the Tyrol,, and all the posses¬
sions of Austria in Suabia, the Brisgau, and the Ortenau,
were transferred to the elector of Bavaria, the Duke of
Wirtemberg, and the Duke of Baden ; and the indepen¬
dence of the Helvetic Republic was also stipulated. The
Germanic constitution, so much damaged by the treaty of
Luneville, was now virtually dissolved by two of its mem¬
bers, the elector of Bavaria and the Duke of Wirtemberg
assuming the title of kings, under the auspices of France,
without the consent either of that body or of its chief.
By this treaty, Austria likewise sanctioned all the partitions
previously effected both in Germany and Italy, and lost a
territory of eleven hundred thousand square miles, with a
population of two millions six hundred thousand souls,
'rodt-d- Napoleon declared to the French senate, as he had pre-
ngsii'Na-viously done to the emperor of Austria, that he had sought
no aggrandizement for France. But this declaration was
made in the true spirit of the Italian school of politics,
which enjoins the observance of the letter of an obligation,
but permits an infringement of its principle. If France was
not aggrandized, all the states in dependence on her were
so. Venice and Dalmatia were added to the kingdom of
Italy. Naples, which an Anglo-Russian force had invad¬
ed, was occupied, and the reigning house expelled, as if by
the mere word of command. Berthier and Murat were
created German princes. The newly acquired provinces
of Venice, Dalmatia, Istria, Friuli, Belluno, Feltre, Bas-
sano, Vicenza, and Rovigo, were declared duchies, and as¬
signed to the generals and civilians of the imperial court.
Bavaria and Wirtemberg had already been aggrandized
out of the spoils of Austria, and their rulers raised to the
rank of royalty. This was Napoleon’s first performance as
king-maker. But his elder brother Joseph was now declared
king of Naples, and his younger brother Louis, a man of
mild and amiable character, king of Holland ; whilst vari¬
ous matches were made, all having for their object at once
to aggrandize and unite the new imperial family. Lastly,
having done so much for those of his own house, Napoleon
consented to receive the homage of his subservient legis¬
lature, which, after lavishing on him the most fulsome ex¬
pressions of adulation, ordered to be erected, in one of the
principal places of the capital, a column surmounted with
a statue of the emperor, and bearing the inscription, “ A
Napoleon le Grand, la patrie reconnoissante.”
tatofaf- The commencement of the year 1806 was brightened
jf [jPr(),‘with a momentary prospect of peace. On the 23d of Ja-
^ nuary, not two months after the battle of Austerlitz, where
all his schemes had been overthrown, Pitt breathed his last.
With the bitter exclamation, “ Oh, my country,” on his lips,
he expired, leaving Europe in confusion, and England be¬
set with difficulties. On the accession to power of Mr Fox
NCR 141
and his friends, hopes of peace were entertained ; and that History,
statesman having opened a correspondence with the French
emperor, by apprising him of an offer which had been made 1806‘
to assassinate him, negotiations followed. But serious ob¬
stacles unexpectedly arose, one of them relating to Sicily,
which the French insisted should be conjoined with Naples.
Talleyrand, however, pushed the conferences with great
activity, and evinced the utmost anxiety to conclude a
peace. With prophetic sagacity, he foresaw, that without
a peace with England, every thing was problematical with
the French emperor ; that nothing short of a sequence of
fortunate battles would consolidate his power; that this
was a series of which the last term might perhaps be zero ;
that nothing could be safe where all was continually put to
hazard ; that one great reverse would overthrow the fabric
which it had required many victories to rear up and esta¬
blish ; that, in short, the time had arrived to secure what
had already been gained, and to realise, as it were, the
glory which no disaster had as yet overclouded.1 But all
these efforts proved, unhappily, vain ; nor in fact would any
peace that might now have been concluded have proved
lasting. Napoleon could not descend from the position to
which victory had raised him ; and England could not ac¬
quiesce in the continued exercise of an ascendant influence
subversive of the general balance of power and the inde¬
pendence of states in Europe. Austria and southern Ger¬
many were under the dictation of the French emperor;
Italy, from the Alps to the Gulf of Tarentum, was subject
to his immediate sway ; Spain had degenerated into a mere
province of the French empire. The only independent
power bordering on France was Prussia, and she was al¬
ready marked out as the next object of attack. In such
circumstances peace was unattainable, or, if nominally at¬
tained, would have only been a renewal of the truce of
Amiens. Bonaparte was still in his ascending movement;
and although wisdom would have counselled him to stop,
and even to descend to a lower and safer level, ambition
held different language, and urged him to go on.
Prussia, however, had acted a part equally imprudent Prussia,
and unworthy. We have already adverted to the two
treaties, one concluded by Haugwitz with Napoleon, and
the other by Hardenberg with England, in December
1805. Perplexed by the results of her own perfidy and
double dealing, she derived advantage from neither. She
naturally hesitated to accept of Hanover, and to shut her
ports against England; but, on the other hand, as Ans¬
pach, Cleves, and Berg, ceded by Haugwitz, were already
seized by the French, the desire of an equivalent prevail¬
ed over all sense of justice or regard even to decency,
and this hesitation was overcome. On the 1st of April
Hanover was annexed to the Prussian territory, in virtue
of a proclamation which set forth that, since Hanover be¬
longed to France by right of conquest, its legitimate pos¬
session had been transmitted to Prussia as an equivalent
for the cession of three of her provinces to France. A
more impudent and unblushing declaration was never
made by any government, nor one more subversive of
every principle of public law, justice, and morality. But
the same cabinets which stigmatized Bonaparte as a usurp¬
er, recognised him as legitimate sovereign of France
whenever they could profit by his political crimes, and
when his spoliations suited their own interests and political
arrangements. The conduct of Prussia, in this particular,
met with loud and indignant reprobation in England. Mr
Fox publicly denounced it as “ every thing that was con-
This proof of the profound sagacity of Talleyrand, whose political foresight has been so often exemplified in the course of the
events of the last thirty years, is taken from the memoirs of Ins enemy the Duke of Rovigo. The words of Savary are, “ M. de
lalleyrand poussait les conferences avec activity ; rien ne lui eut coute pour faire conclure la paix avec Angleterre. II disait, a qui
voulait 1 entendre, que, sans elle, tout etait probleme pour I’empe'reur, qu’il n’y aurait qu’une suite de batailles heureuses qui le conso-
liuerait, et que cela se re'duisait a une serie, dont le premier terme e'tait A, et done la dernier pouvait etre Y ou zero.”
142
FRANCE.
iIIistory. temptible in servility, and all that was odious in rapacity.”
180G! ^01 WaS a^* Whilst Prussia had thus dishonoured
herself for the sake of Plan over and the French alliance,
she had the incredible mortification to learn, through the
English papers, that Napoleon had offered to restore Ha¬
nover to Britain as the price of peace. She had sacrificed
her character to obtain Hanover, and she had even dis¬
missed her minister, Hardenberg, to please the French
emperor ; she had rendered herself an object of scorn to
the government of England, and France now rewarded
her abasement and humiliation with contempt. Never
indeed was perfidy more severely and at the same time
more justly punished. But Prussia had yet other and
more severe mortifications to endure.
Confedera- A compact still more alarming to Prussia than any
tion of the which had yet been formed was now entered into. This
Rhine. wag t]ie confederation of the states of the Rhine, which
was concluded on the 12th of July, between the emperor
Napoleon, and several princes of the south and west of
Germany. These princes separated themselves, in per¬
petuity, from the territory of the Germanic empire, and
united together in a new federation, of which the em¬
peror of the French was declared the protector. The
contingent to be furnished by each of the allies was de¬
termined ; a great number of secularisations and annexa¬
tions of territory in their favour were recognised and sanc¬
tioned ; the old constitution of the Germanic body was
dissolved • and Napoleon became, in fact, lord suzerain of
a laige portion of Germany. His object, indeed, seems
to have been to make the confederation of the Rhine the
centre and pivot of his future power. The notification of
the treaty of the 12th July was made to the diet at Ratis-
bon on the 1st of August, when fourteen German princes
declared their separation from the Germanic body, and
their new confederation under the protectorate of Napo¬
leon. The common interests of the confederate states
were to be discussed in a diet which was to sit at Franck-
fort-on-the-Maine; and this diet wras to be divided into
two colleges. In the college of kings were to sit the repre¬
sentatives of the elector of Bavaria and the Duke of Wir-
temberg, who had each assumed the title of king, together
with those of the Grand Dukes of Baden, Berg, Darmstadt,
and the prince primate; and in the college of princes
were eight petty princes bearing inferior titles. The con¬
tingents were, for France two hundred thousand men; for
Bavaria, thirty thousand; for Wirtemberg, twelve thou¬
sand; for Baden, eight thousand, &c.; making in all two
hundred and sixty-three thousand men. Such was the con-
lederation of the Rhine, which, in the course of six years
was augmented by all the sovereigns of Germany, old or
new, with the exception of the emperor of Austria, the
^ng of Prussia, the Dukes of Brunswick and Oldenburo-
tlm king of Sweden as Duke of Pomerania, and the kins
of Denmark as Duke of Holstein. 8
S-France -20th JulF Preliminaries of peace between France
withRus. tiPatv mWerecTed- at F™8’ This vvas before
sia and iA7Ic ^ , le con/e(ieration of the Rhine had transpired.
Prussia. Whee that organic compact had become known, the cabi¬
net of St 1 etersburg refused (15th August) to ratify the
stipulations which had been agreed to with France, upon
the pretence usual in such cases, that its envoy had ex-
hacMn farYha The neSotiations both sides
had, in fact, been entered upon with equal duplicity, with
the. sa™e perfidy fhe ambitious designs of Napoleon
against the north of Europe had already become sufficient¬
ly manifest not to leave any room for doubt as to his real
intentions; whilst the czar, anxious to obliterate the hu¬
miliation of Austerhtz, and to re-establish his preponder-
ance in the west of Europe, had recourse to those arti-
fices which have at all times been familiar to Russian di¬
plomacy. The object of the French emperor was to ma¬
ture his schemes, and augment his means of future aggres- Hist 1
sion ; what the Russian autocrat desired, was to gain the
time necessary to prepare for another struggle. Mean- 180?1
while the situation of Prussia was every day becomino-
more and more critical. If she had cause for mistrust on
discovering that Napoleon had offered to restore Hanover
to England, this was not lessened by the organization of
a powerful, and, from its very constitution, hostile confe¬
deracy on her most defenceless frontier. Napoleon, how¬
ever, attempted to assuage her just suspicions by invitino-
Frederick-William to form in the north of Germany a
confederation similar to that which he had established in
the south and west, and also to assume the imperial dio--
nity. But, in the circumstances, these propositions were
no better than sheer mockery. The court of Berlin had
received too many proofs of the slighting conduct, if not
hostile intentions, of franco, to repose any confidence in
her offers. Injury had been exasperated and envenomed
by insult, and the cry of the nation was now for war. Still
the most obvious maxims of prudence should have indu¬
ced Prussia to temporize until her allies were in a condi¬
tion to take the field. Russia having refused to ratify the
stipulations of the 20th July, was preparing to renew the
stiuggle; all hopes of an accommodation between Britain
and France were completely at an end ; and Prussia, single
handed, was not in a situation to contend with a power
which had so recently overthrown Austria, even when
assisted by Russia. But, neglectful of all this, the court
of Berlin, passing from the extreme of caution to the ex¬
treme of temerity, gave full intimation of its intentions
as early as the month of August, by increasing the army
and calling out its reserves. Prussia was now destined
to reap the bitter fruits of her selfish and equivocating
policy. Had she, during the last coalition, united cordi¬
ally with Austria before that power had received a stun¬
ning blow, Napoleon might have been compelled to re¬
ceive instead of dictating the law; Austria would at least
have been saved; and the confederation of the Rhine would
never have been heard of. But selfish timidity kept her
arms tied when every motive urged, nay when the strong¬
est obligations bound, her to strike in; and now, when
Austria was humbled and France aggrandised, when all the
favourable chances had disappeared, and when a mighty
army, tiained to combats and flushed with victory, was
ready to pour its veteran legions across her frontier, Prus¬
sia stepped forth alone, in her own strength, to encounter
the gigantic force before which her more powerful neigh¬
bour had fallen. Her councils became smitten with that
infatuation which is the sure forerunner of calamity.
Ifit was the height of imprudence in Prussia to decide War be-
upon a war in which Austria was no longer in a conditiontween
to take part, it was sheer madness not to have both secured Frf “
and waited for the co-operation of Great Britain and^™-
Russia. Instead of this, however, when Lord Morpeth/12’
the British envoy, spoke of Hanover, he was answered
that its fate depended on a battle; plainly intimating that, if
victorious, Prussia meant to retain it. The same indiffer-
ence was manifested as to the aid of Russia; and the army,
which, indeed, it was difficult to restrain, pushed for¬
ward into Saxony to compel the elector to join his forces
to t lose of Prussia, and to induce Hesse to espouse the
cause of the north of Germany against France. For the
sake of these secondary objects, the blunder of Mack at Ulm
was repeated. The French troops were already assembled.
apoleon left Paris in the end of September, and proceed¬
ed by Mayence and Wiirtzburg to Bamberg, the rendez¬
vous of his army, where he arrived on the 6th of October.
1 roc amutmns, the usual preludes of war, now followed,
the king of Prussia required the French to quit Germa¬
ny, the soil of which they had no right to tread. Napo-
eon returned the bravado by some sarcastic remarks on
✓V
V
SK®
If'
FRANCE.
143
Hi; »ry. the Prussian queen and court. “ The queen of Prussia,”
^ says a French bulletin, “ is with the army clothed as an
Up- Amazon, wearing the uniform of her regiment of dragoons,
and penning twenty letters a day, in order to kindle flames
on every side. One might believe her to be Armida out
of her senses, setting fire to her own palace. Near her is
the young Prince Louis, overflowing with valour, and ex¬
pecting vast renown from the vicissitudes of war. Echo¬
ing these two illustrious personages, the entire court cries
out for war. But when war shall have come, with all its
horrors, it is then that each will vainly endeavour to ex¬
cuse himself of the guilt of having drawn down its thun¬
ders upon the peaceful countries of the north.”
(perngof The Prussian army, commanded by the king in person,
lecai- and the old Duke of Brunswick, whom his campaigns
alSr against the French had not instructed in their new sys¬
tem of tactics, was scattered along the high road from
Eisenach and Weimar. Having advanced so far, it should
have assumed the initiative, and, by a great offensive effort,
endeavoured to break through the enemy’s line before
his corps were in a condition to afford mutual support.
But Brunswick was alike incapable of conceiving or exe¬
cuting such a plan of operation; he hesitated when he
should have decided ; marched and countermarched with¬
out object; and, worst of all, committed the fatal error of
dividing his army when almost in presence of the enemy.
The road by which the Prussians had advanced, and along
which their magazines were established, from Weimar, in
a north-easterly direction, to Leipsic, run obliquely to the
line on which the French were now approaching from the
south. Instead of attacking Weimar, where their main
force was concentrated, Napoleon therefore resolved to
throw himself on their communications, intersect their
line of retreat, and cut them off from their principal ma¬
gazines. And this he effected by one of those rapid and
masterly movements which, executed by him, had so often
decided the fate of armies. The only resistance which
the French met with was at Saalfield, where, on the 10th
of October, the division of Suchet, belonging to the corps
of Lannes, was opposed by Prince Louis of Prussia, com¬
manding the advanced guard of the corps of Hohenlohe.
A fierce combat ensued; but the Prussians, being unsup¬
ported, were overpowered, the brave prince lost his life,
and thirty pieces of cannon, with a thousand prisoners, fell
into the hands of the French. The French now occupied
the line of the Saale, with their backs towards Germany;
whilst the Prussians, in order to face them, were obliged
to turn theirs to France. The belligerents having thus,
as it were, changed places, the main body of the French
under Napoleon crossed the Saale at lena; the interval
between lena and Naumberg was occupied by Bernadotte,
who had orders to observe the Saale as far as Doern-
berg, by which he was to debouch, in order to cut off the
enemy’s masses from their reserves, and to fall upon their
rear, in case they should move in force upon Naumberg
or lena; and Davoust, with three fine divisions of infan¬
try thirty thousand strong, but weak in cavalry, was post¬
ed between Naumberg and Doernberg, on the right of the
Saale, to guard the defiles of Koesen. To drive the
French from these positions, and to restore the communi¬
cations, was now the great object of the Prussians. Ac¬
cordingly the king and the Duke of Brunswick, at the
head of the main body of the Prussian army, marched to
dislodge Davoust; whilst the remainder, under Prince
Hohenlohe, advanced against the main body of the French
army, commanded by Napoleon. In this way Davoust
found himself in the presence of an enemy more than
sixty thousand strong, one-fifth of whose force consisted of
cavalry, in which arm he was disproportionately weak;
whilst, on the other hand, Hohenlohe advanced to attack a
loice which outnumbered him in a still higher ratio, and was
supported by the main body of the cavalry under Murat. History.
Both parties appear to have had false notions of each other’s
movements ; but Napoleon was evidently misled by the ex-
traordinary proceeding of the Duke of Brunswick, in divid¬
ing his army on the eve of a great battle, an error which
exceeded all ordinary calculation or experience.
The battles of lena and Auerstadt were fought on the Battles of
same day, the 14th of October, at the distance of six *ena an(l
leagues, without contact or communication. That of Iena^'uersta^t:'
does not present any masterly or decisive manoeuvre. It
was decided by charges of the cavalry under Murat, who,
supported by Augereau, completely, routed the half of
the Prussian force, and pursued the remains of it five
leagues from the field of battle, indeed as far as Weimar.
The action at Auerstadt was long and bravely disputed.
Marshal Kalkreuth and General Blucher combated with
vigour under the eye of their sovereign. But the invin¬
cible firmness of Davoust, supported by Generals Gudin,
Friant, and Morand, triumphed over numbers, and this
portion of the Prussian army was, notwithstanding its
great superiority in numbers and in cavalry, also thrown
into disorder, and driven from the field. The battle of
Auerstadt, which was in fact the grand and decisive com¬
bat, reflects infinite honour upon Davoust. Surprised by
the sudden apparition of the main body of the Prussian
army, and denied all assistance by his colleague Berna¬
dotte, who, from a narrow construction of his orders, and
still more perhaps from an unwillingness to act a secon¬
dary part, withdrew his corps to continue a movement
which had no longer an object, he was thrown upon his
own resources, and, but for his great experience and in¬
flexible tenacity, his corps, thus compromised, might have
been overthrown and destroyed. Forming his battalions
into squares, he received and repulsed the repeated char¬
ges of the Prussian cavalry led on by Blucher; and when
the latter, disordered by the failure of their own efforts,
were obliged to retreat, he attacked and broke through the
centre of the enemy. The Duke of Brunswick and Prince
William of Prussia again led the cavalry back to the charge;
but in vain ; nothing could shake the firmness of the
French. A last effort to retrieve the fortune of the day
was made by the king in person, with no better success.
The centre being broken, the retreat of the wings became
inevitable; and, as almost all the Prussian generals had
been severely wounded, the troops, left in a great mea¬
sure to themselves, fell into a state of the most frightful
disorder. No rallying point had been fixed in the rear;
no provision made for the contingency of a defeat. In
fact, the idea of an eccentric retreat, that is, withdrawing
on diverging lines, at this time possessed the Prussian
tactitians; and the destruction which so rapidly overtook
the remains of the Prussian army may in a great mea¬
sure be ascribed to the circumstance of this absurdity
being now reduced to practice. The extent of the disas¬
ter which had befallen the Prussian arms was only known
when the troops defeated at lena and Auerstadt mingled
in their flight towards Weimar. In killed, wounded, and
prisoners, the Prussians, including their Saxon auxiliaries,
lost more than forty-five thousand men; whilst a hundred
and sixty pieces of cannon, with immense magazines of
provisions, fell into the hands of the conquerors. At lena
and Auerstadt the French had about twelve thousand
men put hors de combat.
Frederick-William, in his flight, sent to demand an ar-Conse-
mistice, which was refused; and the following day, Er-
furth, containinga hundredpiecesof cannon, fourteen thou-1}1686 baU
sand men, and numerous magazines, was surrendered to 1 es‘
Murat, ihe French now pushed on without intermission
for Berlin, which Napoleon entered at the head of his guard
on the 27th of October, amidst the silence and tears of the
people. He had spent the 25th at Potsdam, in the apart-
144
FRANCE.
1806.
Proceed-
History. ments of Frederick II. for whose character and memory,
J both as a warrior and a sovereign, he professed the greatest
veneration ; but this feeling did not prevent him from tak¬
ing away the sword and the order of the black eagle worn by
Frederick, and sending them, with the colours of his guard,
to the Hotel des Invalides at Paris. Meanwhile the king
of Prussia retired behind the Oder, in the hope of col¬
lecting the scattered remains of his army, and making a
stand under cover of the strong places by which that line
was defended. But fortress after fortress, though power¬
fully garrisoned and well supplied with ammunition and
provisions, surrendered with a rapidity inexplicable on
any supposition except that of treachery or infatuation.
Spandau yielded almost without resistance ; Magdeburg,
the bulwark of the kingdom, capitulated after a short and
irregular siege; Glogau, the strongest place on the Oder,
likewise surrendered ; and other places imitated their ex¬
ample. Blucher alone supported the national character
amidst all these calamities. He executed a daring and
masterly retreat amongst the French divisions, which pur¬
sued and frequently crossed his line of march ; and, when
at length obliged to take shelter in the free town of Lu-
beck, the desperate resistance which he opposed to the
overwhelming masses of the enemy made them pay dear for
the advantage they gained in storming the place. Thus,
by two simultaneous battles, in which both parties fought
on wrong principles and erroneous information, was the
Prussian monarchy not only shaken, but destroyed. Na¬
poleon had not only avenged the defeat of the French at
Rosbach, but also the peril in which he had himself been
placed by Prussia during the campaign of Austerlitz, and
he now wreaked his vengeance with unsparing severity.
' a f\r ^ ®er^n Napoleon had once more to enter upon the
poleon • a’task °f organizing a new empire. The smaller states of
Berlin de- Germany were compelled to join the confederation of the
cree. Rhine ; Saxony was treated with politic leniency ; Hesse-
Cassel and Brunswick were doomed to expiate their loy-
alty by rigorous contributions ; and the electorate of Ha¬
nover was seized in the name of France. The occupation
of the free city of Hamburg, against which the emperor
Napoleon had no assignable cause of war, immediately
followed. On the 19th of November, Mortier took posses¬
sion of the town in name of the French government, and
the same day issued an order, enjoining the inhabitants to
make known all funds and merchandise belonging to the
English. This was part of his system. To strike a free
commercial port with nullity, and thus to ruin a great city,
gave him no concern, provided it was closed against Eng¬
land. A measure of a still more extraordinary character
followed. On the 21st of November was issued an impe¬
rial decree, dated at Berlin, in which the British islands
were declared in a state of blockade. By this decree all
commerce and correspondence were interdicted; every
subject of England, of whatever state or condition, who
should be found in the countries occupied by the French
or their allies, was to be made prisoner of war; the com¬
merce in English merchandise was prohibited, and all mer¬
chandise, of whatsoever kind, proceeding from England,
was declared lawful prize; lastly, all vessels coming direct¬
ly ftom England or from English colonies, or having been
there since the publication of the decree, were not to be
received into any port. Such was the decree by which
Bonaparte endeavoured to exclude England from the
Continent at the expense of neutral and independent na¬
tions, and which he intended to enforce in all the harbours
of Europe, from St Petersburg to Constantinople. But
this scheme, although it no doubt occasioned, in the first
instance, much mischief to British commerce, and tended
to throw the principal carrying trade of Europe into the
hands of the Americans, yet, like all prohibitory systems,
it eventually recoiled on its author. For, in the first place, Hi
nothing tended so much as the severities of the continen-
tal system to alienate from Bonaparte the affections both 1
of his subjects and his allies. Even the exhausting de¬
mands of the conscription were borne with less impatience
than the rigours of a code which crippled one great branch
of industry, and deprived all persons possessing only mo¬
derate fortunes of the customary luxuries of life. But,
on the other hand, whilst the price of sugar, coffee, and
other articles, rose to an exorbitant height, the contraband
trade flourished ; and whilst the vexations of the excise
excited that state of chronic war between the government
and the people which is the fruitful sources of disaffection,
the object aimed at was in a great measure defeated. In
spite of all restrictions, enforced by armies of douaniers,
English merchandise found its way into the Continent; the
smugglers were enriched, the regular traders ruined, and
the people forced to pay many prices for articles which
habit had rendered indispensable.
l owards the close of November, Russia declared war War
against l1 ranee. About the same time the king of Prus-t'veei
sia, who had retired to Konigsberg, made an attempt toIiuss
negotiate ; but as Napoleon demanded the cession of the Turk
whole country between the Rhine and the Elbe, Frede-
rick-William, hoping that the power of Russia might yet
give a check to that of France, refused to accept terms
less severe than those which he was afterwards under thft
necessity of submitting to. But, unfortunately for this hope,
war broke out at the same moment between Russia and
Turkey. In a few days of successful intrigue, Sebastiani,
whom Napoleon had sent to Constantinople, succeeded in
putting an end to the amicable relations subsisting not
only between Russia and Turkey, but also between Eng¬
land and the Porte ; the invasion of Egypt by France, and
its deliverance by England, were forgotten ; French offi¬
cers were seen directing works for strengthening the bat¬
teries of the Dardanelles, as well as training the Turks to
serve the guns with which they were armed; and a war
followed on the Danube, which occasioned a powerful di¬
version in favour of Napoleon, and crippled the exertions
of Russia in the approaching struggle.
Napoleon now advanced in pursuit of the Prussian mo- Polani
narch, and at Posen, the capital of that part of Poland
acquired by Prussia, he, on the 11th of December, con¬
cluded a treaty of peace and alliance with the elector of «
Saxony, who acceded to the confederation of the Rhine, \
and assumed the title of king. From Posen he proceeded <
to Warsaw, which was evacuated on his approach. At the 1
sight of the Russian and Prussian eagles retiring from the
capital of their country, the Poleswere in exultation. Their
patriotism and national spirit revived; the youth crowded
into the Polish regiments which were now formed to act
in concert with the French; and the throne of Sobieski
seemed already re-established. But Napoleon, though
resolved to make use of their zeal, had no intention to
reward it with that independence which they so ardently
desired. “ Quoique Napoleon, que sa mefiance et les dis¬
positions de I’Autriche rendraient tres circonspect, ne
leur eut fait aucune promesse,” says General Dumas ; “ il
les avait pourtant excites a s’avancer pour reconquerer
leur liberte et leur independance. II leur avait donne un
gouvernement provisoire cree des autorites civiles et mi-
litaires prises dans leur sein. Les Polonnais se flattaient
avec raison que la restauration de la nation serait le juste
prix.du sang qu’elle avait verse pour la cause de la France,
depuis les premieres campagnes d’ltalie jusquaux der-
nieres batailles, dans lesquelles ils avaientvaillammentcom-
battu. Devaient-ils croire que maitre de reparer le scan- !
dale des demembremens de leur patrie, de venger la plus
maniteste violation du droit des gens, le vainqueur laisserait
FRANCE.
145
pro-
fletrir dans ses mains le plus beau fruit de sa victoire P”1
With Napoleon these just expectations went for nothing.
In his view all interests and all wills were to yield to his,
as all resistance had yielded to his arms; but he lived to
repent of his injustice to Poland, and discovered in adver¬
sity the extent of the error as well as of the wrong he had
committed.
By the first of December all northern Germany, except-
ofthe jng Konigsberg, with the fortresses of Stralsund and Col¬
li,
B of
llties.
berg, was either under the direct domination or under the
immediate influence of Napoleon. Hesse, Brunswick, Ha¬
nover, the duchies of Oldenburg and Mecklenburg, and
the Hanseatic Towns, were in his power. Prussia, which
for half a century had been gradually rising to the highest
rank amongst military powers, was overturned at the first
shock. Hostilities commenced on the 9th of October, and
on the 14th she received a mortal blow. In seventeen
days, the French soldiers, having traversed the forests and
defiles of Franconia, the Saale, and the Elbe, reached Ber¬
lin ; and by the end of November they were beyond the
Vistula. The overthrow of the Prussian monarchy in a
campaign of six weeks, is one of those events the reality
of which will hardly be credited by posterity. But the
season of combats having reached its term, an able and
prudent general, Frederick II. for example, would have
stopped on the Oder, at least until spring, and employed
the winter in establishing himself in a solid manner in
Germany ; in securing the immobility of Austria ; in mak¬
ing himself master of the strong places in Silesia; in
taking possession of Dantzick and Colberg before the arri¬
val of the Russians; in reducing Stralsund, and recruiting,
clothing, and re-arming his troops at the expense of the
conquered countries; in forming a German army, which
would have been an useful auxiliary; in negotiating with
his enemies, in order to divide, deceive, or intimidate them ;
and, above all, in masking his ulterior projects. The his¬
tory of the following years shows that the independence of
Europe would have been destroyed, if Napoleon, yielding
to the most obvious suggestions of prudence, had retarded
a little his precipitate advance, in order to attain his grand
object, the subjugation of Europe. But he did nothing
which he could and ought to have done in order to conso¬
lidate his power, and he was ultimately ruined even by his
own successes.
Hostilities recommenced at Czarnovo, near the con¬
fluence of the Bug and the Wrka, on the 23d of Decem¬
ber ; but the Russians, though numerous and advanta¬
geously posted, were dislodged by the division of Morand
of the corps of Marshal Davoust. A more important combat
took place at Mohrungen, sixteen leagues south of Elbing,
on the 25th. The Russian generals, observing that the
French army had suspended its march, and was preparing
to go into cantonments on the Vistula, came to the deter¬
mination of attempting to cut off the left wing; and their
design would probably have succeeded if Bernadotte had
servilely executed the orders he had received the evening
before to retire to Little Strasburg, seven or eight miles
from I horn. But having received information of the move¬
ment of the Russian columns, and foreseeing the disasters
which would result from the execution of the orders he had
received, he suspended his march; assembled his corps on the
plains of Mohrungen, where the Russian column of attack
arrived about noon ; checked its advance, and, after a se¬
vere action, forced it to retire with considerable loss be¬
hind thePassarge. The determination of Bernadotte saved
the head-quarters of Napoleon and the division of Ney,
perhaps the French army itself, which, if the Russians had
succeeded in their attack, would have been completely com¬
promised. Alarmed at this bold movement, Napoleon, who History,
intended to pass the winter on the Vistula, pressing the
siege of Dantzick, and awaiting the arrival of eighty thou- 18°7-
sand conscripts of the year 1807, judged it necessary to
clear his front, and, if possible, so to intimidate the Rus¬
sians as to prevent a repetition of such enterprises. With
this view Lannes, reinforced by a division of the corps of
Davoust, attacked Beningsen at Pultusk, near the conflu¬
ence of the Narew and the Orzye, on the 26th of Decem¬
ber. A murderous conflict ensued, but the action remain¬
ed undecided. The slaughter of the French was great, Be¬
ningsen having manoeuvred so as to expose them through¬
out the day to a destructive fire of artillery. The Russians
retired unmolested during the night. On the same day ano¬
ther action took place at Golymin, eight leagues north of War¬
saw, between the corps of Augereau, supported by part of
that of Davoust, with the cavalry of Murat, and a strong
Russian division under General Buxhowden. This combat
was maintained with equal tenacity; but the French, though
dreadfully maltreated, ultimately succeeded in forcing their
adversaries to retire. The extreme rigour of the season
now determined the belligerent armies on the Vistula to
take some repose, which both so much required. But this
was destined to be of short duration.
Beningsen having leisurely retired from the field of bat- Battle of
tie at Pultusk, followed but not harassed by the French, Eylau.
moved northward, determined, after a short interval of
rest, and concentrating all his disposable means, to resume
offensive operations. Accordingly, having mustered his
forces, and rallied the remains of the Prussian army under
Lestocq, he formed the project of penetrating between the
main body of the French and their left wing, which bor¬
dered on the Baltic, raising the siege of Dantzick, and thus
turning all the positions of the enemy. In the end of Ja¬
nuary, Napoleon, having become aware of this design, as¬
sembled his army and marched northward, in the hope of
anticipating Beningsen, and attacking him in the midst of
his movement. But an intercepted letter addressed to Berna¬
dotte appi'ised Beningsen of ibis danger, and he immediately
fell back. Both projects thus failed ; but nevertheless the
French had the advantage of obtaining the lead. Napo¬
leon, therefore, continuing his movement northward, came
up with Beningsen at Willenberg, whence the two armies,
the one retiring and the other advancing, traversed ra¬
pidly the country between the Alle and the Passarge. Ir¬
ritated by the close pursuit, and the privations to which
his soldiers were exposed, Beningsen resolved to turn on
the enemy, and make a stand at the little town of Preus-
sisch-Eylau, twelve leagues south of Konigsberg. He first
endeavoured to defend the place, and, during the evening
of the 7th of February, Prince Bagration and General Bar¬
clay de folly made the most gallant efforts to keep back the
enemy; nor were they dislodged from a cemetery in which
they had intrenched themselves until late at night, and af¬
ter a most sanguinary combat. On the morning of the 8th,
the Russians, under cover of a tremendous fire of artillery,
attacked with the greatest fury the French in Eylau and
its vicinity. Divisions belonging to the corps of Davoust,
Soult, and Ney, and the entire corps of Augereau, with¬
stood the efforts, equally impetuous and unexpected, of the
Russians, whose force was estimated at between sixty and
seventy thousand men. The approaches to and the interior
of the village of Eylau exhibited a terrible scene of carnage.
The aim of each general was the same, namely, to over¬
throw his adversary’s left. But Bonaparte having, in addi¬
tion, sent strong columns against the Russian centre, these,
during a heavy fall of snow, missed the proper direc¬
tion, and penetrating between the centre and right of the
VOL. X.
1 Precis des Evenemens Mitttaircs, tome xix. p. 78.
T
146
FRANCE.
Historv.
1807.
enemy, were attacked on both flanks, whilst the Russian
reserve charged them with great impetuosity in front. A
dreadful scene of confusion and slaughter ensued ; several
generals were killed or wounded; and the twenty-fourth
regiment of the line, three thousand six hundred strong,
was annihilated. To extricate the troops thus compro¬
mised, Napoleon was obliged to order the cavalry, sup¬
ported by his reserves, to charge ; which increased the
fury and indecision of the battle. Davoust having made
a considerable detour, now arrived on the left flank of the
Russians, which was refused as he advanced, and about
to fall back in good order, when the Prussians under Les-
tocq came up, and this terrible battle was renewed. Da¬
voust retreated in his turn ; but Ney having by this time
arrived with his division at the other extremity of the
Russian line, the fury of the conflict was transported thi¬
ther, where mutual charges were executed with headlong
impetuosity. Order there was no longer any ; masses
alone, impelled by the instinct of combat, continued the
desperate struggle. The Russians, though huddled toge¬
ther in a small space, determinedly maintained their ground ;
whilst the French, in equal confusion, were unable to bring
up a force sufficient to decide the fate of the battle. The
loss on both sides was enormous. That of the Russians
was, by their own account, seven thousand nine hundred
men killed and twelve thousand wounded; but Napoleon
only acknowledged a loss of one thousand nine hundred
men killed on the field of battle, and five thousand seven
hundred wounded ; an admission evidently as far below the
truth as that of Ruschel, who stated the French loss at
thirty thousand killed and twelve thousand wmunded, was
above it. The Russians remained on the field of battle ;
but as they had been dreadfully cut up, and as Bernadotte
w'as advancing with his corps to reinforce Napoleon, Be-
ningsen withdrew next morning, and retired behind the
Pregel. Had he remained a little longer, the French
would have left him indisputed master of the field. Na¬
poleon had also contemplated a retreat; but, on the dis¬
appearance of the Russians, he kept his ground, remained
an entire week at Eylau, and then retired to occupy the
line of the Passarge, establishing his head-quarters at Os-
terode. This was the only circumstance which gave him
a pretence for claiming a victory which most certainly he
had not won.1
Results of The tidings of a drawn battle, fought at the northern
the battle; extremity of Prussia, filled the Parisians writh apprehension
the^am ° an<^ a^arm* The good fortune of Napoleon had hitherto
been so constant that people looked on the battle of Eylau
as the breaking of the spell, and began to consider reverses
as probable. Nor was this feeling confined to Paris, where
it. occasioned a considerable fall in the funds, and even
shook public confidence. It prevailed also in the army,
where more than one general officer counselled a retreat
behind the Vistula. But Napoleon persisted in remaining
on the Passarge, where he continued until the month of
May, when Dantzick surrendered after a gallant defence.
paign.
Reinforcements had in the meanwhile reached both armies, History,
which were consequently soon in a condition to take the
field. Napoleon, however, determined to leave as little as
possible to chance, had opened negotiations, evidently with
no other object than to gain time, and retard the com¬
mencement of operations until his utmost available means
were collected for the decisive struggle. Accordingly,
when all was ready, the negotiations were broken off; and,
on the 5th of June, two Russian columns attempted to
force the passage of the Passarge at Spanden, three leagues
north-east of Guttstadt; but, after an obstinate combat, in
which Bernadotte wTas severely wounded, they were re¬
pulsed. Another encounter took place at Heilsberg on the
10th, betw een the principal mass of the Russian army and
the corps of Soult and Lannes, supported by the cavalry
under Murat. The Russians disputed the ground inch by
inch, whilst their artillery tore up the ranks of the French,
who had several generals killed or wounded, and maintain¬
ed themselves in close columns in their intrenchments,
which they did not evacuate until the 12th. Both armies
now moved northward, the Russians on the east, and the
French on the west, of the Alle. But as Beningsen’s ob¬
ject was to cover Kbnigsberg, it became necessary to pass
the river by the bridge at Friedland, on the road leading to
the ancient capital of Prussia, and sixteen leagues distant
therefrom.
As the French had but one division (that of Ney) im-Battle of
mediately opposite Friedland, Beningsen brought up forces Friedlani
to attack it. Bonaparte was at Eylau, eight leagues distant,
whence he hurried with the rest of his army to Friedland,
where he found Ney making what resistance he could. It
was the 14th of June, the anniversary of the battle of Ma¬
rengo, and w elcomed by the French emperor as betokening
good fortune. Forming his columns in the woods, he allow¬
ed Beningsen to cross the bridge with the greater part of
his army. When the Russian general thus heedlessly advan¬
ced, he little suspected that the v/hole French army were
lying in w^ait for him ; but dense columns issuing from the
woods, and getting their cannon into position for the at¬
tack, soon convinced him that he would have to fight at a
disadvantage, and without even the possibility of retreating
in the event of sustaining a reverse. He drew out his
line, how ever, w ith his left resting on the bridge, and pre¬
pared to receive the shock which w'as now inevitable. A
considerable time passed in manoeuvres, skirmishes, and
partial combats ; and it w^as not until five in the evening
that the battle became general along the whole line. The
principal attack, led by Ney, was of course directed against
the bridge of Friedland, by which alone the Russians could
retreat; but in his ardour to carry it. he was repulsed, and
the head of his column was broken. Supported by Dupont,
however, he rallied his troops, and was preparing to renew
the attack, when Napoleon, who had acquired some expe¬
rience of Russian firmness and tenacity, judged it best to
achieve the victory by means of his artillery. A battery
of thirty pieces, commanded by General Senarmont, ad-
massfcre’ represented by Napoleon as a victory won by Murat, whose cavalry did not appear until towards the
disorarpd fm- riV’.n”01"'1'? £leaj.^lsc;onlentment amongst some of the marshals, particularly Augereau and Lannes, who were
title to order Sir? a° iSf1 thA „N:Toleon had cllosen to him on this occasion. They disputed not Napoleon’s
temnt which he shnwe/f 0 ^ ea?e:^ ,on t^ie *1? d of battle, but they contended that he had no right to treat truth with the same con-
distant and inhnsnitnVde 0r in^’ °r to dlctat;e hls sovereign orders to fame. Besides, they were sick of prosecuting war in such
of Poland could he dnnhtfid10”8'!- ashed by his chief if, with such soldiers as those who fought at Eylau, the conquest
fourth bulletin Nannlenn th’ 16 ’j u t US countlT ls not worth the loss of the humblest corporal in the army.” In the sixty-
Sr^ou^ the-scene Presented by the field of battle : « Qu’on se figure, sur un espace d’une lieue car-
is presented in these few wnr ] ’ °U Klnclmihe chevaux tues. Tout cela avait plus de relief sur unfond de neige." What a picture
reurlle^aeuerre l”6/liatnraf reflect^6 sPeclac.^e] (^e bulletin continues) est fait pour inspire/aux princes 1’amour de la paix et 1’hor-
bloodv fraiT to rise ” and wt L ^ ce^tai)n^’ however hypocritical and disgusting, as emanating from one who “ commanded the
bloody tray to rise, and who seems even to have contemn ated. with snmethino-
hlnndv fmv tn rlco” o„,i „ri   “c i—'tus einaiiaiiijsr iroiii one wno " commanueu uie
, , ?e™s. e'’en to have contemplated, with something approaching to pleasure, the horribly picturesque
Liln lL°°t ne? Snr, 0f,\hlS field of carna^- Napoleon’s tactics made no account of human life. If the
wever dearly purchased, he fp t nr. rpm-pt   w .
spectacle presented by _ _
battle wa« rained Imwo.rpr U1 damage. i\apoieon s tactics made no account ot human lil
to use Kleber’s expression “ n lr, 'Ur| 'f-86-0 ’ If ^e t n,0 re”re,;’ provided enough of men remained for future consumption,
to use tueoei s expression, a general of six thousand men a day.” ^
He was,
FRANCE.
147
Hi ory. vancing four hundred yards a head of the columns, opened
a destructive lire of grape on the Russian masses, huddled
||f7* up as it were in a corner ; heavy charges of cavalry filled
up the intervals of the cannonade, breaking many of their
squares; and towards evening the French infantry again
advanced to complete the victory. The Russians had suf¬
fered much ; retreat was inevitable; and as the bridge
was swept by the enfilading fire of the enemy’s artillery,
they threw themselves into the river, where thousands pe¬
rished in addition to those who had fallen in the field of
battle. Such was the decisive victory of Friedland, which
re-established the superiority of the French arms, which
the battle of Eylau had brought into question, and which
Napoleon had long desired, as the means of disposing Alex¬
ander to an accommodation. In this battle the Russians
lost seventeen thousand men killed, drowned, or wounded,
nearly as many prisoners, and seventy pieces of cannon.
The loss sustained by the French was also great, and in¬
cluded a number of generals killed as well as wounded,
test s. But the results were eminently decisive. Konigsberg
surrendered to Soult. The last hope of Prussia was anni¬
hilated. Beningsen retired beyond the Niemen,1 on the
banks of which the French soon afterwards arrived. At
Friedland was terminated the series of operations com¬
menced at Spanden on the 5th; and in this campaign of
ten days the Russian army had experienced enormous losses,
and been forced to retreat within its own frontiers. The
Emperor Alexander having now joined the army, an ar¬
mistice was demanded and agreed to on the 21st of June ;
and, on the 25th, an interview took place between the em¬
perors, in a tent raised on a raft in the Niemen, at Tilsitt, an
open place of small importance on the left bank of the river.
The meeting had as much apparent cordiality as if not a
drop of blood had been shed or a life lost in their quarrel.
One of the first words of Alexander expressed his resent¬
ment against England. This was politic, and eminently
calculated to conciliate the conqueror, who in fact is said
to have replied that, such being his sentiments, the terms
of accommodation would be easily arranged. Besides, Eng¬
land had departed from the Pitt system of subsidizing largely,
and the autocrat no doubt thought it hard that he should
not be liberally paid for defending himself. At the second
interview, which took place the following day, the king of
Prussia was admitted, on the urgent entreaty of Alexan¬
der ; and the half of the town of Tilsitt being neutralized,
the two emperors established themselves there, and were
soon upon terms of the greatest familiarity, if not friendship.
Not so the unfortunate king of Prussia, who, having arriv¬
ed as a suppliant, was treated with disrespect and severity.
Even the czar, won by the attentions of Napoleon, or over¬
awed by the ascendency of his genius and fortune, soon
evinced a diminished sympathy for his unfortunate ally;
nor could the presence of the beautiful queen of Prussia,
with all her fascinations, overcome this influence, or soften
the premeditated rigour of the French emperor. The latter History,
had many grounds of resentment against Prussia. At
Austerlitz she had held his destiny in her hands, and acted ' 1^7-
with perfidy, without, however, reaping the reward of her
bad faith. She had besides deranged his favourite system
of policy, which required the alliance of one of the. three
great powers of the north and east, especially of Prussia,
whose central position gave to her peculiar advantages in
this respect. He felt it as a great political evil that he had
been reduced to the necessity of destroying a power which
it was his interest to support, nay even to aggrandize ; and
as he knew that reconcilement could never grow up where
wounds of deadly hate had pierced so deep, he resolved to
avail himself to the fullest extent of the advantages which
victory had given him, and to prevent Prussia from ever
having the power to decide the fate of any future coalition.
The terms granted to the king of Prussia were equally Treaties of
severe and humiliating, and wrere made to appear as con-Tilsitt.
cessions to Alexander rather than stipulations with Frede-
rick-William. He was deprived of all his territories be¬
tween the Rhine and the Elbe, and forced to abandon to
Saxony almost the whole of Prussian Poland, which was
erected into the duchy of Warsaw, as well as the circle
of Cotbus, in Lusatia. Several military roads were also
to be opened through the Prussian state, to form commu¬
nications between the kingdom of Saxony and the duchy
of Warsaw; all the countries which remained to Prussia
were to be shut against the navigation and commerce of
England ; and these provinces were to be evacuated before
the first of October 1807, provided the war contributions
were discharged, which they were to be held to be when¬
ever the intendant of the French army should have certified
the validity of the securities offered. Under cover of this
last provision, the fortresses of Custrin, Stettin, and Glo-
gau were retained by the French long after the period
stipulated for their restoration. The totality of the con¬
tributions imposed upon Prussia was fixed at 513,744,410
francs, or L.20,551,776, and of this enormous amount
there had been collected, by the end of 1808, “ tant en
especes qu’en fournitures,” the sum of 474,352,650 francs,
or L.19,174,106, leaving to be recovered even then a ba¬
lance of rather more than L.1,500,000. These numbers
show the frightful severity with which the law of the con¬
queror was applied to Prussia.2 By the present treaty,
that power lost more than the half of her territory, and
nearly the half of her population ; instead of ten millions
and a half, which she possessed before the disastrous day
of lena, only six millions remained to her ; whilst her terri¬
tory, dismantled and laid open on all its frontiers, formed
a long parallelogram, extending abouta hundred and eighty
leagues from west to east, but reduced to a breadth not ex¬
ceeding forty. Modern history presents no other example
of a power descending to such a degree of abasement and
humiliation by means of a conquest so rapidly executed.3
1 The Russians showed much more firmness at Eriedland than they had done at Austerlitz (2d December 1805); and their retro-
grade march, though performed under every disadvantage, can in no respect be assimilated to the dtroute of the Prussians after the
attics or lena and Auerstadt (14th October 1806), to which, in fact, there is nothing in the annals of modern tactics that can be com¬
pared in point of ignominy. Beningsen was no mean adept in his art; and if lie had been cordially seconded, instead of beino-
thwarted, as he often was, by the native Russian generals (he was a Hanoverian), the result of the campaign might have been differ*
ent. At all events, Napoleon- had yet met with no antagonist who made him pay so terrible a price for victory.
2 Dumas, Precis dcs Evcncmcns Militaires, tome xix. p. 85.
the queen of Prussia begged hard for Magdeburg, but in vain. Napoleon, on one occasion, condescended to present her with a
rose ; she accepted it, saying with a winning smile, “ at least with Magdeburg.” “ Madame,” said Napoleon, assuming a look of great
severity, it is for me to give ; you have only the trouble of accepting.” Nor even when the sacrifice was consummated did he relax
in his sarcasms and severities against the Prussian court; and whenever a deputation of Prussians presented themselves, he recurred
to the painful theme of their monarch’s imbecility and ingratitude. For all this, however, there is the apology either of resentment
or policy. But none whatever can be imagined for the scandalous statements to which he gave currency at the time, and afterwards
repeated, to many persons at St Helena, respecting certain alleged improprieties in the conduct of the queen of Prussia. If true, it
ditnnv1 ''Vi* C| a11^ unn'3n^f to blazon such frailties ; if false, detestable. It is but just to add, that, as far as we have been able to
scover, the character of this beautiful and unfortunate woman w>as impeached hy none except the deadly foe of her family his
are fXenandnslandero ati°nS ^ unsupported hy an-v other authority that we can find, and hence the fair presumption is that they
148
FRANCE.
History. But the primary stipulations at Tilsitt were between
Napoleon and Alexander, lords of the old world, the one
1807. from the Atlantic to the Niemen, the other from the Nie-
men to the Pacific. If the half of his dominions was re¬
stored to the king of Prussia, it was from regard to the
Emperor Alexander; and the latter, equally complaisant,
consented that the greater part of the ancient Polish ter¬
ritories should pass under the sovereignty of Saxony, and
that Dantzick, with a radius of two leagues, should be de¬
clared independent, but with a garrison of French troops.
Napoleon accepted, for form’s sake, the mediation of Alex¬
ander with England; whilst Alexander, in return,recognis¬
ed the confederation of the Rhine, and the three brothers
of his conqueror, Joseph, Louis, and Jerome, as the kings
of Naples, Holland, and Westphalia. The Russian troops
were also to evacuate the principalities of Moldavia and
Wallachia. The old barriers of Europe were thus broken
down, and all the other powers plunged into a state of
humiliating vassalage and uncertainty. In the policy of
Napoleon we always find something gigantic, hazardous,
incoherent, and unfinished; vast but ill-defined concep¬
tions, bold experiments, and wildly capricious assortments.
On this occasion, for instance, the Polish nation was most
ungenerously sacrificed; whereas, by re-establishing the
throne of Sobieski, with a better system of monarchy, he
would have formed a stronger barrier against the ambi¬
tion of Russia, and more effectually preserved Germany
from the influence of Austria and Prussia, than by creat¬
ing two feebles states under the denominations of the king¬
doms of Westphalia and Saxony. But the grand object at
present was spoliation. In the treaty of Tilsitt continental
Europe was sacrificed to the ambition of the two emperors,
who parcelled it out at their pleasure ; the one adjudging
to himself the south and the west, the other the east and
the north. It appears, also, that, by a secret article, the
expulsion of the Turks beyond the Bosphorus had been
determined on. But if such a convention was actually
agreed to, the Emperor Napoleon could not have seen far
before him in politics, whatever may have been the ex¬
tent of his genius in military and administrative affairs.
For, to permit Russia to dismember the Ottoman empire,
that is, to establish herself in a given time at Constanti¬
nople, was, in effect, to deliver up to her in a given time
Italy and the Mediterranean, and, by a necessary conse¬
quence, to abandon Europe, before the lapse of a century,
to the barbarians of the north. But the two emperors
were mutually endeavouring to deceive each other; and
although soon after the peace of Tilsitt Alexander prided
himself on the friendship of Napoleon, as a gift of the
gods, the latter repaid the compliment by observing of
his imperial brother, “ He is as fair and false as a Greek,”
thereby showing that he understood his man.
Attack on Be this as it may, however, the stipulations, whether
Copenha- avowed or secret, of the treaty of Tilsitt, were nothing
£en' less than a league to enchain the world. Prussia was
annihilated ; Spain and Sweden were directly menaced;
Austria and Turkey were prospectively endangered ; Eng¬
land was of course devoted to ruin. Denmark preserved
a nominal neutrality; but, irritated by the violent and ar¬
bitrary nautical maxims of Britain, particularly in regard
to the right of search claimed by her, and, moreover,
placed in nearly the same relative situation to France as
Holland had formerly been, that northern power was, by
the force of circumstances, induced to adopt a line of po¬
licy adverse to the interests of England. But latterly her
position had changed for the worse. The exigencies of
Napoleon’s continental system required that Denmark
should be obliged to shut her ports against the commerce
of Britain, and Holstein was already menaced by the French
troops which occupied Hamburg and Lubeck ; whilst, on
the other hand, information received by the British govern¬
ment of what had secretly passed at Tilsitt gave them History
reason to suspect that an attempt would be made on the ^vn
part of the French to occupy Denmark, and to appropri- I807,
ate its fleet. To prevent such a contingency, an expedi¬
tion which had been fitted out for a different purpose was
dispatched to the Sound, and, on the refusal of the Danish
government to discontinue its relations with France, Co¬
penhagen was attacked on the 7th of September. After
a bombardment of three days, and the burning of six
hundred houses, a capitulation was entered into, and the
Danish fleet seized as a deposit, to be restored at the
conclusion of the war. This proceeding upon the part
of England was strongly censured at the time, and still
merits severe reprobation. In point of injustice, it equal¬
led the worst deeds with which Napoleon was reproached;
and, in point of impolicy, it was not surpassed by the
most stupid act of violence ever before committed. Den¬
mark immediately closed her ports against England, de¬
clared war against that country, and soon afterwards (16th
October) concluded a treaty of alliance with France.
Russia, also, availed herself of the favourable opportunity
thus afforded to announce publicly her adoption of the
continental system, to which she had already secretly ac¬
ceded, to break off all intercourse with England, to annul
the convention of the 17th June, and to proclaim of new
the principles of the armed neutrality.
Napoleon was now in the zenith of his glory, victorious Relative
on every side, and possessed of a power by land which situation!
nothing seemed capable of withstanding. Against Bri-0^™
tain, on the other hand, the whole civilized world was
now arrayed in hostility. Russia, Austria, Prussia, France, a“ ' }
Italy, Spain, were all in arms against her; even Turkey,
her ancient ally, had proved ungrateful; and, except¬
ing Sweden, which was misruled by a madman, and Por¬
tugal, which was governed by a fool, all Europe was
forbidden ground. Even the new world was hostile from
north to south; and, what was worst of all, a deep shade
had been cast on the justice of her cause by the ill-timed
attack on Copenhagen. At this time, too, the charac¬
ter of Napoleon stood fair; he had not misused victory
beyond what the morality of the world indulges to a con¬
queror ; and if he had abstained from aggression on the
Peninsula, his power might, in a very few years, have ac¬
quired a stability which would at length have compelled
England, however reluctantly, to sue for peace. His
decline may be dated from the moment when he inter¬
meddled with the affairs of Spain and Portugal, and en¬
deavoured to convert these ancient and independent king¬
doms into dependencies of France. The unjustifiable na¬
ture of the aggression, and the unexampled perfidy and
profligacy with which it was prefaced and accompanied,
destroyed him in the opinion of Europe; whilst the con¬
test in which he soon became involved in the Peninsula
preyed like an inveterate and daily spreading gangrene
on the very vitals of his power.
The first object of attack wras Portugal. On the 17th Attacbi
October, an army of about twenty-seven thousand men, Portugal
under the orders of Junot, marched from Bayonne for Por¬
tugal. The professed object of this invasion was to en¬
force in that country the adoption of the continental sys¬
tem. But, on the 27th of the same month, a secret treaty
was concluded at Fontainebleau, between the Emperor
Napoleon and the minister of Spain, by which Portugal
was to be conquered, and the province of Entre-Minho-e-
Douro given to the king of Etruria in exchange for Tus¬
cany ; whilst the Algarves and the Alemtejo were to be be¬
stowed in sovereignty upon Godoy, prince of the Peace,
and favourite of the queen of Spain, and the remainder, in¬
cluding Lisbon, was to be retained in reserve until a gene¬
ral peace. This rapacious and unprincipled scheme, how¬
ever, formed but a small part of Napoleon’s design, which
JliiW!
1801'
III de-
»
FRANCE.
jUtory. was to seize and occupy the entire Peninsula. Accord-
ingly> another corps of forty thousand men was ordered
M7- to assemble at Bayonne, at latest by the 30th of Novem-
bery to be in readiness to support Junot in case the Eng¬
lish should send assistance to Portugal, or even menace
an attack. Meanwhile that general continued his march
to Lisbon, which he entered with his advanced guard on
the 30th of November. After much irresolution, the court
had at length determined to shut its ports against the
English, in the hope that this concession would stop the
march of Junot; but, as might have been expected, it
proved wholly unavailing. Conquest, not concession, was
the object aimed at; the Moniteur announced that the
house of Braganza had ceased to reign; and the royal fa¬
mily hastened to fulfil the declaration, by abandoning the
country which they were incapable of defending. The
invaders had advanced with such rapidity along difficult
roads, and were in consequence so greatly harassed and
disorganized, that a few thousand resolute troops would
have knocked them all on the head ; but the court thought
only of flight, not resistance, and the country was meanly
surrendered to a parcel of toil-worn conscripts, without a
single blow being struck in its defence. The escape of the
family of Braganza, however, may nevertheless be consi¬
dered as the first check which the fortune of Napoleon
received on the Continent. The odious nature of this en¬
terprise exceeded even the iniquity of the invasions of
•Switzerland and Egypt; two acts of aggression executed
without any previous declaration, and directly contrary to
the faith of treaties.
Mill de- We have already noticed Napoleon’s Berlin decree.
Another dated from Milan, the 17th of December, contain¬
ed new measures against the commerce and maritime sys¬
tem of Great Britain. After reference to certain orders
in council, issued by the British government, in virtue of
which the vessels of neutral powers were not only sub¬
jected to search by the English cruisers, but also made
liable to detention and to an arbitrary impost, it decreed,
first, that every vessel, of whatsoever nation, which should
have undergone search by any English cruiser, or per¬
formed a voyage to England, or paid a duty to the Eng¬
lish government, became thereby denationalised, in other
words, lost the protection of its flag, and became Eng¬
lish property; secondly, that all such vessels were good
and lawful prize of war; and, thirdly, that the British
islands were in a state of blockade by sea as well as by
land, and that every vessel, of whatsoever nation, which had
cleared out from ports in England, or entered into any of
these, might be lawfully captured. It was added, that the
dispositions contained in this decree would become null
whenever England adopted as the rule of her conduct
the principles of the law of nations, which were also those
of justice and humanity. It must be confessed that this
decree embodied a measure of retaliation which, in the
circumstances, was allowable. In discarding the maxim
that neutral bottoms make neutral goods, England could
appeal to no other sanction but that offeree. In the
law of nations, the maritime sovereignty, which she seems
to have considered as an acquired and incontestible right,
found no support; and the code which she adopted was
viewed by other countries as a system of organized pi-
racy, differing but little in principle from that exercised
by the buccaneers and the Algerines. It was never
before maintained that the law of war, and the right of
conquest thence derived, extended to peaceable and un¬
armed citizens, to private habitations and properties, to
merchandise of commerce and the warehouses which con¬
tained or the vehicles which transported it, to unarmed
vessels which plied upon the rivers or navigated the seas ;
*0 a word, to the persons and properties of private indi¬
viduals. But in giving it this unprecedented and unjust
149
extension, Great Britain necessarilyexposed herself to re- History,
taliation, and the avowed principles of her maritime policy
left her without the smallest right to complain of such
measures as those embodied in the Berlin and Milan de-
1808.
crees.
Napoleon had now realised one part of his scheme re-Invasion-,
specting the Peninsula. Portugal was occupied by hisofsPain-
troops, and it now remained to complete his design by
seizing on Spain. With this view a second army, under
Dupont, crossed the Pyrenees about the same time that
Junot entered Portugal, and a third followed on the first
days of 1808. In fact, all the disposable troops of France
were secretly pouring into Spain. In a short time San
Sebastian, Pampeluna, Figueras, and even the forts of
Barcelona, were in the hands of the French ; who, by a
mixture of artifice and audacity, easily contrived to dis¬
possess the imbecile governors and invalid garrisons to
whom these fortresses had been confided. As if by ma¬
gic, the whole line of defence which covered the Pyre¬
nean frontier fell into the hands of the French. The im¬
becility, not to say profligacy, of the rulers of Spain, had
afforded not only a pretext, but an occasion for this un¬
exampled aggression. The prince of Asturias, indignant
at the influence possessed by Godoy, had secretly ad¬
dressed himself to Napoleon, and, as a pledge of his sin¬
cerity, solicited a wife of the Bonaparte family; whilst,
on the other hand, Charles IV., on discovering the machi¬
nations of his son, complained to the French imperial
court of his undutiful conduct. Napoleon, thus consti¬
tuted a sort of umpire in the quarrel, gave promises to
both parties, sent a splendid present to the king, and at
the same time issued orders to his generals to seize the
principal fortresses in the north of Spain. This last pro¬
ceeding opened the eyes of Charles, and even of Godoy ;
but it was already too late. The keys of the kingdom
were in the hands of the French; and those worthless
personages who, only a few months before, had plotted
with Napoleon the dethronement of the house of Braganza,
were now, by a righteous retribution, reduced to seek
safety in flight. Preparations were accordingly made for
retiring to Cadiz, and the royal party were ready to com¬
mence the journey to that port, when the population of
Aranjuez, raised by the partisans of Ferdinand, stopped
the carriages, and prevented the flight. But matters did
not rest here. The tumult thus excited swelled into an
insurrection; Godoy’s house was attacked, in the hope of
sacrificing the hated favourite as a victim to popular ven¬
geance ; and Charles was compelled to abdicate in favour
of his son, who was proclaimed king by the style and title
of Ferdinand VII. Charles, however, protested against
the act as void, because compulsory, and sent his protest
to Napoleon, accompanied by a letter from the queen;
but as this letter passed through the hands of Murat, who,
with a body of troops, had advanced as far as Burgos, that
officer immediately marched upon Madrid. The affair now
became complicated. Ferdinand reckoned on the support
of the French ; the abdicated monarch did the same ; whilst
the people, delighted with the fall of Godoy, hailed the
new king as the deliverer of his country, and as a sove¬
reign destined to revive its ancient splendour. Raised to
the throne by an insurrection, the popularity of Ferdi¬
nand was unbounded. Nothing, in fact, could exceed
the favour and enthusiasm with which he was regarded
by the nation, except the innate worthlessness of the ob¬
ject on which it was lavished. But, in every view,
Ferdinand was not a monarch suited to the purposes of
Napoleon, or calculated, even as a tributary, to advance
his views. It became necessary, therefore, to remove
him from Madrid, where the loyal frenzy of the popula¬
tion gave him force, and then to decide according to cir¬
cumstances in what way he and the other members of
]50
FRANCE.
History, his family should be disposed of. With this view Savary
was sent to entice him to Bayonne; and Ferdinand, more
1H08. win;ng to rely on the French emperor than on the Spa¬
nish nation, resolved to propitiate Napoleon by giving him
the meeting, which, he was led to believe, would take
place within the Spanish territory. In this, however, he
was deceived. Filled with hopes of meeting Napoleon at
every post, he was enticed on until he had crossed the
Bidassoa, when his eyes were at last opened. Napoleon did
not receive him as king of Spain. But he was now in the
snare, and escape impossible. Charles and his queen also
arrived at Bayonne, where Napoleon was about to decide
the quarrel of the Spanish royal family in his own favour.
Their mutual recriminations were alike disgusting and
disgraceful; the queen impeached the legitimacy of her
son in the presence of her husband; and Ferdinand re¬
torted by applying to his mother epithets which her un¬
blushing immoralities but too well merited. All this had
probably been foreseen and calculated on. At all events,
pretending to identify the nation with its rulers, Napo¬
leon, taking advantage of the degrading exhibition made
by the latter, resolved to set aside the reigning house, and
to substitute a new one of his own in its stead. But in
the mean while the news of the insurrection of Madrid,
on the 2d of May, had reached Bayonne, and the French
emperor saw that no time was to be lost. Through the in¬
fluence of Godoy, Charles was induced to resign his crown
in favour of Napoleon; threats overcame the stubborn¬
ness of Ferdinand; and the Spanish royal family having
played the part required of them, were sent off', the old
king and queen to Fontainebleau, and the princes to Va-
len^ay. A hundred and fifty Spanish nobles, who had
been mostly gained over to the French interest, were
then summoned to assemble at Bayonne, where they met
in June, assumed the name of the Spanish Cortes, and
submissively received Joseph Bonaparte as king of Spain
and the Indies. The events which followed the consum¬
mation of this detestable juggle belong partly to the his¬
tory of Spain and partly to that of Britain, to which heads,
accordingly, the reader is referred. The nation had been
no party to these infamous transactions, by which its ho¬
nour was insulted, and its independence assailed, if not
destroyed. A patriotic spirit burst forth; the insurrec¬
tion of Madrid produced similar movements all over the
country; the nation roused itself from the lethargy in
which it had been long sunk; the aid of Britain was soli¬
cited and obtained; and in a little time that contest com- Historr
menced, which was destined to terminate in the deliver- v^yv
ance of the Peninsula, and the overthrow of Napoleon 1808.
himself. See the articles Britain and Spain.
The invasion of Spain, wild and desperate as it at first Character
appeared,1 soon assumed a shape which left no doubt that and pro.
it would operate as a serious drain upon France. TheFessoftiie
proclamation of the intrusive King Joseph was the signal ^nec-
for the general outbreaking of the spirit of resistance,
which, as in almost all popular commotions, displayed it¬
self in acts of sanguinary vengeance. The French were
assailed and massacred in most of the towns; the soldiers
made common cause with the people ; and those com¬
manders who sought to resist the general will were mer¬
cilessly sacrificed. The flower of the Spanish army had
been marched to the north of Europe; but the void wAs
soon filled up, and in a few weeks insurgent armies made
their appearance in all parts of the Peninsula. In the first
encounters, indeed in most general actions, the French,
as might have been expected, were successful; and the
defeat of Blake and Cuesta at Rio Seco seemed the bat¬
tle of Almanza to the new dynasty. But Lefebvre, though
successful in the field, was repulsed from Zaragoza; and
Dupont, after an unsuccessful attempt to reach Cadiz,
was intercepted in his retreat across the Sierra Morena,
and obliged to surrender at Baylen. These successes
kept alive the national spirit, and encouraged the Spa¬
niards to hope that their efforts would ultimately be crown¬
ed with success. Meanwhile the flame of insurrection
had spread to Portugal, where the inhabitants rose against
Junot, and united with the Spaniards in asserting their
independence. The British government availed them¬
selves of the opportunity thus offered. In the end of July
1808, Sir Arthur Wellesley landed at the mouth of the
Mondego, to the north of Lisbon, with about fifteen thou¬
sand men ; and, after a short but brilliant campaign, termi¬
nating in the battle and victory of Vimiero (21st August),
Portugal was; in virtue of the convention of Cintra, cleared
of the enemy.
The court of Vienna now began to show signs of re-Austria,
turning spirit, and, encouraged by the events in Spain and
Portugal, armed, increased the regular force, and orga¬
nized a landwehr. At a public levee held in August, Na¬
poleon took the opportunity to reproach Metternich, the
Austrian envoy, with these preparations; but the intelli¬
gence received from the Peninsula, together with certain
1 The spirit of a people is often shown in their pasquils. Soon after the affair of the 2d of May, the following epigram
tached to a proclamation affixed by the French to the walls of Madrid, and addressed to the Spaniards :
En la plaza hai un cartel,
Que nos dice en Castellano,
Que Joseph, rey Italiano,
Muda a Madrid su dosel.
Y a leer esa cartel,
Dice un maja a su majo,
Manolo ponlo mas abajo
Que me cago en en esa ley
Que no sabe decir carajo.
It is not necessary to subjoin any translation of this national epigram ; but, to give our readers some idea of the means employed to
stimu ate and perpetuate a hatred of the French, we shall give in English an excerpt from a catechism generally circulated in Spain about
this time, and which parents were enjoined to teach their children. “ Tell me, my dear child, who are you ? A Spaniard, by the grace
wu ° -" i . -. ou1 mean by that ? A person of respectability. Who is the enemy of our happiness ? The emperor of the French.
10 is ic. A wicked man, the source of all that is evil, the destroyer of all that is good, and the centre of every vice. How many na-
tures Has he . I wo, the human and the diabolical. How many emperors of the French are there ? One Veritable, in three de-
ceittul persons. What are the names of these persons ? Napoleon, Murat, and Manuel Godoy. Which of the three is the most
wicked 1 hey are all equally so. Of whom is Napoleon derived ? Of Sin. Murat ? Of Napoleon. And Godoy ? Of the fornica-
tion of the other two. What is the spirit of the first ? Pride and despotism. Of the second? Rapine and cruelty. Of the third?
Cupidity, treachery, and ignorance. Mho are the French ? Men once Christians, who have become heretics. What punishment
does the Spaniard deserve who fails in performing his duty ? The death and infamy of traitors. How ought the Spaniards to con¬
duct themselves ? According to the maxims of our Lord Jesus Christ. Who will deliver us from our enemies ? Mutual confi-
( ence am aims. s i a sm to put a Frenchman to death ? No, father ; he will gain heaven who shall kill one of these dogs of he-
tlioir r 1° children such a manual of doctrine as this might easily be expected to begin by exemplify¬
ing in their own actions the precepts which are here inculcated. • ^ b j i
FRA
;iisry. appearances of the commencement of a re-action, gave
--V-' hardihood to German independence. Resolved openly
181 to insult, if not to menace Austria, Napoleon, in Septem¬
ber, held a meeting with the emperor of Russia at Er-
furth, where, as at Tilsitt, great European interests were
discussed, and Austria was again excluded as a secondary
i power. On the part of the French emperor this was
the consummation of that foolish insolence which is be¬
gotten of success. Being thus insulted, trampled on, and
despised, Austria determined, though alone, and opposed
instead of being supported by Russia, to renew the strug¬
gle with France ; but her effort was reserved for the year
1 1809. Napoleon foresaw the storm which was gathering,
and, that he might be prepared to meet it with undivid¬
ed means, made preparations to extinguish by one grand
effort the insurrection in Spain, and to settle the govern¬
ment of that country. From Erfurth he issued orders to
his veterans to march to the Pyrenees, and by the begin¬
ning of November he had himself crossed these moun¬
tains, and established himself at Vittoria. Napoleon was
now in the midst of the Spanish armies, with a greatly
superior force ; and as they were disseminated on a length¬
ened and irregular line, so as to be incapable of acting in
concert or affording mutual support, his plan was to crush
them one after another, by means of rapid movements
executed with overwhelming masses. Accordingly, from
the central position of Vittoria, he attacked and defeated
I Blake at Espinosa, overthrew Belvedere near Burgos, and
totally routed Castahos at Tudela ; so that whilst the Eng¬
lish were slowly advancing into Spain, one column by a
circuitous route, the armies with which they had expected
to co-operate were completely swept from the field. Na¬
poleon now pushed forward to Madrid, which, after a vain
stand made in the passes of the Somosierra, and a show
of resistance when he approached the walls, he entered in
the beginning of December. Here, however, he remained
but a short time. Having passed some decrees intended
to conciliate the liberal Spaniards, having abolished the
I Inquisition, suppressed the convents, and made a variety
of judicious and salutary regulations, he turned his arms
against the English, whose principal force was assem¬
bled in the neighbourhood of Salamanca; crossed the
Guadarama range in the depth of winter at the head of
eighty thousand men ; and advanced with incredible velo¬
city upon Astorga, the strategic point, in order to cut off
their retreat. But his skilful combinations and rapid exe¬
cution were defeated by the masterly retreat of the Eng¬
lish general Sir John Moore; and Napoleon, finding that
the enemy had escaped him, left Soult to continue the
pursuit, galloped back to Burgos, and thence hurried to
Paris. The preparations of Austria, of which he had
received fresh intelligence whilst proceeding against the
British, required his immediate presence in the capital to
watch the movements of that power.
kh;)>a- A fifth continental coalition had already been formed.
lun ; Availing herself of the diversion occasioned by the events
thel *n ^le Pen'nsu^a> Austria had armed; whilst in France
■eai new conscriptions were ordered, and the imperial guard,
hastily recalled from the pursuit of the British, marched
against the Austrians on the Danube. The war seemed
interminable ; and Talleyrand’s prediction was in course of
being realised. The court of Vienna had made incredible
exertions, and an army of nearly two hundred thousand
N C E.
151
1809.
men, commanded by the Archduke Charles, menaced History.
France and Italy ; whilst another, in Gallicia, was intended
to oppose whatever forces Russia might bring into the
field to support her new ally. On the 9th of April the
Austrians crossed'the Inn at Brunnau and at Scharding,
and the Salza at Burghausen ; the Archduke Charles de¬
claring to the commandant of the French troops stationed
in Bavaria that he was about to advance, and would treat
as enemies all who should resist him. On the loth hos¬
tilities also commenced in Italy, and the following day
the French under Eugene Beauharnais were completely
defeated at Pordenone, on the Tagliamento. Napoleon, on
receiving the first tidings of the advance of the Austrians,
hurried from Paris, and at Dillingen met the king of Bava¬
ria, who had been forced to abandon his capital. The French,
in fact, were quite unprepared for the adoption of such a
vigorous offensive on the part of the Austrians; and the
corps of Davoust, which Berthier had stationed at Ratis-
bon, was so much in advance as to be seriously compro¬
mised. But Davoust took upon himself the responsibility
of executing a flank march from that city upon Abensberg;
checked the advance of the Austrian army at Tann ; gave
his hand (as the military phrase is) to the Bavarians; and
thus prepared for Napoleon, who was on the point of arriv¬
ing, the means of penetrating the enemy’s line, and beat¬
ing in succession the two great Austrian corps under the
Archdukes Louis and Charles. tUpon the 20th Napoleon
defeated, at Abensberg, the corps under the orders of the
Archduke Louis and General Hiller, after an engagement
of only an hour and a half. Great advantages resulted
from this success, which, upon the following day, forced
the Austrians to abandon nine thousand prisoners, thirty
pieces of cannon, six hundred ammunition waggons, three
thousand vehicles of various sorts, and three pontoon trains.
On the 22d, the archduke directed his efforts against Da¬
voust, who was in position at Eckmuhl; but the portion
of the army under Napoleon, which had followed to Land-
shut the corps defeated at Abensberg, rapidly counter¬
marched, and having appeared on the left flank of the Aus¬
trians, compelled the archduke to abandon his position
and cross the Danube. Thus, after a campaign of a week,
on almost every day of which a victory had been gained,
the French emperor was enabled to send forth one of his
astounding proclamations, announcing the capture of a
hundred pieces of cannon, fifty thousand prisoners, and
forty stand of colours. Davoust, to whom the last success
had been mainly owing, was created Prince of Eckmuhl on
the field of battle.
The archduke having crossed the Danube at Ratisbon, Affair of
retreated into Bohemia, no doubt in the hope of drawing Ebersberg;
the French after him in pursuit; but Napoleon preferredo^upataon
marching along the right bank towards Vienna. This, how- 0 ienna*
ever, was not effected without opposition. At Ebersberg,
a large town situated upon the right bank of the Traun,
three leagues from Lintz, there occurred, on the 4th of
May, one of the most sanguinary combats on record. The
French generals, acting under the eye of their chief, at¬
tempted to carry this strong position at the first onset,
and without hesitation sacrificed five thousand men, who
were either drowned in the torrent, destroyed by the mus¬
ketry, overwhelmed amidst the rubbish, or consumed by
the flames of the houses, to which the enemy set fire on
beating a retreat J a carnage as useless as it was horrible,
1 “ Figure to yourself,” says an eye-witness of this horrid spectacle, “ all these dead, baked by the fire, trodden under the feet of
the cavalry and the wheels of the artillery, all forming a mass of mud, which, as it was removed by shovels, emitted an undescribable
odour of burned human flesh, and caused a sensation horrible even amongst the every-day horrors of war.” In passing Cohorn’s
Corsican regiment, which had headed the attack, Napoleon inquired respecting its loss. “ We have just one more charge left,” re¬
plied the officer, pointing to the surviving half of the regiment. “ A ce jour,” says the Abbe Montgaillard, “ 1’espoir d’un grade,
d’une dotation, fait ddpasser toutes les bornes de 1’audace guerriere, et meconnaitre aussi les inspirations de I’huraanite'.” (Hist, de
France, tome vi. p. 391)
152
FRANCE.
1809.
Battle of
Essling.
History, seeing that Marshal Lannes had already turned the posi-
tion, and rendered the retreat of the enemy inevitable.
On the 13th of May, exactly a month after the Austrians
had commenced the war, Vienna was occupied for the se¬
cond time by the French army, though not until it had
stood a bombardment of thirty-six hours. The resources
in munitions of war found in the Austrian capital were
sufficient for a campaign. The imperial family and the
court had, as before, abandoned the city to its fate. Mean¬
while the Archduke Charles had, by a circuitous march
through Bohemia, reached the left bank of the Danube
opposite Vienna. More prudent than in 1805, the Aus¬
trians had destroyed every bridge on the river; and, on
the other hand, it became necessary to the French to
cross the stream and put an end to the war by victory,
ere insurrections could be organized in their rear, or the
want of subsistence should compel them to retreat. But
how was this to be effected in presence of an active and
vigilant enemy ?
The river Danube, which now separated the hostile ar¬
mies, is divided below Vienna into three unequal arms or
branches. From the right bank to the first island, which
is about a mile in circumference, the distance is two hun¬
dred and forty toises; and from this to the great island,
where is the principal current, the canal is in width about
eighty toises. The great island, called In-der-Lobau, is
about seven miles in circumference, and the canal which
separates it from the left bank is nearly eighty toises in
breadth. Napoleon having thrown bridges, by means of
which his troops were enabled to pass from the right
bank into the islands, and thence to the left bank, attack¬
ed the Archduke Charles in position behind the villages
of Gross-Aspern and Essling, about three leagues north of
Vienna. After several murderous attempts in a confined
space, where the French maintairled an obstinate struggle
against superior forces and a formidable artillery, the as¬
sailants were repulsed ; and about the same moment the
bridges were carried away by a sudden rise of the river,
thus leaving them without ammunition, or the means of
sheltering themselves from the fire of the enemy, which
now plunged incessantly into their disordered ranks. But
the tenacity of Massena saved the wrecks of the French ar¬
my, which in the night operated its retreat into the island
of Lobau, the bridge between which and the left bank had
been temporarily repaired. This terrible battle, which last¬
ed during the greater part of two days, was fought on the
21st and 22d of May. The loss of the French was enor¬
mous. Lannes was mortally wounded; three generals
fell, a hundred and twenty-eight officers and six thousand
soldiers were killed; thirteen generals, seven hundred
officers, and eighteen thousand soldiers, were w'ounded;
fourteen officers and three thousand soldiers were made
prisoners. The loss sustained by the Austrians was by
no means so great.
After the battle of Essling the reputation of Napoleon
as a general and a man of resolution was much diminish¬
ed ; for he had not taken any adequate precaution against
the contingency of retreat, and at the moment when the
danger was most imminent he quitted the left bank of the
Danube in a miserable barque, accompanied by Berthier,
and Czernicheff, aide-de-camp to the emperor of Russia,
in order to get under cover on the right bank. The news
of his defeat also spread the flames of insurrection, and
gave the first impulse to that spirit of resistance by which
he was a few years afterwards overthrown. The Tyrolese
rose against the Bavarians ; associations, under the deno¬
mination of the T-Ugenbund, were formed for working out
the independence of Germany; and the adventurous en¬
terprises of the young Duke of Brunswick and of Major
8chill affoi ded abundant evidence of the hostile disposi¬
tion by which the people of the north and east were ani-
Results.
mated towards their oppressors; although the climate of Histoff
Germany, and the character of its inhabitants, as well as -vn
the force and centralization of government, rendered the 1809.
Spanish system of resistance impracticable in that coun¬
try.
The French, forced back to the right bank of the Da-Battle of
nube by their defeat at Essling, established themselves Wagram,
in the great island of Lobau ; and both armies, separated
only by the northern branch of the Danube, sixty yards
wide, remained in observation during six weeks, carefully
retrenching their respective positions. At length, on the
night between the 4th and 5th of July, the French having
constructed bridges lower down the stream, crossed to
the left bank, where a warm combat ensued with the left
wing of the Austrian army, posted near the small town of
Enzersdorff, which was reduced to ashes. The archduke
had fortified his position and made preparations to oppose
the French, on the supposition that they would attempt
to cross by the original bridge opposite Essling, which
Napoleon had ordered to be repaired. But these repairs
had only been made by Napoleon to deceive his anta¬
gonist ; and by crossing lower down the river he rendered
all the preparations and batteries of the archduke unavail¬
ing ; for, instead of fronting the Danube, the latter was
now obliged to extend his line perpendicularly to the river,
from Aspern to Wagram, a village situated five leagues
north-north-east of Vienna, and thence to a small river on
his extreme left. 1 he 5th was spent in manoeuvring, and
in fruitless attempts to dislodge the French from the vil¬
lage of Enzersdorff'. Both armies slept on the field, and
on the 6th at day-break commenced the famous battle of
Wagram. The Austrian centre was posted on the high
ground near the village, which the archduke believed to
be too strong to be forced; and accordingly he threw the
greater part of his force into his wings. This error lost him
the battle. The Austrian right attacked and overthrew
Massena, who commanded the French left, driving him
back with such fury that his four divisions were crowded
into one. Davoust opposed a firmer resistance to the Aus¬
trian left; but still he had great difficulty in maintaining
his ground. In this situation Napoleon resolved to allow
his wings to resist as they might, and to bring the whole
of his disposable force to dear upon the Austrian centre
at Wagram. Lauriston accordingly advanced against it
with a hundred pieces of cannon; Macdonald followed
Lauriston with the infantry; and Bessieres supported the
attack with the cavalry of the imperial guard. This com¬
bined effort succeeded. The artillery made breaches in
the Austrian line; the French, aided by a diversion on
the extreme right, rushed into the openings; the centre
was forced; and the corps victorious over Massena, being
now taken in flank, was also obliged to retire. The differ¬
ent portions of the Austrian army being thus separated
from one another, the archduke withdrew from the field;
but the French had suffered far too much to follow him.
In fact, the battle of Essling had damped the courage of
the French ; and at Wagram they fought faintly, except
when urged on by some bold and determined leader. The
loss on both sides was enormous; that of the French ex¬
ceeding thirty-five thousand men killed and wounded.
Wagram was therefore a victory, but not such a victory
as that of Marengo or Austerlitz. The hostile army was
defeated, but neither destroyed nor intercepted ; and the
Aichduke Charles, still formidable in force, withdrew into
Moravia to await the arrival of his brother’s army, repair
his losses, and prolong the campaign.
Napoleon therefore deemed it prudent to make peace. Peace
His power was in fact shaken. Most of the veterans of
the Italian wars had perished; the army of Essling and
Wagram was no longer that of Austerlitz; and this alarm¬
ing truth had been spoken out even at the imperial head-
Istorjr.
I
H ory. quarters. Accordingly an armistice was concluded about
the middle of July, and conferences with a view to peace
J|10. having soon afterwards commenced at the palace of Schon-
brunn, near Vienna, were continued until the 14th of Octo¬
ber, when a treaty was signed, by which Austria ceded, in
favour of the sovereigns of the confederation of the Rhine,
Saltzburg, Bergtolsgaden, and part of Upper Austria; to
the French, Gorice, Montefalcone, Trieste, the circle of
Villach in Carinthia, and all the countries situated on the
right of the Saave, as far as the frontier of Turkish Croatia;
to the grand duchy of Warsaw, all western Gallicia, with
Cracow, as well as the circle of Zamosc in eastern Gallicia;
and to Russia, a small territory in the most eastern part
of Gallicia, containing a population of four hundred souls.
The emperor of Austria also recognised all the changes
which had already been made or might subsequently take
place in Spain and Portugal; he adhered to the prohibi¬
tive system adopted by France and Russia against Eng¬
land ; and he engaged to discontinue all commercial re¬
lations with “ the enemy of the Continent.” The memoir
writers of the day are pleased to imagine that Napoleon
was terrified into making peace by the discovery of a de¬
sign upon the part of a fanatical young German to assas¬
sinate him. But his views were at once more manly and
more profound. Even in his proudest day of power he
had acknowledged the necessity of having one great ally
attached to his interests; and this was what he now
sought to obtain. Prussia had played him false, and for¬
ced him to destroy her; Russia was evidently not to be
depended upon; Austria yet remained to be tried, and
this trial was now made. Napoleon had no heir of his
body; an adopted son of his brother Louis had died; and
his proposal to a Russian princess had been received with
a coldness amounting to disdain, which proved to him
the insincerity of Russian alliance. At Schonbrunn the
same idea was now suggested with respect to Austria;
and the Emperor Francis, appreciating the advantage of
such a connection, acceded to the proposal. According¬
ly Josephine was divorced to make way for a bride of the
house of. Hapsburg, and, on the 10th of March 1810, the
Archduchess Maria Louisa became the new empress of
the French.
veft of in what remains of the history of France we must con¬
fine ourselves to a mere abridgment of events which are
not of very great importance, this branch of the general
article having already exceeded its due proportion; but
what is omitted here will be found under the other heads
to which reference is made. The occurrences of 1810
and 1811 are chiefly important with reference to an ap¬
proaching struggle with Russia. On the 6th of January
1810 a treaty of peace between France and Sweden was
signed at Paris. On the 7th of February the convention
of marriage between the Emperor Napoleon and the Arch¬
duchess Maria Louisa, daughter of Francis I., emperor of
Austria, was concluded. On the 17th the Roman states
were, by a decree of the senate, incorporated with the
French empire. On the 19th April the provinces of Ca-
raccas, Cumana, Barinas, Margarita, Barcelona, Merida,
and iruxillo, in Spanish South America, formed a fede¬
rative government under the name of the American Con¬
federation of Venezuela, but without separating them¬
selves from the mother country, although this first step
necessarily led eventually to such a result. Early in
July, Napoleon, having made a declaration against the
government of Holland, which he accused of having con¬
verted the Dutch ports into entrepots of English com¬
merce, recalled his brother Louis, and, by an imperial
decree, ordained the incorporation of Holland with France.
On the 21st of August, Bernadotte, prince of Ponte Cor-
vo, was named hereditary prince royal of Sweden, by the
states-general of the kingdom, convoked in an extraordi-
vol. x.
153
nary diet for the election of a successor to the throne, to History,
which, upon the abdication or rather expulsion of Gusta-
vus IV. the Duke of Sudermania had been raised by the 1811.
title of Charles XIII. Towards the latter end of Septem¬
ber Sicily was threatened with invasion by a force under
the orders of Murat, the new king of Naples; but the
threat ended in a mere demonstration, having for its al¬
leged object to draw English troops into the island. On
the 13th of December a hundred and sixty thousand men
of the conscription of 1811 were placed at the disposal of
the government. The relations of France with Russia
had, in the opinion of Napoleon, rendered this measure
necessary. On the 29th of December the state renoun¬
ced the successions of the emigrants which had devolved
to it during so many years ; and thus the revolutionary
laws of the 28th March 1793 and the 28th April 1795
were abrogated. For the events which occurred in Spain
during the years 1809, 1810, 1811, and the following years,
the reader is referred to the articles Britain and Spain.
Napoleon, when in St Helena, asserted that the origin Events of
of his quarrel with Alexander, which led to the invasion 181J.
of Russia in 1812, was his opposition to the czar’s views
upon Turkey ; views, it maybe added, which the autocrat
of all the Russias had been led to entertain at Tilsitt;
and Bignon confirms the statement of Napoleon. “ From
the conferences of 1807,” says that historian, “ sprung the
germ that was to be fatal to Napoleon, To force England
to make peace conformably to the alliance of Tilsitt, Rus¬
sia was to act against Sweden, and France against Portu¬
gal ; or, to translate more freely the ideas of the two em¬
perors, Russia left to Napoleon full liberty of action over
the south of Europe, France abandoning to Alexander
similar liberty in the north with respect to Sweden, and
moreover allowing him a certain measure of tolerance on
the side of Turkey. In consequence of these reciprocal
concessions, France found herself engaged in the horrible
Spanish war; Russia in one of which the dangers were in¬
significant, the acquisition being Finland. Napoleon then
imagined that Finland might content Alexander; but he
was deceived. For a moment Napoleon had admitted
the possibility of partitioning the Ottoman empire. This
contingency Alexander assumed as a certainty; and his
constant demands were on the subject of this partition.
But Napoleon constantly refused, and from a double mo¬
tive ; the first political, because the lot of France, mag¬
nificent as it appeared, was but a source of peril and em¬
barrassment, whilst that of Russia had proved all substan¬
tial and positive value; the second military, because he
looked on the Turkish empire as a morass which prevent¬
ed Russia attacking him on his right.” And hence, it is
said, arose the gradual coolness between the two empe-
rors. But there were other sources of grievance. In the
campaign of Wagram, Napoleon had perceived the luke¬
warmness of Russia; whilst the aggrandisement of the
duchy of Warsaw, which might swell out into an inde¬
pendent kingdom of Poland, made Alexander tremble for
Lithuania. The occupation of the duchy of Oldenburg,
belonging to a prince nearly allied to the emperor of Rus¬
sia, formed another cause of complaint and recrimination.
On the other hand, Alexander, who had already relaxed
in his observance of the continental system, which had
destroyed the trade of his subjects, abrogated it in part
towards the close of 1810, and thereby snapt asunder the
last remaining tie between France and Russia.
The seeds of war being thus freely sown, preparations Prepara-
were made on both sides for the struggle which had now tions of
become inevitable. Those of Napoleon were immense. Napoleon.
From France he drew every soldier the utmost rigour of
the conscription laws would supply; Italy on the one side,
and Holland on the other, were required to contribute
their legions ; the contingents of the confederated states
u
FRANCE.
154
FRANCE.
1812.
History, of the Rhine were ordered to be in readiness; Austria
* consented to furnish forty thousand men; and Prussia,
however willing to throw her remaining strength into the
scale of Russia, was forced by dire necessity to yield up
the remains of her army, her fortresses, and even her very
capital, to the French forces. All continental Europe in
arms seemed about to pour upon Russia; whilst Poland, ex¬
pecting her independence, was calling upon Lithuania, the
spoil of Catharine, to welcome the host of invaders. On
the other hand, by the mismanagement of Napoleon, Swe¬
den, though smarting under the loss of her fairest pro¬
vince, Finland, was thrown into the arms of Russia ; and,
through his neglect, British influence so far prevailed at
Constantinople, that the sultan was induced to abandon
the tempting opportunity, of which he might have taken
advantage, when Russia was hard pressed by a powerful
antagonist, and even to conclude a peace with the ancient
and inveterate foe of the Ottoman name. The fact is,
that about this time Napoleon began to be very ill served
in the civil and diplomatic branches of affairs. Talleyrand
and Fouche were both in disgrace, and he in vain endea¬
voured to supply their places with statesmen of his own
creation. Men of their approved talents and experience,
with clear heads, penetrating discernment, and cool sa¬
gacity, were not every-day productions. In diplomacy,
where the essential requisites are knowledge of mankind
and of courts, together with superiority of address, and
an almost intuitive insight into affairs, Napoleon felt and
lamented this deficiency; and he himself owned, that had
he retained Talleyrand in his service, the Russian (he
might have also added the Spanish) war would have been
avoided. In high views of policy, and conceptions worthy
the head of a great state, Napoleon was alike eminent;
he also foresaw the perils of an insurrection in the Penin¬
sula, should it become general, and the unseasonableness
as well as necessity, circumstanced as he was, of a war
with Russia; but want of tact in his subordinate agents
hurried on both these calamities. The rashness and pre¬
cipitation of Murat, whilst at Madrid, embroiled Spain;
and negotiations carried on through generals and aides-
de-camp marred all hopes of reconciliation with Russia.
Sensible of this, Napoleon made choice of the Count de
Narbonne, a noble and a liberal emigrant, to proceed on a
mission to Russia; and with the same feeling, probably,
he selected and sent to Warsaw the Abbe de Pradt,
archbishop of Malines. But men qualified for such high
and responsible diplomatic situations cannot be produced
even by an imperial improvisation ; and it would be difficult
to say which proved the more unsatisfactory envoy, the
archbishop or the aide-de-camp.
After two years of preparation, the rupture became im¬
minent. On the 24th of March 1812, a treaty of alliance
was concluded between Russia and Sweden, by which
Norway was promised to the latter, and the prince-royal,
Bernadotte, agreed to take the field with a Russian corps
under his orders ; and to this treaty Great Britain acceded
in the beginning of May. On the 24th of April the empe¬
ror of Russia left St Petersburg to join his army, then in
position upon the western frontier of Lithuania; and on
the 9th of May Napoleon set out from Paris for Dresden,
which had been fixed upon as the rendezvous of his allies.
Professions of peace, as usual, preceded the commence¬
ment of hostilities; and at the same time that Napoleon
quitted Paris for Germany, the Count de Narbonne was sent
to the head-quarters of the Emperor Alexander. Mean¬
while, the court assembled at Dresden was such as Europe
had never before witnessed. The emperor of Austria and the
king of Prussia were amongst those who, on this occasion,
waited upon Napoleon ; whilst kings and princes of infe¬
rior rank crowded the antechambers, and jostled one ano¬
ther in the saloons of the conqueror. Here the represen¬
Declara
tion of
war.
tative of the French Revolution found in attendance at Hist0rr
his levees those sovereigns who had combined to crush it;
and the new Charlemagne, whose title to the imperial 1812.
purple had been consecrated by victory, seemed in a fair
way of realizing his own prediction, that his family would
soon be the oldest of Europe. It appears as if fortune,
before abandoning him, had indulged her spoiled favourite
with this parting pageant. Napoleon awaited at Dresden
the return of the Count de Narbonne, who arrived on the
28th of May. The latter had seen the Emperor Alexan¬
der, and had found him inflexible, but neither elated nor
despondent. The czar considered the cause as that of
the independence of his nation, and conceived that in
maintaining it defeat would not be inglorious. On receiv¬
ing these tidings, Napoleon quitted Dresden, proceeded
to join the army, and, on the 22d of June, declared war
against Russia, from his head-quarters at Wilkowiski, near
Gumbinen, in Eastern Prussia. “ Soldiers,” said he, “ the
second war of Poland has commenced. The first termi¬
nated at Tilsitt. At Tilsitt Russia swore eternal alliance
with France, and eternal war against England. She has
now violated her oaths. Russia is hurried on by a fatali¬
ty ; her destiny must be accomplished. Does she sup¬
pose us degenerated ? Let us advance, cross the Niemen,
and carry the war into her own territory. The second
war of Poland will be as glorious to the French arms as
the first.”
The army of Napoleon, at once the finest and most for-Forces of
midable which France had ever sent beyond her own ter-Dance anil
ritory, amounted to nearly five hundred thousand comba-IlussjaK-
tants, with about twelve hundred pieces of artillery. ThissI)ect‘yelJ
army was divided into ten corps. The first corps, com¬
posed of five fine divisions of infantry and one of cavalry,
was under Marshal Davoust; the second was command¬
ed by Marshal Oudinot; the third was under the orders
of Marshal Ney ; the fourth, known under the name of
the army of Italy, was commanded by Eugene Beauhar-
nais; the fifth consisted of the Poles, under Prince Poni-
atowski; the sixth was composed of the Bavarians, under
General Gouvion-Saint-Cyr ; the Saxons formed the se¬
venth, under General Reynier; the eight consisted of the
Westphalians, effectively commanded by Junot, who had
been placed as the Mentor of Jerome Bonaparte, a young
man without talents and consideration; the ninth, not
yet completed, but with a division twenty thousand strong,
was allotted to Marshal Victor; and the tenth, composed
of the auxiliary contingent Prussians, with a reserve of
a division and some companies of artillery, was under the
orders of Marshal Macdonald. The old guard was com¬
manded by Marshal Lefebvre, and the young guard by
Marshal Mortier. The reserve of cavalry, under the or¬
ders of the king of Naples, Murat, formed four corps un¬
der Generals Nansouty, Montbrun, Grouchy, and Latour-
Maubourg. The cavalry of the guard acted apart, and
an Austrian corps under Schwartzenberg marched sepa¬
rately. The grand total did not therefore fall short of
four hundred and fifty thousand combatants, of whom
twenty thousand were Italians, eighty thousand belonged
to the confederation of the Rhine, thirty thousand were
Poles, thirty thousand Austrians, and twenty thousand
Prussians; so that the French alone formed an effective
force of about two hundred and seventy thousand bay¬
onets or sabres. On the other hand, the Russian troops
were divided into the first and second armies of the West,
under Generals Barclay de Tolly and Bagration, and the
army of reserve under Tormasof; making altogether, in¬
cluding different detached corps of irregular cavalry, about
three hundred and sixty thousand combatants. But two
other corps were formed ; one in Lithuania, from Mozyr
to Bobenisk on the Berezina; and the other at Riga and
at Dwinaburg; whilst reserves were established on the
FRANCE.
■y. Willia, and between Wilna and Swentziany; and a vast
intrenched camp was formed before Drissa, in a sinuosity
of the Dwina.
of On the 24th of June the French army crossed the Nie-
men, and on the 25th the emperor of Russia issued a pro¬
clamation announcing the commencement of hostilities,
invoking the name of God, the protector of the Greek
faith, in whom dwells truth, and calling upon his serfs to
defend liberty and their country. In crossing the Nie-
men, the French met with no opposition ; a solitary officer
ot Cossacks being the only enemy who appeared to chal¬
lenge them. I he plan of the Russians was to retreat with¬
in their own territory, to avoid a decisive battle, to draw
on the French as far as possible from their resources, and
at last to fall on them when famine, fatigue, and the
rigours of a northern climate, had abated their enthusiasm
and exhausted their strength ; a plan devised by Barclay
de Tolly, the commander-in-chief, and executed with an
ability and determination which eventually proved the sal¬
vation of the Russian empire. On the 28th of June the
French troops made their entry into Wilna, the ancient ca¬
pital of Lithuania. The Russians fell back at all points.
After having exchanged some cannon shots, they repassed
the Willia, burned the wooden bridge at Wilna, and set fire
to the immense magazines of provision, clothing, arms, and
munitions of war, which had been collected at that place.
On the same day the diet which had assembled at Warsaw
proclaimed the re-establishment of the kingdom of Poland.
This generous nation ardently desired and invoked the re¬
composition of its dismembered provinces ; it implored the
assistance of trance; and, for twenty years, its warriors
had shed their blood for the interests of that country in
Italy, in Germany, in Spain, wherever, in short, their ser¬
vices were needed or required. Since the peace of Til-
sitt, which had consummated the humiliation of Prussia,
the policy of France required the reconstitution of the
monarchy of Sigismond and Sobieski; and powerful con¬
siderations should have determined Napoleon to sanction
a measure which, independently altogether of its political
justice, would have raised up a formidable barrier between
Russia and Germany, attached to his interests a brave
and generous nation, strengthened his hands in the actual
contest with Russia, and, in the event of reverses, rallied
a whole people to cover his retreat. But, either from
an apprehension of exciting the jealousy of Austria, who
would, no doubt have readily accepted an indemnity for
Gallicia on the side of Italy, or, which is more probable,
from a desire to keep the door open for an accommoda¬
tion with Russia, Napoleon evaded the recognition which
was so earnestly solicited of him by a deputation from the
diet, and thus lost an opportunity of strengthening his
power which could never be recalled.1
annof When Napoleon advanced upon Wilna with the main
•body of the army, Macdonald with a strong corps moved
along the Baltic, and formed the left; whilst the Aus¬
trians, under Schwartzenberg, entered Volhynia, and pro¬
tected the right flank of the French. Immediately before
Napoleon, the Russians, as already stated, composed two
aimies; the-principal of which, under General Barclay de
Tolly, had retired from Wilna, to Drissa on the Dwina,
155
where an intrenched camp defended the road leading to St History.
Petersburg ; whilst the other, under Prince Bagration, re-
mained at Grodno, and was consequently separated, by the 1812-
advance of the French, from the main army under Barclay.
This was a great, and might have proved a fatal blunder.
But, happily for the Russians, Napoleon, who saw the full
extent of the error, and did every thing in his power to take
advantage of it, was, on the present occasion, ill served
by his lieutenants. Some were tardy, others inapt; Ju-
not was incapacitated for command by the effects of for¬
mer wounds; Davoust -was paralysed by the obstinacy
and stupidity of King Jerome ; jealousies and misunder¬
standings prevailed among others. Precious time was thus
lost; Bagration made good his retreat; and Barclay, warned
by the peril which he had just escaped, took good care
to afford the enemy no second opportunity of beating him
in detail. From Wilna Napoleon advanced to Witepsk,
which he entered on the 28th of July, being still in hopes
of preventing the junction of the two Russian armies,
which, by a masterly movement, he had disunited. Lithu¬
ania was now conquered, and the end of the war seemed
already attained ; but in the estimation of Napoleon,
whom ordinary advantages did not satisfy, it had scarcely
commenced. His eye was fixed upon Moscow, and, calcu¬
lating on the faults of the Russians, he was eager to strike
a blow commensurate in magnitude with the enterprise in
which he had embarked. In vain, therefore, did Berthier,
Lobau, Caulaincourt, Duroc, and Daru, demonstrate the
necessity of stopping at Witepsk, more especially as hence¬
forward the favourable dispositions of the inhabitants
could not be reckoned on. Murat and Davoust gave op¬
posite counsel, and Napoleon resolved to advance.
Whilst Napoleon remained at Witepsk, where he spent Smolensk,
the first two weeks of August, the Russian armies had
united at Smolensk, a large town situated on the Dnieper,
surrounded with ancient and massive constructions, to
which had recently been added works fortified with ex¬
treme care, and forming the bulwark of Russia upon the
frontier of Poland. In this strong position Barclay re¬
solved to make a stand. It had formed part of the plan
of Napoleon to get to Smolensk before the enemy, inter¬
cept their retreat, and thus force them to accept battle at
a disadvantage ; but, owing to innumerable faults of exe¬
cution, and the unaccountable though perhaps necessary
delay at Witepsk, this project had failed. It now only
remained, therefore, to carry the place by main force;
and for this purpose the French, with Napoleon himself
at their head, advanced to the attack, which was made at
all points and with unimaginable fury. The Russians, pro¬
tected by the ramparts, held out during the day; but on
the approach of night they abandoned all their positions,
after having set fire to the town, which contained immense
magazines. They retired in solid squares, with such ad¬
mirable steadiness and order, that the utmost efforts of
Murat, at the head of his fine cavalry, proved unavailing
against the stability of their formation ; in fact, each
square seemed a blazing ball of fire. The Russians lost
about twelve thousand men in killed, wounded, and pri¬
soners ; the French somew hat less than half that number.
But the system of defence adopted by the Russians had
splf hnLd? ; ,10IVV UC^ ^ the. head-quarters of Napoleon at Wilna, said to him, “ the general diet has constituted it-
the reality °n]^eT^twn °.f 1 ola‘ld- . Say, sire, that the kingdom of Poland exists, and this decree will to the world be equivalent to
ria wh c/the^-nhi P!rS1+ v-g 111 he K-ea f .saTficmg Austrian Gallicia, in order not to be under the necessity of giving up Illy-
sembly of Warsaw 11 de.sireld rec?Ver’ ,NaPoleon ^phed, “ Poles, I would have thought like you In the as-
many duties m fulfil If tT i ^ S fT 7 °f ^^d man. In my situation I have many interests to conciliate,
people to defend m i ^1 ^ reTTed dunng thc hrst; the second, and the third dismemberment of Poland, I would have armed my
if tile .,e 1 .• 1 ,at C0untr^ 1 iove y°ur natmn. I authorize the efforts which you desire to make. It is only in the unanimity
his domSns »°^ ^ h°Pe ^ 1 ?Ught t0 add’ that 1 have Suarauteed to the emperor of Austria the integrity of
avenged. lh language was not misunderstood. But if the hopes of the Poles were blasted, their disappointment was speedily
156
FRANCE.
History, deprived the French of nearly all the advantages which
they might otherwise have derived from their victory;
*812, and where they expected to meet with good quarters and
the sight of human habitations, they found only a heap of
smoking ruins. Still, even amidst these ruins Napoleon
might have halted, brought up provisions and reinforce¬
ments, reorganized his army, and waited to complete the
subjugation of Russia in another campaign. This was
what almost all his generals counselled, including even
Murat; and the results of the campaign completely vin¬
dicated the prudence of this advice. But to stop short in
the month of August within eighty leagues of Moscow,
the term of his enterprise, and without having achieved
any thing calculated to maintain the illusion in favour of
his invincible and overwhelming power, was too much for
Napoleon. The principles of his strategy were fully de¬
veloped in this campaign. He was not insensible to the
difficulties and even dangers attending an advance, or of
the advantages which would result from placing his army
in cantonments at Smolensk, and there preparing for an¬
other and decisive campaign ; with him every thing, even
audacity itself, was matter of calculation ; but, having es¬
timated all the chances, he concluded that as the Russians
would certainly risk a battle to save the ancient capital
of their empire, he would gain the battle, penetrate to
Moscow, and thus conclude the war in Russia as he had
twice before done in Germany. For these, and other rea¬
sons which appeared to him equally cogent, Napoleon de¬
termined to advance.
Further Nor was he wrong in two main points of his calculation.
advance. Although the Fabian tactics of Barclay had unquestion¬
ably saved the Russian army, and with it the empire, all
voices, amongst which that of Prince Bagration was loud¬
est, clamoured for battle ; and, in obedience to this cry, the
able tactician was superseded by the old Muscovite gene¬
ral Kutusof, the same who lost the battle of Austerlitz.
Before quitting the command, however, Barclay signalized
himself by a brilliant feat of arms. Resolving to leave no
trophies to the enemy, he made a stand at Valoutina, to
preserve some baggage and cannon ; and as Junot, who
should have taken the Russians in flank, hesitated at the
critical moment, he succeeded in repulsing Ney with con¬
siderable loss. It was not thus that Napoleon had been
served in Italy and Germany ; but, mindful of former
times, and unwilling to disgrace his earliest protege in the
face of the army, he still continued Junot in the command
of his division. The vanguard, commanded by Murat and
Davoust, was continually in contact with the enemy; but
as the overboiling and impetuous valour of the former as¬
sorted ill with the stern methodical genius of Davoust,
who blamed his colleague severely for sacrificing the ca¬
valry in encounters which led to no result, these officers
were at open variance, and their quarrel contributed in no
slight degree to increase the difficulties andembarrassments
of Napoleon. The accession of Kutusof to the command
of the Russian army, in the room of Barclay, was equiva¬
lent to an announcement of a determination to fight. This
was known to the French, who, accordingly, on the 6th
of September, came in sight of the Russian army posted
upon a series of eminences extending southward from the
village of Borodino, on the Moskwa; the position select¬
ed by Kutusof whereon to fight a battle in defence of the
capital, which he had solemnly promised to cover, and at
the same time to annihilate the French army. This posi¬
tion was covered by redoubts and intrenchments, announ¬
ced in the official reports as inexpugnable ; and the Rus¬
sians were animated by the predictions of their priests,
and by the sight of a miraculous image of the Virgin,
which was carried through their ranks. Kutusof also pro-
phecied victory. “ God,” said he, “ is about to combat
the enemy with the sword of St Michael, and before the
sun of to-morrow shall have descended below the hori- Historr
zon, you will have written your faith and your fidelity, in 'S-~Y'V
the fields of your country, with the blood of the aggressor fSh.
and his legions.” On reaching the ground, Napoleon drove
the Russians from an advanced redoubt, established his
line opposite to theirs, and made the necessary prepara¬
tions for the conflict of the morrow. But he refused to
manoeuvre on the enemy’s flank, or make any movement
to intercept them, lest such an operation should induce
them to withdraw, and thus put off the long-wished-for
battle.
The sun of the 7th September rose in peaceful splendour Battle of
on the mighty hosts arrayed for conflict, and was hailed by Borodino,
the French as the sun of Austerlitz, an omen of victory.
Before daybreak Napoleon was on horseback, and with the
first light of day the following address was read at the head
of each regiment in the French army. “ Soldiers, here is
the battle you have so much desired. Victory must now
depend upon you. It will secure you abundance, good
quarters, and a speedy return to your native country.
Conduct yourselves as at Austerlitz, at Friedland, and at
Smolensk. Let people say of each of you with pride, ‘ He
was at the great battle fought on the plains of Moscow.’ ”
The corps present were, besides the old and new guard,
those of Marshals Davoust and Ney, of the viceroy of Italy,
Eugene Beauharnais, and of Prince Poniatowski; and the
four large corps of cavalry, commanded respectively by Ge¬
nerals Nansouty, Montbrun, Grouchy, and Latour-Mau-
bourg, were all under the superior direction of the king of
Naples. In the Russian army, Barclay de Tolly, disposses¬
sed of his functions as general-in-chief, commanded the
right, Beningsen held the centre, and Bagration commanded
the left. Redoubts strongly armed, and numerous batte¬
ries, covered the front and the wings. The respective nu¬
merical force of the hostile armies has not been satisfac¬
torily ascertained. It appears, however, that the French
army exceeded one hundred and thirty thousand combatants
of all arms, and that the Russians wrere even more nume¬
rous. The latter had also the advantage of position, and
were animated both by religious and patriotic feelings;
but they w ere about to contend with soldiers equally intel¬
ligent and brave, led on by consummate generals, and all
under the direction of the greatest master in the art of war
whom modern times had produced. At six in the morn¬
ing the fire of a French battery gave the signal of battle ;
and General Compans, belonging to the corps of Marshal
Davoust, commenced the attack. The intention of Napo¬
leon w as to carry the first batteries on the Russian left, and
then to take in flank and reverse a great redoubt in the cen¬
tre. Hence, although the action commenced along the whole
line, the weight of the attack was directed against the bat¬
teries just mentioned. But, as might have been anticipat¬
ed, the assailants were met by a gallant and determined re¬
sistance. Compans, who commanded the leading division,
was wounded ; Rapp, who succeeded him, was also wound¬
ed ; and Davoust himself received a hurt from the fall of
his horse, which was killed under him. For a moment the
attack faltered; but victory came from a quarter where it
was least expected. Instead of holding back, according to
his orders, the viceroy of Italy, perceiving the relaxation
in the attack, pushed forward to the village of Borodino,
which he carried in the most gallant manner; and improv¬
ing his advantage, he dashed across the river to attack the
great redoubt. The corps of Davoust now redoubled its
efforts, drove Bagration from his batteries, and before mid¬
day, after more than four hours close combat maintained
wfith extraordinary tenacity, three redoubts had been car¬
ried by Prince Eugene and Marshals Davoust and Ney,
whose corps formed the right wing, and wTere prolonged to¬
wards the centre. The road to victory being thus opened,
it was necessary to follow it up; but Murat, Ney, andDa-
I flistf"?
FRA
H ;orj. voust, exhausted by their exertions, stopped, rallied their
Wv'**' troops, and sent to Napoleon to demand reinforcements.
■1112. Segur, who describes this celebrated battle in a pompous
and affected style, gives long details respecting the alleged
hesitation and uncertainty of Napoleon, as well as the or¬
ders and counter orders which he is said to have issued to
his generals. It is certain, however, that he retained the
young guard in a state of inaction, not thinking it neces¬
sary to order it to advance, notwithstanding the urgent so¬
licitations of Murat to that effect. To those who pressed
him to accede to the instances of the king of Naples, he
replied, that he wished to see better how matters stood;
that his battle was not yet commenced; that it was neces¬
sary to wait; that time entered into every thing; that it
was the element of which all things were composed; that
nothing had as yet been sufficiently cleared up. Then he
asked the hour, and being told it, added, “ That of the bat¬
tle has not yet come. In two hours hence it will commence.”
The event proved that Napoleon judged more wisely than
his impetuous lieutenant. To have ordered up his guard
and brought forward his reserves whilst the state of the bat¬
tle remained uncertain, would have been to risk all upon
one throw of the die. Accordingly, in the afternoon, a se¬
cond, or, as Baron Fain calls it, a third battle commenced ;
all the Russian batteries were successively attacked and
taken; the most formidable of their redoubts, that in the
centre, was carried by a charge of cuirassiers ; and the Rus¬
sians, defeated at all points, were forced to abandon the field.
The result of this day was such as might have been ex¬
pected from an army like that commanded by Napoleon.
Notwithstanding the boasting of the Russian generals, their
army, with all its advantages of position, had been totally
defeated; and the shades of night, which descended too
late for the vanquished, but too soon for the victors, in
this bloody field, concealed the retrograde movements of
Kutusof, who now took the direction of Moscow
>cc:a- At the same time this battle was, without contradiction,
ur'i't of °ne t^ie most °t)st;inate an(l bloody recorded in militar
VfoJi'w.0 anna's- The loss of the Russians exceeded thirty thousano
men killed, wounded, or prisoners ; that of the French was
considerably above twenty thousand. On the side of the
Russians, Prince Bagration fell in the battle, and fifty gene¬
ral officers were either killed or wounded ; on that of the
French, two generals of division and six generals of bri¬
gade were killed, whilst Compans, Nansouty, Grouchy,
Latour-Maubourg, Rapp, Morand, Friand, and La Hous-
saye, were more or less severely wounded. But although
the victory remained with Napoleon, his prospects were still
sufficiently gloomy; and in the bivouacs of the army dis¬
couragement prevailed. Seven or eight hundred prisoners,
and about a score of broken cannon, were all the trophies
he had won. Subsistence also began to fail, and to the tor¬
ments of hunger werq joined the rigours of a cold and rainy
night. But with the return of day the natural vivacity of
the French revived; preparations were made for pursuing
the enemy, who had been suffered to retire unmolested from
the field of battle ; and on the 14th the inhabitants of Mos¬
cow, whom Kutusof had taught to believe that he had just
gained a great victory, beheld the Russian columns in full
retreat, and the French advancing to occupy their city. But
the governor, Rostopschin, had taken measures for rendering
the possession of Moscow useless to the French. When the
latter entered, on the 14th of September, the ancient capital
of Russia remained in all its original splendour ; and Napo¬
leon took up his abode in the Kremlin, anciently the resi- 1
dence of the czars. But a new and unlooked-for enemy
i suddenly appeared. On the very day of occupation fires ap¬
peared in different quarters of the city; but, in the bustle
and confusion incident to the arrival of a great army, they
were neglected. On the 15th and IGth vigorous measures
were taken to arrest the progress.of the flames, which,
however, were incessantly renewed; on the 17th the
NCR 157
conflagration, fanned by a high wind, spread rapidly; on History,
the 18th the city presented the sublime and appalling spec-
tacle of a vast ocean of flame ; and by the evening of the 18!2*
20th nine tenths of Moscow had been reduced to ashes.
The Russians, with their habitual duplicity, endeavoured
to cast on the French the odium of an act unexampled in
history, and one too which the latter had every imaginable
interest, if possible, to prevent; but there no longer re¬
mains a vestige of doubt that the burning of Moscow was
the result of a premeditated plan, and that it was effected
by incendiaries, employed for the purpose by the Russian
authorities, acting, no doubt, under the sanction of the
Emperor Alexander himself. Of this the proof is abun¬
dant and conclusive. Inflammable materials, deposited in
a great number of deserted houses, were fired at the same
instant; to all the public establishments, nay even to the
hospitals, the torch of the incendiary was likewise appli¬
ed ; the flames broke out in many different places at once ;»
and, independently ol all testimony to the fact, every cir¬
cumstance connected with the conflagration showed de¬
sign and premeditation. On the other hand, it must be
equally evident that no officer in the empire, however ele¬
vated in rank, would, without positive orders, have taken
on himself the responsibility of such an act; that, in short,
the terrible resolution to destroy the ancient capital of
the empire must have formed part of the defensive policy
of the philanthropic autocrat of all the Russias, and that
Rostopschin was merely an executive instrument in car¬
rying this resolution into effect. We may add, as illustra¬
tive of this desperate and unwarrantable sacrifice, that no
provision whatever had been made for sheltering the mi¬
serable population, who were driven to seek an asylum in
the neighbouring woods, and that more than twenty thou¬
sand sick and wounded perished in the flames.
Thegrand 'ffijectof the mighty expedition against Russia Position
had been attained; the country had been overrun; a greatai)d plans
battle had been fought and gained ; and Moscow, or ra- °* Nar°-
ther its ashes, had been occupied by the French. But yetleon‘
n messengei of peace came to the head-quarters of Na¬
poleon ; no sign of submission appeared; no sinking of
confidence showed itself. The Russians were evidently
prepared to sacrifice all that is most esteemed or valued
by a nation; and when the campaign was considered as
terminated, peace had yet to be conquered. By the de¬
struction of Moscow, Napoleon had been deprived of the
fruits of the victory which he had so dearly purchased,
namely, winter quarters for his army, and a position where
he might at once collect means for further aggression, and
assume the language of a conqueror. His situation had be¬
come eminently critical. What course ought he to have
followed ? His instant conception was to march to St Pe¬
tersburg, cut off Wittgenstein, and then effect a junction
with Macdonald. The project was a magnificent one; and
though it would have required gigantic efforts to carry it
into execution, success would, in all probability, have
crowned the daring enterprise. There was, in reality, no
time for hesitation. Prudence counselled immediate re¬
treat, which, how'ever, had many disadvantages, particu¬
larly from the influence it would exert upon public opinion.
Genius suggested a bolder scheme, which, if successful,
would have ensured, not only safety, but victory; and, in
extreme peril, the excess of audacity often becomes a dic¬
tate of wisdom. But without the concurrence of the chiefs
such an enterprise was impossible; what Napoleon might
plan, they alone could execute. These men, however,
were no longer the devoted and enthusiastic soldiers of
the Republic. War had enriched them ; and from the en¬
joyment of riches they had become tired of campaigns.
Throughout the whole of the expedition they had been
churlish, discontented, and quarrelsome ; and hence, in¬
stead of seconding the bold proposition of the emperor,
they counselled retreat by a new and circuitous route to
158
FRANCE.
1812.
History, the south. Napoleon could not persist in a project which
his officers refused to execute ; their plan was equally ob¬
noxious to him; and between these conflicting opinions pre¬
cious time was irrecoverably lost. This was the fatality
which ruined all. Instead of deciding either on immediate
retreat, or on following out the emperor’s splendid pro¬
ject, they loitered in a state of indecision at Moscow, as
if waiting to be devoured by a Russian winter. In these
circumstances, Napoleon had recourse to the only expe¬
dient left him; he sent Lauriston with proposals of peace,
and vainly waited in the Kremlin, which the conflagration
had spared, an answer never to return. The course of events
had so far changed as to justify Alexander in declining to ne¬
gotiate with an enemy in the heart of his dominions. The
destruction of Moscow, and the inactivity of the French,
had rendered their retreat matter of absolute certainty;
whilst the re-establishment of peace with the Ottoman
Porte having enabled the army of the Danube to quit Mol¬
davia, and effect a junction at Lutsk in Volhynia with the
army of reserve under General Tormasof, a powerful force
was thus accumulated upon their only line of retreat. In
consequence of the treaty with Svvedcn, the troops employ¬
ed in hinland had also been withdrawn, and disembarked
at Riga to join the force destined to act against Macdo¬
nald. In a word, every day was improving the situation
of the Russians; every hour was adding to the embarrass¬
ments which beset the invaders. At length the affair of
Winkowo decided Napoleon. On the 18th October, Kutu-
sof, desirous to prevent the junction of Marshal Victor, who
had set out from Smolensk, attacked the king of Naples,
who covered Moscow with the advanced guard of the ar¬
my, and completely defeated him.
On the 19th of October, after an occupation of forty
Retreat
covv? " ^ ^aP0'eon evacuated Moscow with the main body of
his army, leaving Marshal Mortier, with the rear-guard, to
blow up the arsenal, the magazines, and the Kremlin. In
ordinary seasons the frost did not set in until after the
middle of November, and hence a month of open weather
might still be reckoned on. Sufficient time, therefore, re¬
mained to enable the French army to arrive at Smolensk,
and there establish itself in winter-quarters; further re¬
treat was not contemplated. But instead of choosing the
direct road, Napoleon now adopted the plan originally pro¬
posed by his officers, and retired by the southern or old Ka-
louga road. His reasons were, that a retrograde movement
along this route had not the appearance of retreat; that it
led through provinces which had been wasted neither by
the Russian system of defence nor by the actual presence
of wai ; and that this circuit would afford time to therear-
guaid to evacuate Moscow. He therefore manoeuvred, in
the hope of concealing his design from Kutusof, and then
suddenly advanced in order to anticipate the enemy, and
occupy the important town of Kalouga. But the Russians
somehow received information of his intention, and reach¬
ed Malojaroslawitz, thirty leagues south of Moscow and
fourteen north of Kalouga, in time to oppose-the march of
the trench. A sanguinary engagement now ensued (20th
Uctober) betw-een the advanced guard, seventeen thou¬
sand strong, under Prince Eugene Beauharnais, and the
Russians, about four times that number, under Kutusof-
but the success of the French was decided and confirmed
by the arrival of Generals Gerard and Compans, beloneino-
to the corps of Marshal Davoust. The Russian general, in
his official report of the battle, admits that he was repuls¬
ed, but states that the town was taken and retaken eight
times. I he action, which lasted from five o’clock in the
morning until ten at night, cost the Russians from eight
to ten thousand, and the French more than five thousand
men hors de combat. This unexpected rencontre, and the
violent efforts made by the enemy, convinced Napoleon
that his enemies were far from being enfeebled or discou¬
raged ; he therefore abandoned his project of retiring on Historr.
Smolensk by the old Kalouga road, and fell back on the''—■'oO
direct route leading through a ravaged and deserted coun- 1812.
try. It is not a little singular that Kutusof, afraid of a re¬
newed attack, had also at nearly the same moment issued
orders for a retreat. At Wiasma, fifty-six leagues west of
Moscow, the French rear-guard, on the 3d of November,
repulsed the enemy after an obstinate and bloody action,
supported by Prince Eugene, Marshals Davoust andNey,
and General Compans. The French ranks were thinned
to the extent of four thousand killed and wounded, and,
in continuing their retreat, they were obliged to abandon
several broken cannon, and nearly all their baggage. On
the 7th of November the French army, which had been
fifteen days in full retreat, and continually harassed on its
flanks by parties of Russians, reached Smolensk.
The cold had already set in with excessive severity.Retreat
The fluid in the thermometer of Reaumur, which during from Smo.
the first days of November had stood at eight or ten de-lensk-
grees below zero, now descended to eighteen; sombre
vapours obscured the sun ; and violent tempests of wind
drifted the snow which, covering the soil, filled up all the
inequalities of its surface, and thus added new dangers to
the horrors of this dreadful winter. I he horses, perish-
by thousands in the bivouacs, were no longer sufficient
to drag the artillery. Nor was the condition of the troops
in any respect less disastrous. After the affair of Malo¬
jaroslawitz, the strength of the men utterly failed. Their
privations, painful at Moscow, became every day more
cruel. Destitute of biscuit, and provisions of every kind,
the army had traversed about a hundred leagues of country
entirely ruined, in which it had never fought except by
the light of conflagrations ; the horrors of devastation ex¬
tended six leagues on either side ; and it was incessantly
assailed by clouds of Cossacks. Its disasters augmented
at each step, and in frightful progression; and all were
attributable to its head, who, by an inconceivable blind¬
ness, had foreseen nothing, calculated nothing, employed
none or the most ordinary precautions which a general is
bound to take for the support of his troops, and whose im¬
providence devoted them to still more deplorable calami¬
ties. I he magazines nearest Moscow were at Smolensk;
but these afforded only a momentary relief, and all trans¬
port had become impossible. Nor was this all. Wittgen¬
stein, reinforced by new levies, had defeated Saint-Cyr on
the Dwina, and taken Witepsk, thus cutting off the retreat
to Wilna; whilst Tschitchagof, commanding the army of
the Danube, had orders to advance from the south, seize
upon Minsk, and thus bar the only other practicable road
to the vvestward. To remain at Smolensk was therefore
out of the question. The least retardation of the retreat
would inevitably have led to a general battle, which the
army was not in a condition to risk, owing to the impos¬
sibility of connecting the centre with the wings. The
excessive cold which set in on the 6th had disabled and
destroyed a great number of men and horses. The army
could neither procure information nor defend itself; its
only resource, therefore, consisted in marching without
intermission in order to reach Minsk (the great depot of
munitions and provisions), oral least the Berezina, before
the enemy, who, being master of the country, was now ad¬
vancing in the opposite direction, and extending his corps
on the flanks. Yet in these frightful circumstances, when
tie french were simultaneously assailed by famine, dis¬
ease, winter, and hostile armies, Napoleon tarried seven
nays at Smolensk, which was only evacuated on the 14th
ovember. Nevertheless he took one good measure, in
nV under a single officer the wrecks of the cavalry.
f thirty-seven thousand horsemen present at the passage
o t ie JNiemen, there now remained little more than eight
mndred mounted, the command of whom was given to La-
FRANCE.
159
U 0rv. tour-Maubourg. The old and young guard had no more
than ten thousand bayonets, with two thousand horses
1.2. mounted; Davoust had under his orders nine thousand
men, Ney five thousand, Prince Eugene five hundred, Po-
niatowski from eight to nine hundred, Junot seven hun¬
dred, Latour-Maubourg (including the remains of the ca¬
valry) fifteen hundred, with about a thousand light horse,
and five hundred dismounted dragoons; in all thirty-six
thousand men, the miserable remnant of about four hun¬
dred thousand combatants, French, Poles, Italians, and
Germans, who had crossed the Niemen at Kowno.
Affi at With the retreat from Smolensk commenced a new se-
Krai.oi. ries of disasters. On the 16th November, Minsk, with all
its magazines, having been uncovered by Schwartzenberg,
who suddenly retired behind the Bug, fell into the hands
of General Lambert, commanding the advanced guard of
the army from Moldavia; and the only refuge of the French
was thus cut off. Upon the same day Kutusof attempted
at Krasnoi, ten leagues west of Smolensk, to intersect the
French columns on the great road leading from Smolensk
to the Berezina. Fie advanced with seventy thousand in¬
fantry and thirty thousand cavalry; the French mustered
only twenty-five thousand effective combatants, who had
lost many of their cannon, and three-fourths of their horses.
But Prince Eugene and Marshal Davoust stood their
ground with admirable firmness; whilst General Roguet,
commanding a division of the young guard, charged the
Russians with such fury that he drove them back at the
point of the bayonet into their camp, which he entered
pell-mell along with them, scarcely allowing them time to
throw their arms into a neighbouring lake, and set fire to
their huts. This shock suspended the movement of the
Russian army for twenty-four hours. On the 19th, Mar¬
shal Ney, left in command of the extreme rear-guard, with
six thousand combatants, found himself attacked by enor¬
mous masses of the enemy, which intercepted his march.
Finding himself unable to break through, he retired before
them, surprised the passage of the Dnieper, forced his way
amidst clouds of Cossacks, and rejoined the main body of
the army, from which he had been two days separated.
On the 21st the Russian generals Lambert and Langeron
took possession of Borisow on the Berezina, and by the
occupation of this point cut oft’ the body of the French
army, which was still five or six marches to the eastward.
But on the 23d Marshal Oudinot, who, since the aban¬
donment of the positions upon the Dwina, immediately
preceded the army in retreat, retook this important post,
and maintained it in spite of every effort that could be
made to dislodge him.
'as: ;e of At Borisow, which had thus been regained by Oudinot,
!ie! 're‘ the passage of the Berezina, the principal difficulty in the
march of the French towards the Niemen, could alone be
effected. But their situation was perilous, not to say des¬
perate. The line of the Dwina had been forced ; Schwart¬
zenberg, whose defection was no longer disguised, had re¬
tired behind the Bug; no difficulty of position arrested the
enemy in his decisive operations; the whole country was in
his hands, whilst the French had only the narrow line upon
which they retreated. The former lived in abundance, the
latter suffered almosfr every privation. The teams of the
Russian artillery were in good condition ; the horses of
the French were dying of cold and hunger, or, from being
unfrosted, could not support themselves on a soil entirely
congealed. In a word, the remains of the French army
seemed about to find a grave in the marshes of the Bere¬
zina, the ice of which had suddenly thawed, as if to swal¬
low them up. Kutusof pursued them with a fury aug¬
mented by each humiliation inflicted on his unskilful pur¬
suit. Pressed on their right flank by Wittgenstein, and
on their left by Tschitchagof, who also took them in re¬
verse ; with an artillery and a cavalry greatly reduced ; ex¬
tenuated by hunger and fatigue, as well as benumbed by
cold; they held out only in the hope of at length reach¬
ing the term of so much evil and suffering. A last effort of
their courage was therefore their last resource. The dif¬
ferent corps of the French army which assembled at Borisow
from the 26th to the 28th of November still presented a
mass of about eighty thousand men, with a tolerably nume¬
rous artillerj^. They were not yet disorganized. The sol-
dery, at least that part which came from Moscow, though
exhausted by the fatigues of forty days’ march over a devas¬
tated country, assailed by swarms of Cossacks, overwhelm¬
ed with privations, and suffering half-naked the excessive
rigours of the climate, recovered their ardour at the sight
of the enemy, who now awaited them in the presumption of
victory. The corps coming from Moscow also saw them¬
selves supported by those of Marshals Victor and Oudi¬
not, and by the Polish division, which had suffered but
little from want of provisions and the rigour of the cold.
But it was necessary, first of all, to overthrow sixteen
thousand Russians advantageously posted in the debouche
of Borisow, on the right bank, and belonging to the army
of Tschitchagof, before the junction of Wittgenstein, who
closely followed the rear-guard of Victor upon the left
bank above Borisow ; and also before Kutusof, who march¬
ed with the main body of the Russians upon the left flank
of the French head-quarters, had time to recover three
marches which had been gained on him. Two bridges
were accordingly thrown at Weselowo, a village four
leagues and a half above Borisow, whilst dispositions were
made which seemed to indicate that the passage was to
be effected by the bridge of Borisow. The rapid con¬
struction of these two bridges, in such terrible circum¬
stances, presents a marvellous instance of what may be
effected by the union of bravery and science. At Wese¬
lowo, the Berezina, at this time covered with ice, is two
hundred and fifty toises broad, and the opposite side ex¬
tends into marshes, which are traversed by a long and
narrow jetty ; but, on the other hand, the Weselowo bank
is elevated; and hence the difficulty of throwing bridges
across such a river would, under any circumstances, have
been very great.
On the 28th the intrepid Oudinot, who commanded the
rear-guard, having been wounded in repulsing Tschitcha¬
gof, whose forces were grouped on the right bank, Marshal
Ney assumed the command in the midst of the action, and,,
at the head of the second, third, and fifth corps, compelled
Tschitchagof to renounce the combat. On this occasion,
so important for the general safety, Ney, already sur-
named the bravest of the brave, displayed a courage which
astonished even the most valiant soldiers; and all acknow¬
ledged that their safety was due to his invincible tenacity,
as well as to the extreme promptitude of his dispositions.
Upon the same day, Marshal Victor, who had been left
with the rear-guard on the left bank, supported with great
firmness the attack of the army of Wittgenstein, and
maintained a prolonged resistance, notwithstanding the
extreme disproportion of numbers ; for, after the capture
of the division of Parthouneaux, which on the preceding
day had been surrounded and taken, the French had only
twelve thousand men, whilst the Russians had upwards
of forty thousand. The ninth corps was then obliged to
repass the bridges, which were immediately blown up;
the artillery, the baggage, and a great number of unfor¬
tunates, almost all non-combatants, who had not been able
to pass, being abandoned on the other bank. The plain
before Weselowo, which is one of considerable extent,
presented in the evening a spectacle the horrors of which
exceed all description. It was covered with carriages, the
greater part overturned and broken, and thickly strewed
with the dead bodies of non-military individuals, amongst
which were those of many women and children, who hav-
History.
1812.
160
FRANCE,
^ History.' ing followed the army to Moscow, had also accompanied it
in its retreat, and now met with death in different ways.
1 he fate 0f these unfortunate creatures, in the midst of the
melee of the two armies, was either to be crushed under the
wheels of the carriages or the feet of the horses; struck
by the balls and bullets of both parties ; drowned in at¬
tempting to pass the bridges with the troops; or stripped
by the Russian soldiers, and thrown naked on the snow,
where the cold soon terminated their sufferings. Besides,
the Russians made nearly twenty thousand prisoners, took
a hundred and fifty pieces of cannon, being all the artil¬
lery that remained except a few pieces, and captured the
baggage, amongst which were found the riches and the
trophies carried away from Moscow.
Itetreat From the Berezina the country is a wooded plateau,
continued, converted by the waters into a vast marsh, which the army
now traversed on three consecutive bridges three hun¬
dred toises in length, astonished that the enemy had not
destroyed them, constructed as they were of resinous
pines. By accelerated marches the troops reached Ma-
lodetchno on the 3d of December, and on the 5th ar¬
rived at Smorgoni, twelve leagues west of Willika, where
Napoleon conferred on the king of Naples the command
of the remains of the army, and set out furtively for Paris,
accompanied by Caulaincourt, duke of Vicenza. His ap^
parition at Warsaw is related in lively terms by the Abbe
de Pradt. In this capital his conversation was a sort of
lengthened discourse, in which he represented his reverses
as still capable of being repaired; but by often repeating
the maxim, “ from the sublime to the ridiculous there is
only a step, he showed how deeply sensible he was of the
magnitude of his fall. On the 18th of December Napoleon
arrived in Paris, where, for many reasons, his presence
had become indispensably necessary.
Immediately after his departure from the army the disor¬
der became general; the flight of the chief proved the sig¬
nal for dispersion; and the greater part of the corps, which
had hitherto maintained an appearance of organization, now
altogether disbanded themselves. Meanwhile, as the cold
continued about twenty-five degrees below the zero of
Reaumur’s thermometer, a great number of soldiers had
their hands and feet frost-bitten ; and the horses of the
artillery having perished in their harness, the pieces were
abandoned. Sixty thousand men had crossed the Berezina,
and twenty thousand recruits had since joined ; but of
these eighty thousand men, nearly the half perished in the
four days between Malodetchno and Wilna. The immense
magazines collected at Wilna were abandoned for want of
means of transport, and the deplorable situation to which
the cold had reduced the army prevented it from there tak-
mg up a position. The retreat was therefore continued on
the loth. Marshal Ney as usual being the last to retire •
indeed, his conduct throughout, in the command of the’
rear-guard, where he continually exposed himself to pro¬
tect the life and cover the retreat of the last soldier in a
condition to march, displayed an heroic fortitude and ge¬
nerous self-devotion, which, considering all the circum¬
stances, has no parallel either in ancient or modern times.
We shall not, however, prolong these painful details, but
observing, what indeed
f rent {°bvl0US’ that the disasters sustained
by the french in this retreat were mainly caused by the
c imate, not by the Russians, who have nevertheless faken
credit foi results in producing which their talents and
bravery had no share. The elements did almost every¬
thing; and as is vulgarly said, even in Russia, “ It was
not General Rutusof who killed or dispersed the French •
it was General Morosow (Frost).”
The aspect which affairs presented to Napoleon on his
return to Pans was not altogether discouraging. Welling¬
ton, victorious at Salamanca, had failed before Wgos, and
Aspect of
affairs.
Madrid remained in the hands of the French. The army,
which he had left at Smorgoni, might rally on the Niemen
and, supplied from the unexhausted resources of East Prus¬
sia, check the advance of its pursuers. At home a daring
conspiracy, which had nearly succeeded when the emperor
was believed to have perished in Russia, fell to the ground
of itself as soon as the falsehood of the report was discover¬
ed. The senate, the court, and the capital, though dis¬
mayed by the reverses sustained in the Russian campaign,
still appeared loyal and obsequious. The conscription of
1813 had been caljed out; the powerful artillery of the
maime was placed at his disposal; and he calculated on
speedily taking the field at the head of a formidable army,
sufficient at least to check the advance of the Russians.
But this was only a momentary and delusive brightening;
a faint gleam of sunshine in winter, which was quickly ab¬
sorbed in the dark clouds that suddenly collected in all
parts of the political horizon. lidings of evil came crowd¬
ing in thick and fast. Macdonald having been deserted
in presence of the enemy by the Prussian auxiliary corps
under Yorck, which constituted his principal force, had
with great difficulty, and after a most painful retreat, reach¬
ed Dantzic, where his troops were left with the governor
General Rapp. Io think of maintaining the line of the
Niemen was therefore out of the question; and even the
position upon the Vistula, occupied by the corps composing
the grand army, or rather the wrecks of these, confusedly
distributed, was menaced by the defection of the Prus¬
sians, and also by the conduct, so perfidiously equivocal,
of the Austrians under Schwartzenberg, who, having re¬
treated as soon as he received intelligence that the French
army had reached the Berezina, had re-entered Gallicia,
W’here his doubtful attitude excited the distrust and ap¬
prehensions of the French. Murat, commanding in chief,
was little capable of remedying so great disasters, or of
warding off so imminent dangers; his military merit con¬
sisted in a chivalrous bravery worthy the ages of romance ;
in the talents and moral tenacity of purpose requisite in
situations of extreme difficulty he was entirely deficient.
Poland was evacuated, and Germany destined to become
the theatre of war. Abandoning the line of the Vistula, as
they had previously done that of the Niemen, the French
now fell back as far as the Warta and the Oder. Instant¬
ly the tocsin of insurrection resounded from the Oder to
the Rhine, and from the Baltic to the Julian Alps; and
the whole tribe of secondary sovereigns, awakened from
their lethargy by the patriotism of their subjects, and dis¬
possessed of the royal delirium generated by their own
cupidity and the poisoned gifts of Napoleon, now crowd¬
ed to join its standards, and to have each a bite at the
sick hon. By a proclamation dated from Warsaw, 10th
February 1813, the Emperor Alexander invited the Ger¬
mans, particularly the members of the confederation of
the Rhine, to throw off the yoke of France; and, by ano¬
ther dated the 22d February, he called upon the people of
Germany to rise en masse against Napoleon. In the un¬
calculating enthusiasm of the hour, when despotism had
the art or the good fortune to rally on its side the feel¬
ings of nationality and patriotism, the call was obeyed,
and the defection became universal. ' Austria, indeed, still
preserved an equivocal and suspicious neutrality, waiting
merely until events had more fully declared themselves,
j 1 Frussia, taking a more decided part, signalized her
defection by the flight of Frederick-William from Potts-
dam to meet the Emperor Alexander at Breslau, and still
more by concluding at Kalisch (on the 1st of March) a
treaty of alliance with Russia, the initial act of a sixth
continental coalition against France. The line of the
Oder having thus become indefensible, was abandoned by
ie rcoch for that of the Elbe, where, by great exertions,
they still hoped to maintain themselves against all their
Jbstor,,}
1813.
f
fig”
Ser-
16 (if
* a. w]
G
gf
ac
FRANCE.
rep'a-
omif
iipt.on
impjgn
Gei
my.'
tlef
tzen
enemies. Amongst these must now be included Berna-
dotte, who, by a treaty concluded with England at Stock¬
holm, on the 3d of March, engaged to raise his banner
against the country of his birth, and to take the field
against his former chief with a corps of national troops at
least thirty thousand strong.
The efforts of Napoleon were commensurate to the cri¬
sis which had arrived. A decree of the senate, dated the
3d of April, placed at the disposal of the government a
hundred and eighty thousand combatants, viz. ten thousand
horse-guards of honour, equipped and mounted at their
own expense; eighty thousand men, called from the first
ban of the national guards of the years 1807, 1808, 1809,
1810, 1811, and 1812, and destined to reinforce the hun¬
dred cohorts levied in execution of the decree of the se¬
nate of 13th March 1812; and eighty thousand conscripts
of 1814, exclusive of the hundred and fifty thousand grant¬
ed to government by the decree of the 11th of January,
and destined for the defence of the frontiers and the coasts.
An imperial decree of the 5th April also instituted thirty-
seven urban cohorts for the particular defence of maritime
places. Decrees, however, though they called forth men,
could not create soldiers, who are only formed by disci¬
pline and experience.
On the 15th of April Napoleon left the capital to join
the army in Germany, and on the 28th removed his head¬
quarters from Erfurth to Ekhartsberg. His army, more
formidable from the mass than the quality of troops com¬
posing it, exhibited an incomplete organization. On the
29th the two French armies formed a junction between
Naumburg and Merseburg; that under Napoleon amount¬
ing to a hundred and twenty thousand men, including the
imperial guard; whilst Prince Eugene Beauharnais had
under his orders about forty thousand combatants. It was
on the banks of the Saale, where the French eagles had
triumphed in 1806, that the veterans of Moscow gave their
hands to the young conscripts who had been sent to defend
their country in Germany; and on the very day when the
junction was effected, Napoleon assumed the offensive.
At Weissenfels, five leagues south-west of Leipsic, some
Prussian corps were attacked by the divisions of Souham,
Gerard, and Marchand, under the orders of Marshal Ney,
supported by the emperor in person. Twelve pieces of
the guard were placed in line, and, under the orders of
General Drouot, opened a close fire of grape, which soon
thinned the ranks of the enemy, and forced them to- re¬
tire ; thus rendering unnecessary the reinforcements de¬
tached from the army of Prince Eugene as soon as the
noise of the cannonade was heard. To prevent Napoleon
following up this advantage, and occupying Leipsic, the
allies advanced, on the 1st of May, with the intention of
giving him battle, and on the 2d the hostile armies met
at Gross-Goerschen, near Lutzen, the scene of the last
victory and of the death of Gustavus Adolphus.
Napoleon did not wait to be attacked in the position
winch he occupied, but advanced from Lutzen to Gross-
Goerschen, where the conflict actually took place. The
general dispositions made at the commencement of the
action were bad; but their defects were speedily repair-
ed by the promptitude, intrepidity, and experience of
Prince Eugene, Marshals Ney, Mortier, Macdonald, Mar-
mont, and Generals Compans, Ricard, Souham, Drouot,
and Latour-Maubourg. In checking the impetuosity of
the Prussians, and, as it were, compelling fortune to de¬
clare in his favour, Napoleon performed prodigies. His
unexpected appearance on the field of battle produced an
effect equally rapid and extraordinary upon the troops.
In an instant the enthusiasm of glory animated the fea-
tuies of the young conscripts, who had been somewhat
astonished by their first interview with the enemy; the
action recommenced with the greatest fury; and for more
VOL. X. o j
161
than four hours the troops on both sides fought under the History,
eyes of their respective sovereigns. Marshal Macdonald
and General Bertrand now arrived with their corps, which, 1813-
having formed a junction, entered into line. Perceiving
that the crisis of the battle had arrived, Napoleon advan¬
ced sixteen battalions of the young guard, ranged in a se¬
cond line six battalions of the old guard, and established
a battery of eighty pieces of cannon. The infantry imme¬
diately attacked; the artillery thundered on the formi¬
dable position of Kaya, on which depended the fortune of
the day; and victory, which had long hovered with doubt¬
ful pinions over this field of carnage, at length settled on
the standards of her ancient favourite. The battle of
Lutzen was gained principally by artillery, in which arm
the French had a great superiority ; but success was dear¬
ly purchased, the victors having, by their own account,
lost in killed and wounded about ten thousand men. Nor
was the victory productive of any brilliant or important
results. Ihe want of cavalry prevented Napoleon from
pursuing the enemy while in disorder, and the fruits of
success were therefore confined to the possession of that
part of Saxony which is situated on the left of the Elbe.
Still the battle of Lutzen deserves to be considered as one
of the greatest achievements of Napoleon. With a mass
of raw and scarcely half-disciplined conscripts, the greater
part of them mere boys, aided by a few thousand expe¬
rienced troops, he had defeated the whole Prussian army,
assisted by a corps of Russians, and protected by a nume¬
rous and greatly superior cavalry.
Instead of confining his views to Leipsic, Napoleon now Battle of
occupied Dresden, and prepared to pursue the allies across Bautzen,
the Elbe. Having thrown a bridge across that river, he
accordingly marched to attack the Austrians and Prussians
at Bautzen, where they were drawn up in a position of great
strength, upon the range of hills forming the natural boun¬
dary of Silesia. Napoleon forced the passage of the Spree
in their front, and occupied Bautzen. The whole of the
20th May was spent in manoeuvres and partial combats, the
object ot which was to enable him to get within reach of
the enemy. On the 21st the battle was fought. It com¬
menced by simultaneous attacks directed against both flanks
of the enemy ; but, owing to the great development of their
line, which extended along many leagues, and was intersect¬
ed by hills, Napoleon found it alike impossible to watch these
movements, or, until assured of their success, to order the
troops under his own immediate command to advance.
He therefore held back the centre, in the midst of which
he remained during the cannonade, and being overcome
by fatigue, fell fast asleep. At length, upon hearing fresh
sounds of artillery in the distance, his attendants awoke
him. By the direction of the sound he knew that his
wings were victorious, and instantly ordered forward his
centre, supported by the imperial guard. This attack
proved decisive of the fate of the battle. The allies were
beaten, and obliged to abandon their line of defence, which
covered Silesia, and to retire into Bohemia. But, as at
Lutzen, they retreated without precipitation or disorder,
leaving neither cannon nor prisoners in the hands of the
conquerors. This negative advantage they owed partly to
their superiority in cavalry, and partly also to their posi¬
tion. At Bautzen the Prussians fought well, the Russians
indifferently. With the former the quarrel had long be¬
come national; the latter were far from their homes, and
careless whether they advanced or retreated. The victory
of Bautzen uncovered Silesia, and opened to the French a
passage to the Oder. Glogau was relieved, Breslau occu¬
pied, and Berlin itself menaced. The Russian and Prus¬
sian armies were obviously unable to cope with the young
soldiers of France; and hence, in retiring into Bohemia,
the allies renewed their instances with Austria, to induce
her to join the coalition. Accordingly, on the day after
162
History, the battle of Bautzen, a message reached the French head-
,~v~—' quarters, proposing an armistice. We shall immediately
1813. see ]Vap0ieon was first deceived, and then insulted, by
a power on whose neutrality he had too hastily calculated.
Subse- At Goerlitz, in Lusatia, the French were severely han-
quent ope- died, and lost several cannon. This affair took place on
rations. 22& of May. The enemy, however, continued their
retreat towards the Oder, followed by Napoleon, who had
astonished Europe by the spontaneous creation of a new
army, and whose late success had re-established his renown.
On the 30th Hamburg was retaken by Marshal Davoust
and General Vandamme, who thus recovered the territory
situated on the right bank of the Lower Elbe, which had
been annexed to the French empire by a decree of the
senate dated the 13th December 1810. On the 4th of
June an armistice was concluded at Plesswitz in Silesia,
between Napoleon and his enemies. The French were
only to occupy a small part, and that the least fertile, of
Silesia; their line was not to extend to the Oder, except
in a space extremely confined; and Breslau was to remain
free between the two armies ; so that the French were, in
some sort, pressed into a country devastated, burned, ex¬
hausted, and menaced with famine. In subscribing condi¬
tions so extremely disadvantageous, Napoleon was no doubt
influenced by the hope of seducing his enemies, or disunit¬
ing their formidable coalition, and also by the desire to
gain time in order to repair his losses by means of very con¬
siderable reinforcements which he expected from France,
andby means of which he would be enabled to act with larger
masses. Victory had again returned to his standards, and
he confided in the power of his genius for repairing every
disaster, and obtaining new triumphs. The enemy were
also guided by the same desire of augmenting their forces,
without wishing, however, that the armistice should be fol¬
lowed by a peace. They reckoned on a general rising in
Germany ; on the defection of the confederation of the
Rhine; on popular movements in Holland, Switzerland,
the 1 yrol, Italy, Dalmatia ; on the progress of Wellington
in the south of France, since the departure for Germany
of part of the troops who had been opposed to him. They
also calculated upon disturbances in France ; and, above
all, they hoped to see Austria, already under arms, take an
active part in this war, which, even from the geographical
position of the theatre of operations, could scarcely fail, if
she took part in the contest, to become fatal to the French.
Negotia- Napoleon, therefore, could not disguise from himself
tions; that the politics of all the continental powers seemed on
Austrian the eve of experiencing great alterations ; but still he en-
perfidy. deavoured to persuade himself of the contrary. On the
14th of June a treaty was concluded at Reichenbach,
twelve leagues from Breslau, by which England agreed
to grant Prussia a subsidy of L.666,666 sterling, to enable
her to continue the war; and, by the same treaty, a subsi¬
dy of L.1,333,334 sterling was also granted to Russia for
the same purpose. Austria now offered her mediation,
which, by a convention signed at Dresden upon the 30th
June, was accepted by Napoleon. The professed object of
this mediation was the accomplishment of a general peace,
or, if that could not be effected, a continental pacification.
With this view a congress was to be opened at Prague
on the 5th of July; and, in the mean time, the armistice
of Plesswitz was prolonged until the 10th of August. In
signing this preliminary act, Metternich commenced that
course of duplicity for which he has since become so de¬
servedly famous in Europe, and Austria remained faithful
to her oblique system of policy, even more so indeed than
to that of temporising, which she has at all times followed.
At this moment her only aim was to profit by all the chan¬
ces ; in transporting, or rather hawking, her alliance from
camp to camp, she had but one view, namely, to be always
on the side which should obtain the division of the spoil.
N C E.
As Russia desired Poland, and Prussia Saxony, so Aus- Histor,
tria had her eye continually fixed on Italy. Her media- ^vv
tion, therefore, was neither more nor less than a manoeuvre 1813,
to gain time and enable her to watch events. The peace
was altogether a pretext of the allied cabinets, to mask
their real views. The opening of the congress of Prague
on the 12th of July, to which day it had been postponed,
clearly indicated the objects which were aimed at. In
the absence of one of the two French envoys, the minis¬
ters of Austria, Prussia, and Russia, commenced the con¬
ferences, and promptly decided that Germany should re¬
main independent; they, however, consented to leave Na¬
poleon in possession of the French empire, with the boun¬
daries of the Rhine and the Alps. This was not negotia¬
tion, but dictation ; not an attempt to conciliate or adjust
interests, but to give the law. Italy was disposed of by
an implication, in the absence of the principal French ne¬
gotiator ; the confederation of the Rhine was annihilat¬
ed ; and Napoleon, though victorious, was called upon to
accept of terms which would have been sufficiently harsh
and humiliating after defeat. But this was merely in¬
sulting. Perfidy followed. The armistice expired upon
the 10th of August; and it was not until the 7th of that
month that the Austrian minister at Prague brought for¬
ward the conditions definitively fixed by his court as ne¬
cessary to the pacification of the Continent. He demand¬
ed, first, the dissolution of the duchy of Warsaw, and its
partition between Russia, Austria, and Prussia ; second¬
ly, the re-establishment of the towns of Hamburg, Lubeck,
&c. in their independence ; thirdly, the re-construction
of Prussia, with a frontier on the Elbe ; fourthly, the ces¬
sion to Austria of all the Illyrian provinces, including
Trieste; fifthly, a guarantee that the state of the powers,
great and small, such as it might be fixed by the peace,
should not be altered except by common consent. The
question of the independence of Holland and Spain was
at the same time brought forward ; but the plenipotenti¬
aries of the allied powers seemed inclined to consent that
it should be adjourned until a general peace. The answer
of'Napoleon, containing certain proposed modifications,
was promptly returned, and, by incredible expedition, it
reached Prague in the night between the 10th and 11th;
but the confederate powers, impatient to appeal to arms,
broke up the congress on the very hour when the armis¬
tice expired on the 10th, and absolutely refused to re¬
ceive or consider the answer which had been returned.
On the 12th of August Austria declared war against
France, and notified officially her adhesion to the alliance
of Russia and Prussia.
The allies had derived great advantages from the ar-Resump'
mistice. By maintaining themselves in Silesia, they had tiondlM'
secured time for the arrival of the Swedish army under t^'e8,
Bernadotte, and the Russian corps under Sacken, as well
as for the organization of the Prussian troops, and the for¬
mation of the army of Beningsen in Poland. The armis¬
tice had covered Berlin ; it had also been of great use to
Austria, in enabling her to complete her armaments, as
well as to render more active her negotiations with the
states of the confederation ; whilst Napoleon derived from
it no real advantage except that of fortifying his line of
operations on the Elbe, which it was his object to main¬
tain. Placed d cheval on that river, with the head of his
army at Dresden, and the rear at Hamburg, he supported
himseli on all the fortified points which secure the posses¬
sion of that large and beautiful valley, namely, Konigstein,
Dresden, Torgau, Wittenberg, Magdeburg, and Hamburg,
with its dependencies on the Elbe, and Merseburg, Er-
furth, and Wurtzburg, which connect the Rhine with the
Elbe. But he lost upon the Oder the garrisons of Kustrin,
Stettin, and Glogau, and upon the Vistula those of Modlin,
Thorn, and Dantzick; garrisons which absorbed more than
FRA
FRA
Flisiry. sixty thousand men. The grand French army, divided in-
to fourteen corps, in which the Italian, German, and Polish
18'!- auxiliaries were incorporated, was inferior to that of the
allies with which it was now about to contend, in the pro¬
portion of two to five. These corps were generally weak¬
er than during the preceding campaigns, and, united, they
did not exceed two hundred and eighty thousand effective
combatants, of whom the half were recruits who had never
been in fire. The allies, on the other hand, had under
arms five hundred and twenty thousand men, of whom
about four hundred and fifty thousand were on the princi¬
pal theatre of operations, viz. Austria, a hundred and twen¬
ty thousand men, including the forces sent to Italy, and
the reserves; Russia, a hundred and thirty thousand;
Prussia, a hundred and eighty thousand, exclusive of the
landsturm or levy en masse ; and Sweden, thirty thousand,
including the Mecklenburg and Hanseatic troops ; making
the total as above mentioned. The French army was
therefore inferior to that of the allies by two hundred and
twenty thousand men ; yet, notwithstanding this inferiori¬
ty of force, Napoleon resolved to maintain his position at
Dresden, and to try the fortune of arms upon the Elbe.
On the 11th the Austrians effected a junction with the
Prussians, in the hope of anticipating Napoleon ; but, as we
shall immediately see, they were themselves anticipated,
•elk. Having divined the plan of the allies, which was to di-
ry i e- rect their forces from three points upon Dresden (viz. from
tl0ri Berlin on the north, Silesia on the east, and Prague on
the south), and there concentrate them to make a com¬
bined attack on that position, Napoleon calculated that be¬
fore their grand army, debouching from Bohemia, could
arrive under the fire of the redoubts constructed around
Dresden, he would have time to execute a combined ope¬
ration by simultaneously attacking Berlin on the north, and
projecting his army of Silesia towards Breslau on the east.
With this design, he first executed a military march in
Lusatia on the 16th of August; on the 18 th he advanced
as far as Gbrlitz, near the frontier of Silesia, threatening to
throw himself upon Blucher, who commanded a powerful
army; then, abruptly changing his direction, he turned
towards Bohemia, in order to ascertain if it might still be
possible to prevent the junction of the forces in Silesia with
the Austrians. But, although Napoleon was still ignorant
of the fact, neither of them had waited till the 16th to com¬
mence the development of their hostile manoeuvres. He
however marched with the second and eighth corps under
Victor and Poniatowski, supported by the first and fourth
corps of cavalry under Lefebvre-Desnouettes and Keller-
man. Debouching from the environs of Zittau, these
troops passed the frontier, advanced by the defiles, and oc¬
cupied Reichemberg on the Neisse, and Friedland on the
Willich. But having received information that the enemy,
apprised of his departure from Dresden, were pouring their
masses in that direction, Napoleon, calculating that they
would require eight days to assemble under the walls of
that place, countermarched, and, like an arrow shot from a
bow, flew to attack Blucher, and drive him beyond the Bo¬
ber. On the 21st of August he crossed the Bober, on the
22d he repulsed the enemy on the bank opposite to Katz-
bach, and again defeated them on the 24th. Three days
had sufficed to inflict two defeats on the enemy, and to re¬
establish his eagles in advance in Silesia. But as it was
now time to return to Saxony, into which the great mass
of the allied army had, on the 20th, descended from the
mountains of Bohemia, he faced about, and leaving seven¬
ty-five thousand men under Macdonald to keep Blucher
m check, he arrived at Dresden on the 26th. But the ef¬
fect produced by this bold and brilliant operation was in
a great measure lost by the failure of Oudinot, who was
charged with the execution of one of the three great parts
of the campaign, namely, the attack upon Berlin. Brave
163
in the advanced guard, Oudinot was deficient in the strate- History,
gic ability necessary for conducting great operations. In-
stead of advancing promptly, he hesitated, lost precious 1813-
time, and allowed the enemy to penetrate his design, and
also deprive him of the lead. He was beaten at Gross-
Beeren ; Berlin was saved ; and the combined armies had
now the facility of advancing into the heart of Germany,
and operating their junction in the plains of Leipsic.
Wherever Napoleon appeared personally, his ascen-Ascen¬
dency was instantly manifest. But his lieutenants had dency of
neither his genius nor his foresight, and were as infe-^aP0^eon’8
rior to him in activity and energy as in talent and capa-^en’us
city. Near the Bober, a tributary of the Oder, and thereVeihes
Queiss, a tributary of the Bober, Marshal Macdonald,
in full retreat from Silesia after his defeat on the Katz-
bach (26th of August), was again, from the 27th to the
29th, discomfited in a series of actions at the passage
of these two rivers, which the rains had swollen and con¬
verted into rapid torrents. By the results of this iso¬
lated and accessory campaign of a few days, the French
army lost fifteen thousand men, and a hundred pieces of
cannon. The defeat and surrender of Vandamme follow¬
ed. Wishing to drive the allied army which had fled
from Dresden into the defiles of Bohemia, Napoleon sent
eastward, by circuitous roads, the first, sixth, and four¬
teenth corps, with a numerous cavalry, to threaten their
flank, and force them back into the mountains. Vandamme
commanded the column on the left, Saint-Cyr and Mar-
mont that of the centre, whilst the king of Naples, with
the cavalry, formed the right. On the evening of the
28th the imperial head-quarters had scarcely been esta¬
blished at Pirna, when Napoleon was suddenly seized
with violent shivering, followed by vomiting. The per¬
sons around him were seriously alarmed, but he himself felt
more disquieted by the consequences which might result
from an accident so unexpected, than even by his illness,
which was the effect of exposure to cold and rain during
the late battle. Profuse perspiration, induced during the
night, afforded him immediate relief, and in the morning
he found himself almost entirely recovered; but, unable
from weakness to continue with the troops, he returned to
Dresden. This accident detained the guard at Pirna;
whilst the two corps forming the columns of the centre,
having experienced great difficulties in ascending the
mountains and penetrating the defiles, made little progress
during three days. But Vandamme having on the 28th dis¬
lodged an enemy’s corps from the position of Peterswalde,
descended next day as far as Kulm, and advanced into
that deep valley, in the hope of seizing Toplitz, the ren¬
dezvous of all the enemy’s columns scattered in the moun ¬
tains. His advanced guard had approached within half a
league of Toplitz, and he only waited for his reserves to
force the last obstacles, when all of a sudden the enemy,
ceasing to give way before him, stood firm, and made the
most determined resistance. The enterprise being thus
checked, Vandamme, instead of persisting, ought to have
renounced it, and, profiting by the night, regained the po¬
sition of Peterswalde. He did the contrary; and the ene¬
my being powerfully reinforced, he was soon attacked both
in front and flank, by at least sixty thousand Austrians
and Russians. For several hours, however, he resisted
all their efforts, retrograded without being broken, eva¬
cuated Kulm, and prepared to ascend to Peterswalde;
but Kleist and his Prussians having escaped from Saint-
Cyr, and found the position evacuated, had just occupied it.
In vain did the French, by the most gallant efforts, endea¬
vour to break through the enemy, which now cut off their
retreat; in vain did the cavalry, clearing their way with
their swords to the very crest of the escarpment, seize
the whole artillery of Kleist; the cannon were promptly
abandoned, and, overwhelmed by hosts of enemies before
N C E.
164 FRANCE.
History, and behind, the greater part were either taken or dis-
persed in the mountains. Vandamme, severely wounded,
1813. was made prisoner, dragged in triumph to Prague, and
subjected to every species of’ insult, in retaliation of cer¬
tain acts alleged to have been committed by him in the
countries conquered by the French. Nor did the mis¬
fortunes of Napoleon’s lieutenants stop here. On the 6th
of September, Ney, who had been sent against Berlin,
with his own corps and those of Oudinot, Reynier, and
Bertrand, was defeated at Dennewitz by Bernadotte, and
lost two thirds of his artillery, his ammunition, his bag¬
gage, and more than twelve thousand men. This disaster
was occasioned by the misconduct of two Saxon divisions,
whose fidelity had already been shaken.
Position Although the victory of Dresden had disconcerted the
and views first plan of offensive operations adopted by the allies, it
of Napo- no longer exercised any influence on the campaign. The
anterior defeat of Oudinot at Gross-Beeren on the 23d of
August, that of Vandamme at Kulm on th% 30th, and the
grave checks'received by Macdonald on the Katzbach and
the Bober from the 26th to the 29th, enabled the allies
to pour three hundred thousand men into Saxony. The
route of Ney rendered the position of the French army
still more critical, inasmuch as the right wing of the ene¬
my, arriving on the Elbe, was in a situation to intersect
its communications with Leipsic and Franconia. Imme¬
diately after the battle of the 27th, Napoleon had marched
with the old and young guard, and other reinforcements,
to succour Macdonald; but the news of this disaster re¬
called him to Dresden. From this central position, which
certainly had many advantages, he hoped to direct his
operations in such a manner as to repair all the faults
committed by his lieutenants; he confided in the power
of his own genius, and never perhaps was its ascendency
more conspicuously displayed. Every thing, in fact, gave
way before him. Blucher, who had defeated Macdonald,
durst not commit himself against Napoleon ; Wittgen¬
stein, who had made an irruption into Saxony,’was driven
back into Bohemia ; and similar attempts repeated by
each of those generals met with the same fate. In fact, the
operations around Dresden resembled what Homer re¬
counts of the siege of Troy. When Achilles rushed forth,
the enemy were instantly routed and put to flight; when
he retired, they took courage, and failed not to gain some
advantage. I he plan of Napoleon was magnificent, and
though bold even to temerity, he had fully estimated all
the chances. So far from entertaining any apprehension
of being cut off from France, he waited at Dresden until the
allies had so far committed themselves as to be no longer
able to avoid a general and decisive battle. His delight
was to be surrounded by enemies, with his army, which
he knew so well how to direct, compact and in hand. But
his generals shrunk from such daring warfare. Brave and
skilful as lieutenants, they had none of that boldness and
# grasp of mind which distinguished their illustrious chief.
But the expected crisis was now approaching. On the
7th of October Napoleon quitted Dresden, leaving in that
place Saint-Cyr with about thirty thousand men under
his orders. Atter having manoeuvred on the banks of the
Mulde, so as to intercept the communications of the ar¬
mies of the north and ot Silesia, he attacked them on the
11th, 12th, and 13th, and forced them to retreat. It is
even said that he proposed allowing the allies to place
themselves in the interval between the Elbe and the Saale,
and, covering himself by the fortified places on the Elbe,
of which he was master from Dresden to Hamburg, to
establish the war between that river and the Oder. On
the 14th the imperial head-quarters were still at Duben
on the Mulde, when Napoleon received intelligence of
the defection of Bavaria, and of the treaty of Ried con¬
cluded on the 8th ; but on the 15th they were removed
to Leipsic, where Napoleon arrived early in the day, Historr
hoping that he would only have to do with Schwartzen-
berg. In this, however, he miscalculated. 1813,
On the 16th of October the allies approached ; Berna-Battlecf
dotte and Blucher from the north, and Schwartzenberg Leipsic,
from the south. Napoleon opposed himself to Schwartzen-
berg, and during the entire day kept him in check upon the
verge of the hills which border the plain of Leipsic. Ney
was less fortunate on the north, where the Prussians under
Blucher fought desperately, and at length obliged him to
retire with loss behind the Partha. But on the western
side of Leipsic Bertrand drove back General Giulay, and
thus cleared the road towards France. During the 17th the
allies, notwithstanding their superiority in numbers, hung
back, awaiting the arrival of Beningsen’s army ; the day
was accordingly spent in partial combats, and in prepara¬
tions on both sides for the inevitable conflict of the mor¬
row. On the 18th the battle commenced to the north,
east, and south of Leipsic, in the vast plain extending be¬
yond Lutzen and Weissenfels, villages celebrated as the
scenes of mighty deeds in arms. Leipsic is surrounded
with suburbs, excepting in the part towards the west,
contiguous to hollows, and facing a plain watered by the
Pleiss and the Elster, which are divided into canals, and
several times intermingle before their definitive junction.
Half a million of men, crowded together on a surface of
three square leagues, now engaged with extreme fury in the
work of mutual destruction. The disproportion of num¬
bers, however, was enormous. Those of the confederate ar¬
mies were as follow : Army of Bohemia, Sch war tzenberg,
140,000 men ; army of the north, Bernadotte, 65,000;
army of Silesia, Blucher, 85,000; army of Poland, Bening-
sen, 40,000; total 330,000 men. The French army was
composed of the second corps, Victor; the third, Ney;
the fourth, Bertrand ; the fifth, Lauriston; the sixth,
Marmont; the seventh, Reynier; the-eighth, Poniatowski;
and the eleventh, Macdonald ; together with the imperial
guard and the cavalry. Its numbers were as follow: In¬
fantry of the line, 130,000; imperial guard, 30,000; ca¬
valry, 15,000; total 175,000. In numbers, therefore, the
allied army exceeded that under Napoleon by no less
than a hundred and fifty-five thousand men ; and this
unprecedented advantage was still further increased by
the bad condition of the French squadrons, which pre¬
cluded the possibility of committing them against even
equal numbers of the enemy’s cavalry. Napoleon was there¬
fore obliged to rely principally on his artillery; but,pressed
on all sides by overwhelming masses, he in vain exhausted
his ammunition ; the artillery of the enemy was as formi¬
dable as his, and latterly better served. Still the French
soldiers fought with astonishing courage, and, notwith¬
standing every effort, maintained their ground. Ponia¬
towski and his gallant Poles kept Schwartzenberg in
check. Macdonald was opposed to the Prussians, and,
when hard pressed, Napoleon at the head of the guard
marched to his assistance, and drove back the enemy. To
the north of this attack, Bernadotte, with the army of the
north, advanced against Reynier, whose corps consisted
chiefly of Saxon and Wurtemberg troops. Eager to en¬
counter the Prussians and Swedes, Reynier ordered these
troops to move forward. They obeyed, but it was only
to desert and join the enemy. Seven battalions of Saxon
infantry, two regiments of Saxon cavalry, and several Wur¬
temberg regiments, making in all twenty-six battalions
and ten squadrons, together with three Saxon batteries
of twenty-six guns, passed over to the enemy, and ranging
themselves under the colours of Bernadotte, instantly
attacked their brothers in arms ; in fact, before arriving
at any distance, the three batteries were turned against
the division of Durutte, forming part of the seventh corps,
and swept away entire files by a raking fire. Neverthe-
FRANCE.
165
listry. less, the emperor, undismayed by this disaster, caused
his reserves instantly to advance, and succeeded in check-
18i • ing the enemy, who were now pouring down upon Leipsic.
But the army could not long maintain its positions without
exposing itself to total ruin. It had neither been broken
nor defeated ; yet, after its enormous losses, it was evident
that want of time alone had prevented the enemy from ob¬
taining complete success. Napoleon was sensible of this;
and, on the approach of night, he issued orders for retreat.
Next day, the 19th, Leipsic was taken. The emperor
of Russia, the king of Prussia, and Bernadotte, entered by
three different gates, and the king of Saxony was made
prisoner. Encumbered with the dead and the dying, with
fugitives and equipages, this city presented a horrible scene
of route and carnage ; but the spectacle exhibited by the
approaches to the suburb of Lutzen was most appaling; it
was a sort of gulf into which the French precipitated them¬
selves, as into a haven of safety. Nevertheless, the com¬
bat and the fusillade continued for two hours, during which
sixty pieces of cannon horsed, and twelve thousand brave
men, were saved : the enemy, master of Leipsic, feared to
push to extremity warriors who might set it on fire, and
still more to oppose column to column in a confined space.
The retreat of the French could only be operated in brav¬
ing the greatest difficulties. Their route lay through a
defile of more than two thousand toises, between marshes,
and along five or six bridges ; nevertheless the retreat
was being executed without very great disorder, when some
Russian tirailleurs, gliding along the Elster, arrived near
the principal bridge on that river, which had been mined
in the night. No sooner were they perceived than the
bridge was blown up by the chief of the post of sappers
stationed there, who, disregarding the safety of the empe¬
ror and of all those on the western bank, fired the train.
This accident, occasioned by the absence of the colonel of
engineers, to whom the charge of the post had been com¬
mitted, having cut off the retreat of all those who were
still in the boulevards and suburbs, the bravest, those old
soldiers who had escaped the casualties of twenty cam¬
paigns, only thought of selling their lives as dearly as pos¬
sible, and perished under the ruins of the houses, which
they defended to the last extremity; whilst the greater
number believing resistance to be hopeless, fled towards the
Pleiss and the Elster. The first of these rivers presented
few obstacles ; but the other, whose bed is deep and mud¬
dy, and whose banks are marshy, swallowed up all those who
could not swim. In this number was Prince Poniatowski,
who had been created a marshal of France on the 16th,
and who on this same day had been wounded whilst per¬
forming prodigies of valour on the field of Liebertwolkwitz.
Having failed to clear his way through the ranks of the
enemies who surrounded and pressed on him, and believing
at this extreme moment, when the hands of the Russians
were extended to seize his person, that he might find a
way to safety through the waters of the Elster, he dashed
into the river, and was drowned. Marshal Macdonald,
more fortunate, succeeded in clearing the muddy stream.
The carnage finally ceased about two in the afternoon.
Two hundred pieces of cannon and nine hundred caissons
or waggons remained in the hands of the allies. The loss
of the French in these two days was immense, being esti¬
mated at upwards of sixty thousand men killed, taken, or
lost by desertion, exclusively of the wounded. The number
killed or mortally wounded on the field of battle did not
fall much short of thirty-seven thousand. But the allies
paid dear for their success, having lost in killed and wound-
| ed nearly eighty thousand men. This is explained by the
circumstance that, although their artillery was more nume¬
rous than that of the French, the latter played on columns
of greater depth and density, and was thus proportionally
more destructive. Napoleon arrived in the evening at
Marc-Renstaedt, and there rallied the remains of his army.
Such was the terrible battle of Leipsic, the battle of na- History,
tions, as the Germans call it, in which the numbers of the
combatants arrayed in the field, and the extent of the car- > I813-
nage, exceeded any thing which Europe had witnessedRemarks'
since the use of artillery, and the results of which fixed for
a time the fate of the Continent. It is, however, difficult to
conceive how a great captain like Napoleon, who had fought
thirty pitched battles and gained them all, and who had at¬
tained the very summit of military glory, by availing himself
with rare ability of the great talents of a crowd of French
generals, should have concentrated his army in a position
so unfavourable, and accepted a decisive battle in the
eastern part of the plains of Leipsic, having in his rear the
city, the marshes, and the waters of the Pleiss and the
Elster, divided into numerous canals, on which there are
but few bridges. The only explanation seems to be, that
it no longer depended upon him to choose the position of his
army ; for, if he had established himself beyond the Par-
tha, the Elster, the Pleiss, and the Luppa, he w7ould have
extended his army in a level country, where the enemy’s
cavalry, in all respects superior to his, would have inter¬
rupted and paralysed all his movements. He could not avoid
fighting on the 16th, in order to force back the Austrian
army from Leipsic, and pass the marshy defile which leads
from that city to Lindenau, on the road towards France.
But his determination to deliver battle on the 18th cannot
be so easily justified. Since the combats of the 16th pro¬
duced no decided results, how could he flatter himself
with being more successful on the 18th, when the enemy,
more concentrated, were in a condition to bring into ac¬
tion a still greater amount of force ? Instead of engaging
anew, he should during the night have made dispositions
for retreat, which his army was still in a condition to effect,
if not without embarrassment, at least without disorder,
and without encountering any serious obstacles.
On the 23d of October the wrecks of the army defeated Rattle of
at Leipsic on the 18th reached Erfurth, where were supplies Hanau.
of ammunitions, provisions, and clothing. All that remain¬
ed of the German troops had deserted since the battle of
Leipsic. On the 26th Wrede, commanding the Austro-
Bavarian army, took possession of Wurtzburg, and follow¬
ed the course of the Mayn. The same day, the troops of
Wurtemberg marched to join those of Bavaria, against the
French. On the 30th the Austro-Bavarian army, amount¬
ing to about sixty thousand men, was found posted at Ha-
nau, on the line which the French had followed from Er¬
furth, no doubt in the hope of arresting their progress, and
thus affording time to Blucher to attack them in the rear,
whilst the grand army of Bohemia turned their left flank,
and that under the orders of the prince royal of Sweden
(Bernadotte) extended itself beyond their right. Placed
under the necessity of breaking through this mass of fresh
troops, the French fell upon them with incredible fury,
and cleared a way by crushing all that opposed them.
General Curial at the head of two battalions of the old
guard, General Nansouty with the cavalry of the old guard,
and General Drouot with fifty pieces of artillery, carried all
before them, and not only saved the remains of a brave
army, but illustrated its retreat by a brilliant victory.
Wrede, who imagined that he had learned the art of war
by serving under the French colours, was wounded; whilst
the loss of twelve thousand men in killed, wounded, and
prisoners, punished the temerity of the general and the in¬
gratitude of his country. Napoleon repassed the Rhine on
the 1st of November with the remains of the guard and
six corps d’armee, the numerical force of which had been
reduced nearly two thirds.; and on the 9th he arrived at
the palace of Saint-Cloud.
The second overthrow of the French was necessarily pro- Results of
ductive of more decisive results than the first; Leipsictlie cam~
completed what the disastrous fate of the Russian expedi- lulSn‘
tion had only commenced. Germany regained its indepen-
FRANCE.
166
History, dence, by which we mean that it disengaged itself from all
connection with France. The confederation of the Rhine
,813- was dissolved. Hanover resumed its allegiance to Eng¬
land. Ferdinand VII. was released from Valen^ay, and
acknowledged as king of Spain. Holland, evacuated by
the French troops, recalled the stadtholder. Denmark
concluded an armistice with Russia, by which Napoleon
lost his only ally in the north ; and Davoust wras isolated in
Hamburg, without the possibility of disengaging himself.
Naples and Sweden alone remained under men of the Re¬
volution, who both retained their regal stations by betray¬
ing at once the chief whom they had served, and the coun¬
try which gave them birth. The exterior frame-work of
Napoleon’s power had been shattered to pieces by the rude
shocks of adverse fortune ; and all the changes produced
on the Continent, whether directly by the Revolution, or
through the instrumentality of the extraordinary person who
had been constituted its representative, wrere obliterated.
Nor were his enemies confined to the provinces beyond the
Rhine. The royalists stirred in the provinces, the repub¬
licans in the capital; and, feeling the compression of des¬
potism removed, the constitutionalists of the first National
Assembly began to raise their heads, and to build hopes of
re-establishing a representative government. In the legis¬
lative body itself, purified as it had been of all those who
were conceived to be friendly to free institutions, there
were men who still retained their attachment to the prin¬
ciples which they had originally professed ; and five of its
members, intrusted with drawing up an address, to be pre¬
sented on the 1st of January 1814, ventured to allude to
the liberty of the subject, the necessity of reforming abuses,
and the urgent expediency of accepting peace, and being
contented with the frontiers of the Rhine and the Alps.
This manifestation of independent opinion excited the asto¬
nishment and indignation of Napoleon, who, after replying
in a style worthy of a disciple of Cagliostro, adjourned the
meeting of the legislative body, and shut up its hall.
State of The situation of Napoleon had now become worse than
affairs. critical. All Europe in arms was arrayed against France,
whose active means of defence had been nearly annihilated
in two campaigns terminating in unparalleled disasters.
When Napoleon recrossed the Rhine on the 1st of Novem¬
ber 1813, he had not more than thirty-five thousand men
in a condition to face the enemy; and even towards the
close of the year, when three hundred thousand consqripts
had been placed at the disposal of the government, his to¬
tal numerical force did not exceed three hundred and sixty
thousand men, whilst eleven hundred thousand enemies
were advancing from various points to pour their invading
torrents upon France. On the 11th November, Dresden
capitulated on honourable terms, which, however, Schwart-
zenberg refused to ratify, and the French troops were
marched as prisoners into Austria ; on the 1st of January
1814, Dantzick surrendered in virtue of a convention,
which the Russians in like manner refused to execute;
and the other fortresses occupied by the French in Ger¬
many speedily shared the same fate. It has been said that
the allies offered Napoleon France, imperial France, w ith
the Rhine for its boundary, and that this fair, this gene¬
rous offer, was madly refused by him. But this charge
is without foundation. On the 2d of December 1813, the
Duke of Vicenza, in a note addressed to the minister of
Austria, declared that the Emperor Napoleon adhered to
the general and summary bases proposed in the name of
the allied powers at Franckfort, and also agreed that nego¬
tiations should immediately ensue in a congress to be as¬
sembled at Manheim. Ihe bases proposed were, France
confined within her natural limits between the Rhine, the
Alps, and the Pyrenees ; Spain replaced under its ancient
dynasty ; and Italy, Germany, and Holland, re-established
as states independent of F ranee, and of every preponder¬
ating power. To these preliminaries Napoleon now de¬
clared his unqualified adherence. The allied powers, how- History
ever, were bent upon conquest, not conciliation ; their ar- y>v
mies were preparing to pass the Rhine for the purpose of 181t
invading France ; and their insincerity was proved by the
evasions which they practised when the bases proposed by
themselves had been unreservedly acceded to. Meanwhile
the tide of war continued to roll on towards France. On
the 21st of December, six divisions of the enemy under
Schwartzenberg, amounting to more than a hundred thou¬
sand men, crossed the Rhine between Basle and Schaffhau-
sen, and ten days thereafter occupied Geneva. On the 31st,
the army of Silesia under Blucher crossed the Rhine between
Manheim and Coblentz ; Bulow, advancing from Holland,
passed still more to the north ; and Wellington, descending
from the Pyrenees, was preparing to invade the south of
France. On the 25th of January 1814, Napoleon left Paris
to join the army, and give new proofs of transcendent mili¬
tary genius in maintaining to the last a hopeless contest.
Schwartzenberg, having advanced through Upper Bur-Battles!;
gundy, had come upon the Seine, the course of which he^™1®
intended to pursue towards Paris. Blucher, having pass-“d ^
ed the Vosges Mountains, had established himself on the1''0™5,
Marne, at Saint-Dizier and at Joinville. Between these
two rivers was the principal mass of the enemy, amount¬
ing at least to a hundred and fifty thousand men. Napo¬
leon could not muster half that nuifiber, and the greater
part of his army consisted of raw levies who had never
been in fire. Advancing from Chalons-sur-Marne, and
throwing himself between Schwartzenberg and Blucher, he
directed his first blow at the latter. The Prussian com¬
mander now (29th January) occupied Brienne, with the Rus¬
sian corps of Sacken and Alsufiew, belonging to the army of
Silesia, and was at dinner in the castle when the French
under Ney drove in his outposts. The chateau, the town,
and its approaches, now became the scene of fierce com¬
bats, in all of which the French were victorious. The cas¬
tle was taken ; and Blucher, who had barely time to effect
his escape, was compelled to fall back, take up a position,
and wait for reinforcements. The audacity of Napoleon
increased in proportion to the immobility of h'is enemies,
who, in fact, durst not execute any movement in his pre¬
sence except in overwhelming masses. But as the battle of
Brienne had failed in its object of preventing the junction
of Blucher and Schwartzenberg, he should have returned
in all haste to the town of Troyes, where Marshal Mortier
w ould have given him a considerable augmentation of force,
instead of waiting to measure himself a second time with
an enemy so greatly superior. On the 1st of February,
Blucher, reinforced by the corps under Giulay, Wrede,
the Prince of Wurtemberg, and the Grand Duke Constan¬
tine of Russia, which carried the force under his command
to about a hundred and ten thousand combatants, became
the assailant in his turn, and attacked the French at La
Rothiere, a village situated in the plain bounded by the
Aube and its tributary the Voire, and distant about two
leagues and a half north of Brienne. Napoleon, though he
had scarcely forty thousand men present under arms, did not
hesitate to accept battle. The engagement commenced at
one o’clock in the afternoon, and did not terminate until
midnight. Attacked along their whole line, the French
stood their ground with great firmness, and towards even¬
ing the Russians in the centre began to waver ; but a vi¬
gorous charge executed by Blucher secured him the advan¬
tage. In the battle of La Rothiere the French lost about six
thousand men, of whom two thousand five hundred were
prisoners, and more than fifty pieces of cannon. The loss of
the allies in killed and wounded was nearly as great, but it
little affected their mass. In the night the French retreat¬
ed to Troyes, without being pursued in any direction; a proof
of the incapacity or timidity of the Prussian commander. congres!
Elated with his advantage, and eager to push on to Pa-0fCh^'
ris, Blucher, being joined by two fresh divisions, now se* Ion.
FRA
[gio! • parated himself from Schwartzenberg and the Austrians,
- r*' tardy in their operations, both from character and from poli-
fij* cy, and persisted in advancing along the Marne. Meanwhile
a congress was opened at Chatillon between the four great
allied powers and France. It was composed of Count Sta-
dion, Baron Humboldt, and Count Rasumowski, plenipo¬
tentiaries of Austria, Prussia, and Russia; England was
represented by Lords Aberdeen, Cathcart, and Castlereagh ;
and Caulaincourt, duke of Vicenza, appeared as the envoy
of France. The result of the battle of La Rothiere had
decided Napoleon to treat conformably to the bases pro¬
posed at Franckfort; and the congress accordingly met on
the 4th of February. But whilst occupied with the con¬
gress of Chatillon, Napoleon had his eye upon Blucher,
whose rash advance along the Marne now inspired him with
the idea of surprising and defeating the Prussians. Full of
this idea, and finding that the allies rose daily in their de¬
mands, and refused to leave even Belgium to France, Na¬
poleon recalled the carte-blanche which a few days pre¬
viously he had given to Caulaincourt, and, on the 9th of
February, refused to ratify the conditions transmitted to
him by his minister from Chatillon. An opportunity of
| striking a blow had now presented itself, and he resolved
i once more to commit all to the fortune of a battle,
tlesif Having abandoned Troyes, Napoleon transferred his ar-
mps- my, by cross roads and forced marches, from the Seine to
’ the Marne, along which Blucher was confidently advan¬
ce towards Paris, under the impression that the battle of
t'x' La Rothiere was the last serious effort of the French. Of
this notion he was speedily and severely disabused. On
the 10th of February Napoleon threw himself on the Rus¬
sian corps of Alsufiew, which formed the left flank of the
Prussian army, and occupied a position near Sezanne in or-
* der to connect the two allied armies. The attack was made
with such rapidity and impetuosity, that, of six thousand Rus¬
sians, scarcely fifteen hundred escaped. Alsufiew, two other
generals, forty-five officers, eighteen hundred soldiers, and
twenty-one pieces of cannon, were the trophies of the day of
Champaubert. On the 11th, at Montmirail, Napoleon came
up with the corps under General Sacken, at the moment
when he was endeavouring to operate his junction with the
Prussian general Yorck, and defeated both with the loss of
three thousand men killed and wounded, a number of pri¬
soners, twenty-one pieces of cannon, and nearly all their
baggage. In two days, three of Blucher’s lieutenants had
been defeated, and the wrecks of their corps driven beyond
the Marne. On the 14th the emperor, after gaining some
advantages at Chateau-Thierry, on the 12th and 13th at¬
tacked Blucher himself at Vaucamp, a league and a half
west of Montmirail, and defeated him with the loss of seven
thousand killed and wounded, three thousand prisoners, and
eighteen pieces of cannon. Leaving Blucher thus humi¬
liated to await the arrival of the Russians under Winzin-
gerode, who were advancing from Belgium to support him,
Napoleon now turned towards the Seine, where the grand
army of the allies was manoeuvring separately, with its ad-
! vanced posts beyond Moret and Provins, whilst parties ex-
| tended to the south of Fontainebleau, and spread alarm even
to the gates of Orleans. Supported by Marshals Victor,
Oudinot, and Macdonald, commanding the remains of the
1 corps, conducting himself the old and young guard, and rein¬
forced by troops which had arrived from Spain, Napoleon
advanced on the 15th against the flank of the enemy dis¬
seminated upon the right bank of the Seine. The French
army presented a mass of about fifty thousand men. On the
17th several strong Austro-Russian divisions, in full march
on Paris, were completely defeated near Nangis, by the em¬
peror, who on the 15th had left Montmirail with his guard
and the corps of Marshal Ney, and marched twenty-eight
leagues in two days. In this action the enemy lost five
thousand men, as many prisoners, and a dozen cannon.
1814.
N C E.
But its result would have been more considerable if Victor
had acted with greater decision. The combat of Montereau
on the 18th was merely a continuation of that of the preced¬
ing day. The Prince of Wurtemberg being impetuously
attacked, lost seven thousand men. Generals Gerard and Pa-
jol had the greatest share in the success of the day. It was
during this affair that Napoleon said gaily to his soldiers, wrho
murmured at seeing him expose himself, “ Ne craignez rien,
mes amis ; le boulet qui me tuera n’est pas encore fondu.”
These successes revived the confidence of Napoleon in Effect of
his genius and fortune, and blinded him to the dangers by these sue-
which he was menaced. After crushing Alsufiew at Champ- c^sses on
aubert, he wrote to his plenipotentiaries at Chatillon to as- NaP°leon'
sume a prouder attitude. The victory of Montmirail con¬
firmed him in the belief that every thing might yet be re¬
paired ; and this conviction was strengthened by the sub¬
sequent successes at Nangis and Montereau. To an Aus¬
trian officer, who came to propose an armistice, and urge
his acceptance of the conditions of Chatillon, he returned
for answer that he would accede to those of Franckfort, but
would on no account consent to yield up Belgium. “ Re¬
collect,” said he, “ that I am nearer to Munich than my
enemies are to Paris.” The conditions now offered were
no doubt severe and humiliating. Departing from the bases
founded on the natural limits of France, which they had
themselves proposed at Franckfort, the allies now propos¬
ed that the emperor of the French should renounce all
the acquisitions made by France since the beginning of
1792, and all constitutional influence beyond her ancient
limits ; that he should recognise in the allied powers the
right of determining, conformably to the treaties they had
entered into among themselves, the limits and relations
of the countries ceded by France, as well as of their own
states, without interfering therein in any manner of way;
that all the colonies of France should be restored to her,
excepting Tobago, and the isles of Bourbon and France ;
that all the fortresses of the ceded countries, and all those
still occupied by French troops in Holland, Belgium, Ger¬
many, and Italy, should be given up without exception,
and with the least possible delay; and that, under the
denomination of depots, the strong places of Besancon,
Befort, and Huningen, should be occupied by the allied
armies until the ratification of a definitive peace. Such
were the humiliating conditions agreed to at Chatillon,
and which Austria now strenuously urged Napoleon to
accept. “ The peace,” observed some one, “ will be good
enough, if it is time enough.” “ It will come too soon,”
replied Napoleon, “ if it bring disgrace.”
On the 24th February, the French, after several affairs Battles of
with the rear-guard of the allied army, now in retreat, re- Craonne
occupied Troyes. Some manifestations of royalism wereandLaon.
exhibited at this place, and one unfortunate individual lost
his life. At Troyes a flag of truce arrived from the Austrian
head-quarters proposing an armistice, which, however, Na¬
poleon refused except on the condition of its extending to
the whole line. The urgent remonstrances of the king of
Prussia having roused Schwartzenberg from the state of
inaction in which he had for some time remained, an at¬
tack was resolved upon, and, on the 27th, forty thousand
Austro-Russians advanced against fifteen thousand French
under the orders of Oudinot and Gerard. Oudinot allowed
himself to be surprised, and was only saved by the admi¬
rable dispositions of Gerard, and by a rapid and vigorous
charge of cavalry executed by Kellerman. The assailants
gained nothing but the field of battle. On the 2d of March
Soissons was occupied by Bulow, the commandant of the
city having opened the gates without making an attempt
to defend it, although he had a sufficient garrison under his
orders, and the sound of the cannon already announced
the approach of the French. On the 4th Marshal Mac¬
donald assumed the command of all the troops in presence
168
FRANCE.
1814.
Hopeless
History, of the grand allied army, amounting to about thirty thou-
sand ; and having evacuated Troyes and abandoned the
basin of the Yonne, he retired to establish his line of de¬
fence from Nogent to Montereau. On the 7th Napoleon at¬
tacked Blucher at Craonne, about three leagues south-east
of Laon. The French had only thirty thousand men, the
Prussians upwards of a hundred thousand; but the force
of the attack was principally directed against twenty-two
thousand Russians under Generals Woronsow and Sacken.
The action was long and obstinate; during the day the
Russians maintained their ground against the furious and
reiterated onsets of the French, and retreated in the night
towards Laon, where they formed a junction with the
Prussians. In the critical situation of Napoleon this vic¬
tory was equivalent to a defeat. Laon, a place which serv¬
ed as an entrepot to the allied army, was next attacked,
but without success. In the night of the 9th, Marmont,
advancing to support Napoleon in the approaching attack,
suffered himself to be surprised by Blucher, and lost two
thousand five hundred prisoners, with forty pieces of can¬
non. The consequences of this check were fatal to Napo¬
leon. On the following day he persisted in his design of
endeavouring to carry Laon by main force, but all his ef¬
forts failed, chiefly from the want of artillery.
At Laon had vanished Napoleon’s last hope of retriev-
situation ofing his fortunes in the field. He therefore dispatched
Napoleon, orders to Caulaincourt to treat with the allies upon any
terms ; but the time fixed for receiving his answer to the
conditions proposed had elapsed, and, taking advantage
of the change of circumstances, the allied plenipotenti¬
aries refused to enlarge it. Caulaincourt now gave in a
counter project, by which the emperor consented to re¬
strict his domination within the boundaries of ancient
France, with Savoy, Nice, and the island of Elba, on
condition that the crown of the kingdom of Italy, with
the frontier of the Adige on the side of Austria, should
be given to Eugene Beauharnais; but this the allied ple¬
nipotentiaries rejected, and the congress broke up. Disas¬
ters now thickened around Napoleon. Encouraged by the
presence of the English army under Wellington, Bordeaux
declared in favour of the Bourbons ; and intriguing states¬
men of the Revolution, at the head of whom was Talley¬
rand, were preparing a similar re-action in the capital, in
the hope of establishing a constitutional government under
the auspices of a restoration. Hitherto the allies had
carefully abstained from openly espousing the cause of the
exiled princes; but the manifestations of royalism in the
provinces, and intimation of the intrigues carried on in
the capital, emboldened them not only to advance upon
Paris, but to declare in favour of a restoration.
Manoeu- Meanwhile Napoleon, having left Mortier and Marmont
vres on the with nearly twenty thousand men, and given orders to the
battle'of comman^ants °f Peaces on the Moselle, the Meurthe, and
Ards! ° ^ie Meuse> to push strong parties in the rear of the enemy,
marched on the 17th from Reims, at the head of about
eighteen thousand men, with the intention of effecting a
junction with Macdonald, who was advancing with thirty
thousand; and, on the 20th, he moved on the Aube against
Schwartzenberg, who had under his command a hundred
thousand effective combatants. During this day and the
following one, Napoleon displayed the talents of a great
captain with the sang-froid of a brave soldier, manoeuvring
with transcendent skill, and fighting with the most deter¬
mined bravery. With the loss of about four thousand
men the proposed junction was effected, and Napoleon re¬
tired on Saint-Dizier and Joinville without being pursued.
In thus operating on the right bank of the Upper Marne, the
emperor no doubt hoped to draw the enemy out of their po¬
sitions on the Aube, and cause them renounce their direc¬
tion on Paris, as well as to rally some reinforcements which
had been sent to Metz. It has been commonly supposed
that his intention was, at the risk of uncovering Paris, to Histon.
manceuvre in their rear, and intercept their communica- 'w
tions with the Rhine ; but his troops were too feeble, par- 18U
ticularly in cavalry, to enable him to flatter himself with at¬
taining such a result. Napoleon made every possible effort
to retard their advance, and, on the 26th, defeated with great
loss ten thousand Russian cavalry belonging to the army
of Winzingerode, who had been sent in pursuit of him.
On the 27th he marched to succour the capital, and reach- Fallofp,
ed Montierender, five leagues south of Saint-Dizier. On the ris, andi;
29th Mortier and Marmont occupied Saint-Mande, Vin-(1jcatios>
cennes, and Charonne, and established themselves before ^aPoleK
the barriers of Paris adjoining to these villages. On the
30th the allied troops commenced the attack of the several
heights, occupied by about twenty-five thousand soldiers
of all arms. The French assumed the offensive on the prin¬
cipal points, and the villages of Pantin and Romainville
were taken and retaken several times. The battle com¬
menced at sunrise, and at eleven o’clock in the forenoon
the Austrians and Russians were still in complete check.
But at that moment the Prussians appeared, entered into
line, and proceeded to arrange their attacks. Seized with
terror, Joseph Bonaparte, who acted as generalissimo, now
only thought of providing for his own personal safety; and
having intimated to Mortier and Marmont that he autho¬
rized them to capitulate, he fled with all the precipitation
of a Thersites. A capitulation was accordingly concluded,
and on the last day of March the emperor of Russia and the
king of Prussia entered the French capital at the head of
their troops. When Napoleon, who had reached Fontaine¬
bleau on the 30th, encountered, in the evening of that day,
while advancing towards the capital, some of the troops of
Marmont retiring by virtue of the capitulation, he refused
to give credit to the tidings ; and it was only by persuasion,
amounting to force, that he was induced to return to Fon¬
tainebleau. No wonder his astonishment was great. If the
minister Clarke had delivered twenty thousand new mus¬
kets to the national guard, to those robust workmen who
loudly demanded arms, the heights would not in all pro¬
bability have been carried on the 30th; and the sudden
apparition of Napoleon in the centre of such immense re¬
sources as Paris presented, might have suddenly changed
the fortune of the war, and led to a very different result;
whilst a check sustained by the allies before Paris would
have inevitably led to their destruction, by rousing all
France to crush the invaders. But treason deprived Na¬
poleon of the last great resource on which he had all along
calculated, and completed the subjugation of France. A
provisional government was appointed, with Talleyrand at
its head ; and a proclamation was issued by the allied so¬
vereigns, refusing to treat with Napoleon as sovereign of
France. In these circumstances, finding himself deserted
by his marshals, officers, and dependents, from Berthier,
prince of Neufchatel, down to the Mamluke Rustan, this
wonderful man, who had never appeared greater than
during the late struggle, signed an unconditional abdica¬
tion, and, on the 11th of April 1814, his dynasty expired.
There yet remain to be treated of, the first restoration;
the reign of the hundred days, with the extraordinary
events crowded into that short space ; the second restora¬
tion, that comedy of fifteen years, as it has been called;
and, lastly, the revolution of July 1830, by which the third
impression of the old monarchy was destroyed, and a new
dynasty established in France on the basis of the interests
created by the first revolution. But unavoidable circum¬
stances, and a desire to procure authentic information, ren¬
der it proper that we should stop at the epoch of Napoleon’s
abdication in 1814, and for the details necessary to com¬
plete our historical survey, to refer the reader to other
parts of the work, particularly the articles Napoleon and
Restoration. (a.)
iter*1’
tc.
Nf
tht
fee
u
FRANCE.
169
II. STATISTICS.
tua;in, i. situation and extent, face of the country,
stilt, CLIMATE and soil.
~yr/ This important part of continental Europe extends from
the forty-third to the fifty-first degree of north latitude, and
from longitude 8-25 east, to longitude west. The
greatest length of France, exceeding 600 miles, is from
east to west, viz. from Alsace to Bretagne, a province
which projects into the Atlantic like a wedge, and without
which France woidd approach in form to a square. Its
breadth from north to south is about 560 miles; and its
superficial extent, not yet exactly ascertained, is computed
to exceed 200,000 square miles, or a hundred and twenty-
eight millions of English acres.,
Though in point of extent of coast and ready access from
the interior to the sea, France is far inferior to Britain and
Ireland, she is, on the other hand, more fortunate in these
respects than the vast inland territories of Austria and
Russia. She has the advantage of these countries likewise
in strength of natural barriers, the Pyrenees forming a great
bulwark on the south-west, the Alps on the south-east,
and the Jura and the Vosges Mountains on the east. The
Netherlands are the only open part of the frontier of France.
i-fM The surface of France exhibits, in general, an advanta¬
geous succession of high and low ground. Less level than
Poland, the north of Germany, or the greater part of Eu¬
ropean Russia, it is, on the whole, less mountainous than
Spain or Italy, and may with great propriety be compared
to England, with this distinction, that whilst in the latter
the mountainous tracts are in the north and west, in France
they are in the south and east. Passing over the lofty
ridges which form the frontier line of France on the side of
the Pyrenees, the Alps, the Jura, the Vosges, and confin¬
ing our attention to the interior, we find throughout Flan¬
ders, Picardy, Normandy, and the countries to the north and
south of the Loire, a level country, diversified occasionally
by hills, either insulated or in succession, but by none of the
massy elevations entitled to the name of mountains. These
we do not meet until reaching the south of Champagne
and north of Burgundy, near the sources of the Meuse, the
Moselle, the Saone, the Seine. From this bleak quarter
(lat. 47 and 48) a very long range of mountains proceeds
from north to south in a direction parallel to the course,
first of the Saone, and subsequently of the Rhone, until,
on approaching the Mediterranean, they branch off to the
south-west and join the Pyrenees. Their greatest height
is in Auvergne (about lat. 45), where this chain, or more
properly a lateral branch of it, attains, at the mountains
called Cantal and Puy-de-D6me, an elevation of fully 6000
feet, and has its highest ridge covered with snow during the
greater part of the year. Another, but a much less lofty
range, extends from Bordeaux to the south-east, a distance
of a hundred and fifty miles, until it reaches the Pyrenees.
The smaller chains are numerous in the east and south-east
of the kingdom, viz. in Lorraine, the Nivernois, Dauphine,
Provence ; also in part of the interior, particularly the Li¬
mousin and Guienne. They are interspersed with exten¬
sive plains, but, on the whole, the south and east of France
are rugged and elevated tracts, and may be said to be to that
country what Wales and Scotland are to Great Britain.
er!i v.r^e course °f the great rivers is easily connected with
this view of the surface of the territory of France. The
Moselle, the Meuse, the Marne, the Aube, the Seine, the
Yonne, taking their rise on the northern side of the moun¬
tain chain, between lat. 47 and 48, flow all to the north or
north-west, until reaching the sea, or quitting the territo¬
ry of France. From the southern slope of the same range
VOL. x.
proceed the Saone, the Doubs, and the Ain. These, along Situation,
with many smaller streams, are all received by the Rhone, Extent,
which flows almost due south, with a full and rapid cur- &c-
rent, until it reaches the Mediterranean. The Loire has r-'*"''1
by much the longest course of any river in France. It
rises to the southward of lat. 45, flows in a northerly direc¬
tion above two hundred miles ; turns, near Orleans, to the
west, is joined by the Cher, Indre, and Vienne from the
south, and, after receiving the Sarthe from the north, falls
into the Atlantic below Nantes. The Garonne, a river of
less length of course, but of a greater volume of water, de¬
scends from the French side of the Pyrenees, flows north¬
ward, and, after receiving from these mountains a number
of tributary streams, of which the chief is the Arriege, turns
to the westward near Montauban (lat. 44), and falls into the
Atlantic after being augmented by the waters of the Tarn,
Aveyron, Lot, and finally the Dordogne, all flowing from
the western face of the mountains of Auvergne.
France has very few lakes, either in the mountainous
districts of the south, or in the great levels of the north
and west. It contains, however, a number of maritime in¬
lets, forming inland bays, and communicating with the sea
only by a channel of greater or less width. These occur
partly on the south-west coast, in Gascony ; but more in the
south and south-east, in Languedoc and Provence. Their
want of depth prevents them from serving as roadsteads
for shipping, and they are useful chiefly for fishing, or for
the manufacture of bay-salt.
France has much less of artificial or ornamental planta- Forests,
tions than England, and much more of natural forests, the
total extent of ground covered by wood being computed at
seventeen millions of acres, or one eighth of the territorial
surface of the kingdom. Forests are found in almost every
department. Lower Normandy contains several of con¬
siderable extent. There is a large one at Fontainebleau,
only forty-five miles from Paris ; and a larger to the north
of the Loire, in the vicinity of Orleans. Those situated in
the neighbourhood of the sea, or of navigable rivers, or of
great works, such as glass-houses and iron-founderies, have
long been subjected to an improvident consumption, which
is likely to be increased by the heavy duties imposed on fo¬
reign coal, and by the undue encouragements given to the
smelting of iron by the heavy duties which were in 1814
and in 1822 laid on the importation of foreign iron; so
that at present the principal forests are at a great distance
inland, particularly in the east of the kingdom, in the depart-
nient of Ardennes, and in the long mountainous tract that
forms the boundary of France on the side of Switzerland.
The want of ornamental plantations, and still more the Scenery,
almost total want of hedges, forms a great deduction from
the beauty of scenery in France, and deprives the country
of the cheerful aspect so striking in England. The near¬
est approach to the latter is seen in travelling through the
fresh pastures and gentle eminences of Normandy. Of the
other provinces, some, like Picardy, Champagne, Poitou,
consist of wide uninteresting levels ; whilst others, such as
Auvergne, part of Upper Languedoc, and the vicinity of the
Alps and Pyrenees, contain a bold but bleak scenery. The
most beautiful and picturesque views are to be found in the
Limousin, or on the borders of the great rivers. The banks
of the Loire from Orleans westward are proverbially beau¬
tiful. The Rhone, bordered by mountains, has generally
a bold, and occasionally a wild aspect. The Seine, equally
wide, but much more tranquil, flows through verdant but
less striking landscapes.
In a country of so great extent and of such diversified Climate,
surface as France, it is difficult to condense a description of
Y
170
FRANCE.
Situation, the climate into a few comprehensive heads. The most
natural division is into the north, south, and central re-
,_i_ gions. The north, comprehending Flanders, Picardy, Nor¬
mandy, Bretagne, and in general all that part of France
which would be bounded on the south by a diagonal line
from lat. 47 on the west to lat. 49 on the east frontier, bears
a great resemblance, both in temperature and produce, to
the south of England, rain occurring frequently, and the
country being consequently fit for pasture. There, as with
us, the predominant culture is wheat, barley, oats, rye, and
such fruit as apples, pears, cherries; also hemp, flax, rape-
seed. It is here, and here only in France, that the natu¬
ral pastures are rich and extensive; here also the species
of wood, oak, ash, elm, bear a close resemblance to ours.
The central region may be said to comprehend the country
to the south of the Loire, or rather of the diagonal line we
have mentioned, until reaching a similar line in lat. 45 on
the west and 47 on the east frontier. Here, with the ex¬
ception of the mountainous parts, the winter is sensibly
shorter and milder. Wheat, barley, oats, and rye, are still
cultivated, but maize begins to appear, and vines become
general. The weather in this great inland tract is much
more steady than in the north. In the summer months
there is little rain, and storms, when they occur, are fre¬
quently accompanied with hail; but, on the whole, the
temperature is perhaps the most pleasant in France, being
exempt equally from the oppressive heat of the south and
the fx-equent humidity of the north. The third region,
comprehending the whole breadth of the French territory
from lat. 45 and 46 to lat. 43, and in some parts to 42‘30,
approaches in climate to the heat of Spain and Italy; it
being necessary in the summer months to suspend all ac¬
tive exertion during the middle of the day, and to reserve
it for the morning and evening. A shaded situation is
here the desideratum for a dwelling, and a supply of water
for agriculture. In this region the heat will invariably pro¬
duce an exubei-ant crop where irrigation can be applied;
hence the frequency of wells, which are generally worked
by a wheel and some rude machinery. Wheat is partially
cultivated ; barley, oats, and rye, only on the high grounds ;
maize is very general, and vines supply not only the main
article of export, but the usual drink of the inhabitants.
The common fruits are olives and mulberries, and, in a
few very warm situations, oranges and lemons. Pasturage is
good only on mountainous or irrigated tracts. To pulmonic
invalids the climate may be advantageous, but in this x-e-
spect also material distinctions occur from locality, the
winter in the south-east of France being at intervals very
cold, from the vent de bise, a piercing wind that blows from
the Alps and the mountains of Auvergne. Here, notwith¬
standing the latitude, the cold of winter is intense.
Bretagne, projecting into the Atlantic, is as rainy as
Ireland or Cornwall. Normandy, with part of Picardy and
Prench P landers, may be compared to our inland coun¬
ties. In the interior of France the rains are less frequent,
but far more heavy; so that there is much less diffei'ence
in the quantity of rain that falls in the course of the year
than in the number of rainy days. The atmosphere of
France is much less cloudy than ours. The most frequent
wind in the north of France, as in Britain and Ireland, is
the south-west; it prevails also, but to a less degree, in the
cential part of the kingdom. In the south of Fraxxce the
more common winds are from the north.
The difference of temperature between London and
Paxis is not considerable, nor is the degree of heat found
to be intense along the west coast of France, until reaching
ox xather passing Poitou. In the interior it is much more
pex ceptible, being strongly felt at Lyons, and still more in
the latitude of ^ismes, Aix, Marseilles, and Toulon. On
the whole, the variations of climate between the north and
, south of France are considerably greater than between the
north and south of Britain, where the effect of difference Situati™
of latitude is so much modified by the vicinity of the sea. Extent,
We know, besides, of no such variation as the very mate-
rial one indicated by the diagonal line from east to west,
the latter being two degrees colder in consequence of the
breezes and vapours of the Atlantic.
The harvest begins in the north of France between the
20th and 25th July, in the central part about the middle
of that month, in the south about the end of June. Septem¬
ber and October are the months of vintage. The great
hazard to the corn of the central part of the kingdom arises
from violent storms of rain and hail, in the south from
the want of rain in spring. In winter the vent de bise proves
often destructive to the olives. The great heats are in
July, August, and September ; a time of much annoyance
in the south of France, from gnats, flies, and other insects;
whilst scorpions even are found in that warm latitude.
To exhibit a classification of the different kinds of soil is Soil,
a task of difficulty in any extensive country, and in none
more than in France, where a striking difference prevails,
not only in contiguous departments, but in contiguous
districts of the same department. In Flanders, Picar¬
dy, Artois, Normandy, and the Pays de Beance, a fertile
tract to the south of Paris, the soil consists frequently of a
loamy mould; in the central and southern parts of the
kingdom it is often lighter ; whilst the greater part of Bre¬
tagne, and of the departments along the western coast, have
a heathy soil, naturally unproductive, but capable of consi¬
derable improvement. But these collective estimates are
liable to great deductions; and the attempts made by Ar¬
thur Young and other statistical writers to calculate the pro¬
portion of the different descriptions of soil, whether loam,
heath, chalk, gravel, or the like, are considered by the
French as far from successful; even the more systematic
effort made by their own government, in the beginning of
this century, to compute the value of land by masses de cul¬
ture, that is, by classing all kindred soils under one head,
proved altogether abortive. We shall forbear, therefore,
all such vague calculations, and proceed to state the value
of annual produce in the different departments, endeavour¬
ing to class the latter in lots, according to their position
and relative productiveness.
Average annual income of the various departments of France,
computed by the English acre, and in Sterling money,
taking the ivords “ annual income" in the most extensive
sense, as including the rent of land, the farmer s profit,
and the rent of houses in towns—(Chaptal, De VIndus¬
trie Franc;wise, vol. i. p. 209.)
The fertility and high state of cultivation of French North ami
Flanders, and the near approach made to it by part of^ortlwasi
Normandy and Picardy, are apparent from the following0^*1
returns. The chief objects of culture there, as in England,
are wheat, oats, barley, and rye; the pasturages are ex¬
tensive; the horses, cattle, and sheep numerous.
Nord (French Flan- Somme 15s. 6d.
ders)... 23s. 4d. Pas de Calais 15s. 6d.
Seine Inferieure....22s. lOd. Manehe 13s. 8d.
Calvados 18s. 6d. Eure 13s. 7d.
Hie inland province, called formerly, from the rivers
along its circumference, the Isle of France, comes next
in the list of relative productiveness. The objects of cul¬
ture are similar to those of Flanders and Normandy, viz.
wheat, oats, and barley; but the pasturages are less rich
and extensive.
Seine et Oise 17s. 3d. Oise 13s. 6d.
Seine et Marne 13s. 7d.
I he district around Paris forms the centre of the above
departments. There the average return is stated at 72s.
9d. the acre; but as this includes house rent, and is alto-
V(
'i-east
«iofin
is
sie,
Mayenne 8s. 3d.
Loiret 8s. Od.
Indre et Loire 7s. 2d.
am
fiie
anct
mt&
1 p* :
irmly
FRA
tua»)n, gather a peculiar case, we proceed to the next great divi-
latnt, gion of open country.
Alsace, though in some parts mountainous, is in others
level and fertile, particularly adapted to pasture and the
culture of wheat.
Bas Rhin 14s. 3d. Haul Rhin 12s. 6d.
Bretagne has in several parts good pasturages, and a soil
adapted to the culture of wheat. Many other parts, how¬
ever, consist of unproductive heaths. The general back¬
wardness and poverty of the province are but too striking¬
ly exemplified by the following return :
Me et Vilaine 8s. lOd. Morbihan 6s. 8d.
Loire Inferieure 8s. Od. Finisterre 6s. 8d.
Cotes du Nord 7s. 7d.
ntr. Here are also extensive landes or heath. Vines are
isioof partially cultivated, but the general produce consists of
a nee wheat, oats, barley. The pastures are extensive, though
less rich than in Normandy.
Eure et Loire 10s. 4d.
Orne 9s. 7d.
Maine et Loire 9s. 6d.
Sarthe 9s. 5d.
Of this great tract parts are level and parts are moun¬
tainous. The climate, though in general steady, is very
different in its degree of warmth, according to the eleva-
oftion of the ground. Hence a considerable discrepancy in
0 the relative fitness for pasture, for corn culture, or for
vineyards. Unluckily the water communication is very
limited, there being hardly any canals, and the rivers be¬
ing too near their source to be navigable.
Aime 12s. Od. Aube 7s. Od.
Haute Saone 10s. 8d.
Saone et Loire 10s. Od.
Jura 9s. Id.
Ain 8s. 8d.
Cote d’Or 8s. 3d.
The six following departments, similar to the above in
latitude, and not materially different in climate, are of very
inferior productiveness; in some parts, from the moun¬
tainous nature of their surface; in others, on account of
extensive heaths, moors, marshes, and tracts of sand. The
objects of culture continue to be wheat, oats, and rye;
vines and maize are raised in the warmest exposures.
Loire et Cher 5s. 9d. Allier 5s. Od.
Nievre 5s. 8d. Cher 4s. 3d.
Vienne 5s. Id. Indre 4s. Id.
Lorraine is a mountainous country, containing exten¬
sive tracts of sheep pasture. Its chief agricultural pro¬
ducts are oats and wheat.
Moselle 8s. 7d. Meurthe 8s. Od.
Meuse 7s. 6d. Ardennes 5s. 8d.
Vosges 6s. 3d.
This extensive province, and the departments to the
south and south-west, are, in general, mountainous, cold
considering their latitude, and thinly peopled. The chief
product of the high grounds is rye. The best departments
are those of the
Loire  8s. 4d. Ardeche 6s. 6d.
Puy-de-D6me 8s. Id. Haute Loire 6s. 2d.
The following, situated to the south and west of the
above, are all poor and thinly peopled:
Cantal 5s. 2d. Correze 4s. 3d.
Aveyron 4s. lOd. Lozere 3s. 8d.
Haute Vienne 4s. 4d. Creuse 3s. 5d.
ith-ist Here we attain a more genial climate, and a country,
,nlK §enerah weh adapted to the growth of the vine. But a
great part of this tract (Dauphine and Upper Languedoc)
is mountainous; and the export of wine is consequently
attended with much more difficulty than along the banks
of the Garonne. Wheat, maize, and silk, are the other
principal products.
Yonne   7s. Od.
Doubs 7s. Od.
Marne 6s. lOd.
Haut Marne 5s. 8d.
veme.
mci
N C E.
Rhone (including
Lyons) 13s. 3d.
Vaucluse 10s. Od.
Var  9s. Id.
Herault  9s. Id.
Bouches du Rhone..8s. lid.
Gard 8s. lOd.
Isere 8s. 2d.
Aude 7s. 8d.
Drome 5s. lid.
171
Civil and
Ecclesias¬
tical
Divisions.
South-west
division.
Of the following ten departments, some are indebted for
the amount of their return to the extent of their vintage,
others to their productiveness in wheat or maize. In pas¬
ture or in cattle these departments are far from abundant.
Tarn et Garonne.... 13s. Od. Haute Garonne 10s. 2d.
Lot et Garonne 11s. 7d Charente 8s. lid.
Gironde (including Tarn 8s. 4d.
Tarn Rordeaux)..10s. 6d. Gers 7s. 8d.
Charente Inferi- Dordogne 7s. Od.
cure 10s. 2d. Lot 6s. 2d.
It remains that we notice a few departments so parti-LaVendee,
cularly circumstanced as not to fall under any of the pre¬
ceding heads. La Vendee, so peculiar in its surface, and
not likely to recover for ages the devastations of civil war,
is naturally fertile. Its products are wheat, oats, and, in
the warmer situations, maize.
Deux Sevres 8s. Od. Vendee 6s. 8d.
Three fourths of this department consist of sandy
downs; the remainder produces maize, wheat, and vines;
but the average annual produce is only 2s. Id. per acre.
Here the degree of fertility becomes less and less as we Pyrenees,
approach to the elevated line which separates France from
Spain. This rugged region contains great tracts of pasture.
The corn raised is maize, wheat, oats, or barley, according
to the altitude and temperature of the district.
Basses Pyrenees 5s. 7d. Arriege 5s. Od.
Pyrenees Orientales..5s. 7d. Hautes Pyrenees 4s. 8d.
Lastly comes the still more lofty barrier of France to
the south-east, the products of which are a little wheat
in the valleys; and in the higher grounds pasture, with
corn of the lighter species.
Hautes Alpes 2s. Id. Basses Alpes 2s. Od.
Landes in
the south¬
west.
II. DIVISIONS, CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTICAL.
Nothing can be more simple and uniform than the ter¬
ritorial divisions of France since the Revolution. Instead
of old provinces or counties, disproportioned in size, and
having frequently their chief town at one or other of the
extremities, the departments of France have almost al¬
ways the capital in the centre, and, in their extent, ap¬
proximate in a great degree to equality. Each depart¬
ment is divided into three, four, five, or more arrondisse-
ments; each arrondissement into seven, eight, or nine
cantons; and each canton into twelve, fifteen, or more
communes. The communes in France are nearly similar
to our parishes, though they are constituted communes by
having a civil instead of a clerical functionary. The num¬
bers of each class are as follows :—
Departments since the peace of 1814 (includ¬
ing Corsica) 86
Arrondissements 368
Cantons 2,669
Communes 38,990
A far different result this from the gigantic empire of
Bonaparte, which, after his latest acquisitions in 1810, ex¬
tended to Rome in the south, and to Hamburg and Lu-
bec in the north, comprehending above 130 departments,
and a population of forty-four millions. But of all these
splendid conquests, none, with the exception of the Nether¬
lands, formed a substantial addition to the power of
France. The Italian provinces, separated by a vast natu¬
ral barrier, were inhabited by a people who bore the as¬
cendency of their northern neighbours only until circum¬
stances should enable them to throw off the yoke, and be¬
come incorporated into one great and independent state;
172
FRANCE.
Harbours, whilst the Germans, still more distinct in habits and lan-
, ; guage from the French, were indignant at their humilia-
tion, and eager to rise with the first appearance of foreign
aid. Belgium alone had no natural barrier, no political
attachment, to oppose to a union with France.
The ecclesiastical division of France is into archbishop¬
rics and bishoprics. These, before the Revolution, were
numerous, there being eighteen archbishops and a hun¬
dred and twelve bishops; but as that great political change
bore particularly hard on the clergy, of whom, as of the no¬
blesse, the great majority were adherents of the Bourbons,
the number of prelates was reduced, first to eighty-five,
and eventually (in 1801) to fifty, viz. nine archbishops and
forty-one bishops. On the restoration of the Bourbons,
measures were taken to re-augment their number; and in
1817 a new concordat, concluded with the court of Rome,
announced the creation of nine additional archbishoprics
and thirty-three bishoprics, carrying the totals respective¬
ly to eighteen and seventy-four. The eighteen archbishop¬
rics are,
Rheims.
Arles.
Rouen.
Aix et Embrun
Vienne.
Toulouse.   
As there are in France eighty-six departments, and only
seventy-six bishoprics, a diocese necessarily comprehends
a larger tract of country than a department.
A further distribution of the French territory is into
military divisions, or great districts, comprising four or
five departments. Of these there are in the whole king¬
dom twenty-two, each having a general of rank and a
body of officers stationed in a central town.
Paris.
Bordeaux.
Bourges.
Besan^on.
Tours.
Albi.
Auch.
Narbonne.
Cambray.
Avignon.
Lyons.
Sens.
III. HARBOURS, NAVIGABLE RIVERS, CANALS, ROADS,
BRIDGES.
Harbours
In this important point France is considerably inferior
to England, her long tract of coast opposite to the At¬
lantic and the Bay of Biscay being indifferently provided
with sea-ports, and those on the southern shore of the
Channel forming a striking contrast to the spacious ma¬
ritime inlets on the side of her rival. To begin from the
north-east, Dunkirk has a small harbour in the interior of
the town, approached on the Dutch plan by a canal lead¬
ing from the sea. Boulogne has a shallow roadstead, in¬
debted for its celebrity under Bonaparte to the facility of
giving protection, by land-batteries near its entrance, to a
numerous assemblage of small craft. The port of Dieppe
is exposed, and, of course, unsuitable for winter; that of
St Malo is better; and on doubling the projecting part
of Bretagne, we find, in the south-west of that province,
L’Orient, a port adapted to the entrance of large merchant¬
men. Proceeding further to the south, we find at La Ro¬
chelle a small but secure harbour, and at Bordeaux a river
nearly equal in width to the Thames at London. From
this there is no sea-port until we reach Bayonne, a place of
no easy access. On the Mediterranean, France has the
portsof Cette and Marseilles, the latter spacious and secure.
Nantes, though a large commercial town, adjoins a
shallow part of the Loire, and vessels of burden are ob¬
liged to load and unload at Paimbceuf. The great dock¬
yards and naval stations of the kingdom are at Brest and
Toulon, both excellent harbours, and at Rochefort, which
is situated on the river Charente, near its mouth. In all
these the accommodation for shipping is the gift of na¬
ture ; but at Cherbourg the case is very different, that
port containing works, of which the labour and expense
(see the article Breakwater) have been A'ery great.
Its roadstead, extensive but open, has a sea-wall, which,
though now in a state very different from its original des¬
tination, affords some protection from the swell of the
sea; and its spacious dock, excavated since the beginning
of this century, at an expense of L.3,000,000 sterling, is
capable of containing fifty sail of the line. Havre de
Grace, the best mercantile harbour in the north of France,
has also been formed at a heavy expense.
The square form of France, favourable as it is for mi-Inlandf
litary defence, subjects the greater part of the country tovigation,
the want of those ready and economical means of trans¬
port by sea which form the great physical advantage of
Britain and Ireland. Unluckily, this want is very imper¬
fectly supplied by the inland waters, canals being very
thinly spread, and the navigation of the great rivers sub¬
ject to many obstructions; occurring in one part from ra¬
pidity, in another from shallowness; at one season from
drought, at another from overflow. The application of
steam to navigation promises to correct in part this most
inconvenient tardiness; but the accommodation which
will even then be afforded by the Loire in the interior, the
Rhone in the south, the Seine in the north, and the Ga¬
ronne with its Canal du Languedoc in the south-west,
will be but a small portion of what is furnished by our
numerous intersections in England, or of what is wanted
for so extensive a territory as that of France.
The canal of Languedoc, begun in the reign of Louis
XIV. and completed in the year 1668, was the first exam¬
ple in Europe of inland navigation on a great scale. It is
the most stupendous undertaking of the sort that has been
executed in France. Its length is about 150 miles, its gene¬
ral breadth sixty feet, its depth only six feet. It has 114
locks and sluices, and in its highest part it is 600 feet above
the level of the sea. As a scientific work, it did honour
to an age as yet little advanced in engineering; but in a
pecuniary point of view it was unproductive, the tolls
never having paid the interest of the very large sum (up¬
wards of L. 1,300,000 sterling) expended upon it. It ex¬
tends from the Mediterranean, near Agde, to the Garonne,
below Toulouse, and will ere long be prolonged in a north¬
erly direction to Montauban.
The canal of Briare is of earlier date, and of much less
extent. 1 he object here was to open a navigation from
the Loire on the south to the Seine on the north, by a
canal running almost due north, a distance of forty miles.
It then receives from the west the canal of Orleans, com¬
menced in 1675, and proceeding also from the Loire;
after which the canal is continued to the north, under the
name of Canal de TOing, till it reaches the Seine. This
canal was begun in 1605, in the reign of Henry IV. and
was completed in 1642, under Louis XIII. There are,
besides this great work, several other important and ex¬
tensive^ canals in France. The Canal du Centre unites
the Saone and the Loire in the early part of the course of
the latter. It is seventy-two English miles in length, and
was completed in 1791, at an expense of L.456,000. Its
summit level is about 240 feet above the level of the Loire
at Digoin. It has eighty-one locks, five and a half feet of
water, forty-eight feet of breadth at the water’s edge, and
thirty feet at the bottom. The canal of St Quentin, twen-
ty-eight English miles in length, was completed in 1810.
It joins the Scheldt and the Somme. The canal of Be-
san^on is extensive. It joins the Saone, and consequently
the Rhone, to the Rhine. From the Saone it stretches a
little above St Jean de Losne, by Dole, Besan^on, and
Mulhoine, to Strasburg, a distance of 200 miles, where
it joins the Rhine. This canal is not quite finished. The
canal of Burgundy, which joins the Rhone to the Seine,
will, when completed, be 150 English miles in length. It
is at present navigable to little more than a third of this
distance. The canal of the Ouxcq was dug, not for a
commercial purpose, but to convey the water of that little
\rrm>
FRANCE.
arturs, river to Paris, for the consumption of the inhabitants. At
&. a village called La Villette, on the north side of Paris,
there has been lately excavated, at the expense of a mil¬
lion sterling, a basin, approaching in size to our London
docks, and calculated, when the necessary canals shall be
completed, for the deposit of merchandise brought from
Havre and Rouen on the one side, and from Flanders and
Champagne on the other. In the south of France there
is a short canal proceeding from the Rhone, near Taras-
con, in a south-west direction, to the Mediterranean, and
called, from its vicinity to a well-known annual fair, Ca¬
nal de Beaucaire. These are as yet the chief canals of
France. There are numerous other lesser canals in dif¬
ferent parts of France, and several are in progress, besides
many which have been projected. But it is probable that
this improved mode of communication may be superseded
by the still greater improvement of the rail-road, which
has, to a considerable degree, engrossed the public atten¬
tion in France. There are, however, obstacles to the pro¬
gress of these improvements, arising partly from the mode
of management adopted, and partly also from the high
price of the materials required. All great works for the
behoof of the community at large, such as canals, rail-roads,
docks, ~and the like, are carried on at the expense, for
behoof, and under the control of the government. Plans
and estimates must be made out and laid before the mi¬
nister of the interior, who refers them to other public
functionaries, namely, the prefect of the department, and
afterwards to the bureau des pants et des chaussees; and
when all these persons are satisfied, a public officer is then
appointed to superintend the work. This tedious official
routine, through which all public undertakings have to pass,
tends to discourage individual enterprise, and accounts
perhaps for the comparatively few works of this descrip¬
tion which have been undertaken in France. The high
price of iron, in consequence of the tax on foreign iron,
must operate as a great discouragement to the construc¬
tion of rail-roads in France ; and thus we have an additional
illustration of the ruinous effects of this tax in obstructing
the domestic improvement of the country,
ads The great roads in France are managed, not, as with us,
by county commissioners, but by government bureaux or
boards, the chief of which are at Paris. The extent of
road under their direction is about 30,000 miles ; and the
annual expenditure from L.1,300,000 to L.l,5O0,OOO, the
whole of which is defrayed without one toll or turnpike. An
attempt was made under Bonaparte to levy tolls ; but this
excited so much clamour in a country where commercial
intercourse is carried on almost wholly by land-carriage,
that it was found indispensable to seek the necessary funds
from another source, namely, a tax on salt. The great
roads in France are in general in tolerable condition; but
no epithet can convey an idea of the wretched state of the
cross roads in almost every department; full of hollows,
encumbered with stones, or inundated with water, they
receive hardly any repair, but are abandoned, year after
year, to the effects of the elements.
The great roads in France are much wider than in Eng¬
land, exhibiting frequently a long straight avenue lined on
each side with chestnut or other large trees. They are
often paved like a street for many miles in succession;
the art of road-making being as yet too little understood
to prevent material injury from the heavy waggons and ill-
constructed wheels, without resorting to this unpleasant
alternative. Travelling is thus much less agreeable than
in England, particularly as the villages want neatness and
cheerfulness, whilst most of the towns along the road are
disfigured by narrow crooked streets, in which new stone
buildings are often mixed with antiquated wooden struc¬
tures, such as have disappeared from our provincial towns
for nearly a century past. The clumsy vehicles former-
173
ly used as stage-coaches in France have at length been Harbours,
replaced in most frequented roads by coaches in the Eng-
lish style; and the mails are now conveyed in a kind of
chariot called a malle-poste.
The French have as yet but few cast-iron bridges, all Bridges,
their great structures of this description being of stone.
Of these, the chief are the bridges over the Loire at Or¬
leans, Tours, and Nantes; those on a smaller scale over
the Seine at Paris; and those over the Saone and Rhone
at Lyons. The Pont du St Esprit above Orange, over the
Rhone, is a long structure of sixteen arches. At no great
distance from it is the Pont du Gard, one of the most en¬
tire and beautiful monuments of Roman architecture, com¬
posed of a triple tier of arches, erected for the purpose of
conducting an aqueduct over the river Garden. This mag¬
nificent structure is 157 feet in height, 530 feet in length
at the bottom, and 872 at the top. Of the lately erected
bridges in France, the most remarkable are those over the
Seine at Neuilly near Paris, and over the Oise at St Maix-
ent, with two of larger dimensions, viz., one over the Ga¬
ronne at Bordeaux, the other over the Seine at Rouen.
IV. AGRICULTURE.
The agriculture of France is in a very different state
from that of England or Scotland, being marked by a de¬
gree of backwardness not a little surprising in a country
so far advanced in many departments of art and science.
The causes of this, however, are not of difficult explanation.
France never enjoyed till lately the advantage of a repre¬
sentative body; and the condition of the peasantry was
long far inferior to that of the same class in England. No
ecclesiastical reformation had taken place to remove a va¬
luable part of the national territory out of the hands of
indolent life occupants; and the grands seigneurs, the
other great body of landholders, devoted their attention
to Paris and Versailles, without bestowing a thought on
their lands or their tenantry, except to extract from them
the means of defraying their expenses in the capital. To this
was added a system of taxation, less heavy indeed than
that to which we are subjected in England, but extremely
crude and impolitic, as evinced in the gabelle, or tax on salt
used in private families, and in the corvee, or obligation
on the peasantry to labour on the high roads. To these
were joined the humiliating enactments of the game-laws,
and the more substantial injury of tithes; for the clerical
body in France levied this pernicious assessment as in Eng¬
land, though possessing in property lands of the computed
rent of five millions sterling.
Another great drawback on French agriculture was the
insignificant size of the occupancies, whether held as farms
or in property. A French agriculturist on a small scale
has little idea of selling his paternal acres, and converting
the amount into a capital for a farm. He is much more
likely to go on as the proprietor of eight or ten acres of
land, and the cultivator of as many more. The mode of
paying rent was equally singular; money rents were ge¬
neral only in the north or most fertile parts of France;
they did not, on the whole, exist in more than a fifth or
sixth of the kingdom before the Revolution. A more fre¬
quent species of tenure was by a grant made under a re¬
servation of a fine, of a quitrent, or of certain servitudes,
of which the least burdensome were sending corn to the
mill, or grapes to the press, of the proprietor. But of
all indications of poverty and backwardness, the most
striking was the system of metairie described by Dr Smith ;
a practice by which a tenant, having little capital of his
own, receives from the proprietor the live stock and im¬
plements necessary for cultivating his petty tenure, and
divides with him its produce. This wretched method was
and still is common, not indeed in the north or north-east of
FRA
Agricul- France, but in many of the poorer districts of the centre
ture- and south. There are, it is to be remarked, several dis-
tinctions in this system ; the landholder, in some parts,
providing only half the cattle and seed, and in others the
whole. There is of course a corresponding difference in
the apportionment of the produce.
Kfleets of Revolution a ete faite pour le cultivateur is a com-
lution6™" mon saying in France; indeed, that great convulsion im-
U 10 ’ proved so much the situation of the agriculturists, by can¬
celling, at one decisive blow, the tithes, the game-laws,
the corvee, and other relics of feudal servitude, that, after
all the horrors of Jacobinism, and all the tyranny of Bo¬
naparte, the escape from former degradation still preserves
an attachment to the Revolution among this pacific class.
Further, the sale of the church lands transferred a valua¬
ble mass of property from indolent into active hands. But
with this we must terminate our eulogy on the Revolu¬
tion, the further progress made by agriculture having been
caused less by any political change, than by the gradual
effect of experience, and the diffusion of information. The
degree of agricultural improvement in France since the
Revolution has certainly been less than in England and
Scotland, and in one very material point that memorable
convulsion has tended to retard it; we mean by the law,
suggested by a jealousy of the ascendency of the noblesse,
which obliges the owner of property, whether in land
or money, to make an almost equal division of it amongst
his children. The parent of two children has the free
disposal of only one third of his property, and the parent
of three children of only one fourth, the residue being
shared equally amongst all. The claim of primogeni¬
ture is thus in a manner annulled; and a law which is
apparently wise and equitable, proves the source of great
injury to agriculture, by multiplying the petty lots of land
throughout a country where they were previously far too
numerous.
Products. We have already mentioned, in stating the average pro¬
duce of the departments, the chief objects of culture in
France. It remains to exhibit a table of the apportion¬
ment of the French territory at large to different species
of culture.
English Acres.
Arable grounds of all kinds, poor and fertile...56,000,000
Pasturage and meadow lands 17,000,000
Vines, nearly  5,000,000
Kitchen gardens  800,000
Miscellaneous culture  2,000,000
Plantations, viz. chestnut woods 1,000,000
Orchards  900,000
Hop-grounds, osieries, nurseries  200,000
Olive grounds  106,000
Pleasure grounds and gardens  40,000
  2,246,000
Woods regularly cut for fuel 16,000,000
Woods allowed to grow for timber 1,100,000
  17,100,000
Heath and other lands of insigni¬
ficant value  10,000,000
Land totally unproductive in an
agricultural view, viz. rocks, sum¬
mits of mountains, surface of
roads, sites of towns, public
walks, beds of rivers, and canals 17,000,000 ’ T
Ponds, small lakes, inland bays,
marshes  1,000,000
18,000,000
128,146,000
To this we add a shorter though not uninteresting table,
viz. the comparative culture of France and England, as
exhibited in proportions of 100.
N C E.
Ktaie“d
Land under tillage of every descrip¬
tion, including vines  50
Land in grass, whether natural or
sown...  13
Land in forests, plantations, copses,
hedges  15
Poor land, as heath, marshes, com¬
mons ; also land totally unproduc¬
tive, as rocks, mountains, summits,
beds of rivers, roads  22
34
42
4
20
100 100
This parallel, brief as it is, places in a striking light the
very different state of agriculture in the two countries.
The surprising proportion of land in France under tillage
is owing to the smallness of the occupancies, the cheap¬
ness of labour, and the general use of bread instead of
animal food by the lower orders. The last is connected
with another remarkable circumstance; the very slender
proportion of land under pasture, of which the main cause
is the dry climate of the southern and central part of the
kingdom. In the proportion of poor and unproductive
land the two countries are nearly on a par, but the French
incur a very heavy disadvantage by using wood instead of
coal for fuel, and covering with forests many tracts which
might be made available either to pasture or tillage.
Nett Return of Land in France, reckoned by the English
Acre, and calculated from Official Surveys.
s. d.
Tillage (average of poor and fertile soils) 11 0
Vines 37 0
Meadow land 37 0
Natural pasturage, chiefly mountainous  3 6
Woods  7 6
Chestnut plantations  7 6
Orchards 15 0
Kitchen gardens 45 0
Various kinds of culture, viz. nurseries, hop-grounds,
olive grounds, &c 18 6
General average of all France, per English acre  9 1
We proceed to add a few remarks on French agricul¬
ture, with reference to articles less known or less general¬
ly raised in England. Buck wheat is cultivated exten¬
sively in Normandy and the north of France, partly as
green food for cattle, partly for the diet of the peasantry;
it is generally sown in June and reaped in the end of Sep¬
tember. Rape-seed is very general in French Flanders
and Normandy; it supplies oil for the market and food
for cattle, either when green or in the cake. Colza (cole¬
seed) is raised for the same purposes. Tobacco would be
generally cultivated in France, but it is monopolized for
the benefit of the state, and its cultivation is confined to
certain licensed parts, which are chiefly in Alsace and
Picardy. The quality of the article produced under the
royal monopoly is greatly inferior to that produced by pri¬
vate cultivators abroad, whilst, the price being 400 per
cent, higher, the latter is smuggled into France in great
quantities, notwithstanding all attempts to prevent it.
Flax is raised very generally, not merely in French Flan¬
ders, Alsace, and Normandy, but in the provinces of the
west and south, where the family of almost every peasant
rears a little stock annually to be spun by his wife and
daughters. Hemp also is raised in many parts of France,
particularly in the north. Maize is a plant of great im¬
portance, whether for the food of man or of cattle ; when
intended to stand for harvest, it is planted in rows with
very little seed, and yields more than twice the quantity
of wheat that would be produced on the same space.
ARriciil
FRA
rici. During its growth the leaves are stripped regularly for
ire. the food of cattle ; and in some districts it is sown thick
nSt and mown merely for that purpose. Such valuable sub¬
stitutes have as yet prevented turnips from being general¬
ly introduced into France. Even potatoes were long very
little known, and it is only during the last half century
that the dislike to this root has disappeared. Chestnuts
are most common in the central part of France, where
they supply no inconsiderable portion of the food of the
peasantry. In the south the fruits are chiefly olives, al¬
monds, mulberries, figs, and prunes ; oranges are partially
cultivated in the south-eastern extremity of the kingdom,
on the verge of Italy, but with great uncertainty, for a
severe winter is fatal to these trees, and in some measure
also to the olives.
Irrigation is little understood in the north of France,
but in the south the want of frequent rain renders it a
primary object of attention ; it in fact determines the ratio
of productiveness, since the warmth of the sun seldom fails
to ripen whatever, whether grass or corn, has received an
adequate supply of moisture. It takes place in some parts
by guiding the rills from the side of the hills and moun¬
tains ; in others by digging wells or raising water by a
wheel ; and in the vicinity of rivers by diverting a portion
of their stream.
nes- The culture of the vine extends more or less over fully
the half of France, beginning as far north as Champagne,
and spreading over the country to the south and the west.
This culture is, however, very limited in Champagne, and
even in Burgundy ; in Provence and the lower part of
Languedoc the climate is warmer, and the culture ge¬
neral, .though not managed with such skill as along the
banks of the Garonne, where the spirit of improvement is
; excited by a demand for foreign markets. As vines suc¬
ceed in light and unproductive soils, their culture gives a
value to much ground which would otherwise be useless ;
and the petty subdivisions of land are here less injurious
than in the case of corn. From the great variety of soil
and climate, the quality of French wines is very various.
The amount produced has been considerably increased
since 1790, as well from the division of many large estates,
as from the quantity of waste land which has been brought
into culture. It is computed that nearly 5,000,000 acres
of land are planted with vines, and that the value of the
annual produce is from L.28,000,000 to L.30,000,000 ster¬
ling, of which about a tenth or twelfth part only is export¬
ed. A further quantity, equal to about a sixth of the
above, is made into brandy, for brandy is distilled wherever
vines are grown ; and of it also the best in quality is in
N C E. * 175
the vicinity of the Garonne. This important and staple Agrieul-
branch of French industry has been very seriously injured ture-
by the prohibitory system of customhouse laws, which have '—'''v
been extended and increased in rigour since the restora¬
tion of the Bourbons, and to which many of the leading
statesmen of France still evince a most mistaken partia¬
lity. France, by excluding the produce of other nations,
virtually deprives, or greatly limits, by the same laws, the
reception of her own produce into foreign countries. It is
clear that they must pay for the wines of France with their
own produce, which, if France refuse to receive, they
have no other equivalent to give her in return; they must
procure an equivalent from foreign countries, and the ef¬
fect of this is to restrict the trade, by raising the price of
French wines. Accordingly, it appears that whilst France
exported to England from 16,000 to 20,000 tuns of wine
when the population was only five millions, this supply
had fallen off, partly owing to the heavy duties imposed in
Britain, and partly to the prohibitory duties imposed in
France on British produce, to 1800 tuns, whilst the popu¬
lation of the country had in the mean time greatly increas¬
ed ; a melancholy illustration of the effects of that illiberal
policy which pretends to improve commerce by prohibit¬
ing the free intercourse of commercial countries.
The minuteness of the Cadastral survey has led to of¬
ficial calculations in France, of products which have not
yet engaged the attention of other governments. Madder
is cultivated on a small scale, partly in the north, partly in
the south of France ; its chief use is in dyeing woollens and
cottons. Wood is used for yellow and green colours;
saffron, cultivated formerly to a great extent, is now con¬
fined to one district (the Gatinois) in the south of France ;
hops are raised only in Picardy and French Flanders.
Subjoined are the values of the following articles pro¬
duced annually in France:
Wine L.30,000,000
Raw silk  600,000
Hemp  1,200,000
Flax  800,000
Madder  200,000
Wood for fuel, and timber of all kinds  5,600,000
Olive-oil, rape-seed, and cole-seed  2,800,000
Tobacco  300,000
Chestnuts    300,000
L.41,800,000
Of the following articles, similar to the produce of our
own soil, we subjoin not the value merely, but the quan¬
tity and average price :
Wheat 
Rye and mixed corn (meteil).
Buck wheat 
Barley 
Peas and beans 
Potatoes (56,928,000 boisseaux)
Oats 
Maize and Indian corn, 
Wrool, Merino, 2,000,000 lbs. at Is. 8d. per lb; second quality, wetisse, 8,000,000
lbs. at Is. 3d; third, or common quality, 70,000,000 lbs. at lOd 
Quantity in
Winchester
Quarters.
18,508,000
10,886,000
3,022,000
4,520,000
646,000
11,524,000
2,265,000
Average
Price.
s. d.
41 8
27 10
14 0
23 2
41 8
0 101
20 10"
27 10
Annual Pro¬
duce.
L.
38,558,000
15,150,000
2,115,000
5,236.000
1,346,000
2,491,000
12,000,000
3,152,000
3,583,000
83,631,000
Of the pasturage ground of France, occupying one In the south, the natural pasture is confined to particular
eighth of its territory, the chief part is in Normandy, districts, chiefly mountainous; in the low grounds, the
Bretagne, and other humid quarters of the north and west, grass, whether natural or sown, is brought forward only
176 . . F R A
Agricul- by means of irrigation. Clover and sainfoin are cultivated
ture. in France, but chiefly in the north and north-east; lu-
cerne is much more general, being raised not merely in
the north, but in the central and southern provinces,
wherever irrigation is practicable and the soil and climate
are favourable. The art of improving cattle by breeding
is little understood in France, nor is there much judgment
shown in gradually fattening them by a removal to richer
pastures. Still the beef and mutton of the north and west
are very good; their price varies from province to province,
but very seldom from year to year ; the general rate is 30
per cent, less than in England. Butter is made and used
throughout the chief part of France, as in England, but
cheese comparatively little. In the south, however, even
butter is little known, and its place in cooking is supplied
by olive oil, an unwelcome ingredient to a northern palate.
One of the latest novelties in French pasturage is the
introduction, in 1819, of a large flock of Cashmeie goats,
which were sent to browse in the Eastern Pyrenees, and
are said to experience but little inconvenience from the
change of climate. ,
Horses. In the number of horses, as well as in their size and
beauty, France is greatly inferior to this country. In the
performance of labour, however, the inferiority is much
less conspicuous; large, old-fashioned carriages, drawn
by four or six horses, are seen proceeding along a paved
road much more easily than we should anticipate from
the weight of the vehicle, the knotted harness, and the
diminutive size of the animals. The same observation is
applicable to the ploughs, the carts, and the waggons of
France, which are awkwardly built, but all dragged on
with expedition, the strength of the horses surpassing the
promise of their appearance ; a strength, however, attend¬
ed by a circumstance of no slight inconvenience, very few
of these animals being gelded. A French mail-coach per¬
forms only five instead of seven or more miles an hour as
with us; but this is owing less to inferiority in the horses,
than to the state of the roads, and to the general want, of
dispatch at post-houses.
Of the aggregate of horses in France (about 1,500,000),
more than half belong to the northern provinces, viz. Nor¬
mandy, Bretagne, Picardy, Alsace, and the Isle of France.
In the central and southern departments, a great propor¬
tion of the work is done by oxen, which are more suitable
to petty farms and mountainous districts. Ihe total of
horned cattle in France in 1812 was reported officially as
follows:
Bulls 214,000 Cows 3,910,000
Oxen 1,702,000 Heifers 856,000
Since this period, however, the number must have ma¬
terially increased, as in 1816 a duty was laid on all foreign
cattle imported; and, however impolitic this duty, as in¬
deed it is known to have inflicted grievous injury on par¬
ticular districts, still it must have tended to increase the
breed at home.
Sheep. Sheep are reared in almost every province of France, the
gentle elevations of the north and the mountains of the
south being alike favourable to them. The mutton is good ;
but in the art of improving the fleece, the French have as
yet much to learn. Merinos were first brought from Spain
in 1787, and formed into a royal flock at Rambouillet. The
quality, originally good, has been progressively improved,
and distributions of Merinos have been successively made
to proprietors of sheep pastures in all parts of the king¬
dom. The consequence has been, that in many districts
the weight of the fleece has been nearly doubled. Still,
in the more backward parts of France, very little attention
is paid to the care of sheep or to the improvement of the
wool. The animals are not folded during night, but crowd¬
ed into covered buildings {bergeries), and exposed, parti¬
cularly in winter, to much injury from going suddenly in-
N C E.
to the air. To encourage the rearing of sheep, a duty of Agric
twenty per cent, was in 1822 laid on foreign wool. ture
Mules are almost as little known in the north of France
as in England ; but in the central and southern parts they
are very generally reared. Poultry, in France, is both
larger in size and more abundant than in England.
Even in the north and north-east of France, the farms Size of
are of small extent. To occupy 200 acres, or to pay a farms,
rent of L.200 a year, places one in the foremost rank of
farmers. Larger possessions are common in pasture dis¬
tricts, that department of agriculture admitting, in France,
as in England, of a greater concentration of capital and
extension of business than in the case of tillage. But
such districts are rare; and in by far the greater part of
France the farms under tillage, if farms they can be call¬
ed, are of fifty, forty, thirty, and often as small as twenty
or even ten acres, there being, it is computed, no less than
three millions of such petty occupancies in the kingdom.
In the south of France the system of metairie is still pre¬
valent, and nearly on the same footing as in Lombardy and
Tuscany. That such insignificant occupancies are adverse
to all enlarged ideas of farming, is sufficiently obvious;
and to their many disadvantages there can only be opposed
this single benefit, that no spot of tolerable soil is ne¬
glected, even the space given by us to hedges being re¬
served for culture.
The beneficial effect of long leases is as little under¬
stood in France as it still unfortunately is in a great part of
England. The common method is to let land for periods
of three, six, or nine years. The peasantry, though exceed¬
ingly illiterate, are by no means a slow or phlegmatic race.
They exhibit, as Frenchmen in general do, no small share
of sprightliness and activity in the individual, with very
little concert or combination in the mass. They are con¬
tent to hand down the family occupancy from father to
son, without any idea of altering their mode of life. The
dwellings of the farmers, and still more of the cottagers,
are like those of our forefathers half a century ago; the
outside having frequently a pool of water in its vicinity,
•whilst the inside is miserably bare of furniture. Their
implements are equally rude, and discover but too clearly
that the price of iron is beyond their reach, being greatly
enhanced by the duty imposed on foreign iron, and the
French iron masters having never been able to supply the
market in any quantity with this useful article. I heir
harrows have wooden teeth ; and even the ploughs, in some
backward districts, are almost entirely of wood. I he cart
in common use is an awkward medium between a cart and
a waggon, being as long as the latter, and not broader
than the former. The singularity, to an Englishman, is
to see a vehicle of great length and burden supported by
a single pair of wheels. Corn and hay, in France, are not
stocked, but housed. The winnowing machine is in a
great measure, and the thrashing machine altogether, un¬
known. Thrashing often takes place in the open air, and
is in general performed by the flail. In the south of
France, the antiquated mode of treading out the corn by
horses and mules is still prevalent.
The diet of the French peasantry is exceedingly simple.
Bread and cider, with soup, pease, cabbage, or other ve¬
getables, form its chief ingredients in the northern pro¬
vinces ; whilst, in the central and southern, the same ali¬
ments are in use, with the substitution of thin wine (yin
de pays) for cider, and of chestnuts for the pears and ap¬
ples of the north. Bread is, still more than with our pea¬
santry, the grand component part of diet, and the article
of which the price determines the comfort or distress of
the lower orders for the year. Butcher-meat is reserved
for the tables of the middle and upper classes. geIier
The landholders in France give almost no attention
whatever to beautifying the country ; its aspect is conse*tioM-
FRANCE.
^ricul- quently monotonous, without plantations, seats, or cheer-
I ire- ful cottages. The peasantry live in villages, frequently ill
built and ill situated. The purchase of land, however, is
eral the favourite mode of investing money in France. It sells,
obirv3- jn general, for twenty-five years purchase ; whilst the pub¬
lic funds seldom fetch above sixteen or eighteen. The
French have little confidence in government stock, and,
in fact, very little knowledge of its nature. There is at
Paris a society similar to the Board of Agriculture in
England, and forming, like it, a central point for corre¬
sponding with the different agricultural societies in the
kingdom. It holds its sittings twice a month, and a public
meeting annually, for the distribution of prizes. The
French have also (since 1819) a corn law, permitting im¬
ports and exports only when the home market shall be
above or below a specific rate. This law, somewhat simi¬
lar to ours in form, is materially different in its operation,
the limitation prices being very low, and the landed inte¬
rest in France having no power to create an artificial
enhancement. The Revolution, by breaking landed pro¬
perty into fragments, has destroyed the ascendency of its
owners as a separate interest. The members of the
French House of Commons are in general lawyers, mer¬
chants, or proprietaires, that is, owners of land and houses
on a scale which we should account very small. Even in
their House of Peers the country interest is of little ac¬
count. The chief difficulty the French government have
to contend with, in regard to the corn trade, is the popu¬
lar prejudice that freedom of export raises the home price.
The south of France, being in a great degree appropriated
to the culture of the vine and olive, stands in need of an
almost annual importation of corn. The north is very differ¬
ent; yet the smallness of the farms, the use of bread in
every meal of the day, and the want of agricultural capital,
are great drawbacks on exportation. In the present cen¬
tury, the only shipments of consequence have taken place
in 1810 and 1814, both years of unusual abundance.
WHs Of the 17,000,000 of acres which we have mentioned
amarests.as covered with wood in France, the proportion belonging
to government is about 3,700,000 acres. A very small
part of this is allowed to grow for large timber. The rest
is subject to an annual cutting and sale, for fuel; a purpose
for which coal is very little used in France, excepting in
the case of forges, glass-houses, and other large works. In
the government forests gross mismanagement took place
during the disorders of the Revolution. Extensive tracts
were sold for an insignificant consideration, whilst in those
that remained timber was felled with a lavish hand, and
without any regard to the ultimate effect on these valua¬
ble properties. The case, however, was altered in 1801,
when a special board, appointed for the care of the forests,
introduced the most satisfactory regulations. In the years
of financial pressure (1815, 1816, and 1817), it was pro¬
posed to effect sales of these great domains; but a fair
price being unattainable, government continues to keep
them, and derives from the wood annually cut and sold a
revenue of from L.700,000 to L.800,000 sterling. Fuel
being little wanted in the south of France, the forests are
Wi ani- confined to remote and rugged situations. These, like
ma most of the forests of the kingdom, harbour a multitude
of wolves, which are frequently destructive to the sheep
and lambs. Regular officers, called Lieutenants de Louve-
terie, are appointed for wooded districts; and on occasions
of heavy loss, recourse is had to a general battue, of which
the usual result is a partial destruction of these animals,
without any sensible reduction of their numbers at large.
Bears also are found in the forests; but they are much
more rare, being confined to the elevated districts in the
Alps and Pyrenees.
After these observations on the agriculture of France, it
remains to compare its produce with that of our own coun-
vol. x.
try, and this inquiry naturally divides itself into two parts;
the total, or, as it is termed, the gross amount produced;
and the nett income afforded, after all deductions for ex¬
pense of culture. First, as to the gross produce, Dr Col-
quhoun estimates the property created in Great Britain
and Ireland in the year 1812, by agriculture in all its
branches, at nearly L.217,000,000
Add for seed corn, not included in this esti¬
mate ; also for the increase of our po¬
pulation, and corresponding increase of
our produce from 1812 to 1820  33,000,000
L.250,000,000
Deduct for decrease in prices by the change
from war to peace, 25 per cent  62,500,000
Remains, L.187,500,000
The amount of property annually created by agriculture
in France is computed, by M. Chaptal, at L.190,000,000
This calculation w^as made in peace, and at
prices (see the preceding corn table) so
low that, to bring them to an equality
with our own, even in peace, we must
make an addition of  80,000,000
Together, L.270,000,000
Those readers who imagine that the addition for the
difference in the value of money is too large, have merely
to refer to the quantities of produce in the preceding com
table, or to the surer test afforded by the relative popula¬
tion of the two countries. Supposing that our population
is now increased to nineteen millions, that of Prance still
exceeds it by fully ten millions, a number which, were the
consumption of the individual the same, would imply, on
the part of France, an annual production of the value of
above L.280,000,000. If to this a small addition be made
for the French produce exported, our estimate will be
found to make the requisite allowance for the plainer fare
of Frenchmen ; and a small allowance will be deemed suf¬
ficient, when we take into account the very cheap diet of
the Irish part of our population. But the point to be ex¬
plained is, not how France produces so much, but how she
does not produce more. Britain and Ireland are to her,
in territorial extent, in the proportion of sixty-one to a
hundred; but in produce they are as sixty-nine to a hun¬
dred. But as the soil of France, if not superior, on an
average, to that of England and Ireland, is greatly su¬
perior to that of Scotland or Wales, to what are we to look
for the inferiority of her produce ? There are, we appre¬
hend, two main causes; first, the waste of large tracts in
wood; and, secondly, the inadequacy of manual labour,
largely as it is afforded by her dense agricultural popula¬
tion, to counterbalance the productive powers of the ca¬
pital and machinery applied by us to agriculture.
We come next to the question of the clear income aris¬
ing from land, the amount of which is seldom above a
fourth part of the gross produce, since it implies a num¬
ber of very heavy deductions, viz. the support of the far¬
mers, their families, their servants, their cattle; the mor¬
tality and depreciation of live stock; wages, and wear of
tools and implements; in short, every description of charge
that intervenes between preparing the ground for culture,
and realizing its produce in money. In regard to France,
we are enabled to proceed in such computations with con¬
siderable accuracy, in consequence of several late estimates
made by order of government, of which the highest, and
we believe the most accurate, made in 1815, gives, for the
clear return of the land, about L.52,000,000
To which adding, to bring the low prices in
the valuation to a par with our own  23,000,000
Total, L.75,000,000
177
Agricul¬
ture.
178
FRANCE.
Agricul- a sum, including not merely rent, but rent and farmer’s
ture. profit together. In England, our best authority for this
purpose is the return made under the property-tax act, in
1810, a time when our paper currency was but slightly
depreciated. This return gave, for England and Wales,
as rent solely, about L.29,000,000
Add for Scotland and Ireland, a computed
amount of.  11,000,000
tithe, poor-rate, and taxes of every kind, is equal to that Mines an(
of all France; a proof, if any were wanting, how much Quarries,
more our landholders are favoured by the legislature than
those of the same class on the south side of the Channel.
V. MINES AND QUARRIES.
LAO,000,000
Deduct for decrease of rent, increase of poor-
rate, and other burdens since 1810, 25 per
cent  10,000,000
Leaving, after payment of tithe and poor-rate,L.30,000,000
The collective income of the farmers of Eng¬
land and Wales, in 1810, was, like the
rent, about L.29,000,000, to which mak¬
ing a similar addition for Scotland and
Ireland, and a similar deduction for the
fall of prices and increase of burdens, the
result is a further sum of.  30,000,000
, In all L.60,000,000
In these returns of nett income the balance is consider¬
ably more in our favour than in those of gross produce.
In the one, Britain and Ireland are to France as sixty-nine
to a hundred, in the other as eighty to a hundred. To
what is this extraordinary disadvantage upon the side of
France to be attributed? We answer, to the employing
of manual labour instead of machinery, and to the very
great addition thus caused to the number of persons to be
supported out of the produce of the land before realizing
its proceeds. In England and Scotland the agriculturists
are not to the population at large as forty to a hundred;
and, after making a large addition for Ireland, which,
in its petty occupancies, bears no slight resemblance to
France, the result does not give, for our whole populat
tion, forty-four persons in a hundred dependent for sup¬
port on agriculture. But in France this proportion ex¬
ceeds sixty in a hundred; and there are thus to be sup¬
ported out of agricultural produce above 5,000,000 per¬
sons more than there would be were the proportion of
agriculturists as in Britain and Ireland.
s. d.
The average income of the whole kingdom, per
English acre, is, we have already said 9 1
But as this includes the rent of houses in towns,
there is to be deducted, on that account, a sixth,
or 1 6
Leaving 7 7
To which adding one half for the very low prices
in the French estimate 3 9
The result is 11 4>
per acre, valuing the produce according to the currency of
English markets. This comprehends both landlord’s rent
and farmer’s profit. There are at present no satisfactory
means of computing either separately; but if we suppose
them equal, the rental of France is only L.26,000,000
From which, by a single tax, the contribution
fonciere, a deduction is made of above 5,000,000
Leaving L.21,000,000
equal in England, after making allowance for
the difference of money, to 30,000,000
In other words, the rental of Britain and Ireland, after
allowing for the difference of money, and after deducting
Far from equalling her northern neighbour and rival
Great Britain in metallic wealth, France yields in this es¬
sential article of produce to Germany, to Russia, to Swe¬
den, and to Hungary. According to the most approved
works recently published, the mines of France may be
classed into five groups, namely, the mines of the Vos¬
ges and the Black Forest; those of the central provinces
of France ; those of Bretagne; those of the Pyrenees; and
those of the Alps-. It is not many years since the mines of
the Vosges yielded above 30,000 cwt. of lead, and a small
quantity of silver, besides copper mixed with silver. The
produce did not, it is probable, repay the expense, as
they have since been abandoned. In the central part of
France there are numerous mines of lead, but they are not
productive. They are chiefly situated in the department
of La Lozere; and they yield annually, along with the
lead, 1600 marcs of silver. The mines in Bretagne are of
some consequence, as they employed in 1828 about 900
workmen, and produced, along with about 1,200,000 cwt.
of lead, 2000 marcs or 16,000 ounces of silver. In the chain
of the Pyrenees there is only one mine of copper, which
has long since been abandoned. There are, however, nu¬
merous iron mines, which furnish materials for more than
100 forges. The chain of the Alps contains many mines
of iron, but is not rich in other metals, possessing some
unproductive mines of lead, and one of silver, which has
long been abandoned. There are some appearances of
gold in the department of the Isere; but not such as to
encourage any trial of their value. If there are few other
mines, those of iron are in great abundance, being scatter¬
ed throughout the country ; and of these the produce is
every day improving. The whole value of the metallic
produce of France was estimated in 1828 to be equal to
L.3,199,595. The number of mines is estimated at 500,
and the number of workmen employed at 18,000. The
working of mines is impeded in France by the want of
good roads and canals, on which to convey the ore and the
coal for smelting it. The production of iron has been en¬
couraged by heavy duties on foreign iron. In 1814 a duty
was imposed of fifteen francs per fifty kilogrammes, or 12s.
6d. per 110 lbs. imperial, on all foreign iron imported, which
was in 1822, including the decime or the tenth added to all
duties, raised to L.l. 2s. 1 Id. on all coal-worked foreign iron.
But this prohibition did not bring prosperity to the trade,
though by these duties the price of iron in France was L.23.
9s. 2d. per ton, whilst English iron was sold at L.9. 6s. 8d.
It is estimated that these heavy duties on foreign iron
cost the agriculturists of France, in the additional ex¬
pense of ploughs and other implements of agriculture, a
sum varying from L.l,500,000 to L.2,000,000 a year.1
Estimating the annual consumption of iron in France to
be 160,000 tons, and the difference of price between
French and English iron to be L.10 per ton, the law of
1814, which imposed a duty on foreign iron, and the law
of 1822, which increased that duty, cannot have cost the
French people less than L.30,000,000 sterling of direct
loss ; whilst it is scarcely possible to calculate the indirect
evil of this monopoly or protecting duty in favour of the
iron masters. One reason of the high price of French
iron is the want of coal, an evil which is aggravated by
the heavy duty on foreign coal, in consequence of which
they are compelled to employ wood in their forges; and it
✓V
1 See First Report on the Commercial Relations between France and Great Britain, p. 28.
FRANCE.
jftes and is calculated that one fourth part of the wood cut down in
Carries, forests is consumed in the manufacture of iron. Coal
'*~*~**/ has been discovered in more than half the departments of
the kingdom, and would doubtless be traced irt others;
but the want of water communication limits the consump¬
tion of this article almost to the place where it is produced.
At St Etienne, near Lyons, are excellent coal mines ; but
there being no iron mines in the vicinity, nor of course
iron works, there is no consumption of fuel on a large
scale. The coal is only used for domestic fuel, and for
the manufacture of hardware. M. Costaz, in an estimate
contained in his work on the agriculture and commerce
of France, makes the coal produced in France to amount
to 15,310,687 metrical quintals or cwts., equal to 765,000
tons;1 the value of which he estimated at between
L.700,000 and L.800,000. The quantity of coal imported
from Britain amounted in 1831 to 40,000 tons, though sub¬
ject to a heavy duty of one franc sixty-five cents per hun¬
dred kilogrammes, or Is. 4id. per 220 lbs. imperial; and
there were imported from Belgium, the duty being thirty-
three cents per hundred kilogrammes, 440,000 tons.2 The
heavy duty on coal operates most injuriously on the in¬
dustry of trance. It is a most serious impediment to the
working of the iron mines, for the encouragement of which
such heavy duties are imposed on foreign iron. But such
is always the effect of the prohibitory system. It pulls
down with one hand what it builds up with another. The
iron masters and the coal owners have each a monopoly
of the home market. But is it not clear that these two
monopolies run counter to each other, and that the iron
trade is encouraged by the one, whilst it is most seriously
discouraged by the other, and the whole inhabitants of
France are taxed in a much higher price for fuel by the
heavy duty laid on the importation of this useful article ?
Steam-boat navigation is also discouraged, so that no steam¬
boats regularly ply between any of the Atlantic ports of
France. A steam-boat which in England could be navi¬
gable at an expense for coal of L.2280, would cost in France
L.5700, about eighteen per cent, on the capital employ¬
ed. It is the owners of forest property who are the most
zealous supporters of this duty, an impost which benefits
them at the expense of the whole of France, and indi¬
rectly depresses the national commerce and industry in
its most important branches. Only a small portion of Pa¬
ris is lighted with gas, which is ascribed to the high price
of iron pipes; and the supply of water is also impeded by
the same cause. The mines, like other large undertakings
in France, are under the direction of government, being
superintended by a board at Paris ( Conseil General'), and
having an Ecole Royale with public teachers, the whole
under the control of the minister of the home department.
This, however, does not prevent their machinery being in
general very clumsy and antiquated.
I urf fit for fuel, or peat, as in Ireland, is found in vari¬
ous parts of France, and is likely to be used, as wood be¬
comes progressively scarcer. This article is produced in
the departments of Gard, Isere, and the Lower Rhine.
“ Salt is made in various parts of the kingdom. The
works corresponding to the salt mines, or rather to the
brine springs, of Cheshire, are called, from their position,
Salines de I'Est, and are situated at the small town of Sa¬
fins in tranche Comte; they are wrought by undertakers
on lease, yield about 20,000 tons a year, and afford a con¬
siderable revenue to government. The heat of the cli¬
mate on the south and south-west coast of France is fa¬
vourable to the evaporation of salt water, and consequent-
y to the formation of bay-salt, the name given to salt
179
made, not by the action of fire, but by the heat of the Mines and
sun, operating on sea water enclosed in a shallow bay (in Quarries.
French etang), so as to produce a saline deposit. The
duty raised from salt in France is in all nearly L.2,000,000,
a sum of great importance to the Treasury, but attended
with fully as much injury to the productive powers of
France as was formerly our salt tax to those of England.
The Revolution began by abolishing entirely the odious
gabelle, and salt being soon afterwards made in great quan¬
tities, and sold very cheap, became the object of a most ex¬
tensive consumption, being given to cattle as food, mixed
with manure on the fields, or scattered as a stimulant to ve¬
getation at the foot of olive trees. But this extended use
of salt was of short duration. No sooner was the power of
Bonaparte consolidated, than he ventured to impose a tax
on salt, less impolitic and oppressive, indeed, than the ga¬
belle, but which had the effect of limiting the use of this
article to such a degree, that the value of bay-salt consum¬
ed, instead of amounting to L.1,000,000 sterling, does not
at present exceed L. 100,000. The consumption is confined
to domestic purposes, and to a trifling export; yet the few
cattle which still receive salt as a part of their food are visi¬
bly in better condition than those which are deprived of it.
. France is in general much better supplied with quar- Quarries,
ries than England. The vicinity of Paris abounds in
quarries of freestone. The case is similar in the moun¬
tainous districts, and even in several, such as Lower Nor¬
mandy, that are comparatively level. The houses are
consequently built of stone in those cities which, like
Paris or Caen, are in the vicinity of quarries. In other
situations they exhibit a mixture of stone and brick.
Slates being comparatively rare, the roofs of the houses
are generally of tile, and the annual value of this rude
species of productive labour, the manufacture of bricks
and tiles, may be computed at nearly L.1,000,000 sterling.
There are marble quarries in several of the mountainous
districts, but not situated so as to admit of export.
VI. MANUFACTURES.
Our historical notices of French manufactures are very
imperfect until towards the year 1600, when the wars of
religion were brought to a close, and peaceful industry re¬
ceived encouragement from Henry IV. and his minister
Sully. It was then that the patronage of government
was extended to the manufacture of silk, o-f glass, of jew¬
ellery, of gold and silver tissues; also of the finer wool¬
lens and linens, the coarser kinds having been established
many centuries before. But the great extension of the
finer manufactures of France took place after 1668, du¬
ring the reign of Louis XIV. and the ministry of Colbert.
It was then that workmen were invited from Holland, and
induced to settle at Sedan and Abbeville, places still ce¬
lebrated for their woollens. In the south of France also,
establishments were formed for making the light cloth
suited to the Turkey market, so that, "towards the year
1700, the manufactures of France, as well for woollens as
other articles, had made considerable progress; we mean
that they had arrived at the state to be expected from a
people of great activity, but of little combination. The
manual labour of the workmen was ingenious ; the machi¬
nery extremely imperfect; the linen, the paper, and in
some measure the woollens and hardware, found their
way abroad, because in the rest of Europe these manu¬
factures were very backward, and, in particular, because
the exports of England were then very limited. The re¬
peal of the edict of Nantes was a very impolitic measure,
^ Histoire de VAdministration en France de 1'Agriculture, et des Arts utiles, &c. Par Cl. Anthelm Costaz, tome ii. p. 14.
First Report on the Commercial Relations between France and Great Britain, p. 23.
180
FRA
NCR
Manufac- but its consequences have been much overrated, for Eng-
tures. lanci iias profited very little by the extension of her silk
v^v'','wrabrics ; and Brandenburg, the chief resort of the French
emigrants, has never become an exporting manufacturing
country.
Another and a more important error is the current no¬
tion that French manufactures were formerly (from 1650
to 1750) more extensive and flourishing than at present,
also that they underwent an almost total extinction du¬
ring the Revolution. These, like many other impres¬
sions in regard to France, rest merely on the loose alle- Manufac,,
gations common in that country, where current report al- lures, i
most always partakes of the marvellous. Official data,
wherever they are preserved, far from sanctioning such
fluctuations, are decidedly in favour of a progressive though
slow increase.
To begin with the oldest and most widely diffused Woollen
branch, woollens,1 we find that the relative numbers ofmanufac.
workmen, at three distinct intervals, and in very different^6,
parts of the country, were as follows, viz.
Agjao
h
Eastern Pyrenees, Carcassonne 
Ditto, Limoux   
In Languedoc, St Afrique, and Rhodez
Ditto, Castres, Albi, and Mazamet.
North of France, Vire 
1789. 1800. 1812.
8,000 9,000
4,400 4,500 6,200
6,700 8,500 10,000
10,400 13,600 18,300
3,000 3,800 4,800
Lizieux also in the north had nearly the same number of
workmen (5000) throughout.
The finest qualities of woollens are made at Sedan in
Champagne, and at Louviers in Normandy. In these the
only material is merino wool. At Elboeuf and Darnetal,
both likewise in Normandy, the qualities are very various,
the prices being from 6s. to 28s. the English yard. Car¬
cassonne and Limoux owed the origin of their extensive
manufactures to the abundant supply of wool from the
pastures in the Pyrenees. Since the reduction of their
exports to the Levant, an alteration in the quality of their
cloths has opened to them a vent in the interior of France.
The mountainous districts in Languedoc contain great
numbers of sheep, and are the seat of the manufacture of
serges, tricots, and other coarse woollens, most of which are
made, not by workmen collected in a factory, but on the
domestic plan still followed in part of Yorkshire, and in the
north-west. In the hamlets or villages of the departments
of the Tarn and Aveyron, almost every house has its
loom, and during the evenings in winter, or in the day¬
time when the weather is adverse to country labour, the
women employ themselves in spinning, and the men in
weaving.
A highly finished species of the woollen manufacture,
viz. shawls, veils, ladies’ cloth, &c. has been introduced in
the present age into France. Rheims is the seat of this
important branch, and employs, in the town and neigh¬
bourhood, no less than 20,000 workmen. Similar articles
are made at Paris.
Shawls became fashionable in France as an indispen¬
sable article of female apparel after the expedition of Bo¬
naparte to Egypt. Many of the officers who were attached
to the army brought back numerous presents of shawls, so
those who did not display a Cashmere shawl were judged
to belong to the humbler classes of society; and shawls
were imported in great quantities from Constantinople,
Moscow, Vienna, and London. These shawls, however,
brought an enormous price when imported into France,
which necessarily limited their consumption to the richer
classes. The great demand now turned the attention of
manufacturers to this important manufacture, and ordinary
shawls are now made of merino and other wools. But this
was only a step in the progress of the manufacture ; and a
finer species of wool having been imported from the coun¬
tries to the north of the Caspian Sea, the ingenious manu¬
facturers with these materials at last produced shawls which
rivalled in beauty those of the East, and in which it re¬
quired the most practised and skilful eye to discern any dif¬
ference. In 1819 and 1823 medals were given to several
individuals for having brought this branch of industry to
such perfection.
Two towns very remote from each other, Lodeve in the <
south, and Vire in the north-west of France, manufactured, 1
under Bonaparte, very largely for the army. French wool- j <
lens are, in general, much thicker than ours. In the fine | I
qualities the raw material forms (Chaptal, vol. ii. p. 131) s
somewhat more than half the cost. In ordinary qualities (
it is somewhat less; but it is only in the slight qualities t
that the price of labour goes considerably beyond that of 1
the materials. The computation for the whole country is, i
that a value of L.4,000,000 sterling in wool becomes con¬
verted into a manufactured value of L.9,000,000, of which
a tenth only is exported; for, though French woollens in 1
general are more substantial and durable than English, the I
inability of their merchants to give long credit prevents
their competing with us in the United States, or other fo- t
reign markets. The cloth in France which corresponds i
to our superfine, and which is worn in general by the up¬
per ranks, is very fine and durable, but heavy. In price it
varies from 22s. to 35s. the English yard. It is remark¬
able, that notwithstanding an import duty of 33 per cent,
imposed in 1822 on foreign wool, the importation of British
wool into France has been increasing for the last ten years.
In' 1824 the quantity imported amounted to 4187 lbs.,
whilst in the last four years from the year 1834 the ave¬
rage importation has amounted to 1,000,000 lbs. This
duty on foreign wool has, however, been very injurious to 1
the French woollen manufacturers; because, by compel- I
ling them to pay a high price for the raw material, it pre- 1
vented them from manufacturing woollen cloth as cheaply a
as their English competitors, to whom the foreign market, f
where the raw material had now fallen to a low price, was i
open. One third of this duty has been since reduced. (
The cotton manufacture was introduced into France Cotton, 1
about 1770, and at first in the south of the kingdom; the s
raw material being supplied, not from America, but from f
the Levant. From the south, this manufacture passed, about s
the year 1780, to Rouen, St Quentin, Paris, Lisle, and other (
parts in the north, extending with a rapidity surpassed (
only by that of England. At present, and for many years |
past, the great import of cotton is from the United States.
In this great department of manufacture the French have i
only followed in the footsteps of Great Britain, whose ma- (
chinery, after the lapse of a certain time, the French ma- 1
nufacturers have imitated; and though they have equalled I
the British manufacture in durability, they have generally i
been inferior in elegance or cheapness. The last is, in a
great measure, owing to the centre of the manufacture be- j i
ing at Rouen and Paris, places where the support of work¬
men, including the extra price of fuel, is not less expensive
than in Lancashire. The districts at present most remark¬
able for the cotton manufacture are.
1 Costaz, Sur PAgriculture et let Manufactures de la France, p. 108.
FRA
tfarac-
tun-
Normandy, Rouen, and adjacent
towns 
Lyons and Tarrare 
French Flanders, Lisle, Cambray...
Paris and its districts 
Picardy, St Quentin, and adjacent
towns 
 Abbeville, Amiens, and their
vicinity 
Champagne, Troyes, and adjacent
towns 
Alsace, Mulhausen, Bischweiler, &c.
Looms in Workmen
1812. in 1812.
10,800
8,000
10,100
40,000
23,000
20,000
7,000
10,700
14,600
5,600
14,000
7,000
13,700
19,000
Cotton yarn is often made in a different place from cot¬
ton cloth. Paris and French Flanders are the chief quar¬
ters for the supply of the former article, which is sent in
quantities to Rouen, St Quentin, and other places. In
former years, cotton yarn used to be smuggled in great
quantities from England; but this is now limited to the
finer qualities. The cotton manufacturers of the more
substantial kind, called bonneterie, such as stockings and
caps, are carried on in Champagne, in Normandy, and in
the department of the Gard in Languedoc. The total num¬
ber of the workmen, young and old, employed on cotton
in France, appears to be about 200,000
The number of works for spinning cotton yarn
is nearly 300
Looms for making bonneterie (in 1812), above 10,000
Looms for weaving cotton cloth 70,000
From the following accounts of the raw material of cot¬
ton imported into France, it appears that this manufacture
is gradually extending.
Cotton Imported into France.
Lbs.
1822  47,459,306
1823  44,777,814
1824  61,666,187
1825  54,268,086
1826  72,411,886
Lbs.
1827  65,305,647
1828  60,225,358
1829  70,045,802
1830  64,372,952
1831  60,815,917
The average annual value of the importation of cotton
for the last five years is calculated by M. Costaz1 at about
L.3,700,000. The quantity of cotton imported into Great
Britain amounted, for the year 1831, to 288,674,000 pounds,
and the value, calculated at 7d. a pound, to L.34,000,000;
from which it will be seen to how much greater an extent this
manufacture is carried on in Britain than in France. The
cotton manufacture is, however, prosecuted in many parts of
France, and presents a great variety of fabrics and an exten¬
sive division of labour. In one place the weaving alone is
followed ; in other places the manufacture of threads, w hich
are sold to those who weave them into cloth. Such is the
case in the department of the North, which exports a great
quantity of thread to the cloth manufacturers. In other
places they bleach the linens, which are afterwards dressed
and stamped. The workmen employed in the cotton ma¬
nufacture are estimated to amount to 260,000.2 Still, how¬
ever, Franee is decidedly inferior to Britain in almost every
branch of the cotton manufacture ; and the consequence is,
that as the importation of English cotton goods is prohibit¬
ed, they are smuggled into the country in great quantities.
Among these, the introduction of cotton twist is most exten¬
sive ; and as the French mills cannot manufacture the higher
numbers, from 170 to 200, w hich are required in the fabri¬
cation of bobbinet, it has been found impossible to repress
the contraband importation of this article. “ It makes its
NCR
way,” say the writers of the Report on the Commercial Re¬
lations between Great Britain and France, “ both by land
and sea, in spite of all interdictions, and to a continually in¬
creasing amount.”* The English can be sold also at half
the price of the French article, which presents an addi¬
tional inducement to the smuggler. The annual value of
the manufactures "thus illicitly introduced is estimated at
L.500,000 sterling. English bobbinet is also smuggled into
France to the estimated annual value of L.625,000 ster¬
ling, which sells at from seven to eight per cent, above
the price of French goods of the same nominal quality.
Quiltings, cambrics, and muslins are also largely introduced
by the illicit traders ; and the delivery of these goods is
ensured at a premium of from eighteen to fifty per cent.,
according as the risk is greater or less in the case of heavy
or of light goods.
In the extent of her linen manufacture France is great-Linen,
ly superior to England ; not that her soil is better adapted
to the growth of hemp and flax, but because England de¬
pends on importations of linen from Ireland and Germany,
and the spinning of flax does not form the occupation of
our female peasantry. In France, particularly in the north,
every farmer, and almost every cottager, covers a little
spot with hemp or flax sufficient to employ his wife and
daughters in spinning throughout the year ; a stock of linen
being the usual dowry of these humble occupants of the
soil. The manufacture of this article is not exclusively
concentrated in the towns, like that of the other fabrics.
Many of the weavers reside in villages, and even in ham¬
lets ; and the hemp and the flax are spun by the hand. This
is a most valuable branch of domestic industry, which
gives employment to females under the roof of their pa¬
rents. But it is destined, in the progress of capital and in¬
dustry, to be superseded by machinery and great establish¬
ments, in which the poor of both sexes are collected to¬
gether under one roof, to the utter ruin of morality. In
Normandy, Lisieux, Dieppe, the neighbourhood of Havre,
Yvetst, Bolbec, and the more inland towns of Yimoirtiers
and Domfront, are all remarkable for one or more branches
of the linen manufacture. The more backward province
of Bretagne manufactures, at Rennes, St Malo, and Vitre,
quantities of coarse linen, canvass, and sacking; but An¬
jou affords a much superior article ; the toiles de Laval have
long been in repute, and give employment, in Laval and
the contiguous towns, to nearly 25,000 workmen. Lisle
and its populous district have very extensive manufactures
of hemp and flax; for the number of workmen so employ¬
ed, directly or indirectly, in this part of French Flanders,
is not short of 50,000. Since 1790, fine linen has, in France
as in England, been in a great measure replaced by fine
cotton ; and the two together employ, at St Quentin (in Pi¬
cardy) and the neighbourhood, no less than 40,000 work¬
men. In a very different part of the kingdom, the pro¬
vince of Dauphine, there are carried on linen manufactures
of various qualities, the prices being from Is. 6d. to 5s. a yard.
Cambrics, thread, gauze, and lawn, rank among the lead¬
ing manufactures of the north-east part of France. They
are made at St Quentin, Valenciennes, Cambray, and in a
smaller degree at Douai, Chauney, and Guise. Lace is still
more general, being made in quantities at Valenciennes,
Dieppe, Alen^on, Caen, Bayeux, and Argentan. Machi¬
nery had up to 1820 been very little applied to this manu¬
facture in France, and the number of women employed
by it was very great. There are considerable manufactures
of printed linens, and the dyeing of linen thread gives rise
to an extensive commerce. At Rouen, and in the surround¬
ing districts, this branch of industry is carried on; and many
s Costaz, L'Agriculture, et let Arts utiles, tome ii. p. 394, 395. * L'Agriculture, et les Arts utiles, &c., tome ii. p. 504.
bee 1‘irst Report of George Villiers and John Bowring on the Commercial Relations between Great Britain and France. Pre¬
sented to Parliament 1334.
182
FRANCE.
Manufac- stuffs of great variety, and for which there is a brisk demand,
tures. are produced. In 1822 the duties on foreign thread and
linen were raised by the French government till they were
nearly prohibitory ; and the annual importation from Ger¬
many and Belgium, which formerly amounted to a mil¬
lion and a half, fell almost entirely away. The price of
home-made linen rose twenty-five and thirty per cent.;
the consumers had recourse to cotton as a substitute ; the
French dyeing trade fell off, and also the entrepot trade in
foreign linens, both of them sources of great business.
The value of the hemp annually grown in France may be
computed, as a raw material, at L.1,200,000, the quantity
imported at L.200,000, together, L.1,400,000; a value which
is doubled in the coarse, and tripled in the finer manufac¬
tures. Of this quantity of hemp, the half is made into can¬
vass and thread, a third into cordage, and the remainder
into cloth for domestic use. Of the flax annually employed,
the value, as a raw material, is about L.800,000; a sum
which is tripled when made up into thread, linen, and mix¬
ed stuffs, and much more than tripled in the finer qualities.
Upon the whole, the value of the finished fabric from hemp
is supposed (Chaptal, vol. ii. p. 142) to be about L.4,500,000
That from flax, including lace  3,000,000
Add for the domestic manufacture of the pea¬
santry  2,500,000
Total value made in France, from the stout¬
est sail-cloth to the finest lace L.10,000,000
French linen differs in quality according to the place of
manufacture ; but in general it is thicker and stiffer than
Irish linen, whilst in whiteness it is inferior to the linen
of Flanders and Holland. It is, however, a substantial and
durable article.
Paper. This useful article is manufactured in great perfection
in France, and has been much improved since the era of
the Revolution, at which time the art had remained in much
the same state as it was when it was first invented. Sub¬
sequent to this period it has been improved in every stage;
and its annual produce is valued at above a million ster¬
ling. Various attempts have been made to reduce the
price of paper, by extracting the ink from paper which has
been printed or written upon, and converting it into the
raw material for a new manufacture. But it does not ap¬
pear that any of these processes have been brought to per¬
fection.
Hardware. France has 330 blast-furnaces, the position of which
is regulated by that of the iron mines. They are chiefly
in the mountainous departments of the Dordogne in the
south-west, and of the Haute Marne, the Haute Saone,
and the Cote d’Or, in the east of the kingdom. Of
forges for malleable iron, called forges d la Catalane, there
are eighty-six scattered throughout different departments,
but chiefly in the hilly part of Languedoc. There are
also a number of wire-works in France, in which, as in
the blast-furnaces, there has been since 1790 a progres¬
sive but very slow increase, altogether different from
the rapid advance of the iron-works of England previously
to 1815. The stationary character of these works has
evidently been owing to the deficiency of fuel and of wa¬
ter communication ; disadvantages which prevent the hard¬
ware manufactures from being concentrated in cities or
populous districts, and cause them to be spread over the
country in petty towns or villages, with a very limited di¬
vision of labour, and a consequent inferiority of execution.
The result is, that France does not export hardware, and
that in nothing is the inferiority of domestic accommoda¬
tion in that country more conspicuous than in articles
which belong to the province of the locksmith and cutler.
The amount of pig-iron annually made in France appears
(Chaptal, vol. ii. p. 154) to be about 100,000 tons. The
value of the hardware of the kingdom, including cutlery,
arms, and other articles of nice workmanship, is computed Manufa,
at L.8,000,000 or L.9,000,000 sterling. Fine cutlery is, tures,
however, largely smuggled into France. The annual im- ''■■’Yv
port of iron and steel is only from L.2,000,000to L.3,000,000,
having greatly declined in consequence of the heavy im¬
port duty on it. The high price of iron is a great obstruc¬
tion to the progress of the hardware manufactures; and
this circumstance places in a strong light the impolicy of
the heavy duties on foreign iron, by which all those impor¬
tant branches of industry in which iron is used are stunted
in their growth. In copper, the importations greatly ex¬
ceed the home produce. From Great Britain the quantity
imported for the last ten years has increased from 200 to
20,000 hundredweight. Of lead, also, the chief part is
imported. The manufacture of steel has only been lately
introduced into France. Prior to 1786 there was no ma¬
nufactory of this useful article; and it was only after ac¬
counts had been published by scientific persons, of the com¬
position of that article, and after repeated experiments,
that in 1809 manufactories of steel were established, which
have been since extended to several departments, especial¬
ly to those of the Loire.
The invention of these wonderful machines has been in- Steam*
troduced into France from Britain, where they are nowgines.
employed in every department of industry. It was in the
year 1779, at the village of Chaillot, near Paris, that the
first steam-engine was established in France; but, owing to
prejudices, to attachment to old customs, it was long before
it came into very general use. These prejudices, however,
gradually faded away before the productive powers and
manifest utility of this extraordinary application of science
to the business of life, and there are now many establish¬
ments for the manufacture of these machines. A premium
has also been offered for the invention of any expedient by
which the danger of explosion may be prevented, or by
which any saving can be effected in the consumption of
fuel. The scarcity of coal is a great obstruction to the ex¬
tensive use of steam-engines ; and the tax on foreign coal
is in this view peculiarly impolitic, and injurious to the ge¬
neral interests of the community.
In this department France possesses, both from physi-SiUc.
cal causes and from long-established manufacture, a decided
superiority. Mulberry trees were introduced in the fif¬
teenth century, and wrere first planted, not in the south,
but in the central part of the kingdom, near Tours. That
town was the seat of the earliest silk manufactures, and it
wras not till 1600 that the culture of the mulberry was car¬
ried southward. It is now prosecuted in twelve depart¬
ments, which, in 1812, produced as follows (Chaptal, vol.
i. p. 181):
Silk in Cocoons.
Lbs.
Indre et Loire 35,500
Allier 6,300
Ain 12,500
Loire 35,500
Isere 1,847,000
Ardeche 2,737,000
Drome 1,502,000
Silk in Cocoons.
Lbs.
Brought over...6,175,800
V aucluse 2,200,000
Card 1,710,000
H6rault  486,000
Mouths of the
Rhone  873,000
Yar  210,000
6,175,800 11,654,800
The importation of raw and thrown silk into Great Britain
amounted, in 1832, to 4,224,897 lbs.
The mulberry thrives in a variety of soils, and may be
planted with success in neglected borders or in waste lands.
The labours of the silk-worm last only six weeks, after
which the cocoons are in a state to be purchased for wind¬
ing or carding. These processes reduce the quantity so
much that the produce of an average year does not exceed
560,000 lbs. sole greze, worth 20s. or 21s. the lb.; and
322,000 lbs. organized silk at 25s.
FRANCE.
183
To this is to be added an equal quantity of foreign silk,
imported chiefly from Italy. The cost of manufacture
nearly doubles the value of the raw material in the plainer
qualities, and in the highly finished, such as fine ribbons,
may be said to triple it.
heat: r.
State of the Silk Manufacture in 1812.
Looms.
Tours  320
Gange in Languedoc (stocking looms) 922
Avignon  1600
Nismes  4900
St Chammond and St Etienne, to the
west of Lyons ; ribbons chiefly  8200
Lyons 10,700
Workmen.
960
1000
5000
13,700
15,450
15,500
The manufacture of silk is considered as an important
branch of French industry, not only on account of the va¬
riety and beauty of the fabrics, but because the raw mate¬
rial is an indigenous product of the country. It is esti¬
mated1 that the amount of the annual sales to foreigners is
thirty millions of francs, or L. 1,250,000 ; that the home
consumption of the kingdom amounts to L.3,333,334; and
that the whole annual value of the silk manufacture is equal
to L.4,598,889. The export of silk manufactures from
Britain amounted, in 1832, to L.529,990. The manufac¬
ture of silk is not confined to any particular spot. It is
carried on in different parts of the country, in all of which
it diffuses prosperity. It has enriched the poor of Nismes,
of Avignon, and of Tours; St Chamond, St Etienne, owe
a great part of their prosperity to the manufacture of rib¬
bons, and the town of Ganges to bonneterie ; Paris derives
immense profits from her manufactures of silk stockings, and
other fabrics, either of silk or with a mixture of silk, or of
wool and cotton. Silk is also the great staple manufacture
of Lyons, in which it is carried on in all its branches with
prodigious success; and since the Revolution, in addition
to fabrics of silk, all sorts of stuffs mixed with silk, and with
cotton and wool, have been manufactured; and to these ma¬
nufactures Lyons is indebted for its riches, having risen
not only to be the second town of France, but to be one of
the most opulent and flourishing cities in the world. It is
estimated that about 60,000 or 70,000 individuals, young
and old, are supported by the silk manufacture in Lyons
and the adjacent district. The dyeing of silk being an im¬
portant branch of the manufacture, many experiments were
made to bring it to perfection ; and, in particular, a dye of
perfect black, that would retain its colour, was a desidera¬
tum. This dye was invented by a common dyer at Lyons,
who received a pension, besides being made a member of
the legion of honour. Prior to this, the black dye which
was used changed in a few days to a brown, and came off
the stuff when it was hard pressed by the hand. Another
improvement which was made consisted in procuring a silk
of a permanent white colour. The eggs of the worm which
produced this silk were brought from China, not, however,
with the desired success. The worm was afterwards pur¬
chased from a merchant of Alais, and being distributed in
the northern departments of the country, the produce of
white silk is now very considerable, and is of great impor¬
tance in the manufacture of gauzes, crapes, and tulles.
Other inventions were devised for saving labour in the
various stages of the silk manufacture, by which, in this
branch of industry, France was long enabled to outstrip all
her neighbours, though of late years the silk manufacture
has made rapid advances in Great Britain.
Articles of leather are in France cheaper by a third than
m England. The value of leather annually prepared for
sale in France is (Chaptal, vol. ii. p. 187) nearly L.3,000,000
sterling; when made up into articles, as boots, shoes, sad- Manufac-
dles, harness, its value is nearly double. Great improve- tures.
ments have been made in the art of tanning, in conse-
quence of the progress of chemical science.
Jewellery, as well as watch and clock making, are car- Jewellery,
ried to a considerable extent in France, particularly at Paris; porcelain,
a time-piece is there a much more frequent article of orna-&c-
mental furniture than in England, and the number of new
watches made annually in the kingdom is not less than
300,000 ; altogether, the value of these different kinds of
workmanship amounts to L.1,500,000, of which more than
the half is made in the capital. The works in bronze be¬
long still more particularly to the capital, and form in their
different branches and stages, of which gilding is the chief,
a further annual value of L.1,500,000 sterling.
Paris is remarkable for other fabrics of taste and luxury;
in particular, the porcelain of Sevres, near St Cloud, and
the beautiful but very expensive tapestry of the Gobelins.
The materials of the latter are silk and the finest woollen
thread; the subjects woven into the work are taken from
paintings executed on purpose. Both the establishments
have been long conducted by government at a sacrifice,
and both are now on a reduced scale, the articles being far
too costly for private individuals. The latter are more fre¬
quently purchasers of 'passementerie, by which is understood
artificial flowers, fringes, gold and silver lace, with a variety
of trifling but tasteful articles, all sufficiently adapted to a city
where so much more is thought of display than of utility.
The value of all the soap made in France is computed at Soap.
L.1,400,000. The main ingredient is olive oil; and Mar¬
seilles was formerly the seat of this manufacture for almost
all France; an advantage owing both to the extent of the
olive-grounds in the south-east of the kingdom, and the
vicinity of Marseilles to Italy, the Levant, and Spain,
whence soda and olive oil were imported in vast quantities.
The disorders of the Revolution, and the establishment of
similar manufactures in other parts of France, have caused
to Marseilles the loss of a third of its soap works ; they are
still however very extensive. Of the oil used in France, Oil.
whale oil forms a very small proportion; the great supply
is of vegetable oil, viz. that extracted from the rape and
cole-seed of the north, and the olive oil of the south. The
collective value of these is very considerable, not short
(Chaptal, vol. i. p. 186) of L.3,000,000 sterling, almost all
consumed in France, where lamps instead of candles are in
very general use.
Beer, formerly little drunk in France, has become of ex- Liquors,
tended consumption since 1790; but even at present the
quantity used does not exceed L.2,000,000 sterling, its
place being supplied by cider in the north, and by wine
in the south. The consumption which corresponds to that
of our home-made spirits, and in a great measure to that
of our rum, is in brandy, of which the value annually made
is between L.2,000,000 and L.3,000,000 sterling. Fur¬
ther, there are at Paris a number of establishments very
recently formed for the singular purpose of distilling from
potatoes a spirituous liquor, which (Chaptal, vol. ii. p. 197)
has been generally approved, and has been brought into
competition with brandy.
Of hats, an article which in France is made more durable, Lesser ma-
but much less light and pleasant than in England, the maim- nufactures.
factures, formerly concentrated at Lyons and Marseilles, are Hats-
now diffused throughout several towns ; and the value annu¬
ally made is about L. 1,000,000 sterling. Perfumery is made
extensively in the south, where, from the mildness of the
climate, aromatic plants are abundant. Paper being exempt
from the heavy duties of England, is sold in France upon
very reasonable terms, whilst in quality it is equal to our
1 See Costaz, Sur rAgriculture et les Manufacturer de France.
FRANCE,
184
Manufac- own. The value annually used in printing, in writing, and
tures. in the hanging of rooms, is computed at fully L.1,000,000
sterling. Of glass, the manufacture has been much im¬
proved and extended during the present age. Whether
for mirrors, for windows, or for bottles, this article in
France is good and of a moderate price. The number of
glass-houses in 1818 was 185, and the value of their manu¬
facture L.900,000. As to earthenwrare, it is only since 1790
that English pottery has been successfully imitated in
France. It is now made to the value of L.200,000 or
L.300,000, whilst the coarse earthenware, fabricated in
almost every province of the kingdom, is computed at
L.600,000.
Saltpetre, till lately a monopolized manufacture, is now
unrestricted, and is made to the value of somewhat more
than L. 100,000 annually. Sulphuric acid has, since the
beginning of the present century, been greatly lowered in
price and increased in quantity; its annual manufacture
representing a value of nearly L.300,000. Muriatic acid is
used in whitening linen and cotton, and is made to an annual
value of L.100,000. Soda is manufactured in France to the
value of L.100,000; copperas L.100,000; alum L.250,000.
Sugar. The manufacture of sugar from beet-root was introduced
into France during the war with Great Britain, when the
coasts of France being blockaded by the enemy’s superior
fleets, the importation of foreign articles, and among others
that of sugar, was rendered dangerous and difficult; and its
price was so high as entirely to preclude its consumption
by the middling classes in society. Various articles were
resorted to as substitutes, such as honey, the juice of rai¬
sins, &c. But they were not relished by the taste of the
people; and in this case experiments were tried by emi¬
nent chemists to extract from beet-root the sugar which it
contained. These experiments were successful, and there
are now more than 200 establishments, from which were
produced annually 7,480,000 lbs. of raw sugar. After the
peace of 1814 this manufacture fell into discredit, especi¬
ally under the now free competition of West India sugar.
But in 1826, by new experiments, and more perfect machi¬
nery, it was found that sugar could be extracted from beet¬
root, and sold at a moderate price with a profit; and the
quantity manufactured in 1829 amounted to 13,200,000
lbs.,1 and in 1832, according to a statement made by M.
Costaz,2 to 12,000,000 lbs.
Labour in Paris is as much dearer relatively to the pro- Man ft.
vincial towns of France, as labour in London is relatively to tur^
those of England. It still remains for us to remove from
our capital some manufactures which have been most inju-
diciously established there ; but the French have carried °*)Sera
this false calculation much further, Paris being the centretl0ns'
not only of ornamental fabrics, such as jewellery, bronze,
sculpture, cabinet-making, but of a number of coarser em¬
ployments, which a very slight change of plan might trans¬
fer to a cheaper quarter. There are at Paris periodical
exhibitions of French manufactures held once in three or
four years, at which are present the king, the princes, the
nobility, and all eminent men of science. There is also in
that capital a Conservatoire des Arts et des Metiers ; a collec¬
tion, on a large scale, of models of all instruments or ma¬
chines that relate to arts and manufactures.
It is more the practice also in France than in Britain to
encourage ingenious inventions in the mechanical arts,
by premiums and honorary marks of distinction. Yet, with
all these advantages, industry has not made the same pro¬
gress as in this country. The truth is, that profit derived
from the utility of the invention itself is the great stimulus
to industry ; and the inventor of any new improvement in
manufactures, by taking out a patent, and obtaining the mo¬
nopoly of his invention for a term of years, is sufficiently
rewarded, provided the invention be really useful by sav¬
ing labour, and thus enabling its contriver to bring a
cheaper article of equal quality into market.
To prescribe the mode of manufacture was formerly a
favourite course with government in England as in France.
From the time of Colbert (1660) the French ordonnances
prescribed peremptorily the length and breadth of serges,
of druggets, in short, of every kind of cloth calculated for
export, under the plausible idea that all these precautions
were necessary to establish a reputation for quality. It
is a curious fact, that these rules were desired by the ma¬
nufacturers themselves, and were long considered as the
safeguard of French industry. A change was introduced
in 1779, and permission given to every manufacturer to
fdllow his own method, provided he distinguished the
goods thus made from those which were in conformity
with the regulations. But this was of very short duration.
The power of habit and prejudice prevailed. New ordon¬
nances, issued the succeeding year, revived the former
limitations ; and the manufactures of France were not put
on an unrestricted footing till the Revolution. Much in¬
convenience had also been sustained from the absurd law
which prevented a workman from settling in business in
any town excepting that in which he had served an ap¬
prenticeship. This law was abrogated in 1767.
The manufacturing industry of France is confined, far
more than ours, to the home market, whether we look to
the supply of the raw material, or to the export of the
finished articles. Her imports are large only in cotton
and silk; in wool and iron they are not considerable;
whilst in flax, hemp, and leather they may be termed in¬
significant. In exports the limitation is still more strik¬
ing, her hardware, her linen, her woollens, her cotton,
her leather, and, in a great measure, her silk, being con¬
fined to the home market; a restriction owing partly to
our manufacturing superiority, but more to the capital of
our merchants, and their ability to give long credit. The
productive industry of France is consequently much less
subject than ours to sudden fluctuation. It tbllows near¬
ly the same routine year after year. On the occurrence
of a war, or other political change, the commerce and ma¬
nufactures of our neighbours, to borrow a phrase of Tal¬
leyrand (Letter to Mr Fox, 1st April 1806) se replient sur
Summary of the computed Value of Goods annually manu¬
factured in France.
Woollen manufactures, fully L.9,000,000
Cottons, nearly  8,000,000
Hardware  9,000,090
Canvass, linen, lace, cambric 10,000,000
Silk, nearly  5,000,000
Leather  6,000,000
Jewellery, watches, clocks  1,500,000
Bronze  1,500,000
SoaP  1,400,000
Spirituous liquors  2,400,000
Beer    2,000,000
Cider and perry (wine reckoned under agricul-
ture)  2,000,000
Hats  1,000,000
Starch and perfumery  1,500,000
Baper  1,000,000
Glass  900,000
Earthenware and pottery  800 000
All lesser manufactures   13,000^000
Total L.76,000,000
* See Costaz, Histoire de VAdministration de VAgriculture en France, tome ii. p. 458.
. . ostaz was lately president of the Chamber of Commerce at Bordeaux, and is now, 1834, governor of the Bank of France.
FRANCE.
n)mi\e,eux-memes. Need more be added to show the error of
&c.. those who maintain that, half a century ago, her manu¬
factures were of great amount; that they were almost en¬
tirely suspended by the Revolution, and indebted for their
subsequent revival to the exertions of the government?
The fluctuations, at no time of great amount, have related
chiefly to the export trade, and owed their origin to the
general hostilities of 1793.
An analysis of the causes of success in manufacture is
instructive, as showing that excellence, where it exists, is
the natural result of specific causes, and by no means a
consequence of that general superiority, the belief of which
is so dear to the vanity of every nation. The individual
talents of workmen in France and England may fairly be
considered on a par; the quickness and activity of the
French being counterpoised by their volatility and want
of adherence to a given object. The leading advantage
of their manufactures is solidity, arising from the compara¬
tive cheapness of labour and raw materials. Flence the
durability of their woollens and silks; and hence also the
cheapness of their paper and leather. The points of infe¬
riority are much more numerous, but may be almost all
traced to one cause, an imperfect division of labour. In
England, the facility of water communication may be said
to unite several towns into one, facilitating the division of
employment, and overcoming the disadvantages of a se¬
parate and remote position ; but in French towns, instead
of the inhabitants limiting themselves to a few manufac¬
tures of kindred character, there prevails a habit of en¬
deavouring to make every thing on the same spot. Lyons,
Rouen, and Lisle, are populous cities, and entitled to rank
with Manchester, Glasgow, and Leeds; but there must end
the parallel; for St Etienne forms a poor counterpoise to
Sheffield; and Birmingham, with several of our other towns,
is without a rival. In short, it may be assumed generally,
that, in a French town of equal size, the work, both of ma¬
nufacturers and of artisans, is, even in the case of ingenious
individuals, much less nice and accurate than in England.
VII. COMMERCE, COLONIES, FISHERIES, SHIPPING.
In no country in Europe has trade been laid under such
galling restrictions as in France ; and it is remarkable that
this system of restriction has in a great measure been the
creation of modern times. The ancient legislation of France
was rather friendly to foreign trade. It encouraged impor¬
tation in preference to exportation. This latter privilege of
export was in 1577 claimed by Henry III. as his royaf and
seignorial right; and he regulated by his ordonnances the
export duty on a variety of articles, whilst the produce
of foreign countries was admitted on payment of an ad
valorem duty of two per cent. Louis XIVI introduced a
sort of navigation act, by which he levied a tax of fifty
sous on all foreign ships. In 1667 further restrictions
were introduced; and in 1687 the exclusive system was
established in its full rigour. Tier statesmen seem to
have imagined that a flourishing commerce could be
created by legal authority, and that domestic industry
could only be encouraged by the exclusion of all fo¬
reign competition ; and hence all the vices and obsolete
maxims of the mercantile system will still be found in the
commercial policy of France. The extension of the re¬
strictive system was promoted by the authority of Col¬
bert, a minister who, though he introduced order into
the finances, and improved in many particulars the system
of taxation, and was indeed a great master of detail,
I adopted the most erroneous maxims of commercial legis-
lation. It is justly observed, in the masterly Report of
ilhers and Bovvring on the commercial relations be-
j tween Great Britain and France, that the “ whole of the
bounties by which he induced adventurers to enter into
vol. x.
remote speculations, as well as the excessive duties which
he' imposed on cheaper foreign articles, were almost un¬
compensated sacrifices ; while, on the other hand, of the
manufactures which he transplanted into France, and
which he protected by the exclusion of rival productions,
scarcely one took permanent rootand even those which
he intended to support by special encouragement would
all of them have been more prosperous, but for the regu¬
lations with which his mistaken zeal retarded the progress
of manufacturing industry. His whole system was an at¬
tempt to regulate by law what would have been better
left to the sagacity of individuals, and to give an artificial
direction to the national capital. Thus he encouraged
a trade to the West Indies by granting a bounty of 25s.
on every ton of goods exported, and of 41s. 8d. on every
ton imported. He boasted of setting up 40,000 looms
by virtue of legal enactments, without considering that
the capital employed in these establishments would have
taken a more natural direction, and been more profitably
employed, but for his interference. The restraints also
which were thus laid on domestic industry were often
enforced by the despotic authority of the government.
Many of the absurd and pernicious regulations of Colbert
were broken down by the French Revolution ; but others
remained, and the tariff of 1791 was from beginning to
end a system of prohibition, the object of which was to
encourage the home manufacturer by freeing him from
the intrusion of all foreign competitors. It must be con¬
fessed that the trade of Great Britain was originally re¬
gulated by the same narrow views, and is still shackled
in many of its important branches. Indeed it is unde¬
niable that Britain set the example of illiberality; and it
was no wonder that the French legislature of that day
should be jealous of a country which excluded her silks
and cambrics, and laid a discriminating duty of thirty-three
and a half per cent, on French wines; and whose parlia¬
ment, under the reign of William III., declared the trade
with France to be a nuisance. These views, however,
have been now abandoned by all British statesmen. The
commercial treaty concluded with France in 1786 by Mr
Pitt, was the earnest of a better system ; and since this
period the legislators of this country have been impressed
with the injurious tendency of all commercial restrictions;
and they have been labouring strenuously to emancipate
the national industry from those fetters in which it has
been too long bound. But in France the progress of im¬
provement has been slower, and it has besides been re-
tarded by political events. The long and sanguinary war
wAed between Great Britain and France subjected the
latter to the maritime hostility of her powerful opponent,
the consequence of which was, that her trade was inter¬
rupted with foreign countries, and the supply of many
of their staple articles of produce greatly diminished, and
of course raised enormously in price. It became a great
object, in this case, to produce these articles at home ; and
thus, in addition to the existing restraints upon the impor¬
tation of foreign manufactures, special encouragements
were given to the production of articles for which neither
the soil nor the climate of France was peculiarly fitted.
And thus when the maritime blockade of France was raised
by the peace of 1814, her industry had, partly from an¬
cient and mistaken maxims, and partly from the pressure
of war, received a very artificial direction, and was op¬
pressed by the most ruinous and complicated restrictions.
At the restoration of the Bourbons in 1814, the tariff of
1791 was the law of the land in commercial matters. It
had undergone a few modifications, but these were all
mostly in the restrictive and prohibitory spirit, and were
accommodated to the hostile position which France occu¬
pied in regard to surrounding nations ; and when the bar¬
rier to a free intercourse with foreign nations was at length
2 A
185
Commerce,
&c.
186
FRANCE.
Commerce, thrown down by the peace of 1814, the exclusive provi¬
de- sions of the tariff of 1791 were brought into full opera-
ytion, and it was then found that when the obstacles to
her commercial intercourse with foreign nations raised up
by the war were withdrawn, a no less effectual line of ch-
cumvallation had been drawn around her commerce by
the restrictions and prohibitions of her own erroneous po¬
licy. It is remarkable, indeed, that a committee of the
Chamber of Deputies, in reporting on the budget in 1832,
enter into an exposition and defence of the restrictive
system, the principle of which is to encourage domestic
industry by the exclusion of the cheaper and better ma¬
nufactures of foreign nations. The fallacious and narrow
views, the loose reasonings, and the gross mis-statements of
facts, especially where a reference is made to the commer¬
cial policy of Britain, is far from evincing on the part of this
committee either diligent research or legislative wisdom.
The tariff of 1791 either excluded from France, or laid
under heavy duties, almost all the great staple manufac¬
tures of other countries. Manufactured iron in every shape,
manufactured steel, copper, tin, cutlery, and all articles
manufactured from any of the metals ; all fabrics of wqol,
cotton, silk, or tissues of hair, saddlery, spirituous liquors,
grain, refined sugar, tobacco, toys, and various other in¬
considerable articles, are included in this magna charta of
domestic commerce. The weakness, the inconsistency, and
the various fallacies on which this system is founded, are
so well exposed in the Report of Villiers and Bowring, to
which we have already alluded, that we subjoin the passage,
which, though somewhat long, is replete with instruction.
“ It requires merely to state some of the objections to
importations, in order to show their narrow and anti-com¬
mercial spirit. The introduction of manufactured tin, for
example, is opposed because it might benefit England,
which is rich in tin mines, as if the importation into
France could take place without equally benefiting her.
The reasons, too, which are grounded on the superiority
of other countries; as, for example, ‘ dangerous rivalry’
in the case of manufactured steel; ‘ cheapness’ of foreign
article in the case of shipping ; threatened ‘ annihilation
of the French manufacture’ in that of cutlery; ‘ extra
advantages of the English’ in plated ware ; ‘ apprehension
of the English’ in articles of pottery; ‘ imprudence of ad¬
mitting English saddlery,’ as so many persons, regardless
of price, prefer it; ‘ advantages of machinery’ in works of
iron; all are modes of announcing the superiority of the
foreign articles, and the power which foreigners possess
of supplying them on cheaper terms than they can be pro¬
duced at home.
« There are other grounds of prohibition by which par¬
ticular French manufactures are avowedly sacrificed to
the interest of other branches of French industry. The
importation of extracts of dye-woods is disallowed for the
purpose of encouraging the importation of the dye-woods
themselves; the interest of the dyer, the manufacturer,
and consumer, being wholly forgotten. The importation of
iron of certain sizes is prohibited, lest small manufacturers
should establish fabrics, and supply the markets at a less
cost than the larger establishments. Woollen yarn is not
allowed to be imported, because it can be produced in
France, though the high price must be a great detriment
to the woollen manufacture; and cast iron of a great va¬
riety of sorts is prohibited, on the ground that a sufficien¬
cy may be obtained at home, though the cost is notorious¬
ly more than double that of many articles of foreign cast
iron. Molasses are not allowed to be introduced, because
the price in France is so low, and the exportation so large,
on the ground that importation will lower the prices still
more, though the lowness of price would obviously make
importation unprofitable ; and the fact of considerable ex¬
portation is the best evidence that the average prices are
low in France. Rock salt was prohibited in 1791, ai   
the prohibition is now justified on the ground that mines
have lately been discovered. The prohibition of refined Wv
sugar is supported on the ground that its admission
would not benefit the treasury; but it is clear, if the in¬
terest of the treasury were kept in view, that all prohibi¬
tions would be suppressed, or superseded by a system of
duties. While some articles are prohibited because the
production is small in France, and requires protection,
others are prohibited (dressed skins, for example) be¬
cause the production is great, and engages a large num¬
ber of hands.”
There is another branch of the French legislation regard¬
ing commerce, and of the legislation indeed of most other
commercial countries, which is equally exceptionable with
the prohibition to import foreign manufactures; namely, the
system of drawbacks and bounties on the exportation of do¬
mestic produce. Having by special encouragements created
a surplus of certain articles at home, and which the high
price prevented from being sold to foreigners, the public
were called upon to pay the difference between this high
price and the price abroad; and thus they were taxed, by
the exclusion of the foreign article, in a higher price for
what was consumed at home, and also taxed for all that
was consumed abroad, in the bounty which was paid on
the exportation of the article. This is a double iniquity,
which has of late years gone on increasing in France. In
1817, the whole amount of what was conceded on this ac¬
count amounted to L.3500 per annum, whilst in 1830 it
amounted to L.600,000, nearly one fifth of the nett amount
of the whole custom-house revenues of France ; and as it
was going on progressively, it might soon have absorbed
the whole custom-house income, without in the least
benefiting, but rather injuring, the general interests of
commerce. During the first nine months of the year
1832 premiums or bounties were paid to the amount of
24,448,375 francs, or L.1,018,682.
The commerce of France, obstructed by these restric¬
tive duties, has not made the same advances as her agri¬
culture and manufactures. The internal produce of every
country necessarily increases with its population ; and the
inhabitants of France having increased, since 1780, from
24,800,000 to 33,000,000, must produce as well as con¬
sume more. But in the mean time her commerce has not
kept pace with this increase in her population. The
value of the imports into France amounted in 1787 to
631,790,700 francs, or about twenty-five millions sterling,
and engaged 888,868 tons of shipping; and her whole
imports only amounted in 1830 to twenty-five and a half
millions sterling, and employed 1,009,454 tons of ship¬
ping, which is far from being an increase corresponding
to her augmented population. The foreign commerce of
England was, in the year 1787, about seven millions less
than that of France, or about eighteen millions sterling,
and employed 1,349,419 tons of shipping. Her population
was nine millions. In 1830 her foreign trade had increased
to L.69,700,748, including L.17,127,764 to the colonies,
which employed 2,860,515 tons of shipping. Thus, whilst
the official value of the commerce of England has nearly
quadrupled, and her shipping nearly doubled, not aboveone
fiftieth part has been added to the foreign commerce of
France ; a fact which strongly illustrates the pernicious in¬
fluence of monopolies in damping the energies of individual
enterprise, and thus obstructing the national prosperity.
The following is a brief sketch of the trade of kranee
with other countries. ,£
The corn, the hemp, the flax, the tallow, which form™1
such important articles of export from the north of Europe 1
to England, are comparatively unnecessary to trance.
Their timber and pitch are imported there, but the quan¬
tities required by a people where ship-building is so limit-
\t
imp
FRANCE. 187
naWtt^ed are necessarily oflittle consequence. The further ar- tedious land carriage, or by a still more tedious river na-Commerce
&c. tides of import are iron, copper, lead, salt, fish, all like- vigation. Here are no canals to facilitate the conveyance &c.
wlse on. a scale. The returns from trance are no of bulky commodities; all proceed in a slow routine, ex-
longer in the sugar and coffee, which, before the Joss of cepting horses and horned cattle, which are imported into
St Domingo, furnished an annual export to the north of France in considerable numbers, and made to travel with
fully two millions sterling. They are limited to wine and expedition. In regard to the Netherlands the case is
brandy, luxuries of which the consumption is confined to different. With them there is an easy communication by
a few large towns, such as I etersburg, Hamburg, Stock- sea, and, as far as regards French Flanders and part of
holm, and Dantzick. Picardy, a still more easy communication by means of ca-
With Germany, at least with the centre and south of nals. The following table presents a view of the trade
Germany, the exchanges of France are carried on by a between France and the Netherlands in 1830.
Articles.
Value of Arti¬
cles for Home
Consumption.
Raw hides 
Wools 
Silk 
Leaf tobacco 
Wood 
Mats and straw plaits 
Coal 
White lead 
Indigo 
Hempen and flaxen thread..
Sheep 
Cows 
Oxen and bulls 
Cheese 
Grain 
Stuffs of hemp and wool 
Other goods 
Total.
Francs.
2,170,931
1,808,174
401,465
420,399
3,103,913
339,136
7,661,243
172,865
2,966,839
5,966,241
628,672
1,559,140
608,520
1,949,111
3,125,419
12,029,238
14,374,219
59,285,525
Articles.
Wines 
Spirits 
Dry fruits 
Tanned skins 
Stuffs and thread....
Clocks and watches.
Mercery 
Linen and clothes...
Bricks 
Madder 
Other goods 
Total.
Value of French
Goods Exported.
Francs.
3,686,854
766,546
422,531
606,568
17,255,943
514,162
833,280
523,880
95,359
886,835
10.986,742
36,578,7001
From Holland are imported spirituous liquors, spices,
butter, cheese. The returns from France consist chiefly of
wine, silks, brandy, and dried fruit. When the Nether¬
lands were subject to France, this intercourse was very
active; but since 1814 it is much impeded by restric¬
tions on both sides.
From Italy France imports raw silk, corn, rice, olive oil,
and fruit, chiefly lemons, oranges, figs, and raisins. The
returns, various in kind, but small in quantity, consist of
wine, brandy, cattle, woollens, linen, leather, hats, stock¬
ings, jewellery, glass, hardware. From the Levant, the
imports, though less than formerly, still consist of raw
silk, cotton, wool, corn, dried fruits; the exports, manu¬
factured silks, woollens, stockings, and, in a small degree,
hardware, paper, liqueurs, linens, lace. With Spain the
intercourse is more extensive: the exports from France
consist of corn, flour, salt fish, wine, brandy, also woollens,
cottons, silks, leather, linen, lace, hats; all articles which
have passed through some process of manufacture, and
bear testimony to the industry of the French. The
Spaniards, on the other hand, true to their character, make
no returns except in produce and raw materials, viz.
wool, silk, fruit, sweet wines, along with some iron and
copper. With Portugal the trade of France is not con¬
siderable, the staple products, wine and brandy, being the
same in both countries.
Were congeniality of feeling, either in an individual or
a national sense, the regulator of commerce, the inter¬
course between the French and Americans should be
great; for no nations ever sympathized more cordially
with the sufferings of each other, or were more decided in
ascribing them to the aggressions of England. But a mu¬
tual want of capital restricts the connection. The Ame¬
ricans require long credit, and to give credit exceeds the
means of the French. The cotton, tobacco, and rice of
the United States are paid partly by wine and brandy,
but in a very slight degree by manufactures. This branch
of trade will increase with the population and wealth of
the United States; and this appears to be the case, as the
tonnage employed has increased from 30,793, its amount in
1820, to 95,818, its amount in 1830. The most ready means
of extending French commerce would be with England ; a
country of customers whose activity supplies them with
the means of giving in exchange a number of useful com¬
modities. At present the intercourse is more considera¬
ble than with almost any other country; but a partial re¬
duction of the custom-house duties would extend greatly
the mutual trade of the two countries. England would
supply France in greater quantities with imports, con¬
sisting of cottons, hardware, earthenware, copper, tin,
coals, &c.; whilst a corresponding increase would take
place in the French exports, of which the staple articles
are wine and brandy, the smaller silks, olive oil, fruit, but¬
ter, poultry, and, when our laws allow, corn and butcher-
meat. In the importation of the produce of the soil from
France, our course would be clear and direct, our climate
not admitting of the growth of the vine, the olive, or the
mulberry; but, in regard to manufactures, it is a matter
of nicety to say in what articles an exchange would take
place, our late improvements in machinery counterba¬
lancing the cheap labour of France in several branches,
such as lace, in which our competition would formerly
1 Firtt Report on the Commercial Relations between France and Great Britain, p. 133.
188 FRA
Commerce,have been hopeless. It is evident, however, that there
would be a series of varied and extensive exchanges, not
so much perhaps in distinct articles, as in different quali¬
ties or shades of quality in the same article or branch of
manufacture. These exchanges are necessary for com¬
pleting assortments in shops, in warehouses, in shipments;
and their extent would be such as to be comprehended
only by those who are familiar with the endless ramifica¬
tions of manufacture, or who are aware of the striking
exemplification of this truth, afforded by our intercourse
with France in the auspicious interval between the com¬
mercial treaty in 1786 and the rupture in 1793.
Trading The chief commercial business of Paris is necessarily
towns." inland ; but it is the centre of exchange transactions for
France, foreign as well as inland; as London is for Eng¬
land, and Amsterdam for Holland. Havre de Grace is
the channel of the maritime intercourse of the capital,
N C E.
the outlet for its exports, and the medium through which Comme-,;
it receives colonial produce, raw materials, and foreign &c.
manufactures. Bordeaux is a sea-port of great activity, as
well for the exportation of wine and brandy, as for the im¬
portation of sugar, coffee, and cotton. Marseilles, a larger
but a less bustling city, continues the emporium for the
trade with Italy and the Levant. Nantes has suffered
greatly by the loss of St Domingo, as well as by the abo¬
lition of the slave trade, of which it was the centre. It
still exports to Martinique and Guadaloupe, linen, hard¬
ware, printed cottons; and, like Bordeaux, receives in re¬
turn sugar, coffee, and raw cotton. Rouen, though acces¬
sible to vessels of burden, is, like Lyons and Lisle, chiefly
remarkable for manufactures.
The following tables will be found to contain, from offi¬
cial documents, a comprehensive view of the value and
extent of the commerce of France at different periods.
Statistical Table of the progress of Trade between France and other Nations, from the year 1716 to the 1st January 1830.
Years.
1716—1720
1721—1732
1733—1735
1736—1739
1740—1748
1749—1755
1756—1763
1764—1776
1777—1783
1784—1786
1787
1788
1789
1797
1798
1799
1800
1801
1802
1803
1804
1805
1806
Imports into
France.
Francs.
65,079,000
80,198,000
76,600,000
102,035,000
112,805,000
155,555,000
133,778,000
165,164,000
207,536,000
301,727,000
631,790,700
577,570,000
636,540,000
369,331,000
309,235,000
289,656,800
351,330,394
434,472,177
492,692,856
500,040,592
510,538,773
548,422,457
531,558,442
Exports from
France.
Francs.
106,216,000
116,765,000
124,465,000
143,441,000
192,334,000
257,205,000
210,899,000
309,245,000
259,782,000
354,423,000
445,301,300
466,380,000
441,220,000
225,538,000
253,801,000
300,690,375
271,575,605
303,245,000
339,120,607
373,468,506
411,067,287
400,783,338
464.810,280
Years.
1807
1808
1809
1810
1811
1812
1813
1814
1815
1816
1817
1818
1819
1820
1821
1822
1823
1824
1825
1826
1827
1828
1829
Imports into
France.
Francs.
418,284,811
421.382.663
357,803,500
384,776,700
445,016,600
410,293,400
316,067,000
275,402,300
229,736,692
310,706,409
451,498,766
469,255,945
396,844,774
473,012,159
520,753,362
612,140,466
562,359,670
699,143,705
785,046,460
738.205.663
752,853,324
815,778,396
764,828,678
Exports from
France.
Francs.
384,639,709
341,386,672
340,605,400
376,619,600
338,017,800
430,471,300
359,794,100
375,615,800
404,592,976
617,925,194
447,833,761
603,760,998
504,631,923
593,145,249
581,458,665
441,637,685
497,252,537
523,733,741
801,942,180
735,154,920
642,254,598
638,494,196
666,393,227
189
Commerce,
&c.
Turkey
Prussia.
Russia.
Two Sicilies.
Mexico.
FRANCE.
Trade and Navigation of France with Foreign Nations, continued.
Sweden and Norway <
Brazils.
Tuscany and the Ro- <
man States 
Years.
1825
1826
1827
1828
1829
1830
1831
1825
1826
1827
1828
1829
1830
1831
1825
1826
1827
1828
1829
1830
1831
1825
1826
1827
1828
1829
1830
1831
1825
1826
1827
1828
1829
1830
1831
1825
1826
1827
1828
1829
1830
1831
1825
1826
1827
1828
1829
1830
1831
1825
1826
1827
1828
1829
1830
1831
Imports.
Francs.
20,297,374
24,420,069
17,182,247
12,115,522
22,275,136
24,006,532
12,263,389
15,252,556
15,596,731
15,058,888
23,015,586
21,153,395
21,223,000
17,020,143
15,281,195
14,983,075
13,657,575
17,011,860
18,655,420
41,819,755
18,567,663
15,044,807
12,134,981
21,326,952
14,297,237
11,062,198
21,311,695
25,816,895
2,925,297
4,025,163
11,736,648
27,472,243
21,571,880
16,484,738
8,864,196
20,748,193
14,124,647
10,401,380
10,103,416
11,691,293
11,652,074
8,927,834
11,257,971
9,861,625
10,604,524
14,646,813
13,601,768
16,468,014
7,661,246
12,681,625
9,130,356
11,187,587
14,523,170
14,616,941
14,246,550
6,974,575
Exports.
Francs.
11,803,574
9,452,496
11,120,228
8,154,744
9,639,428
13,463,760
12,075,478
NAVIGATION.
Commerce
&c. ’
Ships.
Imports. Exports
No.
99
101
62
53
116
104
50
9,650,275
6,160,882
6,379,267
7,11.7,637
7,716,089
8,490,068
12,075,478
9,052,813
6,527,525
9,185,795
8,416,598
10,076,519
9,440,779
6,297,178
13,430,483
10,257,540
8,113,497
7,723,957
9,321,390
9,458,856
7,339,155
18,398,756
14,307,476
15,068,348
9,992,017
9,734,072
23,226,747
20,353,235
3,098,323
3,306,559
2,901,458
2.908,763
3,344,794
2,538,722
2,249,504
10,491,401
9,439,088
11,463,708
12,973,047
13,922,451
11,905,011
5,801,424
7,642,551
7,063,777
8,455,967
10,989,185
8,938,556
9,486,706
10,517,422
155
241
197
303
322
249
55
152
222
171
209
249
395
148
234
232
202
180
192
329
355
18
26
25
35
40
37
30
637
839
660
712
687
695
489
60
57
60
53
56
69
37
539
516
497
491
400
444
422
Tonnage of Ships.
No.
84
112
69
64
95
97
49
55
63
50
58
55
73
48
103
104
107
110
119
96
74
165
178
136
142
162
139
173
63
51
44
39
40
43
29
245
339
329
378
291
261
168
62
61
76
137
125
81
47
473
369
481
613
417
319
304
Imports.
No.
16,683
16,181
10,760
8,882
17,015
17,811
10,252
21,160
43,581
37,424
49,289
52,505
49,226
10,734
29,496
40,203
30,843
34,878
40,895
77,036
35,171
32,285
33,986
37,530
33,962
36,523
64,027
71,729
3,732
5,302
5,294
8,270
9,981
9,330
7,389
91,482
129,572
100,655
113,480
117,778
116,639
83,611
13,710
12,409
13,543
11,866
12,129
14,951
9,205
31,687
30,111
34,206
29,670
23,333
26,934
20,967
Exports.
No.
16,164
18,998
13,054
9,379
15,522
18,241
10,709
7,417
9,157
7,955
9.129
9,282
10,729
7,049
18,272
17,967
19,742
] 9,294
20,268
15,878
13,531
27,381
29,679
25,011
25,545
29,172
21,583
32,447
11,086
10,246
9,501
9,613
9,576
10,217
6,838
34,207
48,167
47,570
56,253
42,271
29,274
24,701
14,683
13,500
16,874
27,097
27,699
18,932
10,711
27,453
21,309
24,804
34,498
23,900
18,896
17,230
Ship’s Crew.
Imports.
No.
1,041
1,040
669
576
1,253
1,182
700
1,116
2,020
1,731
2,411
2,544
2,271
512
1,597
2,195
1,659
1,979
2,240
4,165
1,891
2,434
2,762
2,487
2,187
2,326
4,073
4,796
223
322
326
556
611
538
473
5,169
7,052
5,534
6,082
6,072
6,077
4,312
771
793
800
708
721
860
552
4,059
3,964
3,941
3,656
3,029
3,394
3,100
Exports.
No.
930
1,175
823
619
1,119
1,093
654
383
461
393
452
454
493
368
989
923
909
1,034
1,078
857
703
1,898
2,041
1,637
1,639
1,972
1,553
2,517
710
636
599
583
584
613
435
2,086
2,654
2,636
3,178
2,412
1,844
1,351
864
704
999
1,596
1,561
1,019
577
3,596
2,773
3,452
3,307
3,039
2,430
2,319
Cormerce,
FRANCE.
Trade and Navigation of France with Foreign Nations, concluded.
NAVIGATION".
Years.
English East In¬
dies 
Spanish Islands
(Cuba)  
Hanseatic Towns.
1825
1826
1827
1828
1829
1830
1831
1825
1826
1827
1828
1829
1830
1831
f 1825
1826
1827
1828
1829
1830
1831
Egypt-
Hayti.
1825
1826
1827
1828
1829
1830
1831
Barbary States •<
Peru.
1825
1826
1827
1828
1829
1830
1831
1825
1826
1827
1828
1829
1830
1831
1825
1826
1827
1828
1829
1830
1831
Imports.
Francs.
195,134
8,777,038
9,546,924
16,321,986
19,459,898
17,224,132
16,651,390
9,034,783
8,326,368
9,563,228
7,911,009
10,167,162
9,716,422
4,931,563
6,755,230
8,034,230
6,403,090
9,594,209
12,027,183
9,773,574
4,076,541
6,459,474
7,458,445
9,708,756
7,537,809
2,842,315
5,730,352
7,850,138
5,552,242
6,410,051
7,812,498
6,949,534
5,143,755
5,625,804
3,774,173
5,912,180
4,603,595
7,732,215
5,568,223
3,455,899
52,306,046
2,069,786
3,777,065
3,839,719
9,423,889
1,244,489
1,409,242
3,266,389
2,386,971
Exports.
Francs.
3,726,196
4,867,285
6,590,974
9,451,593
7,246,838
3,416.663
2,210,482
11.500,453
10,206,094
9,957,266
10,197,858
9,958,079
5,565,371
5,355,052
11,790,683
11,124,649
12,856,111
15,919,619
13,095,614
12,940,679
12,091,879
Ships.
Imports.
No.
6
10
11
13
24
15
21
60
64
•72
68
85
65
39
Tonnage of Ships.
Ship’s Crew.
Exports. Imports.
No.
8
11
18
27
25
9
13
9,235,425
5,267,585
4,702,227
2,983,161
8,427,994
3,355,659
2,169,419
9,887,657
5,392,018
9,593,206
4,069,917
6,309,243
3,712,936
2,426,855
8,112,937
4,346,242
4,520,315
3,702,539
3,973,474
7,970,101
1,927,388
69
97
83
164
338
140
78
69
59
82
70
61
28
33
Exports.
No.
1,834
2,882
4,448
4,165
7,297
5,228
6,582
12,927
14,002
15,890
13,930
18,233
14,169
8,447
67
82
89
50
26
42
46
52
72
63
62
39
43
35
187
204
165
305
189
186
160
44
60
61
31
31
26
41
7,497
10,242
9,596
17,913
29,128
15,847
9,245
No.
2,298
4,160
6,315
7,140
8,282
3,120
5,012
15,268
12,829
17,802
14,226
12,876
6,455
7,392
Imports. Exports
No.
110
165
285
265
486
323
381
843
865
913
854
1,067
823
518
5,854,168
9,596,334
6,819,448
8,505,661
9,910,587
4,317,855
1,351,265
95
69
140
72
21
146
26
64
43
64
36
41
27
21
92
63
90
37
34
143
40
14,461
15,552
19,719
10,566
4,846
8,742
9,090
9,191
13,145
12,352
11,996
7,548
8,724
6,818
25,646
30,520
23,979
31,192
25,622
27,006
23,254
8,966
13,580
16,379
6,410
8,193
5,241
8,430
7
10
10
2
3
2
16
11
14
11
13
7
1
1
10,267
8,004
14,441
8,670
2,735
21,582
2,960
2,052
2,764
2,923
523
872
502
3,725
11,542
7,948
12,665
6,860
7,675
5,527
3,933
457
627
606
1,097
1,879
995
566
No.
143
258
348
506
493
183
272
926
803
1,070
866
776
388
432
820
908
1,078
583
274
487
517
11,705
7,697
10,625
5,061
4,373
20.225
4,408
2,968
4,119
3,173
3,430
1,684
175
223
603
825
755
727
457
509
390
1,341
1,568
1,243
1,606
1,365
1,395
1,294
521
808
1,105
363
556
282
490
756
498
760
424
482
326
235
814-
595
1,101
674
218
1,506
264
132
154
195
34
54
34
217
1,364
540
805
385
347
1,505
332
234
264
216
235
128
14
14
191
Commerce,
&c.
192
Commerce,
&c.
FRANCE.
The following table contains a view of the trade between France and Great Britain.
Importations into Franco from England^ and Exportations from France to Eupland^ in the \tar 1830.
Commerce, i
&c.
IMPORTATIONS.
Articles.
Horses  heads
Raw hides  lbs.
Wools  value
Flair for horses and
spinning  lbs.
Thrown silk  ~
Tallow  ~
Spermaceti  -
Whalebone  -
Elephants’ teeth, tor¬
toise-shell, and mo-
ther-o’-pearl 
Grains gallons
Rice  ~
Seeds  lbs.
Cocoa   
Colfee  ~
Pepper  ~
Peruvian bark  ~
Indigo  ~
Dyeing and cabinet¬
makers’ woods  lbs.
Cotton  ~
Hemp  ~
Grindstones  piece
Coal  lbs.
Iron  ~
Copper.....  ~
Lead  ~
Tin  ~
Arsenic  ~
Potash  lbs.
Rough saltpetre  ~
White lead  ~
Acids  -
Woollen stuffs 
Silk stuffs 
Paper  „
Straw hats  pieces
Mats  yards
Files, rasps, and
utensils  lbs.
Machinery  value
Carriages 
Anchors  lbs.
Mercery  „
Furniture  value
Curiosities  ^
Precious stones 
Quantity.
522
290,703
53,704
7,241
1,639,641
141,982
245,153
3,049
2,569,534
9
229,243
44
705
469
2
2,350
423,836
46,390
152
6,525
112,764,983
13,616,844
2,301,607
451,045
740,205
121
367,166
61
136,983
158,420
14,604
12,914
83,362
3,269
7,103
154,077
431,567
24,893
Value.
L.7,620
5,346
59,236
38,968
7,037
16,359
6,181
15,564
810
71,491
13
8,237
10
119
6
938
1,539
1,598
2
2,610
30,677
53,900
84,612
3,681
26,854
3
3,996
1,714
5,030
5,563
25,782
9,244
1,873
3,378
8,989
45,095
15,076
7,828
6,126
1,718
1,418
60,144
EXPORTATIONS.
Articles.
Horses  heads
Sheep 
Oxen  -
Provisions  lbs.
Furs  value
Feathers  lbs.
Butter  ~
Eggs  ~
Corn and flour  ~
Dry pulse  ~
Chestnuts  ~
Seeds F" sowinS “
(others 
Volatile oils  value
Corkwood  lbs.
Flax 
Madder 
Oilcake 
Salt 
Cream of tartar 
Verdigris  ~
Perfumery  ~
Wines gallons
Brandy 
Pottery  lbs.
f empty bot-
Glass-] ties gallons
others  lbs.
Linen & 1 r
, f linen 
hempen >- , •
cloth -
Woollen cloth 
Silk stuffs  ~
Cotton stuffs 
Felts  pieces
Paper and works in
paper  lbs.
f tanned and
Skins -1 curried 
^chamois 
Straw hats  pieces
Basket work  lbs.
Plated ware 
Clock work 
Mercery 
Millinery  value
Furniture 
Beds, linen, and
clothes 
Curiosities  ~
Toys   lbs.
Carriages  value
Leather  lbs.
Articles of Parisian
industry 
Other articles 
Quantity.
407
7,914
2,757
377,620
8,233
219,153
7.662.811
607,792
62,798
338.209
5,446,260
5,401,914
285,391
2,755,415
3.745.812
3,335,718
1,673,455
279.210
77,949
81,865
605,916
1,972,932
313,748
214,409
593,675
49,239
93,312
65,406
279,312
39,580
9,437
420,341
279,933
117,563
17,196
88,037
41,420
93,867
66,253
13,541
104,251
Value.
L.5,776
4.862
22,056
6,403
6,591
3,123
5,367
111,202
1,834
284
1,533
124,109
59,678
4,248
6,212
29,893
63,070
3,671
910
8.863
3,131
10,802
235,169
361,125
18,589
11,773
6,750
13,750
270,828
79,907
608,175
13,429
1,382
48,613
19,042
11,196
8,276
2,056
7,513
41,157
10,045
12,706
10,261
29,304
11,322
2,968
353
69,381
15,191
96,905
FRANCE.
193
Oormerce, currency of France consists chiefly of gold andsil-
& ver, in which the main payments are effected, and of cop-
per coins for the smaller sums. It appears that from
Cwfcy. 1803 to 1814 there were coined, with the effigy of Napo¬
leon, at the different mints, of which there are thirteen
in France, in gold to the value of L.22,001,018, and in sil¬
ver to the value of L.36,992,502. From 1814 to 1828,
the amount of the coinage was L.17,081,635 in gold, of
twenty and forty franc pieces; and in silver the amount
in pieces of five francs down to five sous was L.36,996,560,
bearing the effigy of Louis XVIII. and Charles X. On
the above data, the amount of circulating specie in the
kingdom was estimated on the 1st of January 1828 at
2,713,731,183 francs, equal in value to L.113,072,132 ster¬
ling. The gold and silver currency, prior to the Revo¬
lution in 1789, was estimated at L.87,500,000 sterling.
We can scarcely, however, draw any positive inference
from the quantity of gold and silver coined in France,
respecting the amount of the specie actually circulating,
as within the last seven years the exportation of coin, with
a liberality that is rather at variance with the ordinary
policy of France, has been freely permitted. The coinage
of France has accordingly become an article of trade;
and bullion and coin have been freely exported or import¬
ed, according to the necessities of commerce. For the
ten years preceding 1830, the quantity of bullion import¬
ed has exceeded the quantity exported by L.39,089,667,
as will appear from the following table :—
1820
1821
1822
1823
1824
1825
1826
1827
1828
1829
1830
IMPORTS.
Francs.
109,872,796
126,311,000
185,961,210
200,531,428
244,282,108
251,424,068
173,477,051
68,869,081
208,101,075
148,475,281
220,947,754
1,938,252,852
Francs.
89,742,053
176,694,082
56,468,976
106,498,106
83,191,840
134,648,066
174,642,151
31,471,931
28,571,562
58,574,584
59,597,474
1,000,100,825
Rinlfcf
Fran.
This bank, which is the city privileged bank in France,
received its charter in 1803 for fifteen years, which was
afterwards extended in 1818 to the year 1845. It is
under the direction of a governor, named by the king,
with a salary of 100,000 francs a year. It has, besides, two
deputy-governors, and a general council of eighteen di¬
rectors ; also a separate council for the discount depart¬
ment, composed of twelve members chosen from among
such of the shareholders as are merchants. This bank
issues notes of the amount of 1000 and 300 francs, which
are payable in specie at the will of the holder. Its capital,
which consists of 67,900 shares at 1000 francs, making a
total of 67,900,000 francs, is employed in discounting bills
of exchange, in making advances of money in government
securities, and in deposits of bullion or foreign coin, dia¬
monds, shares in public companies, at the rate of one per
cent, per annum. No less than the value of 10,000 francs
is received as a deposit, and discount for forty-five days
is deducted from the amount of the sum advanced; nor,
if the deposit be redeemed the next day, is any part of
the discount refunded. The paper of the bank of France
chiefly circulates in Paris and the neighbourhood; at a
distance from Paris its notes pass at a discount of one and
a halt per cent., as they are not received in payment of
VOL. x.
taxes or custom-house duties in sea-ports ; so that remit- Commerce,
tances to Paris must be made in cash, for which a charge &c-
of five per cent, is made at the post-office: the dividend '-''Y''—'
of the bank on each share has been thirty francs half-year¬
ly, or at the rate of six per cent, per annum. A surplus
fund, which has accumulated, has been, in consequence of
the reiterated demands of the shareholders, put in a course
of distribution ; and in the year 1831 two entire dividends
were made of fifteen francs and six francs per share, be¬
sides two other payments, under the name of a bonus of
reserve, the one amounting to seven francs fifty centimes,
and the other to three francs, per share. The balance of
the reserved fund amounted in 1830 to 6,974,398 francs,
which would give a further bonus of 146 francs 95 cents,
on each share ; and for the purpose of authorizing the dis¬
tribution of this sum, a law was passed in December 1831.
By this law the bank is bound to hold a third part of its
profits in reserve, after paying the regular dividend of six
per cent, per annum. The circulation of the bank varies
from 214,000,000 to 240,000,000 of francs. In the com¬
mencement of the year 1831, it held commercial bills to
the amount of 75,000,000 of francs, which by its cautious
or timid policy was reduced towards the end of the year
to 23,000,000, the greatest reduction which it had expe¬
rienced for the previous fifteen years. The diminution of
discounts occasioned a corresponding rise in its stock of bul¬
lion, which was increased from 103,000,000 to 266,000,000
francs. Saving banks, caisses depargne, have been lately
introduced at Paris.
Land carriage in France costs only from 2s. to 2s. fid. Fairs,
per cwt. for a hundred miles; a cheapness which facili¬
tates the transport of merchandise to the various annual
fairs which are still held in every great town in the king¬
dom, exactly as was done by our forefathers a century
ago. This periodical routine begins by \hefoire de Long-
champs, which is held annually at Paris in spring, and is
followed by a long list of provincial fairs, of which the
chief are those of Beaucaire in Languedoc, and Guibray
in Normandy.
The weights and measures of France were reduced, as Weights
is well known, to a very simple and uniform scale, soon and mea-
after the Revolution ; but there has been much difficulty sures-
in accustoming the inhabitants, particularly in country
districts, to the adoption of the new system, which un¬
luckily preserved none of the names with which they
were familiar. In 1812 a kind of compromise took place,
government sanctioning the retention of the old names,
such as pounds, ounces, ells, and bushels; but requiring
that their contents should be calculated by a reference to
the new standard. It is, accordingly, on this footing that
business is now transacted in France. The new weights
and measures are, in general, larger by a fraction than the
old, and the use of the latter is prohibited by law.
The colonial possessions of France are quite unsuited Colonies,
to her greatness in other respects. The insurrection en¬
gendered by the Revolution deprived her of the western
half of St Domingo, a rich and beautiful territory, contain¬
ing formerly more negroes, and exporting more produce,
than all the British West Indies together. The French
government seems to have relinquished the hope of re¬
gaining this country, at least by military means, and
to limit its ambition to the remaining colonies, Marti¬
nique, Guadaloupe, Cayenne, in the West Indies. The
first two are, like most of our West India islands, culti¬
vated to a considerable extent, but capable of much im¬
provement. The petty island of Marie Galante is in a si¬
milar state ; but Cayenne forms a part of a most extensive
tract, of which one corner only is as yet rendered pro¬
ductive, and which may eventually become a great settle¬
ment ; though on the score of health it is as unpromising
as the adjacent colonies of Demerara and Surinam. Be-
2 B
m
FRANCE.
Commerce, fore the loss of St Domingo, the annual import into France
&c- amounted to 70,000 hhds. of muscovado or brown sugar,
60,000 hhds. clayed, and nearly 20,000 of fine clayed.
Of this very large supply there were exported nearly
40,000 hhds. of brown, and above 60,000 hhds. of clayed,
forming, exclusively of any duty, an annual value of be¬
tween L.2,000,000 and L.3,000,000 sterling, and affording
a most acceptable exchange for a number of imported
commodities. The sugar thus imported from St Domingo
has long been lost to France, no sugar being now exported
from that country.
In Africa the French possess Goree and some factories
near the mouth of the Senegal. In the East they have
the isle of Bourbon, and Pondicherry, Chandernagore, and
some smaller factories on the mainland of India ; and their
vessels are, like the Americans, admitted to trade with
Calcutta, Madras, and other British settlements, on pay¬
ment of moderate dues; but they possess no power of an¬
noying, or even of resisting Britain, in the event of hosti¬
lities. The retention of the Mauritius, at the peace of
1814, deprived them of the great receptacle for their pri¬
vateers in the East; and in a very different part of the
world, the continent of North America, they retain nothing
since the cession of Louisiana in 1803. In the seas of
Europe, Corsica is almost the only insular possession of
the French. They have no great maritime fortresses, like
Gibraltar or Malta, and no dependencies of the nature of
the Ionian islands.
The commerce of France with her colonies is regulated
by the same narrow maxims as the other branches of her
foreign trade. The colonies and the mother country are
mutually bound to trade exclusively with each other. The
staple produce of the French West India colonies, as well
as the isle of Bourbon in the East, is sugar; and it ap¬
pears that the price of this article in the European mar¬
kets will not repay the expense of its cultivation in those
countries. The colonists, therefore, insist that all other
sugars shall be excluded by heavy duties from the mar¬
kets of France ; that they shall have the exclusive privi¬
lege of supplying these markets; and on a complaint
that the duties imposed on foreign sugars were not high
enough to give them the monopoly of the home market,
an additional duty was in 1822, on the suggestion of the
director-general of the customs, imposed on all foreign su¬
gars. In return, France possesses the exclusive privilege
of supplying the colonies with all the manufactures and
other European goods which they require. On this prin¬
ciple of mutual monopoly the trade is now conducted.
The effect of this system is to levy a tax on the inhabit¬
ants of France, in order to indemnify the colonists for the
losses which they incur in carrying on an unprofitable
trade. They cannot furnish a supply of sugar to France
at the ordinary rate of the European market; and the
price must therefore be artificially raised in that country,
in order to enable them to carry on the cultivation of
their estates; whilst, on the other hand, they are not at
liberty to buy the goods which they require in the cheap Comme^
est market, but must take them at whatever price they &c. ’
can be afforded by the mother country. The quantity of Wv
sugar imported into France is 60,000,000 of kilogrammes,
or 1,178,571 cwts.; of coffee, 4,000,000 of kilogrammes,
or 74,107 cwts. The whole amount of the colonial im¬
portation into France is estimated at L.2,125,000, and
the average exports at L.1,416,666. The additional ex¬
pense which France pays for colonial products, in con¬
sequence of the exclusion of foreign sugar and other
articles, is estimated at L.833,333 per annum. To this
amount the French people are taxed for the colonial mo¬
nopoly. The colonies again purchase the articles which
they require for their consumption at a higher price than
they could be procured from Great Britain ; and they
complain that on this account they pay L.625,000 per an¬
num. Thus both parties suffer. The restrictive system is a
source of mutual mischief to the colonies and the mother
country; and indirectly also it produces injurious conse¬
quences to the general trade of the country. The merchants
of Paris, Bordeaux, and Marseilles, who are interested in
the trade, concur in stating that the impossibility of im¬
porting bulky articles, such as sugar, from foreign coun¬
tries, interrupts the commerce with India and the Levant.
Indigo, silk, spices, &c. the produce of India, are not in¬
deed excluded from France ; but a vessel cannot be load¬
ed with these costly articles, for which there is no suffi¬
cient demand; and hence the want of the more bulky
articles effectually obstructs the trade between the two
countries.
Another evil of this colonial monopoly is, that the co¬
lonies supply more sugar than France can consume. But
it cannot be sold in other countries at the price which is
paid to the colonies by the mother country; and hence it
becomes necessary to find out the means of forcing a sale
of the surplus which cannot be consumed at home. A
bounty is accordingly granted on all sugar exported from
France ; and in 1831, whilst the duty on the importation of
sugar produced L.1,636,030, there was paid back for boun¬
ties L.483,951, which is more than one fourth of the gross
receipts. The loss which France has incurred since the
peace of 1814 by this erroneous system is estimated in
Bowring and Villiers’ Report, at L.40,000,000 sterling ; and
in return for these great sacrifices, the colonies afford but
a limited demand for the manufactures of the mother
country, as will appear from the following account of the
population of the principal colonies, extracted from the
colonial budgets.
Whites.
Free People
of Colour.
Slaves.
Total Popula-
tion.
Martinique....9,937
Guadaloupe.. 17,257
Bourbon 18,747
10,786
16,705
6,387
81,182
101,554
63,447
101,905
135,516
88,581
45,941 33,878 246,183 326,002
Comieree,
FRANCE.
We subjoin a table of the trade of France with her colonies for four years prior to 1831.
Years.
Martinique,
1828
1829
1830
1831
COMMERCE WITH FRANCE.
Importations.
No. of
Ships.
Tonnage.
153
153
132
136
Guadaloupe.
1828
1829
1830
1831
Bourbon.
1828
1829
1830
1831
Senegal.
1828
1829
1830
1831
Cayenne,
1828
1829
1830
1831
Indian Establishments.
1828
1829
1830
1831
173
190
158
194
56
55
77
62
34
24
29
25
21
20
25
23
10
3
7
5
39,703
39,382
34,457
35,037
44,856
46,903
39,209
47,772
Value
Imported.
Francs.
20,999,677
20,640,837
19,833,277
18,992,032
16,684
17,268
23,316
18,315
4,027
2,560
3,013
2,706
3,480
3,399
4,269
4,056
2,823
824
1,812
1,241
23,939,954
25,236,852
20,823,871
26,183,619
11,790,785
14,233,538
14,706,439
15,003,276
3,448,115
2,465,166
3,070,758
3,313,837
2,433,791
1,842,963
2,881,335
2,426,758
4,654,920
926,962
5,274,792
3,723,270
Exportations.
No. of
Ships.
187
153
126
154
Tonnage.
47.889
41,791
33,775
40,966
Value
Exported.
Francs.
19,921,447
20,948,148
12,344,008
12,637,930
185
189
134
195
68
95
71
50
39
43
35
29
23
24
28
27
13
10
48,574
47,701
35,375
47,623
20,228
28,296
21,456
15,122
4,680
5,450
3,985
3,058
3,699
4,119
5,206
4,458
19,329,237
22,456,596
11,274,262
12,143,453
8,216,594
16,664,005
11,697,814
3,715,508
3,972,711
4,551,041
4,121,075
3,093,815
1,956,817
1,779,277
1,768,771
1,736,792
3,442
2,750
1,145
470,191
1,013,586
129,721
?id»ees.
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5
t
The fisheries of France are composed, like our own, of
those on the coast and those at a distance, particularly at
Newfoundland. All along the north coast of France, the
fisheries consist, as on our side of the Channel, of cod,
mackerel, herrings, and pilchards. On the shore of the
Atlantic, and still more on that of the Mediterranean, are
caught great quantities of sardines, a fish of passage,
which appears periodically in shoals, like the herring.
The tunny, a fish not known in northern latitudes, is
found in the Mediterranean in the early part of summer.
It varies in weight from ten to twenty-five pounds, and is
in like manner caught in shoals. These home fisheries,
little calculated for forming seamen, have been left to
their natural progress, whilst repeated attempts have been
made by government to extend the fishery in America;
a design favoured by the early possession by France of
Newfoundland and Canada, as well as by the long peace
that followed the treaty of Utrecht. Towards the middle
of last century the French fisheries in America employed
annually about 5000 seamen; but the unsuccessful contest
with England in 1756 reduced them greatly, and deprived
them of their principal station, Cape Breton. The peace
of 1783 was concluded under better auspices. The islands
of St Pierre and Miquelon were ceded to France by the
treaty of Versailles, and the rights of fishing and of drying
fish from the Cape St John to Cape Ray. In the Gulf of
St Lawrence her rights were subsequently recognised, by
the treaties of 1802 and 1814, at three leagues distance
from the coasts belonging to Great Britain ; but within
the gulf, at a distance of fifteen leagues from Isle Royale,
and thirty leagues from New Brunswick.
For the encouragement of the French fisheries, enor¬
mous pecuniary sacrifices have been made. The only
time they were ever in a prosperous state was, not when
they were protected by the artificial encouragement of
the mother country, but when the French colonists, be¬
ing in possession of a large tract of the American sea-
coast, were in consequence compelled to trust to prudence
and economy alone for the success of their adventures.
During the last session of the chamber of deputies, a com¬
mittee, appointed to inquire into this subject, made their
report, in which they state “ that the French fishermen
have now to compete with those who are always on the
spot; who carry on their fishing concerns in small boats,
and at a trifling cost; who pay no charge of outfit; who
lose no time in voyages; who employ the cneaper labour
of children, women, and old persons; who have their dry¬
ing and salting establishments in the neighbourhood; and
who can accommodate all their proceedings to the ur¬
gency of circumstances.” It is to counterbalance these
advantages that France has resorted to the system of
bounties, which has been carried to a great length in or¬
der to force the establishment of a trade in the face of
natural obstacles. The result of the investigations of the
committee was the recommendation to government to
grant such a premium to those who adventured in the
195
Commerce,
&c.
'  
196
Commerce, fishery as should place them on a level with their more
fortunate rivals. In 1816 a bounty was granted of fifty
francs per man for the cod fishery, fifteen francs per
man for the herring fishery, and twenty-four francs per
quintal on the introduction of the fish into the colonies.
In 1818 these premiums were raised by royal ordonnances
to forty francs per quintal, which is more than 100 per
cent, on the value ; and the market price of the fish be¬
came in consequence a nett profit to the adventurer.
This premium was reduced in 1822 to thirty francs per
quintal. But a new law was passed in 1832, which is to
be valid till 1837, and which allows a premium of fifty
francs for every seaman engaged in the cod fishery of St
Pierre and Miquelon; thirty francs for each engaged in
the fisheries of the Great Bank of Newfoundland, or Ice¬
land ; fifteen francs if on the Dogger Bank; and fifty francs
N C E.
in every case if the fish are dried at St Pierre or Mique- Comm
Ion. An additional premium is allowed of twenty-four
francs per metrical quintal or cwt. on cod fish shipped
from France to the French colonies, thirty francs if ship¬
ped direct from the fisheries, twelve francs per quintal if
shipped to other ports from France, and ten if direct from
the fisheries ; also twenty francs per quintal as a premium
on cod roes. The effect of these bounties is to place the
adventurer in the French fisheries beyond all risk of loss.
In many cases they are equal to the whole expense of
the outfit, the voyage, and the return ; and, though no
cargo is brought home, no loss can be incurred. The
whole expense and hazard of the trade is thus borne by
the public.
The following table contains the amount of the cod fish¬
ery from 1826 to 1830.
FRA
Y ears.
Importations into France.
Salt Fish.
Reduced Half.
Dried Fish.
Total.
Direct Expor¬
tations from the
Fisheries to the
Colonies.
Total Produce
of the
Fisheries.
1826
1827
1828
1829
1830
Quintals.
84,296
90,460
128,563
103,489
105,003
Quintals.
42,148
45,230
64,281
51,744
52,501
Quintals.
159,616
159,702
172,582
203,571
136,458
Quintals.
201,764
204,932
236,763
256,315
188,959
Quintals.
29,784
19,971
17,316
29,218
37,986
Quintals.
231,548
224,903
254,079
285,533
226,943
Totals.
511,811
255,904
831,929
1,088,733
134,275
1,223,006
Average of}
five years /
102,362
51,181
166,385
217,747
26,855 *
244,601
French Exportations.
To the Colonies.
Average of five years 39,225
To Foreign Countries. Total.
17,909 57,134
Average exportation of France being 57,134
There remains for the average consumption of France,
and for land-frontier export 160,61s1
On the above the following bounties have been paid:—
1826  2,519,902 francs.
1827  2,166,118
1828  2,723,317
1829  3,381,031
1830  4,368,582
15,158,950
Average on the five years...3,031,7902
From the above accounts it appears that for the five
yeais previous to 1831 the cod fish caught amounted to
1,223,006 hundredweight, which, estimated at twenty
francs per quintal, the price quoted in the French ports,
is equal to 24,460,120 francs, or L.978,405 sterling; and
for this produce France has paid in the shape of bounties
15,158,950 francs, equal to L.606,358 sterling; and if we
add seven francs per hundredweight for freight and ex¬
penses, it will be found that the produce of the fisheries,
which is worth only L.978,405, has cost the French na¬
tion between L.1,200,000 and L.1,300,000; besides that
the fish are of very inferior quality to those caught by
the Americans, the latter selling at forty-seven francs
thirty-five cents, per quintal, whilst the French cod fish
only brought twenty-six francs ninety-five cents. With
all this expense, however, the French fisheries are not
adequate to the supply of the colonies, which receive con¬
siderable quantities of fish from foreigners, as will be seen
from the following table.
1 Rapport sur la Peche, 1831, p. 108.
3 Idem, p. 109.
tmm ce,
&c:
ry-J
FRANCE.
Colonial Importations—Average of Five Years from 1826 to 1830.
197
From France 
... Newfoundland....
... St Pierre 
... Foreign fisheries.
At Marti¬
nique.
Guadaloupe.
13,827
2,399
8,924
19,920
Total  45,070
Commerce,
&c.
Cayenne.
19,501
3,853
7,188
9,445
39,987
1,162
264
1,426
Senegal.
158
Bourbon.
4,577
5 is
158
5,192
Total.
39,225
6,516
16,627
29,365
91,733
If we contrast the expense and the produce of the Bri¬
tish fisheries with those of hranee, the disadvantages un¬
der which the French prosecute this branch of trade will
be manifest. It appears that whilst the British only em¬
ploy in the Newfoundland fishery at the rate of seven men
per hundred tons, the average number employed by the
French in their different fisheries is nineteen and a half
men per hundred tons ; and in the report laid before the
Chamber of Deputies for 1832, it is stated that the cost
of each man employed in the cod fishery amounted, from
1823 to 1825, to 223 francs, in 1829 to 296 francs, in 1830
to 440 francs, being about L.17. 12s. sterling, or 6s. 9d. a
week, independently of the cost to the owner of the vessel.
The shipping that cleared out from the united kingdom,
and the exportations from St John’s and Labrador on Bri¬
tish account, were,
Tons. Men. Quantity
Exported.
40,625 2,572 996,976 cwt.
44,255 2,768 973,464
35,781 2,267 928,442
7,607
2,539
In the same period the vessels which cleared out from
rrance, and the quantities of fish imported into France,
were as follows:
Ships.
In 1824 348
1825  336
1826  341
Tons.
36,999
35,172
38,938
Men.
6,672
6,311
7,088
Quantity
Imported.
447.380 cwt.
462,253
484.380
Ships.
In 1824 313
1825  322
1826  282
Totals...917
Average... 306
120,661
40,220
2,898,882
966,294
Totals.... 1,025 111,109 20,071 1,394,013
Average  342 37,036 6,690 464,671
From the above tables it will be seen that the number
of British seamen does not amount to a third of the number
employed by France, the average being only 2539 seamen
to 40,220 tons of shipping, while the proportion of French
seamen is 6690 to 37,036. They catch double the num¬
ber of fish, and these of a better quality, namely, 966,294
cwts. while the French only take 464,671 cwts. On the
whole, it appears that the French risk about seven times the
capital in these fisheries for which they could purchase the
same supply of fish from foreigners. We subjoin two
other tables, the first giving a detail of the state of the
French fishery for 1831, and the other a general view of
its produce from 1823 to 1831 inclusive.
General Statement of the Returns of,he Cod Fishery effected in the Forts of France during the Year 1831.
Ports of Arrival.
Bayonne 
Bordeaux....
La Rochelle.
Nantes 
Saint Malo..
Saint Servam
Portrieux 
Paimpoi 
Binic  
Cherbourg...
Granville 
Fecamp 
Le Havre....
Dieppe  
Boulogne  
Dunkirk 
Marseilles....
Cette 
Ships.
Number.
Tonnage.
Total.
6
31
29
9
23
6
2
1
1
3
34
14
7
3
3
79
48
3
302
758
4,020
3,404
979
2,893
966
328
250
244
547
4,501
1,825
995
396
345
4,686
7,664
379
Men.
153
522
420
123
811
569
106
124
75
131
1,090
198
227
43
49
921
651
30
35,180
6,243
Produce of Fish Imported.
Cod Fish.
Pickled.
Weight.
Kilogrammes.
3,960
1,863,519
1,672,059
161,422
46,553
8,318
957
779,893
1,157,363
280,760
277,819
3,669,776
281
9,922,680
Dried.
Weight.
Kilogrammes.
518,800
1,222,491
472,797
294,887
993,737
127,400
200
21,224
Sounds.
245,000
1,411,510
601,025
6,768,682
140,190
12,817,943
Kilogrammes.
11,255
74,991
43,346
47,852
171,713
96,597
21,457
6.608
2,228
46,380
133,638
11,557
57,099
8,604
5,096
419,870
4,878
Kilogrammes.
3,195
4,467
224
31,744
9,648
1,577
14,916
3,866
13,202
604
10,897
181,632
9,105
2,625
Kilogrammes.
2,365
4,343
100
Kilogrammes
12,550
1,791
21,927
35
4,740
1,163,169 287,702
7,150
14,318
100
8,500
22,450
18,576
3,221
4,551
80,815
179,256
FRANCE.
198
Commerce
TT"’ Comparative Statement of the Returns of the Cod Fishery effected in the Ports of Frame from the lears 1823 to 1831 fc
1 both inclusive. '^Y'w
Whale
fishery.
Ships.
Years.
1823
1824
1825
1826
1827
1828
1829
1830
1831
Number.
184
348
336
341
387
381
414
377
302
Tonnage.
16,258
36,999
35,172
38,938
44,808
45,094
50,574
45,036
35,180
Men.
Produce of Fish Imported.
Cod Fish.
Pickled.
Weight.
3,655
6,672
6,311
7,088
8,238
7,957
9,428
8,174
6,243
Kilogrammes.
4,407,730
7,677,824
7,288,949
8,627,341
9,046,145
12,838,291
10,548,878
10,400,302
9,922,680
Dried.
Weight.
Kilogrammes.
4,423,739
14,691,189
15,823,731
15,591,664
15,970,250
17,256,155
20,377,594
13,645,790
12,817,943
Oil.
Kilogrammes.
415,210
1,353,898
1,294,336
1,063,670
1,201,623
1,395,897
1,909,147
1,156,059
1,163,229
Sounds.
Kilogrammes.
136,301
248,630
242,960
249,598
316,503
287,362
337,063
275,471
287,702
Roes.
Kilogrammes
6,843
10,039
7,387
6,331
3,229
8,436
10,762
5,102
14,319
Issues.
Kilogrammes.
232,163
179,256
The whale fishery was established in France in 1784,, by
means of encouragements held out by Louis XVI. who
ordered that no duty should be collected on the articles
exported, and that the produce of the fisheries should pay
no import duty. He guaranteed the adventurers against
loss, and ultimately paid, in addition to 300,000 francs
(L.l 2,500), which he advanced without interest, an addi¬
tional sum of 160,691 francs (L.6695), being the balance
of loss on seventeen voyages. Notwithstanding these en¬
couragements, the whole project was abandoned in 1787.
In 1816, the offer of bounties attracted new adventurers
into this branch of trade. The premium offered by the
government was fifty francs per man, and two thirds of
the crews were allowed to be foreigners. In 1819, forty
francs were allowed to foreign vessels having a crew half
French, fifty francs when the captain and one third of the
crew were French ; the premium to be doubled if the ves¬
sel passed Cape Horn. In 1829, a new ordonnance grant¬
ed ninety francs per ton on vessels wholly equipped by
Frenchmen, forty francs when only two thirds were French¬
men, and thirty francs if the captain was a foreigner. The
premium was doubled if the vessel passed Cape Horn. A
supplementary premium was allowed to vessels fishing to
the south-east of the Cape of Good Hope, and the double
premium was given to all vessels fishing at a higher northern
latitude than sixty degrees ; and as the fishing is seldom or
never prosecuted at a lower latitude, this premium of 180
francs per ton (L.7. 4s.) was invariably paid. The law of
1832, which regulates the whale fishery of France, estab¬
lishes a bounty of seventy francs per ton from March 1832
to March 1833, if the whole crew be French ; the bounty
to be diminished four francs yearly till it reaches fifty-four
francs. If one third of the crew be foreigners, the bounty
to be forty-eight francs per ton, to diminish two francs
yearly till it reaches forty francs per ton. A supplementary
bounty to be given of fifty francs per ton if the crew be
French, decreasing three francs per annum per ton, and
twenty-four francs if one third be foreigners, decreasing one
franc per annum, to be paid to vessels doubling Cape Horn,
or reaching sixty-two degrees of south latitude, if return¬
ing with less than half a cargo, or after an absence of sixteen
months; five hundred tons to be the minimum for a single
whaler.
With these extraordinary encouragements, capital was
attracted to this new line of industry; and in 1831 three
vessels cleared out for the Greenland whale fishery, and
thirteen for the South Sea fishery, which employed 6412
tons of shipping, and were manned by 551 men. The fol¬
lowing table exhibits the gradual progress of the French
whale fishery from 1817:
FRANCE.
mmee.
|&c*
199
Years.
Vessels
Destination.
1817
1818
1819
1820
1821
1822
1823
1824
1825
1826
1827
1828
1829
1830
1831
Bm
16
11
17
9
9
7
7
6
7
9
16
16
North. South
147 19
1
1*
15
10
13
8
8
6
6
6
7
8
13
13
128
Tonnage.
1285
4905
2765
4677
2077
2935
1376
3078
2497
2541
2121
2639
2573
6198
6412
Crews.
French. Foreigners. Total.
30
129
197
302
168
174
68
194
134
106
113
126
195
515
457
58
256
66
101
40
61
47
57
73
67
41
51
75
37
94
88
385
263
403
208
235
115
251
207
173
154
177
270
552
551
Remarks.
2 of Havre.
1 of Bordeaux.
1 of Nantes.
3 of Nantes, 9 of Havre.
2 of Bordeaux, 1 of L’Orient.
1 of Calais (N.)
1 of Nantes, 3 of Havre, 3 of Bordeaux.
[ 3 of St Servan, 1 of Honfleur (N.)
7 of Havre, 1 of St Malo, 4 of Nantes.
1 of Bordeaux (1 of Honfleur,
2 of Dunkerque, and 1 of Dieppe : 4 North.)
2 of Havre, 2 of St Malo, 3 of Nantes.
f 1 of L’Orient, 1 of Dieppe (N.)
13 of Havre, 4 of Nantes.
J 1 of Bordeaux, 1 of Dieppe (N.)
^ 3 of Havre, 1 of Dieppe (N.)
J 3 of Havre, 5 of Nantes.
^ 1 of Dieppe (N.)
5 of Havre, 1 of Nantes, 1 of Dieppe (N.)
6 of Havre, 1 of Granville.*
4 of Havre, 2 of Nantes.
6 of Havre, 1 of Nantes.
7 of Havre, 1 of Dieppe (N.), 1 of Nantes,
f 6 of Havre, 1 of Granville (N.)
^ 2 of Dieppe (N.), 4 of Nantes,
^ 2 of St Malo, 1 of La Rochelle,
j 10 of Havre, 3 of Granville.
^ 1 of Dieppe, 2 of Nantes.
* Was sent to the fishery in the Gulf of St Lawrence, on the west coast
of the island of Newfoundland.
Commerce,
&c.
Fipinj^
k
ier
enl
50
4i]
nd
f fa
his,
idi
lan
lies
ias
hei
•in:
It was estimated by the minister of commerce, in his re¬
port on this subject to the Chamber of Deputies, that the 550
seamen employed in the whale fishery do not cost the state
less than 1,000,000 francs, at the rate of L.72.12s. per man,
or L.6 a month. The wages granted by the budget to sea¬
men employed in ships of war amounts to L.l per month ;
so that the allowance to the seamen employed in the Green¬
land fishery is six times the ordinary allowance of seamen
in the public service. It is remarkable that France was
granting these extravagant allowances for the encourage¬
ment of the whale fishery exactly at the time that Great
Britain was withdrawing the bounties by which she had
formerly endeavoured to promote this branch of trade as a
nursery for seamen. Yet in 1830 the number of vessels
that cleared out for the fishery was 123, consisting of 40,166
tons, navigated by 5044 seamen ; being thus about eight
times the quantity of tonnage employed by France.
France seems destined, by the natural advantages which
she possesses, to become a maritime power of the first rank.
Her sea-coast exceeds in extent that of any other conti¬
nental state. On the Atlantic she has 130 leagues of coast,
150 on the Channel, and ninety on the Mediterranean;
whilst her position between northern and southern Europe,
and her numerous ports and navigable rivers, are eminent¬
ly favourable to the extension of her navigation. But in
this, as in all other branches of the French trade, the pre¬
judicial effects of the restrictive system have been abun¬
dantly manifest. France, in forcing a trade with her colo¬
nies, containing less than half a million of inhabitants,
has sacrificed her trade with other tropical countries and
their numerous population, to the great injury of her ship¬
ping interest; the vessels employed in carrying on her fo¬
reign trade having fallen off since 1787, instead of having
increased, as they ought to have done, considering the great
advances which have been made since that time in popu¬
lation, in capital, and in productive industry. The follow¬
ing accounts exhibit a view of the changes which have taken
place in the shipping of France since the year 1787.
Whole amount in 1787, 2,007,661 tons ) Increase, 682,778
(Outward) in 1830,2,690,439 J tons.
In the whole foreign trade of France:
French.
Years. Tons. Tons.
In 1787, 694,269 1 f 164,583
In 1830, 526,856 J °f whlch { 156,338
Foreign.
Tons.
532,687
370,518
Diminution, 167,414 8,245 162,169
In the colonial trade :
Years. Tons.
In 1787 114,064
In 1830 102,283
Diminution, 11,781
In the fisheries, including the herring, mackerel, and
fresh fisheries:
Cod.
Years. Tons. Tons.
In 1787, 86,868 53,800
In 1830, 128,878 49,394
Whale.
Tons.
3,720
5,894
Coast or Fresh
Fishing.
Tons.
29,148
73,59C
Increase, 42,010 Deer. 4,406 In. 2 174 In. 44,442
In the coasting trade:
Years. Tons.
In 1787 1,010,8521
In 1830 2,302,940
Increase, 1,292,088
1 The return of 1786 does not state whether, like that of 1830, it comprehends the tonnage employed in the river navigation.
200
FRANCE.
Commerce, From the above accounts it will be observed that a very
&c. great decline has taken place in the shipping employed in
the foreign trade of France, whilst a great increase has
taken place in the tonnage employed in the coasting trade ;
a fact which affords clear and convincing evidence of the
extending resources of the country, which would have
equally occasioned an increase in the shipping employ¬
ed in the foreign as well as the domestic trade, if this im¬
portant branch of industry had not been stunted in its natu¬
ral growth by the monopolizing system. The navigation
of France no doubt suffered grievously during the last war,
under the maritime hostility of Britain. But in the course
of nearly twenty years it Would have recovered from this
state of depression, if the natural energies of the country
had been allowed free scope in this line of industry. TheCnmn^
whole amount of the tonnage employed in the trade be-
tween France and Great Britain was, according to French
accounts,
Tons.
In 1787  87,563
In 1830  144,909
Increase 57,346
In 1830, 59,539 tons were reported outwards, and 67,356
in-wards, in the packet service.
The following table exhibits the whole amount of the
vessels and tonnage which entered inwards and outward*
in all the ports of France from 1825 to 1829.
Years.
g <
a
1825
1826
1827
1828
11829
f 1825
1826
1827
I 1828
I 1829
French
Ships.
3,387
3,440
3,350
3,465
3,048
3,908
3,586
3,522
3,341
3,101
Vessels.
Foreign Ships.
3,473
4,299
3,959
4,122
4,342
4,583
4,335
4,141
4,164
3,698
Neutral.
745
611
480
606
728
1,411
973
1,180
899
792
Totals.
7,605
8,350
7,789
8,193
8,118
9,902
8,888
8,843
8,404
7,591
French
Ships.
329,735
355,776
353,102
346,591
331,049
354,311
355,742
346,370
326,835
316,462
Tonnage.
F oreign.
317,850
456,890
408,873
445,708
487,739
283,797
341,036
346,733
344,547
311,286
Neutral.
96,820
86,792
66.636
81,931
94,016
116,643
91.636
93,109
115,972
108,942
Totals.
744,405
899,458
828,611
874,230
912,804
754,751
788,414
786,212
787,354
736,690
The following table exhibits the state of the French navigation for the year 1831, with the number of ships and the
seamen employed.
IMPORTS.
From whence.
From foreign countries..
French colonies 
Fisheries 
Coasting 
Total.
French Ships.
Number of
Ships.
2,935
440
8,283
70,740
82,398
Tonnage.
225,330
107,886
119,476
2,226,000
2,678,692
Number of
Sailors.
Number of
Ships.
20,777
6,035
53,929
278,065
358,806
Foreign Ships.
3951
Tonnage.
461,194
3951 461,194
Number of
Sailors.
36,291
36,291
Total.
Number
of Ships.
6,886
440
8,283
70,740
86,349
Tonnage.
686,524
107,886
119,476
2,226,000
3,139,886
Number of
Sailors.
57,068
6,035
53,929
278,065
395,097
EXPORTS.
Destination.
Foreign countries.
French colonies...
Fisheries 
Coasting 
Total.
French Ships.
Number of
Ships.
3,211
460
8,412
67,292
79,375
Tonnage.
214,493
111,760
117,827
2,088,473
2,532,553
Number of Number of
Sailors.
21,473
6,326
54,640
263,841
346,280
Foreign Ships.
Ships.
4240
4240
Tonnage.
362,981
Number of Number of
Sailors.
32,319
362,981 I 32,319
Total.
Ships.
7,485
460
8,412
67,292
83,649
Tonnage.
577,904
111,760
117,827
2,088,473
2,895,964
Number of
Sailors,
53.963
6,326
54,640
263,841
378,770
One cause of the slow advances made by the French between Great Britain and France is carried on amount-
shipping is, that their ships are manned by so much great- ed in 1830 to 110,766 tons, and they were navigated
er a number of men than those of either Britain or the by 10,029 seamen, being a proportion of nine men for a
United Mates. Ihe British shipping by which the trade hundred tons. The whole British shipping employed in
FRANCE.
201
fus the foreign trade outwards amounts to 2,180,042 tons, na-
iph-vjgated by 122,103 seamen, which gives five and a half
’seamen for 100 tons. Of the French shipping which en¬
tered France in 1831, the tonnage employed in the trade
with all foreign countries amounted to 372,931 tons, navi¬
gated by 34,355 men, being a proportion of above nine
men for 100 tons. The navigation of the United States is
carried on by a proportion of four and one third seamen
per 100 tons. In the coasting trade of France 1,618,896
tons of shipping were employed in 1831, and 209,831 men,
making an average of about thirteen men per 100 tons.
In the coasting trade of the united kingdom 8,777,921 tons
were employed, and 513,109 men, or an average of five
and seven eighths men per 100 tons. The ship-owners com-
herence, by imposing on them an oath of fidelity to the Religious
new constitution, on pain of forfeiture of their livings. The -Establish-
sincerity of the clerical body was now put to the test, and ments> &c.
a striking proof was given of their being actuated by that
conscientious feeling for which the public in Protestant
countries are so little disposed to give them credit. In
every rank, whether prelates, curates, vicars, or the humble
desservants, the majority preferred the hazard of losing
their livelihood to taking an oath at variance with their
conscience. The violent party continued to triumph at
Paris, and the non-conforming clergy had no alternative
but to fly their country. Hence the clouds of emigrants
who, in 1791 and 1792, sought refuge in Italy, Germany,
and, above all, in England. Those who remained in France
oi
si
w.
ar
si
st
to
M
CO
tei
ini
Fr
de
at
ed
re:
tor
am
es
cle
Re
rat ■
n
ric
to
fici
ste
str
bo
Er
fre
go
lot
re!
CO:
of
of t
bii
1?
lie
til
ra
St!
P'
of
g<
in
ti
bt
ra
ta
plain that one of the great obstructions to the progress
of shipping in France is the high price of iron. The whole
shipping of France, they say, consists of 11,000 vessels, in
which there are 1,122,000 cwts. of iron. Estimating the
annual waste at ten per cent, the iron consumed by the
shipping of France will cost 6,283,200 francs (L.261,800
sterling), of which, they say, more than one half is sacrificed
to the interests of the iron masters; besides that, the mo¬
nopoly which they enjoy, and the duty imposed on foreign
coals, raise enormously the value of timber, and thus also
tend to obstruct the progress of navigation.
VIII. RELIGIOUS AND CHARITABLE ESTABLISHMENTS.
The condition of the church and clergy forms a most
important feature in the history and present situation of
France. In former times, the Gallican church, without
desiring a separation from the holy see, had often advanced
a claim to independence, and maintained long and animat¬
ed discussions, or rather controversies, familiar to those
readers of the French annals who have attended to the his¬
tory of the Jansenists and Molinists. The result of these,
and of the general progress of knowledge in France, was an
exemption from a part at least of the interference in ec¬
clesiastical aftairs, exercised so despotically by the court of
Rome in Spain, in Portugal, and in Italy. As to pecuniary
means, though the income of the lower ranks of the clergy
was extremely small, the church of France was on the whole
richly endowed ; the rent of land and houses appropriated
to abbeys, priories, bishoprics, archbishoprics, and bene¬
fices of every description, being computed at five millions
sterling, exclusive of the tithes levied, with more or less
strictness, throughout the whole kingdom. As a political
body, the French clergy were differently situated from the
English, having no voice in legislating, but aiming at, and
frequently attaining, the highest offices in the executive
government.
In 1789 a number of the clergy, both in the upper and
lower ranks, participated in the general wish for a political
reform, and evinced that disposition by their readiness in
coalescing with the tiers etat, at a time when the majority
of the noblesse refused to do it, until compelled by the call
of the people, and the positive order of the court. In the
highly interesting discussions that ensued during the years
1789 and 1790, several of the leading orators were Catho¬
lic clergymen, nor did they in general take the alarm, un¬
til the menacing aspect given to public affairs by the too
rapid progress of the Revolution. The National Assembly
stripped the church of her lands, and declared them the
property of the public, providing, indeed, for the income
of the clergy, but making the payment of it dependent on
government. All this might have passed and been forgiven
in the ardent hopes of national benefit from the Revolu¬
tion ; but the assembly did not stop here. Considering
both the court of Rome and the court of France invete-
rately hostile to the Revolution, they determined to de¬
tach the clergy from both, and sought to compel their ad-
vol. x.
were exposed to all the atrocities of the Jacobins. Hun¬
dreds of them were sacrificed in the massacres of Septem¬
ber 1792, and hundreds more were brought to the guillo¬
tine in the dreadful years 1793 and 1794. With the fall
of Robespierre (July 1794) the executions ceased; but a
tone of hostility to the church was still kept up, and ac¬
counted an indispensable part of the policy of the revolu¬
tionary government. The only class allowed to remain in
quiet were the cures, whose humble station and scattered
position created no political alarm. It was not till the esta¬
blished sway of Bonaparte (in 1801) that circumstances ad¬
mitted of cooler calculation, and enabled that skilful usur¬
per to seek in a hierarchy a prop to his own power, and an
engine of opposition to the liberal party, which still hoped
to secure to France advantages from the Revolution. With
this view he affected great respect for the Catholic church,
concluded a concordat with the pope, and made a pecu¬
niary provision for a specified number of sees. His next
step was to frame and circulate throughout all France
a catechism, calculated to impress the rising generation
with a profound veneration for a sovereign who had been
“ anointed by the pope, and received his mission from the
Almighty.” The power of Bonaparte received in this
manner a most substantial support, and would have taken
deep root with the lower orders, had he not counteracted it
by his subsequent quarrel with the pope, which assumed an
angry aspect in 1809, and became more and more aggra¬
vated during the remainder of his reign.
On the restoration of the Bourbons in 1814, the Catho¬
lic clergy hailed the change with enthusiasm ; but the pub¬
lic, at least the great majority of the middling classes, soon
showed a marked distinction between their cause and that
of the king. The conduct of Louis in regard to the clergy
was marked by moderation and judgment. Religious him¬
self, he sought to revive similar impressions among his sub¬
jects, to enforce the observance of the Lord’s day, and to
relieve from indigence the desservants or country curates.
But he placed no clergymen in political situations, nor
made any attempt to give the bishops or archbishops seats
in the House of Peers.
A concordat or compact between the pope and the king Concordat,
is a transaction of high importance in a Catholic country,
where the public are impressed with the belief, that in all
that relates to religion, reference ought to be had to the
court of Rome, and that their temporal sovereign possesses
authority in such affairs only as far as it is delegated by
the holy father. The object of a concordat is to define
the respective powers of the pope and king. In France
the aim of the executive government has long been to se¬
cure the patronage of the church, and to stipulate that no
bulls, briefs, decrees, or other acts of a nature to agitate
the public mind, should be promulgated without the royal
sanction. Three centuries ago, when the alarm of the Re¬
formation, and some urgent political considerations, made
it of importance to the court of Rome to attach to its cause
the reigning sovereign of France, there was passed be¬
tween Leo X. and Francis I. a concordat, declaring that
2 c
FRA
Religious the power of nominating the archbishops and bishops of
Establish- France resided in the crown, the sanction of the pope being
ments, &c. required only for their inauguration {institution canonique).
This compact was considered a kind of charter or standard
document in the long discussions which afterwards ensued
about the independence of the Galilean church, until the
whole sunk into insignificance before the storm of the Re¬
volution. During the ferment of that convulsion, the Ja¬
cobins, and even the Directory, made no proposition for
accommodation with the holy see, and bade, or affected
to bid, it defiance. Bonaparte, more politic, concluded a
concordat, which, though it reinstated only fifty of the 130
sees existing before the Revolution, stamped him in some
measure a restorer of the church. That he did not after¬
wards augment their number, is to be accounted for solely
by a dread of alarming the revolutionists. The Bourbons,
on their restoration, appear to have felt all the delicacy of
such a measure; and nothing favours the probability of
the charge of their intending to restore the lands, the tithes,
or temporal influence of the clergy. Negotiations for a
concordat were early begun with the court of Rome, but
its conclusion was delayed till 1817 ; and the interest with
which it was received in France can be comprehended only
by persons resident among a people still agitated by politi-
‘ cal division, and dreading the influence of the clergy as an
engine for the revival of all past abuses. From this, and
from differences with the court of Rome that are foreign
to our subject, the execution of the new concordat has been
very tardy. Of the forty-two additional sees appointed by
it, a considerable part are still vacant.
The prelates of the church of France are as follows:—
Cardinals, at present five in number, with an annual in¬
come of nearly L.1300 sterling.
18 archbishops, average income about 800
74? bishops, do. about 600
The next in rank are the vicars-general, to the number
of more than a hundred; and the chanoines or canons, who
also exceed a hundred; after which come the cures or es¬
tablished curates, in number nearly 3000, and divided into
three classes (first, second, and third), with incomes of
only L.40, L.50, or L.60, but with certain emoluments,
from surplus fees, which vary according to the population
of their respective districts. Lastly come the desservants,
or acting curates, of whom there is one in almost every
country commune or parish in the kingdom, amounting in
all to above 23,000, but with incomes of only between
L.20 and L.30 a year; a pittance equal to about L.40 in
England, but still too small to provide for even the limited
wants of a state of celibacy. There are also a number of
succursales, or chapels, appended to large parishes; but of
these a considerable number (at present about 2000) are
vacant from want of funds, bad repairs of the building', and
other causes. These various appointments are all paid out
of the public treasury. The expense of the Catholic church
to the nation is L.1,100,000 sterling a year; but as there
are other heads of disbursement, particularly salaries to
Protestant ministers, the total ecclesiastical charge is about
L.1,300,000.
The nomination of all clergymen, whether Catholic or
Protestant, is vested in the crown. As to political feeling,
the Catholic clergy are, almost without exception, hostile
to the interests produced by the Revolution, and attached
to the Bourbons.
Convents. female convents have all along existed in France, with
the exception of a few years of the worst part of the Re¬
volution, when their inmates were obliged to forsake their
establishments, and to seek an abode with their relations.
Monasteries are, with very few exceptions, abolished, and
no idea is entertained of re-establishing the abbeys, priories,
and other endowed establishments ; the Bourbons and the
court of Rome having repeatedly pledged themselves not
202
N C E.
to disturb the revolutionary purchasers of the church-lands, Reij-j
and to appropriate to ecclesiastical purposes only that pro- Establish
portion of these lands that remains unsold. merits, C,
What, it may be asked, have been the effects of the Re-
volution on the state of religion in France? It has sub-?ffe^tSof
verted the power of the church, and, what is much moreiuti0]i"
serious, the belief of Christianity in the minds of the young religion”
and the middle-aged of the male part of the population;
but with the elders of that sex, and with almost all females,
the Catholic creed preserves undiminished sway ; a sway
which extends much farther than can readily be conceived
by Protestants. The extent of this influence is owing to
various causes ; in part to commendable conduct in the
clergy, who in general act the part of careful pastors, and
attentive visitors in sickness or distress; but in part also
to that blind credulity with which the tenets of the church
are received both by the hearers and their spiritual guides,
whose education has by no means kept pace with the ge¬
neral progress of knowledge; for it does not embrace the
philosophical course of the universities of France, but is
conducted in separate seminaries, and upon a much more
confined plan.
The Protestants in France amount to above 2,000,000, Protest,
and are most numerous in the south, particularly at Nismesantsin
and its vicinity. They are almost all adherents of the ^rance'
Revolution; and a political change, such as that which
twice took place in 1815, could not be accomplished in
a divided community without a contest; but the alarm
which was then so loudly raised in England in their behalf
was founded on exaggeration. The Bourbon government
received with attention the applications of the Protest¬
ants, whether for increase of pastors or repair of churches.
On the whole, the Protestants of France form an indus¬
trious and valuable portion of the population ; but they
are animated by a strong esprit de secte, by a feeling ap¬
proaching to animosity towards the Catholics; and have
all along evinced considerable distrust of the reinstated go¬
vernment.
Before the Revolution the poor in France, as in Italy Charitallt
and other Catholic countries, were supported chiefly by the establish-
abbeys, priories, or other beneficed establishments. Onnients'
the absorption of these sources of income by the revolu¬
tionary government, a provision for the poor became a
subject of legislative inquiry; and, after long investigation,
it was decidedly determined to avoid a poor-rate on the
English plan, but to provide for the aged and helpless an
annual fund to the proposed amount of L.2,000,000 ster¬
ling. Several years elapsed before this was acted on, and
the fund eventually provided consisted of a revival of part
of the old octrois, or dues levied on wine, cider, spirits,
and other articles of consumption, on their entrance into
towns ; a tax from which the Revolution had relieved
the public, and which was now disguised under the spe¬
cious name of octroi de bienfaisance. These dues, how¬
ever, were soon extended and applied to the general ex¬
penditure of the government, after retaining a portion,
which at present constitutes the only regular fund for the
poor. Further sums are collected by subscription in the
depth of winter, or on the occurrence of extraordinary dis¬
tress. From the public treasury, likewise, there are made
occasional issues, in a season of hardship, on the applica¬
tion of the mayors or local magistrates. There are at Paris
a number of hospitals, of which by far the largest is the
Hotel Dieu. In the provincial cities there are in general
two hospitals for the poor, one for the sick, the other for
the aged. Of other charitable institutions, the principal
are the societes de charite maternelle, or associations on a
large scale, at Paris and some of the chief towns, for the
aid of indigent women in child-bed. Mendicity is not re¬
stricted in France, and prevails in many places to a repre¬
hensible degree.
ta'bliii-
sntS'ir
FRANCE.
203
XX. ESTABLISHMENTS FOR EDUCATION.
ucipn. jijg organization or framework of the system of public in-
\r-ftk** struction in France is one of the happiest applications which
has yet been made of the principle of centralization. It is
due to the genius of Napoleon. In 1808 he promulgated
his decree for establishing the University of France, the
provisions of which, being full of the wisdom and foresight
so characteristic of his civil acts, have engrafted them¬
selves on the institutions of the country, and, with a few
slight modifications suggested by experience or by the
course of events, are now in full operation, and producing
the happiest effects. By this decree the establishments
for education throughout France, whether endowed or
not, from the village school, through all the gradations
of grammar schools, academies, and colleges, up to the
faculties and universities, were comprehended under one
great central administration, called l’Universite Imperiale
(now Royale) de France. The term University, there¬
fore, in the sense first introduced by Napoleon, and now
naturalized and generally adopted in France, does not
describe, as in Britain and elsewhere, an institution for
liberal education, but a branch of the administration or
government of the state. It has, nevertheless, so much of
the nature of a corporate body, that it possesses large dis¬
posable funds of its own, consisting, partly of real property,
partly of pecuniary endowment secured on the public reve¬
nue, and partly of the produce of a tax levied on every in¬
stitution for educating the children of the wealthier classes,
which is called retribution universitaire. All professors,
public teachers, and schoolmasters are necessarily mem¬
bers of this vast body, called the University, the control
and direction of which reside in the following authorities :
1. The grand master, who is also minister of public in¬
struction, with a seat in the cabinet. At the moment we
write (September 1834) M. Guizot holds this important
office, in virtue of which he not only appoints all the offi¬
cers of university administration, but fills up all the va¬
cancies in colleges and schools, only, however, upon the
recommendation of the inferior local authorities, and after
rigorous examinations and comparative trials by them.
2. The second university authority is the royal council
of public instruction, composed of ten members, selected
from the names most eminent in the various branches of
science and literature. They hold their sittings in Paris,
and are generally distinguished members of the Institute,
as at present, for example, Villemain, Cousin, Orfila, The-
nard, &c. This council, with the grand master ex officio
president, is the fountain-head of authority, and the su¬
preme court of appeal in all that regards education. Their
province is to suggest and sanction improvements in the
method of teaching; to direct and superintend the compi¬
lation of books to put into the hands of youth, and to see
that they be adopted in schools and colleges; to judge and
remove incompetent teachers, upon the reports of general
inspectors; in short, to watch over the concerns and in¬
terests of public instruction in all its branches.
3. The University, or, in other words, the whole terri¬
tory of France, as far as regards the purposes of educa¬
tion, is divided into twenty-six academies^ each compre¬
hending three or more departments; for the term acade¬
my, like university itself, no longer designates a local in¬
stitution for the training of youth, but a certain territo¬
rial extent of educational jurisdiction. In the central town
of each academy resides a rector, whose business it is to
superintend all the schools, colleges, and faculties within
the departments which form his district, to promote their
moral and intellectual improvement, to collect the reports
of the inspectors who are employed to visit and examine
all places of education under his jurisdiction, to transmit
the result to the central administration at Paris, and to
serve as the organ of communication with the minister ofEstablish-
public instruction. He is assisted and controlled in the ments for
exercise of his functions by an academical council of ten, Education,
who are, partly official persons connected with the univer-
sity, with the department, and with the municipality, and
partly respectable inhabitants of the town which is the
seat of the academy. This council stands in the same re¬
lation to the academy as the conseil royal at Paris does to
the university, except that in most cases an appeal lies to
the latter from the decisions of the former.
4. Attached to the conseil royal are ten inspectors-ge-
neral of the university. Amongst these France is divided
into ten districts, each of which is visited once a year by
a different inspector, who makes a survey of the principal
establishments, controls their administration, and reports
to the minister of public instruction.
Besides these inspectors, who are the agents of the
central administration, each rector has, acting under him,
tw’o or more inspecteurs d’academie, who examine more
minutely every primary school or college within the limits
of his jurisdiction, and report to him on the general con¬
dition of the establishments, on the progress of the pu¬
pils, and on the conduct and character of the teachers.
Such is the general constitution of the administrative
body by which appointments are made, abuses prevented
or remedied, the finance department conducted, and the
general efficiency of the system of practical instruction
secured. With regard to that system itself, the constitu¬
ent parts of the great corps enseignant may be thus enu¬
merated, beginning with the highest;
1. hirst, then, we have les facultes; a term which has
superseded the use of the word universite in its local and
separate meaning, and which corresponds to the Scottish
use of the words college and university. The faculties in
France are reckoned five ; that of the sciences, mathema¬
tical and physical, of letters, of law, of medicine, and of
theology; and all these faculties, with their complement
of professors, a dean at the head of each, and a resort of
students more or less numerous, are found established in
eight different towns of France, which in Scotland we
should call seats of universities. They are the following :
Paris, Caen, Toulouse, Strasburg, Dijon, Poitiers, Rennes,
and Metz.
It is by the faculties alone that degrees can be conferred,
and these degrees are of three kinds : Bachelor’s {le bacca-
laureat), which cannot be obtained before sixteen years
of age ; licentiate’s (la licence), which presupposes the
former, and at least one additional year of age and study ;
and doctor’s degree (le doctoral), granted to licentiates
when still further advanced in age and acquirement.
2. Subordinate to the faculties, and intended to be a
preparation for them, are the colleges; institutions which
resemble a good deal those known by the same name in
England, when the term College is applied, not to the uni¬
versities, but to the schools of Eton, Harrow, Westminster,
&c. The French colleges are either royal or communal. Of
the former there are at present thirty-nine, of the latter
320. Of these 320, by far the greater number are in a
very imperfect and inefficient state ; and the minister Gui¬
zot has announced his intention of bringing in a bill to put
them on a better footing. In many of the colleges royaux,
such as those of Caen and of Rouen, the work of refor¬
mation is already begun, by having conjoined with the old
course of instruction, which was too exclusively classical,
what are called cours speciaux, in history both natural
and civil, in mathematics and physics, and in geography
and modern languages.
3. The third and lowest stage of national instruction is
that of the ecoles primaires, corresponding to our paro¬
chial and village schools. The law of the 28th of June 1833
has new-modelled and added greatly both to the number
204 FRA
Establish- and value of the ecoles primaires. It ordains that there
meets for siiall be a school in every one of the 37,187 communes or
Education, parisiies into which France is divided ; and this ordinance
is advancing rapidly to its full accomplishment.
Still more important and commendable are the provi¬
sions contained in this memorable law, for making the
course of instruction in these schools, and the methods of
imparting it, such as to bestow on the great mass of the
population that amount of religious, moral, and intellectual
training which is best adapted to their condition in life
and the duties they have to discharge. This law provides
also for a somewhat fuller and more comprehensive edu¬
cation of the children of the middle class and wealthy
burghers in considerable towns, by ordaining that in every
commune which contains above 6000 souls (the number of
these in France is 273) there shall be an ecoh primaire su-
perieure, corresponding to and borrowed from the Burger-
or Mittel-schule of Germany, in which a considerable
extension is given to the list of subjects taught in the pri¬
mary schools. Of these schools, intermediate between
the primary schools and the colleges, forty-five had been
established at the date of March 1834.
The educational system of France, as we have briefly
sketched it, may be considered as now happily established,
with a fairer prospect of success, and less risk of failure,
than in any former attempt in that country. This result
is rendered probable, above all, by two other parts of the
system, which deserve particular mention, on account of
their tendency to give permanence and efficiency to any
system whatever of national instruction. One of these is
the ecole normals, established at Paris by Napoleon in
1808, for the purpose of maintaining 300 pupils, and train¬
ing them not only to great acquirements in literature and
science, but to the art of communicating their knowledge
to others in an attractive and interesting form, and thus to
become able regents in the colleges royaux, and professors
in the faculties. None are admitted into this institution
who are under the age of seventeen complete, and who
have not distinguished themselves in the previous stages of
their education. The pupils are divided into two sections,
that of the sciences and that of letters, and remain three
years in the one or the other. The first two years are
employed in confirming and extending their acquirements
by a rigorous and effectual discipline under the best pro¬
fessors and teachers that Paris can afford. During the last
year they are regarded as future teachers or professors,
and trained particularly, both by theory and practice, to
the art of communicating instruction.
The other security we spoke of is an extension and appli¬
cation of this noble conception of Napoleon, so as to em¬
brace a preparatory course of discipline for the teachers
of the primary schools. This idea, though originated and
even acted upon long before the revolution of 1830, never
was followed out with energy and effect till after that
event, and above all since M. Guizot was minister. Even
so late as 1828 there existed only three ecoles normales
primaires, as these seminaries for schoolmasters are call¬
ed. According to the last account rendered to the king
and the chambers by M. Guizot in April 1834, sixty-two
of these seminaries were in full activity, providing able
and accomplished teachers for the primary schools of no
less than seventy-three out of the eighty-six departments
of France ; and there can be no doubt that in a very short
time the law of 1833, which ordains that there shall be a
normal school in every department, will be executed to
the letter.
When this and all the other measures, either actually
voted by the chambers or contemplated by the minister,
N C E.
for giving effect to the system of public instruction which Esubliii,!
has been described above, shall have received their full mentsfoi
and final accomplishment, and shall have taken root uni- War,
versally in the habits of the people, we may congratulate
France on possessing the strongest of all securities for good
government, and against the recurrence of revolutionary
changes.
Iish-f
fori
X. ESTABLISHMENTS FOR THE PURPOSES OF WAR.
ir
a!
d
The French army first assumed a regular form under Army.
Henry IV.; but its peace establishment, including both
horse and foot, did not then exceed 10,000 men, whilst
the whole charge for the war department, including
ordnance and half pay, was L.500,000. In 1610 Henry
carried his army to a war establishment of 40,000 men.
In 1640, under the able administration of Richelieu,
France took an active part in the war of Germany, carry¬
ing her force at one time to 100,000 men, and her expen¬
diture to the then unexampled sum of L.4,000,000 ster¬
ling in one year. In 1659, Louis XIV., already full
of ambitious projects, kept up a peace establishment of
70,000 men; and the war of 1672 having brought Ger¬
many, Holland, and Spain, into the field against France,
the force of the latter country was carried to the number of
160,000 men. From 1679 to 1688 there was peace; but
Louis passed the interval in preparing for war, and the
introduction of the funding system now enabled France,
England, and Holland, to surpass all their former exer¬
tions. The contest begun in 1688 required on the part
of France a force of between 200,000 and 300,000 men.
The peace of Utrecht gave a long repose to exhausted
France, and the war of 1741 did not, until conducted in
its advanced stage by Marshal Saxe, call forth a military
force equal to that of Louis XIV. In the war of 1756
the French army was less numerous, and far less ably com¬
manded. During the continental peace of thirty years
(from 1762 to 1792) its establishment was kept, with little
fluctuation, at 100,000 men.
' The war of the Revolution began with a force on the
part of France1 of only 140,000 men ; but this was speed¬
ily augmented by the compulsory levies of February 1793,
and by the still more comprehensive operation of the re¬
quisition in September. The republican spirit was now
at its height, and the unlimited issue of assignats led to
the maintenance of a force hitherto unexampled in the
annals of any country, ancient or modern. In 1794, the
Frenchmen in actual service in the Netherlands, on the
Rhine, in Piedmont, the Pyrenees, and La Vendee, ap¬
pear to have amounted to between 500,000 and 600,000;
a force which, though imperfectly disciplined and officered,
baffled the greatest confederacy that had at that time
been formed in Europe. In 1795 the assignats lost their
efficacy, and France was obliged to reduce her army by a
third; but its discipline was now greatly improved. Du¬
ring the campaigns of 1795, 1796, and 1797, as well as in
those of 1799 and 1800, the force maintained by France
and Holland was between 300,000 and 400,000. At the
peace of Amiens, Bonaparte kept up a peace establish¬
ment of 300,000 men ; and after the renewal of war it was
raised to 400,000 ;2 a force with which he triumphed in
1805 over the united arms of Austria and Russia. His
annual levy of French conscripts, though apparently only
80,000, amounted (see Declaration of the Minister at War,
18th September 1809) to 100,000; a supply which, joined
to the recruits of his allies in Germany and Italy, kept
up his numbers, and even increased them, notwithstand¬
ing the wasteful campaigns of 1806 and 1807 in Poland,
3 Tableau. Hktorique dcs Guerres de la Revolution.
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FRANCE.
205
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followed by the no less wasteful campaigns of Spain. In
1812 the force of France and her allies reached their
maximum, Bonaparte having led against the Russian em¬
pire a mass of 360,000 men, whilst there remained in Spain,
Germany, and France, a number which carried the aggre¬
gate to between 500,000 and 600,000. Need we then
wonder that, even after the almost total loss of his troops
in Russia, there remained a force competent, with the
aid of fresh levies, to withstand the efforts of the allies
during two campaigns ?
In 1815 Bonaparte, in returning from Elba, found under
arms in France about 120,000 men, all of whom, with the
exception of a few thousands, rejoined his standard. But
so sick were the French of war, that the greatest efforts
during the next three months added only 60,000 to this
number, and the loss of one battle exposed all the hope¬
lessness of resistance to the allies.
On the second restoration of the Bourbons in 1815, the
army had fallen into a very disorganized state, the dis¬
ciplined soldiers being dispersed, and the ranks slowly
filled by new levies. This led to the legislative act of the
10th March 1818, which revived the conscription, but in
a mitigated form, and allowing a great latitude in provid¬
ing substitutes. A recurrence to this method of raising
levies was held to be the only effectual method of filling
the ranks with men of steady habits; for the army in
France, never a receptacle for the refuse of the populace,
has in general been composed of young peasantry and la¬
bourers of good character. Such was its constitution in
the war of the Revolution, and its discipline was exem¬
plary, until Bonaparte adopted the unprincipled practice of
making war without magazines, and obliged the soldiers
to live at free quarters on the inhabitants. The new con¬
scription is indeed greatly modified, the numbers annu¬
ally required being limited to 40,000, and the term of ser¬
vice to six years; still the measure is compulsory, and
falls heavily on the middle and lower classes ; the alterna¬
tive for a youth, when drawn, being either to give up his
intended profession, or to pay L.40 or L.50 for a substi¬
tute. In 1832, the French army amounted to 411,816
men, including 19,036 officers and 3794 children. The
infantry, including the guards, amounts to 264,141 men,
including 9505 officers; the cavalry, consisting of various
denominations of chasseurs, dragoons, cuirassiers, and hus¬
sars, to 51,235 men, including 2805 officers; and the ar¬
tillery to 32,594 men, including 1190 officers; besides
gendarmerie, engineers, &c.; the latter being a numerous
and well educated body of officers.
The gradations of rank in the French service are sous-lieu-
tenant, lieutenant, capitaine, chef d'escadron, colonel, mare-
chal-de-camp, lieutenant-general, marechal de France. The
number of the marshals of France will henceforth be li¬
mited to twelve; the number of the other ranks, even
that of lieutenant-general, is very large ; for the etat major,
or staff of the army, after a reduction in 1818, consisted
of 430 lieutenants-generaux, and 260 marechaux de camp.
There are on full pay twice as many officers as are neces¬
sary for the duty ; but the number of half-pay officers ex¬
ceeds all proportion ; for this part of Bonaparte’s vast ma¬
chine has remained, whilst most of the private soldiers
have sunk tranquilly into the occupations of the lower
classes.
Promotion in the French army never takes place by
purchase, and not often by special order; seniority at
present determines more than half the appointments, a
course which, whilst it renders promotion extremely slow,
will eventually give employment to almost all the half-pay
officers. Of the soldiers in service, there is still a part of
the army of Bonaparte, but the majority are recent levies.
Of the military seminaries of France, the one of high¬
est repute is the Fcole Polytechnique; a school for the
instruction of young men in mathematics, and drawing Establish-
for the engineer and artillery corps. None but candidates merits for
of talent are admitted; and it is well entitled to the name v ^ar-
of a nursery (pepiniere) of intelligent officers.
The charge to government of a foot soldier in France Expense
does not, in time of peace, exceed L.20 a year ; that of°f the
the cavalry soldier is nearly double. The pay for either army*
officer or soldier is little more than half the rate in Eng¬
land, and its inadequacy is much complained of. The
whole charge of the war department under Bonaparte
was about L.20,000,000 sterling. In the year 1833 it
amounted to L.8,564,470.
The gendarmerie are not a part of the regular army, Gendar-
but a corps charged with the police duty, and scattered merle and
in small divisions throughout all France ; their total num-Sar^es na*
ber, including officers, is 18,000. The gardes nationales^™^*'
correspond to our yeomanry and volunteers; and every
town of consequence has a corps of this description.
The chief fortifications of France, on the side of Flan- Fortifica-
ders, are the well-known towns of Lisle, Valenciennes,tions*
Conde, and Douai; on the side of the Alps, Embrum, Gre¬
noble, and Antibes; on the side of the Pyrenees, Perpig¬
nan, Bellegarde, Mont-Louis, and Bayonne. The fortified
sea-ports are Brest, Toulon, Cherbourg, Rochefort, and
Boulogne. France is, without question, the first military
power on the Continent, being nearly equal to Russia in
population, and greatly superior in pecuniary resources,
as well as in the intelligence of the individuals who com¬
pose her army.
The superiority of the English navy over the French Navy,
existed in ages when our pecuniary means were far infe¬
rior; and though, during the middle of the reign of Louis
XIV. the French, by financial sacrifices, obtained a nume¬
rical superiority, one great battle, that of La Hogue, in
1692, was sufficient to restore our ascendency. The war
of 1741, however successful on the part of France by land,
was, particularly towards its close, unfortunate to her at
sea. In the succeeding interval of peace, great efforts
were made to reinstate the French navy; but the war of
1756 proved doubly disastrous, and at last swept it almost
entirely from the ocean. A very different scene opened
in the war of 1778, when France, unembarrassed by a
continental struggle, was enabled to direct all her dispos¬
able resources to her marine. She was then enabled to
keep in an effective state about seventy sail of the line,
the crews of which, added to those of the frigates and
corvettes, formed a total of 60,000 seamen. The blows
given to this force by our navy, towards the end of the
war, were repaired with great diligence in the peace;
and to prepare young officers for the sea in preference to
the land service, became a favourite object in several of
the government schools. In 1791, an official report stat¬
ed the effective French navy at seventy-four sail of the
line, sixty-two frigates, and twenty-nine corvettes ; a state
of preparation which accounts for the resistance made to
our navy by the revolutionary government under all the
disadvantages of an unparalleled continental struggle.
This proud force, however, disappeared progressively at
the capture of Toulon, the victory of the 1st June 1794,
and still more in the victory of Aboukir; so that Bona¬
parte, on his accession to power, found the French marine
in a very reduced state. He laboured, however, to rein¬
state it; the years of continental peace, 1801, 1802, 1803,
and 1804, were favourable to his efforts; and in 1805 he
boasted of having in equipment sixty sail of the line, a
force destined to an early diminution at Trafalgar and St
Domingo. The Bourbons, on recovering their crown, found
little more than half the force which existed previously
to the Revolution. It has since been augmented, and in
1831 it amounted to thirty-five ships of the line, forty fri¬
gates, twenty-three corvettes, fifty-seven brigs, twenty-
206
FRANCE.
Revenue nine galliots and cutters of eight and four guns, twelve
and Lx- steam-boats, sixteen armed store-ships, thirty-two armed
pen 1tme- transports, two yachts; total, two hundred and eighty-four.
There w’ere at the same time building twenty ships of
the line, twenty-six frigates, seven corvettes, ten brigs of
seventeen guns, five steam-boats, nine store-ships; total,
seventy-seven. Other three ships of the line, two fri¬
gates, three corvettes, and five steam-boats, were put on
the stocks in 1832.1
XX. REVENUE AND EXPENDITURE.
Revenue. In France the ancient system of taxation and finance
was extremely unequal and oppressive. Her various pro¬
vinces, though they were united under one head, retained
nevertheless many of their own peculiar laws and privi¬
leges, which were absurd in themselves, and were, besides,
opposed to the general interests of the empire. Amongst
these privileges was an exemption from certain imposts,
to which some were subjected, and consequently over-tax¬
ed ; and others, again, contributed a certain quota of re¬
venue to government, which they raised by taxes impos¬
ed by their own local authorities. The consequence was,
that no uniform system of taxation could be established
throughout the country. The taxes on many commodities
were higher in one province than in another; and custom¬
houses were accordingly established on their respective
frontiers, to prevent the importation of goods until they
had paid the duties. In this manner, owing to the ine¬
quality of taxation, commodities could not freely pass from
one district of the country to another; and the kingdom
was thus broken into separate divisions, to the great in¬
terruption of trade. The partiality shown to the privileged
orders was another serious grievance in the ancient sys¬
tem of French taxation. The taxes by which the public
revenue was raised were, first, the taille, a tax on real pro¬
perty, or on income derived from commerce and industry.
From this tax the lands of the noblesse and clergy were
exempt. Secondly, the vingtieme was a tax of one twen¬
tieth on property, from which the clergy alone were ex¬
empted. Thirdly, a poll tax was levied on all classes in¬
discriminately. Many of the taxes were farmed by rich
capitalists, who paid annually into the treasury a fixed sum,
and collected the taxes from the people. Those farmers-
general held the monopoly of the manufacture and sale of
tobacco and salt; and also the octroi, which was a duty on
. all articles entering Paris. The power delegated to these
contractors was the source of grievous oppression to the
people. The duties called aides were imposed on spiritu¬
ous liquors and other articles of consumption; they also
included duties on all articles wrought in gold or silver,
on wrought iron, playing cards, leather, paper, starch,
&c. These duties were levied by collectors for the be¬
hoof of government. The corvee, which consisted in so
many days labour annually, of men, horses, oxen, carria¬
ges, &c. was nominally applicable to the maintenance of
roads. Ihe tax was payable either in money or in labour.
This system of taxation, so prejudicial to internal com¬
merce, was to a certain extent reformed by Colbert, the
minister of Louis XIV., who, though his views in regard
to the principles of commerce were narrow and illiberal,
yet improved in many particulars the system of taxation,
by rendering it more uniform, and thus breaking down
the barriers which obstructed the free intercourse be¬
tween the different provinces. Under his administra¬
tion the public revenue of France amounted in 1682 to Revemu
L. 5,000,000. and E*
The long and expensive wars of Louis XIV. produced Pen(l^r{,
a great accumulation of debt (nearly L.l00,000,000 ster-
ling), which, after his death, was lessened by an appeal
to a singular privilege, of which advantage has often been
taken in France, viz. that a new sovereign is not bound to
pay the debts of his predecessor in full. During the
eighteenth century the revenue of France increased pro¬
gressively, but more slowly than that of England; the
vicious system of farming the taxes still continued. Nec-
kar, appointed to office in 1776, sought to teach the French
court the value of publicity in financial statements, and
exhibited the rare example of a war conducted for several
years without new taxes, the supplies being found by loans,
the interest of which was provided for by successive re¬
trenchments in the public expenditure. His successor,
M. de Calonne, pursued a very different course, and was
found altogether incapable of the measures necessary
to remedy an annual deficiency of L.2,000,000, which
now took place. The revenue of France was then about
L.22,000,000 sterling. The sum required for payment of
the interest of the public debt was nearly L.l0,000,000,*
leaving only L.l2,000,000 for the army, navy, civil list,
and other public expenses.
Such was the state of the French finances at the era of
the Revolution of 1789, which was followed by invasion
on the frontier, and in the interior by all the confusion
consequent on the reign of terror. In this era of confis¬
cation and judicial murder, the national debt could hard¬
ly be respected. It was not, however, openly cancelled,
but the interest was issued in assignats of no value except
for purchases of national property. At last, in 1798, on
an approximation to regularity in the management of
public business, there was passed a law, declaring that
one third of the old national debt should be sacred, and
the interest on it payable in bons, or paper receivable in
discharge of taxes. This third was called la tiers provi-
soire, but its price in the market continued very low un¬
til Bonaparte succeeded to power, and placed Gaudin, af¬
terwards Duke of Gaeta, at the head of the treasury, when
means were found to redeem the stocks from their de¬
pression, and to resume the payment of the dividends in
cash. The amount of the revenue was greatly impaired by
the general confusion of the Revolution. In 1799 the ex¬
penditure exceeded the receipt by L.8,000,000 sterling.3
The continental peace, a partial reduction of expenditure,
and improvements in the collection of the taxes, brought,
in 1803, the receipts to L.19,500,000, whilst the expen¬
diture was L.20,000,000. In subsequent years both re¬
ceived a progressive augmentation, and in 1813 the re¬
venue derived from France, exclusive of conquered terri¬
tory, was about L.27,000,000. On the restoration of the
Bourbons in 1814, the public debt, funded and unfunded,
did not exceed L. 123,000,000 ;4 its interest L.7,000,000.
France had thus a fair prospect of financial prosperity,
when the return of Bonaparte, and a second invasion by
the allied troops, overthrew public credit, and produced
a national loss and a general derangement of trade. It
has been estimated that the return of Napoleon from Elba,
which led to the second invasion of France by the allied
troops, occasioned a loss to the country of 4,000,000,000
of francs. The direct loss, which included the expenses
paid to the allied powers, and those incurred by the main¬
tenance of their armies, placed in cantonments through-
idiie o’
rci
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P
Pos
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for
the Uac^of^trnmnnrt^ftnn ^ rancc w°rk under the direction of the Admiralty, and as that punishment holds in France
the place ot transportation, the number thus employed amounts to between ten and twelve thousand.
» fniirlin v * • .j r-- °* to the National Assembly in September 1790.
Gaudm, Noi«e F.mncu <U la Franc. ' . Bignon, E,^ Compar.tifd, la Franc.
wil
to
Hit
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‘Veiie
FRANCE.
out France, may be estimated; but the indirect evils oc¬
casioned by the ravages inseparable from the invasion of
a hostile army, by the confusion and derangement of all
commercial relations, and the impossibility of collecting
the revenue in such a time of trouble, cannot be summed
up in money. At the same time there are scarcely any
national difficulties which may not be overcome by the en¬
ergies and industry of a free and intelligent people such
as the French; and accordingly we find, that with an in¬
considerable addition to her debt, France has defrayed all
these heavy expenses, the contributions imposed on her
by the allied powers, the expenses of the temporary main¬
tenance of her armies, and her own warlike expenses. For
this purpose, however, it became necessary in 1815 to im¬
pose additional taxes. In 1817 a loan was required of
392,989,000 francs; and in 1818, to defray the extraor¬
dinary contribution paid in that year to the allies of
575,807,197 francs, the minister had recourse to another
loan of 220,510,718 francs ; whilst by the taxes which had
been imposed, the revenue of that year was carried to
L.35,000,000. The following is the state of the receipt
and expenditure for ten successive years.
Years.
1819
1820
1821
1822
1823
1824
1825
1826
1827
1829
lieceipts.
Francs.
868,312,572
913,313,872
888,021,745
890,000,033
915,220,900
994,971,962
985,673,751
987,620,580
957,431,769
986,156,821
Expenditure.
Francs.
863,853,109
875,342,252
882,327,374
889,541,340
906,565,620
986,073,842
981,972,609
976,948,919
989,448,052
974,184,361
Surplus.
Francs.
4,459,463
37,971,620
5,694,371
458,693
8,655,380
8,898,120
3,701,142
10,671,661
Deficit.
32,016,283
Surplus.
11,972,660
207
Revenue
and Ex¬
penditure.
In 1828 M. Villele, before leaving office, estimated that
the receipts would be 946,483,698, the expenditure
951,631,890, being a deficit of 5,148,192. But on mak¬
ing up the accounts of the year, they exhibited a surplus
of 4,758,000 francs.
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jq
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The following is the statement of the receipt and expenditure for 1830.
Receipt.
Direct taxes, chiefly on land 
Registration stamps, and domains 
Custom-houses and salt 
Liquors, sundry duties, tobacco, and gun¬
powder 
Post-office 
Falls of timber 
Salt-works 
Gaming houses 
Royal lottery 
Coinage 
Sundry proceeds 
Extraordinary resources 
Deductions on receipts 
Francs.
290,265,819
187,225,038
154,231,103
193,081,582
33,469,030
24,060,697
1,200,000
4,338,888
10,042,799
141,381
11,585,418
48,402,241
25,900,000
983,944,066
We subjoin the following account of the expenditure
for 1833.
Francs.
Itf, Interest of the debt, with pensions 349,292,229
2d, Dotations; as the civil list, the expen¬
ses of the Chambers, and the Legion of Ho-
nour  17,370,660
3d, General administration, department of
justice    18,351,365
Department of foreign affairs  7,197,700
Department of public instruction  4,985,000
Department of the interior and religion  38,375,505
Department of commerce and public works...129,580,200
Department of war 205,547,288
Department of marine and colonies  66,406,518
Finances  23,378,400
The expenses of collection 115,075,668
Drawbacks and premiums  41,910,831
* 1,017,471,364
Including extraordinary grants, the total expenditure
will be found to amount to 1,120,394,804 francs, equal
to L.46,681,450.
Besides the public revenue of the empire, the com¬
munes raise a revenue for their own local expenses. This
revenue partly arises from octrois, which amount through¬
Expenditure.
Francs.
Civil list  27,666,666
Chamber of Peers  799,999
Chamber of Deputies   600,000
Legion of Honour  3,655’g09
Sinking fund  41,665,050
Funded debt 276,356,668
Justice  19,566,020
Foreign affairs  8,778,000
Religion and public instruction  38,961,500
Interior ...126,122,716
War 233,363,817
Marine  38,527,474
Finance  22,877,167
Administration of revenue 129,072,351
Repayments  46,30o’808
1,064,288,445
out France to forty millions of francs per annum, and
from other sources, being altogether about two hundred
millions of francs; which, added to the public revenue
of a thousand millions, amounts to about 1,200,000,000
francs for the whole revenue of France, equal to fifty mil¬
lions sterling, or L.41,666,666 if we deduct the local
revenue. During the administration of M. Villele, the
five per cents, in France were converted into a three per
cent, fund, at the rate of 133-33 cents, for every hundred
of the five per cent, stock; so that the whole five per
cent stock, bearing an annual interest of 30,574,116 francs,
was converted into a three per cent, fund, of which the
capital was increased one third. The effect of this trans¬
action by M. Villele was in reality to reduce the inte¬
rest on the five per cent, stock to four per cent., by which
he saved annual interest to the amount of six millions,
though by a very useless complexity in his operations.
It could serve no end to commence a three per cent,
fund, when he was in reality paying four per cent.; the
nominal reduction of interest being compensated to the
stockholders by the increase of the capital stock. The
interest on the public debt of France, thus reduced, may
be stated as follows :
The public debt of France amounts to 4,988,738,000
francs, equal to L.207,864,000. The annual interest of
the debt is about 10,812,000, whilst the sinking fund
/
208
FRANCE.
Itevenue
and Ex¬
penditure.
System of
taxation.
amounts to 1,120,541,828 francs, and yields an annual
interest of 44,053,005 francs, equal to about L.1,835,542,
which is nearly one fourth part of the whole debt.
The ancient system of taxation in France was subverted
by the National Assembly in 1791, and new taxes were
substituted in lieu of those formerly in force. These con¬
sisted of direct and indirect taxes. The direct taxes are,
1. Contribution forwiere or land-tax ; 2. Contribution per-
sonelle et mobiliere; 3. A tax on doors and windows; 4.
Droits depatente, or a license duty on particular trades and
professions, and a duty on mines.
The contribution fonciere is raised equally on all lands
and houses in proportion to their nett revenue. There are
no longer any exemptions in favour of the nobility since
the Revolution. The royal domains and the property of
the state are alone exempted. The contributionpersonelle et
mobiliere is divided into two parts. The first is a species of
poll-tax, rated at three days’ labour, and levied on all males
above eighteen years of age. The contribution mobiliere
is a house-tax levied on all rents from 200 to 2500 francs.
For the contribution personelle, the octroi, which is a custom-
duty on all goods entering a town, is substituted in Paris
and other large cities. The tax on street-doors and gate¬
ways, and windows, varies in proportion to the size ot the
town in which the house is situated, and also in proportion
to the size and value of the house and the number of win¬
dows. The droits de patentes or license-duty is levied on
every person following a profession, trade, or business , and
is divided into two heads; the proportional tax, which
amounts to ten per cent, on the rent of the persons dwell¬
ing ; or the fixed tax, which depends on the extent and po¬
pulation of the town where he exercises his profession. A
merchant pays from forty to 500 francs per annum, accord¬
ing to the population of the place where he resides, and
an additional ten per cent, on the rent of his dwelling-
house. Bankers in all cases pay 500 francs a year; and
there is in like manner a fixed rate for other inferior trades
and professions. The duty on mines is in proportion to
the extent of the surface, and also to their nett produce.
The law which fixes the amount of the direct taxes also
determines the quota which each department is required
to pay. This is announced by the minister of finance to
the prefect of the department, w ho communicates it to his
sous-prefect and to the mayors. The sum thus assigned
by the prefect to each arrondissement is subdivided by the
councils of the arrondissement and by the communes ; and
the amount allotted to each is apportioned among the in¬
habitants by persons appointed for that purpose, called re-
partiteurs or assessors. These assessors regulate the amount
of taxable property, and they fix the scale. The land-tax
is howrever very unequally assessed, amounting in some
departments to six per cent., whilst in the department of
the Seine it is seventeen per cent. The equalization of the
land-tax has always been accounted a capital object in the
financial policy of France; and with this view a minute
survey and measurement of all the landed property in
France (termed the cadastre) was begun in 1803, and is
still going on. Not above one third of this survey is yet
completed. The inequality of the land-tax has long
been a subject of loud and just complaint; and various
plans have been adopted for a more accurate classifica¬
tion of the land. But these have generally proved ineffi¬
cient and unsatisfactory. It is only by an exact survey of
the land that the burden of the tax can be equalized ; and
the survey which is at present in progress, when it is com¬
pleted, will no doubt effect this desirable object. But, in the
mean time, the unequal assessment of this tax, the many
overratings on the one hand, and omissions on the other,
are loudly and justly complained of; and the slow progress
of the cadastre affords but a tardy remedy for so great an
evil.
The indirect taxes consist chiefly of the droits reunis or Revenm
excise duties on articles of consumption, of stamp duties, andEj.
registration duties, duties on carriages, on canals and Pendit“re.
ferry boats, on gold and silver plate, lotteries, and gaming
houses. A revenue is raised from the monopoly of tobacco
and gunpowder \ from the post-office the octroi, or custom
duty on all articles entering large towns, one tenth of which
goes to the royal treasury, and the remainder is applied to
local expenses. The customs form an important branch of
the French revenues.
The droits reunis or excise duties are laid on wine, bran¬
dy, &c. which pay one and a half franc per hectolitre, of
120 English quarts, on being removed from one place to
another. Wine in bottles pays ten francs on its removal.
Cider, perry, and mead pay eighty cents, per hectolitre.
A duty of ten per cent, on the above duty is paid on their
removal from the wholesale warehouse. Prior to 1830 a
duty distinct from the octroi was levied on the entry of all
wine or spirituous liquors into communes the population
of which amounted to 1500 and upwards. All communes
whose population does not amount to 4000 are exempted
from this tax ; and a new tariff has been established, rising
progressively from 4000 to 5000 inhabitants, in proportion
to the estimated wealth of the departments, which are di¬
vided into four separate classes ; a very vague, as wre should
suppose, and uncertain standard of taxation. 1 here is a
further duty on wine and liquors sold by retail, which since
1830 has been reduced from fifteen to ten per cent. A re¬
duction of three percent, on this duty is made to dealers, and
of twenty-five per cent, if the wine be grown by the re¬
tailer himself. Strong beer pays a duty of three francs,
and small beer a duty of fifteen sous, per hectolitre. Re¬
tailers of liquors must take out a distinct license, which
varies, in proportion to the size of the town, from twenty to
six francs. Proprietors of public carriages pay one tenth
of the price of each place for passengers, a third being de¬
ducted for vacant places, and one tenth of the price receiv¬
ed for merchandise. Private carriages are subjected to a
moderate duty, according to their size, of forty francs per
annum for a carriage with two wheels, and holding two
persons ; and of 150 francs per annum for a carriage with
four wheels, and holding nine persons. The enregistre-
ment, or registration duties, embraces a variety of transac¬
tions, where property is conveyed or given away by mar¬
riage-settlement or otherwise. There is a duty on gifts
inter vivos, which increases with the distance of the rela¬
tion between the parties. It was modified by an ordon-
nance of the king in 1832. The duties payable on registry
are either fixed or ad valorem ; the fixed or certain duties
apply to common certificates, those of life or residence, ac¬
count books, bills of lading, appointments of arbitrations,
valuations of furniture, and the like. The ad valorem duty
applies to all bonds or obligations, discharges, judgments,
deposits or releases of sums of money, and for every trans¬
fer of property, contract or engagement arising from real or
personal property, whether between persons living, or given
by way of bequest. It is also applicable to leases, annuity
deeds, deeds of gift during life, negotiable securities with
the exception of bills of exchange ; to policies of assurance,
copies of the judgments of civil and criminal courts, &c.
These duties are either fixed, varying from fifty centimes
to twenty-five francs, or they are in proportion to the pro¬
perty conveyed, and vary from seven francs to twenty cen¬
times per cent. The stamp duty applies to receipts, bills
of exchange, newspapers, handbills, playbills, admission
cards to public places. It is also payable upon all paper
used for civil and judicial actes, and upon all writings which
may be required in evidence in courts of justice, &c., and
varies either in proportion to the size of the paper, or to the
amount of the sum specified in bills, promissory notes, &c.
The tax does nob amount on an average to above Is. 3d. on
)»;■
ReWie
‘and fc-
e:< endure.
FRANCE.
209
'ustob.
L.100. Lotteries and gaming-houses form one of the mi¬
serable resources of French finance. The latter are farm¬
ed out to a company, and paid, previous to the year 1830,
five and a half millions annually ; and for this sum the go¬
vernment of France degrades itself by thus trafficking with
its subjects in iniquity.1
The duty on doors and windows commenced in its pre¬
sent form on the 1st of January 1833 ; and it is regulated
partly by the amount of the population of the town or
commune in which it is situated, a circumstance which
seems to afford a very uncertain standard of taxation.
This tax is very trifling, averaging, where there is only
one door, from thirty centimes to one franc, as the popu¬
lation increases from 5000 to 100,000; where there are
more doors than one the duty is increased. A house with
five doors (ouvertures) pays from 2 francs 50 cents. (2s.
Id.) to 8 francs 50 cents. (7s. 10d.), as it is situated in a
town or commune of 5000 or 100,000 souls. For houses
having street-doors and gate-ways called portes cocheres
1 franc 60 cents. (Is. 5d.) to 18 francs 80 cents. (15s. 8d.),
in proportion to the amount of the commune or town in
which it is situated.
The duties levied on this branch of the French revenues
produce about L.3,000,000 sterling. In Britain the cus¬
toms yield about L.18,000,000 sterling. In France these
duties are laid on in many cases more with a view to re¬
striction and monopoly than to revenue. France sacri¬
fices a large revenue for the encouragement of the colo¬
nial monopoly; paying for the produce of the colonies an
exorbitant price, and afterwards, as in the case of sugar,
the staple article that is imported from the colonies, giving
a great portion of the duty as a bounty on its exportation
to foreign countries, to indemnify the exporter for the
loss that he would incur if he were selling the sugar at
its ordinary price in the markets of Europe. In 1830 the
gross receipts from the sugar duty amounted to L.l,397,34<0,
of which one third, namely, L.420,903, were paid back in
bounties on the exportation of the surplus. Thus the nett
duty nnly amounted to L.976,437, when in 1822, though
the quantity of sugar consumed was only 1,086,596 cwts.
or 281,075 cwts. less than in 1830, the nett amount of the
duty was L.1,234,653. It is by means of heavy custom-
duties that the French legislators endeavour to preserve
the monopoly of the home market to their own manufac¬
turers, by which policy they compel the French commu¬
nity to buy at a high price the inferior articles of their
own manufacture, rather than the better articles of the
foreigner at a lower price. They thus lay the whole com¬
munity under contribution for the benefit of a few. They
exclude the produce of foreign industry because it is bet¬
ter and cheaper, in order to force a sale of workmanship
that is inferior and dearer ; and one miserable consequence
of this narrow and mistaken policy is a great contraband
trade in these prohibited articles, which no efforts have been
able to repress. The increased numbers and superior vigi¬
lance of the custom-house officers have been still counter¬
acted by the new expedients and persevering ingenuity of
the smuggler. The frontier of France is the scene of this
persecution against commerce, where all the illegal, dar¬
ing, and ingenious resources of the contraband traders are
called into activity. Amongst other expedients, they have
trained packs of dogs to carry prohibited goods across the
frontier. These dogs being conducted to the frontier, are
kept without food for many hours ; they are then beaten
and laden with goods, and are started on their travels
when it begins to grow dark, and reach the abodes of
their masters as soon as they can, where they are well
treated, and receive a full meal. According to the ac- National
counts of the French custom-house, 40,278 of these dogs Income and
were destroyed in the year 1830, on which account pre-CaPitah &c*
miums were paid to the custom-house officers to the
amount of 40,278 francs. The great objects of this illicit
trade are tobacco, sugar, and colonial produce generally;
also British cotton manufactures, quiltings, cambrics, mus¬
lins, fine cutlery, &c. That the trade, though it may be ob¬
structed, is not prevented, is evident from the circumstance
that there are regular rates of insurance on the convey¬
ance of contraband goods into France, varying from ten
to seventy per cent. A revision, and if possible a reduc¬
tion, of these heavy duties would be the true policy of
France. Monopoly was never yet the source of commer¬
cial greatness in any country. These special encourage¬
ments rather tend to deaden ingenuity; while it is ani¬
mated by a free competition, in which all parties are on
an equal footing, and in which the prize is the sure re¬
ward only of merit and talent.
XII. NATIONAL INCOME AND CAPITAL ; POPULATION.
Of the official surveys of the French territory, by far Cadastre,
the most minute and accurate is the cadastre, a survey
which became indispensable from the time it was deter¬
mined to exchange the taxes on consumption for taxes on
produce. A return of the rent of land, such as was
made under the property-tax act in England, would not
have answered, or indeed have been practicable in France,
where so many thousands of petty lots are cultivated by
their proprietors. At first the cadastre proceeded on the
plan of an estimate par masses de culture, or continuous va¬
luation of extensive tracts; but this proving unsatisfac¬
tory, it has been conducted since 1807 on a plan of such
minute detail, as to give the value of every separate par-
celle or patch of land. The progress of this minute sur¬
vey of the landed property in France has been retarded
by many causes; and in 1830 not above two thirds of the
land had been surveyed. It was estimated in the report
of one of the committees of the chamber in 1832, that it
would still require from that period about eight years,
and an expense of above L.2,000,000 sterling, to complete
it. They had only surveyed thirty-one millions of hec¬
tares, or sixty-eight millions of acres. The annual ex¬
pense of the survey is L. 120,000.
It is common to dwell on the advantages of France, as
situated in the centre of civilized nations, as raising with¬
in herself a great variety of products, and as capable of
conducting her manufactures with comparatively few im¬
ports. Those, however, who have studied the subject
thoroughly, will pronounce her real advantages to consist
in a temperate climate, in a territory upon the whole fer¬
tile, in a considerable extent of sea-coast, and in the pos¬
session of military strength sufficient to protect her from
aggression. As yet neither the capital nor labour of the
French have been skilfully directed; but the disposition
to industry exists, and needs only a judicious impulse.
The taxation of France, computed by the individual, France and
hardly exceeds L.l. 11s. (English value) per head, whilst Britain
that of Britain and Ireland is not less than L.3. 10s. percomParc,b
head. This, however, is a very inconclusive comparison,
the question being not the relative number of the inha¬
bitants, but the result of their productive industry. M.
Chaptal computes (vol. i. p. 225) the value of the land
and farming capital of France at fifteen hundred millions
sterling, to which making an addition for the difference
of money, and a further addition for the capital employed
1 Okey’s Concise Digest of the Law, Usage, and Custom, affecting the civil and commercial intercourse of the subjects of Great Britain and
France, p, 259. j j
VOL. X. 2 D
210
FRANCE.
National in manufacture and commerce, we arrive at an amount capital of Great Britain and Ireland. But we fix, by Xatic
Income and not unijjjg the very iarge sum which Mr Colquhoun gives preference, the attention of our readers on the annual Income^,
Capital, &CYgee arjicie England, page 14<9) for the collective produce.
Gross produce of agriculture (see the preceding section )
on Agriculture)     /
Manufactures, including mines and minerals 
Commerce, inland and foreign 
Britain and Ireland.
L. 187,000,000
100,000,000
70,000,000
L.357,000,000
France, after making an
addition for the Difference
of Money.
L.270,000,000
76,000,000
40,000,000
L.386,000,000
But the conclusive return, that which leads to a correct calculation of political strength, is the nett produce of the
year.
Rent of land and farmers’ profit.
Rent of houses 
Taxable incomes arising from commerce, manufactures, )
and professions, that is, incomes of L.50 and upwards /
Britain and Ireland.
L.60,000,000
16,000,000
30,000,000
L.106,000,000
France, after making an
addition for the Difference
of Money.
L.75,000,000
18,000,000
not known, but pro¬
bably not above
20,000,000
L.l 13,000,000
The commercial calculation is taken from the property-
tax return of 1810, deducting twenty-five per cent, and
making an addition for Ireland. Neither the income from
the public funds, nor the wages of labour, are reckoned
in either country.
Price of la. In France, the lower orders, from the moderate price of
hour. provisions, are placed above distress by wages which to
us appear very low. Those of the country labourer in
France (Chaptal, vol. i. p. 245) are only Is. or Is. Id. a
day; of masons, Is. 3d. and Is. 4d.; of mechanics in
towns, Is. 6d., Is. 8d., Is. lOd.; the whole without victuals,
or any additional allowance. The wages of the women
are a full third lower.1
On an average of twelve years, the wages of labour in
to 1828, from
According to official returns for 1827, in Paris, the fol¬
lowing is the average price of labour in different mecha¬
nical trades:
Tobacco manufacturers, from 2s. 9d. to Is. 3d. per day.
Fan-makers; men, 2s. 1 d.; women, Is. 0^d.; children, 6d.
Paper-stainers; men, 2s. 6d. to 3. 4d.; women, Is. 3d. to
Is. 8d.; children, 8d. to lOd.
Lapidaries, 3s. 4d.
Working jewellers, 2s. Id. to 3s. 9d.
Marble-workers and statuaries, 2s. Id. to 5s.
Glass-manufacturers, 3s. 4d.
Lithographic printers, Is. 3d. to 4s. Id.
Gas-work labourers, 2s. 3£d.
the following trades are represented as follows, from 1817
official returns:
Stone-cutters lowest, 2s. &|d. highest, 3s. 6^d. last rate, 2s. lid.
Brick-layers  3s. l|d. — 4s. 2d.   3s. 7d.
Ditto (assistants)  — 2s. Id.   2s. lid.  2s. 8^d.
Day-labourers  — Is. 8d. —, 2s. 6d.   Is. lid.
Masons  — 2s. S^d. — 3s. 9d.   2s. lid.
Mortar-makers  —. 2s. l5.   2s. 8£d.   2s. 3£d.
Boys (employed by builders)    Is. 7d. — 2s. Od.   Is. 9d.
Carpenters •.  — 2s. S^d. — 3s. 4d.   2s. lOd.
The price paid to sawyers was:
Sawing oak, per 100 lowest, L.9. 11s. 8d. highest, L.10. 16s. 8d. last rate, L.10. 0s. Od.
Ditto fir, per ditto  — 6. 13s. 4d.   8. 15s. Od.   7. Is. 8d.
Expense The difference in the expense of living between France provided the parallel be made between towns or districts
of living, and our country is about a third, that is, L.100 in France at a similar distance from either capital, Paris being as ax¬
is equivalent to L.130 or L.140 in the southern, and pensive compared to the rest of France, as London is com-
to L.l20 or L.130 in the northern part of our, island, pared to the rest of England. Fortunately for us, the
The difference, as far as regards provisions, is somewhat French have not paid much attention to the price, either
greater; but it receives a counterpoise in the cheapness of labour or fuel, in the places, such as Paris and Rouen,
of our fuel. The proportion now mentioned will be found where they have established their rival manufactures,
applicable to the expense of the middle, as well as of the Another remarkable circumstance is, that various kinds
lower ranks. It will be found equally general in the sense of work, when performed by the piece, are nearly as dear
of locality, being applicable to France and Britain at large, in France as in England ; so unaccustomed are our neigh-
1 These returns apply not to Paris, but to provincial towns of ten, fifteen, or twenty thousand inhabitants. The want of canals
causes a partial difference in the price ot provisions, but in no degree to the extent asserted by those who (Edinburgh Review, No.
G4, p. 362) adopt too readily the loose allegations so general in France. The cheapness of land carriage would speedily counteract it.
v'alinal
co»wid
FRANCE.
211
hours to simplify a task by the application of method, or computation, made in 1817, had further increased to National
the division of employment. above 29,000,000. In the year 1820 the population was Income and
In the end of the seventeenth century, the territory of 30,451,187; and, according to the ordonnance of January CaPital>&c-
France, when equal, or very nearly equal, to its present 1832, it amounted to 32,560,934. The marriages are an-
extent, appears, from the report of the intendants or pro- nually about 236,996, and the deaths about 785,268,
yincial governors, to have contained about 20,000,000 of of which 395,250 are males, and 388,018 females. The
inhabitants. This number was found, by the census made births are 967,533, of which there are 498,707 boys and
by order of the National Assembly, to have increased 468,826 girls. The number of illegitimate children is
nearly a third in the course of a century; the amount, in 68,081. The average population of France is 144 inha-
1791, being 26,363,600, a number which, by the latest" fbitants to the square mile.
Population of France in 1832, distinguished by Provinces and Departments.
Ancient Provinces.
Flanders.
Artois....
Picardy..
Normandy.
Isle of France..
Champagne.
Departments.
Lorraine,
Alsace.
Brittany.
Maine.
Anjou 
Touraine 
The Orleannois
Berry  |
Nivernois 
Burgundy
North 
Pas de Calais 
Somme 
Lower Seine 
Calvados 
Manche 
Orne 
Eure 
Seine (containingParis)
Seine and Oise 
Oise 
Seine and Marne....
Aisne 
Marne 
Ardennes 
Aube 
Upper Marne 
Meuse 
Moselle 
Meurthe 
Vosges  
Upper Rhine (reduced
by the cessions in
1815 to)  
Lower Rhine (reduced
by the cessions in
1815 to) 
Ule and Villaine 
Cotes du Nord  
Finisterre 
Morbihan 
Lower Loire 
Mayenne 
Sarthe 
Maine and Loire  
Indre and Loire 
Loiret 
Eure and Loir 
Loir and Cher 
Indre 
Cher 
Nievre 
Yonne 
Cote d’Or 
Saone and Loire 
Ain 
Population.
989,938
655,215
543,704
693,683
494,702
591,284
441,881
424,248
935,108
448,180
397,725
323,893
513,000
337,076
289,622
246,361
249,827
314,588
417,003
415,568
397,987
424,258
540,213
547,052
598,872
524,396
433,522
470,093
352,586
457,372
467,871
297,016
305,276
278,820
235,750
245,289
256,059
282,521
352,487
375,877
523,970
346,030
Ancient Provinces.
Tranche Comte.
Poitou.
La Marche 
Limousin 
Bourbonnois 
Saintonge and
Angumois 
Aunis and Saint¬
onge  
Auvergne..
/
Departments.
Population.
Upper Saone..
Doubs 
Jura 
Vendee 
Two Sevres....
Vienne 
Creuse 
Upper Vienne.
Correze 
Allier  
Charente.
Lyonnois.
Dauphiny.
 S
Guienne.
Bearn  
County of Foix..
Roussillon 
Languedoc 
Provence.
County of Ve- \
naissin J
Lower Charente 
Puy de Dome 
Cantal    
Rhone   
Loire 
Isere 
Upper Alps 
Drome   
Dordogne 
Gironde.. 
Lot and Garonne 
Lot 
Tarn and Garonne....
Aveyron  
Gers 
Landes  
Upper Pyrenees  
Lower Pyrenees  
Arriege  
Eastern Pyrenees 
Upper Garonne  
Aude 
Tarn 
Herault 
Gard  
Lozere 
Upper Loire 
Ardeche 
Lower Alps  
Mouths of the Rhone.
Var 
Vaucluse.
Corsica...
f 338,910
265,535
312.504
330,350
294,850
282,731
265,384
285,130
294,834
298.257
362,531
445,249
573,106
258,594
434,429
391,216
550.258
129,102
299,556
482,750
554,225
346,885
*283,827
242,509
359,056
312,160
281.504
233,031
428,401
253,121
157,052
427,856
270,125
335,844
346,207
357,383
140,347
292,078
340,734
155,896
359,473
317,501
239,113
195,407
The estimates of population in France subsequently to
1791 are formed, not, like our population returns, on an
actual survey, but by adding for the period which has in¬
tervened, the births, and deducting the deaths, of which
an accurate record is kept in the public offices. It is thus
difficult to compute the relative number engaged in differ¬
ent occupations; a late publication (by Count de Laborde)
contains the following estimate :
Persons.
In agriculture 17,500,000
In manufactures  6,200,000
Indigent  800,000
Various employments    4,500,000
Total 29,000,000
Large as is this proportion of agriculturists, it does not
212
FRANCE.
Population of
the princi¬
pal Towns.
Nancy  29,000
Rennes  29,000
Besan^on  28,000
Troyes  27,000
Aix  27,000
Dunkirk  26,000
Versailles  26,000
Brest  24,000
Montauban  24,000
Avignon  23,000
L’Orient  22,000
Tours  22,000
Grenoble  21,000
Poitiers  21,000
Limoges  21,000
Havre de Grace.... 21,000
StOmer  20,000
Dieppe  20,000
Govern- exceed, nor indeed equal, the proportion returned in the
ment. official census of 1791.
r_Y^w/ Population of
the princi¬
pal Towns.
Paris 774,338
Marseilles 102,000
Lyons   101,000
Bordeaux  92,000
Rouen   81,000
Nantes  75,000
Lisle  60,000
Strasburg  50,000
Toulouse  48,000
Metz  41,000
Nismes  •• 39,000
Amiens  39,000
Caen    36,000
Montpellier  32,000
Clermont in Au¬
vergne  30,000
Rheims  30,000
Toulon  29,000
Angers  29,000
That the proportion of our population inhabiting towns
is greater than in France, is at once ascertained by taking
the aggregate of twenty of the largest cities in each. For
France, that aggregate is about 1,700,000; for Britain and
Ireland, 2,300,000.
The ratio of the increase of population in France is
greatest in the lower classes; the middling and upper
ranks have seldom large families. Men in such stations
in France are much less habituated to steady industry
than in England; the openings in trade to respectable
employment and eventual competency are comparative¬
ly fewer; and, in many situations, the incomes are ade¬
quate to the support of an individual only. In that coun¬
try, as with us, the population evidently increases faster
since the adoption of vaccine inoculation. The climate
and soil are in general not less salubrious than those of Bri¬
tain, and the advantages attendant on agricultural habits
are enjoyed by a much greater proportion of the popu¬
lation ; but a considerable waste of health, and even of
life, takes place from the crowded nature of the towns,
and the damp position of many of the cottages. A want
of comfort on the part of the lower orders tends, along
with their deficient cleanliness, to the same result; but,
on the other hand, the general activity, temperance, and
cheerfulness of the people, are all in favour of health and
longevity.
XIII. GOVERNMENT.
The charter in virtue of which Louis XVIII. ascended
the throne of his ancestors is the basis of the present go¬
vernment of France. The following are the leading pro¬
visions of this memorable and solemn compact, concluded
between the sovereign and the people.
The king is declared the supreme head of the execu¬
tive power, in whom is vested the power of declaring war
and making peace; the command of the national force, whe¬
ther by land or sea ; and the nomination of all ministers,
ambassadors, and other public functionaries, civil and mili¬
tary. He has the power of granting pardons and commut¬
ing punishments; and by the original charter he might
issue ordonnances and regulations, such as the orders in
council in England, for the benefit and security of the
state; but this clause has been annulled by the cham¬
ber, as it was made the pretext for the arbitrary proceed¬
ings which produced the revolution of 1830. The person
of his majesty is declared to be sacred and inviolable; and
his ministers alone are held responsible for all acts of ad- Govern,
ministration. ment,
The legislative power is exercised by two chambers, the v'~Vv
Chamber of Peers and the Chamber of Deputies, in con¬
junction with the king, without whose concurrence no
measure can have the authority of law. He has the
power of convoking, proroguing, and dissolving the Cham¬
ber of Deputies; with this provision, however, that in the
latter case a new chamber must be re-assembled within
three months after the dissolution. It is further declar¬
ed in this charter of French freedom, that all Frenchmen,
either by birth or naturalization, are to be considered
as equal in the eye of the law; that the Roman Catholic
and apostolic faith shall be considered as the establish¬
ed religion of the state; and that all persons, whatever
may be their religious faith, shall be protected in its exer¬
cise, and admissible to all civil and military offices. The
clause respecting the national religion was altered after
the expulsion of Louis XVIIL, on Napoleon’s return from
Elba, it being declared, merely as a matter of fact, that
the Catholic was the religion of the majority of the French,
but not the religion of the state, which gave not its sanc¬
tion to one particular mode of faith more than another.
The two chambers form an important part of the French Chamber
constitution. The Chamber of Peers consists of no defini-of Peers,
live number, as the king has the unlimited power of creat¬
ing peers. The number of peers in 1826 was 214, and in
1827 it was increased to 290 by the creation of seventy-
six new peers. But this great and sudden addition to the
peerage being considered as an unconstitutional exercise
of the prerogative by Charles X., was declared null and
void after his abdication; and in 1833 the number of
peers, including five princes of the blood and several new
creations, only amounted to 262. Louis XVIIL could by
his prerogative convoke this chamber when that of the
Deputies was not sitting. But this power was withheld in
the new charter of 1830, excepting in the case of the
chamber sitting as a court of justice ; and on such occa¬
sions it is strictly confined to its judicial functions. No
meeting of the chamber can take place except by an ex¬
press order of the king ; and it is convoked by his majesty
at the same time as the Chamber of Deputies, the session
of the one commencing and finishing at the same time with
that of the other. A peer of France may be admitted into
the chamber at the age of twenty-five ; but he is not admit¬
ted to the exercise of any prerogative until he has complet¬
ed his thirtieth year. Members of the royal family and
princes of the blood are peers by birth, and sit and vote
in the house after the age of twenty-five. Every peer re¬
ceives a summons from the king to attend the chamber,
without which authority he may be refused admittance
by the usher. The chamber takes cognizance of high
treason, and of all crimes committed against the security
and peace of the state; and on these high occasions the
peers are convened by a special summons from the king.
No peer can be arrested except by the authority of the
chamber. Those who were members of the senate dur¬
ing Bonaparte’s reign were created peers after his abdica¬
tion, and their pensions of L.1500 a year were confirmed.
By an ordonnance of Louis XVIII. no person could be
created a peer unless he possessed a certain entailed pro¬
perty in trust or in the funds, producing, in order to enable
him merely to support the title of a duke, a clear income ot
15,000 francs, or L.625 per annum; for the title of a marquis,
10,000 francs ; and for viscounts and barons, 5000 francs.
In order to exercise the privileges of a peer of France,
double the amount of clear income is required. Several
members of the present chamber who were created byLouis
XVIII. receive pensions equal to the amount required.
Others of the ancient regime, as well as of those lately
created, possess a larger revenue than the law requires
FRANCE.
213
fiovim-
lineti'
hamiT
1M-
oies^"
m
tl)
se
«e
th
IV
pi
ai
re
«
in
ci
ai
tl
o
0
ai
tl
c
t
fl
S'
h
for the maintenance of their rank, and of course receive
no pensions. The sum annually disbursed for the support
of peers, or their widows, amounts to 1,654,000 francs.
The chancellor of France, formerly appointed by the king,
was president of the Chamber of Peers, and received an
annual salary of 100,000 francs. Since the revolution of
1830 this office has been abolished, and a speaker or pre¬
sident is now appointed by the chamber.
This popular branch of the French legislature con¬
sisted, according to the original provisions of the charter,
of 258 members, who were elected by a committee of
voters {college electoral), each paying direct taxes to the
amount of L.40 per annum, and who were delegated to
elect a deputy by a lower class of electors, whose qualifi¬
cation was the payment of L.12 per annum of direct taxes.
One fifth of the chamber was to be renewed every year;
so that every five years the whole would be re-elected
anew. In 1817 a law was passed abrogating the interme¬
diate class of electors, and giving to all the voters the
right of immediately electing the deputy; and in 1821 the
plan of renewing the chamber by one fifth at a time was
also abrogated, and a law was passed for dissolving and
re-electing the whole assembly at once. It was at the
same time provided that 172 members should be added
to the chamber, thus making the whole number 430; and
in order to counteract the democratic influence which was
supposed to predominate in the chamber, the right of
electing those members was confined to the departmental
college, or the fourth part of the voters, who paid the
highest amount of direct taxes, and who, besides this ex¬
clusive right of voting for these 172 members, had a right
to vote along with the other electors of the arrondisse-
ment for the other members of the chamber. In 1831
a new electoral law was passed, reducing the qualification
of the electors to 200 francs (L.8. 6s. 8d.), and also the
age from thirty to twenty-five years, and reducing the qua¬
lification of deputies from forty to thirty years of age, and
the pecuniary qualification from 1000 to 500 francs. The
privileges of the departmental colleges are also abolished ;
all who are qualified by the payment of direct taxes to
the amount of two hundred francs, voting at once for the
deputy. It was estimated, that by thus lowering the pe¬
cuniary qualification of electors, the number would be in¬
creased from 100,000 to 190,000.
In the colleges, the president, formerly appointed by his
majesty, is now chosen by the electors. If there be more
than 600 electors in an inferior college, it is divided into
sections, with not less than 300 electors in each. These
sections elect a vice-president. In the few instances where
the total number of electors does not exceed 600 in the
whole department, they assemble in one college only. The
presidents and vice-presidents have the supreme rule and
authority over the regulations and internal police of their
respective colleges and sections, whose sittings are restrict¬
ed to ten days at most. The military are not allowed to
interfere in any case.
I he votes are collected with the utmost care and ac-
curacy. Each elector must write his name, qualification,
and residence, and hand it, previous to giving his vote, to
the president, who deposits it in an urn along with all the
other suffrages of the electors, whose names are inscribed
on a register by the secretary, or by one of the scrutineers;
and it is not seen by any person before it is thrown into
the general urn. The names are then taken out, read,
counted, and a list made, specifying the number of votes
given to each candidate. The papers on which are writ¬
ten the names of the candidates are then committed to the
flames. All possible means are thus employed to secure
secrecy; and no public functionary can incur the least
hazard though he were to vote against the minister under
whom he is employed.
The prefect of the department decides, in the first in¬
stance, on the validity of the qualifications claimed by the
electors, and makes out and publishes annually a list of
all whom he considers as entitled to vote. Those who are
rejected by the prefect, from whatever cause, have their
appeal to the cour royale ; and if any dispute arise re¬
lative to the payment of their contributions, or their civil
or political residence, their case is decided by the conseil
d'etat. An order from either of these courts is binding
on the prefect; and if he afterwards refuse to insert the
name in the list of electors, he incurs a penalty of from
300 to 500 francs, and is interdicted from exercising his
functions for twenty years. No prefect, sub-prefect, or
general officer commanding a military division, can be
elected for the department in which he exercises his
functions.
The French Chamber of Deputies, consisting of430 mem¬
bers, chosen for 86 departments, is equivalent in its power,
influence, and privileges, to the House of Commons in the
legislature of Britain. They are both the representatives
of the people, whose influence, when it is exerted through
this legitimate organ, is and must ever be irresistible. The
original charter of Louis XVIII. assigned to the monarch
the exclusive right of proposing all public measures; and it
was necessary, in proposing any new law, to move an ad¬
dress to his majesty, praying that it might be presented to
the chamber for its adoption. The charter of 1830 dis¬
penses with this form, and gives the right of initiating laws
to all the branches of the legislature, with the exception of
taxation bills, which must originate, as in Britain, with the
representatives of the people. The proceedings of the
chamber are regulated by a president, who was formerly
chosen by the king out of five members, presented to him
by the assembly; but is now chosen by the deputies them¬
selves at the commencement of each session. The session
is always opened by a speech in the Chamber of Deputies
from the throne ; but the minister of the interior prorogues
the session by the command of his majesty. When the ses¬
sion commences, bureaux, or special committees, nine in
number, are formed, and they are periodically renewed;
and when any new law is presented to the chamber on the
part of the king, it is referred in the first instance to these
special committees; if the law be approved by two or more
of them, it is reported by the chamber, when the principle
of the measure is considered and discussed by the cham¬
ber, and the clauses are afterwards voted article by article;
which proceedings correspond to the second reading and
the committal of a bill in the British parliament. The de¬
cision of the bureaux is reported by the chairman or rap¬
porteur, to the whole chamber ; which, so far from being
guided by this report, very frequently pronounces an oppo¬
site decision. The special clauses of a law are voted by assis
et levee; those who are for the law, the ayes, rising, and
those who are against the law, the noes, keeping their places.
The vote on the whole measure is by secret scrutiny, the
ayes being indicated by white balls, and the noes by black
ones, thrown into an urn placed on the tribune of the
chamber. The sittings of the chamber are public ; but on
the demand of any five members, all strangers are exclud¬
ed, and the house forms itself into a private committee. To
form a chamber, the presence of half the members is neces¬
sary. No deputy can be arrested for debt during the sit¬
ting of the chamber, nor within six weeks previous to its
assembling, or six weeks subsequent to its prorogation;
and if arrested at any other period, he must be liberated
during the session; nor can any deputy be arrested or pro¬
secuted for a criminal charge, except he be detected in the
act, unless by permission of the chamber. The senators
of Bonaparte received each a salary of 10,000 francs per
annum. Ihe deputies to the chamber receive no salary.
The president, the secretaries, and the officers attached to
Govern¬
ment.
FRANCE.
214
Govern- the chambers, such as questeurs, huissiers, &c. are the only
ment. persons paid. The salary of the president was, under the
Bourbon regime, 100,000 francs per annum, besides a fur¬
nished hotel, horses, equipage, &c. But it has been re¬
duced by the stern economy of these reforming times to
4000 francs per month, payable only during the session.
Executive The executive department of the government is admi-
govern- nistered by the king and his cabinet council, consisting of
ment. n-ne ministerSj viz.
1. The minister of finance, whose business it is to receive
the taxes from the receivers-general, and all the other re¬
venues of government. He disburses the payments for the
other departments of the state, for the interest of the pub¬
lic debt, and all pensions, &c. To this ministry are attach¬
ed certain other offices, the chiefs of which are called di¬
rectors ; namely, directors-general of taxes, customs, regis¬
tries and domains, ports, lottery, woods and forests, and the
mint. The salary of the minister of finance was reduced
by the Chamber of Deputies from 150,000 to 120,000 francs
per annum, and the salaries of the directors vary from
40,000 to 50,000 francs per annum. The revenue is con¬
veyed to the treasury through various subordinate offices.
There is a percepteur or collector in each commune, who
pays his collections to the special receiver for each arron-
dissement, who transmits the revenue to the general receiver
of taxes for the department, by whom it is, lastly, remitted
to the office of the finance minister.
2. The minister of the interior. This minister is one of
the most important functionaries of the state. He is in
direct correspondence with all the civil authorities of the
kingdom ; no local tax can be imposed, nor any disburse¬
ments made, in any of the departments, districts, or com¬
munes, without his authority. The general police of the
kingdom, with all its various details, is under his superin¬
tendence, as well as all public roads and bridges, mines,
public buildings, all poor-houses, charities, and hospitals,
the national guard of France, the censorship of the theatre,
the royal institute, the public libraries and government
archives, the examination of all passports, and all reports
from prefects and sub-prefects of departments. Fie takes
cognizance also of the press. He has directors under him,
who relieve him from the trouble of details. His salary
is 120,000 francs.
3. Minister of justice and keeper of the seals. He is at
the head of the law department, though he seldom presides
in any court of justice. He corresponds with the law offi¬
cers of the crown throughout France, and takes cognizance
of all cases of criminals after conviction, and of all applica¬
tions for royal mercy. His salary is 120,000 francs.
4. Minister of marine, who has the direction of the navy
and the colonies of France. His salary is 120,000 francs.
5. Minister of foreign affairs. His duties are expressed
in his designation. All passports to cross the frontiers must
be nominally countersigned by him. His salary is 150,000
francs.
6. Minister of war. He superintends of course the whole
service of the army and navy. He has also the sole con¬
trol of the gunpowder and saltpetre manufactories, barracks,
military hospitals, &c., and the government founderies and
manufactories of small arms. He has also the charge of
organizing and inspecting the corps of gendarmerie or
garde municipale of Paris, as well as in all the departments.
Salary 120,000 francs.
7. Minister of ecclesiastical affairs. His salary is 120,000
francs.
8. Minister of public instruction. His functions are
strictly confined to secular education. He nominates the
different functionaries in the public academies and facul¬
ties, authorizes the opening of private boarding-schools for
both sexes, and regulates the works to be used in these semi¬
naries ; he grants diplomas in law and medicine, superin¬
tends the receipts of colleges, fixes the pensions of retired Govern,
functionaries, grants aids and indemnities to collegiate cor- nient.
porations, and generally takes cognizance of all institutions Yv
for public instruction. He has a council of nine members,
of which he is president. His salary is 100,000 francs.
9. Minister of commerce and manufactures. This is a
new office, of which the business partly belonged to the
minister of finance and the minister of the interior. He
corresponds with the chambers of commerce ; nominates ex¬
change-brokers, with the exception of those in Paris, who
are nominated by the minister of finance ; examines all de¬
mands made for the establishment of assurance offices, their
rules and regulations ; grants patents for inventions, esta¬
blishes or suppresses fairs or markets, judges of the quali¬
fications of candidates for the office of judges in any of the
commercial courts, and has an especial jurisdiction over all
that may be deemed necessary for the prosperity of com¬
merce and manufactures. His salary is 120,000 francs.
Besides these cabinet ministers, the king has a privy
council, the members of which are seldom summoned; the
public business being entirely managed by the cabinet
council. The king formerly presided at the meetings of
this council; but since the last revolution, the presence of
the king has not been so frequent, and is now usually dis¬
pensed with.
Each of these ministers presents to the Chamber of De¬
puties his own budget of expenses, which is examined by a
committee specially appointed for the purpose. It is com¬
petent for these committees to propose a reduction in the
items of these ministerial budgets, which may be adopted
by the chamber, as in 1828, when the salaries of ministers
were reduced 30,000 francs per annum, besides other mo¬
difications that were proposed. After these various budgets
have been considered and discussed, the general account of
the national expenditure is considered and put to the vote.
Ministers of state. These are nominal functionaries, and
the appointments are generally given to retired cabinet
ministers, as a reward for past services. The pension was
formerly 20,000 francs per annum, but since the revolu¬
tion of 1830 it has been restricted to 12,000 francs a year.
Council of state (conseil d'etat). The councillors of state
are appointed by the king either for ordinary or extraordinary
service, or as mere honorary members of the council, at
which, since the restoration, the keeper of the seals always
presides. This council deliberates, in the first place, on all
bills or projets de loi, which are laid before them by the mi¬
nisters before they are submitted to the chambers. The mi¬
nisters, as well as the directors of the several administrations,
have a seat in this council, which for ordinary affairs is limit¬
ed to twenty-four members, and is divided into four sections.
1. For legislation and litigation, which is by far the most im¬
portant in the council of the state, as it deliberates on all
law projects and regulations respecting civil, criminal, and
ecclesiastical affairs, brought under its consideration by the
respective ministers. It is in fact a tribunal which decides
all matters in dispute between individuals and officers of
the state; and its decisions are final. 2. The section of
the interior takes cognizance of all matters connected with
internal and colonial commerce, public roads, bridges, ca¬
nals, mines, departmental police, &c. 3. and 4. The sec¬
tion of finance, and the section of war and. marine, take
charge of all matters connected with their respective depart¬
ments. The councillors of state on actual or ordinary ser¬
vice receive a salary of 12,000 francs a year, a deduction
being made if they enjoy any other situation of emolument
under government. Those who are employed on extraor¬
dinary service have generally other situations, and receive
no salary whatever. To the council of state are attached
the maitres de requetes, appointed likewise for ordinary and
extraordinary service, but some are merely honorary.
Their business is to draw up all acts of council, for which
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they receive a salary of 6000 francs a year. The office of
maitre de requetes may be considered as the first step towards
the rank of councillor of state. There are also auditeurs,
who are merely present at the discussions of the council,
for the purpose of initiating themselves in the routine of
business, and who receive no salary.
Audit office, or cour des comptes. It is the business
of this court to receive and examine all the accounts of
the different ministers, and those of the receivers-general
and prefects of the departments; and to certify the cor¬
rectness of the general accounts published every year by
the minister of finance. The ordinary business of this
court is managed by three chambers, each having a pre¬
sident; and there is also a chief president, who sits when
these chambers are united. There is also a councillor of
reference in each chamber (referendaire), whose duty is
the verification of the accdunts; also a procureur-general,
whose office corresponds to that of solicitor of some of
the public offices in England, and who sees that all the
necessary accounts are delivered into this office within the
period fixed by law, and who, in case of neglect, proceeds
against the offending parties for the penalties they have
incurred. I here is likewise a chief registrar, in whose
custody remain all the accounts and vouchers transmitted
to his office.
The revenue of the king, or the civil list, was fixed at the
restoration, by the budget of 1814, at 15,510,000 francs
per annum; and a further grant was made to the other
branches of the royal family of four millions a year. By
the budget of 1816 the income of the king was augmented
to thirty millions; but at the accession of Charles X. it was
fixed at twenty-five millions, whilst the allowances to the
other branches of the royal family were increased to seven
millions a year. 1 he royal household, as it is designated,
includes the following appointments :
Lord steward (grand maitre)  140,000 fr.
One maitre d’hotel  40,000
Four chamberlains of the household  40,000
Nine stewards    72,000
Four under stewards  20,000
Four cooks  12,000
Chief purveyor of fish  3,000
Ten assistants   20 000
Wine  172^000
Kitchen consumption  585,000
Charcoal   65,000
215
Which, with other expenses, amount to 1,697,700 fr.
In the department of the king’s chamberlain
the expenses amounted to   988,000
There were, besides, thirteen palaces, each with a sepa¬
rate and expensive establishment; a large sum was an¬
nually paid in pensions; and, under the heads of music,
the wardrobe, medical establishment, stables, the annual
disbursements amounted to between two and three millions
of francs. The support of the magnificent manufactory
of porcelain at Sevres, and the manufactory of tapestry at
Gobelins in Paris, cost a large annual sum; the expenses
connected with the garde meuble, where the crown jewels
and royal insignia were kept, and the expense of coining
medals, were considerable ; the establishments for the sup¬
port of the museum of painting and sculpture at Paris
amounted to nearly three millions of francs a year; an
annual sum of 80,000 francs was allowed for the support
of the Italian opera, and a sum of 45,000 francs for the
encouragement of sacred music. After the revolution of
1830, the civil list of Louis Philippe was settled in 1832;
and in fixing his allowances the chamber had two mat¬
ters to deal with; the royal domains, which had hither¬
to been appendages of the crown, and the money-grant
an annual allowance. rlhe real property of the crown
consisted of the Louvre, the Tuileries with their depen- Govem-
dencies, the Elysee Bourbon, the chateaux, houses, build- ment.
ings, manufactories, lands, meadows, farms, woods and fo-
rests, composing the domains of Versailles, Marly, Saint
Cloud, Meudon, St Germain-en-Laye, Rambouillet, Com-
piegne, Fontainebleau, Strasburg,Bordeaux, Pau, and others.
Of these, the chateau of St Germain-en-Laye, and those of
Strasburg and Bordeaux, with several other items, amount¬
ing to L.626,000, were taken from the crown, and made
applicable to the purposes of the state. The money allow¬
ance to the king was fixed at twelve millions of francs, or
L.500,000 per annum ; and the annual sum of one million
of francs, or L.41,666, was allowed to the prince royal;
and the allowances to the daughters were to be regulated
by special laws. . >
The system of provincial government throughout France Provincial
is simple and effective. Ihe kingdom is at present divid- govern¬
ed into eighty-six departments, with their capital towns. ment-
These departments are subdivided into 362 arrondissements
or districts, 2842 cantons, and 39,381 communes. In each
department the prefect is the chief magistrate, and, as well
as the sub-prefect, is paid by government in proportion
to the population and the extent of his jurisdiction, the
salary varying from 40,000 to 10,000 francs a year, whilst
that of the sub-prefect is 4000 francs. The prefect of the
department of the Seine has 100,000 francs a year. To
each prefecture and sub-prefecture are attached councillors
(conseillers de prefecture, and conseillers d’arrondissement),
who are likewise paid by government; and he has, besides,
a general council, composed of the most opulent and re¬
spectable persons in the department, appointed by the
king, which he convokes when necessary; and before this
council he lays all public matters for its approbation. He
is at the head of the police and of the national guard with¬
in his prefecture. It is his business to superintend all ne¬
cessary repairs of public buildings, bridges, fortresses, walls
and barriers of close towns, &c.; to fix the seat of voiries
(for the reception of rubbish, offal, &c.), slaughter-houses,
and manufactories considered as dangerous to health; to di¬
rect the cleaning and paving of streets and high-roads; to
inspect all ports, quays, common sewers, fountains, poor-
houses and hospitals, prisons, &c. He superintends pub¬
lic libraries, museums, primary schools; fixes the price of
bread ; and grants passports. He is in correspondence with
all the subordinate functionaries in his department, as well
as with the minister ot the interior, from whom he receives
instructions to settle the question of all general taxes, and
to provide for the public expenses of the department. He
receives the produce of the octroi, a custom-duty levied on
all articles of general consumption as they enter the town ;
and of all the rents of government entrepots; of stalls and
shambles in public markets; of slaughter-houses; of the pro¬
ceeds from the sale of manure ; as well as fines of police,
and other imposts. One tenth of the octroi is only paid to
the government; and out of the remainder, and from other
funds, he defrays all the local expenses of police, lighting
and cleaning streets. All his accounts are transmitted to
the minister of the interior, who sends them to the cour des
comptes. The functions of a sub-prefect are the same as
those of a prefect. A juge de paix is at the head of
every canton, who has also similar duties, and is, besides,
employed in deciding civil suits to a certain amount. The
mayors of the communes possess similar powers to those of
the prefects of departments; and their receipts and expen¬
ses are provided tor in a similar manner. In case of their
requiring any extra funds for local expenses, they have the
authority ot the legislature to raise a contribution called
centimes communaux from the inhabitants of the commune.
To the office ot mayor are attached municipal councillors,
who have the same functions as the general council of the
prefecture. The mayor may celebrate marriages, and at
216 FRA
Govern- the mairie of the commune a marriage register is kept, as
ment. well as one of births and deaths; a notice of which the
relatives of the parties are obliged to deposit at the office
of the mayor, under a penalty of a fine in case of neglect.
There is in every town a commissary of police, who is paid
according to its population. Paris is divided into twelve
vnairies, called municipal arrondissements, in each of which
is a mayor with two assistants. It is also distinguished
from all other cities by having a prefect of police, who has
very extensive functions, exercising all the multifarious
duties of police within its precincts, having under his im¬
mediate orders the whole corps of police officers, the forty-
eight commissaries of police belonging to Paris, and the
corps of firemen.
Orders. The most comprehensive, though the least ancient, or¬
der, is that of the Legion dHonneur ; an order instituted
by Bonaparte, and maintained on nearly the same plan
by the Bourbons. The usual title to admission is the dis¬
charge of functions, either civil or military, with distinc¬
tion ; and, in time of war, the performance of an action
of eclat. The gradations are, chevaliers, of whom the
number is unlimited, and very great; officiers, who amount
to no less than two thousand ; commandeurs, to the number
of four hundred; grand officiers, a hundred and sixty ; and
grand croix, to the number of eighty. A member must
serve several years as a chevalier before becoming an of¬
ficer, and the same progressively through the other ranks.
Admissions take place once, and frequently twice a year;
a specific number being allotted to each great department
of the public service, the military, the judicial, and the
administrative.
The other orders are, that of St Louis, which is strict¬
ly military; that of St Michel, which dates from 1469, is
limited to a hundred members, and is conferred as a re¬
compense for distinction in science, literature, or the arts.
Eminent professional men and artists, and the authors of
discoveries of public utility, constitute the members of
this order. The order du St Esprit, created in 1578, and
of the very highest rank, comprises princes of the blood,
prelates, and members of the order of St Michel; the whole
being limited to the number of a hundred.
XIV. LAW, AND ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE.
In this great department France shows nothing of the
backwardness apparent in her situation in many other re¬
spects, but is entitled to the particular attention of other
nations, and of none more than our own. Law does not
rest on tradition, nor is it necessary to study it in a never-
ending accumulation of decisions. It is reduced to a com¬
pact and definite form, the result of a code formed re¬
cently, and with all the benefit of the application of the
knowledge of an enlightened age to the principles of juris¬
prudence. Nothing could be more irregular than the
administration of justice in France before the Revolution.
The first stage of a process took place before judges ap¬
pointed, not by the king, but by the seigneur or lord of the
district. These judges had power to impose a fine, to
decree a short imprisonment or other correctional punish¬
ment, and to give, in a civil suit, a decision subject to ap¬
peal. The seneschals and haillis ranked a degree higher,
and were entitled to give a verdict in eases of importance,
subject, however, to an appeal to one or other of the par¬
liaments, of which there were in all thirteen in France ;
and which, very different from the parliaments with which
we are familiar, were composed of judges and public offi¬
cers of rank. The whole of this unharmonious mass was
reduced into a simple and uniform system by the National
Assembly in 1791 ; the seignoral judges being replaced
by justices of the peace, and every district of importance
{arrondissement) obtaining its court, or tribunal depremiere
N C E.
instance. The higher courts were not added till after-
wards, but the judges of every description were elected vv
by the inhabitants of the province, a right which conti¬
nued with them until the usurpation of Bonaparte.
But there remained for the National Assembly another Different
and a much more laborious work. Each province had itscodes.
peculiar code, some founded on the Roman law, others on
tradition and local custom, but the whole replete with am¬
biguity and discrepancy. To digest a complete body of
law, that might suffice for the country at large, and super¬
sede the provincial codes, was the labour of many years,
and of a number of eminent lawyers. It was not com¬
pleted until the beginning of the present century, when
it was promulgated under Bonaparte, and gave to the ju¬
risprudence and judicial constitution of France nearly the
form they at present bear. This body of law consists of
five codes, entitled respectively, 1. Code Civil; 2. Code
de Procedure Civile; 3. Code de Commerce; 4. Code
dInstruction Criminelle; 5. Code Penal.
The Code Civil, the first and by far the most compre¬
hensive of these divisions, defines the rights of persons in
their various capacities of citizens, parents, sons, daugh¬
ters, guardians, minors, married, unmarried. It next treats
of property in its respective modes of acquisition and
possession, as inheritances, marriage portions, sales, leases,
loans, bonds, and mortgages.
The Code de Procedure Civile prescribes the manner of
proceeding before the different courts of justice, begin¬
ning with the juge de paix ; also the mode of carrying
into effect sentences, whether for the payment of damages,
the distraining of goods, or the imprisoning of the party
condemned. It declares likewise the course to be fol¬
lowed in transactions distinct from those of the law courts;
as in arbitration, taking possession of an inheritance, or a
separation of property between man and wife.
The Code de Commerce begins by defining the duties of
certain officers or commercial agents, such as sworn bro¬
kers and appraisers; it next treats of partnerships; of
sales and purchases ; of bills of exchange ; of shipping,
freight, and insurance; of temporary suspensions of pay¬
ment, and bankruptcies.
The Code dInstruction Criminelle, a very different but
equally important division, explains the duties of all pub¬
lic officers connected with the judicial police, whether
mayors, assistants of mayors {adjoints'), procureurs du roi,
juges dinstruction, &c. After prescribing the rules re¬
garding evidence, it regulates the manner of appointing
juries, and the questions which fall within their compe¬
tency. Its further dispositions relate to the mode and
nature of appeals, and to the very unpopular courts autho¬
rized to try state offences, termed Cours Speciales under
Bonaparte, and Cours Prevotales under the Bourbons.
Lastly, the Code Penal describes the punishments
awarded for offences in all the variety of gradation, from
the penalties of the police correctionnelle, to the severest
sentence of the law. All offences are classed under two
general heads ; state offences, such as counterfeiting coin,
resisting police officers, sedition, rebellion; and ofiences
against individuals, as calumny, false evidence, man¬
slaughter, murder.
These codes, the first attempt to reduce the laws of a
great nation to the compass of a volume, consist of a num¬
ber of sections and short paragraphs, each paragraph
marked by a number, as a means of reference. The style
is as concise as is compatible with clearness. The arrange¬
ment is minute and elaborate. The whole is sold for a
few shillings, in the shape of one octavo or of two duo¬
decimo volumes ; and copies of it are in the possession not
only of all judges, pleaders, and attornies, but of agents,
merchants, and persons in business generally, who, with¬
out being enabled by it to dispense with the aid of law*
til'
pre- ■
ire ii
nee.
FRANCE.
217
yers in a suit, find in it a variety of useful explanations
rf tionif relative to questions of frequent occurrence in their re-
sijistic- spective occupations.
The justices of the peace are very numerous, there
being one for each canton, and consequently nearly three
thousand in the kingdom. They never are, as in Eng¬
land, clergymen, and seldom country gentlemen, but per¬
sons acquainted with law, and in circumstances which
make the salary, small as it is (from L.30 to L.40), an ac¬
ceptable return for a portion of their time. They are not
unfrequently provincial attornies, or pleaders retired from
business. The justice of the peace, or juge de paix, is
authorized to pronounce finally in petty questions (under
fifty francs, or L.2) ; and to give, in questions of somewhat
greater amount (up to a hundred francs, or L.4), a deci¬
sion subject to appeal. He takes cognizance likewise of
disputes about tenants’ repairs, servants’ wages, and the
displacing of the landmarks of property. No action can
be brought before a court of justice in France until the
plaintiff has summoned his adversary before a juge de
paix, with an amicable intent (cite en conciliation), and
received from the juge a proces verbal, showing that the
difference could not be adjusted. When the justice is
prevented from acting, his place is taken by his first, and,
if necessary, by his second substitute,
ibunix Of the Primary Courts there is one for every arron-
dissement, making above three hundred and sixty for the
whole of France. Each is composed of three or four
members, of two or three suppleans or assistant members,
and of a procureur du roi acting on the part of the crown.
In populous districts, cours de premiere instance compre¬
hend six, seven, eight, or more members, and are divided
into two or three chambers. They are chiefly occupied
with questions of civil law, and hold, in the extent of their
jurisdiction, a medium between the humble limits of the
juge de paix and the wide powers of the cour royale ; their
decisions being final wherever the income from a property
does not exceed forty shillings, or the principal forty
pounds, but subject, in greater matters, to an appeal to the
cour royale. The members of these inferior courts are
named, like other judges, by the crown, and hold their
places for life; the salary of each is only L.80 a year,
equal to L.120 in England; their number, throughout all
France, including suppleans, is not far short of 3000.
A section of the Tribunal de Premiere Instance is ap¬
propriated to the trial of offences, under the name of Tri¬
bunal de Police Correctionnelle ; and here the English rea¬
der must be careful to distinguish between judicial and
government police; the former having no reference to stdte
offences, such as libel or treason, but comprehending a
very numerous list of another kind, viz. all offences which
do not amount to crimes, or subject the offender to a pu¬
nishment afflictif ou infamant. These offences, when
slight, are called contraventions de police, and are brought
before Sijuge de paix, or the mayor of the commune; when
of a graver stamp, and requiring a punishment exceeding
five days’ imprisonment, or a fine of fifteen francs, they
are brought before the court now mentioned, whose sen¬
tences, in point of imprisonment, may extend to the term
of five years. The trespasses brought before a justice of
the peace or mayor are such as damaging standing corn,
driving incautiously in the highway, endangering a neigh¬
bour’s property by neglecting repairs. The offences refer¬
red to the Tribunal Correctionnel are such as assault and
battery, swindling, privately stealing, using false weights
or measures, &c.
We now come to the higher courts of justice, which
equal in jurisdiction our courts in Westminster Hall and
on the circuit, but with the material distinction, that in
France the civil courts are always stationary. The Cours
Royales, in number twenty-seven, are attached to the
VOL. x.
irs
alesJi
chief provincial towns throughout the kingdom. They Adminis-
are all formed on the same model, and possessed of equal tration of
power, though differing materially in extent of business
and number of members. The number of the latter de-
pends on the population of the tract of country (gene¬
rally three departments), subject to the jurisdiction of
the court. In a populous quarter, like Narmandy, a cour
royale comprehends twenty, twenty-five, or even thirty
judges, and is divided into three or four chambers, of
which one performs the duty of an English grand jury, in
deciding on the bills of indictment (raises en accusation) ;
another is for the trial of offences (police correctionnelle) ;
and ^ third, with perhaps a fourth, is for civil suits.
These courts are often called Cours d’Appel, as all the
cases which come before them must have been previously
tried by an inferior court. The collective number of
judges in these higher courts is not short of nine hun¬
dred ; an aggregate hardly credible to an English reader,
and which would prove a very serious charge on the pub¬
lic purse, were not their salaries very moderate, viz. from
L.100 to L.300 a year, according to the population of the
towns where the court is held. In the financial pressure
of 181.6 and 1817, a reduction of this numerous body was
much called for; but no diminution was made in the num¬
ber of the courts, whatever gradual decrease may be al¬
lowed to take place in the members from decease or re¬
tirement.
Paris does not, like London and Edinburgh, absorb al¬
most all the civil business of the country. It has, it is
true, a cour royale on a large scale (five chambers and
fifty judges), but confined in its jurisdiction to the metro¬
polis and the seven adjacent departments. There is a
procureur du roi for every tribunal de premiere instance,
and a procureur general for every cour d'appel.
The Assize Courts take cognizance exclusively of cri-Assize
minal cases; that is, of the crimes or serious offences re-courts'
ferred to them by the cours royales. They consist of
three, four, or five judges, members of the cours royales,
but never belonging to the section that finds the indict¬
ments. The grand accompaniment of a French assize
court is a jury, which, as in England, consists of twelve
members, and decides on the facts of the case, leaving
the application of the law to the judges. Complete una¬
nimity was at no time necessary in a French jury. At
first a majority of ten to two was required; but this was
subsequently altered to a simple majority, with the quali¬
fication that, in case of condemnation by only two voices
(seven to five), the verdict should be re-considered by the
judges, and the party acquitted, if, on taking judges and
jurymen collectively, there was a majority in his favour.
The assizes are the only courts in France that are not sta¬
tionary. They are, however, generally held in the chief
town of a department once in three months. The costs
of suit are very exactly defined by a printed tarif; and
it is a rule in criminal as in civil cases, that the party
condemned is liable for all.
The Special Courts were constituted out of the usual Cours spe-
course for the trial of state offences. The Cours Spd- ciales,
dales were appointed by Bonaparte, the Prevotales during^^Pre'
the period of political effervescence (fortunately short
lived) which succeeded the second entry of the king, and
the misfortunes brought on the nation by Bonaparte’s
return from Elba. In both cases, the courts were con¬
sidered as under the influence of government, and were
of course obnoxious to the enlightened part of the public.
The name of Tribunal, or court, is given in France to a Tribunaux
committee of five merchants, or leading tradesmen, ap-decom-
pointed by the mercantile body in every town of consider-u16106*
able business or population. Their competency extends
to all disputes occurring in mercantile business, and fall¬
ing within the provisions of the code de commerce. Their
2 £
218
FRANCE.
Adminis- decisions are founded on that code, and on the customs
tration of of merchants. They are final in all cases below L.40.
Justice, 'j'he presence of three members is necessary to form a
court. The duty is performed gratuitously; and the num¬
ber of these courts in France is about a hundred and
sixty.
Cour de The Court of Cassation, the highest in the kingdom, is
cassation, held at Paris, and is composed of three chambers, each of
sixteen members and a president, making, with the pre¬
mier president, a total of fifty-two. Its province is to de¬
cide definitively in all appeals from the decrees of the cours
royales; investigating not the facts of the case, but the
forms of law, and ordering, wherever these have been in¬
fringed or deviated from, a new trial before another cour
royale. This revision takes place in criminal as well as
in civil cases. The royal court chosen for the new trial
is generally, for the convenience of the parties, the near¬
est in situation to the other. The Cour de Cassation has
farther powers, and of the highest kind. It determines
all differences as to jurisdiction between one court and
another, and exercises a control over every court in the
kingdom. It has power to call the judges to account be¬
fore the minister of justice, and even to suspend them
from their functions ; acting thus as a high tribunal for
the maintenance of the established order of judicature.
Ministry The minister bearing the title of Keeper of the Seals
of justice. an(j Minister of Justice, may be compared to the chan¬
cellor of England, though his patronage is much less ex¬
tensive, and his functions much more suitable to the sta¬
tion of minister. He rarely acts as a judge, but exercises
a general superintendence over the judicial body. He is
the medium between the king and the courts of justice,
in the same way as the minister of the home department
is in regard to the civil authorities. The expenses of the
judicial body fall under his cognizance. The procureurs
generaux and procureurs du roi throughout the kingdom
address their correspondence to him ; and it is his province
to report to the king on the alleviation of punishment, on
pardons, in short, on all disputed points, whether of legis¬
lation or administration.
Juries. Juries were introduced into France in 1791, and con¬
fined from the beginning to criminal trials ; nor does there
seem any wish to extend their jurisdiction to civil suits.
During several years there were in France grand juries
constituted as in England; but under Bonaparte their
functions were transferred to the cours royales, on the
plea that none but judges could be made to understand
the difference between bringing to trial and bringing to
punishment; and that the consequence frequently was a
discharge, when a true bill ought to have been found. It
has in fact been questioned, whether the institution of
juries is advisable in a nation of which the mass is still
strongly tinctured with the credulity engendered by blind
submission to an absolute government. That the French
can supply special jurymen of judgment and discrimi¬
nation, must be admitted by all who know how eminent
are many of their men of business; but by their common
juries the nature of evidence is as yet little understood,
and considerable experience will be necessary to form to
the habit of deliberate reflection individuals so much more
open to impressions of feeling than of reasoning. Adroit
pleaders have been known to obtain very unexpected ac¬
quittals ; and it is remarkable that all the charges against
French juries turn on their bias to clemency; none on a
leaning towards the prosecutor, whatever may be his
wealth or rank. The very numerous party called Libe-
raux maintain, that practice only is wanting to qualify
their countrymen to act on juries. They demand, there¬
fore, the restoration of grand juries, and the exclusion of
the executive power from interference with the election Adm^
of common juries, or with the appointment of juges de tratict::
paix, mayors, or other local magistrates. These encroach- Justice,
ments on popular rights all owe their origin to Bonaparte ;
but they are too convenient for the executive power to be
readily relinquished by his successors.
One of the chief improvements made by the French Present
National Assembly was of the nature which now engages stateof
the deliberation of our own parliament—a general miti-cri®e5::
gation of the penal code, or rather the substitution of pu-Pu¬
nishments likely to be enforced, for others of such seve-mem'
rity as in general to put their application out of the ques¬
tion. Stealing privately in a dwelling-house was formerly
punishable in France by the rack and death; an extreme
which prevented respectable persons from bringing delin¬
quents before a court, and tended, of course, to give fre¬
quency to the offence.
There still exists in France the singular practice of
parties engaged in a law-suit visiting the judges in pri¬
vate ; a practice originating in an age when suitors thought
a personal interview the only effectual mode of explaining
their case, and continued in more enlightened times from
that over-complaisance which is the groundwork of several
of the defects of the national character. Such interviews
are little else than an exchange of compliments ; nor have
the judges, either before or since the Revolution, been
charged with acting under the influence of such ex parte
statements.
The salaries of French judges must appear insignificant
to an English reader ; but there are in that country a num¬
ber of men of small patrimony but good education, who
have no idea of trade or of active pursuits in private life,
while they attach much importance to government em¬
ployment; moreover, the functions of judges, and in ge¬
neral of public officers in France, engross much less time
than in England.
The law style of the French is much more brief than
ours ; their deeds, such as leases, mortgages, and sales, be¬
ing generally contained in a very few pages, and free from
Obscure or antiquated phraseology.
Prior to the year 1825 there existed in France no au¬
thentic documents respecting the administration of criminal
justice in France; and in order to know the nature and the
number of the crimes committed during the preceding
years, it would have been necessary to look back into the
records of every prefecture throughout the country; and
such a work, besides its extreme difficulty, would have
been too incomplete to be of any utility.1 Within the last
seven years, however, the statistics of crime and of cri¬
minal justice in France have been made familiar to the
world by a series of official reports, in which the details
of the criminal calendars throughout France are brought
together and perspicuously arranged. In these reports,
the crimes and offences brought under consideration are
divided into three great branches; the first relating to
such crimes as are tried before the courts of assize, with
the assistance of a jury; the second to offences of minor
importance, decided by correctional tribunals; and the
third to such as are disposed of by the ordinary magistrates
of police. Of 6962 persons tried in the courts of assize
in the year 1830, 3910 were for crimes against property,
and 1158 for crimes against the person. This latter class
of offences appears to be decreasing. They amounted in
1825 to 2069, in 1826 to 1709, in 1827 to 1911, and in
1828 to 1844. The proportion between the number of
persons judicially accused of offences, and the general po¬
pulation of the kingdom, was, in 1829, as one in 4321;
and in 1830, as one in 4576. Of the 6962 brought to
trial in 1830, 5608 were men, and 1354 were women.
1 See Essai sur la Statistique Morale de la France, par. A. M. Guerry, p. 5.
vdnrus- With respect to the ages of the accused, 114 had not
raticof completed their sixteenth year; and 1161 were from six-
Justt?. teen to twenty-one years of age. The whole of the accused
ft were natives of France, with the exception of 216. With
regard to education, it appears that the great majority are
ignorant; 4319 could neither read nor write, 1826 could
only do so imperfectly, only 688 could read and write
well, and 129 had received a superior education. It is a
FRANCE.
219
curious and rather a consolatory fact, that in the case of Adminis-
the worst crimes, the proportion of the illiterate was the tration of
greatest. Thus all that were accused of parricide were Justice.
grossly ignorant; and rather less than one half of those
accused of murder, of theft, &c. were in the same state.
We subjoin a table containing the nature of the crimes
that were tried before the court of assize by a jury, the
number convicted, and their punishments.
NATURE OF THE CRIMES.
Attempts on personal liberty, and arbitrary arrests
Resistance by force of arms to the civil authorities
Personal insult to public officers 
Escape from prison 
Associations to commit crime 
Extortion of money, accompanied with personal
violence  
Murder (assassinat) 
Parricide 
Infanticide 
Poisoning 
Menaces and putting in bodily fear by incendiary
letters 
Cutting and maiming 
Do. public officers 
Attempts at abortion 
Rapes and attempts at rape 
Do. on children under fifteen years of age 
Bigamy 
Elopements with minors, and stealing children
under fifteen years of age 
Bearing false witness and perjury 
Libels 
Coinage of money 
Counterfeiting seals and stamps, &c..............
Forgery 
Political crimes 
Bribery and corruption 
Embezzlement of public money , ”
Embezzling documents from public archives...
Robbery of churches, &c 
Highway robbery 
Robbery by servants, &c  
Grand and petty larceny, picking of pockets, shop¬
lifting, burglary, &c 
Extorting signatures to bills, &c 
fraudulent bankruptcy   
Setting fire to houses (arson) 
Wilfully burning other property 
Destruction of public edifices 
Mealing and damaging of corn 
Do. houses and furniture. 
Slave trade 
1
258
54
3
49
5
469
4
109
37
8
235
74
4
136
107
7
16
71
2
48
8
363
16
29
2
4
47
135
1016
3280
28
84
123
15
28
48
37
1
Total.
6961
1
175
21
3
27
1
210
2
62
23
7
133
33
3
79
44
9
57
1
35
7
189
8
21
2
4
18
45
350
1002
16
58
84
11
26
32
31
1
2831 92
PUNISHMENTS.
A
O
82
*i4
3
36
2
106
268
A .
H S
O QJ
£>-
b
O
10
2
3
1
44
6
3
6
77
9
9
45
707
9
16
4
1
6
2
973
S 3
a c
03 rt
a «j
C !h
O
01
3
24
9
33
25
1
7
1
1
83
4
17
321
433
1005
A
-a cc
c o
aS ^
s
£ ^
A °
57
24
1
95
31
1
1
91
5
1
24
18
1
6
11
8
13
25
291
1000
3
10
7
1
9
3
oT a
fee. 2
CO °
4- » Q H
rzj 3 °
£ o 4-*
u A 2
's.so
'C a
a> oi h
X* c P
5- i*
2
7
31
1740 43
‘ "r°",en are "ever to the galleys; for them the chief secondary punishment is solitary confinement.
220 FRA
France M. Goldsmith is of opinion, from an attentive examina-
tt tion of the French establishments of criminal police, and
Fitancis. from the character of their inmates, that crimes against
l—property are not pursued with the same boldness and sys¬
tematic combination as in England. Robbery is not le-
gularly pursued there as a profession. “ The thieves in
France,” he observes, “ are not less than a century behind
us. The skill and combination which are necessary to the
perpetration of a burglary in a banking-house have hither¬
to been reserved among our neighbours for less objec¬
tionable objects. The ordinary incentives to crime are
here the vulgar ones of hunger and want.” The public
peace in France is maintained by an armed police, or
gendarmerie, partly on foot and partly mounted ; and in all
emergencies, whether arising from seditious meetings,
popular assemblies, or any other cause, when this force is
found insufficient for the preservation or execution of the
laws, the national guard and troops of the line may be
called in to assist, being, however, subject to the orders
of the police. Since the revolution of 1830 the gendar¬
merie of Paris have been abolished. They have been re¬
placed by a force termed the garde municipale, the duties
of which are nearly the same.
Before the correctional tribunals there were tried, with¬
out the aid of juries, the same year, 209,493 persons, of
FRA
whom 32,575 were acquitted, 5860 were imprisoned for Fran«
one year and upwards, 20,021 were imprisoned for less 8
than a' year, and 150,603 were amerced in a penalty of Franci).
sixteen francs and upwards. The petty courts have only
the power of inflicting five days’ imprisonment and a fine
of fifteen francs on the offending party. The total number
of cases disposed of were 112,114 fined, 4933 imprison¬
ed, and 20,006 acquitted. In France, the prisons, which
constitute an important department of the criminal police,
are under the special direction of the minister of the in¬
terior. His delegates are the prefects; and the jailers or
governors of the prisons are called directors. In every
city containing a prison there is an inspector-general, who
attends to the proper distribution of the provisions, and
sees that they are of good quality; he daily visits the
prisons, listens to the complaints of the prisoners, and at¬
tends to their comforts. The departmental prisons are for
the confinement of debtors, for persons to be brought to
trial for crimes, and for those who are condemned to im¬
prisonment for a shorter period than a year. The annual
expense of these prisons makes part of the budget of the
minister of the interior, and amounts to 500,000 francs a
year. The other prisons (maisons centrales) are nineteen
in number, and are for the confinement of prisoners whose
sentence is for a longer term than a year.
a member of the council of Bengal. After his return to
England he came into office under the whig administration,
and was honoured with the order of the bath. He pub-
lished several political pamphlets, and died in 1818. Since
his death the authorship of the Letters of Junius has been
ascribed to him, on evidence which certainly creates a
strong presumption in his favour.
Francis, Cape, a town on the north coast of Hispaniola.
See Hispaniola.
FRANCISCANS, mEcclesiastical History, are the mem¬
bers of the religious order established by St Francis in the
year 1208. Francis was the son of a merchant of Assisi,
in the province of Umbria. After leading for some time
a dissolute life, he was reclaimed by a fit of sickness, and
fell into the opposite extreme of devotion. Soon after this
event, hearing the passage repeated (Mat. x. 9, 10), in
which Christ addresses his apostles, Provide neither gold,
nor silver, &c. he was led to believe that a voluntary and
absolute poverty was the essence of the gospel, and to pre¬
scribe this poverty as a sacred rule both to himself and to
his followers. This new society, which appeared to Inno¬
cent III. extremely well adapted to the state of the church
at the time, and calculated to restore its declining credit,
was solemnly approved of and confirmed by Honorius III.
in 1223, and had made considerable progress before the
death of its founder, which took place in 1226. Francis,
through an excessive humility, would not suffer the monks
of his order to be called fratres, brethren or friars, hut fra-
terculi, little brethren, or friars-minor, by which denomi¬
nation they still continue to be distinguished. Ihey were
also called gray friars, on account of the colour of their
clothing, and sometimes cordeliers. Ihe Franciscans and
Dominicans were zealous and active friends of the papal
hierarchy, and, in return for their devotion to its interests,
were distinguished by peculiar privileges and honourable
employments. The Franciscans, in particular, were invested
with ample and extensive indulgences, the distribution of
which was committed to them by the popes, as a means of
subsistence, and a rich indemnification for their voluntary
poverty. In consequence of this grant, the rule of the
founder, which absolutely prohibited both personal and col¬
lective property, so that neither the individual nor the com-
Isle of France, or Mauritius. See Mauritius.
FRANCHISE, in Law, is used as synonymous with li¬
berty, and is defined “ a royal privilege, or branch of the
king’s prerogative, subsisting in the hands of a subject.
Being thus derived from the crown, a franchise must arise
from the king’s grant; or in some cases it may be held by
prescription, which presupposes a grant. The kinds of
franchise are almost infinite.
Franchise is also used to denote an asylum or sanc¬
tuary, where the persons of those who take refuge in them
are secure. One of the most remarkable capitulars made
by Charlemagne in his palace of Heristal, in 779, was that
relating to the franchises of churches. The right of fran¬
chise was held so sacred that even the less rigidly righte¬
ous kings scrupulously observed it; but in course of time
it was carried to such excess, that Charlemagne reduced it,
by forbidding the conveying of provisions to criminals who
had fled for protection to these sanctuaries.
FRANCIS, Philip, an English poet and dramatic wri¬
ter, but more distinguished for his translations of classical
authors than for his original compositions. His father was
dean of Lismore, and rector of St Mary’s, Dublin, whence
he is said to have been ejected on account of his prin¬
ciples at the Revolution. His son received his education
for the church at Dublin ; but, after entering into holy or¬
ders, he came over to England, and settled at Esher, in
Surrey, where he opened a school. He obtained the de¬
gree of doctor of laws, and was afterwards presented to the
rectory of Barrow, in Suffolk, and made chaplain of Chelsea
hospital. He wrote two tragedies, Eugenia, 1752, and
Constantia, 1754, neither of which, however, met with a
favourable reception at the time of its appearance, and
both have now fallen into oblivion. But his translation of
Horace with notes was completely successful, and has been
often reprinted. In 1757 he published a translation of the
orations of Demosthenes and /Eschines, in two vols. 4to.
Dr Francis was also a considerable political writer, and wras
said to have been employed by government. He died at
Bath in the year 1773, leaving a son, who having distin¬
guished himself as a politician, rose to considerable emi¬
nence, held several official situations under government,
and in 1773 went out to the East Indies, where he became
i
FRA
ranoco. munity were to possess either fund, revenue, or any worldly
goods, was considered as too strict and severe, and dispensed
with soon after his death. In 1231 Gregory IX. published an
interpretation of this rule, mitigating its rigour; and it was
further confirmed by Innocent IV. in 1245, and by Alex¬
ander IV. in 1247. But these mitigations were zealously
opposed by a branch of the Franciscans called the spirit¬
ual; and their complaints were attended to by Nicho¬
las III. who, in 1279, published a constitution, confirm¬
ing the rule of St Francis, and containing an elaborate
explanation of the maxims which it recommended, and
the duties which it prescribed. In 1287, Matthew of Aqua
Sparta, being elected general of the order, discouraged
the ancient discipline of the Franciscans, and allowed his
monks to abandon even the appearance of poverty. This
conduct inflamed the indignation of the spiritual Fran¬
ciscans ; so that from the year 1290 seditions and schisms
arose in an order that had bcen distinguished, in appear¬
ance at least, for its disinterestedness and humility. Such
was the enthusiastic frenzy of the Franciscans, that they
impiously maintained that the founder of their order was
a second Christ, in all respects similar to the first; and
that their institution and discipline were the true gospel of
Jesus. Accordingly, in 1303, Albizi, a Franciscan of Pisa,
published a book, with the applause of his order, entitled
The book of the Conformities of St Francis with Jesus
Christ. In the beginning of the fourteenth century the
whole Franciscan order was divided into two parties;
one of which embraced the severe discipline and abso¬
lute poverty of St Francis, and were called spirituals;
and the other, who insisted on mitigating the austere in¬
junctions of their founder, were denominated brethren of
the community. The latter wore long and loose, but good
habits, with large hoods; the former were clad in a strait,
coarse, and short dress, pretending that their habiliments
were enjoined by St Francis, and that no power on earth
had a right to alter them. But neither the moderation of
Clement V. nor the violence of John XXII. could appease
the tumult occasioned by their contentions; their rage,
however, subsided after the year 1329. In 1368 these two
parties were formed into two large bodies, comprehending
the whole Franciscan order, which subsist to this day;
namely, the conventual brethren, and the brethren of the
observance,, from whom sprung the Capuchins and Re¬
collects. The general opinion is, that the Franciscans
came into England in the year 1224, and had their first
house at Canterbury, and their second at London; but
there is no certain account of their being here until King
Henry VII. built two or three houses for them. On the
dissolution of the monasteries, the conventual Franciscans
owned about fifty-five houses, which were under seven
custodies or wardenships, namely, those of London, York,
Cambridge, Bristol, Oxford, Newcastle, and Worcester.
In the eighteenth century the whole number of Francis¬
cans and Capuchins amounted to 115,000 monks, who oc¬
cupied 7000 convents. At present, however, their num¬
ber is not nearly so great, as the order has been suppress¬
ed in various countries.
FRANCIS©©, St, the name of a small island on the
coast of Brazil. Its situation is low, and it is watered by va¬
rious small rivers. On its eastern side there is a narrow lake,
ten miles long from north to south, denominated the river
Acarhy ; and contiguous to it there is another small lake.
1 he town of St Francisco, which gives name to the island,
consists of houses mostly built of earth, and a stone church.
n y two of the streets are paved. The inhabitants are
almost all white, and of a pale complexion. They are
chiefly occupied in the cultivation of mandioc ; and as the
own is said to be well supplied with fish, some have ac¬
counted for their cadaverous appearance by supposing it
arise from their meagre diet. The adjacent country,
fra
221
though rich, is swampy, and of course unhealthy. The Frank
port of St Francisco appears to want depth of water for Language
large vessels, a circumstance which considerably detracts H
from its value. Lat 26. 15. S. Franked.
FRANK Language, Lingua Franca, a kind of jargon
spoken on the Mediterranean, and particularly throughout
the coasts and ports of the Levant, composed of Italian,
Spanish, French, Romaic Greek, and other languages.
Frank, or Franc, an ancient coin, either of gold or sil¬
ver, struck and current in France. The value of the gold
franc was something more than that of the gold crown;
but it has been long out of use, though the name is still
retained as the name of a money of accounts, in which
sense it is equivalent to the livre, or twenty sols.
Frank, or Franc, meaning literally free from charges
and impositions, or exempt from public taxes, has various
significations in the ancient English customs.
Frank-Almoigne {libera eleemosyna'), or free alms, a
tenure of a spiritual nature, by which a religious corpora¬
tion, aggregate or sole, holds lands of the donor granted to
them and their successors for ever. The service which
they were bound to render for these lands was not definitive¬
ly stated ; but only in general they were to pray for the souls
of the donor and his heirs, dead or alive. Hence they did
no fealty, which is incident to all other services, because
this religious service was of a higher and more exalted
nature. This is the tenure by which almost all the ancient
monasteries and religious houses held their lands, and by
which also the parochial clergy, and many ecclesiastical and
eleemosynary foundations, hold them at this day. But
the nature of the service was altered at the Reformation,
and made conformable to the reformed doctrines of the
church of England. It was an old Saxon tenure; and
continued under the Norman domination, from the venera¬
tion paid to religious institutions. This was also the rea¬
son why tenants in frank-almoigne were exempted from all
other services except the trinoda necessitas, of repairing the
highways, building castles, and repelling invasions, just
as the Druids, amongst the ancient Britons, had omnium
rerum immunitatem. And even at present this is a tenure
of a very different nature from all others, being not in the
least feudal, but merely spiritual; for, if the service be
neglected, the law gives no remedy by distress, or other¬
wise, to the lord of whom the lands are holden, but mere¬
ly enters complaint to the ordinary or visitor to correct it.
Frank-Chase is defined to be a liberty of free chase, by
which persons who possess lands within the compass of the
same are prohibited from cutting down wood, &c. out of the
view of the forester.
Frank-Fee signifies the same thing as holding lands
and tenements in fee simple ; that is, to any person and his
heirs, and not by such service as is required by ancient de¬
mesne, but is pleaded at common law.
Frank-Law, a word applied to the free and common
law of the land, or the benefit which a person has by it.
FRANK-Marriage, in Law, is where tenements are given
by one man to another, together with a wife, who is the
daughter or cousin of the donor, to hold in frank-marriage.
By such a gift, although nothing but the \im(\frank-mar-
nage is expressed, the donees have the tenements to them¬
selves tind the heirs ; that is, they are tenants in special tail.
For the word frank-marriage not only denotes ex vi ter¬
mini, an inheritance, like the word frank-almoigne, but like¬
wise limits that inheritance, supplying not only words of de¬
scent, but also of procreation. Such donees in frank-mar-
riage are liable to no service but fealty 5 for a rent reserv¬
ed therein is void until the fourth degree of consanguinity
be past betw een the issues of the donor and donee.
LRANK-Pledge, in Law, signifies a pledge or surety for
the behaviour of freemen.
FRANKED Letters. See Post Office.
222 FRA FRA
Franken FRANKEN, Franciscus, usually designated Old Frank,
!l a famous Flemish painter, supposed to have been born
Frankfort about the year 1544. Although his works are well known,
very few of the circumstances of his life have been ascer-
tained. This master painted historical subjects from the
Old and New Testaments, and was remarkable for intro¬
ducing a great number of well-grouped figures into his com¬
positions. Vandyck commended his works, and thought
them worthy of a place in any collection.
Franken, Franciscus, distinguished by the name of
Young Frank, was the son of the former, and born in the
year 1580. He was instructed by his father, whose style
he adopted so closely that their works are frequently mis¬
taken. He travelled into Italy to improve his colouring;
and upon his return his works were much sought after.
The best works of this painter are, a scriptural performance
in the church of Notre Dame at Antwerp; and an excel¬
lent picture, in a small size, of Solomon’s idolatry. Young
Frank died in 1642.
FRANKENHAUSEN, a city of the duchy of Schwartz-
burg-Rudolstadt, in Germany, the capital of the principa¬
lity and of a bailiwick of the same name. It stands on
the river Wipper, is sui'rounded with walls, and contains
the ducal palace, 630 other houses, and 3100 inhabitants.
It possesses a salt spring, from which is made culinary salt,
the revenue derived from which is divided between the
two branches of the sovereign family of Schwartzburg.
FRANKENSTEIN, a city, the capital of the circle, in
the Prussian province of Siberia. It stands on the river
Pausebach, 877 feet above the sea, and contains 618 houses,
with 5200 inhabitants. It is a place of brisk trade in cloth,
hosiery, tannery, and other articles. It is situated in long.
16. 44. 10. E. and lat. 50. 52. 30. N.
FRANKENTHAL, a city of Bavaria, in the circle of
the Rhine, and the capital of a small canton. It is situated
on a canal which joins the Rhine, is an industrious city,
containing 448 houses and 4109 inhabitants, who make
silk, linen, and woollen cloths, and other goods, especially
excellent porcelain.
FRANKFORT-on-the-Maine, an independent repub¬
lic in Germany, consisting of the city and a small district
around it, containing two market-towns, five villages, 896
houses, and about 7000 inhabitants. The system of go¬
vernment is somewhat complicated, being partly of the
aristocratical and partly of the democratical kind. The
city is surrounded by promenades formed out of the ancient
walls. The fine river Maine passes close to it, and on its
banks are some of the best dwellings of the city. There
are within it 3600 houses, and about 50,000 inhabitants.
The antiquities of the city attract much attention, espe¬
cially the Homer, and the electors’ hall, where the emperors
were chosen, and the cathedral. The situation of Frank¬
fort, between France and Germany, makes it a place fa¬
vourable for the exchange of the commodities of England,
the Netherlands, France, Italy, and Germany; and at two
large fairs, in the spring and autumn, a vast portion of busi¬
ness is transacted. Much trade is carried on by the Maine
and the Rhine with Holland, especially for the German
wines, and the woods of its vast forests. The greatest busi¬
ness in amount is that of exchanges, as the bills of all coun¬
tries can be negotiated with facility at Frankfort, by the
rich bankers, owing to their extensive transactions with the
several states of Europe.
Frankfort-on-the-Oder, a city, the capital of the
circle of that name, in the kingdom of Prussia. It is the
seat of the provincial government, is regularly built, and
has broad streets and good public buildings. It contains
four Lutheran, two Reformed, and one Catholic church,
with 1409 houses, and 15,540 inhabitants. It is a very
considerable manufacturing place for silk and linen goods,
gloves, hosiery, and other articles. The largest fairs of
any on the Continent, except those of F rankfort-on-the- Frankfort
Maine and of Leipsic, are held here. Long. 14. 28. E. Lat. S
52. 22. N. J2nkli»'
FRANKFORT, the political metropolis of Kentucky,
one of the United States of North America. It is situated
on the northern bank of the river Kentucky, at about sixty
miles above its junction with the Ohio. The environs of
the plain upon which the town is built are beautiful, and
remarkable for their romantic scenery. The town is di¬
vided by the river into Frankfort and South Frankfort,
each of which contains about 2000 inhabitants. The two
divisions are connected by a bridge across the Kentucky,
which here flows between banks of from four to five hun¬
dred feet in height. The state-house of the town is en¬
tirely built of marble, with a front presenting a portico of
Ionic columns, and the whole has an aspect of imposing
magnificence. It contains the halls of the legislature, and
apartments for the court of appeals and the federal courts.
The other public edifices of Frankfort are three churches,
an academy, and county court-house. The houses are sin¬
gularly neat, many of them being built of a beautiful spe¬
cies of marble, which is found on the banks of the river.
It possesses a number of manufacturing establishments,
and is a place of considerable commercial enterprise, being
the head port of stearii-boat navigation. Vessels have been
built at Frankfort, and floated to New Orleans, from which
it is distant 806 miles.
FRANKLAND’S Islands, a cluster of small islands
on the north-east coast of New Holland, about six miles
from the land. Long. 146. E. Lat. 17. 12. S.
FRANKINCENSE. See Incense.
FRANKLIN, Thomas, D.D. chaplain in ordinary to his
majesty, was born in London in the year 1721, and was
the son of Richard Franklin, well known as the printer of
an anti-ministerial paper called The Craftsman ; in con¬
ducting which he received great assistance from Lord Bo-
lingbroke, Mr Pulteney, and other writers, who then op¬
posed Sir Robert Walpole’s measures. By the advice of
the second of these gentlemen, young Franklin was devot¬
ed to the church, with a promise of being provided for by
the patriot, who, however, forgot his undertaking, and
entirely neglected him. He was educated at W estmins-
ter School, whence he removed to the university of Cam¬
bridge, w here he became a fellow of Trinity College, and
in 1750 was chosen Greek professor. In 1757 he was
instituted vicar of Ware and Thundridge, which, with the
lectureship of St Paul, Covent Garden, and a chapel in
Queen Street, were all the preferments he held till he ob¬
tained the rectory of Brasted in Surrey, which he held till
his death. He first appeared as an author in a translation
of The Epistles of Phalaris in 1759, and of Cicero’s tract
De Natura Deorum. About this period he is said to have
published An Inquiry into the Astronomy and Anatomy of
the Ancients, reprinted in*l775, in 8vo. In 1759 appeared
his translation of Sophocles, in 2 vols. 4to. This work is
allowed to be a fair and forcible version of that great tra¬
gic poet. It was followed by A Dissertation on Ancient
Tragedy. In 1765 Dr Franklin published a volume ot
Sermons on the Relative Duties, which met with consider¬
able attention. In the year following he produced the
Earl of Warwick, a tragedy, borrowed without acknow¬
ledgment from the French of Laharpe. Notwithstand¬
ing his clerical preferments and duties, he continued to
write for the stage, and on one occasion descended so low
as to bring out a farce. In 1780 appeared his excellent
translation of Lucian, in 2 vols. 4to. Dr Franklin died on
the 15th of March 1784, leaving behind him the character
of a learned, able, but jealous and peculiar man. Besides
the works above enumerated, he was the author of a hu¬
morous piece entitled A Letter on Lectureships, An Ode
on the Institution of the Royal Academy, three volumes of
FRANKLIN.
223
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i. posthumous sermons; and he is also supposed to have
^ aided Smollett in the Critical Review, and in the transla¬
tion of the works of Voltaire.
Franklin, Benjamin, one of the most distinguished
men whom America has produced, was born at Boston in
New England, North America, on the 17th of January
1706. His ancestors were petty freeholders at Eaton in
Northamptonshire, and he was the youngest but two of a
family of seventeen children. About the year 1682 his
father emigrated to America, and commenced soap-boiler
and tallow-chandler in the town of Boston.
Franklin, from his earliest years, discovered the strongest
propensity towards literary pursuits, which determined his
father to qualify him for the ministry ; but he was thwart¬
ed in his designs by a numerous and increasing family, and
therefore Benjamin was taken from the more learned se¬
minary, and placed under a teacher of reading and writing,
preparatory to his being bound to some handicraft trade.
At ten years of age he was withdrawn from school to take
part in the drudgery of his father’s trade. This greatly
mortified the aspiring mind of young Franklin, who would
have preferred a seafaring life to such an employment; but
from this he was dissuaded by the influence of his father,
who was a man of considerable penetration and judgment.
He made it his chief aim to inspire his children with the
love of knowledge and the principles of moral rectitude.
He had few books ; yet from amongst these Benjamin se¬
lected a number of voyages and travels, as well as different
histories, a species of reading for which he had a strong
predilection. By going through a course of controversial
divinity in this unaided manner, he greatly strengthened
his argumentative powers, which was most probably all he
had in view. Defoe upon Projects, according to his own
account, made impressions upon his mind which in a great
measure influenced the principal events of his subsequent
career.
He was now chosen to an employment which accorded
much better with the natural bent of his mind than the
business of a tallow-chandler. A brother of his own had a
printing office in Boston, and to him Benjamin was bound
apprentice at twelve years of age. With the mechanical
part of the business he was soon acquainted ; and the op¬
portunities thus afforded him of procuring new books to
read were eagerly seized, and the greater part of the night
frequently spent in the perusal of them. He soon became
anxious to imitate the works which he most admired, and
his first attempts were of a poetical nature. He composed
and printed ballads, which were well received by those
who love this species of reading; yet his father had the
address to convince him that nature never designed him
for a poet. He accordingly turned his whole attention to
the cultivation of prose composition, in which he made
great progress. He had a young friend with whom he
kept up an epistolary dispute, which afforded him an ad¬
mirable opportunity of exercising his pen. He also read
with avidity and attention various works, particularly Xe¬
nophon’s Memorabilia, which enabled him either to confute
or confound an adversary by a number of questions. It is
also certain that he became a sceptic as to the religion in
which he had been educated, and propagated his unbelief
with zeal and assiduity. The fatal consequences which
this produced on the deportment of some of his intimate
companions at length happily convinced him that it is ex¬
tremely dangerous to destroy the salutary influence of reli¬
gion, without being able to substitute anything in its place of
equal importance and efficacy. He seems, however, to have
continued a sceptic in his own mind; yet he still retained
a love for moral rectitude, which led him to adopt honour¬
able means in the prosecution of valuable ends. Much to
his honour be it spoken, he acquired, at a very early period
of life, that triumph over his sensual appetites, which is so
essentially necessary to a life of dignity, usefulness, and Franklin,
virtue. Having read Tyron’s recommendation of a vege-
table diet, at sixteen years of age, he abandoned the use of
animal food; and on offering to his brother to support him¬
self on half the money which was paid for his board, he
was allowed to adopt his own plan, by which means he was
enabled to save a considerable sum for the purchase of
books. Although he relaxed considerably as to a vegetable
diet, yet he thus acquired the habit of being satisfied with
little; and a contempt of the gratifications of the palate
was frequently of singular advantage to him throughout the
whole of his life.
His brother having commenced a newspaper, Benjamin
sent a number of pieces on various topics to be inserted,
which met with the approbation of the most competent
judges; a satisfaction he enjoyed without being known,
as they were all anonymous. His brother treated him with
the harshness of a master, which he bore with the utmost
impatience, as the public had already pronounced him to
be possessed of merit. The states of America having pro¬
hibited James Franklin from publishing this paper, on ac¬
count of some political offence, the name of Benjamin was
employed as publisher, in consequence of which he pro¬
cured his indentures, although he agreed privately with his
brother to serve out his time. But having been harshly
treated by his brother, he went to New York by sea, and
from that place to Philadelphia, in the seventeenth year of
his age. He himself acknowledges this to have been a
fault, and has therefore averted that censure which he
would otherwise have deserved. At Philadelphia he en¬
gaged with a printer of the name of Keimer, whose affairs
he soon placed on a more respectable footing; and here
also he became acquainted with several young men of a
literary turn of mind, by whose company his taste was
greatly improved.
Shortly after his arrival he became acquainted with Sir
William Keith, at that period governor of the province,
who was struck with the composition and penmanship of
young Franklin, and strenuously advised him to commence
business on his own account, promising to use his influence
in his favour. Encouraged by this gentleman to adopt
such a plan, he set out for Boston on a visit to his pa¬
rents, in order to procure from them some pecuniary aid;
but a welcome reception was all he could obtain. Hav¬
ing returned to Philadelphia without accomplishing his
object, Sir William offered to take the whole burden upon
himself, and advised Franklin to make a voyage to Eng¬
land in order to procure every thing necessary for esta¬
blishing a printing-office. He accordingly set sail in the
year 1725, and took with him his intimate companion
Ralph, who has been celebrated in the Dunciad. Unfor¬
tunately for Franklin, Sir William Keith, on whose letters
of recommendation and credit he entirely relied, deceived
him, and he was compelled to work as a journeyman in
London for his immediate subsistence. His friend Ralph
could only live by his head, and his income of consequence
was extremely circumscribed, as well as precarious, which
made him a heavy burden upon Franklin. In the disso¬
lute metropolis the one forgot his wife and child in Ame¬
rica, and the other the solemn promises of fidelity which he
had made to a Miss Read prior to his departure, anoth;
step of his conduct which he himself severely censures. By
a dissertation on liberty and necessity, pleasure and pain,
he acquired considerable reputation ; "and it wras the means
of introducing him to the celebrated Dr Mandeville, author
of the Fable of the Bees. In the second printing-office in
which he worked, he laboured incessantly to convince his
fellow-workmen that a pint of porter does not contain half
so much nourishment as a penny roll, for which he obtain¬
ed the ludicrous epithet of the American aquatic: yet he
was finally enabled to make many converts to his doctrine 5
224 FRAN
Franklin, a proof that he possessed strong persuasive powers, when
we consider the deep-rooted attachment of those with
whom he had to treat to their favourite beverage.
After eighteen months residence in London, he return¬
ed to Philadelphia in the year 1726, and became clerk to a
Mr Denham, a man of respectability, who had opened a
warehouse in that city. He soon became acquainted with
the principles of commerce, and led a very happy life in
this new situation, till the connection was dissolved by the
death of Mr Denham, which happened the following year.
This again obliged him to become journeyman printer, and
he was afterwards overseer in the office of Keimer his for¬
mer master.
Keimer having engaged Franklin solely with the view
of having his apprentices so far initiated in the art that
he could dispense with their instructor’s services, took the
first occasion to quarrel with him when he thought he had
sufficiently attained his object. Upon their separation,
one of Keimer’s apprentices, named Meredith, who, like
all the others, had conceived a great veneration for Frank¬
lin, proposed that they should enter into partnership toge¬
ther, Meredith’s friends undertaking to furnish the capital
necessary for purchasing the materials, &c. This offer was
too advantageous to be refused; and types, a press, and
other things, were forthwith commissioned from London ;
but whilst preparing to put their plan into execution, Frank¬
lin was induced, during the interval, to return again to
Keimer, at the urgent solicitation of the latter. The mo¬
tive for this humble entreaty was that individual’s having
taken a contract for the printing of some paper-money for
the state of New Jersey, requiring a variety of new cuts
and types, which he knew well nobody in that place but
Franklin could supply. This also presents us with a very
striking instance of Franklin’s remarkable gift of invention.
“ To execute the order,” says he, “ I constructed a cop¬
perplate printing-press, the first that had been seen in the
country. I engraved various ornaments and vignettes for
the bills, and we repaired to Burlington together, where I
executed the whole to the general satisfaction, and he
(Keimer) received a sum of money for this work which
enabled him to keep his head above water for a consider¬
able time longer.”
At Burlington, Franklin formed acquaintance with all
the principal personages of the province, who were attract¬
ed by his superior abilities and intelligence. Amongst
these was the inspector-general, Isaac Decon, “ who,” says
Franklin, “ was a shrewd and subtile old man. He told
me that his first employment had been that of carrying clay
to the brick-makers ; that he did not learn to write till he
was somewhat advanced in life ; that he was afterwards
employed as underling to a surveyor, who taught him his
trade; and that, by industry, he had at last acquired a
competent fortune. ‘ I foresee,’ said he, ‘ that you will soon
supplant this man (speaking of Keimer), and get a fortune
in the business at Philadelphia.’ He was wholly ignorant
at the time of my intention of establishing myself there, or
anywhere else.”
Immediately after Franklin’s return from Burlington, the
types arrived from London, and the partners commenced
business. They were at once successful, and by his un¬
wearied industry Franklin obtained great credit amongst
his townsmen, and at last found himself in circumstances
to attempt a newspaper, always a favourite speculation of
his. The intention of the partners, however, having
been incautiously divulged, their old master Keimer took
steps to establish a paper of his own, and issued a prospec¬
tus to that effect. Franklin defeated his object by the
strenuous support which he gave to the paper which was
then in existence. He published in it a series of amusing
articles, in which Keimer’s proposals were burlesqued and
ridiculed. The paper, however, was published, but after
KLIN.
a short time it passed into the hands of Franklin, by whom Franl^
it was very ably conducted. In the mean time the partner- 'wyv
ship between him and Meredith was dissolved; but, by the
generous aid of friends, Franklin was enabled to take the
whole business upon himself, to which he added that of a
stationer. When the increase of paper-money engaged
the attention of the American government, Franklin wrote
an anonymous pamphlet in defence of the measure, by which
he acquired considerable reputation, and the countenance
of men in power. In the mean time, Miss Read, the person
to whom he had been engaged, was married to another in¬
dividual, in consequence of his neglect. But a report having
gone abroad that the lady’s husband was married to ano¬
ther woman, he retired to the West Indies, where he died,
and Franklin at last espoused the object of his first love.
To him we are to ascribe the establishment of a public
library at Philadelphia, which he accomplished in the year
1731. His Poor Richard’s Almanac was begun in 1732, and
became remarkable for the many prudential maxims with
which it abounded; and the proverbial manner in which
they were expressed made them take fast hold on the me¬
mory. His political career commenced in 1736, when he
was chosen clerk to the general assembly of Pennsylvania,
to which he was re-elected for several years ; and at last
became a representative. In 1737 he was made postmas¬
ter of Philadelphia; and in the subsequent year he great¬
ly improved the police of the city, by the formation of a
fire-company, and afterwards an insurance-company against
losses by fire. In the war with France, which broke out
in 1744, when the best means of defending the province
against the inroads of the enemy were in discussion, and
when the militia bill was thrown aside from its being ob¬
noxious to the people, Franklin suggested the idea of a vo¬
luntary association for defence, which was instantly signed
by 1200 persons, and 10,000 subscriptions were obtained
in a short time by circulating the proposal through the
province. By this and similar means America had an oppor¬
tunity of ascertaining her- own strength, and how to make
use of it with advantage in cases of emergency.
About this time he began his interesting experiments on
electricity, by the result of which he gained an immor¬
tal name in the annals of science. The library society of
Philadelphia having received from Mr Peter Collinson, in
the year 1745, an account of the facts respecting electrici¬
ty, which at that time engrossed the attention of philoso¬
phers in Europe, Franklin set about studying the subject
with the greatest assiduity. He gave the account of his
researches the title of New Experiments and Observations
on Electricity, made at Philadelphia in America, and ad¬
dressed it to Mr Collinson, in the form of letters, bearing
date from 1747 to 1754. They were everywhere read
with avidity, and universally admired, though not at first
very generally in England. Dr Priestley speaks of them
in the following terms. “ It is not easy to say whether
we are most pleased with the simplicity and perspicuity
with which the author proposes every hypothesis of his
own, or the noble frankness with which he relates his mis¬
takes when they were corrected by subsequent experi¬
ments.” It is unnecessary to enter into a detailed ac¬
count of all his discoveries ; we shall therefore content
ourselves with mentioning the most interesting of them
all, namely, that lightning and electricity are identically
the same. This identity had begun to be suspected, and
experiments had been made in France to ascertain the
fact; but it was reserved to Franklin to demonstrate it
by his own experiments. He obtained his first decisive
proof in the month of June 1752, by setting up a silken
kite into the air with a point of iron, and a key fastened to
the end of the hempen string by which he held it. In
this manner he drew down from a thunder-cloud a suffi¬
cient quantity of electric fire to emit sensible sparks from
FRA
the key. By means of an insulated iron rod which he fix¬
ed upon his house, he drew down the lightning, and was
thus furnished with an opportunity of discovering whether
it was positive or negative. As he firmly believed that
philosophical discoveries were only valuable in so far as
they could be productive of benefit to man, he made
them subservient to the protection of buildings from the
effects of lightning, which are frequently alarming in
North America. He applied physics to the purposes of
common life; and in 1745 invented his Pennsylvania fire¬
places, in which the qualities of an open grate were com¬
bined with that of a stove.
Politics also engaged a considerable share of his atten¬
tion. He was chosen a representative of the city of Phi¬
ladelphia for the provincial assembly in 1747. At this time
a contest subsisted between the assembly and the proprie¬
taries, as to the claim of the latter to be exempted from
public burdens. Franklin took the popular side of the
question, by which he acquired great influence, and was
regarded as the head of the opposition. This was not the
offspring of eloquence; for he seldom spoke, and never in
the form of a harangue: but his pointed observations, and
his unadorned good sense, frequently destroyed the effect
of elaborate orations.
He drew up the plan of an academy to be founded at
Philadelphia, from a conviction that education is of the
utmost importance. It was carried into effect in the year
1750, by virtue of a subscription, to which the proprietors
afterwards liberally contributed. He discharged the duties
of his office as postmaster of Philadelphia with so much
punctuality that he was appointed deputy postmaster-ge¬
neral for the British colonies in 1753, and the revenue
was greatly augmented by his exertions. A plan for con¬
ciliating the Indians, and forming an alliance with them,
was drawn up by Franklin in 1754, to which the commis¬
sioners at Albany agreed ; and a copy of it was transmitted
to the British privy council. It is a singular circumstance
that this plan was rejected by the assemblies, as giving too
much power to the crown; while the British ministry de¬
clared that it gave too much influence to the representa¬
tives of the people. In the year 1757 Franklin set sail for
London, as agent for Pennsylvania, the assembly of that
province being involved in disputes with the proprietary.
It was agreed by the privy council that landholders should
pay their share of the public burdens, on condition that
Franklin would engage they should be fairly proportioned.
He continued at the British court as agent for his pro¬
vince, and acquired so great reputation that the same trust
was reposed in him for Massachusetts, Maryland, and Geor¬
gia. His merit as a philosopher wras now justly appreciat¬
ed in Europe; and he was made a fellow of the Royal So¬
ciety of London. The degree of LL.D. was also confer¬
red upon him at St Andrews, Edinburgh, and Oxford.
In the year 1762 he returned to America, where he re¬
ceived the thanks of the assembly of Pennsylvania, and a
handsome recompense in money, for his services. When
the stamp-act occasioned so much disturbance in America,
Dr Franklin was summoned to the bar of the House of
Commons to give evidence respecting the dispositions of
the people, whether he thought they could be induced to
submit to it; and the energy and clearness of his represen¬
tations were instrumental in procuring the repeal of that
obnoxious measure.
On the commencement of hostilities between Great Bri¬
tain and the colonies in 1775, he returned to America, and
was chosen a delegate to congress by the legislature of
Pennsylvania. In 1776 he treated with Lord Howe on
the subject of a reconciliation; and in one of his letters
described in strong terms the temper of the British nation,
to which he imputed the fatal extremity which had ar¬
rived. When the question of independence came to be
VOL. x.
FRA
225
Fraser¬
burgh.
discussed, he was decidedly in favour of the measure, and Franklin
was highly instrumental in bringing over the public mind
to the same opinion. When a negotiation with France
was opened, he was chosen one of the personages to reside ,
at that court. His political abilities eminently qualified
him for such a station ; and his character as a philosopher
gained him great esteem in a country where science was
revered. He brought about a treaty with France of an of¬
fensive and defensive nature in 1778, the immediate con¬
sequence of which was a war with Britain. Fie was one of
those who signed the provisional treaty the year following.
Prior to his leaving Europe he concluded a treaty with
Sweden and Prussia. He was recalled from this station
in 1785, and chosen president of the supreme executive
council. His increasing infirmities made him withdraw
from all public business in 1788 ; and on the 17th of
April 1790 he terminated his active and useful life, in the
eighty-fifth year of his age.
Perhaps no man ever exceeded Dr Franklin in that solid
practical wisdom which consists in pursuing valuable ends
by the most appropriate means. His cool temper and
sound judgment secured him from unreasonable expecta¬
tions. He saw things in their true light, and predicted
consequences with nearly a prophetic spirit. He said of
himself, “ I have always set a greater value on the charac¬
ter of a doer of good, than any other kind of reputation.”
In 1779, his Political, Miscellaneous, and Philosophical
Pieces were published in 4to and 8vo. His Essays, humo¬
rous, moral, and literary, were published after his death, in
two small volumes, and have frequently been reprinted.
He was by no means inattentive to his own interest, of
which his advancement in life furnishes an ample proof;
yet he never neglected the interest of his country, or the
good of mankind in general. The delicate situations in
which he frequently stood unavoidably exposed him to
the censure of enemies; but his general conduct has long
ago received the approbation of his countrymen. When
we view him as a philosopher, we must ascribe his chief
merit to his electrical discoveries ; yet on many other topics,
such as meteorology and mechanics, he evinced himself a
man of great penetration. As a political writer, his chief
merit is clearness, energy, and simplicity ; and as a miscel¬
laneous author he possesses a fund of humour which can¬
not fail to be at once both entertaining and impressive, and
a sagacity which never fails to instruct.
Franklin is the name of several counties in Ame¬
rica, which will be found noticed under the heads of the
different states in which they are situated.
FRANKS, Francs, Frankis, or Franquis, a name
which the Turks, Arabs, Greeks, &c. give to all the peo¬
ple of the western parts of Europe. The appellation is
commonly supposed to have had its rise in Asia at the
time of the crusades, when the French made the most
considerable figure among the crusaders; from which time
the Turks, Saracens, Greeks, Abyssinians, &c. used it as
a common term for all the Christians of Europe; and
called Europe itself Frankistan. The Arabs and Maho¬
metans, says M. d’Herbelot, apply the term Franks not
only to the French (to whom the name originally belong¬
ed), but to the Europeans in general.
FRASCATI, or Frescati, a town of Italy, in the papal
dominions, about ten miles from Rome. It is near the
ancient Tusculum, but not quite so elevated, though
sufficiently so to command a fine prospect over the Cam-
pagna di Roma. The town has an ecclesiastical seminary,
founded by the late Cardinal York. It contains about
8500 inhabitants. Long. 12. 41. 33. E. Lat. 41. 48. 21. N.
FRASERBURGH, a small sea-port town in the coun¬
ty of Aberdeen, situated on the point of land called Kin-
naird's Head, which is the southern extremity of the
Murray Frith. During the last war a large harbour was
2 F
226 FRA
Fraternity constructed here, to serve as a place of shelter for Bri¬
ll tish ships of war which might suffer from stress of wea-
Fr^.ri* ther in the north seas ; this being the first point of land
. cel^ which can be reached. In consequence of this, Fraser-
burgh has risen from comparative obscurity to a port of
some importance. Opposite the harbour there is a spa¬
cious road for vessels, formed by the bay of Fraserburgh.
The town is neat and regularly built, the streets being
generally broad and commodious. The herring fishing is
here carried on to a great extent, and also the manufac¬
ture of linen yarn, considerable quantities of which are ex¬
ported. Fraserburgh is situated 42 miles north of Aber¬
deen, and 151 from Edinburgh. The population of the
town and parish amounted in 1821 to 2831, and in 1831
to 2954.
FRATERNITY, Brotherhood, the relation or union
of brothers, friends, partners, associates, and the like.
Fraternity, in a civil sense, denotes a guild, associa¬
tion, or society of individuals, united into a body for one
common interest or advantage.
Fraternity, in Roman Catholic countries, signifies a
society for the improvement of devotion. Of these there
are several. 1. The fraternity of the rosary, founded by
St Dominic. It is divided into two branches, called the
common rosary, and the perpetual rosary ; the former are
obliged to confess and communicate every first Sunday in
the month, and the latter to repeat the rosary continual¬
ly. 2. The fraternity of the scapulary, whom the blessed
Virgin, according to the sabbatine bull of Pope John
XXII. has promised to deliver out of hell the first Sunday
after their death. 3. The fraternity of St Francis’s gir¬
dle ; these are clothed with a sack of a gray colour, which
they tie with a cord, and in processions walk barefooted,
carrying in their hands a wooden cross. 4. That of St
Austin’s leathern girdle comprehends a great many devo¬
tees. Italy, Spain, and Portugal, are the countries where
we see the greatest number of these fraternities, some of
which assume the name of arch-fraternities. Pope Cle¬
ment VII. instituted the arch-fraternity of charity, which
distributes bread every Sunday among the poor, and gives
portions to forty poor girls on the feast of St Jerome,
their patron. The fraternity of death buries such dead
as are abandoned by their relations, and causes masses to
be celebrated for them.
FRATRIAGE, the partition among brothers, or co¬
heirs, coming to the same inheritance or succession.
FRATRICELLI, in Ecclesiastical History, an enthusi¬
astic sect of Franciscans, which rose in Italy, and particu¬
larly in the marquisate of Ancona, about the year 1294.
The word is an Italian diminutive, signifying fraterculi,
or little brothers; and was here used as a term of deri¬
sion, as most of those who composed the body were apos¬
tate monks, whom the Italians call fratelli, or fratricelli.
For this reason the term fratricelli, as a nick-name, was
given to many other sects, such as the Catharists, the
Waldenses, and the like, however different in their opi¬
nions or in their conduct. But this denomination, applied
to the austere part of the Franciscans, was considered as
honourable.
The founders were P. Maurato and P. de Fossombroni,
who obtained of Pope Celestin V. permission to live in so¬
litude as hermits, and to observe the rule of St Francis
in all its rigour. Ihey were joined by several idle vaga¬
bond monks, who, living after their own fashion, and
making all perfection to consist in poverty, were soon
condemned by Pope Boniface VIII. and his successor,
and the inquisitors were ordered to proceed against them
as heretics. This commission was executed with the
usual barbarity. They were compelled to flee into Sicily,
where Peter John Oliva de Serignan had published his
Comment on the Apocalypse, and they adopted his errors.
F R E
They predicted the reformation of the church, and the Fratricid
restoration of the true gospel of Christ, by the genuine j|
followers of St Francis, and declared their assent to almost ^reats
all the doctrines which were published under the name
of the abbot Joachim, in the Introduction to the ever¬
lasting Gospel; a book published in 1520, and explained
by one of the spiritual friars of the name of Gerhard.
Among other enormities inculcated in this book, it is
pretended that St Francis was the angel mentioned in
Rev. xiv. 6, and had promulgated to the world the true
and everlasting gospel of God ; that the gospel of Christ
was to be abrogated in 1620, and to give place to this
new and everlasting gospel, which was to be substituted
in its room ; and that the ministers of this great reforma¬
tion were to be humble and bare-footed friars, desti¬
tute of all worldly employments. It is mentioned by some
writers that they even elected a pope to be head of their
church ; at least they appointed a general, with superiors,
built monasteries, and made other arrangements for the
new faith. They were condemned anew by Pope John
XXII. in consequence of whose cruelty they regarded
him as the true antichrist; but several of them returning
into Germany, were sheltered by Lewis duke of Bavaria,
the emperor.
There are accounts bearing that no less than two thou¬
sand persons were burnt by the Inquisition from the year
1318 to the time of Innocent VI. for their inflexible at¬
tachment to the poverty of St Francis. The severities
against them were again revived towards the close of the
15th century, by Pope Nicolas V. and his successors.
However, all the persecutions which this sect endured
were not sufficient to extirpate it; for it subsisted until
the times of the reformation in Germany, when its remain¬
ing votaries adopted the cause and embraced the doctrine
and discipline of Luther.
FRATRICIDE, the crime of murdering a brother.
FRATTA-MAGGIORE, a city of the province of
Naples, in the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, containing
8464 inhabitants.
FRAUENBURG, a city of the province of East Prus¬
sia, in the government of Konigsberg, on the Frische
Half, at the foot of a hill on which stands the cathedral of
which Copernicus was a canon, and where he was buried
in 1545. It contains 195 houses, and 1720 inhabitants.
Long. 19. 49. 20. E. Lat. 54. 21. 54. N.
FRAUSTADT, a town of the Prussian province of
Posen, the capital of the circle of the same name, with
607 houses, and 6850 inhabitants, who carry on consider¬
able trade in cloth, corn, wool, oil, and timber, and con¬
duct distilleries and breweries.
FRAY literally signifies to fret; as cloth or stuff does
by rubbing, or too much wearing. Among hunters, a
deer is said to fray his head when he rubs it against a
tree to cause the skins of his new horns to come off.
Fray likewise signifies a battle, broil, or quarrel.
I REA, or Frigga, the wife of Odin, was, next to
him, the most revered divinity among the Saxons, Danes,
and other northern nations, during the reign of heathen¬
ism. As Odin was believed to be the father, Frea was
esteemed the mother, of all the other gods. In the most
ancient times, Frea was the same with the goddess Her-
thus, or Earth, who was so devoutly worshipped by the
Angli and other German nations. But when Odin, the
conqueror of the north, usurped the honours due only to
the true Odin, his wife Frea usurped those which had
been formerly paid to mother Earth. She was worship¬
ped as the goddess of love and pleasure, who bestowed on
her votaries a variety of delights, particularly happy mar¬
riages and easy child-births. To Frea the sixth day of
the week was consecrated, which still bears her name.
FREATS, or Freits, a term used in Scotland for ill
F R E
F R E
227
s ^ -ecklli
jder't.
aFi
omens, and sometimes denoting accidents supernaturally
unlucky.
FRECKLES, Lentigines, spots of a yellowish colour,
of the size of a lentile seed, scattered over the face, neck,
and hands.
FREDERICK II. king of Prussia, one of the greatest
warriors of the age in which he lived, was the son ofFre-
derick-William, then hereditary prince of Brandenburg,
and Maria Dorothea, a princess of the house of Bruns¬
wick. He was born in 1712, the year before his father
Frederick I. mounted the throne of Prussia. The latter
was so far from being a patron of literature, that he re¬
garded nothing but what related to the military art; and
most of his generals, whatever their merits in their own
line might be, scarcely knew how to sign their names.
So great indeed was the ignorance of the monarch him¬
self, that he banished from his dominions a philosopher
of the name of Wolf, merely because he maintained the
doctrine of pre-established harmony ; a theologian named
Lange having asserted, that on that doctrine his ma¬
jesty’s grenadiers were not culpable when they desert¬
ed, it being only the necessary consequence of the im¬
pulse their machine had received from their Creator. His
son was of a disposition the very reverse of his father.
Being put from his birth under the care of Val de Recoule,
a French lady of great merit and understanding, he acquir¬
ed, in his early years, not only a taste for literature in
general, but a predilection for the French language, which
he retained through life.
It is not to be supposed that a prince of the disposi¬
tion above mentioned would allow his son for any length
of time to indulge in literary pursuits. At seven years
of age Frederick was taken out of the hands of Madame
de Recoule-, and put under the care of military tutors.
General Count de Finkestein, an old warrior, was appoint¬
ed his governor; his sub-governor was Colonel de Kalk-
stein, an officer*celebrated for his courage and experience.
He was taught mathematics and fortification by Major
Senning,; Han de Jendun, a Frenchman, instructed him
in other branches of knowledge ; and a cadet of the name
of Kenzel taught him his exercises. At eight years of
age he was furnished with a small arsenal stored with
all sorts of arms proportioned to his age and strength, of
which his father left him absolute master. In a short
time he was named captain and chief of the corps of ca¬
dets ; and the young prince performed every day in mi¬
niature, with his little soldiers, all the evolutions with which
his father exercised his tall regiment. At length he re¬
ceived the command of a company in his father’s regi¬
ment, famous throughout all Europe, and which was com¬
posed of men of whom scarcely one was short of seven
French feet.
Born, however, with a taste for the arts, he devoted to
their cultivation every moment he could steal from the
vigilance of his guardians. Fie was more particularly
fond of poetry and music, and when he could find a mo¬
ment’s leisure, he read French authors or played on the
flute ; but his father, as often as he surprised him playing
or reading, broke his flute, and threw his books into the
fire. I he prince, chagrined at such injurious treatment,
and having a great desire to visit Germany, England,
France, and Italy, desired permission to travel. This,
however, his father would not allow, but permitted him to
accompany himself in the journeys which he made from
time to time into Germany; and, in 1728, took him to
Dresden to see the king of Poland. By these little ex¬
peditions, the desire of the prince to visit other countries
Mras strengthened; and at last he formed a resolution of
setting out without his father’s knowledge. The design
was intrusted to two of the prince’s young friends, named
Kat and Keit; money was borrowed for the occasion, and
the day of their departure was fixed, when unluckily the Frederick,
whole project was discovered. The old king, implacable
in his resentment, and considering his son as a deserter,
determined to put him to death. He was shut, up in the
fortress of Custrin; and it w^as with the utmost difficulty
that the Count de Seckendorf, sent for the purpose by
the Emperor Charles VI., was able to alter the king’s re¬
solution. Vengeance, however, was decreed against the
intended associates in Frederick’s journey. Keit escaped
the danger by flying into Holland; but Kat had not that
good fortune. The king first directed that he should be
tried by a court-martial; but as they, contrary to his ex¬
pectation, only sentenced the criminal to perpetual impri¬
sonment, the revengeful monarch ordered him to be be¬
headed. The execution was performed under the win¬
dows of the prince royal, whose head was held towards
the scaffold by four grenadiers; but no sooner did he ap¬
proach the window, and see his friend in the hands of the
executioner, than he stretched out his arms towards him,
crying out, “ Kat I Kat!” and instantly fainted away. Dur¬
ing the remainder of his life he considered capital punish¬
ments with horror, and they were rare throughout the
Prussian dominions while he continued to reign. When
the emperor had succeeded in preventing the execution
of Frederick, the king remarked that “ Austria would one
day see what a serpent she had nourished in her bosom.”
The royal prisoner remained a year at Custrin, during
which time his father wished him to learn the maxims of
government and finance. For this purpose M. de Mun-
chow, president of the chamber of domains and finances,
was ordered to make him assist at all their assemblies, to
consider him as a simple counsellor, and compel him to
work like others. The young counsellor, however, though
he assisted at their meetings, did not trouble himself with
reading acts or copying decrees. Instead of this, he
amused himself sometimes with reading French pamph¬
lets, and at others with drawing caricatures of the presi¬
dent or members of the assembly. M. Munchow himself
was likewise very useful to the prince at this time, by fur¬
nishing him with books and other articles of amusement,
notwithstanding the express prohibition of his father.
Frederick, after having passed in confinement the time
above specified, was recalled to Berlin, on pretence of
being present at the celebration of his eldest sister’s mar¬
riage with the hereditary prince of Bareith ; but the real
reason was, that the king had now prepared a match for
the prince himself. This was the Princess Elizabeth
Christina of Brunswick, niece to the empress. Frederick,
who was not only totally indifferent to the fair sex in
general, but particularly prejudiced against this princess,
made some objections; his father, however, overcame all
obstacles with his usual arguments, his cane, and a few
kicks.
On the celebration of this marriage, Frederick received
from his father the county of Rupin. He resided in the
capital of this county, named also Rupin, for some time ;
but afterwards chose Rheinsberg for his place of abode.
This town, built on the sands on the confines of Mecklen¬
burg, at that time contained only a thousand inhabitants ;
but it was soon greatly improved by Frederick. Having
put over the great gate of the castle the following inscrip¬
tion, Frederico Tranquillitatem Colenti, his father
was displeased with it, and hurried him from his peaceful
retreat into the noise and tumult of a camp. At this time
the succession to the crown of Poland had kindled a ge¬
neral war throughout Europe; and the king of Prussia
was to send ten thousand auxiliaries to the imperial army,
then commanded by Prince Eugene. The king conduct¬
ed his troops in person, and resolved to take this oppor¬
tunity of giving his son an idea of war. At this time, how¬
ever, he learnt but little; and only saw, as he himself ex-
228
FREDERICK.
Frederick, presses it, the shadow of the great Eugene. That con-
summate general, nevertheless, did not overlook his merit,
but predicted that he would one day be a great captain.
Frederick having gone to reconnoitre the lines at Philips-
burg, in his return through a very open wood, was expos¬
ed to the cannon of the lines; but this neither caused him
to quicken his pace nor change his attitude in the least.
The balls broke a number of branches on every side of
him. He continued to converse with the generals who
attended him, without showing the smallest sign of ap¬
prehension. Being one night at supper with Field-mar¬
shal Grumkow, the conversation turned on the young
Prince Eugene, who died on the Rhine; and he was
asked whether that prince would ever have become a
great man. Frederick decided in the negative, on ac¬
count of young Eugene’s not having known at any period
of his life how to choose a friend who dared to tell him
the truth.
During this campaign the health of the old king was so
much impaired that he was obliged to leave the army;
and Frederick was for some time intrusted with signing
all the orders in his father's name. On the king’s reco¬
very the prince was sent to Stettin, under the care of the
Prince of Dessau, that he might see the fortifications of
that town. He was afterwards permitted to go to Ko-
nigsberg to see the unfortunate Stanislaus, who had taken
refuge in that place, and who was no less remarkable for
his philosophy and constancy than for his misfortunes.
With him Frederick remained for some weeks, and con¬
tracted a friendship which was only dissolved by the death
of Stanislaus. At last he was allowed to return to his
peaceful mansion at Rheinsberg, where he remained till
the death of his father. In this place his time was occu¬
pied alternately in the study of the sciences, the cultiva¬
tion of the arts, and the pleasures of friendship. Philo¬
sophy, history, politics, the military art, poetry, and music,
agreeably succeeded each other, and had each its stated
period. The prince passed the greater part of the day
in his library, and the remainder in the society of a se¬
lect company of agreeable and learned men.
It was in this place that he composed his refutation of
the principles of Machiavel, under the title of Anti-Ma-
chiavel; of which he sent the manuscript to Voltaire to
correct and to get printed.
The old king, now almost worn out with infirmity, saw
with regret the predilection of his son for men of letters;
and, in his peevish fits, often threatened the whole socie¬
ty with confinement in the fortress of Spandau. These
threats frequently occasioned a violent alarm among the
joyous society assembled at Rheinsberg, which it requir¬
ed all the eloquence of Frederick to quiet. Their appre¬
hensions on this account were at last removed, for the
old monarch expired upon the 31st of May 1740, leaving
the throne to Frederick.
The acquisition of a kingdom did not abate Frederick’s
passion for literature, though now obliged to perform the
duties of a king. A consideration of his transactions in
this character belongs to the article Prussia, to which
the reader is referred. These, indeed, so totally engrossed
the remaining part of his life, that little more remains to
be said than to relate some anecdotes by which we may
be able to illustrate the character of this very remarkable
individual.
It has already been mentioned, that in the early part of
his life Frederick had conceived a great inclination to
travel. 4 Ins passion seems not to have been extin¬
guished by the splendour ot his new situation; for hav-
ing, soon after his accession, gone into Westphalia to
receive the homage of the inhabitants, he formed a reso¬
lution of proceeding incognito as far as Paris. Being dis¬
covered at Strasburg, however, he laid aside the de¬
sign of proceeding to Paris, and exchanged it for a visit Frederick,
to his states in Lower Germany. Here he wrote to Vol-
taire, informing him that he should come incognito to visit
him at Brussels; but becoming indisposed in the little
palace of Meuse, two leagues from Cleves, he wrote again
to that philosopher, informing him that he expected he
should make the first advances. The following curious
account is given by that celebrated writer of his recep¬
tion. “ The only guard I found at the gate was one
soldier. The privy counsellor Bambonet was cooling his
heels in the court; he had large ruffles of dirty linen; a
hat full of holes; and an old magisterial peruke, one end
of which descended as low' as his pockets, and the other
scarcely reached his shoulder. I was conducted into his
majesty’s apartment, where there was nothing but bare
walls. I perceived in a cabinet, by the glimmering of a
taper, a truckle bed, two feet and a half wide, on which
lay a little man muffled up in a night-gown of coarse blue
cloth. This was the king, in a strong perspiration, and
even trembling, under a wretched blanket, in a violent fit
of the ague. I bowed to him; and began by feeling his
pulse, as if I had been his first physician. The fit over,
he dressed himself and sat down to table. Algarotti,
Keyserling, Maupertuis, the king’s minister to the States
General, and myself, composed the party; and we con¬
versed profoundly on the immortality of the soul, on liber¬
ty, and the androgynes of Plato.”
As Frederick had espoused his princess entirely con¬
trary to his inclination, it was imagined that on his acces¬
sion to the throne he would embrace the opportunity of
setting himself free from an engagement so disagreeable to
himself. The queen was not without suspicions of this
kind, insomuch that she was on the point of fainting away
when he made his first visit to her. To the surprise of
all parties, however, he made her a very affectionate
speech, apologizing for his indifference, and inviting her
to participate with him the throne of which she was so
worthy. In the first year of his reign he restored the
Academy of Sciences at Berlin, which had been founded
in 1700 ; but he soon became disgusted with its members,
whom he endeavoured at all times to ridicule rather than
encourage. His war with the queen of Hungary, how¬
ever, which took place almost immediately after his ac¬
cession, for some time prevented him from taking such an
active part in literary matters as he was naturally inclin¬
ed to do. After the peace, being at liberty to follow his
inclination, he gave full scope to his passion for literature;
and in the interval betw ixt the conclusion of the first war
and beginning of that of 1756, he composed most of the
works which are now ascribed to him. At this time he
wrote his History of his own Times, afterwards announ¬
ced among his posthumous works. In w riting history he
acquired a taste for historians, and justly gave the pre¬
ference to the ancients, the most celebrated of whose
works he perused every year. Voltaire was his principal
literary correspondent, whom he invited to reside with
him. Afraid of losing his liberty, however, that philoso¬
pher hesitated, excused himself, and entered into pecu¬
niary treaties, first for himself, and afterwards for his
niece, Madame Dennis, whom he wished to accompany
him. At last he was determined by seeing a poem
from Frederick to M. d’Arnaud, in which the latter was
compared to the rising, and Voltaire to the setting sun.
By this Voltaire was so much piqued, that he set out for
Berlin without delay, and arrived there in June 1750. He
was received in the most magnificent and affectionate
manner, and for some time his situation was very agree¬
able ; but the disputes and rivalship which took place
betwixt him and Maupertuis soon threw every thing into
confusion. In these the king interfered in a manner
which was certainly below his dignity ; and he often ex-
Or
FREDERICK.
redeck, ercised himself in making a jest of the other men of letters
/ in a way exceedingly disgusting, and which induced many
of them to leave him. The squabbles with Voltaire end¬
ed at last in a final quarrel with that wit, and his depar¬
ture from the kingdom. The restless disposition of Fre¬
derick showed itself after his departure, by his attempts
to provoke the literati who remained at his court to quar¬
rel with him as Voltaire had been accustomed to do. But
they were of too passive a disposition to gratify him in
this respect; choosing rather to suffer the most mortifying
strokes of raillery, or to leave the kingdom altogether,
than to contend with him. This proved so uneasy to the
king, that he one day exclaimed, “ Shall we have no more
quarrels, then ?” The breaking out of the war in 1756,
however, put a stop to his diversions, and afforded him as
many enemies as he could wish. The exploits he per¬
formed during the seven years which this unequal contest
lasted are almost incredible; and it is amazing how the for¬
titude and resolution of any person could enable him to
sustain the difficulties which, during this period, he had to
encounter. In one fatal moment, indeed, even the resolu¬
tion of Frederick was on the point of giving way. This
happened after the battle of Colin, when his affairs seem¬
ed altogether desperate, till they were retrieved by the
victory at Ilosbach. At this time he wrote to his sister
at Bareith that he was on the point of putting an end to
his own life ; but as this resolution did not extinguish in
him the love of glory, he wished to have it said that he
made verses on the brink of the grave. With this view
he wrote a long poetical epistle to the Marquis d’Argens,
in which he communicated to him his design, and bade
him farewell.
' Happily at last the king’s affairs took a better turn, and
these desperate thoughts were abandoned. His consti¬
tution, however, was irreparably injured by the excessive
fatigues which he had undergone. Soon after the conclu¬
sion of the peace his body began to bend, and his head to
incline to the right side. By degrees he became very
infirm; he was tormented with the gout, and a victim to
dyspepsia. All his distempers, however, were borne with
invincible patience; and, till a very short time before his
death, he never ceased to attend his reviews, or visit the
different provinces of his dominions. He has been known
to review his troops, and gallop through the ranks as if he
felt no pain, notwithstanding that an abscess, which had
approached to suppuration, frequently touched the sad¬
dle. In August 1785 he impaired his health still fur¬
ther by assisting at a review, where he was exposed, with¬
out even a cloak, to a heavy rain for four or five hours.
On his return to Potzdam he was seized with a fever,
and, for the first time, became unable to assist at the mili¬
tary exercises which took place in September. His ma¬
lady, however, did not prevent him from dictating the dis¬
position of these exercises during the three days which
they occupied, and he always gave the word in presence
of his generals and the foreigners of distinction then at
Potzdam. About the end of autumn the fever left him,
but was succeeded by a violent cough ; and he continued
free from the gout, which had usually attacked him at
this season. He was greatly weakened by the cough,
which prevented him from sleeping; but this did not in
the least interrupt him in the execution of his duties.
Every morning, at four or five o’clock, he ordered the
three cabinet secretaries to enter his apartment, where
he dictated answers to their papers. It was not till after
the dispatch of all his affairs that he saw a surgeon, or
sometimes a physician, though he had a bad opinion of
the physicians in general, whom he consulted on his dis¬
temper. In the evening he amused himself from five to
eight with some of his society; and after that hour he
passed the remainder of the time before he went to rest
229
in hearing some ancient authors read to him; and thus Frederick,
he continued to employ himself till the day preceding
his death. On the 17th and 18th of May 1786, he was
unable to assist at the ordinary reviews, but still he hoped
to be present at those of Silesia. He several times at¬
tempted to mount his horse to go to the parade at Potz¬
dam ; but finding his powers insufficient, he was obliged
to return, after having proceeded a few paces. He made
other attempts, but with as little success ; and at last his
disorder terminated in a dropsy. Being now no longer
able to remain in bed, he sat day and night in an arm
chair with springs which could be moved at pleasure,
l or near a month before his death the swelling of his feet
gave him violent pain, so that he wished an incision to be
made; but the surgeon refused to perform the operation,
suspecting that it might hasten his death. Nature, how¬
ever, accomplished his desires ; his right leg opened, and
discharged such a quantity of matter, that he was great¬
ly relieved ; and those unacquainted with the medical art
began to entertain hopes of his recovery. The physicians,
however, were of a very different opinion; and the event jus¬
tified their apprehensions. On the 16th of August 1786
his throat began to rattle violently, and his attendants
expected every moment that he would breathe his last.
In this situation his three secretaries entered the room
for the dispatch of business as usual. Even then Frede¬
rick made an effort, to collect his force, giving them a si°-n
to wait, as if he would speak with them in a short time.
This, however, was the last he could make, for he soon
fell into a stupor, though from this he recovered so far as
to be able to speak. In the evening he asked what o’clock
it was, and on being answered that it was nine, he said,
“ Well, then, I am going to rest.” His respiration and
voice became gradually more feeble; and he expired on
Thursday, at nineteen minutes after two in the morning,
without any convulsion or symptom of pain.
This great monarch was of the middle size, had large
blue eyes, and a piercing look. Fie spoke German incor¬
rectly, and in a very rough manner; but talked French very
fluently, and his voice was then mild and agreeable. His
constitution was naturally feeble, but he had greatly im¬
proved it by his activity and laborious life. He had the
art of relieving everyone from that embarrassment which
frequently occurred in accosting such a celebrated mo¬
narch ; and it seems probable that he himself considered
on what he should say to any illustrious person who hap¬
pened to come to his court. His universal knowledge en¬
abled him to converse on all subjects; and thus he talked
of war with military men, of verses with poets, of agri¬
culture with farmers, jurisprudence with lawyers, com¬
merce with merchants, and politics with Englishmen.
He had a very retentive memory, was attached to gar¬
dening, and likewise took great pleasure in dogs, of which
animals he constantly kept a number about him. In
company he was fond of asking questions and jesting,
in which last he proceeded such lengths as undoubtedly
was unbecoming in a superior towards his inferiors, who
would not have failed to resent such jokes from persons
more on an equality with them. In military affairs he was
excessively severe, not to say cruel; of which the follow¬
ing anecdote may serve as an instance. In the first war
of Silesia, wishing to make some alterations in his camp
during the night, he forbade every person, under pain of
death, to keep, after a certain hour, a fire or other light
in his tent. He himself went the rounds ; and in passing
the tent of a Captain Zietern he perceived a light. En¬
tering the tent, he found the captain sealing a letter to
his wife, for whom he had a great affection. “ What are
you doing there ?” says the king. “ Do you not know the
order ? The captain fell on his knees and asked pardon,
but did not attempt to make any excuse. “ Sit down,”
230
Frederick
II
Frederick-
sham.
F R E
says Frederick, “ and add a few words which I am going
to dictate to you.” Zietern obeyed ; and the king dictat¬
ed, To-morrow I shall perish on a scaffold. The un¬
fortunate man wrote them, and next day he was barba¬
rously executed. In matters of domestic legislation he was
more arbitrary than just; of which we have a notable ex¬
ample in the famous case of Arnold the miller. The man
had refused to pay the rent of the mill which he possess¬
ed, on pretence that the stream which turned it had been
diverted into a fish-pond. This was evidently a frivolous
excuse, because the water which ran into the pond also
ran out of it into the same channel as before, so that little
or nothing could be lost. The judges therefore gave sen¬
tence against the miller; but the king not only reversed
their sentence, but disgraced them. For this he was ce¬
lebrated through all the newspapers in Europe ; and yet
he was in the wrong, and afterwards even acknowledged
himself to have been so; but, notwithstanding that he
knew his error, he not only made no reparation to the
parties whom he hdd injured, but allowed them to lie in
prison at Spandau during his life, and they were only re¬
leased at the commencement of the succeeding reign.
The literary pieces of this monarch cannot be consider¬
ed as extraordinary, although they are undoubtedly re¬
markable as the production of a monarch, a considerable
portion of whose life was spent in war. Voltaire boasts of
having corrected his works, and others of having furnish¬
ed him with materials for his history. In the former part
of his life he entertained a great partiality for the French
learning and language; but as he advanced in years he
entirely lost this predilection, and inclined much more to
favour the English and Germans. Towards the close of
his career, indeed, he affected a contempt for the French,
without whom, it is said, he would scarcely ever have
made any figure except in military affairs.
His works are voluminous, and embrace a variety of
subjects. Those on which his fame as an author prin¬
cipally rest are, his History of his own Times ; The His¬
tory of the Seven Years’ War ; The Art of War, a poem ;
An Essay on Forms of Government, and on the Duties of
Sovereigns ; Considerations on the State of Europe ; and
Memoirs of the House of Brandenburg. He also com¬
piled the Frederician Code with skill and judgment.
Many editions of his writings have been published. Of
these, the best are the Berlin edition of 1788, in 15 vols.,
and another of 1790, with his life prefixed, in 25 vols.
8vo.
Frederick, a post-town of Maryland, and capital of
the county of Frederick, North America. It is pleasant¬
ly situated on Carrol’s Creek, a branch of the Monocas}'.
The town is regularly laid out and well built, and contains
a court-house, a jail, a bank, a market-house, an academy,
and seven places of public worship. Frederick enjoys an
extensive trade with the surrounding country, and trans¬
ports great quantities of wheat and flour to Baltimore.
It is distant forty-four miles north-north-west of Wash¬
ington, and forty-five west of Baltimore. The population
in 1830 amounted to 4427.
FREDERICKSBURGH, a post-town of Virginia, in
North America, and capital of a county. It is situated
on the south-west side of the Rappahannoc, about a hun¬
dred and ten miles from its mouth, and fifty-seven miles
south-west of Washington. It is regularly laid out, well
built, and contains eight public buildings and four
churches. It is a great depot for grain, flour, and to¬
bacco, and numerous flour mills are situated in the vici¬
nity of the town. Being in the centre of a fertile and
well-cultivated country, it is flourishing and healthy. The
population in 1830 was 3307.
FREDERICKSHAM, one of the circles into which
the province of Finland is divided. It extends over 798
F R E
square miles, and contains 25,029 inhabitants. It is on Frederic
the Gulf of Bothnia, and generally a level district. The stad '
chief town has the same name, is built on an isthmus be- II
tween the mouths of two rivers, is fortified, and con-
tains 1270 inhabitants, who carry on foreign trade. Long.
26. 58. E. Eat. 60. 35. N.
FREDERICKSTAD, a strongly fortified city of Nor¬
way, in the province of Aggerhuus and bailiwick of Mos.
It stands at the mouth of the river Glommen. It con¬
tains 420 houses, with 2352 inhabitants, who carry on an
extensive trade in deals and in other timber, and are ex¬
tensively employed in the fisheries.
FREE, in a general sense, is used in opposition to what¬
ever is constrained or necessitated. When applied to
things endowed with understanding, it relates in a parti¬
cular manner to the liberty of the will.
Free Bench signifies that estate in copyhold which
the wife, being espoused a virgin, has, after the decease
of her husband, for her dower, according to the custom
of the manor.
Free or Imperial Cities, in Germany, are those not
subject to any particular prince, but governed, like repub¬
lics, by their own magistrates.
There were free cities {liberce civitates) even under the
ancient Roman empire ; such were those to which the
emperor, by the advice or consent of the senate, gave the
privilege of appointing their own magistrates, and govern¬
ing themselves by their own laws.
Free Stone. See Mineralogy.
FREEBOOTER, or Flibuster, a name given to the
pirates who scour the American seas, particularly such as
make war against the Spaniards. It is also applied, in a
general sense, to robbers and other plunderers.
FREEDOM, in general, the state or quality of being
free.
Freedom of a Corporation, the right of enjoying all the
privileges and immunities belonging to it.
Freedom of Conscience. See Toleration.
Freedom of the Will, that power or faculty of the mind
by which it is capable of acting or not acting, choosing or
rejecting, whatever it judges proper. See Metaphysics.
FREEHOLD, Frank Tenement (ft&enm tenementum),
is land or tenement which a man holds in fee-simple, fee-
tail, or for a term of life. Freehold is of two kinds, in deed
and in law. The first is the real possession of land or te¬
nement in fee, fee-tail, or for life ; the other is the right a
man has to such land or tenement before his entry or sei¬
zure.
Freehold is sometimes taken in opposition to villen-
age. Lambard observes, that land, in the time of the
Saxons, was distinguished into bochland, that is, holden
by book or writing; and folkland, that is, held without
writing. The former, he says, was held on far better
condition, and by the better sort of tenants, as noblemen
and gentlemen, being such as we now call freehold; the
latter was for the most part in possession of peasants,
being the same with what we now call at the tvill of the
lord.
FREEWILL Islands, three small islands in the East¬
ern Seas, discovered by Captain Carteret in 1767, and al¬
most entirely surrounded by a reef, except on the east,
where there is a narrow passage that will admit a canoe.
Long. 137. 51. E. Eat. 0. 50. S.
FREEZE, in Architecture. See Architecture.
FREEZING. See Cold and Congelation.
FREIBERG, a bailiwick in the circle of the Erzgeberg,
in the kingdom of Saxony. It is combined with the baili¬
wick of Grillenburg, and contains five cities, one market-
town, eighty-one villages, with 55,000 inhabitants. It is
a mountainous and woody district, watered by the Mulda,
the Flohe, and various smaller streams. The chief sup-
F R E
Pjeif|| port of the population is mining and preparing the metals
for use. Agriculture is also pursued, but does not pro-
duce sufficient food to supply the consumption. There
is also much employment for females in making thread
lace, and in weaving cotton goods. The capital of the bai¬
liwick is a city of the same name. It is about 1200 feet
above the level of the sea, in a most romantic district on
the river Munzbach. It is surrounded with walls, con¬
tains five churches, 1377 houses, and about 10,000 inha¬
bitants. I he chief employment is mining ; and the opera¬
tions of extracting the several ores, of separating the va¬
luable from the useless particles, and of adapting the ma¬
chinery and the chemistry to the best purposes, have made
this city a school whose pupils have benefited all min¬
ing countries. The mining academy is a valuable insti¬
tution, conducted by six professors, and containing from
300 to 400 students, who have cabinets of minerals, a
museum of models, and a public library. The silver mine
of Himmelsfurst, in the valley of Mulda, yielded, between
the years 1740 and 1801, 3,064,000 ounces of silver. Sil¬
ver is however by no means the most valuable product of
these mines, which yield more in lead, copper, iron, and
vitriol.
FREIGHT, in Navigation and Commerce, the hire of a
ship, or a part of it, for the conveyance and carriage of
goods from one port or place to another ; or the sum agreed
on between the owner and the merchant for the hire and
use of a vessel.
FREIND, John, a learned English physician and writer
of the eighteenth century, was born at Croton, Northamp-
tonshire, in 1675. In 1696 he published, in conjunction
with Mr I. Foulkes, an edition of two Greek orations, one
of .Eschines against Ctesiphon, and the other of Demos¬
thenes De Corona, with a new Latin version. In 1699 he
wrote a letter concerning an Hydrocephalus, published in
the Philosophical Transactions ; and another letter in La¬
tin, Spasmis rarior. Historia, printed in the same Trans¬
actions. In 1703 his Emmenalogia appeared, which gain¬
ed him a high reputation. In 1704 he was chosen profes¬
sor of chemistry in the university of Oxford. In 1705 he
attended the Earl of Peterborough to Spain as physician
to the army there; and, upon his return in 1707, published
an account of the earl’s expedition and conduct. In 1709
he published his Chemical Lectures. In 1712 he attend¬
ed the Duke of Ormond in Flanders as his physician.
^ 1716 he was admitted a fellow of the College of Phy¬
sicians in London. This year he published the first and
third books of Hippocrates De Morbis popularibus, with a
Commentary on Fevers. He sat member for the borough
of Launceston, in Cornwall, in 1722, when he distinguished
himself by his opposition to the administration. In March
1722 he was committed to the Tower on a charge of high
treason; and, during his confinement, he wrote a Latin
epistle to Dr Mead, De quihusdam Variolarum Generihus.
He also commenced his History of Physic, the first part
of which was published in 1725, and the second in 1726.
Upon the accession of George II. to the throne, he was
ippointed physician in ordinary to the queen, who showed
the utmost regard and esteem for him. He died at Lon-
lon in 1728. • His works were published in Latin at Lon-
Jon in 1733, in folio, and dedicated to the queen.
FREISING, a bailiwick of the circle of the Isar, in the
iingdom of Bavaria, extending over 143 square miles. It
contains one city, one market-town, 164 villages, and 151
lamlets, with 16,840 inhabitants. The chief place is the
Mty °' the same name on the river Isar. It is a walled
own, containing 534 houses and 3900 inhabitants. It is
ie seat of an archbishop. There is some trade in making
ne!r! s"uff’ vinegar, and in refining saltpetre. Lone;. 12.
^0. 8. E. Lat. 48. 23. 56. N.
I REJUS, a town on the shore of the Mediterranean,
F R E
231
in the department of the Var, in France. It is in a dis- Fresco
trict rich in citrons, oranges, figs, and pomegranates, but Painting
marshy and unhealthy. It was enlarged, if not built, by ll
Julius Caesar, who gave it the name Forum Julii. It has Uresnoy-
been since celebrated as the landing-place of Bonaparte
on his return from Egypt. It contains at present a cathe¬
dral and 1934 inhabitants, who are chiefly occupied in
Sardinia fishery. Long. 6. 38. E. Lat. 43. 25. N.
FRESCO Painting is a method of painting in relievo
on walls. It is performed with water-colours on fresh
plaster, or on a wall laid with mortar not yet dry. This
species of painting has a great advantage by its incorpo¬
rating with the mortar, and drying along with it; thus be¬
coming very durable, and capable of resisting the weather.
The Italians, from whom we borrow the term, call it
fresco, because it is frequently used for walls, alcoves, and
other buildings in the open air. Vitruvius, lib. vii. cap. 4,
calls it udo tectorio.
I ainting in fresco is a very ancient art, having been
practised in the earliest ages of Greece and Rome. It is
chiefly performed on walls and vaults newly plastered with
lime and sand; but the plaster is only to be laid in pro¬
portion as the painting goes on, no more being to be exe¬
cuted at one time than the painter can dispatch in a
day, while it dries. Before he begins to paint, a cartoon
or design is usually made on paper, to be chalked and
transferred to the wall about half an hour after the plas¬
ter is applied.
The ancients painted on stucco; and we may remark in
Vitruvius what infinite care they took in making the in¬
crustation or plastering of their buildings, to render them
beautiful and lasting; though the modern painters find a
plaster of lime and sand preferable to it, both because it
does not dry so hastily, and because, being a little brown¬
ish, it is fitter to lay colours on than a ground so white as
stucco.
In this kind of painting, all the compound and artificial
colours, and almost all the minerals, are set aside, and
scarcely any thing is used but earths, which are capable
of preserving their colour, defending it from the burning
of the lime, and resisting its salt, which Vitruvius calls its
bitterness.
For the work to come out in all its beauty, the colours
must be laid on quick, while the plaster is still moist; nor
should they ever be retouched dry with colours mixed up
with the white of an egg, or size, or gum, as is sometimes
done; because such colours grow blackish, and soon tar¬
nish. .
The colours used are white made of lime slaked some
time previously, and white marble dust, ochre, both red
and yellow, verditer, lapis lazuli, black chalk, and other
similar substances. These only require to be ground and
mixed up with water, and then laid on.
The brushes and pencils for this work ought to be long
and soft, otherwise they will rake and raise the painting.
The colours should be full and flowing from the brush,
and the design perfect; for in this work you cannot alter
or add upon any colour.
FRESHES, in sea language, denotes the impetuosity
of an ebb tide, increased by heavy rains, and flowing out
into the sea, often discolouring it to a considerable dis¬
tance, and forming a line that separates the two colours,
and which may be distinctly perceived for a great length
along the coast.
FRESNOY, Charles Alphonse du, a poet and paint¬
er, was born at Paris in 1611. He was instructed by
Perrier and Simon Vouet in painting; but he did not
long adhere to Vouet’s manner of colouring; for as soon
as he had fixed himself at Rome, he made the works
of Titian the models for his imitation. He was, however,
more celebrated as a poet than as a painter, and gave more
232 F R I
Fret attention to the theory than to the practice of the pencil.
11 Accordingly he is better known by his celebrated poem
Friars De Qraphica than by his performances on the canvass ;
Observant. and on this work jie bestowed so much labour that he died
in 1665, before it was published. It was printed after¬
wards with a French prose translation and notes by M. de
Piles, and was translated into English by Dryden, who
prefixed to it an original preface containing a parallel
between painting and poetry.
FRET, or Frette, in Architecture, a kind of knot, or
ornament, consisting of two lists or small fillets variously
interlaced or interwoven, and running at parallel distances
equal to their breadth.
Fret-Work, that which is adorned with frets. It is
sometimes used to fill up and enrich flat empty spaces,
but it is mostly practised in roofs which are fretted over
with plaster work.
FRETTS, in Mineralogy, a term used by our miners to
express the worn side of the banks of the rivers in mine
countries, where they search for the shoad stones or grewts
washed down from the hills, in order to trace out the run¬
ning of the shoad up to the mine.
FREUDENBURG, a market-town, now of the province
of Hoya, in Hanover, being, with the canton around it,
recently acquired by exchange with Hesse-Cassel. The
canton contains about 4500 inhabitants. The capital has
250 houses and 1560 inhabitants.
FREUDENSTADT, a bailiwick in the circle of the
Neckar, in the province of the Black Forest, belonging to
Wirtemburg, extending over 204 square miles, compre¬
hending two cities, three market-towns, and sixty-six vil¬
lages, with 21,005 inhabitants. The capital, of the same
name, is on the river Murg, contains 299 houses, with
3164 inhabitants, who make nails, cloth, and potash, aqua¬
fortis, and some other chemicals. Long. 8. 20. 2. E. Lat.
48. 27. 7. N.
FREYBURG, a bailiwick of the circle of the Treisam,
in the grand duchy of Baden, comprehending one city and
eighteen villages, with 1650 inhabitants. The capital, ot
the same name, is in the Black Forest, on the river Irei-
sam. It contains 980 dwelling-houses and 10,450 inhabi¬
tants. It is the seat of a university with eighteen profes¬
sors and betwixt 300and 400 students, and of other well en¬
dowed institutions of education. It is a considerable ma¬
nufacturing place for every kind of clothing, and of domes¬
tic articles and handicraft tools, as well as for musical and
mathematical instruments, and many smaller articles. The
cathedral is an object of great attention to the admirers
of Gothic architecture.
FRIABLE, among naturalists, an appellation given to
bodies that are easily crumbled to pieces, such are pumice
and all calcined stones.
FRIAR, or Frier, by the Latins called frater, the Ita¬
lians fra, and the French frere, that is, brother. It is a
term common to the monks of all orders, founded on the
circumstance that there is a kind of fraternity or brother¬
hood presumed between the several religious persons of
the same convent or monastery. Friars are generally dis¬
tinguished into these four principal branches : 1. Minors,
grey friars, or Franciscans ; 2. Augustines ; 3. Dominicans,
or black friars; 4. White friars, or Carmelites. In these
four the rest of the orders originated.
Friar, in a more peculiar sense, is restrained to such
monks as are not priests; for those in orders are usually
dignified with the appellation of father.
Friars Observant ( fratres observantes') were a branch
of the Franciscans; so called because they are not com¬
bined together in any cloister, convent, or corporation, as
the conventuals are; but they only agree among them¬
selves to observe the rules of their order more strictly
than the conventuals did, from whom they separated out
F R I
of a singularity of zeal, living in certain places of their own Fr!*^
choosing.
FRICASSEE, a dish or mess hastily dressed in a fry-Friend^
ing pan, and seasoned with butter, oil, or the like. The
word is French, formed of the 'Lzim frixatura, frying.
FRICTION, the act of rubbing or grating the surface
of one body against another. It is likewise called attrition.
Friction, in Mechanics, denotes the resistance which
a moving body meets with from the surface on which it
moves. Friction arises from the roughness or asperity of
the surface of the body moved on and that of the body
moving; for such surfaces consisting alternately of emi¬
nences and cavities, either the eminences of the one must
be raised over those of the other, or they must be both
broken and worn off; but neither can happen without mo¬
tion, nor can motion be produced without a force impres¬
sed. Hence the force applied to move the body is either
wholly or partly spent on this effect; and consequently
there arises a resistance or friction, which will be greater,
cceteris paribus, according as the eminences are the great¬
er and the substance the harder; and as the body, by con¬
tinual friction, becomes more and more polished, the fric¬
tion diminishes. See Mechanics.
FRIDAY, the sixth day of the week, so named from
Freya, a Saxon deity. By the Romans it was called dies
Veneris.
FRIDERICA, a fortified city of Denmark, in the pro¬
vince of Jutland, on a promontory on the Little Belt,
where a toll is collected on such vessels as pass through
that strait. It contains 600 houses, and about 3700 in¬
habitants. The harbour is only calculated for small ves¬
sels, and the commerce is considerable. Long. 9. 41. E.
Lat. 55. 32. N.
FRIDSTOL, mentioned, in our ancient writers, among
the immunities granted to churches, signifies a seat, chair,
or place of peace and security, where criminals might find
safety and protection. Of these there were many in Eng¬
land ; but the most celebrated w'ere that at Beverley, and
that in St Peter’s church at York, granted by charter of
Henry I.
FRIEDBERG, a bailiwick in the circle of the Upper
Danube, in the kingdom of Bavaria, extending over 178
square miles. It contains one city, eight towns, and 111
villages and hamlets, with 14,949 inhabitants. The capi¬
tal, a city of the same name, stands on the Acha, with 330
houses, and 1871 inhabitants, among whom are watch¬
makers and ribbon weavers.
FRIEDLAND, a town of the province of East Prussia,
in the circle of the same name. It stands on the river
Alle, contains 263 houses, and 1916 inhabitants employed
in tanning and weaving. It is celebrated for the battle
fought near it in June 1807, between the united Russian
and Prussian troops and the French. Long. 20. 55. 40. E.
Lat. 54. 27. N.
FRIEDRICHSBORG, a small city of Denmark, in the
northern part of the island of Zealand. It is surrounded
with extensive woods, and stands on the border of a lake
of the same name. It contains 1600 inhabitants; but is
only remarkable for the royal palace built on an island on
the lake, which is a,fine specimen of the architecture oi
the seventeenth century.
FRIENDLY Islands, a cluster of islands in the Paci¬
fic Ocean, so named by Captain Cook in the year 1773, .
on account of the friendship which appeared to subsist
among the inhabitants, and from their courteous beha¬
viour to strangers. Abel Jansen Tasman, an eminent
Dutch navigator, first landed on these islands in 1643,
and gave names to most of them. Captain Cook explor¬
ed the whole cluster, which he found to consist of above
sixty. See Polynesia.
FRIENDSHIP may be defined a mutual attachment
F R I
dsh?'subsisting between two persons, and arising not merely
from the general principle of benevolence, from emotions
of gratitude for favours received, from views of interest,
or from instinctive affection or animal passion, but from
an opinion entertained by each of them that the other is
adorned with some amiable or respectable qualities.
The object of the general principle of benevolence is
mankind, not any particular individual. Gratitude regards
the person from whom he who feels its emotions has re¬
ceived a favour, whether that person be a virtuous or
a vicious, a respectable or a contemptible character; it
prompts the person obliged to make some suitable re-
F R I
233
ancient Stoics, or the Christian who fully obeys the pre-Friendship,
cepts and follows the steps of his Saviour, might be capa-
ble of it; but, unfortunately, humanity never reaches such
perfection. Even the purest and most disinterested of
those friendships which prevail among men owe their ori¬
gin to other meaner principles, as well as to that which
has been mentioned as the principle of genuine friendship.
There are certain circumstances favourable, and others
adverse, to the formation and continuance of friendship.
These, making amends, as it were, for the imperfection of
human virtue and human knowledge, lead men to overlook
each other’s faults and follies, and to unite in the bonds of
turn to his benefactor, but not to enter into any particular friendship; a friendship which, though less solid, less ge-
intimacy with him merely on account of the favours which nerous, and less lasting, than that which we have above
he has received. Many connections are formed and dig- described, is yet attended with effects favourable to the
nified with the name of friendship, upon no other princi- happiness of individuals, and to the interests of society
pie but the sordid hope which one or perhaps each of the in general.
parties entertains of accomplishing some- selfish purpose
through the assistance of the other. The instinctive af>
fection which a parent entertains for his child, as well as
that which the child feels for his parent, seems intended
Equality of age is favourable to friendship. Infancy,
manhood, and old age, differ so considerably from each
other in their views, passions, and pursuits, that the man
will seldom be disposed to associate with the boy or the
by nature to form an union between the persons thus re- youth, in preference to one who has had equal experience
ated to each other; but the union between parents and in the world with himself.
children, wdien supported by no other principle hut in- They who cultivate the same trade or profession enjoy
stinct, is different from friendship ; it extends no further opportunities favourable to the formation of friendship.
:han to cause the parent to provide for his child during Equality of rank and fortune is also favourable to friend-
fis helpless years, and the child to look up to his parent ship. Seldom will a man of fortune be able to gain the
or protection and support. We need not mention that sincere friendship of any of his dependents. Though he
ippetite which is the foundation of love, and is the pro- treat them with the most obliging condescension, and load
bsion which nature has made for the continuation of our them with favours, yet still either the sense of dependence,
pecies. 1 his appetite alone, and unassisted by some or resentment for imaginary injuries, or impatience of the
lobler principle, cannot give rise to any connection worthy debt of gratitude, or some other similar reason, will be
if an honourable name. likely to prevent them from regarding him wfith cordial
After excluding these principles, we can refer the ori- affection. Similarity of taste and temper will generally
;in of friendship only to “ an opinion entertained by each be found favourable to friendship. Two individuals of
f the parties between whom it subsists that the other is mild, humane dispositions will naturally take delight in
domed with some amiable or respectable qualities.” A each other’s society and conversation. They who are
onnection founded on different principles we cannot ho- charmed with the bustle of a gay and active life avoid the
our with the name of friendship; but that which flows from haunts of the indolent and contemplative, and join hand
his pure source must be noble and virtuous. When two
[ersons of virtue and abilities contemplate each the other’s
haracter and conduct, they cannot but view them with
omplacency and esteem. Habits and actions displaying
[rudence, fortitude, moderation, integrity, benevolence,
«d piety, naturally command the approbation of the im-
artial spectator, and even affect him with delight. But
in hand to climb the heights of ambition, or tread the
round of amusement and dissipation.
As friendship is an attachment which takes place be¬
tween certain human characters when placed in certain
circumstances, there must therefore be laws for support¬
ing the attachment and regulating the intercourse of
friendship. Mutual esteem is the basis on which true
is we are disposed to revisit a landscape the beauties of friendship is established; and the intercourse of friend-
fhich we have contemplated with rapture, and read ship ought surely to be conducted in such a manner that
ith frequent delight a poem in which genius has faith- this foundation be not injured. Sincerity may be con-
!% delineated some of the most enchanting scenes or sidered as the first law of friendship. Artifice and hypo-
:ie most interesting events in nature ; so we also be- crisy are inimical to all social intercourse. Between the
ome desirous to enjoy frequent opportunities of contem-
|latmg a character distinguished for eminent abilities
md virtues. Hence, whenever men of truly respectable
maracters enjoy opportunities of mutual intercourse, an
Ittachment naturally takes place between them, entirely
lisinterested, and founded solely on the approbation with
i hich the one cannot avoid regarding the conduct of the
Idler. The esteem which the one is thus induced to en-
deceitful and the honest, therefore, friendship can never
subsist for any length of time. But though sincerity is
to be faithfully observed in the intercourse of friendship,
yet the harshness of contradiction must be carefully avoid¬
ed. Those obliging manners which are so agreeable in
an acquaintance or casual companion are still more so in
a friend. If they are necessary to recommend the advan¬
tages of social intercourse in general to the members of
ifcrtain for the other will lead them to seek frequent op- society, they are no less necessary to communicate a
jirtunities of enjoying each other’s society, mutually to charm to the intercourse of friendship. Mild obliging
iik and listen to advice, to trust their most secret and im- manners are understood as the natural and genuine ex-
iprtant purposes to each other’s confidence, and to be no pression of kindness and affection ; boisterous rudeness,
|Ss concerned each of them for the other’s interest and petulance, and neglect, are naturally considered as ex-
pnour than for his own. This, and this alone, is genuine pressive of opposite sentiments. Mutual confidence is
hendshio. founded nn virfne and nn ♦ho* very soul of friendship. If friendship be rightly de¬
fined to be a mutual affection founded on mutual esteem,
those who are united in the bonds of friendship cannot
but repose mutual confidence in each other.
Many instances are related which show what power it
is possible for friendship to acquire over the human heart.
2 G
lendship, founded on virtue, and on that approbation
hich virtue never fails to command; it is a natural con-
•quence of intercourse between virtuous men.
But perhaps such a pure and sublime attachment can
Narcely be expected to exist among beings of so mixed and
Mperfect a character as mankind. The wise man of the
VOL. x.
234
F R I
Frigate-
built.
Friesland We need not here repeat the well-known story of Damon
and Pythias, whose generous friendship afforded a spec¬
tacle which softened even the savage heart of Diony¬
sius. It is known to every school-boy ; for the affecting
narrative of Valerius Maximus has been studiously de¬
tailed and commented on by almost every succeeding
story-teller or moralist. Addison, in one of his Specta¬
tors, gives a beautiful little relation, which finely illus¬
trates the power of both friendship and love. The reader
is referred to the number of the Spectator in which the
narrative occurs.
FRIESLAND, one of the provinces of the Netherlands,
bounded on the north by the German Ocean, extending
over 1192 square miles, comprehending eleven cities and
336 towns and villages, with a population of 176,500 souls,
the greater part of whom are Protestants of the reformed
confession. It is a low, flat district, below the sea at high-
water mark, but preserved by embankments from inun¬
dation, and drained by numerous sluices and wind-mills.
It has a great abundance of canals, which serve the pur¬
pose of roads, and in some degree assist in draining, ihe
soil is rich, admirable for cows, and the produce of the
dairy is one of the chief sources of its annual wealth. The
inhabitants, descended from the ancient Frisii, speak a
dialect distinct from the Dutch and the German, and in
sound approaching nearer to the English. The corn land
does not produce grain equal to the consumption. In the
cities are many manufactories, and extensive labour is ap¬
plied to the fisheries. The province is divided into three
circles and nineteen bailiwicks.
Friesland, East, one of the provinces of the kingdom
of Hanover, on the sea-shore. It was formerly subject to
its native independent sovereigns, on whose extinction, in
the middle of the eighteenth century, it came under the
government of Prussia, and was finally ceded to Hanover
by the congress of Vienna in 1815. It is bounded on the
north and north-east by the German Ocean, on the east
by Oldenburg, on the south by Meppen, on the west by
the Netherlands, and on the north-west by the Dollart.
It extends over 1159 square miles, exclusive of the islands
Juist, Norderney, Baltrum, Longeroog, Spiteroog, and
Wangeroog, which belong to it. It contains lour cities,
seven market-towns, 145 parishes, and 200 hamlets, and in
1815, the population amounted to 127,522. The land is
marshy, but rich on the border. It gradually decreases in
fertility towards the centre, till it becomes a poor sandy
heath, unfit for cultivation. The good land comprehends
seven tenths of the whole. That part is lower than the
sea at high water, but below it at low water, and is drain¬
ed by sluices, as is practised in Holland, which the pro¬
vince much resembles; and the embankments are said to
have been formed more than ten centuries ago. The
chief produce is oats, of which large quantities are export¬
ed. Some wheat also is raised. Many horses and cows
are bred, and butter and cheese are made extensively.
There are few large estates; but most of the occupiers are
proprietors of their land, in portions varying from thirty
to seventy English acres. There is a scarcity of wood,
and turf is used for fuel. The city of Aurich is deemed
the capital; but more of the business of government is
conducted at Emden than in that place.
FRIGATE, a ship of war usually of two decks, light
built, designed for swift sailing. Frigates mount from
twenty to forty-four guns, and are esteemed excellent
cruisers. The name was formerly known only in the Me¬
diterranean, and applied to a long kind of vessel navigat¬
ed in that sea with sails and oars. The English were the
first who appeared on the ocean with these ships, and
equipped them for war as well as for commerce.
FuiGATE-Built denotes the disposition of the decks of
such merchant ships as have a descent of four or five steps
F R I
from the quarter-deck and forecastle into the waist; in Friga^
contradistinction to those whose decks are on a continued il
line for the whole length of the ship, which are called Frai.
galley-built. ''T'-'
FRIGATOON, a Venetian vessel, commonly used in
the Adriatic, built with a square stern, and without any
foremast, having only a main-mast, mizen-mast, and bow¬
sprit.
FRIGID (frigidus), in a general sense, denotes the
quality of being cold.
Frigid Zone. See Geography.
FRIGIDITY, in Medicine, the same with Impotence.
FRIGORIFIC Particles, small particles of matter,
which, according to Gassendus and others, being actually
and essentially cold, and penetrating other bodies, produce
in them that quality which is called cold, or, according to
others, merely the absence or diminution of the particles
of heat.
FRILAZIN, the name of a class or rank of people
among the Anglo-Saxons, consisting of those who had
been slaves, but had either purchased, or by some other
means obtained their liberty. Though these were in rea¬
lity freemen, they were not considered as of the same
rank and dignity with those who had been born free, but
were still in a more ignoble condition, and dependent
either on their former masters, or on some new patrons.
This custom the Anglo-Saxons seem to have derived
from their ancestors in Germany, among whom those who
had been made free did not differ much in point of dig¬
nity and importance in the state from those who conti¬
nued in servitude. This distinction between those who
had been made free, and those who enjoyed freedom by
descent from a long race of freemen, still exists in some
parts of Germany, and particularly in the original seats of
the Anglo-Saxons. Many of the inhabitants of towns and
cities in England, at this period, seem to have been of this
class of men, who were in a kind of middle state between
slaves and freemen.
FRINGYBAZAR, a small town of Hindustan, in the
province of Bengal, situated on the west side of the Dul-
lasery, near its junction with the Megna. During the
height of the rainy season, the inundation here exhibits
the appearance of an inland sea. It is thirteen miles south¬
west from Dacca. Long. 90. 23. E. Lat. 23. 33. N.
FRIPPERY, a French term, sometimes used in our
language to signify the trade or traffic of old clothes or
goods. The word is also used for the place where such
sort of commerce is carried on, and even for the commo¬
dities themselves. The company of frippiers or fripper-
ers at Paris formed a regular corporation, of ancient stand¬
ing, and made a considerable figure in that city.
FRISI, Paul, a profound mathematician and astrono¬
mer, was born at Milan the 13th April 1728; his family
had formerly7 emigrated from Strasburg, and was esta¬
blished at Milan in an humble station of life.
At the age of fifteen he entered into the convent of the
Barnabite friars, or of the congregation of St Paul, where
his studies were at first confined to the attainment ol
some knowledge of geography from the contemplation of
the old maps that were pasted on the walls of the galle-
he soon acquired, however, a taste for geometry,
and made considerable progress in it without an instruc¬
tor. He was sent to the university of Pavia to go
through a course of divinity, and he did not neglect the
opportunity of applying with increased diligence to the
mathematics, with the assistance of Professor Olivetano.
He was afterwards removed to Lodi, in order to give lec¬
tures there on philosophy ; and he soon after distinguish¬
ed himself by writing a most able essay on the Figure oj
the Earth, which, however, he had not the means of print¬
ing, as his brethren were unwilling to assist him, until ue
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F R I
found a patron for his publication in the Count de Silva,
who undertook to be at the expense of the impression.
The credit which he acquired induced some other mem¬
bers of the society to follow his example, and the convent
of the Barnabites at Milan soon began to be converted
into a nursery of mathematics. His reputation procured
him also, from the king of Sardinia, the appointment of
professor of philosophy in the college of Casale. Here,
however, he thought the conduct of his superiors unjust
and tyrannical, and they were also dissatisfied with him
on account of his great intimacy with Radicati, whose opi¬
nions were rather more liberal than they thought it pru¬
dent to tolerate. This friendship was, however, so. far of
advantage to Frisi, as it tended to improve his taste in
modern literature ; but it was the principal cause of his
being removed to Novara, where he was obliged to under¬
take the duties of a preacher. In the mean time he was
nominated a correspondent of the Parisian Academy of
Sciences in 1753, and received similar honours from other
scientific bodies. Soon after this he was recalled to Milan,
and made professor of philosophy in the great Barnabite
College of St Alexander in that city. His dissertation on
the Figure ef the Earth was very acrimoniously attacked
by a young Jesuit, who accused him of being improperly
led away by English and French innovations ; but it was
easy for him to repel so unfounded a charge. From this
time he entertained much ill humour against the Jesuits
in general, and had written a work to depreciate the or¬
der, but he was advised by his second brother to suppress
it. He became, however, more and more connected with
the enemies of the Jesuits, and, among them, with D’Alem¬
bert, Condorcet, and the other Encyclopedistes. He had
before this time declared himself, in his lectures, an ene¬
my to the popular opinions of the Italians respecting magic
and witchcraft, though he felt himself in some danger of
the animadversions of the Inquisition. He was much in
the habit of frequenting the best societies in Milan, and
even more than was thought consistent with his religious
character; but he was in some measure emancipated from
the restraints of his order, by his appointment, in 1756, to
a professorship in the university of Pisa, for which he
was indebted to the Grand Duke Leopold. This situa¬
tion he retained for eight years, enjoying the highest de¬
gree of credit, and receiving marked attention from all
travellers of distinction, and saving, at the same time, a
considerable portion of his salary, to which he added the
amount of some prizes which he obtained from Berlin and
Petersburg in 1756, and from Paris in 1758. Notwith¬
standing his occupations as a professor of moral philoso¬
phy, he had always been in the habit of devoting the
greater part of his attention to the mathematical sciences.
In 1757 he was made an associate of the Imperial Aca¬
demy of Petersburg, and a foreign member of the Royal
Society of London ; in 1758, a member of the Academy
of Berlin ; in 1766, of that of Stockholm ; and in 1770, of
the Academies of Copenhagen and of Berne. The Arch¬
duke Joseph had sent him, in 1759, a collar with a gold
medal, and he received similar marks of distinction from
the kings of Prussia and Denmark. He was also liberal¬
ly rewarded by Pope Clement XIII. for his services in
arranging a dispute between the people of Ferrara and of
Bologna on the subject of rivers and torrents, which had
been referred to him on the occasion of a tour that he
made to Naples and to Rome in 1760. The senate of
Venice also made him a proper acknowledgment for the
assistance he gave to the commissioners whom the}^ had
appointed to control the ravages of the Brenta. The Em¬
press Maria Theresa settled on him a pension of 100 se¬
quins, or L.50 a year. He was recalled to Milan in 1764,
as professor of mathematics in the Palatine schools, with
appointments equal to those which he had enjoyed at
F R I 235
Pisa, and with the additional advantage of living near his Frisi.
family, and being enabled to promote their interests. He
was at various times much engaged in the decision of con¬
troversies respecting canals and rivers, and obtained much
credit for his skill and ingenuity; though the peculiarities'
of his temper tended somewhat to increase the number
of enemies, which might possibly have been unavoidable.
Among other controversies, he was engaged in a dispute
respecting the propriety of adding a high pinnacle to the
dome of the church at Milan, which has since been raised
in opposition to his opinion. In 1766 he undertook a
journey into France and England, and his celebrity every¬
where procured him the most flattering attentions. At
Paris a very liberal proposal was made to him to remove
to Lisbon, but he preferred returning to his own country.
In 1768 he went to Vienna, and he was consulted by the
government there upon some important questions of ec¬
clesiastical policy, in which his advice was adopted. He
remained but little longer in the college of St Alexander,
and Pope Pius VI. liberated him entirely from subjection
to the superiors of his order, and allowed him to wear the
habit of a secular priest. As one of the censors of the
press, he had incautiously been accessory to the publica¬
tion of the Lanterna Curiosa, the work of a coffee-house
club in Milan, which gave great offence to the govern¬
ment ; and he afterwards still more imprudently under¬
took to defend it. This circumstance occasioned his re¬
moval from Milan for a time, but he was recalled in 1777,
and was appointed director of a school of architecture.
He was active in introducing the employment of conduc¬
tors for security against lightning, and had one fixed for
an example on the repository of the public archives. He
was equally zealous on every other occasion, in the dis¬
semination of useful novelties among his countrymen. In
1778 he made a tour into Switzerland, and his observa¬
tions there gave rise to his speculations on subterraneous
rivers. He enjoyed uninterrupted health until the age of
forty-eight, when he was attacked by a haemorrhoidal
affection, ending in an abscess, which, eight years after¬
wards, required the performance of an operation ; this was
unfortunately succeeded by a fatal mortification, and he
died the 22d November 1784, at the moment when he
was about to be placed on the list of the eight foreign as¬
sociates of the Parisian Academy ; an honour which had
been delayed by the preference of J. A. Euler, on the oc¬
casion of a former vacancy, to the no small mortification
of his vanity. He had very lately obtained a prize from
the Academy of Plaerlem, for his memoir on the Inequa¬
lity of the Satellites of Jupiter. He was buried in the
church of St Alexander, and a medallion with his portrait
was placed over his tomb by his brethren Barnabites.
He had four brothers, Antony, a physician, botanist, and
chemist; Antony Francis, an ecclesiastic, author of some
antiquarian researches of merit; Louis, a canon of St
Ambrose, a learned theologian and mechanician ; and
Philip, a lawyer, author of a dissertation, De Imperio et
Jurisdictione.
The works of Father Paul Frisi are, 1. Disquisitio ma-
thematica in causam figurse terras, Milan, 1751 ; de¬
monstrating, more completely than Newton had done, the
spheroidal figure of the earth. 2. Estratto della storia
litteraria dTtalia, Milan, 1753; an answer to a review.
3. Saggio della morale filosofia, Lugano, 1755. 4. Nova
electricitatis theoria, Milan, 1755; seems to be the same
with a dissertation De existentia et motu aetheris, seu de
theoria electricitatis ignis et lucis, printed with J. A.
Euler’s Disquisitio de causa physica electricitatis praemio
coronata, 1755,4to, Petersburg. This dissertation shows
some ingenuity, but is by no means established on firm
foundations. Among some other fanciful hypotheses, it
suggests that light is probably an impulse transmitted by
236 F R I
Frisi. an elastic medium, but not of an undulatory nature. Both
these essays seem to have been republished at Lucca, with
another by Resaud, under the title of Dissertationes se-
lectae quae ad I. P. academiam, anno 1755, missae sunt,
1757. 5. De motu diurno terrae, Pisa, 1758 ; a disserta¬
tion which obtained a prize from the Academy of Berlin
in 1756. 6. Dissertationes variae, 2 vols. 4to, Lucca,
1759, 1761 ; the first volume containing a geometrical
solution of the problem of Precession and Nutation; a
Dissertation on the Atmospheres of the Heavenly Bodies,
which obtained the prize at Paris in 1758; an Essay on
the Nature and Motion of the Ether : the second, a Trea¬
tise on the Inequality of the Motion of the Planets, being
an enlargement of a prize dissertation which obtained the
second premium at Paris in 1760; a Dissertation on the
geometrical method of Fluxions, and some Metaphysical
Meditations. 8. Piano de lavori per liberare dalle acque.
Lucca, 1761 ; for the use of the provinces of Bologna,
Ferrara, and Ravenna. 9. Del modo di regolare i fiumi
e torrenti, Lucca, 1762, 1760; Flor. 1770; French,
Paris, 1774; especially of the Bolognan and Roman ter¬
ritories, making great use of Guglielmini’s works. At the
end there is an Elogio di Gabriello Manfredi. 10. Prae-
lectio habita Mediolani; 1764. 11. Saggio sopra 1’archi-
tectura Gotica, Leghorn, 1766. 12. Lettre a M. d’Alem¬
bert, Par. 1767. 13. Elogio del Galileo, Leghorn and
Milan, 1775; French by Floncel, 12mo, Par. 1767; an
elegant specimen of biography. 14. On the supposed In¬
equalities in the Rotation of the Earth and Moon, Inst.
Bologn. vol. v. Op. p. 11 (1787). The same volume con¬
tains a prospectus of the work on the Laws of Gravity,
p. 514. 15. De gravitate universale libri tres, 4to, Milan,
1768 ; a work considered as a model of elegance, simpli¬
city, and facility; leaving, however, the fact of the moon’s
acceleration still unexplained, and even stating doubts of
its existence. 16. Della maniera di preservare gli edifizi
dal fulmine, Milan, 1768; by conductors. 17. De in-
equalitate motus planetarum, a dissertation which obtain¬
ed the second premium at Paris in 1768. 18. Melandri
et Frisii de theoria iunae commentarii, Parma, 1769.
19. Cosmographia physica et mathematica, 2 vols. 4to,
Milan, 1774, 1775 ; this is Frisi’s principal work; it con¬
tains the substance of the three books on the laws of gra¬
vity, with additional matter. It is only superseded by
the Mecanique Celeste in point of practical utility, but
still retains the advantage of more satisfactory geometri¬
cal representation, and less unnecessary complication in
the modes of reasoning employed. 20. Dell architectura
statica e idraulica, Milan, 1777. 21. A Letter to Me-
lander on the transit of Venus, Atti di Sienna, vol. iv. p.
21 (1771); with some illustrations of the lunar perturba¬
tions. 22. Geometrical problems, ib. vol. v. p. 27 (1772) ;
relating to intersections and circles. 23. Elogi di Galileo
e di Cavalieri; Milan, 1778; Pisa, 1779. 24. Elogio del
Cav. I. Newton, 8vo, Milan, 1778. 25. Elogio del Conte
D. Silva, Milan, 1779; anonymous. 26. Elogio di Tito
Pomponio Attico, Milan, 1780; a compliment to the
Count de Firmian. 27. Opuscoli filosofici, Milan, 1781;
denying the fancied influence of the moon on the wea¬
ther, which Toaldo very unsuccessfully attempted to as¬
sert in answer; with dissertations on Conductors, on the
effect of Oil on Water, on the Heat of the Earth, and on
Subterraneous Rivers. 28. On isoperimetrical maxima
and minima, di Sienna, vol. vi. p. 121 (1781); intend¬
ed as a simpler mode of obtaining the results than that
of Euler. 29. A Collection of his Works, in 3 volumes,
was begun in 1782, and remained unfinished at the time
of his death. The first volume contained Algebra and
Geometry; the second, Mechanics and Hydraulics; the
third, the Cosmography. 30. Elogio di Maria Teresa,
Pisa, 1783; anonymous. 31. Lettera intorno agli studj
F R I
del Sign. T. Perelli, Pisa, 1784. 33. Elogio di D’Alem- Frijjp
bert, Milan, 1788 ; posthumous. 32. An Essay on Arches J
and Domes, Atti della Societd Patriotica di Milano, vol. i. Frit. I
1783 ; correcting some statements of Couplet and Belidor. '"•’W
He left several unpublished works in the hands of his
two brothers: 1. On the mediocrity of the Jesuits. 2.
Elements of the Cartesian Algebra. 3. Institutions of
Mechanics. 4. Of the restoration of the navigation be¬
tween Milan and Pavia. 5. Institutiones Hydrometricae.
6. Elements of Hydrodynamics. 7. Elements of Hydrau¬
lics. 8. Memoirs of his travels in France and England.
9. Lectures delivered at Pisa. 10. Praelectiones de malis
spiritibus. 11. Several miscellaneous dissertations.
(Verri Memorie del S. D. P. Frisi, 4, Milan, 1787;
Fabbroni Elogj d'illustri Italiani, Atti di Milano, vol. ii.;
Chalmers’s Biographical Dictionary, vol. xiv. 8, Lon¬
don, 1814 ; Aikin’s General Biography, vol. x. 4, London,
1815; Guidon in Biographic Universelle, vol. xvii. 8,
Paris, 1816.) (l. l.)
FRISII, a people who dwelt on the east bank of the
Rhine, near its mouth, occupying, as far as the scanty
notices of them will allow us to determine, West Fries¬
land, Groningen, and the north part of Upper Yssel; also
the islands which lie to the north, and those which are
formed by the mouths of the Rhine. Tacitus divides
them into Frisii Majores et Minores, though probably by
mistake, as no other author notices such a division. We
find them, from the earliest period of their acquaintance
with the Romans, on terms of the closest intimacy with
that people. Not only did Drusus pass unmolested through
their country, but they gave him most active support in
his wars against the Cherusci. In process of time it ap¬
pears that the Romans began to build fortresses in their
country, and to levy taxes; but this roused the spirit of
the Frisii, who had received the Romans as friends, but
not as masters. They rose in a body, defeated the forces,
and razed the fortresses to the ground. They would no
doubt have been chastised, but for the opportune jealousy
of the Emperor Claudius towards his general Corbulo, who
-was employed to subdue them. Corbulo received orders
to withdraw to the vvest of the Rhine, and from that time
no Roman set foot in the land of the Frisii.
We hear nothing more of the Frisii till the fourth and
fifth centuries, when they appear in history closely unit¬
ed to the Saxons, and occupying a much wider extent of
country than they did originally. Not only do they appear
to have stretched to the east as far as the Weser, but
even to have reached along the sea coast to the Elbe;
and towards the west their name appears more than once
in the island of the Batavi, and along the coast of Flan¬
ders. We find them even mentioned by Procopius as
possessing part of Britain. They were first humbled by
Pepin, who defeated their king Radbod, and took from
him the western portion as far as the mouth of the Rhine.
Charlemagne added to his other Saxon conquests the east¬
ern kingdom of the Frisii. This people may be consider¬
ed as the ancestors of the Dutch.
FRIT, or Fritt, in the glass manufacture, is the mat¬
ter or ingredients of which glass is to be manufactured
when they have been calcined or baked in a furnace.
Frit by the ancients was called ammonitrum, of a/i/wf,
sand, and wrgov, nitre ; under which name it is described
by Pliny thus : Fine sand from the Volturnian Sea, mix¬
ed with three times the quantity of nitre, and melted,
makes a mass called ammonitrum, which being rebaked,
forms pure glass.
Frit, Neri observes, is only the calx of the materials
which make glass ; which, though they might be melted
and form glass without being calcined, yet it would occu¬
py a much longer time. Thus calcining or making of frit
serves to mix and incorporate the materials together, and
FRO FRO 237
to evaporate all the superfluous humidity. The frit, once
H made, is readily fused and turned into glass. See Glass
^ robifi'r- Making.
•'■Vf'' FRITZLAR, one of the provinces into which the prin¬
cipality of Hesse-Cassel is divided. It extends over 136
square miles, comprehends four cities, twenty-five villages,
and thirteen hamlets, with 15,328 inhabitants. It is ge-
1 nerally a fertile district, depending on agriculture chiefly,
’ which yields corn nearly equal to the consumption, and
much flax, with some tobacco. The capital is the city of
the same name on the river Edder. It is walled, con-
1 tains 478 houses, and 2467 inhabitants.
PRIZE, or Freeze, in Commerce, a kind of woollen
cloth or stuff for winter wear, being frized or knapt on
one side; whence, in all probability, it derives its name.
Of frizes some are crossed, others not crossed; the for¬
mer are chiefly of English manufacture, the latter of
* Irish.
PRIZING of Cloth. See Woollen Manufacture.
FROBENIUS, John, a distinguished printer in the
sixteenth century, was born at Hamelburg in Franconia,
and settled at Basil. He had before studied in that uni-
T versity, where he acquired a reputation for great learning ;
and having set up a printing-house in that city, he was
the first of the German printers who brought the art to
ai any degree of perfection. Being a man of great probity
and piety, as well as skill, he was particularly choice in
1 the authors whom he printed; and would never for the
si sake of profit suffer libels or any thing that might injure
the reputation of another to issue from his press. The
high character of this printer was the principal motive
which induced Erasmus to reside at Basil, in order to
1 have his own writings printed by him. The works of a
great number of valuable authors were printed by Frobe-
111 nius with great care and accuracy; among which were the
»< works of St Jerome, Augustine, and Erasmus. He de¬
signed to have printed the Greek Fathers, but died in
Is 1527, before he could put his design in execution. Eras-
® mus wrote his epitaph in Greek and Latin.
John Frobenius left a son named Jerome Frobenius,
id and a daughter married to Nicholas Episcopius, who, join¬
ing in partnership, continued Frobenius’s printing-house
with reputation, and printed correct editions of the Greek
F< Fathers.
FROBISHER, or Forbisher, Sir Martin, a cele¬
brated navigator and naval officer, was born near Doncas¬
ter in Yorkshire, about the middle of the sixteenth cen¬
tury, and was from his youth brought up to navigation.
He was the first Englishman who attempted to find a
no north-west passage to China; and to put this design into
k execution, in 1576 he sailed with two barks and a pin¬
na nace. In this voyage he discovered a cape, to which he
ga gave the name of Queen Elizabeth’s Foreland; and the
next day he discovered a strait, on which he conferred his
o« own name. This voyage proving unsuccessful, he at-
te tempted the same passage in 1577 ; but discovering some
or ore on an island, and his commission directing him in this
vo voyage only to search for ore, and to leave the further
discovery of the north-west to another time, he returned
to to England. He sailed again with fifteen ships and a
gr great number of adventurers, to form a settlement; but
being obstructed by the ice, and driven out to sea by a
ti violent storm, his fleet, after encountering many difficul-
tif ties, returned home,without effecting a settlement. He
af afterwards commanded the Aid in Sir Francis Drake’s
t! expedition to the West Indies, in which St Domingo,
Ci Carthagena, and Santa Justina in Florida, were taken
at and sacked. In 1588 he rendered himself conspicuous in
tli the defence of his country against the Spanish armada.
H He commanded the Triumph, one of the largest ships in
tl the English service; and, as a reward for his distinguish¬
ed bravery, received at sea the honour of knighthood from Frobisher’s
the lord high admiral. He afterwards commanded a Straits
squadron which was ordered to cruise on the Spanish II
coast; and, in 1592, took two valuable ships and a rich Frontal,
carrack. In 1594 he was sent to the assistance of Henry
IV. king of France, against a body of the Leaguers and
Spaniards, who had strongly intrenched themselves at
Croyzon near Brest; but in an assault upon that fort, on
the 7th of November, Sir Martin was unfortunately
wounded with a ball, of which he died soon after he had
brought back the fleet to Plymouth, in which town he
was buried.
Frobisher’s Straits, a narrow sea, which lies a little to
the north of Cape Farewell in West Greenland. It was
discovered by Sir Martin Frobisher, as above noticed.
Long. 42. W. Lat. 63. N.
FRODSHAM, a market-town of the county of Ches¬
ter, in the hundred of Eddesbury, 193 miles from London.
It stands on a plain on the banks of the river Weaver, by
which, through the Mersey, it is in water communication
with Liverpool. It is chiefly remarkable for its salt-works,
where, from rock salt dissolved in sea water, large quanti¬
ties of culinary salt are refined. There are also establish¬
ments for building and repairing ships. The market is on
Thursday. The inhabitants amounted in 1801 to 1551,
in 1811 to 1349, in 1821 to 1556, and in 1831 to 1746.
The parish is, however, much more extensive than the
town, containing seven other townships. The whole po¬
pulation amounted in 1821 to 5451, and in 1831 to 5547.
FROG. See Reptilia.
F'ROME, a river which rises from several springs in
the western parts of Dorsetshire, in England, the princi¬
pal of which is near Evershot. Directing its course al¬
most due west, it passes under Frampton Bridge, washes
the town of Dorchester, and falls into a bay of the Eng¬
lish channel called Poolhaven, near Wareham.
Frome, a town of the county gf Somerset, in the hun¬
dred of its own name, 105 miles from London. It has the
addition of Selwood to its name, from having been in an-
crent times at the termination of a forest of that name,
said to have extended fourteen or fifteen miles. It is
built on the acclivity of several hills, and the streets,
which are narrow, rise one above the other. It is a place
of extensive manufactures, chiefly of the best superfine
broad cloths and kerseymeres from Spanish and Saxon
wool. There are, besides, mills for rolling iron, and some
considerable breweries. The church is handsome and
spacious, with an octagonal spire 150 feet in height.
There is a good market on Wednesday. The town for¬
merly had a corporation, which has become extinct, and it
is now under the superintendence of the county magi¬
strates. The population amounted in 1801 to 8748, in
1811 to 10,133, in 1821 to 12,411, and in 1831 to 12,240.
FRONDESCENTIA, from frons, a leaf; the precise
time of the year and month in which each species of
plants unfolds its first leaves.
FRONT, the forehead, or that part of the face above
the eyebrows. The word is formed of the Latin
and that from the Greek tp^ovuv, to think, perceive ; of pgjjv,
mens, the mind, thought. Martinius, to make out this ety¬
mology, observes, that from the forehead of a person we
perceive what he is, what he is capable of, and what he
thinks of. Front is also used where several persons or
objects are ranged side by side, and show their front or
fore parts.
FRONTAL, in Architecture, a little fronton or pedi¬
ment, sometimes placed over a small door or window.
Frontal, Frontlet, or Brow-band, is also used in speak¬
ing of the Jewish ceremonies. This frontal consists of
four several pieces of vellum, on each of which is written
a text of scripture. They are all laid on a piece of black
"F R O
238 FRO
Frontier calf's leather, having thongs by which the Jews lasten it
II to their foreheads in the synagogue.
Fronto. FRONTIER, the border, confine, or extreme of a king-
dom or province. Thus we say, a frontier town, frontier
province, &c. Frontiers were anciently called marches.
The word is derived from the French frontiere, and that
from the Latin frontaria, as being a kind of front op¬
posed to the enemy. Skinner derives frontier from front,
because the frontier is the exterior and most advanced
part of a state, as the front is that of the face of man.
FRONTIGNAN, acity of the department of the Herault,
in France. It is on a lake surrounded with an amphi¬
theatre of vine-clad hills, from which the celebrated mus¬
catel wine is made. Much rosin and table salt is also
made. Long. 3. 39. E. Lat. 43. 28. N.
FRONTINAS, Sext. Julius, a Roman citizen, who,
though not of a noble family, rose by his merits to the
highest dignities of the state. He was city praetor 70 a. d.
the year that Vespasian succeeded to the empire, con¬
sul 74, and the year afterwards proceeded to Britain to
act as governor of a restless people. He subdued the Si-
lures, who inhabited the southern parts of Wales, one of
the most powerful and warlike tribes of Britain. He re¬
turned to Rome after this successful war, giving up his
command to the celebrated Agricola. During the reign
of Domitian he seems to have withdrawn from public af¬
fairs to the retirement of the country, and there to have
lived unmolested by that cruel tyrant. Under Nerva,
however, he was again called to take part in the affairs of
his country, and received the consular dignity a second
time (97 a. d.). In the same year we find that he was
curator aquarum, overseer of the Roman aqueducts. His
death took place about 106 a. d., when he was succeeded
in the augurship by Pliny the Younger. On his death¬
bed he forbade that a monument should be erected to his
honour, saying, “ Impensa monumenti supervacua est:
memoria nostri durebit «i vitam meruimus.” The most
valuable work which he has left is entitled De Aquceduc-
tibus urbis Romce, in tw o books, which contains much in¬
formation on the subject of which it treats, but is written
without the least eloquence of language. We have also
another work, Strategeticon Libri iv. sive de Sollertibus du¬
rum Grcecorum, Romanorum, et aliorum, in bello factis et
dictis, a compilation made without much care, but contain¬
ing some pieces of information which we find nowhere
else. There is also a lost work of Frontinus, De Scientia
Militari et de Tactica Homeri. As to the fragments De
Coloniis et de Limitibus, sometimes ascribed to him, they
belong to a later age. (Editions : De Aquceductibus, ed.
Polen. Patav. 1722, ed. Adler, Alton. 1732; Frontin sur
les Aqueducs, par Rondelet, Par. 1820; Strategeticon, ed.
Schwebelius, Lips. 1772, ed. Oudendorp. Lugd. Bat. 1731.)
FRONTISPIECE, in Architecture, the principal face of
a fine building. The word is formed of the Latm frontis-
picium, q. d. frontis hominis inspectio. Hence also, by a
figure, we say, the frontispiece of a book, meaning an or¬
nament with an engraven title on the first page.
FRON TO, Marcus Cornelius, a celebrated orator,
who was born, probably under Domitian or Nerva, at Cirta,
a town of Numidia, considerably to the west of Carthage,
descended, it is said, on the mother’s side from Plutarch.
He soon became distinguished for his eloquence; and
having taken up his residence at Rome, he was appointed
preceptor to M. Aurelius and L. Verus. He was raised
by Antoninus Pius to the dignity of consul, and in fact
received the first honours of the state. He had numerous
friends and followers, who were called Frontoniani. His
death seems to have taken place about 169 a. d. Of all
his numerous works, we had nothing, till within these few
years, except one small grammatical treatise, De Diffe-
rentiis Vocabulorum. But in 1814 Angelo Maio, the in¬
defatigable librarian of the Vatican, discovered in the Frosinoj,
Ambrosian Library at Milan a palimpsest containing a col- I [
lection of the works of this author, which was afterwards ^ro'rif.
completed from a palimpsest of the Vatican, which had w'yv
evidently formed at onetime part of the Milan manuscripts.
It belonged to the age of the Emperors Commodus or Se-
verus. This collection is full of interest, containing nu¬
merous letters addressed by Fronto to his pupils Aurelius
and Verus, and a curious correspondence between the
Emperor Antoninus and Fronto. We are forcibly struck,
even on a cursory perusal of these letters, by the extent
of his information and by the playfulness of the style.
They entitle the author to a distinguished place among
the orators and writers of ancient times, though we do
not allow that he can be placed immediately after Cicero.
The form of the composition does by no means resemble
the noble simplicity of the earlier ages. The style is arti¬
ficial ; and, amidst the poverty of ideas, cold declamation
and unmeaning expressions occupy the place of “ thoughts
that breathe and words that burn.” There appear also
new and strange expressions, which sufficiently indicate
the decline of literature, as well as the corrupted taste of
an age which could consider Fronto as the first of its
orators. There have been several editions of this collec¬
tion : Ed. Angelus Maius, Mediolan. 1815, Francof. 1816;
ed.Niebuhr, Berlin 1816; ed. Angelus Maius, Romae, 1823.
(Letlres inedites de Marc Aurele et de Fronton, par Cassen,
Paris, 1830 ; Chrestomathia Frontoniana, Turici, 1830; see
Roth. Bemerkungen uber die Schriften des Fronto und uber
das Zeitalter der Antonine, Nurnberg. 1817.)
FROSINONE, one of the delegations of the papal do¬
minions in Italy, extending over 1370 square miles, com¬
prehending eleven cities, nine market-towns, and many
small villages, with 156,769 inhabitants. The northern
part is a branch of the Appennines, enjoys a good climate,
and, though the cultivation is negligently conducted, pro¬
duces abundance of all the Italian crops. The inhabitants
are of a lazy, filthy, and knavish character, and constant¬
ly embroiled with the Roman police. The southern part,
called the Maremna, is nearly desolate, because the marshes
have vanquished cultivation, and the malaria has near¬
ly exterminated man and beast. In the height of sum¬
mer not a living creature is to be seen ; and it is only in
the winter that the shepherd descends from the moun¬
tains to gain some pasture for his cattle. The efforts of
the several popes to drain the Pontine marshes have been
unavailing, though a canal has been constructed as a
drain, which is so deep as to be navigable. The marshes
continue to extend, and the air to be as pestiferous as be¬
fore; and it is to be apprehended that the whole cam-
pagna may be turned into an uninhabitable marsh. The
capital of the delegation bears the same name, is situated
on a hill near the river Cosa, and contains 6014 inhabi¬
tants. Long. 13. 59. 9. E. Lat. 41. 13. 45. N.
FROST, such a state of the atmosphere as occasions
the congelation or freezing of water and other fluids. See
Climate, Cold, and Meteorology.
Hoar Fnosr is simply vapour which has been frozen
during the night by the coldness of the atmosphere, and
descended to the earth.
FROTH, a white and very light substance, formed on
the surface of fluids by violent agitation.
Froth Spit, or Cuckoo Spit, a name given to a white
froth or spume, very common in the spring and first months
of summer, on the leaves of certain plants, particularly
on those of the common white field lychnis, or catchfly,
thence called by some spoiling poppy.
FROWDE, Philip, an English poet, was the son of a
gentleman who had been postmaster in the reign of Queen
Anne. He was sent to the university of Oxford, where
he had the honour of being distinguished by Addison,
Fro:'ii
Occ i
lh
tio:
F R U
who took him under his protection. While he remained
there, he wrote several pieces of poetry, some of which,
in Latin, were considered worthy of a place in the Musce
Anglicanae. He likewise wrote two tragedies, The Fall
of Saguntum, dedicated to Sir Robert Walpole; and Phi-
lotas, addressed to the Earl of Chesterfield. He died at
his lodgings in the Strand, in 1738; and in the London
Daily Post of the time the following character was given
him: “ Though the elegance of Mr Frowde s writings
has recommended him to the general public esteem, the
politeness of his genius is the least amiable part of his
character; for he esteemed the talents of wit and learn¬
ing only as they were conducive to the excitement and
practice of honour and humanity. Therefore, with a soul
cheerful, benevolent, and virtuous, he was in conversation
genteelly delightful, in friendship punctually sincere, in
death Christianly resigned. No man could live more be¬
loved; no private man could die more lamented.”
FROZEN OCEAN, or the Icy Sea. By this name
the ocean is distinguished which bounds the continent of
Asia on the north, and which extends towards the north
into the unknown regions of the pole, and of which the
boundaries on the east and west are calculated to be Nova
Zembla and Fohutski Noss. This sea has always been ob¬
structed by an insurmountable barrier of ice at a short dis¬
tance from the shores, all attempts to penetrate which by
mariners have been found ineffectual. The short gleam
of summer has very little effect in dissolving the masses
of ice formed during the cold of winter, and the ice sel¬
dom breaks up until the 31st July ; and thick fogs, which
at a distance resemble islands in a haze, or vast columns
of smoke, are seen constantly hovering over its surface. It
is in clear weather, however, that the cold is most severe:
at this time the thermometer frequently falls many de¬
grees below zero, and at times the cold is so intense that
the quicksilver freezes. There are several islands in this
ocean, one of which was reached in the year 1770, by La-
choff, a hunter, who, venturing out on this sea on a sledge
drawn by dogs, reached an island sixty-six miles from the
coast, when the ice appeared so rough that he could not
proceed. In 1773 he discovered another island, in a boat,
about 125 miles from the coast. These islands are inha¬
bited by white bears and arctic foxes, and other animals
common to the polar zone, such as rein-deer, foxes, wild
sheep, as also the whistling marmot, which are also found
on all the shores of this inhospitable sea. The bones of
the mammoth are also found on all the islands and shores.
Very irregular currents prevail in this ocean, and they run
at very unequal rates. Few productions are to be seen
in this ocean, either animal or vegetable. Whales are rare.
The beluga is occasionally seen; and herrings, together
with a small species of salmon, maybe caught; but shell¬
fish are not to be found. The great Asiatic rivers which
roll down the northern declivity of the Himalaya chain fall
into this icy sea. These are the Oby, the Jenesei, the
Lena, the Tana, and the Kovima. These are all large
streams, by which the vast plain of northern Asia, extend¬
ing from the Himalaya Mountains to the Icy Sea, is drain¬
ed of its waters. The coast of this sea is formed by pro¬
jecting promontories and shallow bays, and is covered
with drift-wood from the mouth of the Kovima to Bacra-
nof, in long. 168. 29. E.
FRUC 1ESCEN1IA (from fructus, fruit), comprehends
the precise time in which, after the fall of the flowers, the
fruits arrive at maturity, and disperse their seeds.
FRUCill'EROUS signifies properly any thing that
produces fruit.
FRUCTIFICATION of Plants is defined by Linnaeus
to be the temporary part of a vegetable appropriated to
generation, terminating the old vegetable and beginning
the new. It consists of the following seven parts, viz.
F R U
the calyx, corolla, stamen, pistillum, pericarpium, semen
or seed, and receptaculum. See Botany.
FRUIT, in its general signification, denotes whatever
the earth produces for the nourishment and support of ani¬
mals. These may be divided into herbs, grain, pulse, hay,
corn, and flax, and consist of every thing which the La¬
tins expressed under the name fruges.
Fruit, in Natural History, denotes the last production
of a tree or plant, for the propagation or multiplication of
its kind; in which sense fruit includes all kinds of seeds,
with their furniture.
Fruit, in Botany, is properly that part of a plant where¬
in the seed is contained; it is called by the Latins fructus,
and by the Greeks xagiroi. The fruit in the Linnaean sys¬
tem is one of the parts of fructification, and is distinguish¬
ed into three parts, viz. the pericarpium, seed, and recep¬
tacle or receptaculum seminum.
Fruits, with regard to commerce, are distinguished
into recent, fresh, and dry.
Recent Lruits are those sold just as they are gathered
from the tree, without any farther preparation ; in which
state most of the productions of our gardens and orchards
are sold by fruiterers.
Dry Fruits are those dried in the sun, or by the fire,
with other ingredients sometimes added to them to pre¬
serve them from decay. They are imported chiefly from
foreign countries, and consist of raisins, currants, figs, ca¬
pers, olives, cloves, nutmegs, pepper, and other spices.
Under the denomination of dry fruits are also frequent¬
ly included apples, pears, almonds, filberts, &c.
Fruit-Flies, a name given to a species of small black
flies found in vast numbers among fruit-trees in the spring
season, and supposed to do great injury to them.
Fruit Stones. Much mischief arises from the custom
which some people have of swallowing the stones of plums
and other fruit. In the I'hilosophical Transactions there
is an account of a woman who suffered violent pains in her
bowels once a month during thirty years on this account.
At length a strong purgative was administered to her,
which drove down the cause of all these complaints from
the bowels to the anus, where it gave a sensation of dis¬
tension and stoppage, producing a continual desire to go
to stool, but without voiding any thing. There was at
last extracted from her intestines with forceps a ball of
an oval figure, of about ten drachms in weight, and mea¬
suring five inches in circumference. This had caused the
violent fits oi pain which she had suffered for so many
years ; and after getting rid of it she perfectly recovered.
I he ball looked like a stone, and felt very hard; but it
floated in water. On cutting it through with a knife, a
plum-stone was found in the centre of it, round which se¬
veral coats ot this hard and tough matter had gathered.
Another instance, given in the same papers, is of a man
who died of an incurable colic, which had tormented him
many years, and baffled the effects of medicines. He was
opened after death, and in his bowels there was found* a
ball similar to that above mentioned, but somewhat larger,
being six inches in circumference, and weighing an ounce
and a half. In the centre of this, as in the case of the
other, there was found the stone of a common plum, and
the coats w^ere of the same nature as those before no¬
ticed.
These, and several otner instances mentioned in the
same place, sufficiently show the absurdity of the notion
that the stones of fruits are wholesome; for though by
nature the guts are so defended by their proper mucus,
that people very seldom suffer by things of this kind, yet
if we consider the various circumvolutions of the guts,
their valves and cells, and at the same time consider the
hair of the skins of animals we feed on, the wool or down
on herbs and fruit, and the fibres, vessels, and nerves of
239
Fruit
11
Fruit
Stones.
240
FRY
Fruitery plants, which are not altered by the stomach, it seems sur-
II prising that instances of this kind of mischief are not much
ryburg. more common than they are. Cherry-stones, swallowed
in great quantities, have occasioned numerous deaths; and
there have been instances even of the seeds of straw-ber¬
ries collecting into a lump in the guts, and causing vio¬
lent disorders, which could not be cured without great
difficulty.
Fruit- Trees. See Horticulture.
FRUITERY, a place for keeping fruit; a fruit-house
or fruit-loft. A fruitery should be kept as free from hu¬
midity as possible.
FRUMENTACEOUS, a term applied by botanists to
all such plants as have a conformity with wheat, in respect
of their fruits, leaves, ears, or the like.
FRUMENTARII were a species of soldiers or archers
under the Western Empire. They are first mentioned in
the reign of the Emperor Adrian, who made use of them
as a kind of spies. They did not form any particular
corps distinct from the rest of the forces, but there was
a certain number of them in each legion. It is supposed
that they were at first a number of young persons, dis¬
posed by Augustus throughout the provinces, particularly
on all the great roads, to acquaint the emperor, with all
expedition, of every thing that happened. Afterwards
they were incorporated into the troops themselves, where
they still retained their ancient name. As their principal
office was the giving intelligence, they were often joined
with the curiosi, with whom they agreed in that part of
their office. Their name of frumentarii is derived from
their being also a sort of purveyors to the armies, cities,
and so on, collecting all the corn from the several pro¬
vinces to furnish the commonwealth.
FRUMENTATION, in Roman antiquity, a largess of
corn bestowed on the people. This practice of giving
corn to the people was very ancient among the Romans,
and frequently used to soothe the turbulent passions of
the populace. At first the number of those to whom this
largess was given was indeterminate, but it was fixed by
Augustus at 200,000.
FRUSTUM, in Mathematics, a part of some solid body
which is separated from the rest.
The frustum of a cone is the part that remains when
the top is cut off by a plane parallel to the base. It is
likewise called a truncated cone.
The frustum of a pyramid is also what remains after
the top is cut off by a plane parallel to its base.
The frustum of a globe or sphere is any part of it which
is cut off by a plane. The solid contents of it may be
found by the following rule: To three times the square
of the semidiameter of the base add the square of its
height; then multiply that sum by the height, and this
product multiplied by -5236 gives the solidity of the
frustum.
FRUTEX, a shrub. Shrubs, according to Linnaeus,
make a branch of the seventh family in the vegetable
kingdom ; and are distinguished from trees, in their com-
ing up without buds. But this distinction is not univer¬
sal, although it is generally correct with regard to those
of Europe. Nature has made no absolute distinction be¬
tween trees and shrubs. Frutex, in its general accepta¬
tion, is a plant whose trunk is perennial, gemmiparous,
woody, dividing and subdividing into a great number of
branches. In short, it is the epitome of a tree, as exem¬
plified in the rose-bush.
FRY, in Zoology, signifies the spawn, or rather young,
of fish.
FRYBURG, or Freiburg, one of the cantons of Swit¬
zerland. It is bounded on the north and the east by the
canton of Berne, on the south and west by that of Neuf-
chatel, and on the north-west by the lake of Neufchatel.
p I
^ ucinm
Lem,
F U C
It is 506 square miles in extent, and contains 67,900 inha¬
bitants, dwelling in 18,384 houses. It is divided into
twelve circles, called bailiwicks.
The canton is full of mountains and hills, but in the
north are some extensive and fruitful plains. None of the
elevations within the district are more than 6000 feet in
height. The religion of the inhabitants is generally Ca¬
tholic; but there are about 7000 Protestants in the bai-
liwick of Murten, who are allowed the free exercise of
their religion. The chief means of subsistence are the
dairy and the Alpine common husbandry. It is said that
the canton contains 34,900 head of black cattle, and that
the milch cows yield 24,000 quintals of Gruer cheese.
Some horses are bred for sale. Neither wine nor corn is
raised in quantities equal to the demand, and the greater
part of the people subsist on potatoes; so that when a
failure of that crop occurs, their sufferings are excessive.
Flax and hemp are cultivated so as to supply the domes¬
tic demand.
The only occupations besides husbandry are linen weav¬
ing, for the use of the several families, and plaiting of
straw for hats and other purposes, which is sent to other
districts. The government is intrusted to a greater and
smaller council; the first consisting of 116 members, and
the latter of 29. The laws are framed by the small coun¬
cil, and rejected or approved by the greater. In each
bailiwick is an amtman or bailiff, chosen by the councils,
who administers the laws. The church is in possession
of the larger portion of the landed property. The canton
pays a contribution to the general funds of the confedera¬
tion, of 18,600 francs, and provides a contingent of 1240
men to the army of the union. The chief place is the
city of the same name on the Soane, on a sandy rock, sur¬
rounded with ancient walls, defended by lofty towers.
It is a place of no industry, but has four churches, be¬
sides a beautiful one belonging to the Jesuits, eight mo¬
nastic establishments, a college for Catholics, 1079 houses,
and 6460 inhabitants. Long. 7. 4. 48. E. Lat. 46. 48.
30. N.
FRYTH, John, a martyr to the Protestant religion in
the reign of Henry VIII. He was the son of an innkeeper
at Seven Oaks in Kent, and educated in King’s College,
Cambridge, where he took the degree of bachelor of arts.
Thence he removed to Oxford, and was made a junior ca¬
non of Wolsey’s College. Not long after he entered that
university, he became acquainted with William Tyndale,
a zealous Lutheran, with whom he had frequent inter¬
course on the abuses in religion. Fryth became a con¬
vert to Lutheranism, and publicly avowed his opinions.
He was apprehended, examined by the commissary, and
confined to his college. At length, having obtained his
liberty, in 1528 he went over to Germany, where he con¬
tinued about two years, and then returned to England
more confirmed in his religious sentiments. Finding but
few associates, he wandered about from place to place, and
was at last taken up at Reading as a vagrant, and put in
the stocks, where he remained until he had nearly expired
with hunger. He was at length relieved by the humanity
of Leonard Cox, a schoolmaster, who finding him a man
of letters, procured his enlargement, and administered to
his necessities. Fryth now took his departure for Lon¬
don, where, with more zeal than prudence, he began to
make proselytes. He was soon however apprehended, by
orders of the chancellor Sir Thomas More, and sent pri¬
soner to the Tower. Refusing to recant his opinions, he
was condemned to the flames, and accordingly burnt in
Smithfield, on the 4th of July 1533. He left several
pieces behind him, which were printed in folio in 1573.
FUAGE, in old English writers, a tax of 12d. levied
during the reign of Edward III. for every fire.
^ FUCINUS Lacus, a lake in the central parts of Italy*
F U C
j. to the north-east of Rome, surrounded by a chain of lofty
r'1 mountains inhabited by the ancient Marsi. Its usual
circumference was about forty miles; but there were
times when the volume of its waters was much increased,
and it enclosed a larger space than this. The purity and
transparency of its waters, and the grateful breezes from
its surface, were frequent themes of praise to the ancient
poets; but the inhabitants on its banks suffered severely
from its inundations. Among other magnificent projects
to benefit his fellow-citizens, Julius Caesar entertained the
idea of cutting a canal to drain the water from the lake
and convey it to the Tiber, by which he imagined that he
would benefit the inhabitants on its banks, and at the
same time increase the volume of water in the Tiber, so
as to render it navigable to vessels of greater burden.
His murder put an end to the attempt; and it was not till
the reign of Caligula that any further steps were taken.
It was the Emperor Claudius, however, who first took ef¬
fectual measures to accomplish the undertaking; and he
directed that the waters should be drained off into the
river Liris, now Garigliano. Suetonius states that 30,000
men were employed for eleven years in cutting this emis¬
sary; but Feboni, a modern Italian geographer, satisfacto¬
rily proves that such a number could not have been em¬
ployed for eleven years on this work, gigantic though it was.
It is probable that the number in t^e Manuscripts was ori¬
ginally 3000. This emissary is still in existence, though
from neglect it has ceased to be of any advantage to the
inhabitants. In the plain of Capistrello the openings are
still to be seen which were intended to give light to the
workmen in the interior, much in the same way as the
Giotto di Posilipo at Naples is now lighted ; and alongside
of these openings there are smaller perforations in the form
of a spiral stair-case, to enable the workmen to descend.
The government of Naples has latterly employed engineers
to report on the possibility of clearing out this emissary, and
of thereby recovering much fertile land now covered by
the waters of the lake ; but whether it has sufficient funds
and sufficient energy to succeed, remains to be proved.
(See Feboni Histor. Marsorum, lib. ii. c. 1; Descrizione
delle antiche et moderne citta accosto de fiumi Liri e Fibre-
no, Napoli, 1824.)
FUCUS, a name given by the ancients to certain dyes
and paints. By this name they called a purple sea plant
used by them in dyeing woollen and linen articles of that
colour. It was very beautiful, but fugitive, and in a short
time wholly disappeared. Such is the account given of
it by Theophrastus.
I he women of those times also used a substance called
fucus, with which they stained their cheeks red; "and
many have supposed, from the same word expressing both
dyes, that they were the same. But this, on a strict in¬
quiry, proves not to be the case. The Greeks called
every thing fucus which would stain or paint the flesh.
But this peculiar substance used by tfie women to paint
their cheeks was distinguished from the others by the
name rizion among the more correct writers, and was
in fact a root brought from Syria into Greece. The La-
tins, in imitation of the Greek name, called this root ra-
dicula; and Pliny very erroneously confounds the plant
with the radix lunaria, or struthion of the Greeks.
Ihe word fucus was in those times become such an uni¬
versal name for paint, that the Greeks and Romans had a
jucus metallicus, which was the ceruse employed in paint¬
ing the neck and arms white; after which they used the
purpimssutn, or red fucus of the rizium, to colour the
cheeks. In ?fter times they also used a peculiar fucus or
paint for the purpose, prepared of the creta argentaria, or
si \ er-chalk, and some of the rich purple dyes that were
in use at that time. Ihis seems to have been a colour
something resembling our rose-pink.
VOL. x.
F U L
FUEGO, Fogo, or St Philips, one of the Cape de
Verd Islands, situated to the west of St Jago. It is chiefly
remarkable on account of a volcano issuing from the top
of a mountain which may be said in a manner to constitute
the whole island. The island is not of great value, there
being only a few plantations along the coast, belonging to
the Portuguese, and cultivated by negroes. Long. 24.
20. W. Lat. 15. 0. N.
FUEGOS Isle, one of the most southerly of the Phi¬
lippines, about forty miles in circumference. Long. 123.
25. E. Lat. 9. 25. N.
fUEL, in its widest acceptation, denotes all bodies
which are combustible, and used in making fires, such as
coal, wood, turf, peat, and the like.
. FUENTE-RR ABIA, a city and fortification of Spain,
in the province of Guipuzcoa, at the mouth of the Bidas-
soa, on the frontier towards Prance. The harbour has a
bar at its mouth, which forbids the entrance of vessels
except at high tide; and even then those only from forty
to fifty tons burden can enter. It was made a place of con¬
siderable note by the operations of that war which pre¬
ceded the celebrated battle of Roncesvalles. Its latitude
is 43. 21. 36. N. and its longitude 1. 16.7. west from Lon¬
don. ^ It contains a population of 1700 souls.
FUGA Isle, one of the Philippines, about thirty-five
miles in circumference, and situated due north from the
large island of Luzon or Luconia. Long. 121. 30. E.
Lat. 19. N.
FUG ALIA, in Roman antiquity, a feast supposed by
some to be the same with the regifugium, held on the 24th
of February, in memory of the expulsion of the kings and
the abolition of monarchical government. Others again
distinguish the fugalia from the regifuge. And some think
that the fugalia was the same with the poplifugia, or the
feast of Fugia, the goddess of joy, occasioned by the rout
of an enemy, for which reason the people abandoned them¬
selves to riot and debauchery.
FUGITIVE, a person compelled to expatriate himself,
or abandon his place of abode, on account of his debts or
misdemeanours.
. FUGUE, in Music (from the Latin fuga, a flight), is a
piece of music, either vocal or instrumental, or both, in
which one part leads off a succession of notes forming
the subject. This is taken up successively by the other
parts, and is dispersed through the movement according
to the taste of the composer. There are three kinds of
fugues; the simple fugue, which contains only one sub¬
ject, and is hence the least intricate ; the double fugue,
which consists of two subjects, occasionally intermingled
and moving together; and the counter fugue, in which
the subjects move in a direction contrary to each other.
In ali fugues, the parts fly after or follow each other, and
hence the general name by which this kind of music is
designated. See the article Music.
FULCRUM, in Mechanics, the prop or support by
which a lever is sustained.
FULDA, a province of the principality of Hesse Cassel,
in Germany. It was formerly an independent ecclesias¬
tical state, governed by its own bishop, and was consign¬
ed to Hesse by the congress of Vienna. It extends over
644 square miles, and comprehends four cities, 223 vil¬
lages, and thirty-three hamlets; and the population
amounted in 1816 to 66,756 individuals. The province is
generally hilly, and one fourth of it consists of woods. It
is the country of basalt, which is to be seen in all its va¬
riety of forms. The elevation is great, and the climate
raw and cold, but it is said to be salubrious. The product
of corn is unequal to the consumption, but potatoes have
been much extended, which serve as a substitute for
grain. Although the cultivation of flax is in a backward
state, the produce of it forms the chief source of the
2 H
241
Fuego
II
Fulda.
242 F U L
Fulham wealth of the province. The conversion of the flax into
II linen cloth, chiefly of the coarser kind, is almost the only
Fuller, branch of industry that is pursued. It is divided by the
present ruler into eight bailiwicks. The capital, Fulda,
takes its name from the navigable river of that name. It
is an ancient but well-built town, 650 feet above the
level of the sea, but overlooked by the castle in which its
former clerical sovereign resided, the excellence and quan¬
tity of whose wines have been much celebrated. The city
contains 995 houses, and 7468 inhabitants, who follow a
great variety of trades, mostly on a small scale. Long.
9. 50. 40. E. Lat. 50. 33. 57. N.
FULHAM, a large village of the county of Middlesex,
in the hundred of Ossulton, four miles from London. It
is beautifully situated on the left bank of the Thames,
over which is a bridge to Putney in Surrey. The palace
of the Bishop of London, and several other houses scarce¬
ly inferior to it, with the grounds and gardens around
them, are very interesting objects; and even those of
less pretensions are elegant. The chief pursuit of the
labouring inhabitants is gardening; and it supplies the
metropolis with a large portion of the fruit and vegetables
it consumes. The population amounted in 1801 to 4428,
in 1811 to 5903, in 1821 to 6492, and in 1831 to 7317.
FULLER, Dr Thomas, an eminent historian and di¬
vine of the church of England, was born at Aldwinckle,
in Northamptonshire, about the year 1608. After re¬
ceiving the rudiments of education at home, he was
sent to Cambridge, where he took the degree of bachelor
of arts in 1624, and that of master of arts in 1628, after
having much distinguished himself for industry and ta¬
lent. Fie was chosen minister of St Bennet’s parish,
Cambridge, and became very popular as a pulpit orator.
In the year 1631 he obtained a fellowship at Sidney Col¬
lege, and was collated to a prebend in the cathedral of
Salisbury. The same year he published a poem entitled
David's hainous sin, Jieartie repentance, and heavie pu¬
nishment. This was his first production, and it is now
little known. Having taken priest’s orders, he was insti¬
tuted to the rectory of Broad Winsor, in Dorsetshire. •
In 1635 he proceeded bachelor of divinity. His His¬
tory of the Holy War first appeared in 1640; soon after
the publication of which work he removed to London,
and was chosen lecturer at the Savoy church in the
Strand. He was member of the convocation which met
in 1640, and was one of the select committee appointed
to draw up new canons for the church. In 1642 he pub¬
lished a loyal sermon, which endangered his personal
safety; and shortly afterwards he joined the king at
Oxford. Before he left London, however, his Holy
State, had appeared. After the loss of the battle of
Cheviton Down in 1644, he went first to Basin-house,
and then to Exeter, where he was appointed chaplain to
the infant princess Henrietta Maria. After the surrender
of Exeter in 1646, he went to London, and was chosen
lecturer, first of St Clement’s Church, then of St Bride’s.
About the year 1648 the Earl of Carlisle presented him
with the rectory of Waltham Abbey in Essex. Two
years afterwards he published A Pisyah sight of Palestine
and the confines thereof; with the history of the Old and
New Testament acted, thereon, in folio, with maps and
views. In 1650 appeared his Abel Redivivus, which
consists of lives of reformers, martyrs, divines, and the
like. In 1656 he published the Church History of
Britain, from the birth of Jesus Christ to the year 1648 ;
to which was subjoined The History of the University
of Cambridge since the Conquest, and the History of
Waltham Abbey. He removed to Crauford in Middle¬
sex in 1658, which living had been conferred upon him.
At the restoration he was reinstated in his prebend of
Salisbury. Soon after he obtained the degree of doctor
F U L
of divinity, was appointed chaplain to his majesty, and
destined for the episcopal bench. This last preferment, |l
however, was prevented by his death, which took place
on the 15th of August 1661. In the year following, his ''"Y
principal literary work, The Worthies of England was
published in folio. This production is valuable on ac¬
count of the information which it contains relative to the
provincial history of the country, and the fund of anec¬
dote and acute observation on men and manners which
are profusely scattered throughout it. It is, however,
tainted with that elaborate display of quaint conceit,
which to a certain extent deteriorates all his productions.
But this affectation was the vice of the age, as well as of
the author of The Worthies of England. Dr Fuller was
remarkable for the strength of his memory, and many
almost incredible anecdotes are related of his powers in
this respect. It is positively affirmed that he could re¬
peat verbatim a sermon of ordinary length after once
hearing it. A new edition of his Worthies, with his life
prefixed, appeared in 1810, in two vols. 4to.
Fuller, a workman employed in the woollen manu¬
factories to mill or scour cloths, serges, and other stuffs,
in order to render them more thick, compact, and durable.
Fullers Earth, a species of clay much used in scour¬
ing woollen cloth and other stuffs, and thus freeing them
from oil and grease. Its colour is greenish white, and
different other shades of green. Sometimes it has a spot¬
ted colour. It is opaque, shining, and resinous in the
streak, very soft, and possesses a greasy feel. It falls into
powder with water, and melts into a brown spongy scoria
before the blowpipe. In England it occurs in beds ; the
best is found in Buckinghamshire and Surrey. When good
it has a greenish-white or greenish-grey colour, falls into
powder when put into water, appears to dissolve on the
tongue like butter, communicates a milky hue to water,
and deposits very little sand when mixed with boiling wa¬
ter. It is used by fullers in taking grease out of cloth be¬
fore the soap is applied ; and as it contains a considerable
proportion of alumina, the remarkable detersive property
which woollen cloth possesses depends upon the alumina
which it thus obtains. Malcolm, in his Survey of Sur¬
rey, published in 1809, states the consumption of fuller’s
earth for the whole kingdom to be about 6300 tons, and
that Surrey alone furnished 4000 tons.
FULLERY, a place where cloths, &c. are fulled.
FULLING, the art of cleansing, scouring, and press¬
ing cloths, stuffs, and stockings, to render them stronger,
closer, and firmer: called also milling. Pliny (lib. vii.
cap. 56) assures us that one Nicias, the son of Hermias,
was the first inventor of the art of fulling ; and it appears
by an inscription, quoted by Sir G. Wheeler, in his Tra¬
vels through Greece, that this same Nicias was a gover¬
nor in Greece in the time of the Romans.
The asperities upon the surface of wool, and the dispo¬
sition which it has to assume a progressive motion to¬
wards the root, render the spinning of wool, and making
it into cloth, difficult operations. In order to spin wool,
and afterwards convert it into cloth, its fibres must be
covered with a coating of oil, which, filling the cavities,
renders the asperities less sensible ; in the same way as
oil renders the surface of a very fine file less rough when
rubbed over it. When the piece of cloth is finished, it is
carried to the fulling-mill, where it is beat with hammers
in a trough full of water, in which some fuller’s earth has
been mixed, for the purpose of cleansing it from the oil.
The clay combines with the oil, which it separates from
the cloth, and both together are washed away by the
fresh water which is brought to it by the machine.
But the scouring of the cloth is not the only object in
view in fulling it. The alternate pressure given by the
mallets to the piece of cloth occasions, especially when
?»!:
r
F U L
i£. the scouring is pretty far advanced, an effect analo-
gous to that which is produced upon hats by the hands
of the hatters. The fibres of wool which compose one of
the threads, whether of the warp or the woof, assume a
progressive movement, introduce themselves among those
of the threads nearest to them, then into those which
follow ; and thus, by degrees, all the threads, both of the
warp and the woof, become felted together. The cloth,
after having by this means become shortened in all its di¬
mensions, partakes both of the nature of cloth and of that
of felt; it may be cut without being subject to ravel, and,
on that account, we are not obliged to hem the edges of
the pieces of which cloths are made. Lastly, as the threads
of the warp and those of the woof are no longer so dis¬
tinct and separated from each other, the cloth, which has
acquired a greater degree of thickness, forms a warmer
clothing. Knit worsted also is, by fulling, rendered less
apt to run in case a stitch should happen to drop in it.
The fulling of cloths and other stuffs is performed by
a kind of water-mill, thence called a fulling or scouring-
mill.
These mills, excepting in what relates to the mill¬
stones and hopper, are much the same with corn-mills;
and there are even some which serve indifferently for
either use, corn being ground, and cloths fulled, by the
motion of the same wheel. Hence in some places, par¬
ticularly in France, the fullers are called millers ; as grind¬
ing corn and milling stuffs at the same time.
The principal parts of the fulling-mill are the wheel,
with its trundle, which gives motion to the tree or spin¬
dle, whose teeth communicate it to the pestles or stamp¬
ers, which are hereby raised and made to fall alternately,
according as its teeth catch on or quit a kind of latch in
the middle of each pestle. The pestles and troughs are
of wood; each trough having at least two, sometimes
three pestles, at the discretion of the master, or according
to the force of the stream of water. In those troughs
are laid the cloths, stuffs, &c. intended to be fulled ; then,
letting the current of water fall on the wheel, the pestles
are successively let fall thereon, and by their weight and
velocity stamp and press the stuffs very strongly, which
by this means become thickened and condensed. In the
course of the operation they sometimes make use of urine,
sometimes of fuller’s earth, and sometimes of soap. To
prepare the stuffs to receive the first impressions of the
pestle, they are usually laid in urine, then in fuller’s earth
and water, and lastly in soap dissolved in hot water.
Soap alone would do very well, but this is expensive,
though fuller’s earth, in the way of our dressing, is scarce¬
ly inferior to it; but then it must be well cleared of all
stones and grittinesses, which are apt to make holes in the
stuff.
Method of fulling cloths and woollen stuffs icith soap.
—A coloured cloth of about forty-five ells is to be laid in
the usual manner in the trough of a fulling-mill, without
first soaking it in water, as is commonly practised in many
places. To full this trough of cloth, fifteen pounds of
soap are required, one half of which is to be melted in
two pails of river or spring water made as hot as the hand
can well bear it. This solution is to be poured by degrees
upon the cloth, in proportion as it is laid in the trough ;
and thus it is to be fulled for at least two hours, after
which it is to be taken out and stretched. This done,
the cloth is immediately returned into the same trough,
without any new soap, and there fulled two hours more.
Then taking it out, they wring it well, to express all the
grease and filth. After the second fulling, the remainder
S0^P is dissolved as in the former, and cast four
different times on the cloth, remembering to take out the
cloth every two hours, to stretch it, and undo the plaits
and wrinkles it has acquired in the trough. When it is
FUN
243
perceived to be sufficiently fulled, and brought to the Fulmina-
quality and thickness required, they scour it in hot water, tion
keeping it in the trough till it be quite clean. With re- , N
gard to white cloths, these full more easily and in less time 4 unc^a^
than coloured ones, and thus require only a third part of
the soap.
FULMINATION, in Chemistry. Many chemical com¬
binations are accompanied by a loud report. This is term¬
ed fulmination, or more commonly detonation.
Fulmination, in the Romish canon law, is a sentence
of a bishop, official, or other ecclesiastic appointed by the
pope, by which it is decreed that some bull sent from the
pope shall be executed.
FULTA, a large village of Hindustan, in the province
of Bengal, situated on the east bank of the river Hooghly,
twenty miles south-south-west in a straight line from Cal¬
cutta, but much more by the windings of the river. It
has safe anchorage for ships, where they are protected
from the swell of the sea, and where the anchors hold
fast, the bottom being stiff clay.
F'ULNEK, a town of the circle of Prerau, in the Aus¬
trian province of Moravia. It contains 400 houses,
and 3045 inhabitants, among whom are many cloth ma¬
nufacturers. This was the original spot whence issued
the respectable Protestant sect of the United Brethren,
known in Germany by the name of Hernhutters or Zin-
gendorfers, and in England called Moravians. The es¬
tablishment in Yorkshire of this sect is called by the name
of the place of its origin.
FUMIGATION, in Chemistry, a kind of calcination,
when metals or other hard bodies are corroded or soften¬
ed by receiving certain fumes for that purpose.
FUNAMBULUS, among the Romans, was what we
call a rope-dancer, and the Greeks schcenobates.
There was a funambulus, it seems, who performed at
the time when the Hecyra of Terence was acted; and
the poet complains that the spectacle prevented the peo¬
ple from attending to his comedy. Ita populus studio stu-
pidus in funambulo, animum occuparat.
At Rome the funambuli first appeared under the con¬
sulate of Sulpicius Pseticus and Licinius Stole, who were
the first to introduce scenic representations. It is added,
that they were first exhibited in the island of the Tiber,
and that the censors Messala and Cassius afterwards pro¬
moted them to the theatre.
In the Floralia, or Ludi Florales, held under Galba,
there were funambulatory elephants, as we are informed
by Suetonius. Nero also gave similar entertainments in
honour of his mother Agrippina. Vopiscus relates the
same of the time of Carinus and Numerianus.
FUNCHAL, a sea-port town on the island of Madeira,
of which it is the capital. It is situated in the centre of
a large bay, the extremities of which are formed by two
steep promontories. The city is by no means handsome¬
ly built, the only respectable looking houses being those
belonging to English merchants. The streets are nar¬
row, irregular, and dirty. Funchal contains six parishes,
one cathedral and seven other churches, four convents,
and three hospitals. The trade of Funchal consists almost
entirely in the exportation of the wine which the island
produces, and which is so much sought after in the Bri¬
tish dominions and settlements. It is principally carried
on by English merchants, who are numerous, and consti¬
tute the most opulent portion of the inhabitants. The
Madeira wine is exported nqt only to Britain, but to the
East and West Indies. The bay does not afford secure
anchorage, and landing is also attended with danger, on
account of the heavy surf which breaks upon the shore.
The harbour is defended by several batteries and a castle,
but on the land side the town is defenceless, a great
oversight. Ships, by touching at Funchal, may obtain,
244
FUN
FUN
Function besides water, wine, fruits, and vegetables, very reason-
11. ably; but fresh meat and poultry are high priced, and
Funding to be obtained. The population amounts to
about 15,000. Long. 17. 4. W. Lat. 32. 38. N.
FUNCTION, the act of fulfilling the duties of any em¬
ployment.
Function is a term used in analytics for an algebrai¬
cal expression in any way compounded of a certain letter
or quantity with other quantities or numbers ; and the ex¬
pression is said to be a function of that letter or quantity.
Thus a — 4 a?, or ax + '3 x2, or 2x — a v'a2 — a?2, or xc>
or cr, is each of them a function of the quantity x.
FUND, in general, signifies any sum of money appro¬
priated for a particular purpose. Thus, that part of the
national revenue which is set apart for the payment of
the national debt is called the sinking fund. But, when
we speak of the funds, we generally mean the large sums
which have been lent to government, and constitute the
national debt; and for which the lenders, or their assig¬
nees, receive interest from revenues allotted for that pur¬
pose. The term stock is used in the same sense; and is
also applied to the sums which form the capital of the
Bank of England, the East India and South Sea Compa¬
nies ; the proprietors of which are entitled to a share of
the profits of the respective companies.
FUNDAMENTAL, in general, something that serves
as a base or foundation for another.
Fundamental, in Music. A fundamental sound is that
which forms the lowest note of the chord, and from which
are deduced the harmonical relations of the rest; or which
serves for a key to the tone. The fundamental bass is that
which serves for a foundation to the harmony. A funda¬
mental chord is that whose base is fundamental, and in
which the sounds are ranged in the same order as when
they are generated, according to the experiment so often
repeated by M. d’Alembert in his Preliminary Discourse
and Elements of Music. As this order removes the parts
to an extreme distance one from the other, they must be
approximated by combinations or inversions; but if the
bass remains the same, the chord does not for this reason
cease to bear the name of fundamental. Such an ex- Fundj.
ample is this chord, ut mi sol, included in the interval of a mental
fifth: whereas, in the order of its generation, ut sol mi, it hass
includes a tenth, and even a seventeenth; since the fun- p II
damental ut is not the fifth of sol, but the octave of that
fifth.
Fundamental Bass. This part in music is, according
to Rousseau, and indeed according to all authors who have
proceeded upon M. Rameau’s experiment, in its primary
idea, that bass which is formed by the fundamental notes
of every perfect chord that constitutes the harmony of the
piece ; so that under each chord it causes to be heard, or
understood, the fundamental sound of that particular chord;
that is to say, the sound from whence it is derived by the
rules of harmony. From which we may see that the funda¬
mental bass can have no other contexture than that of a
regular and fundamental succession, without which the pro¬
cedure of the upper parts would be illegitimate.
To understand this well, it is necessary to be known, that,
according to the system of Rameau, which Rousseau has
followed in his Dictionary, every chord, although composed
of several sounds, can only have one which is its funda¬
mental, viz. that which produces this chord, and which is
its bass according to the direct and natural order. Now,
the bass which prevails under all the other parts does not
always express the fundamental sounds of the chords; for
amongst all the sounds which form a chord, the composer
is at liberty to transfer to the bass that which he thinks
preferable ; regard being had to the procedure of that bass,
to the beauty of the melody, and, above all, to the expres¬
sion. In this case, the real fundamental sound, instead of
retaining its natural station, which is in the bass, will either
be transferred to some of the other parts, or perhaps even
entirely suppressed, and such a chord is called an inverted
chord. For farther particulars relative to this subject, see
Music.
FUNDI, in Ancient Geography, a town of Latium, on
the Via Appia, near Cajeta, enjoying all the privileges of
Roman citizens, except the right of suffrage and of magis¬
tracy. Now Fondi, a city of Naples, on the confines of
the pope’s dominions.
*
FUNDING SYSTEM.
Under this head we propose, first, to give an account
of the rise, progress, and modifications of the Sinking
Fund, accompanied with some observations as to the pro¬
bability of its accomplishing the object for which it was
instituted; and, next, briefly to consider the best mode of
providing for our annual expenditure both in war and peace,
—an inquiry necessarily involving the policy of that Sys¬
tem of Funding of which the sinking fund was long
considered as one of the principal recommendations and
props.
I. On the subject of the sinking fund, we shall have
frequent occasion to refer to the statements of Professor
Hamilton, in his very valuable publication entitled An
Inquiry concerning the Rise and Progress, the Redemption,
and Present State of the National Debt of Great Britain.
“ The first plan for the discharge of the national debt,
formed on a regular system, and conducted with a consider¬
able degree of firmness,” says this able writer, “ was that
of the sinking fund, established in 1716. The author of
this plan was the Earl of Stanhope; but as it was adopted
under the administration of Sir Robert Walpole, it is com¬
monly denominated from him. The taxes which had be¬
fore been laid on for limited periods, being rendered per¬
petual, and distributed among the South Sea, Aggregate,
and General Funds, and the produce of these funds being
greater than the charges upon them, the surpluses, to¬
gether with such further surpluses as might afterwards ac¬
crue, were united under the name of the Sinking Fund, be¬
ing appropriated for the discharge of the national debt, and
expressly ordained to be applicable to no other purpose
whatever. The legal interest had been reduced from six
to five per cent, about two years before ; and as that reduc¬
tion was unfavourable to the commercial state of the coun¬
try, government was now able to obtain the same reduction
on the interest of the public debt, and apply the savings
in aid of the sinking fund. In 1727 a further reduction
of the interest of the public debt, from five to four per
cent, was obtained, by which nearly L.400,000 was added
to the sinking fund. And, in the year 1749, the interest
of part of the debt was again reduced to three and a half
per cent, for seven years, and to three per cent, thereaf¬
ter; and, in 1750, the interest of the remainder was re¬
duced to three and a half per cent, for five years, and to
three per cent, thereafter, by which a further saving of
about L.600,000 was added to the sinking fund.”
This sinking fund was for some time regularly applied
to the discharge of debt. The sums applied from 1716 to
1728 amounted to L.6,648,000, being nearly equal to the
additional debt contracted in that time. From 1728 to
1733, L.5,000,000 more were paid. The interest of seve-
Fun:ig
Svstm.
FUNDING SYSTEM.
ral loans, contracted between 1727 and 1732, was charged
upon surplus duties, which, according to the original plan,
ought to have been appropriated to the sinking fund.
“ Soon after, the principle of preserving the sinking fund
inviolable was abandoned. In 1733, L.500,000 was taken
from that fund, and applied to the services of the year.”
“ In 1734, L.1,200,000 was taken from the sinking fund
for current services; and in 1735 it was anticipated and
mortgaged.” The produce of the sinking fund, at its com¬
mencement in 1717, was L.323,437. In 1776, it was at
its highest amount, being then L.3,166,517; in 1780, it
had sunk to L.2,403,017.
“ The sinking fund would have risen higher, had it not
been depressed, especially in the latter period, by various
encroachments. It was charged with the interest of seve¬
ral loans, for which no provision was made; and, in 1772,
it was charged with an annuity of L.100,000, granted in
addition to the civil list. During the three wars which
were waged while it subsisted, the whole of its produce
was applied to the expense of the war; and even in time
of peace, large sums were abstracted from it for current
services. According to Dr Price, the amount of public
debt paid off by the sinking fund, since its first alienation
in 1733, was only three millions, paid off in 1736 and 1737 ;
three millions in the peace between 1748 and 1756; two
millions and a half in the peace between 1763 and 1775 ;
in all, eight millions and a half.
“ The additional debt discharged during these periods
of peace was effected, not by the sinking fund, but from
other sources.
“ 0° the whole, this fund did little in time of peace,
and nothing in time of war, to the discharge of the national
debt. The purpose of its inviolable application was aban¬
doned, and the hopes entertained of its powerful efficacy
entirely disappointed. At this time, the nation had no
other free revenue, except the land and malt-tax granted
annually; and as the land-tax during peace was then grant¬
ed at a low rate, their produce was inadequate to the ex¬
pense of a peace establishment, on the most moderate
scale. Ihis gave occasion to encroachments on the sink¬
ing fund. Had the land-tax been always continued at 4s.
in the pound, it would have gone far to keep the sinking-
fund, during peace, inviolate.”
This fund terminated in 1786, when Mr Pitt’s sinking
fund was established.
Io constitute this new fund, one million per annum was
appropriated to it by parliament, the capital stock of the
nauonal debt then amounting to L.238,231,248.
Ihis million was to be allowed to accumulate at com¬
pound interest, by the addition of the dividends on the
stock which it purchased, till it amounted to four millions,
trom which time it was not further to increase. The four
millions were then annually to be invested in the public
funds as before, but the dividends arising from the stock
purchased were no longer to be added to the sinking fund
or the purpose of being invested in stock; they were to
be applied to the diminution of taxes, or to any other ob¬
ject that parliament might direct.
A further addition to this fund was proposed by Mr Pitt,
fr readily adopted, in 1792, consisting of a grant of
E.4.UU,000 arising from the surplus of the revenue, and a
further annual grant of L.200,000; but it was expressly
stipulated that no relief from taxation should be given to
e public, as far as this fund was concerned, till the ori-
gina! million, with its accumulations, amounted to four
I'lnn nnn made to the fund, by the grant of
• O’OOO, a»d of L.200,000 per annum, together with the
n erest on the stock these sums might purchase, were not
m be taken or considered as forming any part of the four
minions. At the same time (in 1792), a sinking fund of
ew c laracter was constituted. It was enacted, that be¬
sides a provision for the interest of any loan which should
thenceforward be contracted, taxes should also be imposed
for a one per cent, sinking fund on the capital stock created
by it, which should be exclusively employed in the liqui¬
dation of such particular loan; and that no relief should
be afforded to the public from the taxes which constituted
the one per cent, sinking fund, until a sum of capital stock,
equal in amount to that created by the loan, had been pur¬
chased by it. That being accomplished, both the interest
and sinking fund were to be applicable to the public ser¬
vice. It was calculated, that, under the most unfavour¬
able circumstances, each loan would be redeemed in forty-
five years from the period of contracting for it. If made
in the three per cent., and the price of that stock should
continue uniformly at 60, the redemption would be effect¬
ed in twentjr-nine years.
In the years 1798, 1799, and 1800, a deviation was made
from Mi 1 itt s plan of providing a sinking fund of one per
cent, on the capital stock created by every loan ; for the
loans of those years had no sinking fund attached to them.
The interest was charged on the war-taxes; and, in lieu
of a one per cent, sinking fund, it was provided that the
war-taxes should continue during peace, to be then em¬
ployed in their redemption, till they were all redeemed.
In 1802, Lord Sidmouth, then Mr Addington, was chan¬
cellor of the exchequer. He being desirous of liberating
the war-taxes from the charges with which they were en^
cumbered, proposed to raise new annual permanent taxes
for the interest of the loans of which we have just spoken,
as well as for that which he was under the necessity of
raising for the service of the year 1802; but he wished to
avoid loading the public with additional taxes for a one
per cent, sinking fund on the capitals created by those loans,
and which capitals together amounted to L.86,796,375.
lo reconcile the stockholder to this arrangement, he pro¬
posed to rescind the provision which limited the fund of
1786 to four millions, and to consolidate the old and the
new sinking funds, i. e. that which arose from the original
million per annum, with the addition made to it of L.200,000
per annum subsequently granted, and tnat which arose from
the one per cent, on the capital of every loan that had been
contracted since 1792. These combined funds he pro¬
posed should from that time be applied to the redemption
of the whole debt without distinction ; that the dividends
arising from the stock purchased by the commissioners for
the reduction of the national debt should be applied in the
same manner; and that this arrangement should not be
interfered with till the redemption of the whole debt was
effected.
In February 1803 the debt amounted to L.480,572,470,
and the produce of the joint sinking fund to L.6,311,626!
In 1786 the proportion of the sinking fund to the debt was"
as l to 238, in 1792 as 1 to 160, and in 1803 as 1 to 77.
Ihis was the first deviation of importance from Mr Pitt’s
plan ; and this alteration made by Lord Sidmouth was not,
perhaps, on the whole, injurious to the stockholder. He
lost, indeed, the immediate advantage of an additional sink¬
ing fund of L.867,963, the amount of one per cent, on the
capitals created by the loans of 1798, 1799, 1800, and
1802 ; “ but in lieu,” says Mr Huskisson, “ of this sinking
fund, a reversionary sinking fund was created, to com¬
mence, indeed, in about twelve to fifteen years from that
time, but to be of such efficacy when it should commence,
and to be so greatly accelerated by subsequent additions
in its progress, as, under the most unfavourable supposition,
to be certain of reducing the whole of this debt within for-
ty-five years. Ihis reversionary sinking fund was to arise in
the following manner; by continuing the old sinking fund
at compound in terest, after it should have reached its maxi¬
mum ot four millions; and by continuing also the new sink¬
ing iund or aggregate of the one per cents of the loans
245
F unding
System.
246
Funding since 1792, after such one per cents should have liqui-
System. dated the several loans in respect of which they are ori-
ginally issued. There is nothing., therefore, in the act
of 1802 which is a departure from the spirit of the act
of 1792.”1
The next alteration that was proposed to be made in
the sinking fund was in 1807, by Lord Henry Petty, then
chancellor of the exchequer. His plan was extremely
complicated, and had for its object, that which ministers
are too much disposed at all times to view with compla¬
cency, namely, to lessen the burden of taxation at the
present, with the certainty of aggravating its pressure at
a future day.
It was estimated by Lord Henry Petty, that the ex¬
penses of the country during war would exceed its per¬
manent annual revenue by thirty-two millions. For twenty-
one millions of this deficiency, provision was made by the
war-taxes; the property-tax amounting to L.11,500,000,
and the other war-taxes to L.9,500,000. The object then
was to provide eleven millions per annum. If this sum
had been raised by a loan in the three per cents, when their
price was 60, provision must have been made by taxes for
the interest and sinking fund, so that each year we should
have required additional taxes to the amount of L.733,333.
But government wished to raise the money without impos¬
ing these additional taxes, or by the imposition of as few
as circumstances would permit. For this purpose they
proposed to raise the money required, by loan, in the usual
way, but to provide, out of the war-taxes, for the interest
and redemption of the stock created. They proposed
to increase the sinking fund of every such loan, by taking
from the war-taxes ten per cent, on its amount for interest
and sinking fund, so that if the interest and management
absorbed only five per cent., the sinking fund would also
amount to five per cent.; if the interest amounted to four
per cent., the sinking fund would be six per cent. The
sums proposed to be borrowed in this manner were twelve
millions for the first three years, fourteen millions for the
fourth, and sixteen millions for each succeeding year;
making together, in fourteen years, 210 millions, for which,
at the rate of ten per cent., the whole of the war-taxes
would be mortgaged. It was calculated, that, by the ope¬
ration of the sinking fund, each loan would be paid off in
fourteen years from the time of contracting for it; and,
therefore, the L.1,200,000 set apart for the interest and
sinking fund of the first loan would be liberated and avail¬
able for the loan of the fifteenth year. At the end of fif¬
teen years a like sum would be set free, and so on each
succeeding year; and thus loans might be continued, on
this system, without any limitation of time.
But these successive sums could not be withdrawn from
the war-taxes, for interest and sinking fund on loans,
and be at the same time applied to expenditure ; and,
therefore, the deficiency of eleven millions, for which pro¬
vision was to be made, would, from year to year, increase
as the war-taxes became absorbed; and at the end of four¬
teen years, when the whole twenty-one millions of the
war-taxes would be absorbed, instead of eleven millions,
the deficiency would be thirty-two millions.
To provide for this growing deficiency, it was proposed to
raise supplementary loans, increasing in amount from year
to year; and for the interest and sinking fund on such loans,
provision wras to be made in the usual way by annual per¬
manent taxes; on these loans the sinking fund was not to
be more than one per cent.
By the plan proposed, in fifteen years from its com¬
mencement, on the supposition of the war continuing so
long, the regular loan would have been twelve millions,
and the supplementary loan twenty millions.
SYSTEM.
If the expenses of the war should have exceeded the es- Funiiil]1,
timate then made, provision for such excess was to have System;
been made by other means.
The ministry who proposed this plan not continuing
in office, it was acted upon only for one year. “ In com¬
paring the merit of different systems,’ says Dr Hamil¬
ton, “ the only points necessary to be attended to are the
amount of the loans contracted—the part of these loans
redeemed—the interest incurred—and the sums raised by
taxes. The arrangements of the loan under different
branches, and the appropriation of particular funds for
payment of their respective interests, are matters of offi¬
cial regulation ; and the state of the public finance is
neither the better nor the worse, whether they be con¬
ducted one way or other. A complicated system may
perplex and mislead, but it can never ameliorate.” Ac¬
cordingly, Dr Hamilton has shown, that the whole amount
of taxes that would have been paid in twenty years, for
an annual loan of eleven millions on the old plan of a sink¬
ing fund of one per cent., would be 154 millions. On Lord
Henry Petty’s plan, these taxes would, in the same time,
have been ninety-three millions,—a difference in favour of
Lord Henry Petty’s plan, of fifty-one millions ; but to ob¬
tain this exemption we should have been encumbered with
an additional debt of L.l 19,489,788 of money capital, which,
if raised in a three per cent, stock at 60, would be equal to a
nominal capital of L.199,149,646.
The sinking fund was established with a view to dimi¬
nish the national debt during peace, and to prevent its
rapid increase during wrar. The only wise and good ob¬
ject of war-taxes is also to prevent the accumulation of
debt. A sinking fund and war-taxes are only useful while
they are strictly applied to the objects for which they are
raised ; they become instruments of mischief and delusion
when they are made use of for the purpose of providing
the interest on a new debt.
In 1809, Mr Perceval, who was then chancellor of the
exchequer, mortgaged L.l,040,000 of the war-taxes for
the interest and sinking fund of the stock he funded in
that year.
By taking more than a million from the war-taxes, not
for the annual expenditure, but for the interest of a loan,
Mr Perceval rendered it necessary to add one million to
the loan of the next and all following years; so that the
real effect of this measure differed in no respect from one
which should have taken the same sum annually from the
sinking fund.
In 1813, the next and most important alteration was
made in the sinking fund. Mr Vansittart was then chan¬
cellor of the exchequer. It has been already observed,
that the national debt amounted to L.238,231,248 in 1786,
when Mr Pitt established his sinking fund of one million.
By the act of 1786, as soon as the sum of one million
amounted, by the aid of the dividends on the stock which
was to be purchased by it, to four millions, its accumula¬
tion was to cease, and the dividends on the stock pur¬
chased were to be available for the public service. If the
three per cents were at sixty when this million had accu¬
mulated to four millions, the public would have had a
disposable fund of L.20,000 per annum ; if at eighty, of
L.15,000 per annum; and no other relief was to be given
to the public till the four millions had purchased the whole
sum of 238 millions, the then amount of the debt. In
1792, Mr Pitt added L.200,000 per annum to the sinking
fund, and accompanied it by the following observations:
“ When the sum of four millions was originally fixed as
the limit for the sinking fund, it was not in contemplation
to issue more annually from the surplus revenue than one
million ; consequently, the fund would not rise to four
FUNDING
* Mr Huskisson’s Speech on the State of the Finance and Sinking Fund, 25th March 1813.
pi!
StO(
FUNDING SYSTEM.
llW-] millions till a proportion of debt was paid off, the interest
stem of which, together with the annuities which might fall in in
the interval, should amount to three millions. But as, on
the present supposition, additional sums beyond the origi¬
nal million are to be annually issued from the revenue,
and applied to the aid of the sinking fund, the conse¬
quence would be, that if that fund, with these additions
carried to it, were still to be limited to four millions, it
would reach that amount, and cease to accumulate, before
as great a portion of the debt is reduced as was originally
in contemplation.” “ In order to avoid this consequence,
which would, as far as it went, be a relaxation in our sys¬
tem, I should propose, that whatever may be the addition¬
al annual sums applied to the reduction of debt, the fund
should not cease to accumulate till the interest of the ca¬
pital discharged, and the amount of the expired annuities,
should, together with the annual million only, and exclu¬
sive of any additional sums, amount to four millions.”1
It will be recollected, that in 1792 a provision was made
for attaching a sinking fund of one per cent, to each loan
separately, which was to be exclusively employed in the
discharge of the debt contracted by,that loan ; but no part
of these one per cents were to be employed in the reduc¬
tion of the original debt of L.238,000,000. The act of
1802 consolidated all these sinking funds, and the public
were not to be exempted from the payment of the sinking
fund itself, nor of the dividends on the stock to be pur¬
chased by the commissioners, till the whole debt existing
in 1802 was paid off. Mr Vansittart proposed to repeal
the act of 1802, and to restore the spirit of Mr Pitt’s act of
1792. He acknowledged that it would be a breach of
faith to the national creditor, if the fair construction of
that act, the act of 1792, were not adhered to. It wras, in
Mr Vansittart’s opinion, no breach of faith to do aw ay the
conditions^ of the act of 1802. Supposing, how'ever, that
the act of 1802 had been really more favourable to the
stockholder than that of 1792, it is not easy to comprehend
by what arguments it can be proved not to be a breach of
laith to repeal the one and enact the other. Were not all the
loans from 1802 to 1813 negotiated on the faith of that act ?
Were not all bargains made between the buyer and seller
of stock made on the same understanding ? Government
had no more right to repeal the act of 1802, and substitute
another less favourable to the stockholder, and acknow¬
ledged to be so by the minister himself, than it would have
liad to get rid of the sinking fund altogether. But what
we are at present to inquire into is, whether Mr Vansittart
aid as he professed to do ? Did he restore the stockholder
0 a“ ^le advantages of the act of 1792 ? In the first place,
t was declared by the new act, that as the sinking fund
consolidated in 1802, had redeemed L.238,350,143.18s. Id.
exceeding the amount of the debt in 1786 by L.l 18,895.
12s. 10id., a sum of capital stock equal to the total capital
^ the P^lic debt existing on the 5th January 1786, viz.
^.-38,231,248. 5s. 2|d. had been satisfied and discharged;
247
“ and that in like manner an amount of public debt equal
to the capital and charge of every loan contracted since
the said 5th January 1786, shall successively, and in its
proper order, be deemed and declared to be wholly satis¬
fied and discharged, when and as soon as a further amount
of capital stock, not less than the capital of such loan, and
producing an interest equal to the dividends thereupon,
shall be so redeemed or transferred.”
It was also resolved, “ that after such declaration as
aforesaid, the capital stock purchased by the commissioners
for the reduction of the national debt shall from time to
time be cancelled; at such times, and in such proportions,
as shall be directed by any act of parliament to be passed
for such purpose, in order to make provision for the charge
of any loan or loans thereafter to be contracted.”
It was further resolved, that in order to carry into effect
the provisions of the acts of the 32d and 42d of the king,
for redeeming every part of the national debt within the
period of forty-five years from the time of its creation,
it is expedient that in future, whenever the amount of
the sum to be raised by loan, or by any other addition to
the public funded debt, shall in any year exceed the sum
estimated to be applicable in the same year to the reduc¬
tion of the public debt, an annual sum equal to one half of
the interest of the excess of the said loan, or other addi¬
tion, beyond the sum so estimated to be applicable, shall
be set apart out of the monies composing the consolidated
fund of Great Britain, and shall be issued at the receipt of
the exchequer to the governor and company of the Bank
of England, to be by them placed to the account of the
commissioners for the reduction of the national debt;2
and upon the remainder of such loan or other addition, the
annual sum of one per cent, on the capital thereof, accord¬
ing to the provisions of the said act.
A provision was also made, for the first time, for one per
cent, sinking fund on the unfunded debt then existing, or
which might thereafter be contracted.
In 1802, it has been already observed, it was deemed
expedient that no provision should be made for a sinking
fund of one per cent, on a capital of L.86,796,300 ; and as
it was considered by the proposer of the new regulation in
1813, that he was reverting to the principle of Mr Pitt’s
act of 1792, he provided that L.867,963 should be added
to the sinking fund for the one per cent, on the capital stock
created, and which wras omitted to be provided for in 1802.3
This was the substance of Mr Vansittart’s new plan, and
which, he contended, was not injurious to the stockholder,
as it strictly conformed to the spirit of Mr Pitt’s act of 1792.
1^, By Mr Pitt’s act, no relief could be afforded to the
public from the burdens of taxation, till the stock redeem¬
ed by the original sinking fund of one million amounted to
such a sum as that the dividends on the capital stock re¬
deemed should amount to three millions, making the whole
sinking fund four millions; from thenceforth the four mil¬
lions were to discharge debt as before, but the interest of
Funding
System.
2 Pit.l,s sPeeeh, 17th February 1792.
inkiiKT f„n?nf h! V118 clause was t0.Sive a sinking fund of one and a half instead of one per cent, on such excess of loan above the
3 Sir Vmsf. ! r °a? T0 ra:Srlln a,three Per ce!lt- ^ock, and of two and a half per cent, if raised in a five per cent, stock
On lift S1.ttart.b Plan lias added to the sinking fund one per cent, on a capital of L.8G,790,300 L.8G7 930
i> . • "Ax mdh°ns of exchequer bills outstanding 5th January 1818, one per cent  r./jV' ’
l haladdal VTteshJhffild™ Uie inlereSt’ °f 0116 per Ceilt- 011 a part °f the capital created"^ loans,
793,343
From stock cancelled and available for public serviceT.0^!.3^.’”.'.'.’.'.'.'^
In Hi a an nr-t . . . Total deduction from sinking fund on 5th January 1819 15 411 CtR
lock the February !819 the commissioners certified that there had been transferred to them L.378'519 9G9"5s"W canital
Seel mTs TJS™3 ^V’448’564- 18s- 6^’ and that the d*bt -eated P™ to and by the 37th Gea Ifllf'amounted^to
s. 9id., w it J a yearly" interest ofLJsSl jr^d n’446’736- 3s- ^ ; and consequently the excess redeemed was L.29,835,772.
248
FUNDING SYSTEM.
Funding debt so discharged was to be available for the public ser-
System, vice, and the public was not to be relieved from the charge
on the remainder of the debt of 238 millions till the four
millions at simple interest, and the further sinking fund
which might arise from the falling in of terminable annui¬
ties, together with the additional sum of L.200,000 per
annum, voted in 1792, with their accumulations, had re¬
deemed the capital of 238 millions. The sinking fund
arising from the one per cent, on each loan was directed,
by the act of 1792, to be applied to each separate loan for
which it was raised. Mr Yansittart thought himself justi¬
fied, and free from any breach of faith to the stockholder,
in taking for the public service, not the interest of four
millions, which is all that Mr Pitt’s bill would allow him to
take, but the interest on 238 millions ; and on what plea ?
because the whole consolidated sinking funds, comprising
the one per cent, on every loan raised since 1793, had pur¬
chased 238 millions of stock. On Mr Pitt’s plan he might
have taken L.20,000 per annum from the sinking fund ; on
his own construction of that act, he took from it more than
seven millions per annum.
‘idly, Mr Vansittart acknowledged that the stockholder,
in 1802, was deprived of the advantage of one per cent,
sinking fund on a capital of I..86,796,300 ; and therefore,
to be very just, he gives in 1813 one per cent, on that ca¬
pital ; but should he not have added the accumulation
which would have been made in the eleven years from
1802 to 1813, on L.867,963, at compound interest, and
which would have given a further addition to the sinking
fund of more than L.360,000 per annum ?
2>dly, On Mr Pitt’s plan, every loan was to be redeemed
by its sinking fund, under the most unfavourable circum¬
stances, in forty-five years. If the loan was raised in a
three per cent, fund at sixty, and the stock was uniformly
to continue at that price, a one per cent, sinking fund
would redeem the loan to which it was attached in twenty-
nine years; but then no relief would be given to the pub¬
lic from taxation till the end of twenty-nine years ; and if
there had been loans of ten millions every year for that pe¬
riod, when the first loan wras paid off, the second would re¬
quire only one year for its final liquidation; the third two
years, and so on. On Mr Vansittart’s plan, under the same
circumstances, the sinking fund of each and every loan was
to be applied, in the first instance, to the redemption of the
first loan ; and when that was redeemed and cancelled, the
whole of the sinking funds were to be applied to the pay¬
ment of the second, and so on successively. The first loan
of ten millions would be cancelled in less than thirteen
years, the second in less than six years after the first, the
third in a less time, and so on. At the end of the thir¬
teenth year, the public would be relieved from the interest
on the first loan, or, which is the same thing, from the ne¬
cessity of finding fresh taxes for a new loan at the end of
thirteen years, for two new loans at the end of nineteen
years; but what would be the state of its debt at either of
these periods, or at the end of twenty-nine years ? Could
this advantage be obtained without a corresponding disad¬
vantage ? No ; the excess of debt on Mr Vansittart’s plan
would be exactly equal to these various sums, thus prema¬
turely released by cancelled stock, accumulated at com¬
pound interest. How could it be otherwise ? Is it pos¬
sible that we could obtain a present relief from the charge
of debt without either directly or indirectly borrowing the
fund necessary to provide that relief at compound interest ?
“ By this means,” says Mr Yansittart, “ the loan first con¬
tracted would be discharged at an earlier period, and the
funds charged with the payment of its interest would be¬
come applicable to the public service. Thus, in the event
of a long war, a considerable resource might accrue du¬
ring the course of the war itself, as every successive loan
would contribute to accelerate the redemption of those
previously existing; and the total amount of charge to be Fuia,
borne by the public, in respect of the public debt, would Syst^j
be reduced to a narrower compass than in the other mode, ^vn,
in which a greater number of loans would be co-existing.
At the same time the ultimate discharge of the whole debt
would be rather accelerated than retarded.”—“ It is now
only necessary to declare that an amount of stock equal to
the whole of the debt existing in 1786 has been redeemed;
and that, in like manner, whenever an amount of stock
equal to the capital and charge of any loan raised since
1792 shall be redeemed, in its proper order of succession,
such loan shall be deemed and taken to be redeemed and
satisfied. Every part of the system will then fall at once
into its proper place ; and we shall proceed with the future
redemption with all the advantages which would have been
derived from the original adoption of the mode of succes¬
sive instead of simultaneous redemption. Instead of wait¬
ing till the purchase of the whole of the debt consolidated
in 1802 shall be completed, that part of it which existed
previously to 1792 will be considered as already redeemed,
and the subsequent loans will follow in succession, when¬
ever equal portions of stock shall have been purchased. It
is satisfactory to observe, that by a gradual and equal pro¬
gress, we shall have the power of effecting the complete
repayment of the debt more speedily than by the present
course.” Is it possible that Mr Vansittart could so deceive
himself as to believe that, by taking five millions from the
sinking fund, which would not have been taken by the pro¬
visions of the act of 1802, which would not have been taken
by the act of 1792, and other sums successively, in shorter
times than could have been effected by the provisions of
those two acts, he would be enabled to complete the re¬
payment of the debt more speedily ? Is it possible that he
could believe that, by diminishing the sinking fund, that
is, the amount of revenue as compared with expenditure,
he would effect the payment of our debt more speedily?
It is impossible to believe this. How then are his words
to be accounted for ? In one way he might have a mean¬
ing. It might be this,—I know we shall be more in debt
in ten, twenty, and thirty years, on my plan, than we
should have been on that of Lord Sidmouth or on that of
Mr Pitt; but we shall have effected a greater payment in
that time of the stock now existing, as the sinking funds
attached to future loans will be employed in paying our
present debt. On Mr Pitt’s plan, those sinking funds would
be used for the payment of the new debt to be created;
that is to say, of the loans to which they are respectively
attached. We shall be more in debt at every subsequent
period, it is true; but as our debt may be divided into old
stock and new stock, I am correct when I say that we shall
have the power of completing the repayment of the debt,
meaning by the debt the stock now existing, sooner than
by the present course.
This plan of Mr Vansittart was opposed with great abi¬
lity, both by Mr Huskisson and Mr Tierney. The former
gentleman said, “ The very foundation of the assumption
that the old debt has been paid off, is laid in the circum¬
stance of our having incurred a new debt of a much larger
amount; and even allowing that assumption, Mr Vansit¬
tart would not have been able to erect his present scheme
upon it, if the credit of the country had not been, for the
last twenty years, materially impaired by the pressure of
that new debt. On the one hand, had the sinking fund
been operating at three per cent, during that period, be
would not have touched it, even under his own construc¬
tion of the act of 1792. On the other hand, had the price
of the stocks been still lower than it has been, he would
have taken from that sinking fund still more largely than
he is now, according to his own rule, enabled to take.
This then is the new doctrine of the sinking fund;—that,
having been originally established ‘ to prevent the incon-
i®’
*
FUNDING SYSTEM.
249
ifunc.g venient and dangerous accumulation of debt hereafter’ (to
tystuu borrow the very words of the act), and for the support and
^v-'/ improvement of public credit, it is in the accumulation of
new debt that Mr Vansittart found at once the means and
the pretence for invading that sinking fund; and the de¬
gree of depression of public credit was, with him, the mea¬
sure of the extent to which that invasion might be carried.
And this is the system of which it is gravely predicated,
that it is no departure from the letter, and no violation of
the spirit of the act of 1792; and of which we are desired
seriously to believe, that it is only the following up and im¬
proving upon the original measure of Mr Pitt!—of which
measure the clear and governing intention was, that every
future loan should, from the moment of its creation, carry
with it the seeds of its destruction; and that the course
of its reimbursement should that moment be placed beyond
the discretion and control of parliament.” (Mr Huskis-
son’s Speech, 25th March 1813.)
This is the last alteration that has taken place in the
machinery of the sinking fund. Inroads more fatal than
this which we have just recorded have been made on the
fund itself; but they have been made silently and indirect¬
ly, while the machinery has been left unaltered.
It has been shown by Dr Hamilton, that no fund can be
efficient for the reduction of debt but such as arises from
an excess of revenue above expenditure.
Suppose a country at peace, and its expenmture, includ¬
ing the interest of its debt, to be forty millions, its revenue
to be forty-one millions, it would possess one million of
sinking fund. This million would accumulate at compound
interest; for stock would be purchased with it in the mar¬
ket, and placed in the names of the commissioners for pay¬
ing oft the debt. These commissioners would be entitled
to the dividends before I’eceived by private stockholders,
which would be added to the capital of the sinking fund.
Ihe fund thus increased would make additional purchases
the following year, and would be entitled to a larger amount
of dividends, and thus would go on accumulating, till in
time the whole debt would be discharged.
Suppose such a country to increase its expenditure one
million, without adding to its taxes, and to keep up the ma¬
chinery of the sinking fund; it is evident that it would
make no progress in the reduction of its debt; for though
it would accumulate a fund in the same manner as before
in the hands of the commissioners, it would, by means of
adding to its funded or unfunded debt, and by constantly
borrowing, in the same way, the sum necessary to pay the
interest on such loans, accumulate its million of debt an¬
nually at compound interest, in the same manner as it ac¬
cumulated its million annually of sinking fund.
But suppose that it continued its operations of investing
the sinking hind in the purchase of stock, and made a loan
lor the million which it was deficient in its expenditure,
and that, in order to defray the interest and sinking fund of
such loan, it imposed new taxes on the people to the amount
of L.60,000, the real and efficient sinking fund would, in
that case, be L.60,000 per annum, and no more ; for there
would be L. 1,060,000, and no more, to invest in the pur¬
chase of stock, while one million was raised by the sale of
stock, or, in other words, the revenue would exceed the
expenditure by L.60,000.
Suppose a war to take place, and the expenditure to be
increased to sixty millions, while its revenue continued, as
before, forty-one millions, still keeping on the operation of
the commissioners with respect to the investment of one
million. If it were to raise war-taxes for the payment of
the twenty millions additional expense, the million of sink¬
ing fund would operate to the reduction of the national
debt at compound interest as it did before. If it raised
twenty millions by loan in the stocks or in exchequer bills,
and did not provide for the interest by new taxes, but ob¬
tained it by an addition to the loan of the following year,
it would be accumulating a debt of twenty millions at com¬
pound interest; and while the war lasted, and the same
expenditure continued, it would not only be accumulating
a debt of twenty millions at compound interest, but a debt
ot twenty millions per annum; and consequently the real
increase of its debt, after allowing for the operation of the
million of sinking fund, would be at the rate of nineteen
millions per annum at compound interest. But if it pro¬
vided by new taxes five per cent, interest for this annual
loan of twenty millions, it would on the one hand simply
increase the debt twenty millions per annum ; on the other
it would diminish it by one million per annum, with its
compound interest. If we suppose that, in addition to the
five per cent, interest, it raised also by annual taxes
L.200,000 per annum as a sinking fund for each loan of
twenty millions, it would, the first year of the war, add
L.200,000 to the sinking fund, the second year L.400,000,
the third year L.600,000, and so on, L.200,000 for every
loan of twenty millions. Every year it would add, by
means of the additional taxes, to its annual revenue, with¬
out increasing its expenditure. Every year, too, that part
of this revenue which was devoted to the purpose of pur¬
chasing debt, would increase by the amount of the divi¬
dends on the stock purchased ; and thus would its revenue
still further increase, till at last the revenue would overtake
the expenditure, and then once again it would have an ef¬
ficient sinking fund for the reduction of debt.
It is evident that the result of these operations would be
the same, the rate of interest being supposed to be always
at five per cent, or any other rate, if, during the excess of
expenditure above revenue, the operation of the commis¬
sioners in the purchase of stock were to cease. The real
increase of the national debt must depend upon the excess
of expenditure above revenue, and that would be noways
altered by a different arrangement. Suppose that, instead
of raising twenty millions the first year, and paying off one
million, only nineteen millions had been raised by loan,
and the same taxes had been raised, namely, L. 1,200,000.
As five per cent, would be paid on nineteen millions only,
instead of on twenty millions, or L.950,000 for interest in¬
stead of one million, there would remain, in addition to
the original million, L.250,000 towards the loan of the fol¬
lowing year, consequently the loan of the second year would
be only for L.18,750,000; but as L.1,200,000 would be
again raised by additional taxes, or L.2,400,000 in the
whole the second year, besides the original million, there
would be a surplus, after paying the interest of both loans,
of L. 1,512,500, and therefore the loan of the third yearwould
be for L.18,487,500. The progress during five years is
shown in the following table:—
Funding
System.
1st year.
2d year..
3d year..
4th year.
5th year.
Loan each Year.
L.19,000,000
18,750,000
18,487,500
18,211,875
17,922,469
Amount of Loans.
L.19,000,000
37,750,000
56,237,500
74,449,375
92,371,844
Amount of
Interest.
L.950,000
1,887,500
2,811,875
3,722,469
4,618,592
Amount of
Taxes.
L.2,200,000
3,400,000
4,600,000
5,800,000
7,000,000
Surplus.
L.1,250,000
1,512,500
1,788,125
2,077,531
2,381,408
2 i
VOL. X.
250
Funding
System.
’ , '
FUNDING SYSTEM.
If, instead of thus diminishing the loan each year, the
same amount of taxes precisely had been raised, and the
sinking fund had been applied in the usual manner, the
amount of debt would have been exactly the same at any
one of these periods. In the third column of the above
table it will be seen, that in the fifth year the debt had in¬
creased to L.92,371,844. On the supposition that L.200,000 .
per annum had each year been added to the sinking fund, System,
and invested in stock by the commissioners, the amount Wv
qP ^jQj^dGGmed debt would have been the same sum of
L.92,371,844, as will be seen by the last column of the
following table :—
1st year.
2d year..
3d year..
4th year.
5th year.
Loan each Year.
L.20,000,000
20,000,000
20,000,000
20,000,000
20,000,000
Amount of Loans.
L.20,000,000
40,000,000
60,000,000
80,000,000
100,000,000
Debt redeemed
each Year.
L.1,000,000
1,250,000
1,512,500
1,788,125
2,077,531
Amount Debt
Redeemed.
L.1,000,000
2,250,000
3,762,500
5,550,625
7,628,156
Interest on
Debt Redeemed.
L.50,000
112,500
188,125
277,531
381,408
Debt remaining
Unredeemed.
L.19,000,000
37,750,000
56,237,500
74,449,375
92,371,844
A full consideration of this subject in all its details has
led Dr Hamilton to the conclusion that this first mode of
raising the supplies during war, viz. by diminishing the
amount of the annual loans, and stopping the purchases of
the commissioners in the market, would be more econo¬
mical, and that it ought therefore to be adopted. In the
first place, all the expenses of agency would be saved ; in
the second, the premium usually obtained by the contrac¬
tor for the loan would be saved on that part of it which is
repurchased by the commissioners in the open market. It
is true that the stocks may fall as well as rise between the
time of contracting for the loan and the time of the pur¬
chases made by the commissioners ; and therefore, in some
cases, the public may gain by the present arrangement;
but as these chances are equal, and a certain advantage is
given to the loan contractor to induce him to advance his
money, independently of all contingency of future price,
the public now give this advantage on the larger sum in¬
stead of on the smaller. On an average of years, this can¬
not fail to amount to a very considerable sum. But both
these objections would be obviated, if the clause in the ori¬
ginal sinking fund bill, authorizing the commissioners to
subscribe to any loan for the public service, to the amount
of the annual fund which they have to invest, were uni¬
formly complied with. This is the mode which was for
several years strongly urged by Mr Grenfell; and it is far
preferable to that which Dr Hamilton recommends. Dr
Hamilton and Mr Grenfell both agree, that in time of war,
when the expenditure exceeds the revenue, and when there¬
fore we are annually increasing our debt, it is a useless ope¬
ration to buy a comparatively small quantity of stock in the
market, while we are at the same time under the neces¬
sity of making large sales: but Dr Hamilton would not
keep the sinking fund as a separate fund; Mr Grenfell
would, and would have it increased with our debt by some
known and fixed rules. We agree with Mr Grenfell. It
a loan of twenty millions is to be raised annually, while
there is in the hands of the commissioners ten millions
which they annually receive, the obvious and simple ope¬
ration should be really to raise only ten millions by loan;
but there is a convenience in calling it twenty millions,
and allowing the commissioners to subscribe ten millions.
All the objections of Dr Hamilton are by these means re¬
moved ; there will be no expense for agency; there will
be no loss on account of any difference of price at which
the public sell and buy. By calling the loan twenty mil¬
lions, the public will be induced more easily to bear the
taxes which are necessary for the interest and sinking fund
of twenty millions. Call the loan only ten millions, abolish
during the war the very name of the sinking fund in all
your public accounts, and it would be difficult to show to
the people the expediency of providing L.1,200,000 per
annum by additional taxation for the interest of a loan of
ten millions. The sinking fund is therefore useful as an
engine of taxation; and if the country could depend on
ministers that it would be faithfully devoted to the pur¬
poses for which it was established, namely, to afford at the
termination of war a clear additional surplus revenue be¬
yond expenditure, in proportion to the addition made to
the debt, it would be wise and expedient to keep it as a
separate fund, subject to fixed rules and regulations.
We shall presently inquire whether there can be any
such dependence ; and therefore whether the sinking fund
is not an instrument of mischief and delusion, and really
tending rather to increase our debt and burdens than to
diminish them.
It is objected both to Dr Hamilton’s and Mr Grenfell’s
projects, that the disadvantages which they mention are
trifling in degree, and are more than compensated by the
steadiness which is given to the market by the daily pur¬
chases of the commissioners ; that the money which those
purchases throw into the market is a resource on which
bankers and others, who may suddenly want money, with
certainty rely.
Those who make this objection forget, that if, by the
adoption of this plan, a daily purchaser is withdrawn from
the market, so also is a daily seller. The minister gives
now to one party ten millions of money to invest in stock,
and to another party as much stock as ten millions costs to
sell; and as the instalments on the loan are paid monthly,
it may fairly be said that the supply is as regular as the
demand. It cannot be doubted too, that a loan of twenty
millions is negotiated on worse terms than one of ten. It
is true that no more stock will remain in the market at the
end of the year, whether the one or the other sum be
raised by loan ; but for a time the contractor must make a
large purchase, and he must wait before he can make his
sale of ten millions to the commissioners. He is induced
then to sell much more largely before the contract, which
cannot fail to affect the market price ; and it must be re¬
collected, that it is the market price on the day of bidding
for the loan which governs the terms on which the loan is
negotiated. It is looked to both by the minister who sells
and the contractor who purchases. The experiment on
Mr Grenfell’s suggestion was tried for the first time in 1819;
the sum required by government was twenty-four millions,
to which the commissioners subscribed twelve millions, m
lieu of a loan of twenty-four millions from the contractor,
there was one only of twelve millions; and as soon as t is
arrangement was known, previous to the conti act, t o
stocks rose to four or five per cent., and influenced t e
terms of the loan in that degree. The reason was, that a
preparation had been made for twenty-four or thiity mi
lions loan ; and as soon as it was known that it would be
for twelve millions only, a part of the stock sold was re¬
purchased. Another advantage attending the smaller loan
is, that eight hundred per million, which is paid to the ban
for management of the loan, is saved on the sum sub¬
scribed by the commissioners. (j
Dr Hamilton, in another part of his work, observes,
FUNDING SYSTEM.
indir
iH’ster-
^ n
the sinking fund could be conducted without loss to the
public, or even if it were attended with a moderate loss, it
would not be wise to propose an alteration of a system
which has gained the confidence of the public, and which
points out a rule of taxation that has the advantage at least
of being steady. If that rule be laid aside, our measures
of taxation might become entirely loose.”
“ The means, and the only means, of restraining the
progress of national debt, are saving of expenditure and
increase of revenue. Neither of these has a necessary con¬
nection with a sinking fund. But if they have an eventual
connection, and if the nation, impressed with a conviction
of the importance of a system established by a popular
minister, has, in order to adhere to it, adopted measures,
either of frugality in expenditure, or exertion in raising
taxes, which it would not otherwise have done, the sinking
fund ought not to be considered as inefficient, and its ef¬
fects may be of great importance.”
It will not, we think, admit of a doubt, that if Mr Pitt’s
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sinking fund, as established in 1792, had been always fairly
acted upon,—if, for every loan, in addition to the war-taxes,
the interest, and a one per cent, sinking fund, had been in¬
variably supplied by annual taxes,—we should have made
rapid progress in the extinction of debt. The alteration
in principle which was made in the sinking fund by the act
of 1802, was, in our opinion, a judicious one : it provided
that no part of the sinking fund, neither that which arose
from the original million, with its addition of L.200,000
per annum, nor that which arose from the one per cent,
raised for the loans since 1792, should be applicable to
the public service, till the whole of the debt then ex¬
isting was redeemed. We should have been disposed to
extend this principle further, and to make a provision,
that no part of the sinking fund should be applicable to
the public service until the whole of the debt then exist¬
ing, and subsequently to be created, should be redeemed.
We do not think that there is much weight in the objec¬
tion to this clause which was made to it by Lord Henry
Petty in 1807, and referred to and more strongly urged by
Mr Vansittart in 1813. The noble Lord said, “ I need
hardly press upon the consideration of the committee, all
the evils likely to result from allowing the sinking fund ^o
accumulate without any limit; for the nation would be ex¬
posed by that accumulation to the mischief of having a
large portion of capital taken at once out of the market,
without any adequate means of applying it, which would of
course be deprived of its value.
“ This evil must appear so serious to any man who con¬
templates its character, that I have no doubt it will be
felt, however paradoxical it may seem, that the redemp¬
tion of the whole national debt at once would be produc¬
tive of something like national bankruptcy; for the capital
would be equivalent almost to nothing, while the interest
he had before derived from it would be altogether extin¬
guished. The other evils which would arise from, and
which must serve to demonstrate the mischievous conse¬
quence of, a prompt discharge of the national debt, I will
show presently. Different arrangements were adopted in
the further provisions made on the subject of the sinking
und in 1/92 and in 1802. By the first the sinking fund
of one per cent., which was thenceforwrard to be provided
or every new loan, was made to accumulate at compound
interest until the whole of the debt created by such new
loan should be extinguished. And, by the second ar¬
rangement, all the various sinking funds existing in 1802
were consolidated, and the whole were appropriated to
accumulate at compound interest until the discharge of
the whole of the debt also existing in 1802. But the
e t created since 1802, amounting to about one hun¬
dred nnlhons of nominal capital, is still left subject to the
act o 1792, which provides for each separate loan a sink¬
ing fund of only one per cent, on the nominal capital. The
plan of 1802, engrafted on the former acts of 1786 and
1792, provided for the still more speedy extinction of the
debt to which it applied. But it would postpone all re¬
lief from the public burdens to a very distant period (com¬
puted in 1802 to be from 1834 to 1844); and it would
throw such large and disproportionate sums into the mo¬
ney market in the latter years of its operation, as might
produce a very dangerous depreciation of the value of
money. Many inconveniences might also arise from the
sudden stop which would be put to the application of those
sums when the whole debt should have been redeemed,
and from the no less sudden change in the price of all
commodities, which must follow from taking off at one
and the same moment taxes to an extent probably then
much exceeding thirty millions. The fate of merchants,
manufacturers, mechanics, and every description of deal¬
ers, in such an event, must be contemplated by every
thinking man with alarm ; and this applies to my observa¬
tion respecting a national bankruptcy; for, should the na¬
tional debt be discharged, and such a weight of taxation
taken off at once, all the goods remaining on hand would
be, comparatively speaking, of no value to the holders,
because, having been purchased or manufactured while
such taxation prevailed, they must be undersold by all
those who might manufacture the same kind of goods
after such taxation had ceased. These objections were
foreseen, and to a certain degree acknowledged, at the
time when the act of 1802 was passed; and it was then
answered, that whenever the danger approached, it might
be obviated by subsequent arrangements.” A great many
of these objections appear to us to be chimerical; but, if
well founded, we agree with the latter part of the extract,
“ whenever the danger approached, it might be obviated
by subsequent arrangements.” It was not necessary to
legislate in 1807 or in 1813, for a danger which could not
happen till between 1834 and 1844. It was not necessary
to provide against the evils which would arise from a ple¬
thora of wealth at a remote period, when our real diffi¬
culty was how to supply our immediate and pressing
wants.
What are the evils apprehended from the extravagant
growth of the sinking fund towards the latter years of its
existence ? Not that taxation will be increased, because
the growth of the sinking fund is occasioned by dividends
on stock purchased ; but, first, that capital will be returned
too suddenly into the hands of the stockholder, without his
having any means of deriving a revenue from it; and, se¬
condly, that the remission of taxes, to the amount proba¬
bly of thirty millions, will have a great effect on the prices
of particular commodities, and will be very pernicious to
the interest of those who may deal in or manufacture such
commodities.
It is obvious that the commissioners have no capital.
They receive quarterly or daily certain sums, arising from
the taxes, which they employ in the redemption of debt.
One portion of the people pay what another portion re¬
ceive. If the payers employed the sums paid as capital,
that is to say, in the production of raw produce, or manu¬
factured commodities, and the receivers, when they re¬
ceived it, employed it in the same manner, there would be
little variation in the annual produce. A part of that pro¬
duce might be produced by A instead of by B : not that
even this is a necessary consequence; for A, when he re¬
ceived the money for his debt, might lend it to B, and
might receive from him a portion of the produce for inte¬
rest, in which case B would continue to employ the capital
as before. On the supposition, then, that the sinking fund
is furnished by capital and not by revenue, no injury would
result to the community, however large that fund might be ;
there might or might not be a transfer of employments,
252
FUNDING SYSTEM.
Funding but the annual produce, the real wealth of the country,
System, would undergo no deterioration, and the actual amount of
capital employed would neither be increased nor diminish¬
ed. But if the payers of taxes, for the interest and sinking
fund of the national debt, paid them from revenue, then
they would retain the same capital as before in active em¬
ployment ; and as this revenue, when received by the stock¬
holder, would be by him employed as capital, there would
be, in consequence of this operation, a great increase of ca¬
pital ; every year an additional portion of revenue would
be turned into capital, which could be employed only in
furnishing new commodities to the market. Now, the
doubts of those who speak of the mischievous effects of the
great accumulation of the sinking fund, proceed from an
opinion they entertain that a country may possess more
capital than it can beneficially employ, and that there may
be such a glut of commodities that it would be impossible
to dispose of them on such terms as to secure to the pro¬
ducers any profits on their capitals. The error of this rea¬
soning has been made manifest by M. Say, in his able work
Economic Politique, and afterwards by Mr Mill, in his ex¬
cellent reply to Mr Spence, the advocate of the doctrine of
the Economistes. They show that demand is only limited
by production; whoever can produce has a right to con¬
sume, and he will exercise his privilege to the greatest ex¬
tent. They do not deny that the demand for particular
commodities is limited, and therefore they say there may
be a glut of such commodities ; but, in a great and civilized
country, wants, either for objects of necessity or of luxury,
are unlimited, and the employment of capital is of equal ex¬
tent with our ability of supplying food and necessaries for
the increasing population, which a continually augmenting
capital would employ. With every increased difficulty of
fn’oducing additional supplies of raw produce from the
and, corn, and the other necessaries of the labourer, would
rise. Hence wages would rise. A real rise of wages is ne¬
cessarily followed by a real fall of profits; and therefore,
when the land of a country is brought to the highest state
of cultivation, when more labour employed upon it will not
yield in return more food than what is necessary to support
the labourer so employed, that country is come to the limit
of its increase both of capital and population.
The richest country in Europe is yet far distant from
that degree of improvement; but if any had arrived at it,
by the aid of foreign commerce, even such a country could
go on for an indefinite time increasing in wealth and popu¬
lation ; for the only obstacle to this increase would be the
scarcity, and consequent high value, of food and other raw
produce. Let these be supplied from abroad in exchange
for manufactured goods, and it is difficult to say where the
limit is at which you would cease to accumulate wealth, and
to derive profit from its employment. This is a question
of the utmost importance in political economy. We hope
* that the little we have said on the subject will be sufficient
to induce those who wish clearly to understand the princi¬
ple, to consult the works of the able authors whom we have
named, to which we acknowledge ourselves so much in¬
debted. If these views are correct, there is then no dan¬
ger that the accumulated capital which a sinking fund un¬
der particular circumstances might occasion, would not find
employment, or that the commodities which it might be
made to produce would not be beneficially sold, so as to af¬
ford an adequate profit to the producers. On this part of
the subject it is only necessary to add, that there would be
no necessity for stockholders to become farmers or manu¬
facturers. There are always to be found in a great coun¬
try a sufficient number of responsible persons, with the re¬
quisite skill, ready to employ the accumulated capital of
others, and to pay to them a share of the profits, and which
in all countries is known by the name of interest for bor¬
rowed money.
The second objection to the indefinite increase of the jw
sinking fund remains now to be noticed. By the remission System
of taxes suddenly to the amount probably of thirty millions
per annum, a great effect would be produced on the price
of goods. “ The fate of merchants, manufacturers, me¬
chanics, and every description of dealers, in such an event,
must be contemplated by every thinking man with alarm;
for should the national debt be discharged, and such a
weight of taxation taken oft' at once, all the goods remain¬
ing on hand would be, comparatively speaking, of no value
to the holders, because, having been purchased or manu¬
factured while such taxation prevailed, they must be un¬
dersold by all those who might manufacture the same kind
of goods after such taxation had ceased.” It is only, then,
on the supposition that merchants, manufacturers, and
dealers, would be affected as above described, that any evil
would result from the largest remission of taxes. It would
not of course be said, that by remitting a tax of L.5 to A,
L.10 to B, L.100 to C, and so on, any injury would be
done to them. If they added these different sums to their
respective capitals, they would augment their permanent
annual revenue, and would be contributing to the increase .
of the mass of commodities, thereby adding to the general
abundance. We have already, we hope, successfully shown
that an augmentation of capital is neither injurious to the
individual by whom it is saved, nor to the community at
large ; its tendency is to increase the demand for labour, and
consequently the population, and to add to the power and
strength of the country. But they will not add these respec¬
tive sums to their capitals ; they will expend them as reve¬
nue ! The measure cannot be said to be either injurious to
themselves or to the community on that account. They an¬
nually contributed a portion of their produce to the stock¬
holder in payment of debt, who immediately employed it
as capital; that portion of produce is now at their own dis¬
posal ; they may consume it themselves if they please. A
farmer who used to sell a portion of his corn for the parti¬
cular purpose of furnishing this tax, may consume this corn
himself; he may get the distiller to make gin of it, or the
brewer to turn it into beer, or he may exchange it for a
portion of the cloth which the clothier, who is now released
from the tax as well as the farmer, is at liberty to dispose
of for any commodity w hich he may desire. It may indeed
be said, where is all this cloth, beer, gin, &c. to come from;
there was no more than necessary for the general demand
before this remission of taxes ; if every man is now to con¬
sume more, from whence is this supply to be obtained?
This is an objection of quite an opposite nature to that
which was before urged. Now, it is said there would be
too much demand and no additional supply ; before, it was
contended that the supply would be so great that no de¬
mand would exist for the quantity supplied. One objec¬
tion is no better founded than the other. The stockhold¬
ers, by previously receiving the payment of their debt, and
employing the funds they received productively, or lending
them to some other persons who would so employ them,
would produce the very additional commodities which the
society at large would have it in their power to consume.
There would be a general augmentation of revenue, and a
general augmentation of enjoyment; and it must not for
a moment be supposed that the increased consumption of
one part of the people would be at the expense of another
part. The good would be unmixed, and without alloy, ft
remains then only to consider the injury to traders from the
fall in the price of goods; and the remedy against this ap¬
pears to be so very simple, that it surprises us that it should
ever have been urged as an objection. In laying on a new
tax, the stock in hand of the article taxed is commonly
ascertained; and, as a measure of justice, the dealer in such
article is required to pay the imposed tax on his stock.
Why may not the reverse of this be done ? Why may not
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FUNDING SYSTEM.
253
undthe tax be returned to each individual on his stock in hand,
iyfte.. whenever it shall be thought expedient to take off the tax
^Y'"' from the article which he manufactures, or in which he
deals ? It would only be necessary to continue the taxes
for a very short time for this purpose. On no view of this
question can we see any validity in the arguments which
we have quoted, and which were so particularly insisted
on by Mr Vansittart.
There are some persons who think that a sinking fund,
even when strictly applied to its object, is of no natiorial
benefit whatever. The money which is contributed, they
say, would be more productively employed by the payers
of the taxes than by the commissioners of the sinking fund.
The latter purchase stock with it, which probably does not
yield five per cent.; the former would obtain from the em¬
ployment of the same capital much more than five per cent.,
consequently the country would be enriched by the differ¬
ence. There would be in the latter case a larger nett sup-
P ply of the produce of our land and labour, and that is the
fund from which ultimately all our expenditure must be
drawn. Those who maintain this opinion do not see that
the commissioners merely receive money from one class of
the community, and pay it to another class, and that the
real question is, Which of these two classes will employ it
most productively ? Forty millions per annum are raised
by taxes, of which twenty millions, we will suppose, is paid
for sinking fund, and twenty millions for interest of debt.
After a yeax-’s purchase is made by the commissioners, this
forty millions will be divided differently; nineteen millions
will be paid for interest, and twenty-one millions for sink¬
ing fund; and so from year to year, though forty millions
is always paid on the whole, a less and less portion of it
will be paid for interest, and a larger portion for sinking
fund, till the commissioners have purchased the whole
amount ot stock, and then the whole forty millions will be
in the hands of the commissioners. The sole question then
with regard to profits is, whether those who pay this forty
millions, or those who receive it, will employ it most pro¬
ductively ; the commissioners, in fact, never employing it
at all, their business being to transfer it to those who will
employ it. Now, of this we are quite Certain, that all the
money received by the stockholder in return for his stock
must be employed as capital; for if it were not so employ¬
ed, he would be deprived of his revenue, on which he had
habitually depended. If then the taxes which are paid to¬
wards the sinking fund be derived from the revenue of the
country, and not from its capital, by this opei’ation a por¬
tion of revenue is yearly realized into capital, and conse¬
quently the whole revenue of the society is increased; but
it might have been realized into capital by the payer of the
tax if there had been no sinking fund, and he had been
allowed to retain the money to his own use. It might so,
and if it had been so disposed of, there can be no advan¬
tage in respect to the accumulation of the wealth of the
whole society by the establishment of the sinking fund;
hut it is not so probable that the payer of the tax would
i make this use of it as the receiver. The receiver, when
he gets paid for his stock, only substitutes one capital for
another ; and he is accustomed to look to his capital for all
his yearly income. The payer will have all that he paid
ax addition to his former revenue ; if the sinking fund be
discontinued he may indeed realize it into capital, but he
may also use it as revenue, increasing his expenditure on
wine, houses, horses, clothes, &c. The payer might too
lave paid it from his capital; and therefore the employment
of one capital might be substituted for another. In this
case, too, no advantage arises from the sinking fund, as
the national wealth would accumulate as rapidly without
it as with it; but if any portion of the taxes paid expressly
or the sirxking fund be paid from revenue, and which, if
not so paid, would have been expended as revenue, then
there is a manifest advantage in the sinking fund, as it Funding
tends to increase the annual produce of our land and la- System,
hour; and as we cannot but think that this would be its
opei-ation, we are clearly of opinion that a sinking fund,
honestly applied, is favourable to the accumulation of
wealth.
Dr Hamilton has followed Dr Price in insisting much on
the disadvantage of raising loans during war in a three per
cent, stock, and not in a five per cent, stock. In the former, a
great addition is made to the nominal capital, which is ge¬
nerally redeemed during peace at a greatly advanced price.
Three per cents which were sold at sixty will probably be
repurchased at eighty, and may come to be bought at 100;
whereas in five per cents there would be little or no in-
crease of nominal capital, and as all the stocks are redeem¬
able at pai’, they would be paid off with very little loss.
The correctness of this observation must depend on the
relative prices of these two stocks. During the war in
1798, the three per cents were at fifty, while the five per
cents were at seventy-three; and at all times the five per
cents bear a very low relative price to the three per cents.
Here then is one disadvantage to be put against another,
and it must depend upon the degree in which the prices of
the three per cents and five per cents differ, whether it be
more desirable to raise the loan in the one or in the other.
We have little doubt, that during many periods of the war,
there would have been a decided disadvantage in making the
loan in five per cent, stock in preference to three per cent,
stock. The market in five per cent, stock, too, is limited ;
a sale cannot be forced in it without causing a considerable
fall, a circumstance known to the contractors, and against
which they would naturally take some security in the price
which they bid for a large loan if in that stock. A pre¬
mium of two per cent, on the market price may appear to
them sufficient to compensate them for their risk in a loan
in three per cent, stock; they may require one of five per
cent, to protect them against the dangers they apprehend
from taking the same loan in a five per cent, stock.
II. After having duly considered the operation of a sink¬
ing fund derived from annual taxes, we come now to the
considei’ation of the best mode of providing for our annual
expenditure, both in war and peace ; and further, to exa¬
mine whether a country can have any security that a fund
raised for the purpose of paying debt will not be misapplied
by ministers, and be really made the instrument for creat¬
ing new debt, so as never to afford a rational hope that any
progress whatever will permanently be made in the reduc¬
tion of debt.
Suppose a country to be free from debt, and a war to take
place which should involve it in an annual additional expen¬
diture of twenty millions—there are three modes by which
this expenditm-e may be provided ; fii’st, taxes may be raised
to the amount of twenty millions per annum, from which the
country would be totally freed on the return of peace ; or,
secondly, the money might be annually borrowed and fund¬
ed, in which case, if the interest agreed upon was five per
cent, a perpetual charge of one million per annum taxes
would be incurred for the first year’s expense, from which
there would be no relief during peace, or in any future
war,—of an additional million for the second year’s expense,
and so on for every year that the war might last. At the
end of twenty years, if the war lasted so long, the country
would be perpetually encumbered with taxes of twenty
millions per annum, and would have to repeat the same
course on the recurrence of any new war. The third mode
of providing for the expenses of the war would be to bor¬
row annually the twenty millions required as before, but
to provide by taxes a fund, in addition to the interest,
which, accumulating at compound interest, should finally
be equal to the debt. In the case supposed, if money was
raised at five per cent- and a sum of L.200,000 per annum
• I
254 FUNDING SYSTEM.
Funding in addition to the million for interest were provided, it
System, would accumulate to twenty millions in forty-five years;
and, by consenting to raise L.1,200,000 per annum by
taxes for every loan of twenty millions, each loan would be
paid off in forty-five years from the time of its creation;
and in forty-five years from the termination of the war, if
no new debt were created, the whole would be redeemed,
and the whole of the taxes would be repealed.
Of these three modes, we are decidedly of opinion that
the preference should be given to the first. The burdens
of the war are undoubtedly great during its continuance,
but at its termination they cease altogether. When the
pressure of the war is felt at once, without mitigation, we
shall be less disposed wantonly to engage in an expensive
contest; and, if engaged in it, we shall be sooner disposed
to get out of it, unless it be a contest for some great na¬
tional interest. In point of economy, there is no real dif¬
ference in either of the modes ; for twenty millions in one
payment, one million per annum for ever, or L.1,200,000
for forty-five years, are precisely of the same value; but
the people who pay the taxes never so estimate them,
and therefore do not manage their private affairs accord¬
ingly. We are too apt to think that the war is burden¬
some only in proportion to what we are at the moment
called to pay for it in taxes, without reflecting on the pro¬
bable duration of such taxes. It would be difficult to con¬
vince a man possessed of L.20,000, or any other sum, that
a perpetual payment of L.50 per annum was equally bur¬
densome with a single tax of L.1000. He would have
some vague notion that the L.50 per annum would be
paid by posterity, and would not be paid by him ; but if
he leaves his fortune to his son, and leaves it charged
with this perpetual tax, where is the difference whether
he leaves him L.20,000 with the tax, or L.19,000 without
it ? This argument of charging posterity with the inte¬
rest of our debt, or of relieving them from a portion of
such interest, is often used by otherwise well-informed
people; but we confess we see no weight in it. It may
indeed be said that the wealth of the country may in¬
crease, and as a portion of the increased wealth will have
to contribute to the taxes, the proportion falling on the
present amount of wealth will be less, and thus posterity
will contribute to our present expenditure. That this
may be so, is true : but it may also be otherwise; the
Avealth of the country may diminish ; individuals may with¬
draw from a country heavily taxed ; and therefore the pro¬
perty retained in the countrj7 may pay more than the just
equivalent, which would at the present time be received
from it. That an annual tax of L.50 is not deemed the
same in amount as L.1000 ready money, must have been
observed by every body. If an individual were called
upon to pay L.1000 to the income-tax, he would probably
endeavour to save the whole of it from his income; he would
do no more if, in lieu of this war-tax, a loan had been rais¬
ed, for the interest of which he would have been called
upon to pay only L.50 income-tax. The war-taxes, then,
are more economical; for when they are paid, an effort is
made to save to the amount of the whole expenditure of
the war, leaving the national capital undiminished. In
the other case, an effort is only made to save to the
amount of the interest of such expenditure, and therefore
the national capital is diminished in amount. The usual
objection made to the payment of the larger tax is, that
it could not be conveniently paid by manufacturers and
landholders, for they have not large sums of money at
their command. We think that great efforts would be
maae to save the tax out of their income, in which case
they could obtain the money from this source; but sup¬
pose they could not, what should hinder them from selling
a part of their property for money, or of borrowing it at
interest ? That there are persons disposed to lend, is evi¬
dent from the facility with which government raises its Fund !
loans. Withdraw this great borrower from the market,
and private borrowers would be readily accommodated.
By wise regulations and good laws, the greatest facilities
and security might be afforded to individuals in such trans¬
actions. In the case of a loan, A advances the money,
and B pays the interest, and every thing else remains as
before. In the case of war-taxes, A would still advance
the money and B pay the interest, only with this differ¬
ence, he would pay it directly to A; now he pays it to
government, and government pays it to A.
These large taxes, it may be said, must fall on proper¬
ty, which the smaller taxes now do not exclusively do.
Those who are in professions, as well as those who live
from salaries and wages, and who now contribute annually
to the taxes, could not make a large ready money pay¬
ment ; and they would therefore be benefited at the ex¬
pense of the capitalist and landholder. We believe that
they would be very little, if at all, benefited by the sys¬
tem of war-taxes. Fees to professional men, salaries, and
wages, are regulated by the prices of commodities, and
by the relative situation of those who pay and of those
who receive them. A tax of the nature proposed, if it
did not disturb prices, would, however, change the rela¬
tion between these classes, and a new arrangement of
fees, salaries, and wages, would take place, so that the
usual level would be restored.
The reward that is paid to professors, &c. is regulated,
like every thing else, by demand and supply. What pro¬
duces the supply of men, with certain qualifications, is
not any particular sum of money, but a certain relative
position in society. If you diminish, by additional taxes,
the incomes of landlords and capitalists, leaving the pay
of professions the same, the relative position of profes¬
sions would be raised; an additional number of persons
would therefore be enticed into those lines, and the com¬
petition would reduce the pay.
The greatest advantage that would attend war-taxes
would be the little permanent derangement that they
would cause to the industry of the country. The prices
of our commodities would not be disturbed by taxation;
or if they were, they would only' be so during a period
when every thing is disturbed by other causes during war.
At the commencement of peace every thing would be at
its natural price again, and no inducement would be af¬
forded to us by the direct effect, and still less by the in¬
direct effect, of taxes on various commodities, to desert
employments in which we have peculiar skill and facili¬
ties, and engage in others in which the same skill hnd fa¬
cilities are wanting. In a state of freedom every man
naturally engages himself in that employment for which
he is best fitted, and the greatest abundance of products
is the result. An injudicious tax may induce us to im¬
port what we should otherwise have produced at home,
or to export what we should otherwise have received from
abroad ; and in both cases we shall receive, besides the
inconvenience of paydng the tax, a less return for a given
quantity of our labour than what that labour would, if un¬
fettered, have produced. Under a complicated system of
taxation, it is impossible for the wisest legislature to dis¬
cover all the effects, direct and indirect, of its taxes; and
if it cannot do this, the industry of the country will not
be exerted to the greatest advantage. By war-taxes, we
should save many millions in the collection of taxes. We
might get rid of at least some of the expensive establish¬
ments, and the army of officers which they employ would
be dispensed with. There would be no charges for the
management of debt. Loans would not be raised at the
rate of L.50 or L.60 for a nominal capital of L.100, to be
repaid at L.70, L.80, or possibly at L.100 ; and perhaps,
what is of more importance than all these together, we
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FUNDING SYSTEM.
255
niiglit get rid of those great sources of the demoralization
of the people, the Customs and Excise. In every view of
this question we come to the same conclusion, that it
would be a great improvement in our system for ever to
get rid of the practice of funding. Let us meet our diffi¬
culties as they arise, and keep our estates free from per¬
manent encumbrances, of the weight of which we are
never truly sensible till we are involved in them past re¬
medy.
We are now to compare the other two modes of defray¬
ing the expenses of a war, one by borrowing the capital
expended, and providing annual taxes permanently for
the payment of the interest; the other by borrowing the
capital expended, and, besides providing the interest by
annual taxes, raising, by the same mode, an additional re¬
venue (and which is called the sinking fund), with a view,
within a certain determinate time, to redeem the original
debt, and get rid entirely of the taxes.
Under the firm conviction that nations will at last adopt
the plan of defraying their expenses, ordinary and extra¬
ordinary, at the time they are incurred, we are favourable
to every plan which shall soonest redeem us from debt;
hut then we must be convinced that the plan is effective
for the object. This, then, is the place to examine whether
we have or can have any security for the due application
of the sinking fund to the payment of debt.
When Mr Pitt, in 1786, established the sinking fund,
he was aware of the danger of intrusting it to ministers
and parliament; and therefore provided that the sums
applicable to the sinking fund should be paid by the ex¬
chequer into the hands of commissioners, by quarterly
payments, who should be required to invest equal sums
of money in the purchase of stock, on four days in each
week, or about fifty days in each quarter. The commis¬
sioners named were, the Speaker of the House of Com¬
mons, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Master of
the Ilolls, the Accountant-General of the Court of Chan¬
cery, and the Governor and Deputy-Governor of the
Bank. He thought that, under such management, there
could be no misapplication of the funds, and he thought
correctly, for the commissioners have faithfully fulfilled
the trust reposed in them. In proposing the establish¬
ment of a sinking fund to parliament in 1786, Mr Pitt said,
“ With regard to preserving the fund to be invariably ap¬
plied to the diminution of the debt inalienable, it was the
essence of his plan to keep that sacred, and most effec¬
tually so in time of war. He must contend, that to suffer
the fund at any time, or on any pretence, to be diverted
from its proper object, would be to ruin, defeat, and over¬
turn his plan. He hoped, therefore, when the bill he
should introduce should pass into a law, that house
would hold itself solemnly pledged not to listen to a pro¬
posal for its repeal on any pretence whatever.”
“ If this million, to be so applied, is laid out with its
growing interest, it will amount to a very great sum in a
period that is not very long in the life of an individual,
and but an hour in the existence of a great nation; and
this will diminish the debt of this country so much as to
prevent the exigencies of war from raising it to the enor¬
mous height it has hitherto done. In the period of twen-
ty-eight years, the sum of a million, annually improved,
would amount to four millions per annum ; but care must
be taken that this fund be not broken in upon : this has hi¬
therto been the bane of this country; for if the original sink¬
ing fund had been properly preserved, it is easy to be
proved that our debts, at this moment, would not have
been very burdensome: this has hitherto been in vain endea¬
voured to be prevented by acts of parliament; the minister
has uniformly, when it suited his convenience, gotten Funding
hold of this sum, which ought to have been regarded as System,
most sacred. What then is the way of preventing this?
The plan I mean to propose is this, that this sum be vest¬
ed in certain commissioners, to be by them applied quar¬
terly to buy up stock; by this means, no sum so great
will ever be ready to be seized upon on any occasion, and
the fund will go on without interruption. Long and very
long has this country struggled under its heavy load,
without any prospect of being relieved; but it may now
look forward to an object upon which the existence of
this country depends; it is therefore proper it should be
fortified as much as possible against alienation. By this
manner of paying L.250,000 quarterly into the hands of
commissioners, it would make it impossible to take it by
stealth; and the advantage would be too well felt ever
to suffer a public act for that purpose. A minister could
not have the confidence to come to this house and de¬
sire the repeal of so beneficial a law, which tended so di¬
rectly to relieve the people from burden.”
Mr Pitt flattered himself most strangely, that he had'
found a remedy for the difficulty which “ had hitherto
been the bane of this country:” he thought he had dis¬
covered means for preventing “ ministers, when it suited
their convenience, from getting hold of this sum, which
ought to be regarded as most sacred.” With the know¬
ledge of parliament which he had, it is surprising that, he
should have relied so firmly on the resistance which the
House of Commons would offer to any plan of ministers
for violating the sinking fund. Ministers have never de¬
sired the partial repeal of this law, without obtaining a
ready compliance from parliament.
We have already shown, that in 1807, one chancellor
of the exchequer proposed to relieve the country from
taxation, with a very slight exception, for several years
together, while we were, during war, keeping up, if not
increasing, our expenditure, and supplying it by means of
annual loans. What is this but disposing of a fund which
ought to have been regarded as most sacred?
In 1809, another chancellor of the exchequer raised a
loan, without raising any additional taxes to pay the in¬
terest of it, but pledged a portion of the war-taxes for
that purpose, thereby rendering an addition to that amount
necessary to the loan of the following and every succeed¬
ing year. Was not this disposing of the sinking fund by
stealth, and accumulating debt at compound interest?
Another chancellor of the exchequer, in 1813, proposed a
partial repeal of the law, by which seven millions per an¬
num of the sinking fund was placed at his disposal, and
which he has employed in providing for the interest of
new debt. This was done with the sanction of parlia¬
ment, and, as we apprehend, in direct violation of all the
laws which had before been passed regarding the sinking
fund. But what has become of the remainder of this
fund, after deducting the seven millions taken from it by
the act of 1813 ?x It should now be sixteen millions, and
at that amount it was returned in the annual finance ac¬
counts last laid before parliament. The finance committee
appointed by the House of Commons did not fail to see
that nothing can be deemed an efficient fund for the re¬
demption of debt in time of peace, but such as arises from
an excess of revenue above expenditure; and as that ex¬
cess, under the most favourable view, was not quite two
millions, they considered that sum as the real efficient
sinking fund, which was now applicable to the discharge
of debt. If the act of 1802 had been complied with, if
the intentions of Mr Pitt had been fulfilled, we should
now have had a clear excess of revenue of above twenty
1 Some of the following observations refer to the period when this article was originally composed Ed.
FUNDING SYSTEM.
256
Funding millions, applicable to the payment of the debt; as it is,
System. we have two millions only, and if we ask ministers what
has become of the remaining eighteen millions, they show
us an expensive peace establishment, which they have no
other means of defraying but by drafts on this fund, or
several hundred millions of three per cents, on which it is
employed in discharging the interest. If ministers had
not had such an amount of taxes to depend on, would
they have ventured, year after year, to encounter a defi¬
ciency of revenue below expenditure, for several years to¬
gether, of more than twelve millions ? It is true that the
measures of Mr Pitt locked it up from their immediate
seizure; but they knew it was in the hands of the com¬
missioners, and presumed as much upon it, and justly,
with the knowledge they had of parliament, as if it had
been in their own. They considered the commissioners
as their trustees, accumulating money for their benefit,
and of which they knew that they might dispose when¬
ever they should consider that the urgency of the case
required it. They seem to have made a tacit agreement
with the commissioners, that they should accumulate
twelve millions per annum at compound interest, while
they themselves accumulated an equal amount of debt,
also at compound interest. The facts are indeed no
longer denied. In the last session of parliament, for the
first time, the delusion was acknowledged by ministers,
after it had become manifest to every other person; but
yet it is avowed to be their intention to go on with this
nominal sinking fund, raising a loan every year for the
difference between its real and nominal amount, and let¬
ting the commissioners subscribe to it. On what prin¬
ciple this can be done, it would be difficult to give any ra¬
tional account. Perhaps it may be said that it would be
a breach of faith to the stockholder to take away the sink¬
ing fund ; but is it not equally a breach of faith if the go¬
vernment itself sells to the commissioners the greatest
part of the stock which they buy? The stockholder
wants something substantial and real to be done for him,
and not any thing deceitful and delusive. Disguise it as
you will, if of fourteen millions to be invested by the com¬
missioners in time of peace, the stock which twelve mil¬
lions will purchase is sold by the government itself, which
creates it for the very purpose of obtaining these twelve
millions, and only stock for two millions is purchased in
the market, and no taxes for sinking fund or interest are
provided for the twelve millions which government takes ;
the result is precisely the same to the stockholder, and to
every one concerned, as if the sinking fund was reduced
to two millions. It is utterly unworthy of a great country
to countenance such pitiful shifts and evasions.
The sinking fund, then, has, instead of diminishing the
debt, greatly increased it. The sinking fund has encou¬
raged expenditure. If, during war, a country spends
twenty millions per annum, in addition to its ordinary ex¬
penditure, and raises taxes only for the interest, it will in
twenty years accumulate a debt of four hundred millions,
and its taxes will increase to twenty millions per annum.
If, in addition to the million per annum, taxes of L.200,000
were raised for a sinking fund, and regularly applied to
the purchase of stock, the taxes, at the end of twenty
years, would be twenty-four millions, and its debt only
three hundred and forty-two millions ; for fifty-eight mil¬
lions will have been paid off by the sinking fund; but if
at the end of this period new debt shall be contracted,
and the sinking fund itself, with all its accumulations,
amounting to L.6,940,000, be absorbed in the payment of
interest on such debt, the whole amount of debt will be
five hundred and thirty-eight millions, exceeding that
which would have existed if there had been no sinking
fund by a hundred and thirty-eight millions. If such an
additional expenditure were necessary, provision should
be made for it without any interference with the sinking Fun(ji
fund. If, at the end of the war, there is not a clear sur- SystJ
plus of revenue above expenditure of L.6,940,000 on the 'wVv
above supposition, there is no use whatever in persever¬
ing in a system which is so little adequate to its object.
After all our experience, however, we are again toiling to
raise a sinking fund; and in the last session of parliament
three millions of new taxes were voted, with the avowed
object of raising the remnant of our sinking fund, now re¬
duced to two millions, to five millions. Is it rash to prog-
nosticate that this sinking fund will share the fate of all
those which have preceded it?.* Probably it will accumu¬
late for a few years, till we are engaged in some new con¬
test, when ministers, finding it difficult to raise taxes for
the interest of loans, will silently encroach on this fund;
and we shall be fortunate if, in their next arrangement,
we shall be able to preserve out of its wreck an amount
so large as two millions.
It is, we think, sufficiently proved that no securities
can be given by ministers that the sinking fund shall be
faithfully devoted to the payment of debt, and without
such securities we should be much better without such a
fund. To pay off the whole, or a great portion of our
debt, is, in our estimation, a most desirable object, if, at
the same time, we acknowledged the evils of the funding
system, and resolutely determined to carry on our future
contests without having recourse to it. This cannot, or
rather will not, be done by a sinking fund as at present
constituted, nor by any other that we can suggest; but
if, without raising any fund, the debt were paid by a tax
on property, once for all, it would effect its object. Its
operation might be completed in two or three years dur¬
ing peace; and if we mean honestly to discharge the
debt, we do not see any other mode of accomplishing it.
The objections to this plan are the same as those which
we have already attempted to answer in speaking of war-
taxes. The stockholders, being paid off, would have a
large mass of property, for which they would be eagerly
seeking employment. Manufacturers and landholders
would want large sums for their payments into the ex¬
chequer. These two parties would not fail to make an
arrangement with each other, by which one party would
employ their money, and the other raise it. They might
do this by loan, or by sale and purchase, as they might
think it most conducive to their respective interests; with
this the state would have nothing to do. Thus, by one
great effort, we should get rid of one of the most terrible
scourges which was ever invented to afflict a nation; and
our commerce would be extended without being subject
to all the vexatious delays and interruptions which our
present artificial system imposes upon it.
There cannot be a greater security for the continuance
of peace, than the imposing on ministers the necessity of
applying to the people for taxes to support a war. Suffer
the sinking fund to accumulate during peace to any con¬
siderable sum, and very little provocation would induce
them to enter into a new contest. They would know that,
by a little management, they could make the sinking fund
available to the raising of a new supply, instead of being
available to the payment of the debt. The argument is
now common in the mouths of ministers, when they wish
to lay on new taxes, for the purpose of creating a new
sinking fund, in lieu of one which they have just spent, to
say, “ It will make foreign countries respect us; they will
be afraid to insult or provoke us, when they know that we
are possessed of so powerful a resource.” What do they
mean by this argument, if the sinking fund be not consi¬
dered by them as a war fund, on which they can draw m
support of the contest ? It cdnnot, at one and the same
time, be employed in the annoyance of an enemy, and in
the payment of debt. If taxes are, as they ought to be,
*
1
FUN
FUN
'^,l Fun ! raised for the expenses of a war, what facility will a sink-
11 ing fund give to the raising of them ? none whatever. It
f une 1 js not because the possession of a sinking fund will enable
^ l!,lte^ them to raise new and additional taxes that ministers prize
^ it; for they know it will have no such effect; but because
they know that they will be enabled to substitute the
sinking fund in lieu of taxes, and employ it, as they have
always done, in war, and providing interest for fresh debt.
Their argument means this, or it means nothing; for a
sinking fund does not necessarily add to the wealth and
1 prosperity of a country; and it is on that wealth and pros¬
perity that it must depend, whether new burdens can be
borne by the people. What did Mr Vansittart mean in
1813, when he said that “ the advantage which his new
I plan of finance would hereafter give, in furnishing a hun¬
dred millions in time of peace, as a fund against the. re-
• turn of hostilities, was one of great moment. This would
P place an instrument of force in the hands of parliament,
' which might lead to the most important results.” “ It
might be objected by some, that keeping in reserve a large
fund to meet the expenses of a new war, might be likely
to make the government of this country arrogant and am¬
bitious, and therefore have a tendency unnecessarily to
P plunge us in new contests ;” not a very unreasonable
0 objection, we should think. How does Mr Vansittart an¬
swer it? “ On this subject he would say, from long ex-
P perience and observation, that it would be better for our
II , neighbours to depend on the moderation of this country,
than for this country to depend on them. He should not
think the plan objectionable on this account. If the sums
treasured up were misapplied by the arrogant or ambitious
conduct of our government, the blame must fall on the
heads of those who misused it, not on those who put it
into their hands for purposes of defence. They did their
c duty in furnishing the means of preserving the greatness
and glory of the country, though those means might be
used for the purposes of ambition, rapine, and desolation.”
f These are very natural observations from the mouth of a
minister; but we are of opinion that such a treasure
» would be more safe in the custody of the people, and that
fi parliament have something more to do than to furnish mi¬
nisters with the means of preserving the greatness and
glory of the country. It is their duty to take every se¬
curity that the resources of the country are not misap¬
plied “ by the arrogant and ambitious conduct of our go¬
vernment,” or “ used for the purposes of ambition, rapine,
and desolation.”
On the extraordinary assumption that there was any
thing in Mr Vansittart’s plan that would more effectually
than the old plan allow a hundred millions hereafter to be
appropriated to the public service, Dr Hamilton has the
following observations:
“ We are together at a loss to form a distinct concep¬
tion of the valuable treasure here held forth. So soon as
any stock is purchased by the commissioners, and stands
invested in their name, a like amount of the public debt is
in fact discharged. Whether a parliamentary declaration
to the effect be made or not, is only a matter of form. If
the money remain invested in the name of the commission¬
ers, no doubt it may be transferred again to purchasers
in the stock exchange when war broke out anew; and
money may be raised for the public in this manner. It is
an application to the public to invest their capital in the
purchase of this dormant stock.” “ It is true, that if the
taxes imposed during war for the purpose of a sinking fund
be continued after peace is restored, till a large sum (sup¬
pose L. 100,000,000) be vested in the hands of the com¬
missioners, the public, upon the renewal of the war, may-
spend to that amount without imposing fresh taxes; an ad¬
vantage,” observes Mr Huskisson, “ not only not exclusively
belonging to this plan, but unavoidable under any plan of
a sinking fund in time of peace.” Mr Vansittart ought to
have said, “ if our sinking fund should accumulate in time
of peace to so large a sum that I can take five millions per
annum from it, I can spend L. 100,000,000 in a new war
without coming to you for fresh taxes : the disadvantages
of my plan are, that by now taking L.7,000,000 per annum
from it, and making a provision for speedily, and at regular
intervals, appropriating more of this fund to present objects,
the sinking fund will be so much diminished that I cannot
so soon, by a great many years, avail myself of the five mil¬
lions for the purpose which I have stated.” (s. s. s.)
FUNEN, an island in the Baltic, which, with the island
o of Langeland and some smaller islands, forms a province
ol of the kingdom of Denmark, which extends over 1348
s square miles. These islands partake, in soil and formation,
oi of the same character as the adjoining continental dominions
ol of the same monarchy. The climate also resembles Ham-
* burg, being moist, and excessively variable. The inhabitants
ol • of these islands amount to 127,000 persons, who speak the
Danish language, and profess the Lutheran religion. The
a{ agriculture is tolerably conducted, and the province yields
a surplus of corn, chiefly rye and oats, which are sent to
oi other parts of the kingdom or to Norway. The dairies
al also have a surplus of butter and cheese. There are few
ii manufactures, except those of the domestic kind, which
a employ the people during the long winter nights in spin-
o ning. The capital is Odensee, in the centre of Funen.
FUNERAL Rites, ceremonies accompanying the in¬
ti torment or burial of the dead. The word is formed of the
I. Latinyi/wj/s, and that offunalia, on account of the torches
f (flines cera circumdati) used in the funerals of the Romans.
( Others, however, derive funus from the Greek qovog, death
o or slaughter.
ffhe first people who seem to have paid any particular
ri respect to their dead were the Egyptians, the posterity of
Ham, the first cultivators of idolatrous worship and super¬
stition after the deluge. They were also the first who as-
si serted the immortality of the soul, its migration into all
VOL. x.
kinds of animals, and its return to the human body, which
they supposed to be within the term of three thousand y'ears.
Hence the great care which they evinced in embalming their
dead, and the vast expense they incurred in building pro¬
per repositories for them. In fact, they were more solicit¬
ous about graves for the dead than about houses for the
living. This is strikingly displayed in those stupendous
remains of architecture under ground which were appro¬
priated to the reception of the dead, as well as those above
ground, such as the pyramids, where some of the Egyp¬
tian kings were interred.
Amongst the Egyptians, when a person died, his parents
and friends put on mourning habits, and abstained from all
banquets and entertainments. This mourning lasted from
forty to seventy days, during which period they embalmed
the body. After this ceremony was completed, it was re¬
stored to the friends, who placed it in a kind of open chest,
which was preserved either in their houses, or in the sepul¬
chres of their ancestors. But before the dead were allow^-
ed to be deposited in the tomb, they underw ent a solemn
judgment, which extended even to their kings. Of this
remarkable custom we have a particular account in the first
book of Diodorus Siculus. “ Those who prepare to bury
a relative give notice of the day intended for the ceremony
to the judges, and to all the friends of the deceased, in¬
forming them that the body wall pass over the lake of
that district to which the dead belonged; when, on the
2 K
Funeral
Rites.
258 FUN
Funeral judges assembling, to the number of mere than forty, and
Rites, ranging themselves in a semicircle on the further side or
the lake, the vessel is set afloat, which those who superin¬
tend the funeral have prepared for this purpose. This ves¬
sel is managed by a pilot, called in the Egyptian language
Charon; and hence they say, that Orpheus, travelling in
old times into Egypt, and seeing this ceremony, formed
his fable of the infernal regions, partly from what he saw,
and partly from invention. The vessel being launched on
the lake, before the coffin which contains the body is put
on board, the law permits all who are so inclined to pro¬
duce an accusation against it. If any one steps forth and
proves that the deceased has led an evil life, the judges
pronounce sentence, and the body is precluded from burial;
but if the accuser is convicted of injustice in his charge he
falls himself under a considerable penalty. When no ac¬
cuser appears, or when the accusation is proved to be an
unfair one, the relations who are assembled change their
expressions of sorrow into encomiums on the dead ; yet do
not, like the Greeks, speak in honour of his family, because
they consider all Egyptians as equally well born ; but they
set forth the education and manners of his youth, his piety
and justice in maturer life, his moderation, and every vir¬
tue by which he was distinguished; and they supplicate
the infernal deities to receive him as an associate amongst
the blessed. The multitude join their acclamations of ap¬
plause in this celebration of the dead, whom they consider
as going to pass an eternity amongst the just below.” Such
is the description which Diodorus gives of this funeral ju¬
dicature, to which even the kings of Egypt were subject.
The same author asserts that many sovereigns had been thus
judicially deprived of the honours of burial by the indigna¬
tion of their people ; and that the terrors of such a fate had
the most salutary influence on the conduct of their kings.
The funeral rites amongst the Hebrews were solemn and
magnificent. Upon the demise of any person, the relatives
and friends of the deceased rent their clothes. This custom
is still imitated, but with a due regard to economy, by the
modern Jews, who only cut off a piece of their garment in
token of affliction. It was usual to bend the dead person’s
thumb into the hand, and fasten it in that posture with a
string, because the thumb having then the figure of the
name of God, they thought the evil spirit would not dare
to approach it. When they came to the burying-place,
they made a speech to the dead in the following terms:
“ Blessed be God, who has formed thee, fed thee, main¬
tained thee, and taken away thy life. O dead, he knows
your numbers, and shall one day restore your life and
so on. After this they delivered the eulogium, or funeral
oration, upon the deceased ; then said a prayer, called the
“ righteousness of judgmentand finally, turning the face
of the dead body towards heaven, they called out, “ Go
in peace.”
Amongst the ancient Greeks it was usual sometimes, be¬
fore the interment, to place a piece of money in the mouth
of the deceased, as Gharon’s fare for wafting the departed
soul over the river Styx. This ceremony vras considered as
unnecessary in those countries which were supposed to be
situated in the neighbourhood of the infernal regions, and
to lead thither by a ready and direct road. The corpse was
likewise furnished with a cake, composed of flour, honey,
and other ingredients, which was designed to appease the
fury of Cerberus, and to procure the ghost a safe and quiet
enhance. Whilst the corpse continued in the house, a
vessel of water was placed before the door, the design of
which was, that those concerned about the body might pu¬
rify themselves by washing; it being the opinion of the
Greeks, as well as of the Jews, that pollution was contracted
by touching a dead body.
The ceremonies by which they expressed their sorrow
for the death of their friends were various; but it seems to
F U IN
have been a constant rule to recede as much as possible in Fun®!
habit and behaviour from their ordinary customs. For this kites
reason they abstained from banquets and entertainments; ww
they divested themselves of all ornaments ; and they tore,
cut off, or shaved their hair, which they cast into the funeral
pile, to be consumed with the remains of their deceased
friend. Sometimes they threw themselves on the ground
and rolled in the dust, or covered their heads with ashes.
They beat their breasts, and even tore their flesh with their
nails, upon the loss of a person whom they much lamented.
When people of rank, such as public magistrates or great
generals, died, the whole city mourned their loss. All pub¬
lic meetings were intermitted; the schools, baths, shops,
temples, and all places of concourse were shut up.
After interment followed the epulm or feasts, at which
the company used to appear crowned; and upon this occa¬
sion they spoke in praise of the dead, as far as they could
go with truth, it being esteemed a notorious wickedness to
disregard truth in their eulogiums. And not only at these
feasts, but even before the company quitted the sepulchre,
they were sometimes entertained with a panegyric upon
the deceased.
The Grecian soldiers who died in battle had not only
their tombs adorned with inscriptions showing their names,
parentage, and exploits, but were also honoured with an
oration in their praise. The custom amongst the Athenians
in the interment of their soldiers was as follows: “ They
used to place the bodies of their dead in tents three days
before the funeral, that all persons might have an oppor¬
tunity of finding out their relatives, and paying their last
respects to them. Upon the fourth day a coffin of cypress
was sent from every tribe to convey the bones of their own
relatives ; after which went a covered hearse, in memory
of those wfflose bodies could not be found. All these, ac¬
companied by a concourse of people, were carried to the
public burying-place, called Ceramicus, and there interred.
One oration was spoken in commendation of them all, and
their monuments were adorned with pillars, inscriptions,
and other ornaments usual about the tombs of the most
honourable persons. The oration was pronounced by the
fathers of the deceased persons who had behaved them¬
selves most valiantly. Thus, after the battle of Marathon,
the fathers of Callimachus and Cynaegyrus were appointed
to pronounce the funeral oration. And on the return ot
the day upon which the solemnity was first held, the same
oration was annually repeated.”
Interring or laying the dead in the ground seems to have
been the most ancient practice amongst the Greeks; though
burning came afterwards to be generally had recourse to.
It was customary to throw into the funeral pile those gar¬
ments which the deceased had usually worn. The pile was
lighted by one of his nearest relatives or friends, who made
prayers and vows to the wind to assist the flames, that the
body might quickly be reduced to ashes ; and whilst tire
pile was burning, the friends of the deceased stood by it,
called upon him, and poured out libations of wine.
The funeral rites amongst the ancient Romans were very
numerous. The deceased was kept seven days, and every
day washed with hot water, and sometimes with oil, that,
in case he was only in a slumber, he might be thus awaken¬
ed ; and at intervals his friends collected and raised a shout
with the same intent. This last act they called conclamatw.
The third conclamation was on the seventh day ; when, i
no signs of life appeared, the defunct was dressed and em¬
balmed by the pollinctores, placed in a bed near the door,
with his face and heels towards the street; and the outside
of the gate, if the deceased were of condition, was hong
with cypress boughs. In the course of these seven days
an altar was raised near his bed side, called acerra, oa
which his friends every day offered incense; and the Iw-
tinarii provided articles necessary for the interment.
u
I
unesl
iani!"
F U N
On the seventh dajr a public crier was sent about the city,
inviting the people to the solemnization of the funeral in
these words : Exequias L. Tit.Jilii, quibus est commodum
ire, jam teinpus est. Olus (i. e. ille) ex cedibus ejferlur.
The company being assembled, the last conclamation end¬
ed, and the bed was covered with purple. A trumpeter then
marched forward, followed by old women called prceficce,
singing songs in praise of the deceased. Lastly, the bed
followed, borne by the next relations; and if the person
were of quality and office, the waxen images of all his pre¬
decessors were carried before him on poles. The bed was
followed by his children, kindred, and others, atrati, or in
mourning. From this act of following the corpse, these fune¬
ral rites were called exequiee. The body being thus brought
to the rostra, the next of kin laudabat defunctum pro rostris,
made a funeral oration in his praise and that of his ances¬
tors. This being completed, the body was carried to the
pyra, or funeral pile, and there burnt, his friends first cut¬
ting off a finger, which was buried with a second solemnity.
When the body was consumed, the ashes were gathered ;
and the priest, sprinkling the company thrice with clean
water, the eldest of the prceficce crying aloud, Ilicet, dis¬
missed the people, who took their leave of the deceased in
this form, Vale, vale, vale ; nos te ordine quo natura permi-
serit sequemur. The ashes, enclosed in an urn, were laid
in the sepulchre or tomb.
The ancient Christians testified their abhorrence of the
Pagan custom of burning their dead, and always deposited
the body entire in the ground ; and it w as usual to bestow
the honour of embalming upon the martyrs at least, if not
upon others. They prepared the body for burial by wash¬
ing it with water, and dressing it in a funeral attire. The
exportation or carrying forth of the body was performed
by near relations, or persons of such dignity as the circum¬
stances of the deceased required. Psalmody, or singing of
psalms, was the great ceremony used in all funeral proces¬
sions amongst the early Christians.
In the Roman Catholic church, the body of the deceased
person is washed, and a crucifix is put in its hand. At its
feet stands a vessel full of holy water, and a sprinkler is
placed, that those who come in may sprinkle both themselves
and the body. A priest also stands by the corpse, and
piays for the deceased till it is interred. In the funeral
procession, the exorcist walks first, carrying the holy wa¬
ter, next the cross-bearer, afterwards the rest of the" cler¬
gy, and lastly the officiating priest. They all sing the
miserere, and some other psalms; and at the end of each
psalm a requiem. We learn from Alet’s ritual that the faces
of deceased laymen must be turned towards the altar when
they are placed in the church, and those of the clergy to¬
wards the people. The corpse is placed in the church, sur¬
rounded w ith lighted tapers ; after the office for the dead,
mass is said ; then the officiating priest sprinkles the corpse
t mce with holy water, and as often throws incense on it.
1 he body being laid in the grave, the clergyman sprinkles
it with holy water.
The funeral ceremonies of the Greek church are much
the same with those of the Latin. It needs only to be ob¬
served, that, after the funeral service, they kiss the crucifix,
and salute the mouth and forehead of the deceased ; after
which each of the company eats a bit of bread and drinks
a glass of wine in the church, wishing the soul a good re¬
pose, and the afflicted family all consolation.
Funeral Games, a part of the ceremonial of funerals
amongst the ancients.
It was customary for persons of quality amongst the an¬
cient Greeks and Romans to institute games with all sorts
m ren^er t^ie death of their friends more re¬
markable. This practice was generally received, and is
equently mentioned by ancient writers. Patroclus’s fu¬
neral games occupy the greater part of one book of the
FUN
259
Iliad; and Agamemnon’s ghost is introduced by Homer, Funeral
telling the ghost of Achilles, that he had been a spectator at Oration,
a great number of such solemnities.
The celebration of these games amongst the Greeks most¬
ly consisted of horse-races; the prizes wrere of different sorts
and value, according to the quality and magnificence of
the person who celebrated them. The garlands given to
victors on this occasion usually consisted of parsley, which
was thought to have some relation to the dead.
These games, amongst the Romans, consisted chiefly of
processions, and sometimes of mortal combats of gladiators
around the funeral pile. They, as well as the Greeks, had
also a custom, though very ancient, of cutting the throats
of a number of captives before the pile, as victims to ap¬
pease the manes of the deceased. Caesar relates that the
Gauls also observed this sanguinary custom.
The funeral games were at length abolished by the Em¬
peror Claudius.
Funeral Oration, a discourse pronounced in praise of
a person deceased, at the ceremony of his funeral.
This custom is very ancient. In the latter part of the
account given of the Egyptian ceremonies of interment
may be perceived the first rudiments of funeral orations,
which were afterwards moulded into a more polite and re¬
gular form by other nations who adopted this custom. Nor
can we omit remarking, that those funeral solemnities were
attended not only wfith orations in praise of the deceased,
but with prayers for him; which prayers, it seems, w ere
made by one who personated the deceased.
The Grecians received the seeds of superstitious and ido¬
latrous worship from the Egyptians, through Cecrops, Cad¬
mus, Danaus, and Erechtheus; and amongst other customs
transplanted from Egypt into Greece, wrere the solemnities
used at the burial of the dead. Of these an encomium on
the deceased always formed part, as particularly noticed
under the preceding article.
From the Egyptians and Grecians, especially from the
latter, the Romans received many of their laws and customs,
as well as much of their polytheism and idolatrous wor¬
ship. It is well known that the custom of pronouncing fu¬
neral orations in praise of the dead obtained amongst them ;
and the manner in which their funeral services were per¬
formed has been already described. The corpse being
brought into their great oratory, called the rostra, the
nearest relation laudabat defunctum pro rostris, that is,
made a funeral oration, in commendation principally of
the party deceased, but touching the worthy acts also
of those his predecessors whose images were there pre¬
sent. The account given by Dr Kennet is in these words :
“ In all the funerals of note, especially in the public or
indictive, the corpse was first brought with a vast train of
followers into the forum; here one of the nearest rela¬
tions ascended the rostra, and favoured the audience with
an oration in praise of the deceased. If none of the kindred
undertook the office, it was discharged by some of the most
eminent persons in the city for learning and eloquence, as
Appian reports of the funeral of Sylla. And Pliny the
younger reckons it as the last addition to the happiness
of a very great man, that he had the honour to be praised
at his funeral by the eloquent Tacitus, then consul; and
this is agreeable to Quintilian’s account of this matter.
“ For the funeral orations,” says he, “ depend very often
on some public office, and, by order of the senate, are many
times given in charge to the magistrates, to be performed
by themselves in person. The invention of this custom
is generally attributed to Valerius Poplicola, soon after
the expulsion of the regal family. Plutarch tells us,
that honouring his colleague’s obsequies with a funeral
oration, it so pleased the Romans that it became cus¬
tomary for the best men to celebrate the funerals of great
persons with speeches in their commendations.” Thus
' 1
260 FUR
Funeral Julius Caesar, according to custom, delivered an oration in
Oration tim rostra in praise of his wife Cornelia, and his aunt
I! Julia, when dead; showing that his aunts descent, by
r.. in, her mother’s side, was from kings, and by her lathers
from the gods. Plutarch says that “ he approved of the
law of the Romans, which ordered suitable praises to be
given to women as well as to men after death. But fiom
what he says in another place it appears that the old
Roman law provided that funeral orations should be made
only for the elder women ; and therefore he says that
Caesar was the first who made one upon his own wife, it
not being then usual to take notice of younger women in
that way ; but by that action he gained much favour from
the populace, who afterwards looked upon him, and loved
him, as a very mild and good man. I he reason why such
a law was made in favour of the women, Livy tells us,
was this, that when there was such a scarcity of money
in the public treasury, that the sum agreed upon to give
the Gauls to break up the siege of the city and capitol
could not be raised, the women collected amongst them¬
selves and made it up; for which cause they had not only
thanks given them, but this additional honour, that after
death they should be solemnly praised as well as the men ;
which looks as if, before this time, the men only had those
funeral orations made for them.
This custom of the Romans very early obtained amongst
the Christians. Some of their funeral sermons or orations
are now extant, as that of Eusebius on Constantine; and
those of Nazianzen on Basil and Caesarius, and of Am¬
brose on Valentinian, Theodosius, and others. Gregory,
the brother of Basil, made etnxridtwv Aoyov, a funeral ora-
Trade.
FUR
tion on Melitus, bishop of Antioch. These orations were Fnt]fyr
usually pronounced before the bodies of the deceased were chen 1
committed to the ground, which custom has been more or Jj
less continued ever since.
Thus it appears that those rites and ceremonies amongst
the heathens, which have been delivered from one people
to another, are what have given birth to
Funeral Sermons and Orations among Christians.
The method in which the characters of deceased persons
are given in our funeral sermons is very much the same
with that observed in those pagan orations, where first an
account is given of the parentage of the deceased, then of
his education ; after which we hear of his conduct in riper
years ; then his many virtues are enumerated, as also his
generous, noble, and excellent performances.
FUNFKIRCHEN, or Pets, a city of Hungary, in the
circle of the Further Danube, situated on the river Pecs.
It consists of a single street, near four miles in length, on
the declivity of a hill by the river side. It is the seat of
the civil and military boards which govern the province,
of a college, and of several institutions for education.
It contains 2000 houses, and 8487 inhabitants.
FUNGI, from eyoyyot, fimgus, the name of the fourth
order of the twenty-fourth class of vegetables in the Lin-
naean system, comprehending all those which are of the
mushroom kind. See Botany.
FUNGIBLES, in Scotch Laiv, are such things as are
estimated by number, weight, or measure, as corn, butter,
ale, and the like.
FUNNEL of a Chimney, the shaft or smallest part of
the waste, where it is gathered into its least dimensions.
FUR TRADE.
The fur trade in Great Britain, and in most parts of the
world, is divided into two distinct branches; namely, one
for the preparing of fur for felting purposes, or the manu¬
facturing of men’s hats of various descriptions; and the
other for dressing the skins of animals for articles of cloth¬
ing and ornament. But before entering into a detailed
account of these two divisions of the fur trade, we shall
present the reader with a brief sketch of the history of
this branch of commercial traffic in modern times. In
doing this, however, our limits will only permit us to give
a dry statement of facts, although the subject naturally
abounds with moving incidents and perilous enterprises.
There is not, perhaps, a single article of commerce which
has called forth a more daring and adventurous spirit, or
given rise to a more patient and courageous endurance of
personal dangers, privations, and hardships, than have been
manifested throughout the whole history of the fur trade.
We have by its means become pretty accurately acquaint¬
ed with nearly three fourths of the immense continent of
North America, extending from the Gulf of Mexico, on
both sides of the country, to the Frozen Ocean on the
north. The indefatigable exertions of the fur merchant,
stimulated by the prospect of attaining great profits from
his hazardous undertakings, have made many nations and
tribes of savage men partially acquainted with the arts
and refinements of civilized life, who, in the natural course
of things, would otherwise have remained many ages im¬
mersed in heathen darkness and barbarity. Nor are the
general advantages derived from the fur trade confined to
a more accurate geographical knowledge of a vast range
of country, and the extension of the arts of social comfort
and peace. The adventurous fur trader has often been
the precursor of the gospel missionary, and has enabled
him to pursue his important labours with comparative se¬
curity and success.
History.
The French, soon after their establishment in Canada
in 1608, were the first who brought this commerce into
repute, by extending their traffic in skins to the remotest
settlements of the Indian tribes in North America. When
this trade had been carried on for nearly half a century
by the French, it was thought to be so extremely profit¬
able and advantageous that it became the leading temp¬
tation for incorporating the English Hudson’s Bay Com¬
pany. The vast countries which surround this bay abound¬
ed with animals whose furs and skins were of great value,
and far superior in quality to those found in less northerly
regions. In 1670 a charter was accordingly granted by
Charles II. to the governor and company of adventurers
of England trading to Hudson’s Bay. They were to have
the sole trade and commerce of and to all the seas, bays,
straits, creeks, lakes, rivers, and sounds, in whatever la¬
titude, which lie within the entrance of the straits com¬
monly called Hudson s Straits ; together with all the lands,
countries, and territories, upon the coasts of such bays,
seas, and straits, which were then possessed by any Eng¬
lish subject, or the subjects of any Christian state. Nie
company established several forts, namely, Prince of Wales
Fort, Churchill River, Nelson, New Severn, and Albany,
which stood on the west side of the bay, and were garrison¬
ed by a sufficient number of men for ordinary purposes.
But in May 1782 the French took and destroyed these
forts and settlements, which the company considered as a
loss equal to half a million sterling.
Notwithstanding this misfortune, however, the com¬
pany carried on for many years a very steady and lucra¬
tive business. But in spite of the restrictions which gre'V
out of their charter, the fur trade gradually extended it¬
self beyond the territorial limits of the Company; never-
FUR TRADE.
Pur theless, being principally carried on by private individuals,
radi with divided interests and very limited means, the com-
'V^ pany did not look upon their enterprises with jealousy, and
allowed them to pursue their traffic without molestation.
But for some time after the conquest of Canada by the
English, this irregular trade was suspended, and several
years elapsed before it was again revived.
In the year 1766 private adventurers began to traffic
from Michilimakinac. The first persons who attempted it
went as far as the river Camenistignia, and soon returned
successful to Michilimakinac. Their success induced them
to renew the journey, and incited others to follow their
example. One of these adventurers, Thomas Curry, with
a skill and enterprise superior to the others, penetrated
to Fort Bourbon, one of the French forts, and returned to
Canada with four canoes filled with fur. From this period
the people began to spread over every part of the country.
In 1787 these scattered and independent trading par¬
ties were united into one body, under the denomination
of the North-West Company. This was neither more nor
less than an association of commercial men, who agreed
to carry on the fur trade conjointly. The capital con¬
sisted of twenty shares, of which a certain proportion
was held by the company’s agents in Canada. The re¬
maining shares were held by the proprietors, who were
obliged to manage the business of the concern with the
Indians, their clerks, and other servants. They were not
bound to furnish capital, nor even credit. Some of them
held double shares, and could retire from business at any
period with one of them, naming to succeed him in the
other any young man in the service, who might be ap¬
proved of by the majority of the concern, which became
accountable to the succeeding person for the share so
transferred. The retiring proprietor was also discharged
from all duty, and became a dormant partner. Shares
were transferable only to such as had served their time in
the trade. Every share had a vote, and two thirds form¬
ed a majority. The liberal way of providing for the clerks
of the company, by admitting them as partners in the con¬
cern, excited a spirit of emulation amongst them, and was
one of the principal causes of its past and present pros¬
perity. In 1788 the amount of the adventure did not
exceed L.40,000; in eleven years it increased to triple
that sum. In the same year this concern assumed a new
form: the shares were more than doubled, and the com¬
pany split into two parties ; the majority acting upon the
old stock and firm, and the rest commencing a new one.
I he following is the mode of carrying on the fur trade
by these companies. The agents order the goods from
England in October, which are shipped from London the
next spring, and arrive at Montreal by the summer. From
thence they are sent to the Indian market in May follow-
ing, where they arrive in the ensuing winter, and are ex¬
changed for furs, which reach Montreal next autumn, and
are thence shipped for London. As these are not sold
nor paid for till the succeeding spring or summer, the
merchant, allowing twelve months’ credit, receives no re¬
turn for his goods, and the expenses attending them,
which is about equal to the value of the goods them¬
selves, until two years after they are considered as cash;
which makes this a very heavy business.
The articles necessary for the trade are coarse woollen
cloths, milled blankets, arms and ammunition, tobacco, Man¬
chester goods, linens and coarse sheetings; common hard¬
ware, cutlery, ironmongery, and sheet iron ; handkerchiefs,
hats, shoes, and hose ; calicoes and printed cottons, &c.
> pnituous liquors and provisions are purchased in Canada.
lese, with the expenses of making up, and transporting
t em to and from the Indian market, form about half the
annual amount against the adventure.
The number of men employed in the North-West Com¬
pany, after its firm establishment, was in all 1276; con¬
sisting of fifty clerks, seventy-one interpreters, 1120 canoe-
men, and thirty-five guides. Of these, five clerks, eigh¬
teen guides, and 350 canoe-men, were employed for the
summer in going from Montreal to the Grand Portage,
and were called pork-eaters, or goers and comers. One
third of the total number remained during the winter;
all the rest were hired by the year, and sometimes for
three years, except the apprentice clerks, who were ge¬
nerally engaged for five or seven years, for which they
had only L.100, besides clothing. At the expiration of
their time they were either admitted as partners, or were
allowed from L.100 to L.300 per annum till thus provided
for. Ihose who acted both as clerks and interpreters re¬
ceived from 1000 to 4000 livres per annum, with clothing
and provisions. I he guides, who also acted as interpre¬
ters, had from 1000 to 3000 livres. The canoe-men are
of three descriptions; foremen, steersmen, and middle¬
men. The first two were allowed annually 1200, and the
latter 400 livres each. To the last class were attached
upwards of 700 Indians, women and children, victualled
at the company’s expense.
The necessary number of canoes being purchased, the
goods packed, and the rivers free of ice, they are dispatch¬
ed from La Chine, about eight miles above Montreal, with
eight or ten men in each canoe, and their baggage ; sixty-
five packets of goods, six hundredweight of biscuit, two
hundredweight of pork, three bushels of peas, two oil¬
cloths to cover the goods, a sail, &c., an oar, a towing-line,
a kettle, a sponge to bail out the water, with a quantity
of gum, bark, and watape to repair the vessel. An Euro¬
pean seeing one of these vessels thus laden, with her gun¬
wale within six inches of the water, would think his fate
inevitable in it; but the Canadians are very expert, and
few accidents happen.
The number of skins obtained annually by the company
has varied considerably. In the year 1798 the total pro¬
duce of their trade for twelve months consisted of 184,300
skins. Of these, 16,338 were diverted from the British
market, and sent to China. This speculation, however,
did not turn out very profitable, principally on account of
the difficulty of getting home the return from this coun¬
try in the East India Company’s ship, the payment of
duty, and various other restrictions which do not affect
the direct trade with America.
We shall now leave the fur trade in this part of the
American continent for the present, and give a short
sketch of the trade in other parts of the world. During
Captain Cook’s last voyage to the Pacific Ocean, besides
the various scientific advantages which were derived from
it, a new source of wealth was laid open to future naviga¬
tors, by trading for furs of the most valuable kind to the
north-west coast of America. The first vessel that en¬
gaged in the new branch of trade which had been pointed
out by that great navigator, was equipped by some gentle¬
men in China. She was a brig of sixty tons and twenty
men, commanded by James Hanna; and having sailed from
the Typa in the end of April 1785,. proceeded to the north¬
ward along the coast of China, passed Diemen’s Straits,
the south end of Japan, and arrived at Nootka in August
following. Soon after her arrival, the natives, whom Cap¬
tain Cook had left unacquainted with the effect of fire¬
arms, tempted probably by the diminutive size of the
vessel, which was scarcely longer than some of their own
canoes, and the small number of her people, attempted to
board her in open day, but were repulsed with consider¬
able slaughter. This was the introduction to a firm and
lasting friendship. Captain Hanna cured such of the In¬
dians as were wounded; an unreserved confidence took
place; they traded fairly and peaceably; a valuable cargo
of furs was procured; and the bad weather setting in, he
261
Fur
Trade.
262
FUR TRADE.
left the coast in the end of September, touched at the
Sandwich Islands, and arrived at Macao about the end of
December. „ ... .
Captain Hanna sailed again from Macao in May 178G, m
the snow Sea Otter, of a hundred and twenty tons and
thirty men, and returned to Macao in February 1787. In
this second voyage he followed his former track, and ar¬
rived at Nootka in August; traced the coast from thence
as far as fifty-three degrees; and explored the extensive
sound discovered a short time before by Mr Strange, and
called by him Queen Charlotte’s Sound, the latitude of
which is 51 degrees north, and the longitude 128 west.
The snow Lark, Captain Peters, of two hundred and twenty
tons and forty men, sailed from Macao in July 1786. Her
destination was Kamtschatka (for which she was provided
with a suitable cargo of arrack, tea, &c.), Copper Islands,
and the north-west coast. Captain Peters was directed to
make his passage between Japan and Corea, and examine
the islands to the north of Japan, said to be inhabited by
hairy people ; which, if Captain Cook had lived, would not
have been left for the French to determine. No account
having been received of this vessel since her depaiture,
there is every reason to fear that she perished.
In the beginning of 1786 two coppered vessels were
fitted out at Bombay, under the direction of Mr James
Strange, who was himself a principal owner. These ves¬
sels were the snow Captain Cook, of three hundred tons,
and snow Experiment, of a hundred tons. 1 hey proceeded
in company from the Malabar coast to Batavia, passed the
Straits of Macassar, where the Experiment was run upon
a reef, and was obliged to haul ashore upon Borneo to re¬
pair ; and thence they steered to the eastward of the Pa-
laos Islands, made Sulphur Island, and arrived at Nootka
the end of June following. From Nootka, where they left
their surgeon’s mate, Mackay, to learn the language and
collect skins against their intended return (but who was
brought away in the Imperial Eagle the following year),
they proceeded along the coast to Queen Charlotte s Sound,
of which they were the first discoverers, and thence in a
direct course to Prince William’s Sound. After some stay
there, the Experiment proceeded to Macao (their vessels
being provided with passes by the governor-general of Goa);
the Captain Cook endeavoured to get to Copper Island,
but without success, being prevented by constant westerly
winds.
Two coppered vessels were also fitted out by a society
of gentlemen in Bengal, viz. the snow Nootka, of two hun¬
dred tons, and the snow Sea Otter, ol a hundred tons,
commanded by John Meares and William Pipping, lieu¬
tenants in the royal navy. The Nootka sailed in March
1786 from Bengal; passed through the China seas; touched
at the Bashees, where they were very civilly treated by
the Spaniards, who had taken possession of these islands;
arrived at Oonalashka the beginning of August; found
there a Russian galliot and some furriers; discovered ac¬
cidently near Cape Greville a new strait near Cook’s River,
fifteen leagues wide and thirty long; saw some Russian
hunters in a small bay between Cape Elizabeth and Cape
Bear ; and arrived in Prince William’s Sound about the end
of September. They determined to winter in Snug Corner
Cove, latitude 60. 30. in preference to going to the Sand¬
wich Islands, which seem placed by Providence for the
comfort and refreshment of the adventurers in this trade ;
and were frozen up in this gloomy and frightful spot from
the end of November till the end of May. By the severity
of the winter they lost their third and fourth mates, sur¬
geon, boatswain, carpenter, and cooper, and twelve of the
foremast-men ; and the remainder were so enfeebled as
to be under the necessity of applying to the commanders
of the King George and Queen Charlotte, who just at this
time arrived in the sound, for some hands to assist in carry¬
ing the vessel to the Sandwich Islands, whither, abandoning
all further thoughts of trade, they determined (after getting Trade,
a sea-stock of fish off Cape Edgecumbe) immediately to '
proceed. The Nootka arrived at Macao in the end of Oc¬
tober 1787.
The Imperial Eagle, Captain Barkley, fitted out by a
society of gentlemen at Ostend, sailed from Ostend in the
latter end of November 1786; went into the bay of All-
Saints, and thence, without touching anywhere, to the
Sandwich Islands, and arrived in the beginning of June at
Nootka, whence he proceeded to the south, as far as 47.30.
in which space he discovered some good and spacious har¬
bours. In the latitude of 47. 46. he lost his second mate,
purser, and two seamen, who were upon a trading party
with the long boat, and imprudently trusting themselves
ashore unarmed, were cut off’ by the natives. This place
seems to be the same which Don Antonio Mourelle calls
the Jlha de los Dolores, where the Spaniards, going ashore
to water, w ere also attacked and cut off.
The King George, of three hundred and tw enty, and the
Queen Charlotte, of two hundred tons, commanded by Cap¬
tains Portlock and Dixon, who served under Captain Cook
in his last voyage, were fitted out by a society of gentle¬
men in England, who obtained a privilege to trade to the
north-west coast of America, from the South Sea and East
India Companies. These vessels sailed from England in
the beginning of September 1785, touched at the I alkland
Islands, Sandwich Islands, and arrived at Cook’s River in
the month of August. From thence, after collecting a feu-
furs, they steered in the end of September for Prince Wil¬
liam’s Sound, intending, it is said, to winter there; but
they were prevented entering by heavy storms and ex¬
tremely bad weather, which obliged them to bear away,
and seek some other part of the coast to winter at. The
storms and bad weather accompanied them till they arriv¬
ed off Nootka Sound, when they were so near the shore
that a canoe came off to them; but though thus near ac¬
complishing their purpose, a fresh storm came on, and oblig¬
ed them finally to bear awray for the Sandwich Islands,
where they remained during the winter months; and re¬
turning again to the coast, arrived in Prince Williams
Sound in the middle of May. The King George remained
in Prince William’s Sound ; and during her stay her long
boat discovered a new passage from the sound into Cook’s
River. The Queen Charlotte proceeded along the coast
to the south ; looked into Behring’s Bay, where the Rus¬
sians have now a settlement; and examined that part of the
coast, from fifty-six to fifty degrees, which was not seen by
Captain Cook, and which consists of a cluster of islands,
called by Captain Dixon Queen Charlotte’s Islands, at a
considerable distance from the main, which is thus remov¬
ed further to the eastward than it was supposed to be. Some
part of the continent may, however, be seen from the east
side of these islands ; and it is probable that the distance
does not anywhere exceed fifty leagues. According to this
estimation, Hudson’s FIouse, longitude 106.27. west, latitude
53. north, is not more than 800 miles distant from that part
of this coast, in the same parallel. It is therefore not impro¬
bable that the enterprising spirit of our Canadian furriers
may penetrate to this coast, the communication with whic
is probably much facilitated by lakes or rivers, and add to
the comforts and luxuries of Europe this invaluable rur,
which in warmth, beauty, and magnificence, far excee s
the richest furs of Siberia. Queen Charlotte’s Islands are
inhabited by a race of people differing in language, in ea-
tures, and in manners, from all the other tribes of this coast.
Amongst other peculiarities, they are distinguished by a
large incision in the under lip, in which is inserted a l)iec<j.
of polished wood, sometimes ornamented with mother o
pearl shell, in shape and size like a weaver’s shuttle, wine t
undoubtedlv is the most effectual mode of deforming t e
Fu human face divine that the ingenious depravity of taste in after this, Don Martinez took possession of the little set- Fur
I'rad any savage nation has yet discovered. These ships, after tlenjent, hoisting the standard of Spain, and modestly Trade.
Hf'"r disposing of their furs in China, were loaded with teas on declaring all the lands from Cape Horn to sixty degrees
account of the English company, sailed from Wampoa, and north latitude belonging to his master. To aggravate the
arrived in England after an absence of three years. insult, he forcibly employed the crew of the Iphigenia in
The year after the departure or tne King George and building batteries, &c. and offered no kind of violence to
two American vessels which were at the same time in the
harbour. At this time the North-West America was sent
to explore the Archipelago of St Lazarus. On her return
FUR TRADE.
Queen Charlotte, the association to which they belonged
fitted out two other vessels, viz. the Princess Royal, of sixty
tons, and the Prince of Wales, of two hundred tons, com¬
manded by Captains Colnet and Duncan, the former of to Nootka she met with similar treatment, and the skins
whom had served under Captain Cook. These vessels left she had collected were seized, with the rest of her cargo.
England in August 1 /S6 ; touched at New \ear s Harbour A few days after, the Princess Roval (which we have
on Staaten Land, where they left an officer and twelve men mentioned as having left Canton in company with the Ar-
to kill seals against the arrival of a vessel which wras to fol- gonaut) arrived. I he Spanish commander, for reasons
low them from England; and thence proceeded directly which do not appear, suffered her to depart. The skins
to Nootka, where they arrived the 6th of July, sickly and collected by the North-West America wrere shipped on
in bad condition, and found theie the Imperial Eagle, which board her for the benefit of her owmer, and she proceeded
had left Europe some months after them. Leaving Noot- to trade in the neighbouring isles. On the 3d of July the
ka, they steered along the shore to the northward, and
soon after fell in with the Queen Charlotte.
In the beginning of 1788 Captain Meares again sailed
with two other vessels, the Felice, which he commanded
himself, and the Iphigenia, Captain Douglas, to Nootka
Sound. Here he purchased of the chief of the district a Mr Colnet, director of the enterprise, was also seized by
spot, on which he built a house for his residence and the the Spanish captain.
more convenient intercourse with the natives; hoisting the The crews of the British vessels were variously dispos-
British colours thereon, surrounding it with a breastwork, ed of, some being sent to China by the American vessels,
and mounting a three-pounder on the front. Having done and others to Spanish America; but the Chinese were all
this, he sent Mr Douglas in the Iphigenia to trade along detained, and employed in the mines which were opened
the northern coast, whilst he himself proceeded to the south ; in the lands purchased by Captain Meares. What these
and by presents to the chiefs he obtained the ports Cox and mines consisted of we are nowhere informed. Mr Colnet
Effingham, and the promise of an excellent trade w'ith the was so much affected at the failure of the enterprise that
natives of the district, and also some other places, which he lost his reason.
he took possession of in name of the king. Captain Doug- This proceeding, as soon as it became known, occa-
las likewise, by presents to the chiefs of the countries he sioned a spirited representation from the British court to
visited, obtained similar privileges, no other European ves- that of Spain ; at the same time that vigorous prepara-
sel having been there before him. tions were made for war in case adequate satisfaction
On their return to Nootka, they found a vessel finished, should be refused. Matters, however, were prevented
which the commander had laid down before his departure, from coming to extremities, by a compliance on the part
This, which he named the North-West America, he left of Spain, after many delays and much artifice of negotia-
at Nootka with the Iphigenia, whilst he sailed with a cargo tion, with the requisitions of Britain; in consequence of
of furs in the Felice to China. which, among other advantages unnecessary to be here
A few days after his arrival at China, two vessels, the recited, the whole trade from California to China was com-
Prince of Wales and Princess Royal, came to Canton from pletely laid open, and the British allowed the full exer-
their trading voyage above mentioned. Captain Meares, cise of navigation and commerce in those parts of the
fearing that a competition of interests might be injurious world which formed the subject of discussion,
to both parties, proposed a partnership, which was mutually In some accounts of the voyages above mentioned, the
agreed^ to; and another ship was purchased by the firm, fur trade in those parts has been greatly magnified. In
that published by Captain Portlock, however, this officer
observes, that the gains hitherto have certainly not been
enviably great, although the merchants have no doubt
and called the Argonaut. In the month of April 1787,
Captain Meares gave Mr Colnet the command of the
Princess Royal and the Argonaut, which were loaded
with stores and articles estimated sufficient for three years found the trade lucrative,
trade, besides several artificers, and about seventy Chi¬
nese, who intended to become settlers on the north-west
coast of America, under protection of the new company.
_ In the mean while the Iphigenia and North-W'est Ame¬
rica (the vessel built at Nootka), having wintered in the
Considerable success having attended the Russian voy¬
ages to the Aleutian Islands, and along the north-western
shore of North America, in the middle of the last cen¬
tury, two Russian mercantile houses, of the names of
Schelikoff and Gaiikoff, projected, in 1785, the formation
Sandwich Islands, returned to Nootka in the latter end of of a regular company, to encourage the fur trade in those
April; soon after which two Spanish ships of war, under regions, under the denomination of the Russian Ameri-
the command of Don Martinez, anchored in the sound, can Fur Company. Schelikoff himself, the head of one
lor a few days mutual civilities passed between the Spa- of the establishments, was the commander of all their
nish captain and Mr Douglas; but at the end of about a early expeditions. They erected forts for the protection of
week Don Martinez summoned the latter on board his a chain of factories on most of the islands, and induced a
own ship the Princessa, telling him he was his prisoner, number of respectable merchants to join in their exten-
and that the king of Spain had commanded him, Don sive and lucrative adventures at the expense of the natives,
Martinez, to seize all vessels he should find on that coast, from whom they did not fail to take every opportunity of
He therefore instructed his officers to take possession of wresting the staple of the district. Many cruelties were
the Iphigenia, which they accordingly did in the name of charged against them at this time ; and the Emperor Paul
his Catholic majesty ; and the officers and crew were con- was upon the eve of suppressing the association altogether,
veyed as prisoners on board the Spanish ships, where they when the company pledged itself, through its active agent
were put in irons, and otherwise ill treated. Immediately M. Von Resanoff, to follow more regular proceedings. In
263
Argonaut arrived at the sound; and Don Martinez, after
making every profession of civility to Mr Colnet, the com¬
mander, took possession of the said ship in the name of
his master, and made prisoners of the crew. Soon after,
the Princess Royal returning to receive instructions from
264
FUR TRADE.
1799 it was formally established with considerable privi¬
leges. The present emperor took it under his particular
patronage at his accession ; and the intelligent ministei
RomanzofF has introduced many useful changes in its con¬
stitution. The condition of the fur-collectois of the com¬
pany is said, however, to be still wretched in the extreme,
and only to be exceeded by that of the oppressed Aleu¬
tians, who are in turn their slaves.
From about the year 1806 till 1823 a very extensive
trade was carried on in the South Seas in procuring seal¬
skins, which in that part of the world are covered with a
very fine fur. These were obtained in vast abundance
by the first traders, and yielded a very large profit; but
the traffic has now become nearly extinct, on account of
the almost entire destruction of the animals. The price
of seal-skins is in consequence very high, averaging from
30s. to 50s. per skin ; a price which has effectually pre¬
vented the use of the fur for felting purposes, to which it
w'as a few years since extensively applied, and confined it
entirely to objects of ornament in dress.
Within these last twenty years a great trade has been
carried on with some of the South American provinces
for the skins of a little animal called the nuetra. It is
of the rat species, and is found in immense quantities in
most of the rivers in that part of the world, ihe fur of it
is now considered as quite a staple article in the hat trade.
The traffic is entirely in the hands of private adventurers ;
and great numbers of these skins are imported annually
into the port of Liverpool by the hat manufacturers in
Lancashire, who send their goods to the South American
market, and obtain nuetra-skins in exchange.
From the period of the establishment of the North-
West Company till 1809, they had succeeded in establish¬
ing trading posts adjoining the different factories of the
Hudson’s Bay Company in all the interior ports of Ame¬
rica ; and were still, by their enterprise and skill, making
considerable progress both to the north and west. They
had numerous trading establishments at Athabasca, Peace
River, Great and Lesser Slave Lakes, New Caledonia,
St Columbia, &c. to none of which places did the Hud¬
son’s Bay Company attempt to follow them. By these
means the North-West Company became undisputed mas¬
ters of the interior and south-western states. Their in¬
fluence with the natives was all-powerful; and no single
trader, without incurring imminent danger from the In¬
dians, or encountering the risk of starvation, could at¬
tempt to penetrate into their territories.
A few independent individuals unconnected with either
company, the chief of whom was Mr John Jacob Astor, a
wealthy merchant of New York, still carried on a fluctuat¬
ing trade with the Indians whose lands border on Canada
and the United States ; but their competition proved in¬
jurious to themselves, as prices far above their value
were frequently given to the natives for their furs.
With the interior thus inaccessible, and the confines
not worth disputing, Mr Astor turned his thoughts to the
opposite side of the American continent; and accordingly
made proposals to the North-West Company to join with
him in forming an establishment on the Columbia River.
This proposition was submitted to the consideration of a
general meeting of the wintering proprietors ; but, after
some negotiations as to the details, it was rejected. Mr
Astor, therefore, determined to make the attempt without
their co-operation ; and, in the winter of 1809, he succeed¬
ed in forming an association called the Pacific Fur Compa¬
ny, of which he himself was the chief proprietor. As able
and experienced traders were necessary to ensure success,
he induced several of the gentlemen connected with the
North -West Company to quit that establishment and join
in his speculation.
It was intended, in the first instance, to form a trading
establishment at the entrance of the Columbia, and as Fur
many more subsequently on its tributary streams as the na- Trade,
ture and the productions of the country would admit. It
was also arranged that a vessel laden with goods for the
Indian market" should sail every year from New York to
the Columbia, and, after discharging her cargo at the
establishment, take on board the produce of the year’s
trade, and thence proceed to Canton, which affords a
ready market for furs of every description. On disposing
of her stock of peltries at the latter place, she was to re¬
turn to New York freighted with the productions of China.
The first vessel fitted out by the Pacific Fur Company
was the Tonquin, commanded by Captain Jonathan
Thorne, formerly a lieutenant in the service of the United
States. She sailed from New York in the autumn of
1810, and had on board four partners, nine clerks, with a
number of mechanics and voyageurs, and a large and
well-assorted cargo for the Indian and Chinese trade.
Much about the same period a party under the command
of Messrs W. P. Hunt and Donald Mackenzie, left St
Louis on the Missouri, with the intention of proceeding
as nearly as possible by Lewis and Clarke’s route across
the continent to the mouth of the Columbia. This party
consisted, besides the above gentlemen, who were part¬
ners, of three clerks and upwards of seventy men.
The following year, 1811, another vessel, the Beaver, of
four hundred and eighty tons, commanded by Captain
Cornelius Sowles, sailed for Columbia. She had on hoard
one partner, six clerks, and a number of artisans and voy¬
ageurs, with a plentiful supply of every thing which could
contribute to the comfort of the passengers and crew.
After a voyage of nearly seven months, she arrived at the
mouth of the Columbia.
An establishment was here formed, which was called
Fort Astoria, in honour of Mr Astor. There were at this
fort, when the Tonquin and the Beaver united their re¬
spective forces, five proprietors, and as many clerks, ar¬
tisans, canoe-men, and others, as amounted to a hundred
and forty men. The Tonquin was dispatched on a short
cruise to the northward, as far as Nootka Sound, with a
view of obtaining a few furs there ; whilst the party at the
Columbia were endeavouring to obtain what would com¬
plete her cargo, when she was to be sent forthwith to
Canton. But she was destined never to return to St Co¬
lumbia. The captain and the natives quarrelled, when
she w'as plundered, and every one on board put to death.
This melancholy circumstance threw a great gloom
over the establishment at Astoria, which, three years
after this, w’as doomed to entire dissolution. In 1812, war
having been declared by Great Britain against the United
States, the company found, that in consequence of the
strict blockade maintained by the English cruisers, no ves¬
sel could venture to trade to such a remote part of the
world ; added to which, information was received that the
Beaver, which had proceeded a short time before to Can¬
ton, was blockaded there. These untoward events decid¬
ed the fate of the Pacific Fur Company. Many of the most
active persons in its employment offered their services to
the North-West Company, which were readily accepted.
The standard of exchange established between the fur
traders and the Indians, from whom the skins are obtained,
is quite of an arbitrary description, and has very little refe-
rence to the intrinsic value of the skins when brought into
this country. The beaver-skin is taken as the standard ot
value. Three martens, eight musk-rats, or a single l>nx
or wolverene skin, are equivalent to one beaver; a silver
fox, a white fox, or otter, is reckoned two beavers; and a
black fox, or large black bear, is equal to four; a mode
of reckoning which has very little connection with the rea
value of these different skins in the European market.
Neither has any attention been paid to the original cost o
par
PUR TRADE.
'ur European articles, in fixing the tariff by which they are
sold to the Indians. A coarse butcher’s knife is one skin,
a woollen blanket or fathom of coarse cloth eight, and a
fowling-piece fifteen. The Indians receive their principal
outfit of clothing and ammunition on credit in the autumn,
to be repaid by their winter hunts; the amount intrusted
to each of the hunters varies with their individual reputa¬
tion for industry and skill, from twenty to a hundred and
fifty skins.
From 1810 to 1821, the North-West Company continu¬
ed to prosecute their trading speculations with the most in¬
defatigable activity and considerable success. They had
established their trading forts over almost the whole length
and breadth of North America. The Hudson’s Bay Com¬
pany were not less enterprising and industrious; and from
their having been the original possessors of a large portion
of the hunting territory, long established and protected by
a charter, they had a decided advantage over the other
company. But this keen rivalship produced a multitude of
evils, both to the companies and to the poor Indians them¬
selves. Each company had to keep an extra number of
men in their employment, to collect the skins during win¬
ter ; for every thing depended upon who should get first
among the Indians. The hunters having obtained from
either the one or the other of these companies a consider¬
able sum in advance upon the success of their hunting ex¬
ertions, were often strongly tempted to break through their
engagements, by the statements and artifices of rival agents.
The Indians, often deceived themselves, became deceivers in
their turn ; and not unfrequently, after having incurred a
heavy debt at one trading post, they would move off to an¬
other, and play the same game. In some cases mutual agree¬
ments were entered into by both companies, to put a stop
to these dishonest proceedings ; but such treaties were no
sooner made than indirectly violated by the zeal and cupi¬
dity of individual agents; so that they proved fertile sub¬
jects for disputes and differences, which were more than
once decided by force of arms.
These, with many other serious evils arising out of this
keen commercial rivalry, threatened ultimately to destroy
both companies, and ruin the fur trade altogether. Both
parties, therefore, saw it for their interest to come to a friend¬
ly understanding. In 1821 they became united into one
body; and the result has hitherto shown that they have
since done a great deal more business, the profits upon
which have yielded a considerably increased per centage.
They possess at this time (1834) a decided monopoly°in
the fur trade; and though this may seem to a casual ob¬
server as likely to enhance the price of furs, and operate
like an additional tax upon the community, yet the whole
history of this traffic clearly shows that it cannot be carried
on by individual capital and enterprise.
The amount of foreign furs of every description import¬
ed into Great Britain cannot be less than from one and a
half to two millions annually ; whilst the value of the hare
and rabbit furs of our own country may be valued at an¬
other million. The following are the duties to which skins
and furs are at present subjected.
Imports.
Beaver (British possessions)....4s. per skin.
Do. foreign 8s. per do.
Nuetni Is. per 100.
Musquash.. Is. per 100.
Otter (British possessions) Is. per skin.
Foreign Is. od. per do.
Exports.
Foreign skins No duty.
British rabbit fur Is. per 100.
Hare do   Is. per do.
VOL. x.
265
On the Manufacturing of Fur for Felting purposes.
In the manufacturing of furs for the making of hats, the
principal kinds of skins used are the hare, rabbit, beaver,
and nuetra. All these sorts of skins, in the northern parts
of Europe, as well as in America, are divided by furriers
into two distinct kinds ; namely, the seasoned and unsea¬
soned skins. The former are those which are taken off
the animal in winter, when the fur is at its full growth,
and in the highest state of perfection as to fineness; the
latter are those obtained in spring, summer, and autumn.
The fur in the unseasoned skins is short, coarse, and
hairy, and is generally not worth more than a third of the
value of furs cut off the best-seasoned skins. The mode
of manufacturing both descriptions is, however, the same ;
of which we shall now endeavour to give the reader a
brief account.
Hare-Skins.—-The first mechanical operation performed
on the hare-skin is to open it with a knife down between the
middle of the forelegs, taking great care that the skin be
not torn ; for there is a considerable waste of the fur if this
precaution be not attended to. The skin must now be
rubbed with what is called a rake, which resembles a com¬
mon dinner-knife, with teeth like a saw. This is used for
the purpose of clearing away all manner of dirt and dried
blood which may happen to be upon the skin. This clean¬
ing is of very great importance; for the smallest particle
of dirt or blood will greatly injure the fur for felting pur¬
poses. The operation requires to be carefully and judi¬
ciously performed for another reason. If the workman be
not attentive, he will tear up, along with the bloody and
dirty parts, a considerable part of the good and clean fur;
and thus great loss will be incurred.
Hare-skins, after being thus opened and cleaned, must
be damped on the pelt side with a little water, and placed
under a heavy weight, pelt to pelt, to press them, so that
all ridges and inequalities in the pelt may be removed.
The skins are now fit for what is called shearing. Their
outsides are all covered over with a kind of hair, which
possesses no felting properties whatever; and this must
be taken off with hand shears. These are of two kinds;
the one the common shears used for clipping the wool off
sheep; the other kind resembles the cutting shears of
tailors, only the bowl is made equally large on both sides,
for the admission of all the fingers. Some furriers prefer
one kind of shears and some another. Those like tailors’
shears make the prettiest work when skilfully used; but
the other requires less time for their management. The
shearing of the skins forms a very important part of their
manufacture ; for if you cut too far down, you will se¬
riously destroy both quality and quantity of the fur, as
well as disfigure its appearance. On this account many
furriers confine a part of their work-people to this branch
of the business alone ; for the greater part of the profits of
a master depends upon the manner in which this shearing
process is performed.
After a hare-skin has been submitted to the process of
shearing, it presents an appearance altogether different
from what it did before. A stranger would not know it to be
the same skin. Before, it was of a uniform brown colour;
now, it is down the whole of the back of a most beautiful
jet black, which gradually becomes fainter as it approaches
the sides of the skin. After it undergoes the process of
rounding, which consists in taking off all the irregular or
angular pieces of skin, and making the pelt smooth and
even, it is then fit for the cutting board.
The cutting boards of furriers are made of the willow
tree, and are commonly about twenty inches wide, and
from two to three feet broad. They ought to be wet with
a little water at short intervals, when used, to make the
wood soft, and prevent the edge of the cutting knife from
2 L
266 FUR T
Fur being taken off too soon. These knives are sometimes
Trade, made of common sheet-iron, but more frequently of steel,
which are to be preferred to the former, on account of
keeping their edge longer, and being much lighter for the
hand. A fine edge will not cut the fur off the skins ; it
must be a rough edge, which is obtained from rubbing the
knife about every two or three minutes upon a piece of
common free-stone, of not too fine a grain. These knives
are from five to six inches in length and three in breadth,
and resemble in some measure those knives used by gro¬
cers for the cutting up of cheeses. "1 he skins are all, be¬
fore cutting, split down the middle of the back into two
halves. The cutting then commences at the head or cheeks
of the skin, and always in the line of direction in which
the fur lies. The cutting knife is run quickly backward
and forward against the first joint of the fingers across the
skin; whilst at every two or three strokes the hand must
be lifted up, to gather in the fur that has been cut, and
preserve it in as fleecy a form as possible. Care must be
taken against chopping the fur; because, when this takes
place, the felting principle in all furs is considerably weak¬
ened, and in some entirely destroyed.
An important point in the getting up of furs for sale
is, to keep them in as unbroken or fleecy consistency as
possible. This, abstractedly considered, is of no conse¬
quence to their felting power; but the practice of the
trade as to this matter has arisen from a desire to keep
the different kinds of fur from being mixed with one ano¬
ther, and thereby in some degree to prevent adulteration.
From this cause, the above mode of cutting the hare-skin
has been very recently much improved, by the use of in¬
struments made of tin, against which the cutting knives
run, and which are so contrived as to gather in the whole
fur off the largest skin with as much ease as the fur of a
half skin could be gathered by the hand when the knife
runs against the fingers. This simple invention preserves
all the most valuable parts of the skin in one lump or
fleece, and enables the workman to sort the fur with more
ease and readiness than before.
The fur of the common hare-skin is sorted into five dis¬
tinct kinds: 1st, Fine backs, value from 20s. to 24s. per lb.;
2d, second backs, value 12s.; 3d, sides, from 8s. to 10s. ;
4>th, bellies, or white sides, from 4s. to 5s.; and, 5th, tail
wool, from Is. 6d. to 2s. 6dv
Rabbit-Skins The rabbit-skin is cut in precisely the
same manner as that of the hare, only there is a consider¬
able difference in the mode of dressing or preparing the
former. The rabbit-skin is covered over on the pelt side
with large quantities of grease or fat, from which the hare-
skin is comparatively free. This must be removed when
the rabbit-skin is first opened. The knife used in opening
the skin must be pressed down upon that part of the pelt
where the fatty substance is, till it gets beneath the cu¬
ticle on which it rests, when the whole of the greasy mat¬
ter may be removed, and a little whitening rubbed on the
spot. If this operation be not well attended to, the grease
will get mixed with the fur, and damage it considerably.
The rabbit, like the hare skin, is covered over with hair
upon the top of the fur; but this hair cannot be taken off
by shearing, as in the case of the former, but must be re¬
moved by pulling it out. This is done with a short knife
about three inches long, which is held so as to grasp the
hair between the thumb and it, which is secured from in¬
jury by having a piece of buckskin leather placed over it.
The hand of the workman ought to fall lightly upon the
skin, otherwise the hair will be cut and the fur pulled out
also, which will deteriorate its quality and diminish its
quantity very considerably. Rabbit fur is divided into
six kinds: Istf, Fine backs, value from 10s. to 13s. per lb.;
2d, sides, 6s.; 3d, seconds, 5s.; \th, redneck, 12s.; 5th,
pate wool, 4s.; and §th, tail wool, 2s. 6d.
R ADE.
Beaver-Skim.—The skin of the beaver is manufactured
in the same way as that of the rabbit. The fat, however,
in the former is much greater in quantity and more firmly
imbedded in the pelt than in the latter; and of course
greater care and trouble are required to remove it. Ful¬
ler’s earth, mixed with whitening, are used to imbibe the
fatty particles. The pulling the outside hair off is of great
importance. The cutting of the beaver has been for some
years performed by machines; the thickness and regu¬
larity in the pelt affording facilities for this mode of ope-
ration, which the generality of other skins do not.
The fur of the beaver is sorted into three or four differ¬
ent kinds; but that which is cut off the cheek of the
skin bears the highest price. White beaver is compara¬
tively scarce, and is much esteemed for fine drab hats.
The prices of beaver fur fluctuate very much; the fol¬
lowing are the present quotations of its value. Best
cheek, 194s. per lb.; best brown wooms, 130s.; stage, 100s.
Nuetra-Skins.—These are dressed like rabbit-skins, only
the hair on the outside of the skins is much stronger than
in the rabbit, and requires a sharper knife and greater
strength to remove it. Nuetra skins are full of fat; and
before they are submitted to the pulling process, they
must be well washed with soap and boiling water. The
skin is laid with the pelt downwards, and well scrubbed
on the fur side with a brush, till the grease is entirely re¬
moved. They must then be well washed in cold spring
water, which is drawn out from amongst the fur by a piece
of wood made for the purpose. After this they are placed
before a stove or hot fire to dry, and are then fit to go
through the other manufacturing processes. The fur is
divided into three kinds; and the price at present ave¬
rages about 60s. per lb.
Both the beaver and nuetra furs, before they are used
for hat purposes, must go through the operation of blowr
ing. This is done for the purpose of clearing them of
those short black hairs which remain amongst the fur after
it is separated from the pelt. A blowing machine consists
principally of a cylinder, into which the fur is placed; and
• by means of a fly-wheel, situated within it, the stuff is
thrown up, and the hairs, by reason of their greater spe¬
cific gravity, fall to the bottom, and leave all the fine fur
upon the top. Hare and rabbit furs are also partially
used in a blown state for the nap or outside covering of
hats.
Though the hare, rabbit, beaver, and nuetra furs are the
staple articles of hat manufacture, yet there are other furs
occasionally used in their stead, or in conjunction with
them. These are the furs of the otter, the seal, musquash,
and the mole. The otter is fully as fine as the beaver
itself; but the principal objection hatters have to its use
is, that it does not retain a good black, but a brown or
coppery shade. The seal is not so fine as the otter. It
finishes dull upon a hat, and, in consequence, is not much
used at present. Musquash is a useful fur. The mole is
the only skin known to furriers which for felting purposes
needs no preparatory dressing before cutting. Its fur is
alike fine throughout. But notwithstanding its fineness,
it is so very short as to prevent its being extensively used
in the hat manufacture.
Within these last forty or fifty years many attempts have
been made to apply machinery to the cutting off the vari¬
ous kinds of fur, but, with the exception of the beaver, these
attempts have hitherto been but partially successful. The
great difficulties in the way of machinery for cutting pur¬
poses are, the unevenness on the surface, and the inequa¬
lities in the thickness of the pelt in different skins. The
smallest particles of the fleshy part of the skin getting
among the fur will injure it; so much so, that a piece o
pelt not larger than a pin’s head will destroy the finest hat.
This circumstance has greatly increased the difficulty ot
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FUR TRADE.
bringing machinery to bear upon the fur trade. There
) are, however, at this moment some machines employed in
* the cutting of hare and rabbit skins in England; but if re¬
ports are to be relied upon, they are not likely, from the
obstacles above adverted to, to realise the expectations of
gain at first entertained by those employing them, either
in the saving of labour, or in the superior manner in which
the fur is manufactured.
Many experiments have also been made to dispense with
the usual processes of cutting the different kinds of fur
with knives, by applying chemical substances to the pelts,
so as to loosen the roots of the fur, and make it leave the
pelt upon a slight application of force. Lime has often
been tried for this purpose, by using it in the same manner
as skinners do in the management of sheep-skins. Some
furriers have also tried a partial state of putrefaction ; but
this, as well as the lime preparation, has proved abortive.
The fur obtained off different kinds of skins by such means
looks in every respect as well to the eye as if it had been
manufactured in the usual manner; but the felting prin¬
ciple is by all such means entirely destroyed.
Carroted Fur. Sulphuric acid has the property of in¬
creasing the felting power of most kinds of fur. When
this is applied the fur is called carroted, from the colour
which the acid gives it. The most common kind of fur
submitted to this process is that belonging to the rabbit-
skin ; and it is generally employed in small quantities for
the manufacture of all fine stuff hats. Carroted coney
wool is made in the following manner: You mix one part
of sulphuric acid with two parts of pure spring water, in a
dish of some kind ; then take and wet the rabbit-skin with
a brush all over, making the liquid penetrate as near to the
bottom of the fur as possible ; care being used, in this pro¬
cess, not to touch the skin with the fingers, lest they be
burned, but with a piece of iron hoop made like unto a pair
of sugar-nippers. When the skins are thus wet, they must
be placed over a very hot fire to dry ; but they must not
be placed too near, lest they take fire, which they are very
apt to do from the application of the acid. Instead of dry¬
ing them before the fire in this manner, some run a hatter’s
finishing iron, heated to a certain degree, over the skins,
md allow them to dry gradually in the sun. This is found
to be a very good plan. When the skins are dry, they
mght to be gently beaten with a rod, and slightly wet on
the pelt side with water, previously to their being put under
the pressing stone. They are then cut in the usual man-
icr. Skins prepared in this way attract a great quantity
if moisture from the atmosphere ; and carroted fur always
eels to the hand as if it had been partially wet with water.
1 he fur off the rabbit-skin improves in its felting capabi-
ities by being kept a moderate length of time after being
aken off the skin ; but hare fur does not. Great attention
mght to be paid by hat manufacturers, who keep consider-
ible stocks of fur on hand, as to the place they are deposited.
If it be too damp, they will rot; if too dry, they will fear-
ully diminish in weight; therefore a moderately dry and
■ool place ought to be chosen. The great enemy to all
urs is the common moth. This destroys the felting prin-
:iple. Whenever the slightest appearance in the fur indi-
:ates the secure lodgment of this little creature, it ought
mihediately to be used ; or, if this cannot be done, it should
>e taken out of the paper bags, and broken all over with a
mall switch rod, or, what will answer the purpose still bet-
cr, a hatter’s bow. The same rules apply to the keeping
1 skins in good condition as to fur. The situation ought
0 cool, dry, and well aired. They will seldom keep
anger than twelve or eighteen months, without running
jreat risk of suffering injury from the moth or black beetle,
oo many ought not to be heaped together, and particu-
ir y if they be rabbit-skins, because the fat or grease about
hese skins will get heated, run amongst the fur, and be¬
come of such an acrid nature as to corrode the very pelt
itself. Many persons are inclined to keep hare and rabbit
skins a long time, from a notion that the fur upon them will
increase in length from the moisture left in the pelt. This
is an entirely erroneous opinion. Any one who will make
the experiment will find that the amount of fur obtained
off any given quantity of skins is much greater in weight
when manufactured immediately after they are taken off
the animal, than after having been kept for six or twelve
months.
1 he qualities of all kinds of furs differ very considerably,
from climate and other local circumstances. The best rab¬
bit fur, used for the manufacture of the finest London hats,
is commonly considered as the produce of the east coast
of England, particularly from Lincolnshire to Berwick in¬
clusively. The rabbit fur is always stronger in the felting
principle when got off rabbits bred on the sea-coast, than
in those found in inland places, however favourable in
other respects these places may be for the rearing of the
animals. The skins along the tract of coast already men¬
tioned seem all of the same size and quality. North of
Berwick the rabbit-skin grows less, and the fur weaker and
shorter ; and the further north, along the coast, the more
inferior it becomes. The same thing takes place on the
west side of the island. The fur of rabbit-skins procured
on the western coast of Scotland is very inferior, and quite
unfit for the manufacture of fine stuff hats. Along the
west of England the skins become larger and finer in quali¬
ty, but they are always considered as of less value than those
obtained on the eastern coast. The rabbit fur from Ire¬
land is generally of an average quality; but what forms a
curious circumstance in the natural history of that country
is, that the hare-skins, through every part of it, are of no
value whatever. Their fur is totally useless, and consists
principally of a kind of hair. The Irish hat manufacturers
have, in consequence, to import all their hare fur from Eng¬
land.
The hare fur in Great Britain is superior, for hat pur¬
poses, to any in the world. It is finer in its grain, and
stronger in its felting properties, than any found in the
other countries of Europe. Large quantities of German
hare fur are imported into this country, and used along
with the produce of our own island; but, on account of
its being of a coarser nature, it is generally disposed of at
a reduced price. The hare and rabbit furs in all parts of
America are very inferior in quality.
The pelts of skins used for felting purposes, after the
fur is taken off them, are of little value. They are gene¬
rally sent to the west of England, and sold for the purpose
of making a fine kind of glue, much used in the manufac¬
ture of fine cloth. Their present value is only about eigh¬
teen shillings per hundredweight.
On the Manufacture of Furs for Ornament and Clothing.
It was not till the later ages that the furs of beasts be¬
came an article of luxury. The more refined nations of
ancient times never made use of them ; those alone whom
the former stigmatized as barbarians were clothed in the
skins of animals. Strabo describes the Indians as covered
with the skins of lions, panthers, and bears ; and Seneca, the
Scythians as clothed with the skins of foxes and the lesser
quadrupeds. Virgil exhibits a picture of the savage Hy¬
perboreans, similar to that which our late circumnaviga¬
tors have witnessed in the clothing of the wild Americans,
unseen before by any polished people. Most part of Europe
was at this time in similar circumstances. Caesar might
be as much amazed with the skin-dressed heroes of Bri¬
tain, as our celebrated Cook was at those of his newly-dis¬
covered regions. What time has done to us, time, under
humane conquerors, may effect for them. Civilization may
268
FUR
FUR
Fur
Trade
Furetiere.
take place; and those spoils of animals, which are at pre¬
sent essential for clothing, become the mere objects of or¬
nament and luxury.
It does not appear that the ancient Greeks or Romans
ever made use of furs. It originated in those regions where
they most abounded, and where the severity of the climate
required that species of clothing. At first it consisted of
the skins only, almost in the state in which they were torn
from the body of the beast; but as soon as civilization took
place, and manufactures were introduced, furs became the
lining of the dress, and often the elegant facing of the
robes. It is probable that the northern conquerors intro¬
duced the fashion into Europe. We find, that about the
year 522, when Totila, king of the Visigoths, reigned in
Italy, the Suethons, a people of modern Sweden, found
means, by help of the commerce of numberless intervening
people, to transmit, for the use of the Romans, the precious
skins of the sable. As luxury advanced, furs, even of the
most valuable species, were used by princes as linings for
their tents. Thus, Marco Polo, in 1252, found those of the
Cham of Tartary lined with ermines and sables, the last of
which he calls zibelines and zambolines. He says that
these and other precious furs were brought from countries
far north; from the land of darkness, and regions almost
inaccessible by reason of morasses and ice. The Welsh set
a high value on furs as early as the time of Howel Dda,
who began his reign about 940. In the next age furs be¬
came the fashionable magnificence of Europe. When God¬
frey of Boulogne and his followers appeared before the Em¬
peror Alexis Comnenus, on their way to the Holy Land,
he was struck with the richness of their dresses. How dif¬
ferent was the advance of luxury in France from the time
of their great monarch Charlemagne, who contented him¬
self with the plain fur of the otter. Our Henry I. wore
furs, yet in his distress was obliged to change them for
warm Welsh flannel. But in the year 1337 the luxury
had got to such a head that Edward III. enacted, that all
persons who could not spend a hundred pounds a year
should absolutely be prohibited the use of this species of
finery. These, from their great expense, must have been
foreign furs, obtained from the Italian states, the traffic of
which was at this period boundless. How strange is the
revolution in the fur trade. The north of Asia at that
time supplied us with every valuable kind; at present we
send, by means of the possessions of Hudson’s Bay, furs
to an immense amount, even to Turkey and to China.
The business of preparing skins for articles of dress is
much more simple, and employs a great deal fewer hands,
than the trade of manufacturing furs for felting purposes.
The first thing to be attended to by those who follow the
former occupation is to examine the skin as to the manner
in which it has been dried. If it has experienced the
slightest degree of putrefaction, it will never be of any use
for the purpose of dressing as fur. Great attention is,
therefore, paid by the hunters, and those who are engaged
in bringing the furs to market, as to the drying of the skins,
and the proper manner of packing and preserving them
when they are dried. Exposure to the air is the best me¬
thod of drying a skin after it is taken off the animal, or
hanging it up in a dry and cool room where there is no
fire. If skins be once thoroughly dried in this manner,
they may be preserved for a great length of time, and
transported to any distance without injury.
In the dressing of furs for clothing or ornament two
things are necessary; to remove the fat or grease from the
pelt; and to extract the oiliness from the fur itself, and im¬
part to it a bright and shining appearance. In the accom¬
plishment of these two things the whole art consists. The
clearing of the pelt is effected by applying a composition of
bran, alum, and salt to it; and the cleansing of the fur by
a mixture of soda and fine soap. The skins, after having
undergone these processes, are washed with cold water, and
dried gradually in the air.
After the skins are prepared in this manner, the next
thing is to cut them to advantage. In almost all the articles
of the fur kind used as clothing, we find them made up of
small and detached pieces of skin, to give these articles a
uniform appearance as to the length and colour of the fur.
Hence it becomes a point of great importance to a furrier
not to have his skins cut to a disadvantage, but to make
the most of every part of them.
Very few of the skins used for felting purposes are ma-
• nufactured for dress. The principal of the latter kind are
the grey, silver, and black fox, the ermine, the sable, the
chinchilla, the fitchet, the bear, the marten, the mink, the
lynx, and the wolf.
haili
Furia
Ilf
;
0
d**'
i
FURBISHER, a person who furbishes, polishes, or
cleans arms, as guns, swords, pistols, &c. which is chiefly
performed with emery.
FURCA, in Antiquity, a piece of timber resembling a
fork, which was used by the Romans as an instrument of
punishment.
There were three methods of punishing by the furca.
The first, which was only ignominious, consisted in a mas¬
ter, for small offences, forcing a servant to carry a furca on
his shoulders through the city. In the second, which was
penal, the party was led round the circus, or other place,
with the furca upon his neck, and whipped all the way.
The third was capital. In this instance the malefactor
having his head fastened on the furca, was whipped to
death.
FURCHE', in Heraldry, a cross forked at the ends.
FURETIERE, Anthony, an eminent French philolo¬
gical writer, was born at Paris in the year 1620. He first
studied law, and was a counsellor of parliament; but he
abandoned these pursuits, adopted the ecclesiastical pro¬
fession, and became abbot of Chalivoi and Cluines. Fie
now composed various works in prose and verse, by which
he greatly distinguished himself and extended his repu¬
tation. He was elected a member of the French Aca¬
demy, the meetings of which learned society he assidu¬
ously attended; but having engaged in the compilation
of a dictionary of the French language, at a time when
his brother academicians collectively were employed in a
similar undertaking, his conduct was deemed disrespect¬
ful to his colleagues; and a specimen of his work having
been published in 1684, he was in the year following ex¬
pelled the academy. He retaliated by publishing a Fac¬
tum in his own defence, which, on account of its keen
satire and invective, served to render his exclusion from
that learned body permanent. He died in the year 1688.
Flis dictionary was published in 1690 in two vols. folio.
It was republished with improvements by Basnage de
Beauval in 1701, in three vols. It afterwards received a
further enlargement, and served as the basis of the Zh’c-
tionnaire de Trevoux, of which an edition appeared in
1771, in eight vols. folio. F'uretiere’s other works were
Five Satires in verse, Gospel Parables in prose, Le Ro¬
man Bourgeois, &c. There is also a collection of anec¬
dotes by him entitled Furetieriana. (a- a. R-)
FURIES, in pagan antiquity, were- goddesses whose
office it was to punish the guilty after death. They were
three in number, Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, and weie
described as having snakes instead of hair, and eyes h"e
lightning, carrying iron chains and whips in one hand,
and in the other flaming torches; the latter to discover,
i
i
4
*
FUR
s 'urif> and the former to punish, the guilty. They were sup-
|| posed to be constantly hovering over such persons as had
's‘ ittm- been guilty of any enormous crime.
'' ^T"' Mythologists suppose that Tisiphone punished the
1 crimes which sprang from hatred or anger; Megaera those
1 from envy; and Alecto those arising from an insatiable
1 pursuit after riches and pleasure.
FUR 269
FURLING, in naval affairs, signifies the operation of Furling
wrapping up and binding any sail close to the yard. II
FURLONG, an English long measure, equal to one ^ »rnace.
eighth of a mile, or 660 feet.
FURLOUGH, in the military language, is a license
granted by an officer to a soldier to be absent from his
duty for a limited time.
kam
81 ustj
nera
Mil idpll.
flu'ply
FURNACE,
A general name for those contrivances used in the arts
and in chemistry, by which an extraordinary degree of
heat is generated, much more intense than what obtains
in our ordinary fire-places. These are of very extensive
use, particularly where metals and minerals are the sub¬
jects of manufacture or of examination, such substances
requiring a very powerful heat for their reduction, cal¬
cination, or fusion. Hence the various kinds of furnaces
which occur in the manufacture of iron, steel, brass, cop¬
per, zinc, &c. in smelting, casting, and forging the metal,
and in numerous other processes connected with the for¬
mation of it. In other cases, such as glass-works, potte¬
ries, and various others, it is in general not so much a
very intense heat that is wanted, as a steady temperature,
and the fire of such magnitude as will keep a large body
of material in fusion, and at a very equable state for work¬
ing. Another large and extensive class of furnaces, and
one which is becoming every day of more and more im¬
portance, is that applied to the generation of steam in
the boilers of steam-engines; and here also it is not so
much an intense heat which is necessary, as a very large
quantity for a rapid production of the elastic fluid. The
construction of furnaces therefore forms an interesting
and very important branch of practical mechanics. We
shall endeavour at present to explain the general princi¬
ples of their construction, and describe a few of those
most generally in use; and further information will be
found in treating of the different arts, manufactures, and
processes where the furnaces are chiefly employed.
In regard to the general principles on which the opera¬
tion of furnaces depends, the exact nature of the process
of combustion is, we believe, hardly yet settled among che¬
mical philosophers; and experiments are wanting to deter¬
mine many points which might be practically useful. It
was thought, for example, by Sir Humphry Davy, that by
a vivid and rapid combustion of our fuel, a much great¬
er quantity of heat would be generated than by a slow and
languid action ; and this theory, were it consistent with fact,
would often be of great importance where economy of fuel
is the object. Be this, however, as it may, it is certain
that, in our ordinary furnaces, whatever be the fuel, the
grand supporter of combustion is the atmospheric air, or
rather the oxygen, which forms one of its constituent parts ;
and it is the combination of this aerial element with the
solid mass of the combustible material in the furnace, which
somehow or other, not well understood, produces all the
heat that we obtain. To provide, therefore, a supply of
this vital principle is the first object in the construction of
every furnace. It appears, from some experiments on the
products of combustion made by our celebrated chemist Dr
1 homson of Glasgow, that for every pound weight of good
caking coal consumed in a furnace, there will be required
at least 150 cubic feet of common air; and adding fifty
more for what cannot be rendered effective, we may allow
at least ‘200 cubic feet to each pound of coal; and this may
give us some idea of the vast quantity of air which must be
required for many of the large furnaces and fires which are
frequently used. In many of the furnaces, for instance, for
the boilers of our steam-vessels, the consumpt of coal is
more than twenty cwt. each hour; and by the above cal¬
culation this will require 7400 cubic feet of air per minute.
It may seem at first no easy matter to supply so large a Draught
stream, and to make it pass regularly through the fire ; yet by chim-
this is done in the simplest manner, by means of the chim- ney*
ney, on the principle of the ascensional power of heat¬
ed air ; and few examples occur in practical mechanics of
so simple, beautiful, and highly useful an application of a
general principle. Air, like every other substance, is ex¬
panded by heat, and this in a remarkable degree, owing to
the feeble aggregation of its elementary parts. With every
degree of Fahrenheit, from the temperature of freezing to
that of boiling mercury, or 680°, it expands the 488th part
of its bulk. This is according to the accurate experiments
of Messrs Petit and Dulong; and these philosophers also
found the important law to obtain exactly within the above
range of the thermometer, that equal increments of heat
produced equal increments of expansion. Hence with a
heat of 488°, which is far surpassed in our fires, the volume
of the air is doubled; but with every such expansion the
air becomes in proportion specifically lighter, and ascends
by its buoyancy through the colder and of course denser
medium around it. The fire therefore heating the air above
it, this ascends, and the chimney forming a tube or per-
pendicvdar shaft, either directly above the fire-place, or in
communication with it, the heated air fills it, and forms a
rarefied column standing in the midst of the ordinary me¬
dium. The external columns, therefore, pressing on all sides
into the partial vacuity, must rush in below where there
is a free communication through the fire : thus a constant
draught of air sets in towards the fire and up the chim¬
ney ; and by this means the combustion in the furnace
is kept up. It is exactly what takes place on a great scale
over the globe itself, by the sun heating excessively the
regions under the line; and this causing everywhere a
current of heated air upwards, draws continually a current
of cold air from the regions on each side of the tropics;
and it is this which produces the phenomenon of the trade-
winds, the opposite currents coming into collision under the
equator, and destroying each other’s effect as to north or
south, while the rotation of the earth gives the whole an
apparent motion nearly due east. The chimney then is
the most essential part of every furnace, and its use is
not only to create a draught of heated air, but to receive
and discharge the smoke and other aerial products which
arise from the combustion. In ordinary fire-places, where
only a very moderate degree of heat is wanted to heat our
apartments comfortably, the chimney is left open below,
immediately above the fire-place, for the convenience of
getting fuel or cooking utensils put on. In that case only
a very small portion of the air which ascends up the chim¬
ney passes through the fire, namely, that which ascends
from under the grating, and perhaps a little in the front.
The greater proportion ascends above the fire-place, and
this mixing with the heated air, cools it, and moderates
the draught, which would otherwise become too great. In
furnaces, however, where all the heat is required which can
be produced, a different arrangement becomes necessary.
The fire-place in these must be closed on all sides, and
270
FURNACE.
Furnace.
Essential
parts.
Grating.
Power
of the
draught.
every access to the air excluded, excepting below, where
the fuel rests on an open grating, consisting of iron bars laid
parallel to each other, and at such distances apart as will
retain the fuel, while the air is admitted through them, and
the ashes and other refuse drop down into the ash-pit below.
Hence arises the same general construction in every fur¬
nace ; and, however they may vary in particular forms and
dimensions, each contains afire-place, grating, ash-pit, and
chimney. It is very essential, particularly where an in¬
tense temperature is wanted, that the fire-place should be
surrounded with substances of a very slow conducting power
for heat, otherwise this would be soon dissipated in the sur¬
rounding atmosphere, and no high degree of temperature
attained. Clay is found very useful for this purpose in
small furnaces intended for experiments; and the effect is
most strikingly exhibited if we try the action of a fire-place
of sheet iron: the heat is extremely feeble, and is observed
dissipating itself on all sides ; but if we line it with an inch
thickness of clay or pounded charcoal, a very intense heat
may then be generated. In large furnaces there is no ma¬
terial so useful for this purpose as brick, which is not only
a slow conductor, but can be made to withstand very in¬
tense heats. The magnitude of the fire must evidently
be determined by the size of the grating; for, however
large the fire-place be made, or great the quantity of
fuel in it, unless the grating is such as will admit a suf¬
ficiency of air, the combustion will not proceed. In large
fires, therefore, intended to generate a great quantity of
heat, such as those for steam-engine boilers, the grates
must be made large in proportion. In fires, again, where
it is not so much quantity as an intense temperature, the
grate may be quite small, as the temperature will depend
chiefly on the power of the draught. Most of the opera¬
tions of the brass-founder, and of gold and silver-smiths,
are performed with furnaces of which the grate does not
exceed two feet in area. It may be reckoned generally,
that for every ten pounds of coal consumed in an hour,
there should be a square foot of area in the grating. The
spaces between the bars should be about three eighths or
half an inch. The bars themselves should be loose, and
made to rest on two cross bars, one at each end, so that
they can be taken out and renewed at pleasure. In that
case they are made about an inch thick, and with a swell
in the middle for greater strength. They are seldom made
more than two feet or two and a half feet in length, one or
more of such lengths being used if required.
But the grating itself, though it will admit it, will not
determine any air to enter and pass through the fire. This
is done by the draught in the chimney ; and according as
this is more or less powerful, the fire will burn with great¬
er or less force. It is of the first importance, therefore, to
determine what are the circumstances in the form and di¬
mensions of the chimney on which the effect of this draught
depends, and by which it may be regulated to our purposes.
It is evident, in the first place, that the warmer the air is
in the chimney, the greater will be its buoyant force, and
the more powerful, therefore, the draught upwards. Every
means, therefore, should be taken to preserve the heat in
the chimney; and hence the great advantage in dwelling-
houses of conducting the vents as much as possible through
the interior walls, which are not exposed to the cooling ef¬
fects of the atmosphere, or of wind and rain, and also car-
rying them up in a mass together, by which each pro¬
tects the other from the cold ; secondly, the interior of
the chimney should be as straight, smooth, and regular
as possible, that the current of air may traverse it with
the least possible degree of impediment. There should
be no projections, nor any sudden inequalities in width,
which are sure to create eddies, and obstruct the progress
of the air. Hence even the cylindrical form of a chimney
will be found to improve the draught, because it presents a
larger area than a square in proportion to its circumference, Fum*.
and therefore presents less obstruction. A decided im- 'wvv
provement has lately been introduced in the construction
of domestic chimneys, by the use of cylindrical cans of fire¬
brick, about a foot long, and built in, one above the other,
to the top of the chimney. These are glazed inside, and
present on the whole a very smooth and equal bore for the
heated air. The cylindrical form of a chimney also pre¬
sents externally less extent of cooling surface than the
square. Still there are facilities of construction in the
square form which give them an advantage. But whether
circular or square, as the air becomes necessarily rather
cooler at the top of the chimney than the bottom, and
therefore denser, hence the chimney should have a slight
degree of taper in proportion to this.
But of all the circumstances affecting the draught of fur-Height of
naces, that which has the most powerful influence is thechinmev,
height of the chimney. The reason of this will be evident,
if we consider that the mechanical force producing the
draught is nothing else than the superior weight of the
external air over that within the chimney. The latter
forms a column expanded by heat, and having thus lost
part of the air which it would have contained had it been
at the same temperature with the external air. The ex¬
ternal column, therefore, presses on the internal with a
force exactly equal to this difference, and which is evident¬
ly proportional to the height of the chimney. For sup¬
pose we had a chimney fifteen feet high, and the air within
it heated to 488°, then one half of the air originally in the
chimney will be expelled. The column of fifteen feet
would now, if the tube were extended, occupy thirty feet.
This fifteen feet, therefore, of the expanded air, being
taken out of the scale of the internal column, it is evident
that the external air will now act with a preponderating
force exactly equal, or with such a pressure as will be
due to a column of the expanded air fifteen feet high,
which is just equal to a column of the ordinary air seven
and a half feet high. But suppose the chimney is thirty
feet high under the same circumstances, then the column
of expanded air expelled by t*he heat will be thirty feet
high, and the preponderating column of ordinary air fifteen
feet, just double of the former, in proportion to the double
altitude, and so of every other height; and hence we de¬
duce an important rule, that the height of the preponde¬
rating part of the column of air, by which the draught is
produced in the chimney, is in every case proportional to
the height of the chimney itself; and it is easy, from what
has been stated, to form a calculation of this height in
every case. Let H be the height of the chimney, n the
number of degrees by which the internal air is heated be¬
yond the external, taking of course the average heat of the
top and bottom of the chimney, or any other rule for giv-
nH
ing a true average from top to bottom, then H +
will be the height of the internal column when expanded
wH
by the heat, and .co
J 488
the height of the preponderating
part of the external column, supposing it to have the den¬
sity of the internal. But suppose it to be of the ordinary
density, it will be —.
J 488 + n
These principles then being established, it is easy now to
calculate the velocity with which the external air will rush
into the chimney ; and this is the most important point to
arrive at, as it is this which must determine the rate of sup¬
ply, and whether it will be more or less than what is cal¬
culated on. This velocity, then, or V, according to the
well-known formula, will be each second eight times the
square root of the height of the preponderating part of thfe
mar. column; and as this height is proportional to that of the
Y'*" chimney itself, hence the rule that the velocity is propor¬
tional to the square root of the height of the chimney. Tak¬
ing then the above expression for the height of the pre- for this velocity is simpler, being V-6 and in the
ponderating part of the column, we have the velocity of the **
external air rushing into the chimney V = 8 J
FURNACE.
271
often very different; and by not attending to this distinc- Furnace,
tion, serious mistakes may be committed. The formida
480 + n
But in passing along the sides of the chimney, the air, par¬
ticularly with great velocities, encounters considerable ob¬
struction ; and for thisj and for what may arise from ine¬
qualities or other causes, we may allow 6 instead of 8 for
the co-efficient in the above formula; this gives V — 6
yr ™—,—• The air is also greatly obstructed at the
grating, and in passing through the interstices of the fuel;
but this is supposed to be allowed for by giving the grating
an enlarged capacity on this account, so that it may have
the same facility in passing through the fire as it has in the
chimney. This source of obstruction therefore need not
be taken into account.
The above simple formula will be found to agree very
nearly with facts ; and we have been thus particular in de¬
ducing it from well-known and established principles, as
rules and calculations have been given on this subject by
different authors, the results of which differ considerably
from each other. In cases of this nature, it is really super¬
fluous to enter into all the refinements of calculation ; there
are in actual practice so many anomalies and deranging cir¬
cumstances, that the only rules of any utility are those
which embody simply, but with accuracy, the leading prin¬
ciples involved in the action ; more complicated formu¬
lae, even though rigidly exact, instead of guiding, serve
often rather to deter the practical engineer from any cal¬
culation at all. In an ingenious paper on this subject,
by an eminent mathematician, in the Quarterly Journal
of Science, rigorous formulae are given for the above cal¬
culations ; but they are more complex, and the accuracy
of some parts may be doubted. The rarefaction of the
air by heat, for example, is calculated by a rule which
makes it, for 1500°, to be expanded upwards of twenty
times its natural volume; whereas, by Petit and Du
Long’s experiments, it would not exceed 4^ times. Let
us now take an example. Suppose we have a chimney
thirty feet in height, and the average temperature of the
air in it 300° above the external atmosphere, What will
be the velocity with which the external air will enter the
chimney ? Here H 30 ft — 300, therefore V — 6
/9000
v "788^ °r a^out ^ ^eet Per second. Hence a chimney
at this height, and one foot square, ought to supply 1200
feet per minute ; and, from what we have seen, this would
be sufficient to consume six pounds of coal per hour; and
by enlarging the area of the chimney it would be adapted
to a larger fire. But suppose it is raised to 100 feet, the
velocity being in every,case as the square root of the height,
this would give the ratio of 5^ to 10, or 37 feet per second,
and a supply, with a one-foot chimney, of 2220 feet a
minute. This shows how slowly the effect of raising the
chimney proceeds. It requires the height to be raised four
times to double the effect, and nine times to triple it; and
this explains the great effect, comparatively, which is often
produced by chimneys of moderate height judiciously con¬
structed.
In this manner it is easy to calculate the effect of differ¬
ent heights and areas of chimneys, and proportion our di¬
mensions to the nature of the fire to be used. In the above
calculations it must be kept in view that the velocity re¬
ferred to is always the velocity of the external air entering
under the fire. The velocity in the chimney itself may be
480’
above case it is twenty-five in place of twenty, and the sup¬
ply 1500 feet in place of 1200.
In the smelting of iron, and other uses, where a more Blast-fur-
intense temperature is required than can be produced by see¬
the'natural draught of a chimney, it is necessary to resort
to artificial means for increasing the effect; and this gives
rise to the blast-furnace, where the draught is produced by
the action of bellows or blowing cylinders throw ing by me¬
chanical force a violent current of air into the fire. The
same object has recently been attained in a very convenient
manner by means of fanners, which was originally propos¬
ed, we believe, by Desaguliers in the Philosophical Transac¬
tions, under the name of the centrifugal wheel, for the pur¬
pose of ventilating hospitals, ships, &c., and was a few'
years ago revived and successfully adapted to the blast-fur¬
nace by Messrs Carmichael, engineers, Dundee, and is now
employed, not only for smelting, but instead of the bellows
in the smith’s forge, eight or ten forges being in some ma¬
nufactories all supplied from one fan-wheel.
We shall now describe a few of the furnaces most ge- Lescrip-
nerally in use. The first is the common air-furnace usedtion of fur-
chiefly for melting the metals. In this, the metal being naces*
placed in a crucible, is set in the heart of the fire, and
the heat is communicated directly from the materials in
combustion, of which charcoal or coke is the most power¬
ful. The draft is produced by a chimney of proper capaci¬
ty and height, and the heat generated is retained by a
building of brick. The most perfect form of air-furnace Common
of this description would be to have the chimney ascend-air-fur-
ing right above the fire-grate, and to be nearly of the samenace-
capacity. In that case, the draft would operate with the
most powerful effect. But in practice it is found more
convenient to have the use of the space immediately above
the fire-place for getting in and out the crucibles and the
metal. The chimney is therefore set to a side, and the
draft directed into it by a sloping vent, or even by a level
flue, the height of the chimney making up for any defi¬
ciency in the direct course of the heated air. Plate
CCLI. fig. 1, shows a furnace of this description, being a
section and side elevation. A shows the fire-place or
body of the furnace, with a smelting-pot or crucible on its
stand. The stand is often omitted, but is useful in rais¬
ing the crucible above the grate, so as to allow the bot¬
tom of it to receive the full heat of the fire. B is the sloping
flue, terminating in the chimney C, and D is the cover
or door for closing the opening when the crucible is set.
The angle E at the top of the inclined vent serves for set¬
ting a crucible to heat when necessary, a is the grate,
and F the ash-pit opening through the outer wall, or into a
cellar below, which serves to prevent the cold air rushing
in from injuring the workmen, d is the damper. Fig. 2 is
a plan of the same furnace, showing the furnace-bars, &c.
Fig. 3 is a section of another air-furnace, with a hori¬
zontal flue above the fire-place. Fig* 4 is a section of
a brass-founder s melting-furnace, which is found to an¬
swer the purpose extremely well. The body of the fur¬
nace is circular, composed of three courses of bricks form¬
ed to the arch, as shown in the plan, fig. 5. At the top
and bottom, and at the two intermediate joints of the
bricks, the whole is bound with hoops like a barrel, form¬
ing a very strong and durable construction. The flue is
horizontal, and of small capacity compared with the fire¬
place. Above all there is an iron plate, with a flanch in
front, holding the brick-work together, and an iron cover,
a, shutting the opening. A is the ash-pit; B the pave¬
ment on the floor of the workshop.
FURNACE.
272
Furnace. The next sort of air-furnace is what is termed the re-
verberatory furnace. In this the metal is acted on, not
Iteverbera- iieat generated among the combustible materials in
tory fur- j- j rt t]ie f5re the action of the flame and the
heated air striking against it as it ascends up the chim¬
ney. The fuel best suited for this furnace, therefore, is coal,
not coke ; and for the purpose of directing the current, the
space above the fire-place is arched over, and a horizon¬
tal or slightly descending flue is extended from this space
to about three or four times the length of the fire-place,
until it terminates in the bottom of the chimney. In this
flue the metal is placed, and the flame and heated air
striking against the top of the arch above the fire-place, is
from thence reflected with full force against the metal,
and from this sort of reverberation which takes place the
furnace takes its name. From this action, and from the
flame heating the interior of the chimney, the effect of
this furnace is very powerful; and it is most extensively
used in the iron manufacture.
At Plate CCLI. figs. 6, 7, and 8, are represented a plan
and sections of one of these reverberatory furnaces. A is
the fire-place with the arch above ; B the descending flue;
C the chimney; d the damper; E the ash-pit; F is an
opening for introducing the metal or other substance to
be acted on, which is laid on the inclined hearth at B,
where the flame, reverberating from the top of the arch,
strikes with full force. If the substance is intended to be
melted, it runs down, and can be taken out at the open¬
ing G.
At fig. 9 is a view of another reverberatory furnace,
contrived by Dr Black. The hearth or bottom of the flue
B here is horizontal. Immediately above the fire-place
there is an arched cover, H, of iron, from the top of which
an arch of brick-work is extended all the way to the chim¬
ney, in which the flame reverberates down upon the hearth.
There is only one opening, F, for the introduction of the
metal. This furnace may be used with advantage for
roasting various substances, such as the ores of metals, for
the purpose of expelling their volatile matter. It may
also be employed for the cupellation of metals, the door,
F, being a little opened for admitting atmospheric air.
Furnace A furnace of great power was constructed and em-
by Mushet. ployed by Mr Mushet, in his numerous and valuable ex¬
periments on iron and steel, and was found very con¬
venient for such operations. It is represented at Plate
CCLII. figs. 1, 2, 3. Fig. 1 is the section of an assay or
melting and annealing furnace, and also a small reverbe¬
ratory furnace for fusing in very high heats with the flame
of pit-coal.
The assay-furnace is cased in cast iron, with a flanch
projecting inward the breadth of a brick, and about half
an inch more, which serves instead of bearers for the bars
(see fig. 2 at D). Upon this flanch the brick-work is
reared. It ought to be of good fire-bricks on the bed. The
furnace is nine inches square; total height twenty-seven
inches. From the top of the flanch to the bottom of the
flue the interval is eighteen inches ; the flue is four inches
high; the height above is five inches; flue seven inches
long, and keeps opening into the chimney, as may be seen
at fig. 3 at E. If the chimney is under twenty-five feet
in height, a larger flue is requisite; and if beyond thirty-
five feet, a smaller flue will throw the heat mor« regularly
through the furnace. In general, however, more harm
ensues from too small than too large a flue. G is the
floor-line, and also represents the edge of a grate which
covers the ash-pit, which is better seen on the ground-
plan, fig. 3, and in fig. 2 at H. This grate lies nine inches
from the bars, having an open space for the admission of
air. It projects twenty-four inches outwards, and serves
the operator to stand upon.
I I, in figs. 1 and 2, is the ash-pit. In fig. 3, which is a
ground-plan of the chimney and furnaces, C is the an- Fum
nealing or cementing furnace, in which the crucibles are
annealed or baked to a bright red heat, and from thence
introduced, along with the matter to be operated upon,
into the assay-furnace. It also serves instead of a ce¬
menting furnace, being easily made to produce a heat of
100° of Wedgewood. It may be made of any size, from
nine to fourteen inches square ; a nine-inch chimney being
sufficiently wide to the extent of an eighteen-inch fur¬
nace.
The chimney to each furnace is carried up five feet
perpendicular; they then gradually incline to the centre
opening, which they enter about twelve feet above the
flues. L, L, L are dampers. From the grates of this as¬
say-furnace to the top of the chimney the interval is thir¬
ty-three feet.
This furnace has melted 400 grains of malleable iron in
ten minutes, and half a pound from lumps in forty mi¬
nutes. If the materials to be operated upon are prepared
with judgment, any experiment to the extent of half a
pound of matter may be performed in half an hour, and
less quantities in much less time. When approaching to
its highest heat, a Stourbridge clay crucible (which drops
in 168° of Wedgewood) will disappear in fifteen minutes
from the time that it is put in. The first five bring it
to 140° of Wedgewood, at which cast iron boils. Steel
boils in it at 160°, and malleable iron boils in it at 170° to
172° of Wedgewood. It is probable, however, that the
advantages of this furnace do not result from the height
of the chimney (which is not so great), or from the size
of its opening. More, it is likely, depends upon the flue,
the opening of the grate bars, the size of the fuel, and
particularly the feeding of the fire.
In many cases it is desirable to heat the articles of ma-Muffle
nufacture without exposing them to the smoke or dust^UIIiacfl
arising from the fire or flame. This gives rise to a varie¬
ty of furnaces variously adapted to the purpose ; a kitchen
oven is a furnace of this description ; also the brass-found¬
er’s hot-plate or lacquering furnace ; the furnaces used by
enamellers ; and all the different kinds known by the name
of muffle-furnaces, in which a close vessel or cavity is
formed above the fire-place, or in the draft of heated air
from it, with a door opening externally, and by this the
articles to be heated are introduced. Plate CCLII. fig.
4, represents a very convenient lacquering furnace or
hot-plate for brass-founders. It stands at some distance
from the wall of the apartment. The fire-place is imme¬
diately under the plate, and the flue carried horizontally
into the chimney. Above the plate there is a square cover
or box of tin plate, open below, which can be let down
over the plate, and encloses the articles as in an oven.
Figs. 5 and 6 represent a convenient furnace for ena¬
mellers. It is merely a common air-furnace, similar to
those already described, with a close vessel of earthen¬
ware placed over the fire-place, the latter being swelled
out to allow the heated air to ascend on each side of the
vessel. A is the fire-place; B the ash-pit; a the grate;
C the vessel with its door; D the chimney; and d the
damper; the other parts to be understood. This furnace
may also be used for assaying metals by cupellation.
Figs. 7, 8, and 9, represent a muffle-furnace for pro¬
ducing very intense degrees of heat, and which was em¬
ployed by Pott, and afterwards by D’Arcet, in their ex¬
periments on earths and stones exposed to a continued
and violent heat. The fire-place or body of the furnace,
B B, is in the form of an oblong coffer, swelling out in the
middle. A shows the hole for the muffle; and the dome
or upper part of the furnace is shown in D D, with a
large door C, for introducing the fuel; g is the grate, t
the ash-pit; and the other parts will be understood.
For an account of the glass-house furnaces, and those
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trna;* in the potteries and other manufactories, we must refer to third row of five or six within two inches of the top. These Furnace.
x  holes should be rather smaller than the four lower ones.
The pot should now be bound round with iron or copper
wire, to hold it together when it cracks, and a handle made
to it of iron wire.
A small round grate of cast iron is only wanting to
-T'' the respective articles in this work.
In regard to furnaces for steam-boilers, the object of
'umix3- these, as already mentioned, is to produce rapidly a large
quantity of heat for the generation of the steam. For
this purpose the fire-place and grate are of great extent
mien
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FURNACE.
273
and the flame and heated air, after striking the bottom of render this furnace complete for many operations ; and
the boiler, is conveyed in flues along the bottom, and several of these grates of different sizes should be ready
then round and round the sides, so as to deliver the whole at hand to drop in, and fit at different heights, as may be
of the heat, or as much of it as possible, to the water, required. The part below the grate then forms the ash-
before it ascends into the chimney. Figs. 8, 9, 10, Plate pit, and the part above forms the body of the furnace.
CCLIII. represent a furnace and boiler of this descrip- For the purpose of regulating the fire, if this requires to
tion. A is the fire-place ; B, B, the grate bars ; C, C, the be diminished, the air-holes can be closed with stoppers
boiler; D, D, D, the flues running under and around the made of soft brick or old blue pots; and, to increase the
boiler, and terminating in the chimney, E. For a more
particular account, we must refer to the article Steam
Engine.
In all these furnaces, and particular!}' those for steam
engines, a very important object has often been attempt
temperature, the body of the furnace itself may be en¬
larged by setting on the top of it a portion of an old pot,
as in fig. 2, cut off so as to form a ring, several of which
may be added as occasion requires; and they increase con¬
siderably the draft as well as the capacity of the furnace.
ed, namely, a consumption of the immense volumes of Another simple method of increasing the power of these
furnaces is to set on the top a piece of straight funnel
pipe, as at fig. 3, two feet long, four inches diameter,
opening out below like a funnel, till it is about eight inches
diameter, with a wooden handle for the convenience of
taking off or putting on. These simple furnaces are very
powerful, and are capable, without difficulty, of raising a
crucible two and a half inches in diameter to a white heat.
smoke occasioned by the large fires which must be kept
up for their use. For an account of these, see Smoke
and Steam-Engine.
Figs. 11, 12, 13, and 14, represent the forms of fire-
tongs found useful in the operations connected with fur¬
naces.
Furnaces are of very extensive use in the numerous
processes of chemistry, and are variously constructed, ac- In fact, all the ignitings and heatings which belong to the
cording to the notion of the chemist, the uses required, or analysis of siliceous and other minerals have lono- been
the means within his reach. They may be divided into made in furnaces of this kind at the Royal Institution,
three kinds ; crucible-furnaces, wind-furnaces, and blast- If the funnel-pipe in one of these crucible furnaces be
furnaces. Ihe first are used with charcoal, or, in the connected with any chimney or flue in the laboratory,
larger ones, with charcoal mixed with coke. The draft for which is easily done by kneeing the pipe at the top, and
the supply of air is obtained from the mere height of the having two or three short pieces to fit in for adjusting it
crucible, or by the addition of a funnel pipe. In the wind- to different lengths, as at fig. 4, its power is greatly in¬
furnaces, the draft is obtained by connecting them with creased, and in fact it becomes a wind furnace. The fun-
the chimney of the laboratory, and therefore more power¬
ful, and better adapted for various uses. In the blast-fur¬
nace, again, the air is supplied by bellows; and furnaces
of this kind are capable of producing the most intense
degree of heat required. The crucible-furnaces are thus
described by Professor Faraday, in his well-known work
on Chemical Manipulation.
nel termination at the bottom should be lined with fire¬
clay, and have an opening for the introduction of fuel, to
be closed by a stopper when the fire is in order; or a still
better arrangement is to continue the furnace upwards by
a deep ring with the feeding apertures in it, as at fig. 5.
On the same principle with the crucible-furnace is a
small portable furnace contrived by Mr Knight, and re-
An exceedingly useful furnace, either in a large or presented at Plate CCLIV. fig. 1, and consisting of a cy-
small laboratory, may be made out of a black-lead or linder of sheet-iron lined with an earthy composition. A
earthen crucible. The proper crucibles for this purpose B is the fire-place; B C the ash-pit, closed on all sides
are known by the name of blue pots, and may be had of excepting at the register door, D, where air is admitted;
almost every size less than the height of twenty-two E is an opening for fuel; F a recess for the neck of a re-
mches, and of twelve or fourteen inches diameter in the tort. Fig. 2 is a funnel top for the furnace, with a pipe
top. They are made of clay and plumbago mixed, and are above extending by other lengths into the chimney. Fig.
easily cut by a saw, rasp, or file. The price of one which 3 is a sand-bath, which can be used in place of the dome,
will make a very good furnace for small operations is about with a pipe rising up from it.
six shillings. _ On the same principle is the well-known portable fur-Dr Black’s
One of these vessels, of the height of twelve inches, nace of Dr Black, represented at fig. 4, Plate CCLIV. portable
and seven inches in width at the top within (Plate CCLIII. which is the most complete of the kind which has yetfurnace-
fig 1), will make a very useful furnace for the igniting of been contrived. It is made of sheet iron, formed into an
a small crucible, heating a tube, or distilling with large elliptic shape for the purpose of getting a chimney sepa-
g ass retorts at moderate temperatures, or with smaller rate from the body of the fire-place, and is carefully lined
glass or earthen retorts at higher temperatures. It is with clay well tempered. A B is the fire-place; B C
first, in the course of preparation, necessary to have cer- the ash-pit; E a sliding door for the admission of'fuel;
tain round holes pierced in it. These are easily made ; a D another door for the same purpose, and also for the in-
gimlet, bradawl, or other small instrument, is to be used troduction of a muffle. Fig. 5 is a cover, and fig. 6 a sand-
to penetrate the sides ; and the small apertures thus pro- bath. F is the chimney, which is lengthened by pipes,
duced are to be enlarged with a rat’s-tail and round rasp, and connected with the chimney of the house. ’
and ultimately finished with a half-round rasp, which will On the same general principle of the wind-furnace is
make them of the size required. Four of these holes are the genera! laboratory or table-furnace, which, being of
to be placed at equal distances from each other, and about considerable magnitude, is fixed in the laboratory, and
two inches from the bottom of the pot. They may be one forms one of the most important and useful pieces of ap-
and a fourth or one and a half inch in diameter. A se- paratus which the chemist employs. From the extreme
cond ring of holes, five or six in number, is to be made facility which, if conveniently arranged, it gives to every
Halt way between the top and bottom of the pot, and a operation, its use is partly domestic, partly chemical;
2 m
FURNACE.
274
Furnace, for it lias to warm and air the place, occasionally to heat
water, as well as to supply the means of raising a crucible
to ignition, or of affording a high temperature to flasks
through the agency of a sand-bath.
These objects are best obtained by those furnaces which
are built with a table top. The fire-place itself is con¬
structed of brick-work with iron front and fittings; and
the flue being carried horizontally for three or four feet,
is afterwards carried off to and connected with the main
flue existing in the wall. The fire-place and horizontal
flue are covered with a large plate of cast iron, of from
two to three feet in width. This is formed in the middle,
over the heated part, into sand-baths; a round moveable
one over the fire itself, and a long fixed one over the flue.
The sand-baths supply every gradation of heat, from dull
redness, if required, down to a temperature of 100° or
lower; whilst on each side of them exists a level surface,
which answers every purpose of an ordinary table, and
supplies extraordinary facilities to experiments going on
in the sand-bath or furnace. Nor are these advantages
gained by any serious sacrifice of heating power in the
furnace itself; for it is easy so to construct it as to make
its ordinary combustion not more rapid than that of a
common fire, and yet, by closing the fire-door and open¬
ing the ash-pit, to obtain a heat that will readily melt
gold, silver, or cast iron.
A furnace like this is best placed in the middle, or
towards one end of the laboratory, independent of the
wall; for then it most effectually warms the air of the
place, and there is working room all round it. The flue
may then either descend and be carried off for a short
distance under ground, or it may be connected by a fun¬
nel pipe with the upright draught chimney. But if more
convenient, either as occupying less of the room of a small
laboratory, or for other reasons, it may be placed with ad¬
vantage against one side; and where the laboratory is
made out of a room previously built, the best situation is
generally against the fire-place, and the flue of the furnace
is then easily connected with the chimney previously ex¬
isting. When a furnace of this kind stands against the
wall, it is frequently advantageous to construct a wooden
hood over the sand-bath, to receive the fumes evolved
during the digestions and solutions made upon it, and con¬
duct them away to the chimney.
Being in constant requisition as a table, a furnace of
this kind should be about thirty-four or thirty-five inches
in height; its other dimensions, and even its form, must
depend upon the space that can be allotted for it; and
the following is a more particular description of the one
in the laboratory of the Royal Institution, constructed un¬
der the direction of Mr Brande. It is represented at fig.
7, Plate CCLIV., and in section at fig. 8 through the line
AB. It has the brick-work fifty-two inches in length and
thirty-eight in width ; the iron plate, including sand-bath,
being fifty-seven inches by forty-two. Others have been
constructed, the plates of which are only forty inches by
twenty-seven. The principal part of this furnace is ne¬
cessarily of brick-work, only the top plate, with the backs
and the front, being of iron. The front is a curved iron
plate, having two apertures closed by iron doors, one be¬
longing to the fire-place, and the other to the ash-pit. It
is thirty-four inches high and fourteen inches wide. The
ash-hole door moves over the flooring beneath; the bot¬
tom of the fire-place door is twenty-two inches from the
ground, and the door itself is eight and a half inches by
seven. This front is guarded within, at the part which
encloses the fire, by a strong cast-iron plate, having an
opening through it, corresponding to the door of the fire¬
place. It has clamps attached to it, which, when the fur¬
nace is built up, are enclosed in the brick-work. In the
setting or building of the furnace, two lateral brick walls
are raised on each side the front plate, and a back wall at Funu#
such a distance from it as to leave space for the ash-hole
and fire-place. These walls are lined with Welsh lumps
where they form the fire-chamber. Two iron bars are in¬
serted in the course of the work, to support the loose grate
bars in the usual manner, the grate being raised nineteen
inches from the ground. The side walls are continued
until of the height of the front, and are carried backward
from the front until in two parallel lines, so as to afford
support for the iron plate which is to cover the whole.
The back wall of the fire-place is not raised so high as the
side walls by six inches and a half, the interval which
is left between it and the bottom of the sand-bath being
the commencement of the flue or throat of the furnace.
In this way the fire-place, which is fourteen inches from
back to front, and nine inches wide, is formed, and also
the two sides of the portion of the horizontal flue which
belongs to the furnace, and is intended to heat the larger
sand-bath. The bottom of this part of the flue may be
made of brick-work, resting upon bearers laid on the two
side walls ; or it may be a plate of cast iron, resting upon
a ledge of the brick-work on each side, and on the top of
the wall which forms the back of the fire-place. When
such an arrangement is adopted, the plate must not be
built into the brick-work, but suffered to lie on the ledges,
which are to be made flat and true for the purpose ; for,
if attached to the walls, it will by alternate expansion and
contraction disturb and throw them down. The ends of
the side walls, forming as it were the back of the furnace,
may be finished either by being carried to the wall against
which the furnace is built, or enclosed by a piece of con¬
necting brick-work, to make the whole square and com¬
plete ; or a warm air cupboard may be built in the cavity
beneath the flue, and the door made to occupy the opening
between the walls. Occasionally the flue may be requir¬
ed to descend there, and pass some distance under ground.
These joints should be arranged and prepared before the
plate constituting the top of the furnace is put on to the
brick-work, so that when the plate with its sand-baths are
in their places, they may complete the portion of the ho¬
rizontal flue by forming its upper side.
The size of this plate is the first thing to be consider¬
ed, and having been determined upon from a considera¬
tion of the situation to be occupied by the furnace, and
the places of the sand-bath also having been arranged,
the brick-work must then be carried up, so as to corre¬
spond with these determinations, and with the plate itself,
which in the mean time is to be cast. The sand-bath and
the plate are to be formed in separate pieces. The bath
over the fire is best, of a circular form, and of such dia¬
meter, that when lifted out of its place, it may leave an
aperture in the plate equal in width to the upper part of
the fire-place beneath ; so that a still or cast-iron pot, or
a set of rings, may be put into its place over the fire. The
other sand-bath must be of such a form as to correspond
with the shape and size of the flue beneath. These
vessels are to be of cast iron, about three tenths of an
inch thick; their depth is to be two and a half inches or
three inches, and they are to be cast with flanches, so as
to act in the corresponding depressions of the plate, that
the level of the junctions may be uniform. This will be
understood from the accompanying sections of the fur¬
nace, see fig. 8, given through the line A B of the view.
It is essential that these sand-baths be of such dimensions
as to fit very loosely into the apertures in the plate, a space
of the eighth of an inch or more being left all round them
when cold, as shown in the section, otherwise, when heat¬
ed, they will expand so much as entirely to fill the aper¬
tures, and even break the plate. The plate itself should
be half an inch thick.
When the plate and its sand-baths are prepared, and
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the brick-work is ready, the furnace is finished by laying
the plate on the brick-work, with a bed of mortar inter¬
vening. If the walls are thin, or any peculiarity in their
arrangement occasions weakness, they should be bound
together, within by cranks built into the work, and with¬
out by iron bands. The alternate changes of temperature
from high to low and low to high, to which the furnace
is constantly subject, renders it liable to mechanical in¬
jury, in a degree much surpassing that which would occur
to a similar piece of brick-work always retained nearly at
one temperature.
The sand-baths which have been described are liable
to an accident that has induced some chemists to substi¬
tute others made of wrought iron. When first heated,
they frequently, indeed generally, crack from the unequal
expansion in different parts ; and the plate itself is subject
to the same accident. If constructed of wrought iron,
this effect is not produced; but then, after being used
some time, they warp into very irregular and inconvenient
forms, especially if made of thin metal; whilst, on the con¬
trary, those of cast iron, when cracked, are rarely injured
for the uses to which they are to be applied, and seldom
suffer further change.
These baths should have washed sea-sand put into
them. It is heavy, and occasions no dust when moved ;
whilst, on the contrary, unwashed and bad sand contains
much dirt, and occasions great injury in experimenting.
A piece of straightened iron hoop, about twelve inches in
length, should lie on the furnace, as an accompaniment
to the baths, being a sort of coarse spatula with which to
move away the sand.
The circular sand-bath is frequently replaced by a
set of concentric rings, or a cast-iron pot, see fig. 9. The
rings are convenient for leaving an aperture over the fire
of larger dimension, according as a larger or smaller num¬
ber are used at once; and being levelled at the edges, fit
accurately into each other, without any risk of becoming
fixed by expansion. The external one, like the sand-
baths, should be made smaller than the depression in the
furnace plate in which it rests. The iron pots are of vari¬
ous sizes, and adapted to the furnace by means of the rings.
A red heat is easily obtained in them for sublimation.
In cases where a greater heat is required than can
be obtained by the table furnace, or any of the portable
furnaces already described, other wind furnaces may be
constructed by proportioning the size of the chimney to
that of the furnace, much surpassing these in the inten¬
sity of heat produced; but in these and other cases it is
better to have recourse at once to the blast-furnace, the
operations being more manageable and expeditious, the
heat greater, and the consumption of fuel smaller. By
a little contrivance, one of the crucible furnaces before
described is easily converted into a blast-furnace, and
a very high temperature for small vessels obtained. This
is done by closing the holes of the ash-pit with the stop¬
pers, except one, and applying to that the nozzle of a pair
of double-hand bellows, from which a draft is to be urged,
and the furnace aided at the same time by the piece of
upright funnel pipe; the fuel is to be charcoal.
A very powerful blast-furnace on a small scale has been
contrived by Mr Aikin ; it is represented at fig. 10, and
i ma^e ou^ hr°ken pots. The lower piece, A, is
the bottom of one of these pots, cut off so low as only to
save a cavity of about an inch deep, and ground smooth
a ove and below. The outside diameter over the top is
ve and a half inches. The middle piece or fire-place, B,
!s a larger portion of a similar pot, with a cavity about
six inches deep, and measuring seven and a half inches
over the top, outside diameter, and perforated with six
ast-holes at the bottom. These two pots are all that are
essentially necessary to the furnace for most operations;
but when it is wished to heap up fuel above the top of a
crucible contained, and especially to protect the eyes
from the intolerable glare of the fire when in full height,
an upper pot, C, is added, of the same dimensions as the
middle one, and with a large opening in the side, cut to
allow the exit of the smoke and flame. It has also an iron
stem with a wooden handle (an old chisel answers the
purpose very well), for removing it occasionally. The
bellows, which are double, D, are firmly fixed by a little
contrivance, which will take off and on, to a heavy stool,
as represented in the plate; and their handle should be
lengthened so as to make them work easier to the hand,
lo increase their force on particular occasions, a plate of
lead may be firmly tied on the wood of the upper flap.
The nozzle is received into a hole in the pot, A, which con¬
ducts the blast into its cavity. Hence the air passes into
the fire-place, through six holes of the size of a large
gimlet, drilled at equal distances through the bottom of
the pot, and all converging in an inward direction, so
that if prolonged, they would meet about the centre of
the upper part of the fire. No luting is necessary in us¬
ing this furnace, so that it may be set up and taken down
immediately. Coke, or common cinders taken from the
fire when the coal ceases to blaze, sifted from the dust,
and broken into very small pieces, form the best fuel for
higher heats. The fire may be kindled at first by a few
lighted cinders and a small quantity of wood charcoal.
The heat which this little furnace will afford is so intense,
that its power was at first discovered accidentally by the
fusion of a thick piece of cast iron. The utmost heat pro¬
cured by it was 167° of Wedgewood’s pyrometer, when a
Hessian crucible was actually sinking down in a state of
porcelaneous fusion. A steady heat of 155° or 160° may
be depended on if the fire be properly managed and the
bellows worked with vigour.
The following is a description of a most excellent blast¬
furnace, which has been in use for some years in the la¬
boratory of the Royal Institution, and is represented at
fig. 11. It is sufficiently powerful to melt pure iron in
a crucible in twelve or fifteen minutes, the fire having
been previously lighted. It will effect the fusion of rho¬
dium; and even pieces of pure platinum have sunk to¬
gether into one button in a crucible subjected to its
heat. All kinds of crucibles, including the Cornish
and the Hessian, soften, fuse, and become frothy in it;
and it is the want of vessels which has hitherto put
a limit to its applications. The exterior consists of a
blue pot, eighteen inches in height and thirteen inches
in external diameter at the top. A small blue pot of
seven and a half inches internal diameter at the top
had the lower part cut off so as to leave an aperture of
five inches. This, when put into the larger pot, rested
upon its lower external edge, the tops of the two being
level. The interval between them, which gradually in¬
creased from the lower to the upper part, was filled with
pulverized glass-blowers’ pots, to which enough of water
had been added to moisten the powder, which was pressed
down by sticks, so as to make the whole a compact mass.
A round grate was then dropped into the furnace, of such
a size that it rested about an inch above the lower edge
of the inner pot: the space beneath it, therefore, consti¬
tuted the air chamber, and the part above the body of the
furnace. The former was seven and a half inches from
the grate to the bottom, and the latter seven and a half
inches from the grate to the top. Finally, a horizontal
hole, conical in form, and one and a half inch in diame¬
ter on the exterior, was cut through the outer pot, form¬
ing an opening into the air-chamber at the lower part, its
use being to receive the nozzle of the bellows by which
the blast was to be thrown in. The furnace being thus
completed, the next object was to dry it gradually, that
275
Furnace.
276 FUR
Furneaux when used it might not be blown to pieces by confined
Islands, aqueous vapour; a charcoal fire was therefore made in it,
and left to burn some hours, being supplied with air only
by the draught through the hole into the chamber be¬
neath. When vapours ceased to be formed, the furnace
was considered to be ready for use.
This furnace has always been used with a pair of large
double bellows mounted in an iron frame, the furnace being
raised upon a stool, so as to bring the aperture of the air-
chamber to a level with the nozzle of the bellows. The lat¬
ter has generally been inserted in the aperture; for this
and similar furnaces are of such depth compared to their
width, that when charged with a crucible and fuel, there
is so much resistance to the passage of the air, when
urged by a blast competent to create and sustain a vivid
combustion, that a part returns by the side of the nozzle,
if the aperture be left open. The bellows spoken of is
far larger than necessary for the furnace described, and is
rarely worked to one third of its power ; for otherwise the
heat rises so high as to destroy the crucible, and the
results are lost. It is, however, at all times advisable to
have an abundant command of air.
The heat produced in this furnace is such as at every
violent operation to cause the production of some slag
. from the melting of the inner surface of the furnace it¬
self, where the combustion has been most vivid. The
slag running down the interior, collects round the edge of
the grate, and should be removed with a chisel and ham¬
mer, or with an iron rod, after each operation, that the
grate may be clear and free of obstruction for the next
process. When in the course of time the interior of the
furnace is so far injured as to become thin and weak, it
must be displaced, and the furnace restored to its original
state by the introduction of a new inside, as before.
The fuel to be used in this furnace is coke. Its con¬
sumption is very small, considering the heat that is ob¬
tained in consequence of the short period of each opera¬
tion. The superiority of the blast-furnace over the wind-
furnace, in many operations for which high temperatures
are required, depends upon the rapidity of its action. It
is requisite to employ this furnace in the open air, or
under a well-arranged vent; for an immense number of
sparks, much flame, and a current of hot air, are projected
during its operation, which might occasion serious mis¬
chief in a room, unless the ceiling were at a considerable
height, or guarded by a metal screen.
The fuel to be used in furnaces is of three kinds,
coal, coke, and charcoal. Coal is the ordinary fuel for
the laboratory table furnace, or that intended to be in use
every day, and to serve for fusions, roastings, and other
operations, for which its temperature may be sufficient.
It is very desirable that this coal should be good, and not
of the kind which contains much sulphur, or an abundance
of earthy matter; for the first interferes with various
fusions and ignitions, and the latter renders the fire dirty
and dusty, and, when the temperature is raised to a high
point, causes an abundance of clinkers. On certain occa¬
sions to be hereafter distinguished, especially if the coal
be sulphureous and bad, it may be necessary at times to
use both coke and charcoal in the table-furnace. Coal
should never be used in the blast-furnace ; for, in conse¬
quence of its softening and swelling by heat, it aggregates,
closes the small channels by which the air finds a passage
through the fuel, and impedes the combustion.
FUR
Coke Is in constant requisition. It varies in quality Fum(
with the coal from which it is obtained. Such as is in- bias
tended for the service of the blast-furnace should be free W
from sulphureous, earthy, and metallic matter. Of this
kind is the Staffordshire coke, which may be obtained at
various wharfs on the canals near London. It is frequently
so little altered in appearance as to resemble the original
coal. It burns completely away in a blast-furnace, leaving
scarcely a trace of slag, so that after several successive
portions have been introduced, no material quantity of
refuse is produced upon the grate, nor any thing that will
act seriously on the crucible as a flux.
On the contrary, if common gas-coke be used in this
furnace, the oxide of iron and earthy matter which it con¬
tains is so abundant, that slag is soon produced, which
flowing over the crucible, corrodes and destroys it.
The charcoal intended for laboratory use may be of
the ordinary kind, and must not be either too large or too
small. If large, the pieces should be broken down, or
they will be unfit for use in the crucible furnaces, for
which it is principally intended. Charcoal is a quick fuel;
but burning with facility, a small quantity of it can be easily
retained in a state of regular combustion ; and hence, in
cases where but little space intervenes between the sub¬
stance to be heated and the side of the furnace, or when a
small temporary fire is required in the air, it is very con¬
venient. Where Staffordshire coke will burn, and, by
means of a blast or a draught of air, will give sufficient
intensity of heat, it is very superior to charcoal in dura¬
tion. Occasionally a mixture of coke and charcoal is con¬
venient, since it affords a combination possessing the qua¬
lities of permanency and freedom of combustion.
A charcoal box is almost as essential in a laboratory
as one for coal, and should have its appointed place.
It must be remembered, that all operations with fur¬
naces should be carried on in safe situations; care being
taken that no danger be incurred by the ascent of sparks,
flame, or hot air, by lateral vicinity to combustible bodies,
or by standing on an unprotected wooden surface.
WLen small furnaces are placed upon tables, stools,
or trays, a brick or a piece of sheet iron should be inter¬
posed, according to the mode by which the heat is likely
to be communicated.
For further information on the subject of furnaces, see
the articles already referred to, and others connected with
particular arts where they are used. See also Lewis’s
Philosophical Commerce of Arts ; Faraday’s Chemical Ma¬
nipulation ; Parke’s Chemical Essays ; Aikin’s Dictionary
of Chemistry; Tredgold on Warming and Ventilating
Buildings; Tredgold’s Account of the Steam-Engine;
Davies Gilbert, Quarterly Journal of Science, vol. xiii.;
Watt’s Patent Furnaces, Repertory of Arts, vol. iv. p.226;
Raley’s Patent Furnaces, Repertory of Arts, vol. x. p. 155;
Miche on Reverberatory Furnaces, in Rozier’s Journal,
vol. xxxii. p. 385 ; Howard’s Improved Air Furnace, in
Tilloch’s Philosophical Magazine, vol. v. p. 190 ; Perceval s
Chamber Lamp Furnace, Repertory of Arts, vol. iii. p- 29,
and in the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, vol.
iv. p. 91 ; Accum’s Improved Universal Furnace of Dr
Black, in his System of Practical Chemistry, vol. ii. p- 357,
and in Nicholson’s Journal, vol. vi. p. 273, 8vo; Curau-
deu’s new Evaporating Furnace is described in the An-
nates de Chimie, No. 149, an. xii.; and in Nicholsons
Journal, vol. ix. p. 204, 8vo. (cv
FURNEAUX Islands, a cluster of islands in Bass forty miles in length, Cape Barren Island, and Clarke sand
Strait, between New Holland and Van Diemen’s Land. Preservation Islands. There are, besides, several other
The exact number of these islands has never been ascer- smaller islands, and numerous islets. These islands are
tained. The principal are, Great Island, which exceeds barren and unproductive, being sandy in the lower parts,
FUR
r Fare-
containing swamps and pools, and being overrun with
brushwood and stunted trees, which rarely exceed the
Furl- height of twelve feet. A singular phenomenon appears in
Preservation Island, where, in a certain spot, the trees have
undergone a partial petrifaction towards the roots. Two
species of seals are found here; as also the kangaroo,
wombat, and duck-billed ant-eater. Innumerable flocks
of sea-birds, amongst which is the sooty peterel, haunt the
shores. These islands are resorted to for the seal fishery,
and afford a temporary residence to those employed in
it, the islands being uninhabited. The navigation is in¬
tricate ; and there is a scarcity of fresh water. These
islands were first visited by Mr Bass, along with Captain
Flinders, in 1798.
FURNES, a city of the province of West Flanders, about
two miles from the sea, on the canal from Dunkirk to
Bruges. It is strongly fortified, and contains 3452 inha¬
bitants. Long. 2. 34. 31. E. Lat. 51. 4. 23. N. It is the
capital of a circle divided into four cantons, extending
over 266 square miles, containing 76,547 inhabitants.
FURNITURE, a term in dialling, which denotes cer¬
tain additional points and lines drawn on a dial, by way of
ornament, such as the signs of the zodiac, length of days,
parallels of declination, azimuths, points of the compass,
meridians of chief cities, Babylonian, Jewish, or Italian
hours, and the like.
FURRUCKABAD, a fortified town of Hindustan, in
the province of Agra, and capital of the district of the
same name. The town was built by a Patan colony about
a hundred years ago, and is situated about a mile from
the western bank of the Ganges. It contains a small cita¬
del, and the palace of the nabob. The streets are wide,
and the houses and open places are shaded with trees.
It carries on an extensive trade with Cashmere and other
parts of India, and derives considerable benefit from the
extensive military cantonments of Futtehghur in its vi¬
cinity. A civil establishment for the administration of
justice and the collection of the revenue was settled here,
subordinate to the Bareilly court of circuit and appeal.
Its inhabitants consist nearly in an equal proportion of
Hindus and Mahommedans. It was under the walls of
this place that, in the year 1804, Lord Lake defeated
Holkar, who narrowly escaped being made prisoner. Long.
79. 33. E. Lat. 27. 33. N.
The district of Furruckabad is situated in a country en¬
closed between the Ganges and the Jumna, and between
the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth degrees of north
latitude. It extends west along the banks of the Ganges,
and formerly belonged to Canange ; but in the early part
of the last century it was assigned as a jagheer to an Af¬
ghan, whose descendants, after shaking off their depen¬
dence on the court of Delhi, became tributary to the na¬
bob of Oude. In the year 1801 it was taken under the
protection of the British, who assumed the civil and mili¬
tary administration of the country. Prior to this the coun¬
try was in a wretched state ; but tranquillity being now
secured by the paramount power of the British, the coun¬
try is in consequence improving.
FURTH, a city of the circle of the Rezat, in the king¬
dom of Bavaria. It stands at the junction of the rivers
Rednitzand Pegnitz. It contains 1179 houses, and 12,705
inhabitants, of whom 2673 are Jews, which people have
here an university with 200 students, two Hebrew printing
presses, three Jewish schools, and an hospital. It is the
most active manufacturing town in the kingdom; and
though none of the establishments are upon a large scale,
great quantities of goods are produced by them. The
principal fabric consists of looking-glasses, innumerable
small ones being made and distributed throughout Eu¬
rope. Some hundreds of people are employed in making
turnery ware; many in making locks, snuff-boxes, watches,
F U S 277
leaf-gold, foil, spectacles, and the various other articles Furth-
usually called Nuremburg goods. coming
FURTHCOMING, in Scotch Law, the name of an ac- II
tion competent to any person who has used arrestment in t ,
the hands of his debtor’s creditor, for having the subject
arrested declared his property.
FUSAROLE, in Architecture, a moulding or ornament
placed immediately under the echinus, in the Doric, Ionic,
and Composite capitals.
FUSE, or Fuze, in artillery. See Fusee.
FUSEE, in clock-work, is that conical part drawn by
the spring, and around which the chain or spring is wound.
Fusee, Fuze, or Fuse, is a tube, generally made of
very dry beech-wood, and sometimes of horn-beam, taken
near the root, which, being filled with a composition of
saltpetre, sulphur, and mealed powder, hard rammed, is
driven into a loaded shell, which it serves to explode.
The fuze must be of such length as to continue burning
all the time the shell is in its flight or range, and to in¬
flame the powder within as soon as it reaches the ground.
Fuzes are of various kinds, according to the purposes to
which they are applied. Fusees a hombes a feu mort, or
bomb-fuzes with dead light, differ from the ordinary ones
in this, that the eye, instead of being pierced and hollow,
is full, and of a half spherical shape. Fusees d grenades,
or fuzes for grenades, are made of the same quality of
wood as that adopted for bombs, and required to be
charged with the same care and precision. Fusees d'ohus,
or howitzer fuzes, are generally made of the same wood
and composition as those of bombs, and are loaded in a si¬
milar manner. Fusees volantes, or rockets, are made of
various dimensions, and serve as signals in time of war.
FUSIL, in Heraldry, a bearing of a rhomboidal figure,
longer than the lozenge, and having its upper and lower
angles more acute than the other two in the middle. It
is called in Latin/wsws, a spindle, from its shape.
FUSELI, Henhy, a celebrated painter, was born at
Zurich, in Switzerland, in the year 1741. He was the
second son of Gaspard Fuessli, who had obtained some dis¬
tinction as a portrait and landscape painter. Henry chose
to alter the orthography of the family name, and also to
place the date of his birth in the year 1745, instead of
1741. From his earliest years he was inspired with a
love of painting, particularly of those works which have
a sublime or imaginative character. Michel Angelo was
his favourite artist; and he familiarized himself with his
style, by making numerous copies of some prints of that
great master’s productions. Fuseli made rapid progress
in learning, and united the love of literature, particularly
of the poetry of Greece and Rome, with his devotion to
painting. At the Humanity College of Zurich he became
the intimate friend of the celebrated physiognomist La-
vater. Here he studied the English language, and con¬
ceived such an ardent admiration of Shakspeare, that he
translated Macbeth into German. He was induced,
however, to leave his native place on account of a cir¬
cumstance in nowise discreditable to his character. A
magistrate in one of the bailiwicks of Zurich having
committed some flagrant act of oppression, Lavater and
he published a pamphlet exposing the affair, and so ef¬
fectually did the friends succeed in their attempt, that
the unjust ruler was compelled to leave the country.
His friends, however, so annoyed Fuseli, that after tak¬
ing his degree of master of arts, he quitted Zurich, first
for Vienna and then for Berlin, whither he was accom¬
panied by Lavater. In the capital of Prussia the two
friends prosecuted their studies under the learned Sul-
zer; and here Fuseli extended his acquaintance with
English literature. His genius and talents attracted
the attention of Sir Robert Smith, British ambassador
at the court of Berlin, and by the advice of that gentle-
1
278
F U S
F U S
F useli.
man he was induced to visit England, where he arrived in
the year 1762. He had letters^ introduction to several
influential individuals, through whose instrumentality he
obtained the situation of tutor to the son of a nobleman,
whom he accompanied to Paris. His governorship, how¬
ever, was short, and after returning to England he subsist¬
ed for some time by the labours of his pen. He wrote a
number of pieces, but acknowledged none save the trans¬
lation of Winkelman’s work on painting and sculpture.
About this period an angry controversy raged between
Voltaire and Rousseau, and Fuseli printed a pamphlet in
defence of the latter; but the whole impression caught
fire, much to the satisfaction of the author, who afterwards
felt ashamed of his production. Having shown some of his
sketches to Sir Joshua Reynolds, the highly favourable
opinion of that great painter determined the fate of our
young artist, and he resolved on devoting himself entire¬
ly to the pencil. His first work was Joseph interpreting
the Dream's of the Chief Baker and Butler ; but nothing is
known as to the manner in which it was executed or re¬
ceived, and the picture is now lost. In 1770 he visited Italy
in company with Armstrong the poet. From his boyhood
an enthusiastic admirer of Michel Angelo, he had an op¬
portunity in Rome of studying that great artist in all his
sublimity aod grandeur, and for weeks together, as he loved
to repeat, he would repose on his back gazing upon the
magnificent ceiling of the Sistine chapel, and the lofty
grandeur of the Florentine. Nor was the milder radiance
which sheds such an inexpressible charm over the works
of Raffaelle overlooked by our ardent student. But still,
although he acknowledged the genius of that great mas¬
ter, he considered him as inferior to Michel Angelo, upon
■whom, fulfilling the injunctions of Re3molds, “ he eat, he
drank, he slept, he waked.” From Rome he transmitted
several pictures to England, two of which were taken from
Shakspeare ; namely, the Death of Beaufort, and a scene
from Macbeth. After visiting his father at Zurich, he re¬
turned to London in 1779. In 1782 appeared his celebrated
work entitled Nightmare, a subject peculiarly adapted to
his genius, and which at once stamped him as a great and
original genius. The idea of the Shakspeare gallery hav¬
ing been started at the table of Alderman Boydell, it was
eagerly caught up by Fuseli and other painters present.
It was soon afterwards realized, and, as might have been
expected, our artist grappled with the wildest passages of
the dramatist. For this institution he painted eight of his
best pictures, of which the Ghost in Hamlet is consider¬
ed as the noblest. Other pictures followed, the subjects of
which were taken from Dante, Virgil, Sophocles, and other
poets; and the fame of Fuseli having spread far and
wide, he was in 1790 elected a royal academician. In the
course of the next nine years he painted forty-seven pic¬
tures from Milton, which were afterwards exhibited as
the Milton gallery. They all more or less evince the vi¬
gorous imagination of the painter. The Lazar House is
most admired by men of vertu ; but the rising of Satan at
the touch of Ithuriel’s spear is the favourite of the multi¬
tude. In 1799 he succeeded Barry in the professorship
of painting, and, in 1804, Wilton as keeper of the Royal
Academy. In the year following he published an improv¬
ed edition of Pilkington’s Dictionary of Painters, which,
however, added but little to his reputation, although he in¬
troduced a great number of new names as candidates for
pictorial celebrity. In 1807 the students of the Royal
Academy presented him with a silver vase designed by
Plaxman ; and ten years afterwards he was presented with
the diploma of the first class in the Roman Academy of
St Luke. From this period until his death Fuseli exhi¬
bited twelve pictures at the academy, neither the fervour
of his fancy nor his skill of hand having in the least fail¬
ed. Whilst on a visit to the Countess of Guildford at
Putney Hill, he became seriously unwell; and his indispo- f
sition increasing, he expired there, on the 16th of April ^
1825, in the eighty-fourth year of his age. it. *
As a painter, the merits of Fuseli are of a high order
in the line to which he applied himself. His mind was
daring, and in dealing with themes of terror and imagi¬
nation he evinced an originality and skill not surpassed
amongst English artists, for to England he belongs by
adoption. As a professor of painting, his chief aim was
to impress his audience with a sense of the nobleness of
art, and the high purposes to which alone it ought to be
dedicated. His lectures and other literary compositions
evince the same characteristic attributes of mind. In many
of his criticisms upon painters and painting, particularly
his celebrated disquisition upon invention, he displays
great originality of mind, with a lofty and impassioned elo¬
quence. His lectures were published in one volume 4to.
FUSILIERS, Fusileers, or Fuzileers, are men armed
with fusils or light muskets. When pikes were in use
amongst the French, each regiment had only four fusi¬
leers, exclusively of ten grenadiers who also carried mus¬
kets. At present, fusils or muskets are universally adopt¬
ed in all European armies, though some regiments still
retain the name of fusileers, which was anciently applied
only to that one which was exclusively armed with fusils.
FUST, John, a goldsmith of Mayence, in the middle
of the fifteenth century, and a man not more distinguish¬
ed for his riches than for his knowledge of the arts, shares
with Guttemberg and Schceffer the glory of having in¬
vented printing. Guttemberg is generally considered as
the first inventor of this art; and, according to some,
Fust had only the merit, by no means a slight one, of sup¬
plying him with money ; whilst others are of opinion that
the goldsmith contributed both his funds and his industry
towards the completion of the invention. But, however
this may be, a partnership was formed between them in
1450, and it appears that these associates practised suc¬
cessively three sorts of impressions; first, the tabellary,
that is, in carved tablets or plates, like our engravings on
wood; secondly, the xylographic, or in moveable charac¬
ters of wood; and, lastly, the impression in characters
cast in moulds or matrices, analogous to, if not identical
with, the stereotype founding of the present day. There
is reason to believe, however, that Fust, notwithstanding
his acquirements, contributed but little of his own inven¬
tion to the operations of the partnership contracted \4th
Guttemberg; since the latter appears to have been the
first who thought of applying to regular compositions the
same mode which had been long practised at the foot of
engravings for their explanation; and since Schceffer, iin
inventing the punch, completed the discovery, if indeed
this ought not to be considered as the discovery itself.
Fust, zealous in favour of all that regarded his art, was so
much delighted with the invention of Schceffer, thathegave
the latter his daughter in marriage. The Biblia Sacra
Latina, without date, in folio, and consisting of 637 leaves,
is probably the first production of printing, and seems to
have been executed between 1450 and 1455, during the
partnership of Fust and Guttemberg ; but some think that
the impression was struck from the characters invented
by Schceffer. In 1455, difficulties arose between Fust and
Guttemberg, who, in consequence, separated on the 6th of
November. But, in reimbursements of the sums he had
advanced, Fust remained proprietor of the establishment,
which he now carried on with Schceffer; and to this new
partnership we are indebted for the Psalter, Psalmorum
Codex, of 1457, the most ancient work printed with a
date (reprinted in 1450, from the same characters, which
also served for the re-impressions of 1490, 1502, and
1516); the Durandi Rationale Divinorum Officiorum,
1459; the Constitutiones dementis Quinti, 1460; the ce-
1
F U S F Y Z 279
hpur lebrated Biblia Latina, of 1462, the first Bible with a
date; and the treatise De Officiis of Cicero. Fust and
Schceffer exercised printing until 1466, when Fust went
to Paris, and is thought to have died of the plague which
then ravaged that city.
Fust, the goldsmith of Mayence, and the promoter of
printing, has, however, been sometimes confounded with
Faust the magician, whose name is associated with so
many imaginary horrors. The latter, born about the com¬
mencement of the sixteenth century, was the son of a pea¬
sant of Weimar, or, as some say, of Kundling. He was
educated by one of his uncles, who caused him to study
theology, and, notwithstanding a strong propensity to de¬
bauchery, he completed his course, and obtained the de¬
gree of doctor. But having become disgusted with this
pursuit, he cultivated medicine and astrology, and in par¬
ticular applied himself to the study of magic. From this
time his historians are only insipid romancers, who relate
a thousand absurdities respecting him. They make him
conjure up the devil himself; employ an infernal spirit
named Mephistopheles, with whom he made a paction for
twenty-four years; descend into hell, and travel through
the celestial spheres, as well as through all the countries
of this sublunary world, everywhere surrounding himself
with illusions, playing mischievous pranks, having com¬
merce with Helen the wife of Menelaus, causing Alex¬
ander the Great to appear to Charles V., and, lastly, to
terminate the whole in a suitable manner, having his neck
twisted by the devil at the expiration of his compact with
that personage. Much more infallible than even the il¬
lustrious Mathew Laensberg, Faust yearly circulated in
Germany almanacks, which, being dictated by Beelzebub,
could scarcely fail to have great success. Such are the
marvellous feats related by George Rodolph Widman, who
published at Franckfort, in 1587, 8vo, the history of John
haust, and Christopher Wagner his valet. This history,
or rather this romance, reprinted at Berlin in 1590, and at
Franckfort in 1591, re-appeared at Hamburg, 1598-1600,
in three volumes 4to, with historical, physical, and moral
commentaries, filled with ignorance and folly; and it was
also translated into English, Dutch, and French. Ade-
lung has honoured Faust with an article at the end of his
History of Human Follies, where will also be found the
Conjurationes Fausti, but without the mysterious figures
which ought to have accompanied them, and by means
of which the reader might easily perform the same pro¬
digies as the magician of Weimar. The Germans, who
are fond of the marvellous, have often brought upon the
scene the descent of Dr Faust to the infernal regions.
Of this number are the celebrated Goethe, Klinger, and
'J' Schink; whilst Trithemus, the most ancient of all,
• Manlius, Schaller, Wier, Del Rio, and even Camera-
nus and Gesner, have discoursed of Faust and his en¬
chantments, of which Peter-Frederick Arpe has favour-
et the world with a catalogue. But notwithstanding the
testimony of these writers, many others, perhaps with rea¬
son, regard this personage as entirely imaginary, and con-
81 L’r b's history as a romance intended merely for amuse-
jnent. Some, indeed, including Conrad Durius, are dis-
posed to think that the legend of Faust is a satire fabri¬
cate by the monks against John Fust, one of the inven-
ors of printing, who had incurred the resentment of these
ccno ites by being concerned in a discovery which su-
pei set ed their useful functions as copyists of manuscripts ;
u others have shown that this opinion is not well found-
co' ) y0,^16 subject of Faust, the curious reader may
nsu t Zeltners iSchediasma de Fausto preestigiatore ex
Qann£ bausto a quibusdam Jicto ; Struvius in his Jniro-
m not. Bei Litterar. and in his Bibl. Antiq.; and
umann s Dissertatio Historica de Fausto preestigiatore,
Wittemberg, 1683, 1693, 1711, in 4to. (a.)
Fust, in Architecture, the shaft of a column, or the part Fust
comprehended between the base and the capital, and also II
called the naked. Fyzabad.
FUSTIAN, in Commerce, a kind of cotton stuff, tweelled
or ribbed on one side. Fustians should be altogether
made of cotton yarn, both woof and warp; but a great
many are made, the warp of which is flax, or even hemp.
Fustians are made of several kinds, wide, narrow, fine,
coarse ; with shag or nap, and without it.
Fustian is also employed to denote an inflated or bom-
bastical style of composition.
FUSTIGATIO, in the Roman customs, a punishment
inflicted by beating with a cudgel. This punishment was
peculiar to freemen; for the slaves were scourged with
thongs.
FUFTEHGHUR, a town of Hindustan, situated on
the western bank of the Ganges, three miles from the
city of Furruckabad, formerly a very extensive military
cantonment, but now occupied by the civil establishment
of the Furruckabad district.
FUTTEHPOOR, a town of Hindustan, in the province
of Agra, twenty-four miles from the town of that name. It
was enlarged and embellished by Akbar, in honour of a
celebrated saint, to whose prayers the Emperor Akbar
thought that he was indebted for a son. The tomb of this
saint is situated on a mountain near the town, and is still
the resort of Mahommedan pilgrims. The place is en¬
closed with a high stone wall of great extent; but the
space within appears never to have been filled with build¬
ings. It presents at present a wide extent of ruined
houses and mosques, interspersed with fields cultivated
with rice and mustard, and a few tamarind trees; and
nearly in the middle, on a high ridge of rocky hills, is a
range of numerous palaces, serais, and other public build-
ings, in the best style of Mussulman architecture, with a
noble mosque in good repair. Long. 77. 34. E. Lat. 27.
5. N. '
FUTTOCKS, in a ship, the timbers raised over the
keel, or the encompassing timbers which form her breadth
and capacity.
FUTWA, a town of Hindustan, in the province of Bahar,
situated at the confluence of the river Pompon with the
Ganges, nine miles south of Patna, over which is a good
bridge, built of brick. In the year 1574, when the Af¬
ghan army was retreating before Akbar, the bridge broke
down, and they were mostly either drowned or put to the
sword. It is noted for the manufacture of table-cloths
and sheeting. Long. 85. 28. E. Lat. 25. 30. N.
FUTTYPOOR, a town of Hindustan, in the province
of Ajmeer, within the territory of the Teynagur rajpoots,
and seventy miles north-north-west from Teynagur. Long.
75. 7. E. Lat. 27. 51. N.
FUTURE, something to be, or to come hereafter.
Future, or Future Tense, in Grammar, denotes an
inflection of verbs, denoting that a thing will be in some
time yet to come. See Grammar.
FYZABAD, a town of Hindustan, in the province of
Oude, situated on the southern bank of the river Dewah
or Gogra. This city is said to have owed its origin to the
nabob Sufder Jung, who, in 1740, erected some tempo¬
rary houses in an extensive garden at this place. His son
Shuja Addowleh, after the battle of Buxar, removed his
residence to this place, and gave orders for erecting a
palace and other public buildings. The city was in con¬
sequence quickly enlarged, and rose into importance; but
the nabob Assup Addowleh having transferred his resi¬
dence to Lucknow, many of the houses, having been hastily
built, fell into decay. It is still, however, a considerable
city, and contains a numerous population, chiefly of the
lower classes, the merchants and bankers having removed
to Lucknow along with the court. It was the residence
280 G
G. of the two celebrated Begums, the mother and grand-
mother of the last-mentioned nabob. Adjoining is the
ancient city of Oude or Ayodha, the capital of the great
Ram, who conquered Ceylon. The city contains some
GAB
handsome tombs belonging to the reigning family; and g ^
its gardens are celebrated for grapes and other fruits. It
is eighty miles east from Lucknow. Long. 82. 10. E.GaF
Lat. 26. 46. N. v-
Gr.
GTHE seventh letter and fifth consonant of our al-
9 phabet, though in the alphabets of all the oriental
languages, the Hebrew, Phoenician, Chaldee, Syriac, Sama¬
ritan, Arabic, and even Greek, G is the third letter. The
Hebrews call it ghimel or gimel, a camel, by reason of its
supposed resemblance to the hump on the back of that
animal; and it bears the same appellation in the Samaritan,
Phoenician, and Chaldee ; in the Syriac it is called gamel,
in Arabic giim, and in Greek gamma. The gamma, T, of
the Greeks is manifestly the ghimel, 3, of the Hebrews or
Samaritans; the difference between the gamma and ghimel
consisting in this, that the one is turned to the right and
the other to the left, according to the different manners
of writing and reading which obtained amongst these dif¬
ferent nations. From the Greeks the Latins borrowed
their form of this letter; the Latin G being certainly a
corruption of the Greek gamma, r, as might be easily
shown, if our printers had all the characters and forms of
this letter to be met with in the Greek and Latin manu¬
scripts, through which the latter passed from r to G.
Diomedes (lib. ii. cap. De Litera) calls G a new letter.
His reason is, that the Romans had not introduced it be¬
fore the first Punic war, as appears from the Columna
Rostrata erected by Duilius, in which C is everywhere
found instead of G. It was Sp. Carvilius who, as we
learn from Terentius Scaurus, first distinguished between
these two letters, and invented the figure of the G.
The G, however, is found instead of C on several me¬
dals (Vaillant, Num. Imperat. tom. i. p. 39) ; and Beger
produces a medal of the Familia Ogulnia, where we find
Gar instead of Car, which is the reading on those of
Palin. But the C is more frequently seen on medals in¬
stead of G, as Aucustalis, Callcecia, Cartacinensis, &c.; not
that the pronunciation of these words was altered, but
only that the G was unskilfully or negligently cut by the
workmen ; as may be seen in different inscriptions of the
eastern empire, where avc is frequently found for aug,
and so in other cases. The northern nations frequently
changed the G into V or W, as in Gallus, Wallus; Gal¬
lia, Wallia, Vallia, &c. But it must not be supposed that
the French have changed the W into G; because they
wrote Gallus long before Wallus or Wallia was known,
as appears from all the ancient Greek and Roman writers.
And yet it is equally true that the French change the
W of the northern nations, and V consonant, into G; as
Willielmus, William, into Guillaume ; Wulphilas into Gul-
philas; Vascon into Gascon, and so in other cases.
The letter G is a mute, and cannot be any way sounded
without the help of a vowel. It is formed by the reflec¬
tion of the air against the palate by the tongue, as the air
passes out of the throat, or, as Martianus Capella ex¬
presses it, G spiritus cum palato ; so that G is a palatal
letter. The modern G takes its form from that of the
Latins. In English it has two sounds; one from the
Greek r, which is called that of the hard G, because it
is formed by a pressure somewhat hard of part of the
tongue against the upper gum, a sound which it retains
before a, o, u, l, r; and the other, called that of the I
soft G, resembles that of j, and is commonly, though not
always, found before e and i, as in gesture, giant, whilst
at the end of a word it is always hard. To this rule,
however, there are many exceptions. G is often hard
before i, as give, &c. and sometimes before e, as get, &c.
It is also hard in derivatives from words ending in g, as
singing, stronger, &c. and generally before er at the ends
of words, as finger. G is mute before n, as gnash, sign.
Gh has the sound of the hard G in the beginning of a word,
as ghostly; in the middle, and sometimes at the end, it
is quite silent, as right, though. At the end of a word Gh
has often the sound of f, as laugh, rough, tough.
As a numeral, G was anciently used to denote 400; and
with a dash over it thus, G, 40,000. As an abbreviature,
G. stands for Gains, Gellius, gens, genius, &c. G. G. for
gemma, gessit, gesserunt, &c. G. C. for genio civitatis or
Ccesaris. G. L. for Gains libertus, or genius loci. G. V. S.
for genio urbis sacrum; G. B. for genio bono ; and G. T.
for genio tutelari. In music, G is the character or mark
of the treble cleff; and from its being placed at the head,
or marking the first sound in Guido’s scale, the whole
scale took the name of gamut.
GABALE, in Mythology, a deity worshipped at Helio¬
polis under the figure of a lion with a radiant head.
GABARA, or Gabbaua, in Antiquity, the dead bo¬
dies which the Egyptians embalmed and kept in their
houses, especially those of such of their friends as had
died with the reputation of great piety and holiness, or
as martyrs.
GABARDINE, from the Italian gavardina, has been
sometimes used to denote a coarse frock, or mean dress.
In this sense it is used by Shakspeare in his Tempest and
Merchant of Venice, and by Butler in his Hudibras.
GABEL {Gabella, Gablum, Gablagium), in French Ga-
belle, that is, Vectigal, has the same signification among the
ancient English writers which gabelle has in France. It
is a tax, but the term has been variously used for a rent,
custom, service, and the like. Where it was a payment
of rent, those who paid it were termed gablatores. When
the word was used without any addition to it, it signified
the tax on salt, though afterwards it was applied to all
other taxes. See the article France.
Gabel, or Gablona, a city of the Austrian kingdom
of Bohemia, in the circle of Buntzlau. It is surrounded
with walls, and contains 380 houses, and 1980 inhabitants,
who are chiefly employed in making woollen cloths. It
is celebrated for a battle fought there in 1757, with the
Prussians. t ,
GABINIAN Laws, in Roman antiquities, laws insti¬
tuted upon several occasions by persons of the name ot
Gabinius.
GABINIUS, Aulus, a Roman general, the chief events
of whose life are included between his tribunate, b. c. 67>
and his death, b. c. 49. He seems to have been of an ac¬
tive, enterprising disposition, but without principle, and
ready to prostitute his talents to advance his interests.
GAB GAG 2£
ȣaho In the Mithridatlc war, b. c. 81, he served under Sylla ing been for some time tolerated in that country, was Gad
£ II with considerable distinction; but it was not till he had at length obliged to remove, and died in Poland,
i Gab 1" reached the dignity of tiibune that he took an important GAD, a Jewish prophet, the seer or domestic prophet Gage.
|; share in public transactions. He proposed to the people a of King David, and his adviser in all matters of import- ' 
^ law, by which an unlimited power over the Mediterra- ance.
nean was intrusted to Pompey, on the pretence of putting Gad, in Ancient Geography, a district of the Transior-
down the Cihcian pirates; and though the senate could dan Palestine, situated between Gilead and the kingdom
not prevent its enactment, they determined that Gabinius of Bashan on the north, and the kingdom of the Amorites
should not succeed in his desire of being appointed lieute- on the south, having the Jordan on the west, and bounded
nant to Pompey. Through the interest of Caesar we find him by various tribes on the east. It is so called from a tribe
consul, b. c. 58, and lending his official influence to Clo- of that name.
dius to procure the banishment of Cicero. Neither the
known wishes of the senate, nor the entreaties of the
knights, could alter his determination, and Cicero found
himself obliged to yield to the storm. The reward he re¬
ceived for this conduct was the province of Syria, and
money from Clodius to enable him to equip his troops.
Upon his arrival in Syria he made war on the Jews, and,
having defeated Aristobulus, their king, compelled him
to sue for peace. Gabinius addressed a public letter to
the senate announcing his victory, and demanding that a
day of public thanksgiving should be appointed. This the
senate refused, and ordered him to return; but he was
not of a disposition likely to attend to their orders, if it
did not suit his inclination. He-continued in Syria, and
was preparing an expedition against the Arabians, when
he received a letter from Pompey, requesting him to re¬
store the exiled Ptolemy to his kingdom of Egypt. Though
both the Sibylline books and the senate forbade an army
to be led into Egypt, Gabinius disregarded all conse¬
quences, and immediately restored Ptolemy, Such con¬
duct was heard with astonishment at Rome, and impera¬
tive orders were given him to return home. This time
he thought proper to obey, and the exertions of Pompey
and his friends procured his acquittal. In the civil wars
he joined the party of Caesar, and we find him command¬
ing the troops in Illyria, where he was cut off by a body
of the enemy, or, according to others, being shut up in
Salona, died of vexation. (Appian. Mithr. 60, 94 ; Bell.
Civ. 11, 14; Syr. 51 ; Illyr. 12, 25; Dion. Cass, xxxix.
55-63 ; Hist. Alex. 43.)
GABION, in Fortification, is a kind of basket made
of ozier twigs, of a cylindrical form, having different di¬
mensions, according to the purpose for which it is used.
Some gabions are five or six feet in height and three
feet in diameter, and serve in sieges to carry on the ap¬
proaches, when these have advanced near the body of
the place. Those used in field-works are from three
to four feet in height, and from two and a half to three
feet in diameter. Gabions of a still smaller size are
placed along the top of the parapet, to cover the troops in
firing over it.
GABLE, or Gabel End, of a house (from Welsh),
is the upright triangular end from the cornice or eaves to
the top of the house.
GABRES, or Gavres, called also Gebres, Guebres,
Cevres, and Giaours, a religious sect in Persia and India,
the lurks call the Christians Giaours, or people of a
alse religion, or rather, as Leunclavius observes, Hea¬
thens or Gentiles; the word amongst the Turks having
the same signification as Pagan or Infidel amongst the
Christians, an(I denoting any thing not Mahommedan. In
ersia the word has a more peculiar signification, being
applied to a sect dispersed throughout the country, and
said to be the remains of the ancient Persians, or follow¬
ers of Zoroaster.
GABRIEL, the name of one of the principal angels in
7- The name signifies The Strength of God.
A .ELITES, in Ecclesiastical History, a sect of
, nabapt>sts who appeared in Pomerania in 1530. They
enve their name from Gabriel Scherling, who, after hav-
vol. x. “
GADES, called by the Greeks Gadeira, an ancient
city of Spain, situated on an island of the same name, now
Isla de Leon, 750 stadia west of Calpe, the Straits of Gib¬
raltar. It was placed on the western side of the island,
being, it is said, founded by a colony from Tyre, 348
yeai s before the building of Rome. It seems to have
been a flourishing city at a very early period, being the
central point from which the Phoenicians directed all
their commercial expeditions to the west of Africa and
Europe. From this city Hanno started in his exploratory
expedition towards the western coasts of Africa, and the
Carthaginian Himilco in his voyage to the north-western
parts of Europe. Gades and Carthage alone reaped the
fruits of their discoveries ; they concealed the knowledge
thus acquired from the rest of the world. Gades thus
became one of the richest cities in Europe; and, as a
proof, Strabo states that she could produce in his time
five hundred knights, a greater number than could be
found in any city of Italy excepting Rome and Padua.
In the first Punic war Gades submitted to the Cartha¬
ginians, and at the conclusion of the second it followed
the example of the rest of Iberia, in yielding to the superior
arms of Rome. From Julius Caesar it received the privi¬
leges of a Roman colony, and at a later period the hono¬
rary title of Angusta Julia Gaditana. It was celebrated
for a temple of Her.cules, the ruins of which are said to be
still seen at the tower of Saint Peter, on the side of the
island nearest to the main land.
Gades gradually sunk, till in the fourth century we
find Avienus lamenting bitterly over its fallen state, and
adding that it afforded nothing worthy of notice, excepting
the festival which was celebrated in honour of Saturn.
In later times the city of Cadiz occupied the position of
the ancient Gades.
GAETA, a fortified maritime city of the province Terra
di Lavoro, in the kingdom of Naples. It is a very irre¬
gular and ill-built place, with a cathedral, several other
churches and monasteries, and 14,125 inhabitants, who
subsist chiefly on the coasting trade and the fisheries. The
country around supplies good wine, oil, and fruit. On a
hill opposite stands the walled castle of Otranto. Long.
13. 27. E. Eat. 41. 50. N.
GAFbAREL, James, a French divine, and learned
writer, born about 1601. He acquired great skill in the
oriental and several other languages, and was particularly
conversant in the cabalistic and occult sciences, which
he learned, exposed, and refuted. Cardinal Richelieu
made choice of him as his librarian, and sent him into
Italy to collect the best manuscripts and books. He pub¬
lished a work entitled Curiositez Innouies. It is said the
cardinal designed to employ him in his grand project for
the reunion of religions. He died in 1681, aged fourscore.
GAGA, a small uninhabited island in the Eastern Seas,
between the two islands of Waygiou and Gilolo. It has a
harbour on the south side of the island, and produces sago
and timber in abundance. Long. 126. 40. E. Lat. 0. 18. S.
GAGE, in our ancient customs, signifies a pledge or
pawn, given by way of security. If the gage perish, the
person who received it is not answerable for it, except in
the case of extreme negligence.
2 N
G A I
GAL
Gage was also used to signify a challenge to combat.
In this sense it was a pledge, which the accuser or chal¬
lenger cast on the ground, and the other took up as ac¬
cepting the challenge. The gage was usually a glove,
gauntlet, chaperoon, or the like.
Gage, in nautical language. When one ship is to wind¬
ward of another, she is said to have the weather-gage of
such ship. The number of feet that a vessel sinks in the
water is likewise called the ship’s gage; and this is found
by driving a nail into a pike near the end, and putting it
down besTde the rudder till the nail catch hold under it;
then as many feet as the pike is under the water is the
ship’s gage.
Gage, amongst letter-founders, is a piece of box, or
other hard wood, variously notched, the use of which is
to adjust the dimensions, slopes, &c. of the different sorts
of letters.
Gage, in joinery, is an instrument made to strike a line
truly parallel to the straight side of any board or piece of
stuff.
Sliding-GAGE, a tool used by the mathematical-instru¬
ment makers for measuring and setting off distances.
Sea-Gage, an instrument invented by Dr Hales and
Dr Desaguliers for finding the depth of the sea.
Bucket Scu-Gage, an instrument contrived by Dr Hales
to find the different degrees of coolness and saltness of
the sea at different depths.
Aqueo-mercurial Gage is the name of an apparatus
contrived by Dr Hales, and applied in various forms to
the branches of trees, for the purpose of determining the
force with which they imbibe moisture.
Tide-Gage is the name of an instrument used for de¬
termining the height of the tides.
Wind-Gage is an instrument for measuring the force of
the wind upon any given surface. See Meteorology.
GAHRAH, a small town of Hindustan, in the province
of Sinde, situated on the banks of a salt-water creek com¬
municating with the sea, and navigable for small boats.
The surrounding country is barren and sandy ; and the
dry and parching wind blows up the sand in clouds, so as
nearly to blind both man and beast. Long. 67. 56. E.
Lat. 24. 46. N.
GAILDORF, a bailiwick of the circle of the Jaxt, in
the kingdom of Wurtemberg, extending over 148 square
miles, and comprehending one city, two market-towns, and
253 villages, with 21,498 inhabitants. It is a mountainous
district, better adapted to the breeding of cattle than the
growth of corn. The capital, of the same name, situated
on the river Kocher, contains 1341 inhabitants.
GAILLAC, an arrondissement of the department of
the Tarn, in France, extending over 511 square miles. It
is divided into eight cantons and eighty-four communes,
and contains 63,376 inhabitants. The chief place is a
city of the same name, situated on the Tarn, which is
navigable as far as this town. The ware made near this
city is the best of the department, and chiefly exported
from Bordeaux to foreign, markets. Gaillac contains
1503 houses and 6636 inhabitants. Long. 1. 45. E. Lat.
43. 30. N.
GAIN, the profit or lucre a person reaps from his trade,
employment, or industry.
Gain, in Architecture, is the workmen’s term for the be¬
velling shoulder of a joist or other timber.
To Gain the Wind, in nautical language, is to arrive on
the weather side or to windward of some other vessel in
sight, when both are plying to windward, or sailing as near
the wind as possible.
GAINAGE, Gainagium, in our ancient writers, signi¬
fies the draught oxen, horses, ivain, plough, and furniture,
for carrying on the work of tillage by the baser sort of
sokemen and villeins.
Gainage is also used to signify the land itself, or the Gait
profit raised by cultivating it. |j
GAINSBOROUGH, a market-town of the county of Gali
Lincoln, in the hundred of Corringham, and the Lindsay ^
division, 148 miles from London. It is advantageously
situated on the right bank of the river Trent, by which it
is divided from Nottinghamshire. The tide comes in with
more rapidity, and rises higher, than in any other of the
ports of England except Chepstow, though it is nearly
forty miles from the Humber. The Trent being thus far
navigable, conveys the agricultural produce of the vici¬
nity to distant markets, and makes Gainsborough a kind
of emporium for such heavy articles as coal, salt, timber,
iron, and others; but it has no manufactures, and little
other trade. There is no corporate body of magistrates.
The market is held on Tuesday. The population amounted
in 1801 to 4506, in 1811 to 5172, in 1821 to 5893, and in
1831 to 6658.
GALACTOPHAGI, and Galactopot^, in Anti¬
quity, persons who lived wholly on milk, without corn or
the use of any other food. The words are compounded of
yaXa, yaXaxroj, milk ; (payuv, to eat; and worjjf, from mm,
I drink.
GALASHIELS, a town of Scotland, situated in a pa¬
rish of the same name, which lies partly in the county of
Roxburgh, and partly in that of Selkirk. The town stands
upon a low piece of ground on the right bank of the Gala,
about a mile above its embouchure into the Tweed. The
old village of the same name is now abandoned and de¬
stroyed, and the new town has been built within the last
fifty years. It consists of one long street, with some
small lanes striking off from it, and also scattered clusters
of houses, the whole being built of blue whinstone, and
slated. Galashiels being situated in the midst of an ex¬
tensive pastoral country, which yields abundance of wool,
the manufacture of woollen cloth, and the spinning of
woollen yarn, is carried on to a considerable extent, not¬
withstanding the disadvantage arising from expensive in¬
land carriage, and the distance of the place from coal
mines. The value of the manufactures of this descrip¬
tion amount to about L.20,000 per annum, and the trade
is upon the increase. The cloth produced here, which
is coarse and strong, has long been remarkable for its du¬
rability ; the quality, however, has been much improved
within these few years. Only a small quantity of the
goods manufactured is exported, the greater part of them
being consumed at home. Flannels and blankets of an
excellent quality are also made here from foreign wool.
The tanning of leather and the dressing of skins are like¬
wise carried on to some extent, and the town possesses a
brewery. There are here several schools besides that for
grammar, a parish church, and two or three dissenting
meeting-houses. Galashiels is a burgh of barony. It is
situated thirty-one miles from Edinburgh, five from Sel¬
kirk, and about five from Melrose. The population of the
town and parish amounted in 1821 to 1545, and in 1831
to 1534.
GALATAiA, or Galathasa, in fabulous history, a
sea nymph, daughter of Nereus and Doris. She was pas¬
sionately beloved by the Cyclops Polyphemus, whom she
treated with coldness and disdain; whilst Acis, a shep¬
herd of Sicily, enjoyed her unbounded affection. But the
happiness of these two lovers was disturbed by the jea¬
lousy of the Cyclops, who crushed his rival to pieces with
a piece of a broken rock whilst he reposed on the bosom
of Galataea. The nymph was inconsolable for the loss ot
Acis ; and as she could not restore him to life, she chan¬
ged him into a fountain.
GALATIA, or Gallogr^cia, a considerable province
in the central part of Asia Minor, the boundaries of whic
it is impossible to determine with any degree of exact-
)
GAL
. ness. It lay towards the sources of the river Sangarius,
J being bounded on the north by Bithynia and Paphlagonia,
on the east by Cappadocia, and on the south by Phrygia.
The Galatae were a portion of that great Celtic race
which is found from the earliest times in the valleys of
the Danube and of the lofty Alps, and which began to press
towards the east during the weakness of the Macedonian
empire under the successors of Alexander. A large body
of this people under their leader Brennus (b. c. 278),
made their appearance in Dardania, a district of Macedon,
with the intention of plundering Greece. Here a dispute
arose, and a party of twenty thousand men under Leono-
rius and Lutarius, separating from the main body, directed
their course through Thrace to Byzantium, now Constan¬
tinople, and encamping before it, laid this city and all the
adjoining country under contribution. Perceiving the
beautiful shores of Asia, and being invited by Nicomedes
king of Bithynia, who was then at war with his brother
Zipsetes, to cross the straits, they willingly acceded to
the request. They had no difficulty in deciding the con¬
test in favour of Nicomedes, but, like the Saxons, they
refused to evacuate the country when their services were
no longer required ; and so powerful did they find them¬
selves amongst the effeminate inhabitants of Asia, that
they even proceeded to parcel out to the three tribes of
which they were composed, the Trocmi, Tolistoboii, and
Tectosages, the several parts of Asia Minor. They, how¬
ever, fixed themselves towards the sources of the Sanga¬
rius, and at last became so formidable, that even the kings
of Syria consented to comply with their demands. It was
Attalus king of Pergamus (about 235 b. c.), who first
ventured to resist their extortions, and meeting them in
the field, gained a complete victory. Not long afterwards
Prusias king of Bithynia was also successful in an attack
which he made on them. They continued, however, to be
the terror of Asia, until the Romans, having defeated
Antiochus the Great, king of Syria (b. c. 189), directed
their arms against these marauders. A great portion of
them were cut to pieces, and the remainder were happy
to be allowed to retain quiet possession of their lands.
Strabo tells us that the whole of Galatia was originally
divided into four principalities, at the head of each of which
was a tetrarch ; but in later times they were reduced to one.
It seems that this change was made by the Romans in fa¬
vour of Deiotarus, who had assisted them in the Mithridatic
war. Some time afterwards the whole of Galatia came
into the possession of the Romans, who made it a province
of their empire. St Jerome states, that in his time they
spoke the same language as the Treviri in Gaul. St Paul
addressed one of his epistles to the Christians of Galatia.
ie possessions of the Tolistoboii were to the south, and
icir chief town was Pessinus; the Tectosages occupied
ie central parts of the province, having Ancyra for their
oapital; and the Trocmi were found in the north-eastern
portion of the country, towards Pontus and Cappadocia, the
ue town of which was 1 avium. Their history is chiefly
KlI\Livy, xxxviii- 12-27, 40; Polyb. Fragm, xxii.
Vat V£pian* Mithr' 114 5 Strab- xii- 566 i PHn. v. 32.
vjALATZ, a city of Moldavia, in the circle of Kohur-
f n bmlt °.n the banks of the Danube> is surrounded
■ \ wa . ’ antl _ is by far the best-constructed city in the
lonrn Pnnc*Pabty- It contains seven Greek churches,
rniK !°uses> an(l 7000 resident inhabitants, besides nume-
trJpya\lge[\^?ys resortingto it as the chief place of
Grppl-0r a 0t * alluchia and Moldavia. These consist of
trim S’ raiiraans5 and Jews, who bring German and Aus-
countr^anUnntUied S00^’ and some from more distant
mit* S’ i oppiarbour *n tbe r'ver Is very g00{b ancl ad-
imnv hlpS ^ 1°° tons to Iie close t0 the quays. There are
Lonff V9ftSei 7 u'*1 as web Por sea as Por river navigation.
^°ng. 28. 17. E. Lat. 45. 24. N.
GAL
283
Galaxy
GALAXY, in Astronomy, the long white luminous track
which seems to encompass the heavens like a coronal or
girdle, and which is easily perceivable in a clear night, es- Galba.
pecially when the moon does not appear. The Greeks call
it yaAa^;aj, galaxy, on account of its colour and appear¬
ance. The Latins, for the same reason, call it via lactea,
or milky ivay. It passes between Sagittarius and Gemini,
and divides the sphere into two parts. It is unequally
broad, and in some parts is single, in others double. See
Astronomy.
GALBA, Sergius Sulpicius, a Roman emperor, who was
born b. c. 3 and died a. d. 69. He was descended from a
family which had first risen to notice towards the latter
years of the republic. His father, who was of consular
rank, had some pretensions to be considered as an orator;
he married Mummia, the grand-niece of L. Mummius, the
conqueror of Corinth, and by her he had the emperor
Galba. Of his youthful years we can give no account,
excepting that he must have evinced early proofs of great
abilities. Augustus is said to have foretold that he would
be one of his successors on the imperial throne. We find
him raised to the highest dignities of the state before he
had reached the age fixed by law, consul a. d. 33, and then
appointed by Caligula to the command of the troops in
Gaul. On the death of that emperor (a. d. 40), he was
strongly urged by his friends to put in his claim for the
vacant throne ; but he seems to have preferred the plea¬
sures of retirement to the anxieties of a court. Claudius
was so charmed with the moderation of his conduct, that
he admitted hirn to his intimate friendship, and made him
proconsul of Africa as a mark of his particular favour.
Here he remained for two years, carrying the strictness of
military discipline into all the civil arrangements of the
province. On his return to Rome he retired to the pri¬
vacy of the country, and took no part in public affairs till
the middle of the reign of Nero. He was then invited by
that emperor to assume the command of Hispania Tarra-
conensis, and it may be readily imagined that he did not
venture to refuse such a request. This province he conti¬
nued to govern for eight years ; at first he distinguished
himself by the severity with which he punished even ve¬
nial faults, though the example giveil by Suetonius is a
curious proof of the state of moral feeling in that age.
The au thor expresses his surprise at the punishment " of
crucifixion, which Galba inflicted on a guardian who had
poisoned his ward. Latterly, however, he changed his po¬
licy, and apparently passed his life in indolent repose, that
he might give no cause of complaint to the suspicious
Nero. That despot, however, thought him too powerful a
pasha to be allowed to live, and, like the sultans of later
times, sent an order for his death. His friends at Rome
informed him of his impending fate, and he had therefore
no other alternative than to declare his independence, pro¬
claiming himself lieutenant of the senate and of the Roman
people. But as soon as he was informed of the death of
Nero, he assumed the title of emperor, being the first per¬
son not descended from the family of the Caesars who
reached that high dignity.
His previous life, and the habits which he had acquired,
were little suited to the scene of corruption and debasement
into which he now emerged. All ranks at Rome had be¬
come, by a long course of unrestrained license, so com¬
pletely demoralized, that they could ill brook the sternness
of an old military disciplinarian. He does not appear to
have possessed any of the mental qualities of a statesman,
nor was his previous education of a character likely to fit
him for the position in which he now found himself placed.
The affairs of the empire seem to have been chiefly direct-
ed by three favourites of very dissimilar characters; T.
Vinius, his lieutenant in Spain, a man of unbounded ava¬
rice ; Laco, prefect of the praetorian band, equally distin-
GAL
GAL
guished for his indolence and arrogance; and the freed-
man Icelus, who had all the follies of a foolish upstart.
Every act of theirs was ascribed to the emperor, and all
classes were equally dissatisfied with their proceedings.
The soldiers were refused their usual largesses, and were
deeply mortified by the reply of the emperor, Legeresemi-
litem, non emere, consuesse. I he soldiers in Upper Ger¬
many openly refused to take the oath of allegiance to
Galba ; and at Rome Otho headed a conspiracy, which
was embraced by too large a body not to prove successful
against a man who stood nearly alone in Rome. He was
assassinated in the seventh month of his reign, and in the
seventy-third year of his age, omnium consensu capax im¬
perii nisi imperasset, as Tacitus pithily remarks. Sueto¬
nius, Life of Galba ; Tacitus, Hist. i. 6-18, 49.
GALE, in nautical language, a term of various import.
When the wind blows, but not so hard that a ship may
not carry her top-sails a-trip, then they say it is a loom
gale. When it blows very strong, they say it is a stiff,
strong, or fresh gale. When two ships are near each
other at sea, and, there being but little wind blowing, one
of them finds more of it than the other, they say that the
one ship gales away from the other.
Gale, Hr John, an eminent minister amongst the Bap¬
tists, was born at London in 1680. He studied at Ley¬
den, where he early distinguished himself, and afterwards
at Amsterdam, under Dr Limborch. He was chosen mi¬
nister of the Baptist congregation at Barbican, where his
preaching, being chiefly practical, was greatly resorted to
by people of all persuasions. Four volumes of his sermons
were published after his death, which happened in 1/21.
His Reflections on Hr Walls History of Infant Baptism
is the best defence of the Baptists ever published ; and the
reading of that performance induced Mr William Whiston
and Dr Foster to become Baptists.
Gale, Theophilus, an eminent nonconformist minister,
born in 1628. He was invited to Winchester in 1657;
and continued a stated preacher there until the re-estab¬
lishment of the church by Charles II. when he chose
rather to suffer the penalties of the act of conformity, than
to submit to it contrary to his conscience. He was after¬
wards engaged by Philip Lord Wharton as tutor to his
sons, whom he attended to an academy at Caen in Nor¬
mandy ; and when this duty had been fulfilled, he became
pastor of a congregation of private conventiclers in Hol-
born. He died in 1678, and is principally known by an
elaborate work entitled the Court of the Gentiles, calcu¬
lated to show that the Pagan philosophers derived their
most sublime sentiments from the Scriptures.
Gale, Hr Thomas, a learned divine, born at Scruton, in
Yorkshire, in the year 1636, was educated at Cambridge,
and at length became professor of the Greek language in
that university. He was afterwards chosen head master of
St Paul’s school, London, and was employed by the city in
writing the elegant inscriptions on the monument erect¬
ed in memory of the conflagration in 1666. In 1676 he
was collated to a prebend in the cathedral of St Paul’s;
and was likewise elected a fellow of the Royal Society, to
which he presented a Roman urn with its ashes. About
the year 1697, he gave to the new library of Trinity Col¬
lege, Cambridge, a great number of Arabian manuscripts ;
and in the same year he was admitted as Dean of York. He
died in that city in 1702, and was interred in the cathe¬
dral, where a monument, with a Latin inscription, was
erected to his memory. He was a learned divine, an
eminent historian, one of the best Greek scholars of his
age, and maintained a correspondence with the most learn¬
ed men abroad as well as at home. He published, 1. His-
toriae Poeticae Scriptores Antiqui, Paris, 1675, in 8vo; 2.
Opuscula Mythologica, Ethica, et Physica, Cambridge,
1671, in 8vo; 3. Herodoti Historiarum libri x. London,
1679, in fol.; 4. Flistoriae Anglicanas Scriptores quinque, q k
Oxford, 1687, in fol.; 5. Historian Britannicae, Saxonicee, v. ^
Anglo-Danicae, Scriptores quindecim, Oxford, 1691, in
fol.; 6. Rhetores Selecti, and other works.
GALEN, Claudius, prince of the Greek physicians
after Hippocrates, was born at Pergamus, in Asia Minor,
about the year 131. His father was possessed of a con¬
siderable fortune, and not only well versed in polite litera¬
ture, philosophy, astronomy, and geometry, but skilled in
architecture. He instructed his son in the rudiments of
learning, and afterwards procured him the greatest mas¬
ters of the age in philosophy and eloquence. Galen having
finished his studies under their care, chose physic as his
profession, and chiefly studied the works of Hippocrates.
Having at length exhausted all the sources of literature
which were to be found at home, he resolved to travel, in
order to converse with the most able physicians in other
countries, intending at the same time to take every op¬
portunity of inspecting on the spot the plants and drugs
of the countries through which he passed. With this
view he proceeded to Alexandria, where he staid some
years; from thence he travelled into Cilicia, passed
through Palestine, visited the isles of Crete and Cyprus,
and made two voyages to Lemnos, in order to examine
the Lemnian earth, which was then esteemed an admir¬
able medicine. With the same view he went into Lower
Syria, in order to obtain a thorough insight into the na¬
ture of the opobalsamum, or balm of Gilead; and having
completed his design, he returned home by the way of
Alexandria.
Galen had been four years at Pergamus, where his prac¬
tice was attended with extraordinary success, when some
seditious commotions induced him to repair to Rome,
where he resolved to settle; but the proofs he gave of his
superior skill, added to the respect shown him by several
persons of elevated rank, created him so many enemies
amongst his brethren of the faculty, that he was obliged to
quit the city, after having resided there four or five years.
Fie had not long returned to Pergamus, however, when he
was recalled by the Emperors Aurelius and Verus. After
their death, he retired to his native country, where he died
about the year 200. He wrote in the Greek language,
and is said to have composed two hundred volumes, which
were unhappily burnt in the Temple of Peace. Galen was
of a delicate constitution, as he himself asserts; but ne¬
vertheless, by his temperance and skill in physic, he arrived
at a great age ; for it was his maxim always to rise from
table with some degree of appetite. He is justly consi¬
dered as the greatest physician of antiquity next to Hip¬
pocrates ; and he performed such surprising cures that
he was accused of magic.
But without entering into any detail of the particular
treatises written by Galen, it may be sufficient here to
notice the different editions of his collected works. The
Greek editions are those of Aldus and Asulanus, printed
at Venice, 1527, in five vols. folio; and that of Hierony¬
mus Gemusaeus, printed at Basil, 1538, in the same form.
The Latin editions are that of Paris, 1536, in folio, print¬
ed by Colinaeus, and reprinted at Lyons in 1554, with
additions and corrections by F’rellonius; that of Basil,
1542, in folio, printed by Frobenius, and edited by Ge¬
musaeus ; the editions published at the same place in 1549,
1550, and 1562, the last of which contains an able pre¬
face by Conrad Gesner; the edition of Venice, 1562, with
the corrections of Rasario; ten editions published at Ve¬
nice by the Juntas between 1541 and 1625, the ninth o
which, printed in 1609, and the tenth, a reprint of the
ninth, are the most correct; and, lastly, an edition print¬
ed at Venice in 1541-1545, by Farraeus, in seven vols.
8vo, with the notes of Ricci. But the most elegant as
well as most complete edition of Galen’s works, both in
GAL
GAL
285
i»flalfic Greek and in Latin, is that which was published at Paris
rP| by Rene Chartier, 1639-1679, in thirteen vols. folio, which
Gali '• ai e ordinarily bound in nine or ten. This edition included
< V the works of Hippocrates.
GALENIC, or Galenical, in Medicine, is the man¬
ner of considering and treating diseases, founded on the
principles of Galen, or introduced by Galen.
Galenic is more frequently used as contradistinguish¬
ed to chemical. The distinction of galenical and chemi¬
cal was occasioned by a division of the practitioners of
medicine into two sects, which happened on the introduc¬
tion of chemistry into medicine. Then the chemists, ar¬
rogating to themselves every kind of merit and ability,
stirred up an opposition to their pretensions, founded on
the invariable adherence of the other party to the ancient
practice; and though this division into the two sects of
Galenists and chemists has long since ceased, yet the dis¬
tinction of medicines which resulted from it is still some¬
times observed. Galenical medicines are those which are
formed by the easier preparations of herbs and roots, by
infusion or decoction, and by combining and multiplying
ingredients ; whilst those of chemistry derive their more
remote virtues from elaborate preparations, as calcination,
digestion, fermentation, and the like.
GALENISTS, a denomination given to physicians who
practise, prescribe, or write, on the Galenical principles,
and are opposed to the chemists.
Galenists, or Galenites, in Ecclesiastical History, a
branch of Mennonites or Anabaptists, who adopt several
of the opinions of the Socinians, or rather Arians, respect¬
ing the divinity of our Saviour. In 1664 the Waterland-
ians were divided into two parties, of which the one was
called Galenists, and the other Apostolians. They are so
denominated from their leader Galenus, a learned and elo¬
quent physician of Amsterdam, who considered the Chris¬
tian religion as a system which laid much less stress on
faith than on practice, and who was for admitting into
the communion of the Mennonites all those who acknow¬
ledged the divine origin of the books of the Old and New
Testaments, and led holy and virtuous lives.
GALERICULUM was a cap worn both by men and
women amongst the ancient Romans. It consisted of skin,
which was so neatly dressed with human hair that the
artificial covering could scarcely be distinguished from the
natural. It was used by those whose hair was thin; and
also by wrestlers, in order to keep their own hair from
receiving any injury from the oils with which they were
rubbed over before they exercised. It seems to have re¬
sembled our wigs.
GALIANI, Ferdinand, an eminent Italian writer, was
born at Chieti, in the Neapolitan province of Abruzzo,
on the 2d of December 1728. At eight years of age he
was sent to his uncle at Naples, who was then first chap¬
lain to the king. Here he received his elementary edu¬
cation, along with his brother Bernard, who was a few
years older. In 1740, the uncle being obliged to go to
Rome upon a political mission, he gave his two nephews
in charge to the Celestine fathers, for the continuance of
their studies; and accordingly, in the course of two years,
they were instructed in philosophy, the mathematics, and
other liberal sciences. The archbishop, on his return to
aples, received them back into his palace, where they
studied law, and enjoyed the society and conversation of
tie most distinguished professors of the university of
maples. Ferdinand, who possessed great talents and vi¬
vacity, devoted himself with ardour to the study of his¬
tory, antiquities, the belles lettres, and philosophy, and
wore particularly to political economy. At the age of
3'ic|fen_|le produced a Memoir on the Coins of the period
•A\r.(yan W(ir> and this early production first in¬
spired him with the idea of his great work on money.
He also translated Locke’s treatise on Money and Interest.
At the age of eighteen he undertook a work on the Ancient
History of the Navigation of the Mediterranean ; and in his
great work, we find that he there made use of part of the
materials which he had collected at this early age. Ajeu
d'esprit, which had nearly been attended with serious con¬
sequences, diverted him for some time from his graver stu¬
dies. Having been charged by his brother Bernard to de¬
liver, in his absence, a discourse in an academy of which
he was a member, the president, looking only at the youth
of Ferdinand, and being ignorant of his talents, would not
permit him to proceed. The latter resolved to revenge
himself in a manner that showed more spirit than pru¬
dence. It was the custom in this academy, as in several
others, that when any great personage died at Naples, all
the academicians published, in his praise, a collection of
pieces in prose and verse. The executioner at Naples
having died, Galiani seized the opportunity of turning the
academy into ridicule. With the assistance of a friend,
he composed, in the course of a few days, a collection of
serious pieces on this event, which were ascribed to each
of the members, and in which their peculiar style and
manner were so well imitated, that one of them confess¬
ed he should have been himself deceived, if he had not
been perfectly certain that he had not written the piece
to which his name was subscribed. This malicious and
witty little volume appeared in 1749, under the title of
Componimenti varj per la Morte di Domenico Jannacone,
Carnejice della gran corte della vicaria, raccolti e dati in
luce da Gian. Anton. Sergio Avvocato Napoletano. This
Sergio was the president of the academy. The publica¬
tion was eminently successful, and excited a sensation
which the authors had not foreseen ; and as they became
afraid of being discovered by the publisher, they went di¬
rectly to the minister Tanucci, confessed the fact, and
got off for the performance of some spiritual exercises.
Galiani soon effaced the impression made by this piece
of youthful folly, by the publication of his Treatise on
Money, which had employed the labour of several years.
It appeared at Naples in 1750, when the author was only
twenty-one. It was first published anonymously, and the
author did not make himself known until the success of
the work was decided. The Archbishop of Tarentum took
this occasion to patronize him, and procured for him se¬
veral benefices, which induced him to take orders. He
afterwards travelled through the whole of Italy, was pre¬
sented at the various courts, and found himself every
where preceded by his reputation. He was well receiv¬
ed by the pope and several of the Italian princes; he was
admitted a member of some of the most celebrated aca¬
demies ; and he established a correspondence with many of
the most eminent literary characters. His next publica¬
tion was a treatise entitled Della perfetta Conservazione
del Grano, written, with his usual elegance, for the pur¬
pose of recommending an ingenious machine, invented by
his friend Intieri, for drying and preserving grain.
The active mind of Galiani was now engaged in inves¬
tigating several scientific subjects, particularly connected
with antiquities and natural history. He was the first who
undertook to form a collection of the volcanic productions
of Vesuvius; and he wrote a learned treatise upon this
subject, which, however, was not printed until about fifteen
years afterwards. He presented the manuscript to Pope
Benedict XIV. along with the collection itself, which was
arranged in seven boxes, according to the order of the
treatise. The collection was placed in the Museum of
the Institute of Bologna, where it still remains. In pre¬
senting this collection to the pope, Galiani had written
upon one of the boxes, Beatissime Pater, fac ut lapides
isti panes fiant. His holiness, understanding the hint,
gave him the prebend of Amalfi, worth 400 ducats a year.
Galiani
286 GAL
Galiani. In the lifetime of his uncle, whom he lost in 1753, he en-
joyed a benefice of 500 ducats, which conferred upon him
the episcopal dignity, and another living worth 600 ducats.
His funeral oration, on the death of his patron, Benedict
XIV., who died in 1758, procured him a high character
for eloquence, and was one of his works which he himself
most esteemed.
Galiani was one of the members of the academy of
Herculaneum, established by King Charles III. for the
purpose of illustrating the remains of ancient art disco¬
vered among the ruins of that city; and he furnished se¬
veral memoirs, which were inserted in the first volume of
that magnificent work, the Antiquities of Herculaneum.
With the other academicians who were engaged in this
labour, Galiani enjoyed the royal bounty, in a pension of
250 ducats.
In the month of January 1759 he was appointed secre¬
tary of state and of the royal household, and, soon after¬
wards, secretary to the French embassy; and he arrived
at Paris in the month of June following. Here his recep¬
tion was exceedingly flattering, and his company was
courted in all polite literary societies. The ambassador
was the Count Cantillano, marquis of Castromonte, a
Spanish nobleman, of much indolence and little talent.
During the absence of the count on a six months’ journey
to Spain, Galiani remained charge d'affaires, was present¬
ed to the king of France, and enjoyed all the advantages
of his situation. He applied himself with great zeal and
assiduity to the acquisition of a correct French style of
writing; and about this time he commenced his learned
and ingenious Commentary on Horace, of which the Abbe
Arnaud inserted some extracts in the fifth, sixth, and se¬
venth volumes of his Gazette Litteraire for 1765. About
the commencement of that year Galiani had set out for
Naples, for the purpose of taking the waters of Ischia.
Long after his period of leave had expired, he was retain¬
ed by the government, employed and consulted in several
matters of importance, and at length appointed a member
of the Supreme Council of Commerce. With this new
title he returned to Paris; and about a year afterwards
he obtained permission to travel for a few months in Eng¬
land, having been invited to that country by the Marquis
of Caracciolo, who was then ambassador from the court
of Naples at London. He returned through Holland to
Paris, and soon afterwards wrote in French his celebrated
Dialogues sur le Commerce des Hies ; the style of which
is so easy and elegant, that one would never suppose it to
be the work of a foreigner. The manuscript was left in
the hands of Diderot, and was published in 1770, with
the date of London, and without the name of the author.
The work excited great attention in France, and the best
writers were loud and unanimous in their praise of it.
Voltaire wrote to Diderot, wrho had sent him a copy, in
the following terms: “ The powers of Plato and Moliere
seem to be combined in the composition of this work. I
have as yet only read about two thirds of it; and I ex¬
pect the denouement of the piece with great impatience.”
The same author again praises the work in his Questions
sur l'Encyclopedic, in the article Bled on Ble.
Meanwhile, Galiani had returned to Naples, where, in
addition to his office of member of the Council of Com¬
merce, he received that of secretary to the same tribunal.
These two situations brought him a revenue of 1600 du¬
cats. In 1777 he was made one of the ministers of the
junto of the royal domains, who had the charge of every
thing connected with the private patrimony of the king;
an office which added 200 ducats to his income. His
partiality for the writings of Horace inspired him with the
idea of a treatise Des instincts ou des gouts naturels et des
habitudes de I'homme, ou Principes du droit de la nature et
des gens, tires des Poesies d'Horace; a work which he left
GAL
nearly complete, but which has never been published, (jai
There is a life of Horace prefixed, much better and more W
complete than that which is inserted in the works of Al- '
garotti. The project which he entertained of a dramatic
academy induced him to attempt the composition of a
comic opera, in a new and singular style. This was The
Imaginary Socrates, of which he gave the plan to the poet
Lorenzi, who put it into verse, and it was set to music by
the celebrated Paesiello. The piece was performed with
the greatest success throughout Italy, Germany, and even
at St Petersburg. Galiani himself was passionately fond of
music. He sung agreeably, and played well on the harp¬
sichord. His library was select rather than numerous, and
particularly rich in good editions of the Greek and Latin
classics. Fie had also a considerable and very valuable
cabinet of ancient coins and rare medals, engraved stones,
cameos, and a few statues.
On the 8th of August 1779, a terrible eruption of Ve¬
suvius spread the utmost dismay throughout Naples. For
some time the press teemed with new and frightful de¬
scriptions of this phenomenon, and the ravages it occasion¬
ed ; and the minds of the inhabitants were every day fill-
ed with fresh terror. In order to efface these disagree¬
able impressions, Galiani in a single night composed a
piece on this eruption, in which he imitated very happily
the style of an author who was well known in the city for
his ridiculous weakness. This production was printed
next day under the following title : Spaventosissima des-
crizione dello spaventoso spavento, che ci spavento tutti coll
eruzione delli 8 di Agosto del corrente anno, ma (per grazia
di Dio) duro poco, di D. Onofrio Galeota, poeta eflosofo
air impronto. It was a very laughable piece on a very
serious subject; and it had the effect of dispelling the
melancholy ideas which had got possession of the minds
of the people.
Galiani was very fond of the Neapolitan dialect, and
took great pleasure in speaking it. In the same year he
published anonymously, as was his custom, a work entitled
Del dialetto Napolitano, in which he gave, for the first
time, a grammar and history of this dialect, which he
maintained was the primitive language of Italy; and short¬
ly afterwards he composed a lexicon of the words pecu¬
liar to the Neapolitan tongue, which was begun to be
printed in 1780; but the work wras suspended, and has
not since been resumed.
A work of a different kind soon afterwards engaged his
attention. In the war which broke out in 1778, between
England on one side, and France and Spain on the other,
Naples and some other powers had remained neutral; but
their rights, as they conceived, were not sufficiently re¬
spected by the belligerent parties. Numerous writings
appeared throughout Europe on the rights and duties of
neutrals ; and, among others, Galiani produced a treatise
in Italian, On the Duties of Neutrals towards Belligerent
Powers, and of the latter towards the former. It was pub¬
lished at Naples in 1782, in 4to. In the same year he
was appointed first assessor to the general council of
finance ; a situation which he accepted the more readily,
as its duties were analogous to his other studies; but he
refused to touch the salary. A few months afterwards,
however, the king presented him with the abbacy of Scur-
coli, which was worth 1200 ducats per annum, after de¬
ducting all charges and pensions. The office of assessor
of economy in the superintendence of the crown funds, to
which he was appointed in 1748, added to his public duties,
and likewise increased his income. Meanwhile his health,
which was naturally weak, declined daily. On the 13th
of May 1785 he had an attack of apoplexy; and in order
to prevent a return, he travelled the following year through
Puglia. In 1787 he made a longer journey, and went a*
far as Venice, where he was well received by all the men
Gal a
GAL
of letters, as he was also at Modena by Tiraboschi, and
by Cesarotti at Padua. On his return to Naples his health
rapidly declined ; and he died, quietly and resignedly, on
the 30th of October 1787, at the age of fifty-nine.
Besides the works already mentioned, Galiani left be¬
hind him a variety of interesting manuscripts, which came
into the possession of D. Francesco Azzariti, his heir, and
many of which, it is said, well deserve publication. Among
them are, 1. The Commentary on Horace, with the Life ;
2. The Lexicon of Words peculiar to the Neapolitan Dia¬
lect ; 3. A Poetical Translation of the Anti-Lucretius;
4. A Miscellaneous Collection of Poetical Pieces ; 5. Se¬
veral volumes full of facetious Letters, Novels, and Anec¬
dotes ; 6. His Epistolary Correspondence, which would
form of itself a pretty voluminous collection. A part of
it was published at Paris in 1818, in two vols. 8vo. (See
the article Galiani, by Ginguene, in the Biographic
Universelle, tom. xvi.) (K,j
GALICIA, the largest province of Spain, and that which
contains the greatest number of inhabitants. It is situat¬
ed in the north-west corner of the peninsula. On the
east it is bounded by Asturias and Leon, on the north
and west by the ocean, and on the south by Portugal, from
which it is separated by the river Mino. The extent of
this province is 1330 square leagues, and the number of
its inhabitants amounts to 1,585,419
On the cogst the climate is mild and temperate; but,
from the frequent and heavy rains which fall on the higher
land, it is both humid and cold. Scarcely one sixth part of
this province is cultivated; for though the natives are of
robust frames and industrious habits, yet, as almost all the
land belongs to either spiritual or municipal corporations,
oris held in mayorazo or entail by private lords, the culti¬
vators have no encouragement to improve, or are too poor
to do so. They live in a state of great depression, are fed
coarsely, and their houses and clothing bespeak great
poverty, from the distress felt in their native province,
they emigrate to every part of the peninsula, and procure
subsistence by the lowest and severest kinds of labour.
Ihe term Galego is hence become synonymous with that
of porter in every part of Spain. Wherever they are they
seldom fail in regard for their native province; and they
often return to it when they have saved enough in service
to subsist upon. Their attachment to their families, es¬
pecially to their aged and infirm relatives, is evinced by
sending them pecuniary assistance; and they anxiously
seek out employment for those of their younger relations
and friends who may be inclined to exchange their condi¬
tion for better food and more ample wages. Galicia con¬
tains more good harbours than the whole of the rest of
the north of Spain, and it is crossed by various rivers, so
that under a good system of government it might become
a country of considerable commerce. One of the greatest
hindrances to increasing prosperity is the want of good
roads, bridges, and other means of communication. Some
lew advances towards these improvements had commen¬
ced, and would probably have succeeded, but for the war
ot the invasion, which put aside every object that did not
immediately tend to the defence of the country. When
fanaticism was more prevalent than it has recently been,
tie roads to the capital, Santiago, were frequented by
numberless pilgrims from every part of Spain, and even
t rance, who came to pay their vows at the shrine of St
ago. At that period roads, bridges, and hospitals were
erected, but as the zeal for pilgrimages declined, these
es ablislnnents decayed. Attempts to revive them wrere
made m the reign of Ferdinand VI. about the year 1750,
an roads were formed from Corunna to Santiago, from
orunna towards Madrid by Betanzos and Lugo, and from
Santiago to Pontevedra, Puente de San Payo, and Tuy.
iese pass through the most sterile parts of the province.
GAL
They are therefore less beneficial than one which was be¬
gun when the French entered Spain, which was design¬
ed to pass from Benevente to Vigo through Sanabria and
Montemy, with branches connecting them with Santiago,
Pontevedra, and Tuy. If even this plan is effected it will
be of great advantage to all Galicia, but especially to the
environs of Orensee, in which much wine is made, and
where, for want of roads, the greatest calamity that can
happen to the cultivators is a very productive grape sea¬
son ; for having no foreign vent, the price is so low that it
does not pay the expense. It is estimated that the dis¬
trict of Orensee, after supplying its own inhabitants with
wine, would be able to send to other markets 400,000
gallons annually.
, Though Galicia is partially and imperfectly cultivated,
it produces wheat and barley, but not in sufficient quan¬
tity for its consumption. It yields maize, potatoes, chest¬
nuts, nuts, and wine. It feeds much cattle, especially
pigs, from which hams and sausages are great articles of
traffic with Gastille, Andalusia, and the kingdom of Por¬
tugal; but having little or no oil, it receives that article
from those parts in exchange. Hemp is grown, but not in
sufficient quantity for the demand, which is supplied by
the annual importation of about 1000 tons from the ports
on the Baltic. Some flax and silk are raised in Galicia,
but scarcely sufficient for the domestic consumption.
The plantations of oranges and lemons have gradually
disappeared in Galicia, as well as in the neighbouring pro¬
vinces of Asturias and Santander. In the middle of the
seventeenth century both England and France were sup¬
plied with these delicious fruits from this province; but,
as is supposed, from some change of climate, none are now
grown in the north; and the whole commerce in these
fruits is transferred to the southern provinces of the pe¬
ninsula.
Ihe manufactures of Galicia are leather, inferior wool¬
len cloths and blankets, hats, linen, and some silks. Many
families in some parts live by weaving, which is performed
principally by the females, and there no house is to be found
without a loom. The fisheries both on the coast and on
the rivers employ many men, whilst their wives are weav¬
ing ; and produce salmon, lampreys, eels, trouts, and other
fish. These are pickled, and furnish a trade with the in¬
terior, though complaints are made that the demand is
constantly decreasing. The same complaints are made of
want of sale for sardinias, a most excellent sea-fish, which
used, when caught, to be slightly salted, and conveyed in
baskets to the mountainous districts, where no fish is to
be had for keeping Lent and other periods of abstinence.
The sea-ports and fisheries of Galicia used to breed the
best seamen of Spain, and the number of vessels of differ¬
ent classes once amounted to 1600; but the long wrars in
which the connection with France has involved Spain,
whilst they have annihilated the royal navy, have reduced
very considerably the merchant ships, and the seamen,
who used to supply the king’s fleet with dexterous sailors.
Ihe rivers of Galicia are the Mino, which rises in the
north, and after a course of fifty leagues, and receiving
various tributary streams, enters the Atlantic Ocean at
the boundary between Spain and Portugal; the Tamago,
which rises in the province, and entering Portugal, empties
itself into the Duero; and the Montemy, which likewise
runs to the Duero.
rlhe only mines, though the mountains are said to
abound in iron, are some of tin, which were worked on
account of the government; but in 1798 the working was
abandoned, either because, from the negligence displayed
in most royal works, it was too expensive, or the mines
were not sufficiently rich in metal to induce a continu¬
ance of the operations. Ihese mines are at Ciervas, one
league from Montemy. This province contains 18,230
287
Galicia.
288
GAL
GAL
Galilee horses, 17,090 mules, 12,050 asses, 88,667 neat cattle,
II 764,509 sheep, 73,011 goats, and 142,236 swine. The
Gameo. bees produce, of honey 707, and of wax 347^ cwt. The
inhabitants make 200,000 dozen stockings, and 5,550,000
varas of linen.
GALILEE, once a province of Judasa, now of Turkey
in Asia, was bounded by Mount Lebanon on the north,
by the river Jordan and the sea of Galilee on the east, by
the Chison on the south, and by the Mediterranean on
the west. It was the scene of many of our Saviour’s mi¬
racles; but the boundaries of the country are not now
well known, nor even the places where many of the towns
were situated.
GALILEANS, a sect of the Jews. Their founder was
one Judas, a native of Galilee, from which place they de¬
rived their name. Their chief, esteeming it an indignity
for the Jews to pay tribute to strangers, stirred up his
countrymen against the edict of the Emperor Augustus,
which liad ordered an enrolment or taxation of all the sub¬
jects of the Roman empire. They pretended that God
alone should be owned as master and lord, and in other
respects they were of the opinion of the Pharisees; but
as they judged it unlawful to pray for infidel princes, they
separated themselves from the rest of the Jews, and per¬
formed their sacrifices apart. As our Saviour and his
apostles were of Galilee, they were suspected to belong
to the sect of Galileans; and it was upon this principle,
as St Jerome observes, that the Pharisees laid a snare for
him, asking, whether it was lawful to give tribute to Cae¬
sar, that if he denied it, they might have an occasion of
accusing him.
GALILEO GALILEI, the founder of experimental
science, was born at Pisa on the 15th of February 1564,
being descended of a noble and ancient Florentine fa¬
mily, which, under the surname of Bonajuti, afterwards
changed to that of Galilei, had filled distinguished offices
in the state. His father, Vincenzo Galilei, was a man of
considerable talent and learning, with a competent know¬
ledge of the mathematics, and particularly devoted to the
study of music, on the theory and practice of which he
published several treatises. Vincenzo had three sons,
Galileo, Michel Angelo, and Benedetto, and the same
number of daughters, Giulia, Virginia, and Livia ; but he
was not opulent, and being burdened with a numerous
family, was unable to provide for them expensive instruc¬
tors. The subject of this notice exhibited early symptoms
of an active and original mind, and even in his childhood
showed a singular aptitude for mechanical contrivances,
imitating with infinite address all sorts of machines, in¬
venting new ones, or when, as often happened, he wanted
the necessary materials for constructing these, adding
new pieces to old ones. It is worthy of observation, that
the boyhood of his great follower, Newton, whose genius
in many respects closely resembled his own, was marked
by a similar talent. Galileo commenced his literary stu¬
dies at Florence, where his family resided; but, for the
reason already stated, his masters were of the humblest
kind. Knowing the disadvantages of his situation, how¬
ever, Galileo resolved to supply by industry the want of
better opportunities; and he applied with so much assi¬
duity to the study of the classic models, that he soon laid
the foundations of that extensive and solid literature to
which he was afterwards indebted for the purity of his
language and the elegance of his writings. His leisure
hours were applied to the cultivation of music and draw¬
ing, in both of which arts he excelled. For the former he
inherited his father’s talent, which he displayed by per¬
forming skilfully on several instruments, especially the
lute; and during the whole of his life this continued to be
his favourite recreation amidst more serious pursuits. In
the latter, which he had at one time thoughts of cultivat¬
ing as a profession, he acquired so perfect a taste, that
eminent contemporary artists did not scruple to own their
obligations to him for his counsel and suggestions. Such
was Galileo at the age of eighteen, when his father, be¬
coming daily more sensible of the extent of his genius,
determined, at whatever sacrifice, to give him the advan¬
tage of an university education. In 1581 he accordingly
commenced his academical career in the university of Pisa,
which he entered with the intention of studying medicine,
from the profession of which his father hoped that he
might one day procure an easy and honourable subsist-
4
ence.1 And, that he might not lose any kind of instruc¬
tion which was to be obtained, he attended a course of pe¬
ripatetic philosophy, such as it was then taught, in addi¬
tion to that of medicine. But, called by the predestina¬
tion of genius to unveil to mankind those wonders of nature,
which their fanatical confidence in the opinions of Aristo¬
tle prevented them from seeing even when revealed, he
could not bring himself to assent without conviction, nor to
admit the authority of a master in questions which reason
and experiment ought alone to decide. Actuated by this
spirit, he several times ventured, in the academical discus¬
sions, to combat the firmest supporters of the Aristotelian
dogmas, and in consequence he obtained the imputation of
possessing an obstinate and contradictory disposition; for
men do not easily reconcile themselves to the subversion
of opinions, the stability of which they have long been
accustomed to consider as incapable of being shaken; and
hence the partisans of Aristotle found as great difficulty
in doubting as Galileo did in admitting the authority of
that master. It is not a little remarkable that, some years
later, Descartes commenced in France, as Bacon did in
England, the same war which Galileo had so boldly de¬
clared at Pisa; thus proving that the great regenerative
efforts of the human mind are inevitably brought on by
the force of circumstances and the natural progress of
ideas, and that the men of genius who attach their names
to these memorable revolutions, are themselves carried
onward by their age, and precede it only by a few steps.
It was at this period, 1582, when he had scarcely com¬
pleted his eighteenth year, that Galileo made the first and
perhaps the finest of his discoveries. Happening one day
to be in the metropolitan church of Pisa, he remarked the
regular and periodic movement of a lamp suspended from
the roof of the cathedral; he also observed the equal du¬
ration of its oscillations, whether great or small; and this
he confirmed by repeated experiments. Plaving satisfied
himself as to the phenomenon itself, he immediately per*
ceived the use to which it might be applied for the exact
measurement of time ; and this idea having remained in his
mind, he employed it fifty years afterwards (in 1633) for
the construction of a clock intended for astronomical ob¬
servations. In what manner this instrument was construct¬
ed, does not exactly appear; but it seems certain that it
was employed for the purpose stated; and this, in our
opinion, is sufficient to entitle Galileo to the honour ol
having been the first to make an application which after¬
wards became of so much importance to astronomy; for
Huygens, who, in truth, rendered it incomparably more
perfect, by employing the pendulum as the regulator ot
clocks, and not as the motive pow'er alone, did not publish
his researches on this subject until about the year 1658.
At the time of which we are here speaking, Galileo had
no knowledge of the mathematics, nor even the least desire
to learn them, not conceiving in what respect triangles
1 In the matriculation lists of Pisa he is styled Galileo, the son of Vincenzo Galilei, a Florentine, scholar in arts,
dated the 5th November 1581.
His entry h
GALILEO.
!ai -o.
VK
and circles could conduce to the advancement of philoso¬
phy. The study of geometry was then at a very low ebb,
not only in Italy, bub in every country of Europe. Com-
mandine, it is true, had recently revived a taste for the
writings of Euclid and Archimedes ; Vieta, Tartalea, and
others had made considerable progress in algebra; and
Guido Ubaldi and Benedetti had done something towards
establishing the principles of statics, the only branch of
mechanics as yet cultivated. But, with these exceptions,
the application of mathematics to the phenomena of na¬
ture was scarcely thought of. Galileo’s first inducement
to acquire a knowledge of geometry arose from his par¬
tiality for music and drawing; he had heard his father re¬
peatedly state, that these arts, of which he was passion¬
ately fond, had their principles in the relations of numbers
and of position taught by the mathematics; and he now
entreated to be instructed in a subject which promised to
unfold to him the true theory of'his favourite pursuits.
But his father, apprehensive that a study which so strong¬
ly attaches those who take pleasure in it wrould diminish
his zeal for medicine, told him to wait until he had com¬
pleted his course. Galileo, however, was not satisfied;
and as Ostilio Ricci, professor of mathematics in the uni¬
versity, frequently visited at his father’s house, he besought
this person to give him secretly some lessons in geometry.
The professor consented, after having privately asked and
obtained the consent of the father. But the young man
had no sooner entered into that field of investigation for
which natuie had destined him, than his mind became en¬
grossed by the pleasure he felt in the certain and entire
possession of truth ; from that moment medicine and philo¬
sophy were abandoned for Euclid ; and all the efforts and
remonstrances of his father, who desired to recall him to
pursuits which he thought more useful, and even went so
far as to prohibit him from holding any intercourse with
Ricci, proved unavailing. The impulse had been given,
and all attempts to counteract it were fortunately useless.
Galileo had learned enough to study alone. He accord¬
ingly continued in secret the perusal of Euclid, at the
same time keeping open beside him a Galen or an Hippo¬
crates, in order to conceal the favourite book when his fa¬
ther entered. Having thus by stealth advanced as far as
the sixth book, and being transported with the utility
which he discovered in the science of geometry for givim’-
force and method to the understanding, he resolved to
avow his progress to his father, and entreat the latter no
longer to oppose the decided bent of his mind. Vincenzo,
perceiving that he was born for the mathematics, yielded
to the irresistible predilection of his son, and permitted
, t0 enter freely upon those speculations to which he
thenceforward devoted all the energies of his hi{jhlv-«-ift-
ed intellect. o j a
Having thus abandoned medicine, Galileo read with
avidity the works of the ancient geometers, and then pro¬
ceeded to study the treatise of Archimedes on floating
bodies, which greatly delighted him. He now sought to
niuitiply the applications of the method employed by the
i ustnous ancient in determining the proportions of an al-
oy of silver and of gold by successive weighings in water
d in air ; and for this purpose he invented an instru¬
ment similar in its uses to that which was afterwards call-
the hydrostatic balance. This invention, joined to his
1 evious discovery respecting the movement of oscillation,
liKnnl'8 n<TV ,an(! tree method of discussing subjects in phi-
tinnP i 1^d »lreac}y P^cured him Iconsiderable reputa-
do TTK n" hf *ormed a connection with the Marquis Gui-
onni? dl\t le,n one of ^ niost Earned mathematicians
y- At the suggestion of this distinguished person,
289
Galileo applied himself to consider the position of the Galileo,
centre of gravity in solid bodies; a choice of subject suf-
ficiently indicating the estimate which Ubaldi had form¬
ed of his powers, considering that the question was one
on which Commandine had recently written, and which
at that time engaged the attention of geometricians of the
highest order. Galileo, however, discontinued his re¬
searches on meeting with Valerio’s treatise upon the same
subject; but Ubaldi was so much struck with the genius
displayed in the essay which Galileo presented to him,
that he introduced the young geometer to his brother the
Cardinal del Monte, who again warmly recommended him
to John de Medici and the Grand Duke Ferdinand of
Tuscany, as a person of the highest promise. These illus-
ti ions personages gave him a most favourable reception,
and soon afterwards bestowed on him the chair of mathe¬
matics in the university of Pisa, although he had as yet
scarcely completed his twenty-fifth year.
Excited by this distinction, Galileo neglected nothing
calculated to justify the preference which had been given
him ; and conceiving that a knowledge of the laws of mo¬
tion is the basis of all solid study of nature, he undertook to
establish them, not by hypothetical reasonings, as was the
piactice in the schools, but by real experiments. He thus
demonstrated that all bodies, whatever be their nature, are
equally affected by gravity; and that, if the spaces through
which they descend in equal times are different, this de¬
pends on the unequal resistance opposed to them by the
aii, accoiding to their different volumes. This important
proposition Galileo completed long afterwards, in a work
entitled Dialoghi delle Scienze Nuove, in which he esta¬
blished the true theory of uniformly accelerated motion.
I he novelty and beauty of his first experiments, performed
before an immense concourse of spectators, excited great
enthusiasm. But they at the same time embittered the
animosity of the partisans of the ancient philosophy, who,
seeing their whole science attacked, sought to destroy the
innovator in the opinion of persons in power, and at length
succeeded in raising against him such a host of annoy¬
ances and persecutions, that, in 1592, he was obliged to
icsign his chair at Pisa. He returned to Florence with¬
out employment, but durst not present himself in the
house of his father, who had already made so many sacri¬
fices on his account. He had the good fortune, however,
to obtain from Guido Ubaldi a letter of recommendation
to an opulent gentleman of Florence, of the family of the
Salviati, who received him with extreme kindness, and
afforded him the means of prosecuting his discoveries, until
he could find some employment. With a view to serve
him, Salviati also made him known to a Venetian noble¬
man of the name of Sagredo; an enlightened and influen¬
tial man, who soon afterwards obtained for the youthful
philosopher the chair of mathematics at Padua, which was
conferred on him for six years. It was in gratitude for '
these seasonable benefits that Galileo gave the names of
Sagredo and Salviati to the two interlocutors in his dia¬
logues who support the true philosophy.
In his new situation, where he enjoyed greater freedom
than he had done at Pisa, Galileo continued, with still more
brilliant success, both his public lessons and his experi¬
mental rescai ches. Fie constructed, for the service of the
state, various machines of great utility; and he wrote for his
pupils treatises on gnomonics, mechanics, spherical astrono¬
my, and even fortification, according to the usage of the age,
when many things were united which the progress of know¬
ledge has since separated. In 1597, he invented the ther-
mometer and the proportional compass or sector, which he
called the military compass, because he had principally in-
2 o
>90 GALILEO.
Galileo, tended it for the use of engineers. In 1599, his commis- his researches, he invented the microscope; he also itn- Gal
sion having expired, the senate renewed it for another six proved his telescope, and soon brought it to a state fit to ^
years, with an increase of salary, which Galileo repaid be applied to the observation of the heavens. He then
to the republic by new discoveries. In 1604, an unknown perceived what as yet no mortal eye had ever seen; the sur-
star of extraordinary brightness having suddenly appeared in face of the moon, like that of the earth, bristled with high
the constellation of Serpentarius, Galileo demonstrated, by mountains and ploughed with deep valleys; Venus, pre-
his observations, that this body was placed far beyond what senting, like the moon, phases which prove her rotundity;
the peripatetics called the elementary region ; nay, that it Jupiter environed with four satellites, who accompany him
was much more remote than all the planets, contrary to in his course ; the milky way ; the nebulae ; in a word, the
the formal and infallible opinion of Aristotle, who main- whole heavens bespangled with a countless multitude of
tains that the heavens are incorruptible and free from all stars too small to be even perceived by the naked eye. It
mutation. He also made researches on natural magnets, is more easy to conceive than describe the surprise and de-
and succeeded in considerably augmenting their power by light which the first view of so many wonders must have in¬
means of capping or casing them. His commission as pro- spired him withal, as well as the admiration which they could
fessor was renewed a second time in 1606, with additional not fail to produce when they were known. A few days
advantages, for which he testified his gratitude, as before, having sufficed to pass them in review, he hastened to an-
by increased diligence in the prosecution of his discoveries, nounce his observations to the world in a publication en-
But envy, which had never lost sight of him, exerted herself titled Nuncius Sidereus, or Celestial Courier, which hede-
to disturb that peace which is so necessary to the success- dicated to the princes of Medici, and which he continued
ful pursuit of science. In 1604, on the occasion of his re- at intervals, in proportion as he discovered new objects,
searches respecting the new star, he had been grossly He also observed that Saturn sometimes appeared under
abused by one Baltasar Capra of Milan. This man had the form of a simple disc, and sometimes with two appen-
the audacity to publish a Latin treatise on the proportional dages which seemed two small planets ; but it was reserved
compass, in which he represented himself as the real in- for another astronomer (see Huygens) to demonstrate that
ventor of that instrument; but the calumny was so gross these appearances were produced by the ring with which
that nobody was deceived by it; Galileo confounded his Saturn is surrounded. Galileo also discovered moveable
adversary, and the work of Capra was prohibited as a de- spots on the globe or disc of the sun, whom the peripate-
famatory libel. Nor was this the only instance in which tics had declared incorruptible, and did not hesitate from
he had to vindicate his right of property in his own inven- these to infer the rotation of that planet. He remarked that
tions. He frequently found himself ill recompensed for the feeble light which, in the first and last quarter of the moon,
readiness with which he communicated the results of his renders visible, by means of the telescope, the part of her
investigations ; but he always raised himself by new disco- disc which is not then directly enlightened by the sun;
veries,&far above these disgraceful attempts to appropriate and he concluded rightly that this effect was owing to the
the fruits of his genius. light reflected tow ards the moon by the earth. The
The year 1609 was signalised by a discovery on the part continued observation of the spots of the moon satisfied
of Galileo, which forms one of the most solid foundations him that that planet always presents nearly the same as-
of his glory. In the month of April or of May, a rumour pect; but in these he nevertheless recognised a species of
was circulated in Venice that a Dutchman had presented periodic oscillation, to which he gave the name of libration,
to Count Maurice of Nassau an instrument, by which means the exact laws of which ware afterwards made known by
distant objects appeared as if they were near at hand. On Dominic Cassini. In a word, not less profound in follow-
this slight and cursory hint Galileo immediately applied ing new truths to their consequences than subtile in disco-
himself to discover whether the thing was possible, con- vering them, Galileo perceived the use to which the mo-
formably with the passage of the luminous rays through tions and eclipses of the satellites of Jupiter might be turned
spherical glasses of various forms. Some attempts made with for the measure of longitudes ; and he even undertook to
lenses which he had at hand produced the desired effect; make a sufficient number of observations of these stars to
and next day he gave an account of his success to his enable him to construct tables for the use of navigators,
friends, which, in fact, wras nothing less than the invention After so many and so admirable discoveries, we have
of the telescope. A short time afterwards he presented^ -good reason to be astonished that any one should dream
several of these instruments to the senate of Venice, ac-* Of denying to Galileo the invention of the telescope, with
companied with a description in which he unfolded the im- which he had made them; as if, in such a case, the inventor
mense consequences for nautical and astronomical obsefva- was not,.he who, guided by certain rules and by great
tions which would certainly result from the discovery ; and views, knew how to perform wonders with that which
in recompense of his ingenuity his commission as professor chance had thrown rude and unfashioned into incapable
was continued for life, with an allowance of salary triple hands. If he who, in Holland, accidentally joined two
that which he had previously received. Galileo neglected glasses of unequal curvature, was really the inventor of the
nothing calculated to evince his gratitude, or to add to the telescope, why then did he not turn it towards the heavens,
claims which had merited these favours. Indefatigable in the most beautiful and sublime application of that instru-
already mentioned as the friend of Galileo, writes to him in the following terms :—“ I have brought the instrument which you in¬
vented, into several convenient forms, so that the difference of temperature between two rooms is seen as far as a hundred degrees.
The date of this communication, which incidentally establishes the invention of Galileo, is anterior to the claims of Santorio, and a so
to those of Drebbel, a Dutch physician, who obtained, and still preserves in Germany, the honour of having invented this instru¬
ment. Another testimony may be added. In 1638, Castelli wrote to Cesarini that he remembered an experiment shown to nun
more than thirty years before by Galileo, who took a small glass bottle, about the size of a hen’s egg, the neck of which was twenty-
two inches long, and as narrow as a straw. “ Having well heated the bulb in his hands, and then introduced its mouth into a yesse
containing water, he withdrew, his hand from the bulb, on which the water rose in the neck of the bottle more than eleven me es
above the level of that in the vessel; and this principle he employed in the construction of an instrument for measuring heat an ^
cold.” Galileo’s thermometer, therefore, consisted merely of a glass tube ending in a bulb, the air in which, being partly expellee
by heat, was replaced by water from a glass in which the open end of the tube was immersed ; and the different degrees of heatwer
indicated by the expansion of the air which still remained in the bulb, so that the scale would be the reverse of that now in use, a
the water would stand at the highest level in the coldest weather. In other words, it was a compound of the barometer an
thermometer.
f
GALILEO.
291
r n ment ? Why did he leave to Galileo the happiness and
f „]ory of overturning, in the eyes of all, ancient prejudices,
of consolidating by the clearest proof's the system of Co¬
pernicus, and of aggrandising the celestial spaces beyond
all that the imagination could have conceived? But how¬
ever this may be, it is easy to comprehend to what a
height so many and so great discoveries must have raised
the views of Galileo; he perceived all the consequences
which resulted from them relatively to the constitution of
the universe ; and, indeed, how could they escape him who,
having taken nature as his guide, had, during his whole
life, preserved his mind open to her impressions P1 He
concealed none of these high consequences, which formed
as it were the soul of his writings and conversation ; and
he considered himself as henceforth entitled to despise
errors too gross to be honestly maintained.
But, unfortunately for himself, he was no longer under
the protection of Venice. Yielding to the instances of
the Grand Duke of Tuscany, who had named him mathe¬
matician extraordinary, and loaded him with favours, he
had quitted Padua, where he enjoyed the utmost free¬
dom, for Florence, where such a thing as liberty was
scarcely known. Honoured by the senate of Venice,
and united by the ties of friendship with several of the
most distinguished senators, he could publish his opinions
without danger to himself as long as he remained within
the territories of that state. But, in the end, experience
proved that he could have no such security at the court
of a prince, obliged at least to keep up appearances with
the court of Rome. Besides the number of envious per¬
sons whom his great merit had exasperated against him,
his discoveries made to him enemies of all those who had
hitherto taught the ancient doctrines ; and of these per¬
sons by far the greater part were ecclesiastics. According¬
ly, some spread it abroad that his discoveries in the stars
were pure visions, comparable only to the voyage of $s“
tolphus; others affirmed that they had had the telescope in
their possession during entire nights, and that they had
seen nothing of all that which Galileo had announced;
and a preacher was found who, malicious enough to con¬
vey a dangerous allusion in a pun, took as his text the
words of the Gospel, Viri Galilai, quidstatis adspicientes
in ccelum? It was thus that the countrymen of Coperni¬
cus had publicly ridiculed him on the stage; and it was
thus that, at a later period, the reformed of Holland per¬
secuted Descartes, who had taken refuge amongst them.
But the most certain method of reaching Galileo was
to begin by prohibiting the doctrine of Copernicus, which
he supported and propagated with so much distinction.
This was accordingly effected by representing it as con¬
trary to Scripture, and denouncing it to the holy see. Ga¬
lileo endeavoured in vain to allay the storm, by publish¬
ing, in 1616, a letter addressed to the Grand Duchess of
Tuscany, in which he undertook to prove theologically,
and by reasons deduced from the Fathers, that the terms
of Scripture might be reconciled with his new discoveries
respecting the constitution of the universe. But this pro¬
duction only afforded a new handle to his adversaries,
wrho maintained that he had rested his defence on an opi¬
nion which was itself erroneous in point of doctrine. Fie
was cited to appear personally at Rome, and constrained
to repair thither to defend himself. But neither the ar¬
guments which he urged in support of his opinions, nor
the justice which they were forced to render to his know¬
ledge, his merit, and even his catholicity, could prevent
an assembly of theology, named by the pope, from coming
to the following conclusion : “ To maintain that the sun
is placed immoveable in the centre of the world, is an
opinion absurd in itself, false in philosophy, and formally
heretical, because it is expressly contrary to the Scrip¬
tures ; to maintain that the earth is not placed in the
centre of the world, that it is not immoveable, and that it
has even a daily motion of rotation, is also an absurd pro¬
position, f^lse in philosophy, and at least erroneous in
point of faith.” Confounded- at this deliverance, Galileo
employed all the arguments which the truth suggested to
ffflilMn defence of a doctrine which his observations had
rendered andubitable ; but his efforts were unavailing; his
reasonings were disregarded; and as he had not showed
sufficient deference to the decision of the holy office, he
was personally interdicted from professing in future the
opinion which had just been condemned.2
Galileo.
1 “ The interpreter of the works of nature is experiment,” says Leonardo da Vinci; “ that is never wrong: it is our judgment
which is sometimes deceived, because we expect results which experiment refuses to give. We must consult experiment, and vary
the circumstances, till we have deduced general rules, for it alone can furnish us with them. But, it will be asked, what is the use
of these general rules ? I answer, that they may . direct us in our inquiries into nature and the operations of art. They keep us
from deceiving ourselves and others, by promising ourselves results which we can never obtain.” (Venturi, Essai sur les Ouvrages
:ie Leonardo da Vinci.) ' '
2 It has been contended that the treatment which Galileo experienced on this and a subsequent occasion was caused, not by his
maintaining the true system of the world, which, in the above declaration, is formally condemned as “ false in philosophy and errone¬
ous in faith,” but solely by his persisting in the endeavour to prove thtlt the Scriptures were reconcilable*with the Copernican the¬
ory. “ Ce philosophe (Galileo),” says Bergier, u ne jut point persecute comme bon astronome, niais comme mauvais the'ologien.
C’est son entetement a vouloir concilier la Bible avec Copemic, quijui donna les juges. Mais vingt auteurs, surtout parmi les Pro-
testans, ont dcrit que Galilee fut persecute et imprisonne pour avoir soutenu que la terre tourne autour du soleil, que ce systeme a
dte condamnd par ITnquisition comme faut, errone, et contraire a la Bible.” (Encyclopedic Methodique, art. Sciences humaines, Paris,
1790.) This is a complete misrepresentation of facts known to every one. So far was Galileo from persisting in an attempt to re¬
concile the Bible with Copernicus, that he regarded this as a matter altogether indifferent, and indeed beside the real question. “ I
am inclined to believe,” says he in his letter to the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, “ that the intention of the sacred Scriptures is to
give mankind the information necessary for their salvation, and which, surpassing all human knowledge, can by no other means be
accredited than by the mouth of the Holy Spirit. But I do not hold it necessary to believe that the same God who has endowed us
with senses, with speech, and with intellect, intended that we should neglect the use of these, and seek by other means for knowledge
which they are sufficient to procure us ; especially in a science like astronomy, of which so little notice is taken in the Scriptures, that
mme ot the planets, except the sun and moon, and once or twice only Venus, under the name of Lucifer, are so much as named there,
lids therefore being granted, I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought not to begin at the authority of texts of
Scripture, but at sensible experiments and necessary demonstrations ; for from the divine word sacred Scripture and nature did both
mike proceed ; and I conceive that, concerning natural effects, that which either sensible experience sets before our eyes, or necessary
demonstrations prove unto us, ought not upon any account to be called in question, much less condemned, upon the testimony of
Scripture texts, which may under their words couch senses seemingly contrary thereto.” Can any thing be more explicit than the
contradiction of the assertion of Bergier contained in these words ? Is there any evidence here of Galileo’s alleged “ entetement a
vouloir concilier la Bible avec Copernic ?” But the philosopher proceeds in continuation : “ Again, to command , the professors of
astronomy that they of themselves should see to the confuting of their own observations and demonstrations, is to enjoin a thing be¬
yond all possibility of being done ; for it is not only to command them not to see that which they do see, and not to understand that
which they do understand, but it is to order them to seek for and find the contrary of that which they happen to meet with. I
would entreat these wise and prudent fathers that they would with all diligence consider the difference which exists between opi-
nionative and demonstrative doctrines ; to the end that, well weighing in their own minds with what force necessary inferences urge
292
GALILEO*
Galileo. Galileo returned to Florence in 1617, and resumed,
with what grief may be easily imagined, the course of his
astronomical labours. But his love for these sublime
truths, of which he considered himself as the depositary,
increasing in proportion to the efforts made to extinguish
it, he undertook to silence, if he could not persuade, his
adversaries, by collecting into a body all the physical
proofs of the motion of the earth and the constitution of
the heavens; and during sixteen entire years he was en¬
gaged in this work. All that the finest genius could ima¬
gine in point of ingenuity, or the purest taste admit in
point of elegance, he employed to render the truth attrac¬
tive. But it is not a learned treatise which he presents
to us as the fruit of his labour and talents; it is merely a
continued simple dialogue between two of the most distin¬
guished personages of Florence and Venice, and a third
interlocutor, who, under the name of Simplicius, under¬
takes to re-produce the “ invincible arguments” of the
peripatetics ; and each perfectly sustains the part assign¬
ed to him. The two men of the world possess instruction,
without system, and without prejudices ; they discuss, ex¬
amine, propose doubts, and only yield to cogent reasons.
The good Simplicius, on the other hand, is altogether scho¬
lastic ; he neither understands nor desires to comprehend
any thing but Aristotle; he judges things true or false
according as they are conformable or opposed to the asser¬
tions of his master; the least pleasantry on this subject
is insupportable to him, and he yields not to any kind of
conviction. The style of each of the interlocutors is also
perfectly adapted to his character, without ceasing how¬
ever to preserve, amidst these shades of distinction, an ex¬
quisite elegance, united with the most felicitous choice of
expressions.
But if great genius was required for the composition
of such a work, equal address was necessary to obtain
permission to publish it; and this Galileo undertook to
procure even in Rome itself. In 1630 he proceeded to
that city, and having waited on the master of the sacred
palace, boldly presented his work as a collection of new
scientific fancies, at the same time requesting him to have
the goodness to examine it scrupulously, to retrench what¬
ever might appear to him exceptionable, and indeed to
criticise it with the greatest severity. The prelate, not sus¬
pecting any thing, read it once and again ; handed it to one
of his colleagues for his opinion ; and, not seeing any thing
reprehensible in the work, set his hand to the most ample
approbation of its contents. But the permission thus ob¬
tained was not sufficient; for, in order to profit by it, the
work must be printed at Rome ; and the numerous ene¬
mies of Galileo in that city would not have failed to ex¬
plode the mine which the philosopher was himself charg¬
ing to blow them up. On the pretext of some difficulty
of communication between Rome and Florence, occasioned
by a contagious distemper which then prevailed, Galileo
accordingly wrote to the master of the sacred palace, so¬
liciting permission to print his work at Florence, on the
condition of having it again examined in that city. But the
prelate, who perhaps began to suspect some deception,
made difficulties; pointed out to Galileo a new censor - ’
and demanded to see the approbation which he had pre¬
viously given, in order, as he said, to revise the terms in
which it had been conceived. With this request Galileo
could not refuse to comply; but the prelate having once
got hold of the document, refused to restore it, or to give
any answer in explanation of his conduct; so that Galileo,
after making every effort to recover it, and even causing it
to be demanded by the ambassador of Tuscany, was com¬
pelled to abandon the pursuit as hopeless; and, content¬
ing himself with the approbation of the censor of Florence,
which he now managed to obtain, he published his work
in 1632.
To shield himself as much as possible from prosecution,
he however imagined the singular expedient of present¬
ing his dialogues to the public as an apology for the judg¬
ment of Rome, by which the doctrine of Copernicus had
been condemned. “ Some years ago,” says he, in the com¬
mencement of the introduction, which is addressed to discreet
readers, “ a salutary edict was promulgated at Rome, which,
in order to obviate the perilous scandals of the age, enjoined
an opportune silence as to the Pythagorean opinion of the
earth’s motion. There were not wanting persons who rash¬
ly asserted that this decree had originated, not in a judici¬
ous examination, but in ignorance and passion ; and com¬
plaints were even heard that councillors unexperienced
in astronomical observations should have attempted by
hasty prohibitions to clip the wings of speculative minds.
When I heard these rash lamentations, my zeal would not
suffer me to remain silent; and being fully informed in re¬
gard to that most prudent determination, I thought it pro¬
per to appear publicly on the theatre of the world as a wit¬
ness of the actual truth. I happened at that time to be in
Rome ; I was admitted to the audiences, and enjoyed the
approbation, of the most eminent prelates of that court;
nor did the publication of the decree pass without my re¬
ceiving' some previous intimation of the circumstance.1
Wherefore it is my intention, in this present work, to
show to foreign nations that as much is known of this
matter in Italy, and particularly in Rome, as ultramontane
diligence ever formed any notion of; and, collecting toge¬
ther all my own speculations on the Copernican system, to
give them to understand that the knowledge of these pre¬
ceded the Roman censures, and that from this country pro¬
ceed not only dogmas for the salvation of the soul, but also
ingenious discoveries for the gratification of the under¬
standing. With this object in view, I have taken up in
the dialogue the Copernican side of the question, treating
it as purely a mathematical hypothesis, and endeavouring
in every artificial manner to represent it as having the ad¬
vantage, not over the opinion of the stability of the earth
absolutely, but according to the manner in which that opi¬
nion is defended by some who indeed profess to be peripa¬
tetics, but retain only the name, and are contented without
improvement to worship shadows, not philosophizing with
their own reason, but only from the recollection of four
us, they might the better assure themselves that it is not in the power of professors of demonstrative sciences to change their opinions
at pleasure, and adopt first one side and then another ; and that there is a great difference between commanding a mathematician or
a philosopher, and the disposing of a lawyer or a merchant; and that the demonstrated conclusions touching the things of nature
° 6 ^ieavens cannot be changed with the same facility as the opinions are what is lawful or not in a contract, bargain, or bill
of exchange, therefore^ first let these men apply themselves to examine the arguments of Copernicus and others, and leave the
condemning of them as erroneous and heretical to whom it belongs; yet let them not hope to find such rash and precipitate deter¬
minations in the judicious and holy fathers, or in the absolute wisdom of him who cannot err, as those into which they suffer them¬
selves to be hurried by some particular affection or interest of their own. In these and such other positions, which are not directly
articles of faith, no man doubts but his holiness has always an absolute power of admitting or condemning them ; but it is not in tM
power oJ any creature to make them to he true or false, otherwise than of their own nature and in fact they are."
, 1 ilelarnbre, whose prejudice against Galileo is as unreasonable as his partiality to Kepler is marked, quotes this sentence as an
instance of mis-statement of facts on the part of Galileo. With all his acknowledged ability, the historian of astronomy does not seem
to have perceived, what must be obvious to almost every reader, that the whole passage is ironical, and that in the very sentence
which he has cited there lurks a bitter sarcasm. {Histoire de VAstronomic Moderne, tome i. p. GG6*)
GALILEO.
293
^ jUlili principles imperfectly understood.” Any one who peruses
fliryV a few pages of the dialogues will be at no loss how to in-
[ terpret this declaration, nor will he feel any surprise that
those whom Galileo here pretended to vindicate should
have evinced but little gratitude for such a justification.
But what can scarcely be imagined now, is the fury which
the appearance of this work excited amongst the theolo¬
gians of Rome, almost all of whom were ardent peripatetics.
In vain did Galileo attempt to escape by alleging that his
book had been submitted to the judgment of the holy see ;
in vain did he, as a last resource, protest that his only ob¬
ject had been to expound, in a philosophical manner, the
two systems of Ptolemyand Copernicus. His enemies would
not suffer any such excuse to be listened to. Still there
remained to him some hope, founded upon the personal
esteem of Pope Urban VIII., who, on a former occasion,
had given him a most gracious reception, and had even paid
his astronomical discoveries the compliment of celebrating
them in bad verse ; but the holy father having been per¬
suaded that Galileo had intended to represent him under
the character of Simplicius, his wounded self-love rendered
his severity inexorable.1 Notwithstanding the intercession
of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and the earnest solicita¬
tions which this prince caused to be made by his ambas¬
sador, the work of Galileo was delated to the Inquisition,
and the author himself ordained to appear before that for¬
midable tribunal.
The power of Rome was then supreme; it was neces¬
sary to obey. Neither the infirmity of his health, nor the
pain he suffered from a rheumatic complaint which afflicted
him, could procure an exemption from that sorrowful jour¬
ney. This was in 1633, Galileo being then in the sixty-
ninth year of his age. “ I arrived at Rome,” says he, in
one of his letters, “ on the 10th February, and was re¬
mitted to the clemency of the Inquisition, and of the so¬
vereign pontiff, Urban VIII. who had some esteem for me,
although I could not compose epigrams or write little ama¬
tory sonnets. I was put under arrest in the delicious palace
of the frinita de Monti, the residence of the ambassa¬
dor of Tuscany. Next day I received a visit from Father
Lancio, commissary of the holy office, who took me with
him in his coach. By the way he put to me a number of
questions, and showed a great desire that I would repair
the scandal which I had given to all Italy by maintaining
the opinion of the motion of the earth ; and to all the ma¬
thematical reasons which I could oppose to him, he could Galileo,
make no other answer than this : Terra autem inceternum
stabit, quia terra in ceternum stat. In discoursing thus we
arrived at the palace of the holy office. I was present¬
ed by the commissary to the assessor, with whom 1 found
two religious Dominicans, who civilly informed me that I
would be permitted to explain my reasons before the con¬
gregation, and that afterwards I should be heard as to
my grounds of excuse, if I was found guilty. The Thurs¬
day following I appeared before the congregation, and
applied myself to the exposition of my proofs. But, un¬
fortunately for me, they were not apprehended; and,
notwithstanding all the pains I took, I could not succeed
in making myself understood. My reasonings were cut
short by bursts of zeal; they spoke to me only of the
scandal which I had occasioned; and always opposed to
me the passage of Scripture on the miracle of Joshua as
the victorious piece of my process. This brought to my
recollection another passage where the language of the
sacred book is evidently conformable to popular ideas,
since it is said that the heavens are solid, and polished like
a mirror of brass. This example appeared to me one in
point to prove that the expression of Joshua might be
similarly interpreted ; and the consequence seemed to me
perfectly just. But no regard whatever was paid to it;
and all the answer I received consisted of shrugs of the
shoulders ”2 On the 30th of April Galileo was sent back
to the residence of the ambassador, with a prohibition not
to go beyond the enceinte of the palace, but with permis¬
sion to walk freely in the extensive gardens attached to it.
On the 22d of June he was again brought before the tri¬
bunal to hear the sentence read, and pronounce the abju¬
ration dictated to him, according to which the venerable
philosopher was made to say, “ I abjure, curse, and detest
the error and heresy of the motion of the earth,” &c. and
to promise that he would never more in future say or as¬
sert any thing, verbally or in writing, importing “ that the
sun is the centre of the world, and immoveable ; and that
the earth is not the centre of the world, and moveable.”
This expiation being completed, his dialogues were prohi¬
bited ; he was condemned to suffer imprisonment for an in¬
definite period; and, as a salutary punishment, he was ordain¬
ed to recite once a week for three years, the seven peniten¬
tial psalms. Such was the unworthy recompense of one of
the greatest geniuses that has ever enlightened humanity.3
Tuscanyf tmife Galile0 from Acastri’ 2Cth JuIie 1G3G’ and cited h7 Targioni-Tozzetti in his History of the Sciences in
Letter of Galileo, cited by Tiraboschi.
found in tSbpSfm°frie •Inquis.iti°n on. GAileo, one of the most remarkable records of intolerant ignorance and bigoted folly to be
Holy toman rin^h f1611-00; 1S c“nceivf in the following termsWe, the undersigned, by the grace of God, cardinals of the
asaiJst WHppS.’ I-fqUw?rS General throughout the whole Christian Republic, Special Deputies of the Holy Apostolical Chair
in Kiln to i hi. h i ^ li1 ^ 'c , ie,rf.aS y°u’ GahIeo, son of the late Vincenzo Galilei of Florence, aged seventy years, were denounced
the “ orld nml tw H ICe’ holdin£ as true a false doctrine taught by many, namely, that the sun is immoveable in the centre of
nions'k’nf!,.!!10 earth m°VeS’ and also Wlth a dlurnal motiotl 5 alS(S for having pupils whom you instructed in the same opi-
the sol'rr ~ •lain,taiuing a correspondence on the same with some German mathematicians ; also, for publishing certain letters on
duced from the hnlv ^ ;V°U de.velofcd. the same doctrine as true; also, for answering the objections which were continually pro-
ducedtheconvofa wrUin111^,8’^7 fjozing the said Scriptures according to your own meaning; and whereas thereupon was pro-
livpothesis oFr*Ting’ in.for1m,of a lettfr’ Professedly written by you to a person formerly your pupil, in which, foUowing the
this holy trih„m,iPhI?n n’ 7°U inCJude ^yend propositions contrary to the true sense and authority of the holy Scripture : therefore
ment of the holv fAtb °f pro™hlf a/?ainst th^ dlsorder and mischief which was thence proceeding and increasing, to the detri-
the two pronoslhnsf hohnef’ and of ^ ^ost eminent lords cardinals of this supreme and universal Inquisition,
poMon LuZlZ It n stability of the sun, and motion of the earth, were qualijiedby the theological qualifiers as follows : ] st/ The pro.
expressh covtrarTtn iZ f / e ^ 0fthcxi-orld, and immoveable from its placets absurd, philosophically false, and formally heretical, because it is
and also with a Sflp,turef 2dl^ The proposition that the earth is not the centre of the world, nor immoveable, but that it moves,
pleased at that time fn dlnT’ *fn ™ Phll°snPhlcfy falsf anf theologically considered, at least erroneous in faith. But whereas being
bruary 1919 thn bk em 7 "Tlth 7^' r wf3 d^reed 111 ^ holy congregation, held before his holiness on the 25th day of Fe
shouh'l refuse thSt vouTmdH^ 16 ^ord Rellarmme should enjom you to give up altogether the said false doctrine; if you
it, nor ever mention it l -' bj tbe cominifaiT of the holy office to relinquish it, not to teach it to,others, nor to defend
ing day at the m Wp ’in default of acquiescence that you should be imprisoned ; and in execution of this decree, on the follow,
^id lord cardinal vnn preSence of ,hl,s ^mmuence the said Lord Cardinal Bellarmine, after you had been mildly admonished by the
together the sa d feko “mmandf1 h-v the acting commissary of the holy office, before a notary and witnesses, to relinquish al-
vour iironiisinir ohedi 1011’ am ^ Utlne)neit'lle^ *;0 deend nor teach it in any manner, neither verbally nor in writing; and upon
“uate itselffarthei l1Thpl7°U wc,re disnufed; ln «rdt'r tPat so pernicious a doctrine might be altogether rooted out, nor insi-
to the heavy detriment of the Catholic truth, a decree emanated from the holy congregation of the index prohi-
294
GALILEO.
Galileo. It is said that, after having pronounced his abjuration,
Galileo, as he rose from the kneeling posture, indignant at
the monstrous injustice of his age, stamped on the ground,
and said in an under tone, E pur si muove, It moves not¬
withstanding. No doubt it does move, and this is the only
answer which those who study nature should at all times
make to their detractors and persecutors. What signifies
the opinion of men when nature herself speaks ? Of what
value are their prejudices, or even their wisdom, in opposi¬
tion to her laws ? Why denounce as an impiety the obser¬
vation of the works of God ? Such, indeed, are now the
sentiments of persons the most enlightened on the subject
of theology; the motion of the earth and the immobility
of the sun are no longer contrary to the words of Scripture ;
it is at length admitted that the Holy Spirit spoke to men
in the only language which they could comprehend. It is
true that this interpretation, which is now universally re¬
ceived, did not appear good in the time of Galileo, since
we have seen that he was himself reprehended for having
attempted to give it effect; but, from what we have relat- Gs
ed of the history of his life, it is evident that the persecu- 'w1'
tion exercised against him was the effect, unhappily too com¬
mon, of the envy which always attaches to great celebrity.
There are arms peculiar to every country. Galileo was a
heretic in Italy, as Descartes was an atheist in Holland.
However, in denouncing to posterity the shameful injus¬
tice done to this great man, it must in fairness be admitted
that the formidable tribunal by which he was condemned
did not exercise towards him its extreme severity. It has
been pretended, without any probability, that he was put
to the question. But although it is true that, in the inqui¬
sitorial style, this seems to be indicated by the words rigo-
rosum examen which are found in the text of the judgment,
and although, by a singular coincidence, he began about
this time to be afflicted with an intestinal hernia, the ordi¬
nary consequence of the particular species of torture {il tor-
mento della cordd) to which he is supposed to have been
subjected ; yet, for the honour of humanity, these presump-
biting the books which treat of this doctrine; and it was declared false, and altogether contrary to the holy and divine Scripture.
And whereas a book has since appeared, published at Florence last year, the title of which showed that you were the author, which
title is. The Dialogue of Galileo Galilei, on the two principal systems of the world, the Ptolemaic and Copernican ; and whereas the holy con-
gregation has heard that, in consequence of the printing of the said book, the false opinion of the earth’s motion and stability of the
sun is daily gaining ground, the said book has been taken into careful consideration, and in it has been detected a glaring violation of
the said order, which had been intimated to you ; inasmuch as in this book you have defended the said opinion, already and in your
presence condemned; although in the said book you labour with many circumlocutions to induce the belief that it is left by you un¬
decided, and in express terms probable; which is equally a very grave error, since an opinion can in no way be probable which has
been already declared and finally determined contrary to the divine Scripture. Therefore by our order you have been cited to this
holy office, where, on your examination upon oath, you have acknowledged the said book as written and printed by you. You also
confessed that you began to write the said book ten or twelve years ago, after the order aforesaid had been given. Also, that you de¬
manded license to publish it, but without signifying to those who granted you this permission that you had been commanded not to
hold, defend, or teach the said doctrine in any manner. You also confessed that the style of the said book \vas, in many places, so
composed that the reader might think the arguments adduced on the false side to be so worded as more effectually to entangle the
understanding than to be easily solved, alleging in excuse that you have thus run into an error, foreign (as you say) to your inten¬
tion, from writing in the form of a dialogue, and in consequence of the natural complacency which every one feels with regard to his
own subtilties, and in showing himself more skilful than the generality of mankind in contriving, even in favour of false propositions,
ingenious and apparently probable arguments. And, upon a convenient time being given to you for making your defence, you pro¬
duced a certificate in the handwriting of his eminence the Lord Cardinal Bellarmine, procured as you said by yourself, that you might
defend yourself against the calumnies of your enemies, who reported that you had abjured your opinions, and had been punished by
the holy office; in which certificate it is declared that you had not abjured, nor had been punished, but merely that the declaration
made by his holiness, and promulgated by the holy congregation of the index, had been announced to you, which declares that the
opinion of the motion of the earth, and stability of the sun, is contrary to the holy Scriptures, and therefore cannot be held or de-
fended. Wherefore, since no mention is there made of two articles of the order, to wit, the order ‘ not to teach,’ and ‘ in any man-
ner,’ you argued that we ought to believe that, in the lapse of fourteen or sixteen years they had escaped your memory, and that this
was also the reason why you were silent as to the order, when you sought permission to publish your book, and that this is said by
you not to excuse your error, but that it may be attributed to vain-glorious ambition rather than to malice. But this very certifi¬
cate, produced on your behalf, has greatly aggravated your offence, since it is therein declared that the said opinion is contrary to
the holy Scripture, and yet you have dared to treat of it, to defend it, and to argue that it is probable ; nor is there any extenuation
in the license artfully and cunningly extorted by you, since you did not intimate the command imposed upon you. But whereas it
appeared to us that you had not disclosed the whole truth with regard to your intentions, we thought it necessary to proceed to the
rigorous examination of you, in which (without any prejudice to what you had confessed, and which is above detailed against you.
with regard to your said intention) you answered like a good Catholic. Therefore, having seen and maturely considered the merits
of your cause, with your said confessions and excuses, and every thing else which ought to be seen and considered, we have come to
the underwritten final sentence against you. Invoking, therefore, the most holy name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of his most
glorious Virgin Mother Mary, by this our final sentence, which, sitting in council and judgment for the tribunal of the reverend
masters of sacred theology, and doctors of both laws, our assessors, we put forth in this writing touching the matters and contro¬
versies before us, between the magnificent Charles Sincerus, doctor of both laws, fiscal proctor of this holy office of the one part, and
you, Galileo Galilei, an examined and confessed criminal from this present writing now in progress as above of the other part, we
pronounce, judge, and declare, that you, the said Galileo, by reason of these things which have been detailed in the course of this
writing, and which, as above, you have confessed, have rendered yourself vehemently suspected by this holy office of heresy; that is
to say, that you believe and hold the false doctrine, and contrary to the holy and divine Scriptures, namely, that the sun is the centre
of the world, and that it does not move from east to west, and that the earth does move, and is not the centre of the world; also that
an opinion can be held and supported as probable after it has been declared and finally decreed contrary to the holy Scripture, and
consequently that you have-incurred all the censures and penalties enjoined and promulgated in the sacred canons, and other general
and particular constitutions against delinquents of this description. From which it is our pleasure that you be absolved, provided
that, first, with a sincere heart and unfeigned faith, in our presence, you abjure, curse, and detest the said errors and heresies, and
every other error and heresy contrary to the Catholic and apostolic church of Home, in the form now shown to you. But, that your
grievous and pernicious error and transgression may not go altogether unpunished, and that you may be made more cautious in fu¬
ture, and may be a warning to others to abstain from delinquencies of this sort, we decree that the book of the Dialogues of Galileo
Galilei be prohibited by a public edict, and we condemn you to the formal prison of this holy office, for a period determinable at our
pleasure; and, by way of salutary penance, we order you, during the next three years, to recite once a week the seven penitential
psalms, reserving to ourselves the power of moderating, commuting, or taking off the whole or part of the said punishment and pen¬
ance. And so we say, pronounce, and by our sentence declare, decree, and reserve, in this and in every other better form and man¬
ner, which lawfully we may and can use. So we, the subscribing cardinals, pronounce. Felix, Cardinal di Ascoli; Guido, Cardina
Bentivoglio; Desiderio, Cardinal di Cremona; Antonio, Cardinal S. Onofrio ; Berlingero, Cardinal Gessi; Fabricio, Cardinal Verospi,
Martino, Cardinal Ginetti.” This document is decisive as to the fallacy of the allegation, that “ Galileo was not persecuted as a
good astronomer, but only as a bad theologian.”
GALILEO.
]j[ . tions seem completely destroyed by the conduct which was
y subsequently observed towards him. It is certain, from the
letters of the ambassador of Tuscany, that he was not
thrown into the dungeons of the holy office, although the
judgment bears so. The prison assigned him was the lodg¬
ing of one of the superior officers of the tribunal, with per¬
mission to walk throughout the whole palace ; he was al¬
lowed to retain his domestic; and, so far from being put in
solitary confinement, he was permitted to receive the visits
of his friends as often as he pleased. All this is establish¬
ed by numerous letters of Galileo himself, dated at this
period, and which, fortunately for the cause of truth and
humanity, have been preserved. If he did not at once re¬
cover his entire liberty, his captivity was at least mitigated
as much as it could well be, since the prison assigned him
was the magnificent palace of the Archbishop of Sienna,
Piccolomini, his friend and pupil, surrounded with beauti¬
ful gardens, in which he was allowed to take exercise at
pleasure. In the beginning of December 1633, the pope
granted him permission to reside openly in the country
near Florence; and at a somewhat later period, he was al¬
lowed to enter the city as often as his infirmities required.
Nevertheless, these restrictions prove that he still remain¬
ed under the surveillance of the Inquisition ; and the Ita¬
lian writers even say that he several times received, from
that tribunal, threatening letters, on account of the pursuits
to which he still applied himself, and on pretence of the
too intimate connection which he maintained w ith the learn¬
ed in Germany.
It was no doubt too much thus to afflict an old man who
had committed no other error than that of unfolding truths
previously unknown. This treatment made a deep impres¬
sion on his mind, as may be seen from the preface to his
two new dialogues on the motion and resistance of solids,
which he confided in manuscript to the Count de Noailles,
when the latter was on his return to France from Rome,
where he had been ambassador. “ Confounded and afflict¬
ed with the bad success of my other works,” says he, “ and
having resolved to publish nothing more, I have wished at
least to place in sure hands some copy of my works ; and
as the particular affection with which you have honoured
me will certainly make you desirous to preserve them, I
have chosen to confide these to you.” The count lost no
time in communicating them to the Elzevirs, by whom they
were printed at Leyden, in 1628, 4to ; and it may be pre¬
sumed that this publication did not occasion Galileo as
much uneasiness as his disciple Viviani, writing, like him¬
self, near Rome, would lead us to believe ; a presumption
confirmed by several letters, addressed to his intimate
friends, which have fortunately been preserved. In these
two dialogues Galileo created a science altogether new,
namely, that of the resistance of solids ; and he established,
with admirable sagacity, the laws, not less novel, of the
accelerated motion of heavy bodies, whether falling freely
through space or descending on inclined planes. Nor is
this the only production ot Galileo which the French have
had the honour of saving from his enemies.. It was a
Frenchman, Father Mersenne, who first published his me-
c lanics; a book which, in a fe\y pages, contains, among
other discoveries, a demonstration of the laws of equilibri¬
um on the inclined plane, and that other principle so fruit-
u ^ consequences, since called the principle of virtual
velocities, which consists in this, that, in any machine
" lats°ever, the power and the weight in equilibrio are in-
versely proportional to the spaces which they would pass
'rough in a time infinitely small, if the equilibrium were
ever so little disturbed.
Oppressed with the weight of years and misfortunes,
£mleo still pursued his observations, and worked w ith in-
e atigable courage to continue his tables of Jupiter’s satel-
1 es, when the loss of sight obliged him, at the age of se-
295
venty-four, to discontinue his labours. But his faculties Galileo,
survived this deprivation, and he did not cease to meditate
on nature though it was now concealed from his view. Sur¬
rounded by attentive and respectful pupils, and by the most
distinguished persons of Florence, he lived four years in
this state of blindness, after which a slow fever terminated
his long and brilliant career, on the 9th of January 1642
(the same year in which Newton was born), at the advan¬
ced age ot seventy-eight. His body was transported to
Florence, and buried in the church of Santa Croce ; but
it was not until near a century later that the splendid mo¬
nument was erected which now covers his remains and
those of his celebrated pupil and friend Viviani.
The most masterly, and at the same time the most impar¬
tial estimate which has yet appeared of the services ren¬
dered to the cause of human knowledge by the Florentine
philosopher, will be found in the Third Dissertation prefix¬
ed to this work (see particularly p. 469, 470), to which
the reader is accordingly referred ; more especially with re¬
spect to the preference which Biot, supported by Hume,
has been pleased to assign to Galileo over Bacon in point¬
ing out the true method of studying nature, and showing
the art, if it may be so called, of interrogating her by-
means of experiment. On this subject Professor Playfair
has left little or nothing to be said by those who come af¬
ter him. The accomplishments of Galileo as a scholar
were scarcely less remarkable than his discoveries in science.
His style, which has been happily characterised by Hume,
is so elegant and pure that it has become a classical au¬
thority ; and we have already shown by what happy prepa¬
ration he attained this excellence in the art of writing. He
loved literature, especially poetry, and was so passionate an
admirer of Ariosto that he knew the whole of the Orlando
by heart. This predilection indeed he carried so far as to
suffer it to betray him into injustice towards Tasso ; at least
if we may judge from an early composition published after
his death, but which he most probably never intended to
see the light. But if the manner in which he speaks of
the Jerusalem Delivered be not always consistent with the
respect due to so great a poet, something must at the same
time be allowed for that freedom with which the mind gives
scope to its own impressions when it converses as it were
with itself alone, and is not obliged to observe any of those
restraints which publication imposes. It is probable that
Galileo would have softened his criticism if he had pub¬
lished it; and it may be believed that when his taste was
formed, he would have judged it proper to suppress it en¬
tirely ; for in several passages of his letters he renders jus¬
tice to the merit of Tasso, although Ariosto always appear¬
ed to him superior as a poet. We have entered into this
•detail, because an interest attaches to all the distinctive
characteristics or peculiarities of celebrated men. For the
same reason, we shall add, that Galileo was a man of ami¬
able character and agreeable appearance, particularly in
his old age ; that his temperament was animated, his man¬
ners cheerful, and his conversation attractive; and that he
preferred living in the country, where his favourite relax¬
ations consisted in the cultivation of his garden, and in
the conversation of his friends. He was never married ;
but he left three natural children, a son, and tw-o daugh¬
ters, who, after his death, entered a convent, and took the
veil.
Without pretending to give an accurate list of all the
works of Galileo, wre shall content ourselves with the fol¬
lowing enumeration of his principal productions:—1. Nun-
cius Sidereus, Florence, 1610, in 4to, reprinted the same
year at Venice in 4to, and at Frankfort in 8vo; 2. II Sag-
giatore, nel quale, con bilancia esquisita e giusta, si pon-
derano le cose contenute, &x\ Rome, 1623, in 4to, being a
refutation of the Libra Astronomica of the Jesuit Grassi-
ni; 3. Dialogi quattro sopra i due massimi Sistemi del
296
Galipoli
II
Gall.
GAL
GAL
Mondo, Tolemaico e Copernicano, Florence, 1632, in 4;to,
translated into Latin by Bernegger, with other pieces,
under the title of Systema Cosmicum; 4. Epistolae Ires
de conciliatione Sacra; Scriptura? cum Systemate Telluris
mobilis, quarum duae posteriores nunc primum cura M.
Nevraei prodeunt, Lyons, 1649; 5. Considerazioni al Tas*
so, printed for the first time in 1793, Venice, in 12mo,
and Rome, in 4to; 6. Lettere inedite di Uomini Illustri,
published by 'Fabroni, Florence, 1773, in 8vo, in which
are included several unedited letters of Galileo. Flis trea¬
tise on Fortification and Military Architecture is pre¬
served in manuscript in the Bibliotheca Riccardiana, of
which Lami published a catalogue in 1756. The editions
of his collected works, in which is contained much that
was never published separately, are, 1. Opere di Galileo
Galilei, Bologna, Charles Manolessi, 1656, in 2 vols. 4to,
but very incomplete ; 2. Opere, &c., Florence, Bothni,
1718, in 3 vols. 4to, scarcely less so; 3. Opere, &c., Pa¬
dua, 1744, in 4 vols. 4to, being the first edition of the
collected works, containing the Dialogue on the System
of the World, after the copy corrected and improved by
the author; 4. Opere, &c., Milan, 1811, in 11 vols. 8vo,
which is the most complete of all. The most extended
life which has yet appeared of this illustrious philosopher
is that by Louis Brenna, which has been inserted by Fab-
roni in the first volume of his Vita Italorum, 1778. Many
precious notices are also to be found in Tiraboschi, and
in the work of Targioni-Tozetti on the History of the Sci¬
ences in Tuscany. (See Biographic Universelle, art. Ga¬
lileo Galilei, by Biot; Saggio della Filosojia del Galileo,
by Andres; and Drinkwater’s Life of Galileo, in the Li¬
brary of Useful Knowledge.') (a.)
GALIPOLI, a city of Turkey, on the peninsula formerly
known as the Adriatic Chersonesus, and the capital of the
province of the same name. It is situated on the Darda¬
nelles, at the opening of the Sea of Marmora. It is an
open city, and is defended by an old but strong citadel on
a height near to it. It contains mosques, Greek churches,
and Jews’ synagogues, and about 17,000 inhabitants, pf
whom 10,000 are Turks, 3500 are Greeks, and 3500 are
Jews. It has two havens, both spacious and safe, and ba¬
zars, which are stored with every description of Asiatic
and European merchandise. The inhabitants make the
best Morocco leather, and carry on manufactures of cotton
and silk, spinning and weaving, and have several establish¬
ments for making porcelain ware. It is governed by an
aga, who represents the Capudan Pasha, the commander
in chief of the province. It is in long. 26.32. 10. E. Lat.
40. 25. 33. N.
GALL, in the animal economy, the same thing as
bile. Gall was generally given amongst the Jews to per¬
sons suffering death under the execution of the law, to
make them less sensible of pain; but gall and myrrh are
supposed to have been the same thing, because at our Sa¬
viour’s crucifixion, St Matthew, says that they gave him
vinegar to drink mingled with gall; whereas St Mark
calls it wine mingled with myrrh. The truth of the
matter perhaps is, that they distinguished every thing
bitter by the name of gall. The Greeks and Romans
also gave such a mixture to persons suffering a death of
torture.
Gall, in Natural History, denotes any protuberance or
tumour produced by the puncture of insects on plants and
trees ol different kinds. These galls are of various forms
and sizes, and not less different in their internal structure
than in their external form. Some have only one cavity,
and others a number of small cells communicating with
one another; and some of them are as hard as the wood
of the tree they grow on, whilst others are soft and spon¬
gy. The former are termed gall-nuts, and the latter berry-
galls or apple-galls.
GALL, John Joseph, the founder of Phrenology, as it is (
now called, was descended of a respectable family resid- ^
ing at Tiefenbrunn, two leagues distant from Pforzheim,
in Suabia, and born on the 9th of March 1757. His fa¬
ther was a shopkeeper or merchant, and mayor of the vil¬
lage. Flis parents, who were of the Roman Catholic per¬
suasion, originally intended him for holy orders; but his
natural dispositions were adverse to such a destination.
He pursued his studies first at Baden, then at Brucksal,
and afterwards at Strasburg, where he completed his lite¬
rary education. Having resolved to study medicine with
a view to the practice of physic, he, in 1781, proceeded
to Vienna, the medical school of that capital having ac¬
quired great celebrity, particularly since the times of Van
Swieten and Stoll; and, after passing through the ordi-
nary course, he took his degree.
Being early given to observation, Gall, whilst yet a boy,
was struck with the fact, that each of his companions and
schoolfellows possessed some peculiarity of talent which dis¬
tinguished him from the others. One excelled in penman¬
ship, another in arithmetic, a third in the acquisition oflan-
guages. The compositions of some were remarkable for
elegance, whilst those of others were hard, stiff, formal, and
dry ; several connected their reasonings in the closest man¬
ner, and clothed their arguments in forcible language;
many were devoid of the talent for logical arrangement, and
incapable of expressing themselves with clearness and pre¬
cision. Nor were their dispositions less various than their
intellectual endowments. Not a few manifested a capaci¬
ty for employments which they had not been taught, such
as cutting figures in wood, or delineating them on paper;
some devoted their leisure to drawing or gardening, whilst
others abandoned themselves to noisy games, or traversed
the woods to gather flowers, search for birds’ nests, or
catch butterflies. In short, each presented a character
peculiar to himself, and Gall did not observe that the indi¬
vidual who, one year, displayed selfish or knavish propen¬
sities, became a kind and faithful friend the next. Of
his schoolfellows, those with whom he experienced the
greatest difficulty in competing, were the boys who com¬
mitted their lessons to memory with the greatest facility;
and such individuals frequently gained from him by their
repetitions the places which he had obtained by the me¬
rit of his original compositions. Several years afterwards,
having changed his place of residence, and still meeting
with individuals possessed of the same faculty, he observ¬
ed that the individuals so gifted had all prominent eyes,
and he also recollected that his rivals in the first school
had been distinguished by the same peculiarity. On en¬
tering the university, he accordingly directed his atten¬
tion to those students who had large eyes, and, upon in¬
quiry, he found that they all excelled in committing pieces
to memory and giving correct recitations, although many
of them were by no means remarkable for general talent.
As the coincidence thus observed was recognised by the
other students in the classes, Gall conceived that it could
not be entirely accidental; and hence, from this period,
he seems to have come to the conclusion that they stood
in an important relation to each other. But il verbal
memory was thus indicated by an external sign, it requir¬
ed no great effort of generalization to conceive that the
other intellectual powers might have each its appropriate
manifestation. Proceeding on this idea or assumption,
Gall now directed his attention to individuals distinguish¬
ed by any remarkable faculty ; and, after a course of ob¬
servation, he conceived himself to have discovered and
defined the external characteristics indicative of decided
talents for painting, music, and the mechanical arts. Hav¬
ing also become acquainted with several persons remark¬
able for determination of character, he observed that a
particular part of their heads was largely developed, anc
GAL
GAL
297
1^ Gal. this development he set down as the external sign or ma-
nifestation of the character referred to.
His next step was to look in the head for the indications
of the moral sentiments as well as of the intellectual fa¬
culties ; but here he experienced considerable difficulties.
Hitherto he had been ignorant of the opinions of physio¬
logists concerning the brain, and of metaphysicians re¬
specting the mental faculties; and, on turning to books,
he became so much perplexed by the discordance of the
views therein inculcated, that, for a time, he hesitated as
to the correctness of his own observations. He found
that, whilst Pythagoras, Plato, Galen, Haller, and others,
placed the sentient soul in the brain, Aristotle fixed its
residence in the heart, Van Helmont in the stomach, Des¬
cartes in the pineal gland, and Drelincourt in the cerebel¬
lum; that, according to many philosophers and physiolo¬
gists, all men are born with equal mental faculties; and
that the differences observable amongst mankind are not
ascribable to any original or constitutional inequality of
powers, but the result partly of education, and partly of
the diversified circumstances in which individuals are
placed. But if all differences are accidental, it is evident
that there can be no natural signs of predominating facul¬
ties, and, consequently, that the project of attempting,
by observation, to discover the functions of the different
portions of the brain, must be abandoned as hopeless.
Sensible of this, Gall combated the difficulty by denying
the truth of the doctrine of original equality on which it is
founded. He contended that persons who have all re¬
ceived the same or very nearly the same education unfold
each a distinct character, over which circumstances ap¬
pear to exercise only a limited control; that individuals,
whose education has been conducted with the greatest
care, and on whom the labours of instructors have been
most freely lavished, frequently remain far behind their
companions in attainments; that many, even with the
most ardent desire, followed out by the most persevering
efforts, cannot, in some pursuits, attain even to medio¬
crity ; that, in point of fact, instructors of youth do not
appear to attach much faith to the system which teaches
the equality of mental faculties, and think themselves en¬
titled to exact more from one scholar and less from ano¬
ther; that the doctrine of Scripture, according to which,
each will be required to render an account only in propor¬
tion to the gifts which he has received, serves to confirm
this view, and is, moreover, in accordance with observa¬
tion and experience. On these grounds, Dr Gall con¬
cluded that there is a natural and constitutional diversity
of talents and dispositions amongst men; and that, sup¬
posing the exercise of the mental faculties dependent on
the functions of the brain, the external signs of these
faculties may be determined by observation.
Abandoning every theory and preconceived opinion,
therefore, he applied himself to the discovery of those signs
of the existence of which he had thus satisfied his own
mind. Being physician to a lunatic asylum at Vienna, he
had opportunities of making observations on the insane ;
he visited prisons, and resorted to the seats of learning;
he was introduced to the courts of princes and the tribu¬
nals ofjustice ; wherever he heard of an individual remark¬
able either for his mental endowments or defects, he studied
the development of his head ; and at length he conceived
himself warranted in maintaining that particular mental
powers are indicated by particular configurations of the shell
or case in which the brain is lodged. Hitherto he had resort- Gall,
ed only to physiognomical indications in order to discover v—
the functions of the brain ; but, being convinced that phy¬
siology is imperfect when separated from anatomy, he felt
the necessity of instituting anatomical researches into
the structure of the brain.1 Accordingly, in every in¬
stance where an individual whose head he had examined
whilst alive happened to die, he used every means to ob¬
tain permission to examine the brain, and frequently did
so; and he states it as a general fact, that, on the skull
being removed, the brain, covered by the dura mater, pre¬
sented a form corresponding to that which the skull had
exhibited in life. Thus, by successive steps, by first ob¬
serving a concomitance between particular talents and
dispositions, and particular forms of the head, and next by
ascertaining that the figure and size of the brain were in¬
dicated by these external forms, Dr Gall conceived that
he had determined the intellectual dispositions corre¬
sponding to about twenty organs, or, in other words, ascer¬
tained the residences of as many intellectual faculties of
the first order; and these organs he named according to the
faculty or propensity which he attributed to each respec¬
tively. In short, he maintained that the intellectual dis¬
positions being innate, have their seats in the brain, where
the organs of the faculties are also situated ; that the more
prominent any isolated point on the skull is, the greater
is the activity of the faculty, the organ of which is there
placed; and that the part of the brain where such facul¬
ty resides and acts, by pressing on the skull, forms, on its
convex surface, a protuberance, which indicates exter¬
nally the organ, and is, in fact, its invariable sign.
Dr Gall first became known as an author by the pub¬
lication of two chapters of a work entitled PhUosophisch-
Meicinishe Untersuchungen uber Natur und Kunst im ge-
sunden undkrauken Zustande des Menschen, Vienna, 1791.
This work was not continued ; but in the two chapters pub¬
lished, Dr Gall evinced the spirit which subsequently
guided his researches into the intellectual and moral na¬
ture of man. The first written notice of his inquiries re¬
specting the differences of form observable in the human
head was contained in a familiar letter addressed to Baron
Retzen, which appeared in the Deutschen Mercur of De¬
cember 1798 ; but two years before this Dr Gall had com¬
menced giving courses of private lectures at Vienna, where
his doctrines soon attracted general attention; and Fro-
riep, Martens, and Walther, were among his hearers. He
continued his lectures for five years, with increasing suc¬
cess, when, at length, upon the 8th of January 1802, the
Austrian government issued an order, interdicting them,
on the ground that the doctrines therein promulgated were
dangerous to religion; and, in a general regulation which
accompanied the order, all private lectures were prohibit¬
ed, unless specially permitted by the public authorities.
Dr Gall understood the object of this regulation, and never
solicited permission ; but, as usually happens, the prohibi¬
tion stimulated curiosity, and the doctrines thus interdict¬
ed were studied with greater zeal than before. It is dif¬
ficult to perceive what object the Austrian government
proposed to attain by this foolish interposition, more espe¬
cially as publications on the subject continued to be per¬
mitted, provided they abstained from reflecting on the go¬
vernment for issuing the order above mentioned. On the
6th March 1805, Dr Gall left Vienna, in company with
Dr Spurzheim, whom he had now associated with him in
1 Having observed a woman, aged fifty-four years, who from her youth had been afflicted with water in the head, yet possessed
a mind as active and intelligent as that of any other individual of her class, Dr Gall declared his conviction that the structure of
die brain must be different from what it was generally supposed to be \ a conclusion which Tulpius had already drawn from ob¬
serving a hydrocephalic-patient, whose mental faculties remained unaffected by the disease under which he was labouring. This,
and other analogous cases, convinced Dr Gall of the necessity of instituting minute anatomical researches into the structure and
tunctions of the brain.
VOL. X. 2 P
298 GAL
Gall, St. hig pursuits, and proceeded to Berlin, where he remained
a short time; he then visited all the principal towns and
universities of Germany, and in November 1807 repaired
to Paris, where he established himself as a medical practi¬
tioner, and remained till the time of his death. To the
charge of Spinozism or atheism, which was strongly urged
against him, particularly by some of the French scholars.
Dr Gall replied in a work entitled Des Dispositions innees
de TArm et de VEsprit, ou du Materialisme, Paris, 1812, in
8vo, which he seems to have intended as an authoritative
exposition of the metaphysics of the new science. But a
much ruder onset awaited it. In 1815, and again in 1826,
craniology was attacked in able articles inserted in the Edin¬
burgh Review, where the united powers of argument and ri¬
dicule were forcibly directed against it by writers possessing
an equal mastery over both ; but the results of Dr Gall’s ob¬
servations were not, in the opinion of his followers, destroy¬
ed, nor even materially affected, by the critical severity
with which these had been examined in the Review; and
their confidence in the truth of the system, which to the
uninitiated appeared to be overthrown, gained strength
from each successive shock to which it was exposed. But
whatever may be thought of Dr Gall’s discoveries, either
in reference to the philosophy of mind, or to the moral
and religious opinions of mankind, it seems to be pretty
generally conceded, that, by his dissections and observa¬
tions, he has considerably advanced the knowledge of the
cerebral system, and that, even if he be accounted a bad
philosopher, he has at least shown himself an able anato¬
mist. He demonstrated, what before was only conjectur¬
ed, that cerebral matter does not derive its origin from
the brain, but from the spinal marrow ; which, expanding
as it proceeds, at length forms the two hemispheres into
which the brain is divided. In conjunction with Spurz-
heim, Dr Gall published at Paris, in 1810, Anatomic et
Physiologic du Systeme nerveux en general, et du Cerveau
en particulier ; but of this work there only appeared a vo¬
lume and a half. The most elaborate of his productions,
however, is Organologie, ou Expositions des Instincts Pen-'
chans, fyc. et du siege de leurs Organes, which was com¬
pleted in 1825. His Histoire des Fonctions du Cerveau
had appeared in 1822, in two vols. 8vo. In 1828 Dr Gall
died at Paris, where he had for many years practised me¬
dicine with success, leaving his mantle to Dr Spurzheim,
who had been long associated with him both in the pur¬
suit and the propagandism of phrenology. (See Biogra¬
phic des Hommes Vivants, art. Gall; and Transactions of
the Phrenological Society, Edinburgh, 1824); Necrologie,
1828; Edinburgh Review, vols. xxv. and xlv.) (a.)
Gall, St, a canton of Switzerland. It is bounded on
the north by the canton of Thurgau, on the north-east by
the Lake of Constance, on the east by the Austrian do¬
minions and the principality of Lichtenstein, on the south¬
east by the Grey Bunden, on the south-west by Uri, and
on the west by Schwitz and Zurich. It is 870 square
miles in extent, and contains 45,342 houses, with 146,700
inhabitants, about equally Catholics and Protestants. It is
divided into eight amtsbezirke or bailiwicks. The great¬
er portion of the land is mountainous ; but the districts of
Rhinethal, Norschach, and Gossau, have some fine plains
intermixed with gentle hills. In the other divisions the
mountains are rather lofty, varying in height from 4300
to 7500 feet. None of the mountain regions of Switzer¬
land have been less explored, or are less known, than those
of this canton, trom them issue many of those rivers
which increase the volume and the rapidity of the Rhine
before it enters into the Lake of Constance.
Although the cultivation on the plains is good, the can¬
ton does not produce sufficient corn for the consumption
of the inhabitants; but potatoes are extensively planted,
and fruits of all kinds are raised in large quantities and of
GAL
excellent sorts, especially apples, which furnish cider as Gal
the common drink. The milk of the cows is more used
for butter than for cheese. Some wine is made; but for Gal. 1
want of care it will not bear to be long kept. ^ /
The manufactures of the canton are prosperous and in¬
creasing. The muslins, printed calicoes, and cotton goods,
find ready sale at the German fairs. There are many
large mills for spinning cotton and linen. The chief trade
is in the capital, at Utznach, and Sargans. The govern¬
ment is republican, residing in two assemblies chosen by
those who possess property to a stipulated amount, whilst
the members to be chosen must have a prescribed amount
of capital. The canton contributes to the general fund of
the confederacy 39,450 francs yearly, and furnishes for I
the general defence a contingent of 2630 men ; but all the
population capable of bearing arms are regimented, and
taught the use of them.
Gall, St, the capital of the canton of that name in
Switzerland. It stands between two hills, on the river
Steinach. It is surrounded with walls and ditches, but is
well built, with broad streets and good houses. It con¬
tains 960 houses, and about 9500 inhabitants, of whom
8000 are Protestants. It is a flourishing city, of great in¬
dustry in manufactures of cotton, linen, and silk, and some
in woollen goods. Long. 9. 21. 37. E. Lat. 47. 21. 50. N.
GALLA, an Abyssinian nation. See Abyssinia.
GALLAND, Antony, a celebrated orientalist and
numismatist, was born, in 1646, at Rollat, near Montdi-
dier, in Picardy. His life shows what may be effected by
the love of study, firm resolution, and irreproachable mo¬
rals. By a rare perseverance in his pursuits, Galland
triumphed over the caprices of fortune; by the rectitude
and nobleness of his character he was enabled to over¬
come all the disadvantages of his humble lot. Born of
poor parents, he lost his father at the age of four, being
the youngest of seven children. But his mother, though
reduced to live by the labour of her hands, contrived to
place him in the college of Noyon, where the principal and
a canon of the cathedral charitably undertook the care
and expense of educating young Galland. At the age of
fourteen he lost both his benefactors at the same time,
and returned to his mother with no other wealth than the
knowledge of a little Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, a decid¬
ed taste for letters, and a firm resolution to apply himself
to learning. But as his mother could not of course fur¬
nish the means necessary for the completion of his studies,
it became necessary to learn a trade and renounce litera¬
ture. This cruel distraction Galland supported for a year,
when, finding it intolerable, he one day set out for Paris,
with no other resource than the address of an old relation
who was in good circumstances, and that of an ecclesias¬
tic whom he had sometimes seen at the house of the ca¬
non of Noyon. The hardihood of this resolution created
an interest in his favour; the sub-principal of the college
of Plessis made him continue his studies at that seminary,
and then confided him to the care of M. Petitpied, doctor
of the Sorbonne. Anything more fortunate could not have
happened to Galland than this last act of kindness, which
may be said to have prepared, and indeed ensured the suc¬
cess of his literary career. He now extended his know¬
ledge of Hebrew and the other oriental languages, attend¬
ed the courses of instruction in the Royal College, and
even undertook to make a catalogue of the oriental ma¬
nuscripts of the Sorbonne. Doctor Petitpied had just
placed him in the house of M. Godouin, professor in Ma-
zarin College, when M. de Nointel set out, in 1670, on his
embassy to Constantinople, and took along with him young
Galland, whose labours and acquirements had already at¬
tracted notice. The intention of this minister was to em¬
ploy Galland in procuring from the Greek churches for¬
mal attestations of the articles of their faith, which then
GAL
g|lte]. formed the subject of a grand controversy between Ar-
nauld and Claude. Galland soon acquired at Constanti¬
nople a knowledge of the vulgar Greek, from his long con¬
ferences with the Greek prelates, and obtained from them
attestations, along with much information on the subjects
discussed in France. De La Croix, secretary of the em¬
bassy, makes no mention of these researches in his Me-
moires; but it may be supposed that he found them use¬
ful in the composition of Etat present de VEglise Grecque
et Maronite, published in 1695, 12mo, and reprinted with¬
out any alteration under the title of Turquie Chretienne.
Galland accompanied M. de Nointel in his journey to
Jerusalem, and availed himself of the opportunity to copy
a great number of inscriptions, and even to remove them,
as often as he found it practicable to do so. Of these,
Montfaucon has published some fragments in his Palceo-
graphie. From Syria Galland returned directly to France,
whence he immediately set out again for the Levant with
the intention of collecting more medals. In 1679 he un¬
dertook a third voyage, being charged by the India com¬
pany to collect every thing calculated to enrich the ca¬
binet of Colbert; but this commission having ceased in
consequence of changes which took place in the com¬
pany, Colbert, and, after his death, Louvois, instructed
Galland to continue his researches, and caused the title of
antiquary to the king to be conferred on him. At the
moment when he was about to embark at Smyrna to re¬
turn to his native country, he was on the point of perish¬
ing in an earthquake. The house which he occupied fell,
and buried him in the ruins, under which he remained until
next day, hreathing with difficulty through accidental open¬
ings in the rubbish. On his return to Paris, Thevenot, keeper
of the king’s library, and D’Herbelot, the celebrated orien¬
tal scholar, availed themselves of his labours. But death
having soon deprived him of both these learned men, he
attached himself to Bignon, a zealous protector of men of
letters, whom he also lost the following year. It appears
to have been the fortune of Galland continually to lose
those useful protections which acknowledged merit' is
sometimes long in obtaining; but such was the esteem
inspired by his attainments and his character, that death
no sooner deprived him of one support than he found an¬
other. houcault, intendant of Lower Normandy, supplied
the place of Bignon, and received Galland into his house,
where, in the midst of a fine library, and a numerous col-
lection of medals, he applied himself to the composition
of different works, in which he turned to account his know-
ledge of the Arabic, Persian, and Turkish languages, with
which he had rendered himself familiar during his resi¬
dence in the East. In 1701, he was admitted into the Aca-
1dS°f' InscriPtions> although he resided at Caen; in
1/06 he returned to take up his habitation in Paris; and,
three years afterwards, he obtained the chair of Arabic in
t ie tioyal College of France. This learned man termi-
17 i ^a^or*ous> useful, and irreproachable life, on the
/ . ot February 1715, at the age of sixty-nine. The fol-
owmg is a list of his printed works: 1. Trois Lettres
touchant la critique M. de Guillet, sur le Voyage de Grece
19 .o Pnnted in tlle reply of Spon, Lyons, 1679, in
mo, . I aroles remarquables, bons mots, et maximes
aes Unentaux, traduits de leurs ouvrages Arabes, Persans,
t tifurcs, avfc des remarques, Paris, 1694, in 12mo ; 3.
C /Air'1!0 lan* ^ Flistoire des quatre Gordiens, prouvee
par es Medailles, Paris, 1696, in 12mo ; 4. Lettre touchant
eiSri-lleS anti(lues’ publiees par le P. Chamillard,
i- n’. in 12mo; 5. Lettre touchant la nouvelle ex-
I S ?n 1<iUne mddaille d’or du cabinet du Roi, Caen,
tu„ r 111 ,m1° 5 6- Lettre sur le meme sujet, printed in
e Journal des Savants, 15th August 1705: 7. Observa-
trJfsu‘ ffuelques medailles de Tetricus le pere, et d’au-
wees du cabinet de M. Ballonseaux, Caen, 1701, in
GAL
8vo; 8. De 1’origine et du progres du Caffe, translated
from an Arabic manuscript in the library of the king, Caen,
1699, in 12mo ; 9. Les Mille et Une Nuits, contes Arabes,
traduits en Francais, Paris, in 12vols. 12mo; 10. Relation
de la Mort du Sultan Osman, et du couronnement du Sul¬
tan Mustapha, translated from the Turkish, Paris, 1678,
in 12mo ; 11. Several articles in the Journal de Trevoux;
12. Letters written from Smyrna and Constantinople ; 13.
Contributions to the Menagiana, as well as to the Biblio-
theque Orientale of D’Herbelot, who died before the
printing of the work was completed ; 14. Ten dissertations
and memoirs for the collection of the academy of which
he was a member. Since the death of Galland there
have been published of his, 1. Contes et Fables Indiennes
de Pidpai et de Lokman, Paris, 1724, in 12mo; 2. Disser¬
tation sur une medaille Grecque de 1’Empereur Diadume-
men, frappee a Ephese, 1739; 3. Relation de 1’esclavage
dun Marchand Francais de la ville de Cassis a Tunis,
1809. The manuscripts left by Galland were, 1. His-
toire des Princes de la lignee de Tamerlan, depuis le
Sultan Abou-Said-Bahadur, jusqu’au Sultan Abou-Said-
Kourkan; 2. Histoire Othomane, traduite du Turc de
Naima Effendi; 3. Vocabularium Turcico-Latinum; 4. A
translation of the History of Djenguyz-Khan, extract¬
ed from the Persian History of Mirkhoud; 5. Cata¬
logue d’ecrivains Arabes, Persans, et Turcs; 6. Journal
de mon sejour a Constantinople pendant 1’annee 1672 et
1673; 7. Dictionnaire Numismatique ; 8. Relation de ses
Voyages; 9. Traduction de 1’Alcoran; 10. Necrologie de
la mort des Savants pour chaque jour de 1’annee de 1500
a 1701 ; 11. Relation d’un Voyage fait a Constantinople
en 1679 et 1680; 12. Etat present des lies de Samos, de
Nicaire, de Patmos, et du iVlont Athos; 13. Description
de la Ville de Constantinople en 1671 et 1672; 14. Rela¬
tion des Evenemens qui se sont passes a Constantinople
en 1671 et 1672. (A.)
GALLEON, in naval affairs, a sort of ship or vessel
employed by the Spaniards in the commerce of the West
Indies.
GALLEOT, a small galley designed only for chase, and
carrying one mast, with two pattereroes.
GALLERY, in Architecture, a covered place in a house,
of much greater length than breadth, and usually in the
wings of a building, its use being chiefly to walk in.
Gallery, in Fortification, a covered walk across the
ditch of a town, made of strong beams covered with planks,
and loaded with earth. Sometimes it is covered with raw
hides, to defend it from the fire of the besieged.
Gallery of a Mine is a narrow passage or branch of a
mine carried on under ground to a chamber in a work de¬
signed to be blown up.
GALLEY, a kind of low flat-built vessel, furnished with
one deck, and navigated with sails and oars, particularly
in the Mediterranean. By the Greek authors under the
eastern empire this kind of vessel was called ycikoaci and
yaXua, by the Latin authors of the same time galea; and
hence, according to some, the modern denomination. Some
say it was called galea, because a casque or helmet was
carried on the prow, as Ovid attests (de Tristibus). The
French call it galere, because it seems the top of the mast
is usually cut in the form of a hat, which the Italians call
galero. Others derive both galea and galere from a fish
called by the Greeks yakturrn or £/p/af, and by us the sword¬
fish, which this vessel resembles. Others, again, derive
galley, gallea, galere, galleasse, Sec. from the Syriac and
Chaldee gaul, and galin, a man exposed on the water in
a vessel of wood.
^ GALLI, in Antiquity, a name given to the priests of
Cybele, from the river Gallus in Phrygia ; but of the ety¬
mology ot the name we have no certain account.
GALLICIA, a division of the Austrian empire, usually
299
Galleon
II
Gallieia.
V ^
300
GAL
GAL
Gallicia.
designated as a kingdom. The whole of it formerly consti¬
tuted a part of the kingdom or republic of Poland, and, by
the successive dismemberments of that unfortunate coun¬
try, has been transferred to the house of Austria. It is a
long tract of land, one part being the most northern terri¬
tory of the empire, whilst another part enters into the mid¬
dle region of it. It extends between 47. 10. and 50.44. of
north latitude, and between 18 47. and 26. 25. east longi¬
tude, over 33,572 square miles. It is bounded on the north
by the republic of Cracow and the kingdom of Poland, on
the east by Russia, on the south-east by Turkish Moldavia,
on the south and south-west by Hungary, and on the west
by the circle of Teschen, in Moravia.
According to the census of 1817, Gallicia contained
ninety-eight cities, 191 market-towns, 6175 villages, and
617,210 dwelling-houses. The inhabitants then amounted
to 3,761,922, of whom 182,650 were Jews. Since that
period the population has rapidly increased, and in 1830
it was calculated at 4,500,000. The prevailing religion is
the Catholic, but divided into the Latin and the Greek
ritual. There are a bishop and thirty-six churches of the
Greek church, nineteen congregations of Lutherans, and
thirteen of Calvinists, while the Jews have 294 syna¬
gogues, which are governed by a rabbi and six elders. All
are alike established and paid by the government.
The land stretches out gradually from the north side
of the Carpathian Mountains, and terminates in that vast
plain which extends to the Baltic Sea, with scarcely an
intervening hill. The Carpathians form part of Gallicia,
extending in some of their projections to the banks of the
Vistula. The more eastern circles are very mountainous,
and those of Bukovina and Czernowitz peculiarly so. The
declination of the land is generally towards the north,
and the streams, which all fall into the Vistula, are emp¬
tied into the Baltic Sea, excepting a small portion of the
eastern part, the w-aters of which run to the Black Sea, after
joining the Danube. The Vistula is not a river of Galli¬
cia, but merely forms part of the boundary between it and
the kingdom of Poland. It receives the waters of the fol¬
lowing rivers: ls£, those of the Dunajew, which rises in the
Carpathians, receives the waters of the Poprad, also a na¬
vigable river, and some smaller streams, and after a course
of 115 miles through the circles of Sandec, Bochnia, and
Tarnow, falls into the Vistula near Nowopole; 2^, those
of the Wisloka, which rises in the Carpathians, and after a
course of eighty miles through the circles of Jaslow and
Tarnow, enters the Vistula; 3c?, those of the San, which
receives the tributary streams of the Wislok and Tanew,
and, after a tortuous course of nearly 200 miles, is lost in
the Vistula near Lapiszow; kth, those of the Bug, which
rises near Soligory, in the circle of Zloczow, and above
Sokal enters the kingdom of Poland. The rivers which
run to the Black Sea are but small till they quit Gallicia,
though their sources are within the province. They are,
the Dniester, the Stry, the Podhorze, the Pruth, the Se-
reth, and the Moldawa. There are no canals, and no lakes
of any extent.
from the nature and extent of the country, the soil is
very various. , In the west and in the north there are
many sandy tracts, in the vicinity of the rivers many mo¬
rasses, and, taken as a whole, only indifferent land; but
in the east and south-east divisions the soil is for the
most part excellent and easily worked, and with moderate
agriculture is found highly productive.
That part of the land which is most naturally fertile is so
badly cultivated as to yield but little increase. Wheat and
rye are said not to produce more than five times the mea¬
sure of the seed that is sown, and barley and oats not more
than six times. The poverty and the ignorance of the pea¬
santry are impediments to their gaining much more pro¬
duce than they consume ; and for what little surplus corn
they gain, it is generally sold to the usurious Jews before (
it is thrashed out. The working cattle and utensils are of
the most miserable kind ; and very little manure is applied
to renovate the exhausted soil. About one third of the'
land is covered with forests, and some fine timber is annu¬
ally supplied to commerce. The chief production is corn
some small portion of which is sent by the Vistula to Dant-
zick, but the larger part is sold to the inhabitants of the
eastern parts of Hungary. Oxen, horses, and cows, are
few, and of bad races, though the Austrian government
have taken much pains to introduce better breeds.
The chief mineral production is rock-salt, from the great
mine near Cracow, which supplies a considerable part of
Gallicia, Bohemia, and Austrian Silesia. The mine in
question, Wieliczka, yields annually near 25,000 tons of
culinary salt. There are also some mines of iron, and
others of zinc, but they are not very productive.
There is scarcely any commerce except for the native
productions, but the contraband trade is very extensive,
being conducted by the Jews from Lemberg and Brody,
over the boundaries of the Russian empire, and with Cra¬
cow for colonial wines. The manufactures are almost ex¬
clusively of a domestic kind.
GALLICISM, a mode of speech peculiar to the French
language, and contrary to the rules of grammar in other
languages. With us it is used to denote such phrases or
modes of speech in English as are formed after the French
idiom.
GALLIPOLI, a sea-port, the seat of a bishop, in the
province of Otranto, in the kingdom of Naples. It is si¬
tuated on an island in the Bay of Taranto, but connected by
a bridge with the main land. The haven is connected by
a mole, but the entrance is dangerous on account of the
rocks. It is strongly fortified both on the land and the sea
side. It contains, besides the cathedral, ten churches, an
ecclesiastical seminary, with some other establishments for
education, and, with the suburbs, 8141 inhabitants. The
land near it yields oil of great celebrity. In the city,
cotton, hosiery, and muslins, are manufactured, and an ex¬
tensive tunny fishery is carried on. Long. 17. 2. E. Lat.
40. 20. N.
GALLOIS, John, one of the founders of the Journal
des Savans, was born at Paris on the 11th of June 1632.
From his infancy he evinced a strong inclination for learn¬
ing, which his father, an advocate in the parliament, cul¬
tivated with the greatest care. Having embraced the ec¬
clesiastical state, he turned his studies towards theology,
and at the same time endeavoured to perfect himself in the
knowledge of Greek and of Hebrew, that he might be able
to read the sacred books in the originals ; he also devoted his
leisure hours to literature and the sciences ; and as he was
endowed with an excellent memory, as well as a sound judg¬
ment, his different acquisitions arranged themselves with¬
out confusion or disorder in his mind. To learning equal¬
ly solid and various he joined the talent, then rare among
scholars, of writing his mother tongue with precision and
elegance ; and hence no one could be better qualified than
he for conducting a work having for its object to make
known the literary and scientific productions of other na¬
tions. Such was the object of the Journal des Savans;
and as the privilege had been withdrawn from Sallo, on the
complaints of some writers whom he had censured with too
great bitterness, Colbert bestowed it on the Abbe Gallois
in 1666. The latter had the sole charge of this journal
till 1674, when the amount of labour which it imposed,
and his other avocations, forced him to abandon it alto¬
gether. Colbert, who had appreciated the merit of Gallois,
gave him at first an apartment in his hotel, and afterwards,
during his journeys to Versailles, intrusted it entirely to
his care. It has been alleged that this great minister de¬
sired to learn Latin, and that he retained the Abbe Gal-
:
gal GAL 301
s yio lois for the purpose of instructing him in that language.
^Kll But, however this may be, it is certain that, while Colbert
ijjallu jived, Gallois enjoyed the highest favour, although he never
'"r'C1 took advantage of it to promote his own advancement or
fortune. On the contrary, he was singularly moderate and
disinterested; the only benefice he possessed was the abbey
of Corres, the revenue of which was so small that he re¬
signed it because it had become chargeable to him, and
never thought of asking another. But if he was careless
of all that concerned himself, none was more active or
more indefatigable in soliciting assistance for unfortunate
men of letters. It is believed that it was he who gave to
die minister the plan of the Academy of Inscriptions, al¬
though he did not become a member; but he had been
admitted into the Academy of Sciences in 1668, and in
1673 he filled the place of Bourzeis in the French Academy,
being admitted the same day with Flechier and Racine.
After the death of his illustrious protector, he obtained
the place of keeper of the king’s library ; and, some years
afterwards, when he lost this situation, he was, by way of
compensation, appointed professor of the Greek language
in the Royal College. After the remodelling of the Aca¬
demy of Sciences, he was placed in the class of geometry ;
and he then proposed to publish the treatise of Pappus, of
which there only existed a defective Latin translation ; but
this design was not carried into execution. The Abbe
Gallois died on the 19th of April 1707, in the fifty-seventh
year of his age. Notwithstanding the extreme mediocrity
of his fortune, he had collected more than twelve thousand
choice volumes, a catalogue of which was printed in 1710.
Besides his contributions to the Journal des Savans, the
Abbe Gallois wrote, 1. Traduction Latine du Traite de
Paix des Pyrenees, Paris, 1659, in fol.; 2. Remarques sur
le projet de I’Histoire de France, dresse par Ducange,
printed in the new edition of the Bibliot/ieque Historique
de France, tome iii.; 3. Reponse a 1’ecrit de David Gre¬
gory, touchant les lignes appelees Robervalliennes, qui ser-
vent a transformer les figures, Mem. de 1’Acad. des Sci¬
ences, 1692 ; with some others of less note. The eloge of
Gallois was pronounced by Fontenelle. (a.)
GALLON, a measure of capacity both for things dry
and liquid, containing four quarts.
GALLOP, in the manege, is the swiftest natural pace
of a horse, performed by reaches or leaps; the two fore¬
feet being raised almost at the same time, and when these
are in the air, and just ready to touch the ground again,
the two hind feet are lifted almost at once. The word is
borrowed from the barbarous Latin calupare, or calpare,
to run. Some, however, derive it from caballicare ; and
others from the Greek xaXira£s/v, to spur a horse.
GALLOWAY, a province of Scotland, divided into two
districts, comprehending the stewartry of Kirkcudbright and
Wigtonshire. See Kirkcudbright and Wigtonshire.
GALLOWS, an instrument of punishment, on which
persons convicted of capital crimes are executed by hang¬
ing. Amongst our ancestors it was called furca, or fork;
the gallows being a fork driven into the ground, across the
legs of which was laid a beam, to which the rope was fast¬
ened.
GALLUS, C. Cornelius, a native of Forum Julii, now
Frejm, in Gaul, was distinguished amongst Latin poets for
us elegiac poetry, being the intimate friend of Virgil, who
speaks in the very highest terms of his works. Fie was
appointed prefect of Egypt by Augustus 30 b. c., and was
governor at the time when Antony and Cleopatra put an
en, t0 their lives. A short time afterwards he was recall-
c , and being accused of treason, was tried and condemn-
0 ,*j? c‘eath (26 b. c.) ; but he escaped the ignominy of a
pu ic execution by suicide, at the age of forty, according
o Eusebius. Of his four books of elegies, which he ad-
ressed to his beloved Lycoris, nothing has been preserv¬
ed. The six elegies known under his name are the work Galvani.
on Maximianus Gallus Etruscus, who flourished under Anas- '
tasius (491, a. d.). Besides these elegies, Gallus translat¬
ed a Greek poem of Euphorion of Chalcedon ; and some
ascribe also to him the poem Ciris, generally considered
as the work of Virgil. (Fabric. Bibl. Lat. i. 14; Souchay,
in the Mem. de l'Acad, des Inscript, tom. xvi. p. 399.)
GAL VANI, Louis, a celebrated natural philosopher, was
born in 1737, at Bologna in Italy, where many of his rela¬
tions had arrived at distinguished eminence in jurisprudence
and divinity. From boyhood he became enamoured of the
austerities of the Catholic religion, and attached himself to a
convent, the monks of which were celebrated for their atten¬
tion to the solemn duty of visiting the dying. He wished
much to become a member of this order, but was prevail¬
ed on by one of the brotherhood to relinquish the idea,
and then turned his attention to the study of medicine in
its various branches. He studied under Beccaria, Tacconi,
Galli, and especially Galleazzi, whose daughter he after¬
wards married. In 1762 he acquired great reputation by
his inaugural thesis De Ossibus, and was soon afterwards
chosen as public lecturer in the university of Bologna, and
reader in anatomy to the institute of that city. Flis talent
for lecturing was so much admired that vast numbers con¬
stantly attended him ; and he employed his few leisure
hours in making experiments and in the useful study of
comparative anatomy. We find in the Memoirs of the
Institute of Bologna a number of curious observations by
Galvani on the urinary organs, and also on the organs of
hearing in birds.
Soon after his reputation for anatomical and physiologi¬
cal knowledge had been fully established in the Italian
schools, a mere accident led him to that interesting disco¬
very which will transmit his name to the latest posterity.
His wife, for whom he cherished the most ardent affection,
and with whom he had been united for a number of years,
being in a declining state of health, was using a soup made of
frogs by way of restorative. Some of these animals, skin¬
ned for the purpose, happened to be lying on a table in Gal-
vani’s laboratory, where also stood an electrical machine,
when one of the persons who assisted him in conducting
his experiments unintentionally brought the point of a
scapel near the crural nerves of a frog which lay near the
conductor, and immediately the muscles of the limb were
violently convulsed. Signora Galvani, a woman of a pene¬
trating understanding, and a lover of science, having wit¬
nessed the phenomenon, instantly informed her husband.
On his arrival Galvani repeated the experiment, and dis¬
covered that the convulsions only happened when the sca¬
pel was in contact with the nerve, and when a spark was at
the same time drawn from the conductor. After an almost
endless variety of experiments, conducted with great inge¬
nuity, but which it would be foreign to the design of this
article to enumerate here, he concluded that all animals
have within them an electricity of a peculiar nature ; that
this fluid is contained in other parts, but is most apparent
in the nerves and muscles ; and that it is secreted by the
brain, and diffused by the nerves through various parts
of the body. To this new principle, which is now com¬
monly called Galvanism, he gave the name of Animal
Electricity.
Fie compared each muscular fibre to a small Leyden
phial, and attempted to explain the phenomena of muscu¬
lar motion by analogies taken from that instrument. He
also thought of its pathological influence in rheumatic, con¬
vulsive, paralytic, and other nervous affections. His first
publication on this grand discovery was entitled Aloysii
Galvani de viribus Electricitatis in Motu Musculari Com-
mentarius, which made its appearance in 4to in the year
1 /91, and was printed for the Institute of Bologna. This
work instantly attracted the attention of philosophers both
302
GAL
GAL
Galvani. in Italy and other countries; and it was soon followed by
numerous publications, in some of which the sentiments
of Galvani were defended, and in others opposed. Ihe
celebrated Volta turned his attention to the subject, and pro¬
duced a number of arguments to prove that Galvani’s opi¬
nion respecting animal electricity was erroneous, deriving
the phenomena from the electric matter of the atmosphere,
and allowing the nerves and muscles no higher function
than that of being the most sensible tests hitherto discover¬
ed. The doctrine of Volta met with many admirers and
advocates ; yet there are still to be met with in the learned
world many persons who support the opinions of Galvani,
and adhere to his original theory, in the defence of which
he displayed equal candour and ingenuity, and by which
he may be justly considered as deserving that distinguish¬
ed place amongst experimental philosophers, which the
union of his name with the most interesting natural pheno¬
mena will probably for ever secure to him.
These important inquiries, joined to the duties of his of¬
fice as professor, and his extensive practice as surgeon and
accoucheur, in both of which capacities he eminently excel¬
led, afforded abundant scope for his indefatigable industry.
He composed a variety of memoirs upon topics connected
with his profession ; but these have not, as far as we know,
been published. He delighted to converse with men of
science, and to read and investigate the merits of new pub¬
lications in their society, which he found a valuable source
of intellectual improvement.
The character of Galvani in private life is allowed to
have been most exemplary ; and his sensibility, which was
naturally strong, received a violent shock in the death of
his wife, Lucia Galleazzi, in 1790. This event brought on
an alarming melancholy, which he delighted to encourage,
by visiting her tomb in the nunnery of St Catharine, and
pouring out his unavailing lamentations over her grave.
He was punctual in the discharge of his religious duties, and
retained through life the pious impressions which had been
early made on his mind. To this may probably be traced
the misfortune which afterwards befel him, and which un¬
doubtedly hastened his end. The Cisalpine republic having
required of all those holding public employments an oath to
the government, Galvani refused to take it. Who can blame
him, says M. Alibert, for having followed the voice of his
conscience, that internal and sacred voice which alone pre¬
scribes the duties of men, and which preceded all human
laws ? Who can avoid commending him for having sacri¬
ficed, with exemplary resignation, all the emoluments at¬
tached to the office which he held ? Besides, this learned
professor entertained strict notions as to those solemn obli¬
gations, which are so often abused in the hope of strengthen¬
ing the laws of empires; he thought, with reason, that they
were only suitable to nations filvcapable of violating them.
Deprived of his rank and employnferjLrand almost reduced
to indigence, Galvani retired to the residence of his brother
James, and soon afterwards fell into a state of extenuation
and languor, which, notwithstanding all the skill and atten¬
tion, equally enlightened and generous, of Doctors Uttini
and Cingari, continued to gain ground. Moved by his
great celebrity, and ashamed of the severity with which
they had treated a man who valued his conscience above all
earthly possessions or distinctions, the Cisalpine government
now decreed that, notwithstanding his obstinacy, he should
be reinstated in his chair. But the indulgence was useless ;
it came too late. His sensibility had received too many
violent shocks to leave a hope of recovery; and death,
which he had for some time desired, at length came to his
relief on the 4th December 1798. In the Memoirs of the
Institute of Sciences of Bologna are to be found the works,
few in number, but of the highest importance, which have
immortalized the name of Galvani. These are, 1. De re-
nrbus atque ureteribus volatilium ; 2. De volatilium aure ;
3. De viribus Electricitatis in motu muscular! Commenta-
rius, already mentioned.
GALVANISM is the name which has been given to G'i),
that branch of physical science which treats of the chemi- ^ v
cal agencies of electricity, and of its influence upon the
animal frame. The chemical effects of electrical action
had been previously studied by Cavendish as a branch of
ordinary electricity, and it was not till the year 1790, when
Galvani made the interesting discovery that muscular con¬
tractions were excited in dead frogs by the contact of me¬
tals, that the new science of Galvanism was established.
The boundaries of Galvanism were widely extended by the
invention of the pile in 1800, by M. Volta of Corna, in
consequence of which the name of Voltaic Electricity has
been very generally substituted instead of Galvanism.
Had we been disposed to adopt the earlier and more po¬
pular name, and to have treated the subject under the fore-
said head, the state of the science would have forced us to
abandon our design. The splendid discoveries of Mr Fa¬
raday, to which we have referred in various parts of our
article on electricity, have given a new form to electrical
science ; and as but a part of them have been published, we
could only have presented our readers with an imperfect
and disjointed article, the defects of which it rvould have
been necessary to supply in a subsequent part of the alpha¬
bet. The subject of Galvanism, including Animal Elec¬
tricity, will therefore be treated under the head of Vol¬
taic Electricity, which will contain a complete view of
Mr Faraday’s discoveries, as well as of those which may be
made by other philosophers before that article is required
for the press.
GALWAY, a county in the province of Connaught, in
Ireland, is bounded on the north by the counties of Mayo
and Roscommon; on the east by those of Roscommon,
King’s County, and Tipperary ; on the south by the coun¬
ty of Clare and by Galway Bay ; and on the west by the At¬
lantic Ocean.
Its name is generally supposed to be derived from Gal,
a stranger, or Gael, a merchant, and Iv, a territory, indi¬
cating a country inhabited by foreigners, or frequented by
merchants. In the time of Ptolemy it was inhabited by
the Auteri. In a later period it was divided into the dis¬
tricts of Clanconow, Hy-Maine, Maghullen, Lilanchia, Hy-
Fiacrin-Aidne, afterwards Clanrickard, and Hy-Tartagh.
In the commencement of the sixteenth century it was por¬
tioned out amongst a number of families or septs, of which
the principal were the O’Flahertys and O’Maleys in the
west; the Burkes and Berminghams in the north ; the 0’-
Naghtens, O’Kellys, and O’Dalys in the east; and the 0’-
Heynes, the O’Maddens, and the O’Shaughnerrys in the
north. It was made shire-ground by Elizabeth in 1569,
and is now divided into seventeen baronies, of which Baly-
more and Dunmore are in the north ; Athenry, Clare, Dun-
kellin, and Tyaquin, in the centre ; Killian, Kilconnel, and
Clonmacnoon, in the east; Longford, Loughrea, Leitrim,
and Kiltartan, in the south; and Arran, Ballynahinch,
Moycullen, and Ross, in the wrest. These are subdivided
into a hundred and six parishes, and nine parts of parishes,
the remaining parts of which are in some of the adjoining
counties.
According to the ecclesiastical divisions of Ireland, the
county contains a hundred and sixteen parishes, of which
forty-nine are in the archdiocese of Tuam, thirty-seven in
the diocese of Clonfert, twenty in Kilmacduagh, eight in
Elphin, and two in Killala. The episcopal seats of the
first three of these sees are in this county. The archdio¬
cese of Tuam extends also over a large portion of Mayo
and Roscommon, comprehending a space of seventy-seven
miles by sixty-three, being the largest see in the country
in extent of surface. The bishop’s lands, whence he de¬
rives the greater part of his income, are estimated at 49,281
gh
GALWAY.
303
hrav acres, and his revenue is returned as amounting to L.5549
fY'-per annum. In the town of Tuam there is a neat but
small cathedral, which is used as the parish church. The
Roman Catholic archbishop has just completed another
cathedral, which is one of the most splendid fabrics for
religious worship in Ireland. The see of Ardagh, in the
county of Longford, is united to Tuam. The diocese of
Clonfert, founded at the close of the sixth century, and ex¬
tending into the county of Roscommon, is in the south¬
eastern part of the county. Its lands, together with those
of Kilmacduagh, which were united with it in 1602, amount
to 6555 acres, but no return of the amount of its income
is extant. Part of the bishop’s emoluments arises from
what are called the quarto, pars, being a portion, generally
a fourth, of the tithes of certain parishes. The cathedral,
which is also the parish church of Clonfert, is an ancient
and capacious structure; the bishop’s palace is in its imme¬
diate neighbourhood. The cathedral of Kilmacduagh is
now the church of one of the parishes which constitute the
deanry. According to the new episcopal arrangements,
the dioceses of Killala and Achonry are to be united with
Tuam on the next vacancy, and those of Clonfert and Kil¬
macduagh with that of Killaloe.
Galway is naturally divided by Lough Corrib into two
great divisions, differing from each other in several striking
points. The eastern division, which comprehends all the
county except the four western baronies, rests on a lime¬
stone base, is convertible into good tillage land, and is, ge¬
nerally speaking, level; the western, comprehending the
three last-named baronies (for that of Arran is a cluster
of islands at the mouth of Galway Bay), has a substratum of
granite, and is barren, rugged, and mountainous. The south¬
ern part of the former of these divisions is supposed by
some to be a continuation of the Golden Yale of Limerick,
so celebrated for its fertility, and produces the finest wheat,
except in the region of the Slieveboghta Mountains, which
form part of the boundary between this county and Clare.
The northern part of the same division is also rich pasture
and tillage ground, and beautifully diversified with hill and
dale. Some of the intermediate country is comparatively
barren; but those parts which would not repay the expense
of tillage form excellent pasturage for sheep, which is the
great staple commodity of the county.
The w'estern division is divided into the three districts of
Connemara, Tar-Connaught, and Joyce’s Country, which
correspond in boundary with the three modern baronies of
Ballynahinch, Moycullen, and Ross. The name of Conne¬
mara is, however, often applied to the whole district, and
signifies the Bays of the Ocean. Its highest mountains
are the group of Benabola, or the Twelve Pins, which oc¬
cupy a space of about five square miles, midway between
Lough Corrib and Aghris Point, the most western pi-ojec-
tion of the county. Knockenhiggen, the highest of these,
is 2400 feet high. The cliff to the south of Glen Ina pre¬
sents a naked perpendicular cliff 1200 feet in elevation,
over which a considerable sheet of water is precipitated.
But this district, although mountainous, is not an elevated
country; the surface of most of it is not a hundred feet
above the level of the sea, rising from the edge of Galway
Bay, in a gently sloping plain, to a height of not more than
three hundred feet, where there are some hills about seven
mndred feet high. Joyce’s Country, more northwards, is
an elevated tract, with flat-topped hills of from 1300 to
-000 feet high, with deep narrow valleys lying between
them.
1 he rivers are few and small. The Suck, the largest, rises
m Boscommon, and forms the eastern boundary, passing
>y Athleague and Ballynasloe, till it joins the Shannon at
uannon harbour. This latter river then forms part of the
boundary to Mount Shannon. The Suck is joined by the
icvin and Ahascragh rivers. The Blackwater, which forms
part of the northern boundary between Galway and Mayo, Galway,
discharges itself into Lough Corrib. Near Shruil it sinks
at once into the ground through an open called a shallow,
and, after a short underground course, bursts forth again
through several springs. The Carnamart passes through
the southern baronies, and falls into Galway Bay. The
Ballynahinch rises in the Twelve Pins Mountains, and after
a short but rapid course empties itself into Birterbuy Bay.
The lakes are numerous. Lough Corrib extends from
Galway town northwards thirty miles, affording a large
scope for inland navigation. It communicates with the
sea by the Galway river, but as its level is fourteen feet
above high-tide mark, the fall is such as to prevent a water
passage by the river from the bay to the lake. An attempt
made to connect them by a canal having failed, is still
pointed out under the name of Lynch’s Folly. The lake
is studded with many islands, some of them thickly inha¬
bited. Near it is Lake Ross, which, with some smaller
lakes, receives a large supply of water from streams, but
has no visible outlet. In Connemara are a number of
lakes extending nearly twenty miles from Lough Corrib to
the sea, besides several others in other parts. About twen¬
ty-five of these are more than a mile in length each, and
there are upwards of an hundred of a smaller diameter. The
principal are lakes Ina, Derryclare, Ballynahinch, Poula-
gopple, and Fea. Lough Reagh, at the town of the same
name, is more remarkable for scenic beauty than extent.
Besides these perennial lakes, there are several low tracts
which are covered with water during a great part of the year :
they are called Furloughs. The largest is Turloughmore,
extending from Tuam nearly to Clare Galway. Another of
large size is near Rahasane. A few sheep are grazed on
them during four months in summer, but they are unpro¬
fitable in winter. They are mostly of easy drainage ; the
main obstacle being the conflicting rights of the proprie¬
tors of the soil.
Galway enjoys the advantage of a very extended line of
sea-coast, indented by numerous and safe harbours. Com¬
mencing at Killery Bay in the north, which separates the
counties of Galway and Mayo, the first bay on the western
coast is Ballynakill, capable of accommodating large ships,
and sheltered by Truchelaun or Heath Island. Next in
succession is Cleggan Bay, having Ennisbofin in its offing.
From Cleggan to Aghris Cape, the most western point of
the county, the shore is a low granite, outside of which are
Crua, High and Friar Islands, and Omey Island on its
south. Streamstown is a narrow inlet, within which are
the inhabited islands of Tarbert and Innisturk. Ardbear
harbour divides itself into two inlets, the northern of which
is terminated by the rising village of Clifden ; the latter has
a fine salmon fishery. Mannin Bay, though large, is but
little frequented by shipping. From Slyne Head the coast
turns eastward to Roundstone Bay, having its entrance
protected by the islands of Innisnee and Innislacken ; here
the whole British navy could lie in safety. Next in order
is Birterbuy Bay, deep and safe, and near it is the island
of Cruanakeely. Between it and Kilkerran Bay, the next
in order eastwards, are the islands of Mason, Mynish, and
Fynish, all inhabited ; Elanmacdara and Cruanakeely, now
a deer park. Kilkerran Bay has a most productive kelp
shore of nearly a hundred miles, including its islands of
Annaghvane, Garomna, Lettermore, Lettermullen, Knap-
pagh, and Furnish, yet its mouth is but eight miles broad.
Between Garonna and the main-land is Greatman’s Bay,
and close to it Costello Bay, the most eastern of those in
Connemara. Next is the harbour of Galway, at the
mouth of the River of Galway, having the village of Clad-
dah on its western bank, inhabited by a most industrious
and singular tribe of fishermen, by whom the town and
neighbouring country is chiefly supplied with fish. At
Oranmore the coast turns southwards, and presents the
304
GALWAY.
Galway, harbours of Rynville, Ardfry, Ballynacourty, Stradbally,
Killeen or New Arran, Kinvarra, and Duras, where the
county joins that of Clare. The whole of this coast, from
Greatman’s Bay eastward, together with the northern
shore of Clare, to Blackhead, comprehends the Bay of
Galway, the entrance of which is protected by the three
islands of Arran, forming a distinct barony, and remarkable
as well for many relics of ancient pagan and monastic in¬
stitutions, as for the singular mode of life of the inhabitants.
The climate, though moist, variable, and exposed to
frequent and violent gales from the west, is mild and salu¬
brious. The country is subject to no diseases except those
incident to a population not attentive to domestic neatness,
and frequently in a state of great destitution. Frost or
snow seldom remains long on the western coast, and cattle
of every description continue unhoused during the winter.
The boundary line between the limestone and granitic
district is easily discernible to an intelligent eye, by the di¬
minution of the verdant hue which marks the latter. The high
road from Galway to Oughterard nearly marks the division.
All the country to the north and east of this limit is limestone,
all to the south and west granite, excepting some detached
masses of primitive limestone between Oughterard and
Clifden, and some scattered portions of other minerals, of
great variety of appearance. The component rock of Be-
nebola is quartz, in general distinctly stratified, or at least
schistose. The position of its beds is various. Towards
the western shore they are vertical, easily splitting by in¬
tervening mica plates, and affording a good building stone.
Limestone occurs in some places along the foot of these
mountains, where also is some green serpentine, which is
conveyed to Galway and elsewhere for ornamental pur¬
poses. Round the basis of this group are also gneiss and
mica slate, with bands of hornblende and primitive mica.
Along the north side of Lough Corrib to Ballynakill the
mica slate and hornblende rise' into mountains, and the
limestone disappears. From Lough Mask to Killery Bay
is a transition country of greenstone and grauwacke slate,
covered by the old red sandstone or glomerate. The hjll
of Gian on the shore of Lough Corrib exhibits, in a small
compass, all the formations which occur in the district.
The western end is quartz; the north-eastern side mica
slate ; the middle is penetrated by beds of mica slate, con¬
taining hornblende and granular mica covered by thick
beds of pyritous greenstone. On the south and east are
granite and syenite, which runs under the sandstone, con¬
glomerate towards Oughterard, and this again passes under
the flcetz limestone, which, passing Lough Corrib, occu¬
pies the greater part of Connaught and Leinster. Along
the borders of the flcetz limestone is a series of vast ca¬
verns, usually traversed by subterraneous rivers, a pheno¬
menon which, though not of unfrequent occurrence in
limestone countries, is peculiarly striking here. The suc¬
cession of the stratified rocks may be distinctly seen at the
water-fall at Oughterard. A fine gritstone, highly valued
for making mill-stones, is raised near Dunmore. Crystal¬
line sand, of a superior quality for scythe boards, occurs at
Lough Coutra ; and mowers come for it from great distances.
Lead has been found near Lough Corrib and other parts
of Connemara, manganese at Slieve-an-oir in the south.
Iron was raised at Woodford, and smelted until the timber
was exhausted. The mountains of Slieveboghta, which
separate G-alway from Clare, are siliceous. A beautiful black
marble, without spots or flaws, and susceptible of a high
polish, is raised near the town of Galway in large quanti¬
ties, particularly for chimney-pieces. Mineral spas, mostly
chalybeate, are abundant. T. hat at Kingston was pronoun¬
ced by Kirwan to be one of the best in Europe. At the
village of Quose is a well which instantly kills poultry that
drink of it. A spa at Oughterard draws many invalids to
that town. Others at Athenry, W oodbrook, Rathglass,
Killimore, and Abbert, are equally prized in their respec¬
tive neighbourhoods.
The inhabitants of Galway are not distinguished by any
striking peculiarities from those of the rest of the province.
It is known that, on the settlement of Ireland after the Re¬
storation, great pains were taken to remove to Connaught
such of the native Irish as had been allowed to retain their
property, insomuch that many proprietors of this descrip¬
tion, who had resided in other provinces, were compelled
to exchange their properties for lands in it supposed to be
of equal value with what they were forced to surrender.
They were also prohibited from settling in any of the cor¬
porate towns, or within a mile of the sea-coast, the boun¬
dary of which was called the mile-line. Thus cooped up,
and debarred all opportunities of intermixing with stran¬
gers, it is not surprising that they have retained many
peculiarities of appearance and manners. But these pecu¬
liarities are not confined to this county. One very remark¬
able variety of the species is exhibitecl in the fishermen of
Claddagh. This village is supposed to have been the germ
of the now populous and once commercial town of Galway.
The inhabitants form a community of about 1100 souls,
who intermarry among one another, and jealously resist the
residence of strangers. The men are all fishermen. This
is their sole occupation. They are governed by a mayor,
elected by themselves, whose only mark of office is the
white sail of his boat, and a flag at its mast-head; but to him
they pay implicit deference. He regulates the time of the
sailing of the fishing fleet, and its movements when at sea. At
home the women are mistresses ; the moment the boats’ car¬
goes are unloaded, the whole is transferred to them; they
make the sales and spend the produce, their husbands being
fully satisfied with the liberal allowance of spirits and to¬
bacco they receive from them; but on their fishing expe¬
ditions no ardent spirits are suffered in their boats; their
stock then consists solely of potatoes, oaten bread, fire, and
water. Their language is Irish, which they speak with a harsh
discordant accent. Literary education is almost unknown
among them. The dress of the men consists of three flan¬
nel vests under a fourth of white dimity, a blue rug jacket,
and blue plush breeches never fastened at the knees, blue
worsted stockings, a horizontal-brimmed hat, and a red silk
neckerchief. Among the women, the matron’s dress is a
blue mantle, a red body gown and petticoat, and a silk
handkerchief on the head. Unmarried women are known
by their muslin caps trimmed with the richest lace; rib¬
bons are not worn. Females of all ages are remarkable
for attention to neatness, both in their persons and house¬
hold. It is scarcely necessary to add, that their religion
is almost exclusively Roman Catholic, there being but one
or two exceptions. Marriages are generally preceded by
an elopement, and followed by a boisterous merrymaking.
The possession of a boat, or at least a share of one, is
deemed the qualification requisite to justify a young man
in taking upon himself the charge of a family. The great
village festival is celebrated on St John’s day in mid¬
summer, when all the young men of the village march
through Galway in uniform white jackets, with silken
sashes, and flowers in their hats, carrying flags and stand¬
ards with fanciful devices, and preceded by two or three
of the most arch wags among them, disguised as mummers.
The day terminates with bonfires, dancing, and village
merriment. St Patrick’s day is also a season of peculiar
festivity, which continues for two or three days.
The popidation of the county was as follows at the pe*
riods stated in the under-cited authorities:
1760 De Burgo 82,188
1792 Beaufort 142,000
1812 Parliamentary return.... 261,000
1821 Do 309,599
1831 Do 394,287
GALWAY.
305
According to these calculations, the population has in-
creased with extraordinary rapidity, having nearly tripled
in the course of forty years.
Notwithstanding its great extent and proportionate po¬
pulation, the county sent but eight members to the Irish
parliament; two for the county at large, and two each for
the boroughs of Galway, Athenry, and Tuam. By the
act of Union the number of borough members was redu¬
ced to three, two for the county and one for the town of
Galway. By the reform act this number was increased
to four; the county and town now returning two members
each. The constituency previously to the disfranchise¬
ment of the forty-shilling freeholders was the most nu¬
merous of any county in Ireland. The changes produced
on its numbers by the Catholic relief act, and by the re¬
form act, will best appear by the following table :
L.10. 40s. Total.
950 32,055 34,107
1812 ... 3,008
2540 ... 3,057
L.50. L.20.
1829  828 274
1830  897 299
1831  326 191
From the population returns of 1821, and those of the
commissioners of education in 1824-26, the state of educa¬
tion was as follows:
Boys. Girls.
1821  7,690 3161
1824-26 11,874 6487
Sex not
ascertained.
463,
Total.
10,851
18,824
Of the number of pupils stated in the latter return,
1471 were of the established church, and 17,090 Roman
Catholics. The number educated by grants of public
money was 1600, of those educated by the contributions
of societies or individuals 3626, and of those who paid for
their instruction 13,598. The average proportion of Pro¬
testants to Catholics, estimated from the relative numbers
of the children of each persuasion receiving scholastic
instruction, was as 1 to 11^ nearly.
The eastern part of the county produces the best wheat,
the growth of which requires the preparatory culture of
potatoes. Oats are frequently sown after potatoes in
moory soils less adapted for wheat. Manure is generally
abundant, but most so in the western districts, which do
not admit the growth of wheat. The flat shores of the
bays there are formed of coralline sand, and the quantities
of sea-weed thrown up after storms affords a copious sup¬
ply of vegetable manure. Limestone gravel and marl is
to be had in most other parts. When this substance
is applied to reclaimed bog, the admixture of animal ma¬
nure, however small the quantity, is said to render it
much more effective. When a sufficient quantity of ma¬
nure for potatoes cannot be had, the usual practice is to
pare and burn the surface, for which purpose a broad and
sharp spade, with a considerable bend in the blade to pre¬
vent the necessity of stooping, is made use of. Potatoes
are still planted in ridges by the small farmers, who make
much use of spade culture, particularly in the upland dis-
tncts, where the ruggedness of the surface is unfavour¬
able to the application of the plough. They also pay great
attention to the weeding of their crops. When sea-weed
is used for potato ground, it is previously dried, but used
f resh in preference to being thrown up in heaps to putrefy,
n many places on the sea-shore fine early potatoes are
raised in several feet of sea-sand, manured with sea-weed,
jv uch is succeeded by barley. Oxen are little used in
msbandry, excepting by a few extensive farmers. The
P ough is clumsy and defective. The fences most in use
arp ornied of the stones collected from the surface, and
heiSht ^ve or s*x ^ee*" *n dry walls, broad
a ase, and narrowing upwards. Thrashing-mills are un¬
common ; carts are not generally employed, as the small
cars are cheaper in construction, and more easily worked in Galway,
the mountainous parts. Slide-cars are still in use in some
places, as being the only kind fit to draw loads down steep
hills. The chief markets for grain are Galway, Loughrea,
Tuam, Ballynasloe, Gort, Eyrecourt, and Mount Bellew.
Flour-mills are numerous. Those parts of the eastern
district less fitted for grain are employed in pasturage.
Heathy sheep-walks occupy a very large tract between
Monivae and Galway. An extensive range from Athenry,
stretching to Galway Bay at Kinvarra, is also chiefly oc¬
cupied by sheep. Tracts of coarse moory ground are
attached to many farms, which only require draining, a
practice little known or encouraged to repay the labour
of tillage amply.
A breed of small hardy horses is raised in Connemara;
but, in consequence of the introduction of stallions of large
size, it is declining. The breed of black cattle is chiefly
long-horned. A great improvement has taken place in
sheep as to the carcass, but to the deterioration of the
fleece. Some of the old stock of red deer are occasionally
seen, and hunted down or shot. The great fairs for cattle
and wool are held at Ballynasloe, in May and October.'
Dairies on an extensive scale are unknown; but excellent
butter is made in the neighbourhood of Galway. In Con¬
nemara cows are very frequent with the cottage farmers.
Manufactures are not carried beyond the demand caused
by the domestic consumption of the people. Coarse friezes,
flannels, and blankets are made in all parts, and sold largely in
Galway and Loughrea. Connemara has been long celebrated
for its woollen stockings. They are knit by the hand, and
have a softness and elasticity superior to that of the woven
article; but they are slight, and therefore give but little
wear. The fineness of the wool is one great cause of their
excellence. The women adhere to a very primitive prac¬
tice in the manufacture. When about to commence a pair,
the operator goes to the mountain, clips off from the living
animal the quantity she deems sufficient, and works it up.
Hence it is noways uncommon to see a- sheep with one
side shorn, or a part of the neck and shoulders bare of wool,
according to the judgment or fancy of the stocking knitter.
Coarse linen, of a narrow breadth, called handle linen, is
also made for home consumption ; but sufficient attention
to the spinning and reeling of the yarn, and to the weaving
of the cloth, is wanting to entitle it to appear to advan¬
tage in foreign markets. Coarse sacks of tow, for packing
wool and bacon for exportation from the great provision
marts of the south, are in much demand. The manufac¬
ture of finer linens and diapers was attempted, but with
little success. That of kelp is one of the great sources of
profit on the western shores. It was introduced about the
year 1700. At first the kelp sold as low as from 14s. to
16s. a ton, but rose progressively until it advanced to L.16
a ton in 1810; but since that time it has fallen, both on
account of the increased supply from other quarters, and
from negligence or fraud in the preparation of the home¬
made article. The price is now about L.4 the ton, and the
quantity manufactured about 10,000 tons. Of the minor
manufactures, marble is wrought for domestic and sepul¬
chral purposes in Galway. Coarse pottery and tobacco pipes
are made in the same town, and at Creggs and Dunsandle.
Felt hats and coarse straw bonnets are made in several
places. Feathers are brought in great quantities from the
islands of Arran, where they are procured from the puffins
and other sea-fowl that frequent the cliffs on the coasts.
They are caught by men trained to the practice, who are let
down at night from the projecting crags above, by means
of a rope tied round their waist, to the haunts of the birds;
and on supplying themselves with all they can capture, they
are hauled up again in the morning. Sea fowls’ eggs are
collected in large quantities in the same manner.
Amongst the relics of antiquity are the round towers of
2 Q
GALWAY.
306
Galway. Ardrahan, Ballygaddy, Kilbannon, Kilmacduagb, Meelick,
and Murrough. The last-named ot these is of very small
dimensions; that of Kilmacduagh, which is still fifty feet
high, inclines seventeen feet from the perpendicular. Raths
are numerous, and several cromleachs are still to be seen
in good preservation. The ruins of monastic buildings are
also numerous. That of Knockmoy, about six miles from
Tuam, contains the monument of O Connor, one of the kings
of Ireland. It is adorned with fresco paintings, which are
still in a state of some preservation. Ancient castles are
likewise numerous; some have been kept in repair, and
are still inhabited; but by much the greater number are
in ruins. The castle of Tuam, built in 1161 by Roderic
O’Connor, king of Ireland, is said to have been the first
building of this description of stone and mortar in Ireland.
The remains of a round castle, a form of building very un¬
common in the military architecture of the country, is to
be seen between York and Kilmacduagh.
Galway, the county town, is also a county in itself, hav¬
ing an exclusive local jurisdiction, which extends two miles
on every side except the south. It stands on the northern
shore of the Ray of Galway, on the eastern bank of the
river of the same name, and is enclosed on the land side
by the baronies of Clare, Dunkellin, and Moycullen. It is
supposed by some to be the Nagnata or Naguata of Ptole¬
my. It certainly was considered a position of much ^ im¬
portance from the earliest period, as in the divisions of the
island into north and south, at first made by the descend¬
ants of Heremen, and afterwards repeated by Conn and
Eogan, it was fixed upon as the eastern extremity of the
line of demarcation, which proceeded eastwards to Duolin.
Little, however, is known of it until after the arrival of tlm
English, at which time it was under the protection of
O’Flaherty, who possessed the adjoining district to the
west. On the extinction of the native dynasty of the
O’Connors, the town fell into the hands of the De Burgos,
the head of a branch of which, under the name of M‘Wil¬
liam Lighter, leng governed it by magistrates of his own
appointment. After it had been secured by walls, which
began to be built in 1270, it became the residence of'a
number of enterprising settlers, through whom it attained
a position of much commercial celebrity. Of these settlers
the principal families, fourteen in number, are still known
by the name of the Tribes of Galway. Their names are
preserved in the following distich :—
Athy, Blake, Bodkin, Browne, Deane, Darcy, Lynch,
Joyes, Kirwan, Martin, Morris, Skerrett, French.
The tribe whose name is not included in the rhyme was
called Ffont. These families became so closely connected
by intermarriages, that dispensations are frequently requi¬
site for the canonical legality of marriages among them at
present. The town rapidly increased from this period in
wealth and commercial rank, in this respect far surpassing
the rival city of Limerick. Richard II. granted it a char¬
ter of incorporation with liberal privileges, which was con¬
firmed by his successor: It had the right of coinage by
act of parliament; but there is no evidence to show that it
exerted the privilege. Another charter, granted in 1545,
extended the jurisdiction of the port to the islands of Ar¬
ran, permitted the exportation of all kinds of goods except
linens and woollens, and confirmed all the former privileges.
The commercial prosperity of the town, which had been
steadily advancing under the protecting favour of the go¬
vernment, received its first check from an unfavourable de¬
cision of the Court of Chancery, respecting the prisage of
wine; a toll paid by every sea-port to the head of the Or¬
mond family, in right of his office of chief butler to the
king, and from the payment of which Galway claimed an
exemption which had been hitherto acquiesced in. Wine
was the great staple of commerce. The payment of pris¬
age, which consisted of two pipes of wine from every ves¬
sel discharging at the port, was a heavy drawback upon its Ga, j
profits. But soon after, its municipal privileges were ex- w,) t
tended by a charter from James I., whereby the town, and
a district of two miles round in every direction, were form¬
ed into a distinct county, with exclusive jurisdiction and a
right of choosing its own magistrates. During the civil
wars of 1641, the town took part with the Irish, and was
surrendered on articles to the parliamentary forces under
Sir Charles Ooote; after which the ancient inhabitants
were mostly driven out, and their property given to adven¬
turers and soldiers, chiefly from England. On the acces¬
sion of James II. the old inhabitants entertained sanguine
hopes of recovering their former rights. But the successes
of King William soon put an end to their expectations;
and the town, after undergoing another siege, again capi¬
tulated to the force brought against it by General Ginkell,
on condition of a safe conduct for the garrison to Limerick,
pardon and the protection of property and civil rights to
the townsmen, and the free exercise of their religion in
private. The penal statutes passed by Queen Anne against
the Roman Catholics in general rendered the latter clause
of the capitulation nugatory, and exposed that portion of
the population which stood in need of its protection to
much hardship, particularly on the breaking out of the re¬
bellions of 1715 and 1745 in Scotland. During the period
of volunteering, Galway embodied a corps of eight compa¬
nies ; and in the subsequent insurrection in 1798, the mer¬
chants, at an hour’s notice, furnished General Hutchinson
with fifteen hundred guineas, to enable him to join Lord
Lake at Castlebar, whither the yeoman company of the
town accompanied him, and took part in the battle at that
place. In the beginning of the present century the walls
were thrown down, and buildings erected on their site.
Several streets have also been carried out eastwards, to
which the name of the New Town is given.
Galway is governed by a mayor, two sheriffs, the free
burgesses, and the commons, with a recorder, town-clerk,
and other subordinate officers. The mayor is permitted
to have a sword of state carried before him. The right ot
returning members was exei’cised at an early period. By
the act of union the number of representatives was re¬
duced to one ; but the other was restored to it by the re¬
form act. The population in 1821 amounted to 27,775,
and in 1831 it had increased to 33,120.
In its ecclesiastical arrangements the town formed part
of the ancient diocese of Enachdune or Annaghdown,
which was incorporated in 1314 with the archdiocese oi
Tuam. But in 1484 it was erected into an exempt juris¬
diction by the name of the wardenship of Galway, to be
governed by a warden and eight vicars, chosen by the cor¬
poration ; the parishes of Furanmore, Moycullen, Skreen,
and Ballenclare, were united to the wardenship. At the
Reformation it was deprived of much of its property; and
since that time there have been two wardens, a Protestant,
nominated by the corporation, and a Catholic, chosen by
the ancient inhabitants or tribes.
The towm is situated on the extremity of a projecting
neck of land, rising with a gentle acclivity between the
river and the sea. The space within the walls formed an
oval of about 3426 square perches, covered with strongly
built houses, chiefly in the antique Spanish fashion, being
square, with a court in the centre, and a gateway opening
into the street. St Nicholas’ Church is the most remark¬
able building in the towm. It is cruciform, 152 feet long
by 126 broad, having a steeple rising over the nave, anc
the side aisles separated from the centre by Gothic pillars.
Its interior can accommodate upwards of 5000 individuals.
There are several antique monuments in it. I he exchange,
or tholsel, near the church, consists ot an open corridor,
90 feet long by 28 broad, with a front of arches support'
ing an upper story, in which are apartments for holding
Gam
'*rV’K
GAM
GAM
the town courts, and for other public purposes. The coun¬
ty court-house is an elegant modern building, having am¬
ple accommodations for all the purposes of its erection ;
and near it are the county and town prisons, both modern
structures; the former being considered as the best con¬
structed prison in the province. The barracks are small
buildings detached from each other. The town has also a
county infirmary, in which between 800 and 900 patients
are annually relieved, and also a fever hospital. A gram¬
mar school, under the board of Erasmus Smith, is in the
immediate neighbourhood of the town; and a charter-
school was opened in 1750, but closed in the year 1798;
the building is now a nunnery. It has been succeed¬
ed by a public school for the education of 150 indigent
children. The meat and fish markets are convenient,
well kept, and plentifully supplied. The small mutton
from the island of Arran is peculiarly esteemed for its fla-
The river is crossed by two bridges ; the one near
vour
its mouth was built in the year 1342, and, after setting at
defiance the impetuosity of the current for five centuries,
appears sufficient to brave it for as many more ; the other,
higher up the stream, an elegant modern structure, con¬
nects the county court-house and the jail. A literary as¬
sociation, called the Amicable Society, has collected a li¬
brary of some extent, to which a news-room is attached.
There are several charitable institutions for the relief of
disease, the maintenance of the aged and impotent, and
the care and instruction of orphans.
Galway, though much reduced in the scale of mercan¬
tile importance, is still an extensive exporting town, parti¬
cularly of grain, flour, and kelp. For some years the average
export of grain was 4000 tons. Large quantities of flour
are manufactured in the town and its vicinity; much of it
is transported to Dublin by the canals. The imports are
flax-seed, timber, hemp, tallow, iron, and coal. The port
duties are little more than sufficient to defray the expenses
of the establishment employed in their collection.
Amongst the eminent characters to which this town has
given birth were, Patrick Darcy, the author of the argu¬
ment for the independence of Ireland before the House
of Commons in 1641; John Lynch, author of Cambrensis
Eversus, and other tracts on the antiquities of the coun¬
try ; Roderic O’Flaherty, author of the Ogygia, who died
in 1718; Sir .George Staunton, secretary to Lord Macart¬
ney in India, and author of the account of that noble¬
mans embassy to Pekin ; Walter Blake Kirwan, celebrat¬
ed as a popular preacher in Dublin; and Richard Kirwan,
the chemist and mineralogist.
Ihe other towns of much notoriety are Ballinasloe, on
the borders of Roscommon, the great cattle and wool sta¬
ple for Ireland, where fairs are held twice a year, in May
and in October, at which immense droves of black cattle
and flocks ol sheep are disposed of; (the grand canal
horn Dublin terminates here) ; Athenry, a town of consi¬
derable importance in the earlier periods of Irish history;
and Loughrea, beautifully situated on the borders of a
small lake of the same name.
GAMA, Vasco de, born at Synis, a sea-port in Portu-
ga!, was admiral of the fleet which first doubled the Cape
ot Good Hope in 1497, and arrived on the coast of India,
the historians who have transmitted to us his discoveries,
jave contented themselves with informing us of the facts
connected with his first voyage, and the establishment of
,,e ortuguese in India, but they have left us in ignorance
° t le details ot his private life. This is the more to be
regretted, as Gama is one of those men w ho, by important
d iscoveries, have contributed to the prosperity of their
country and the increase of human knowledge. The pro-
Srtss o the art of navigation, and the desire of exploring
< ur g obe, excited by the prospect of gain, had about this
me ta en possession of the minds of men; and the success
307
of the expedition of Christopher Columbus had given a Gama,
fresh stimulus to this spirit of adventure. This extra-
ordinary man had taught navigators the means of conduct¬
ing themselves with safety across the ocean; and his
example had encouraged them to brave all dangers. The
Portuguese who, under the guidance of Prince Henry, had
been the first to turn .their views in this direction, observed
with jealousy that the fruits of their researches were about
to enrich the Spaniards, and they sought to indemnify
themselves by pursuing, with more activity than ever, their
discoveries on the side of Africa, in the hope of passing to
the south of that continent, and penetrating into India, or
into the kingdom of Abyssinia, of which they had acquired
some notion by the relations which they maintained with
the Moors. As they believed that the inhabitants of this
last kingdom were Christians, they gave to the sovereign
thereof the name of Prester John, by which people had
hitherto designated a powerful prince w'hom they believed
to be Christian, without, however, knowing where his domi¬
nions were to be found. It appears, indeed, from what has
been said on the subject, that this name has been applied
to the great Khan of Tartary, and to the Grand Lama of
Thibet, as well as to the king of Abyssinia. The existence
of this Christian king was confirmed by Peter of Covilham,
who, in 1487, had set out with Alphonso de Paiva, in order
to reach India by the Red Sea. The latter, however, pro¬
ceeded to Abyssinia, where he remained some time, but
he died soon after his return to Cairo. Having visited
Goa, Cananor, Calicut, and acquired some knowledge of
the coast of Sofala, situated in the canal of Mozambique,
Covilham, on returning to Cairo, found the narrative of
Paiva’s voyage, which he transmitted to Portugal, together
with an account of what he had himself done. He de¬
scended the Red Sea a second time, touched at Ormus,
and lastly penetrated into Abyssinia, where he was de¬
tained during twenty years. His first voyage had been
conceived on a very wise plan ; and the information which
he procured put him in a condition to enter the Indian
Seas, with the certainty of deriving great advantages from
such an enterprise, if it should only be found practicable
to pass to the south of the continent of Africa. In fact,
some knowledge had already been obtained of great cities
in India, abounding in wealth derived from commerce ;
and it was also known that, on the eastern coast of Africa,
at a great distance from the places where the Indian Sea
might be entered, were commercial nations, amongst whom
it would be possible to refit and procure pilots for proceed¬
ing further. Bartolomeo Diaz, having sailed from Lisbon
in 1486, proceeded in search of the southern extremity of
Africa, and had the good fortune to discover it. The storms
which he had encountered, however, induced him to de¬
nominate the promontory by which the African continent
is terminated, the Cape of Tempests; but this name was
changed by the king of Portugal into that of the Cape of
Good Hope, with the intention of obviating the unfavour¬
able impression likely to be produced by a sinister name.
Diaz returned to Lisbon in December 1487. There seemed
now to be no obstacle calculated to prevent navigators en¬
tering the Indian Sea ; but daring enterprises remain long
in suspense, until men are found capable of carrying them
into execution. It was not until five years after the disco¬
very of the New World by Columbus, and ten years after
that of the Cape of Good Hope by Diaz, that Emanuel
king of Portugal resolved to send a fleet into India, and
chose as its commander a gentleman of his own household,
named Vasco de Gama, already known by his prudence,
firmness, and ability in navigation.
Ihe expedition destined for this great enterprise con¬
sisted of three vessels, having on board as crews a hundred
and sixty men. Vasco de Gama sailed from the Tagus on
the 8th of July 1497. He first shaped his course towards
GAM
the Cape de Verd Islands, which he doubled, and making
his way to the southward, anchored in the bay of St He¬
lena, situated on the western coast of Africa, at a little dis¬
tance to the north of the Cape of Good Hope. On the
16th of November he quitted this bay, and in two days af¬
ter arrived at the extremity of Africa; but in attempting to
make his way to the eastward, his little squadron had to
contend with the south-eastern monsoon, which blows al¬
most continually during that season of the year, and gene¬
rally with great impetuosity. His crews, discouraged by
the boisterous weather, attempted to force him to return ;
but he managed to allay their mutinous despondence, and
by his firmness succeeded in overcoming all obstacles. He
made to the eastward along the southern coast of Africa,
stood in to the bay of St Blaise, and, on the 17th of De¬
cember, arrived at the rock of Cruz, where Diaz had termi¬
nated his discoveries. It is at this point where the eastern
coast of Africa begins to trend towards the north, and here
the Portuguese for the first time entered the Indian Sea.
Vasco de Gama, whose intention it was to go in quest of
the countries which had been visited by Covilham, kept in
sight of land; he proceeded northward, and several times
sent his people to visit places where he observed inhabi¬
tants. He also went ashore himself as often as the popu¬
lation appeared considerable; but not finding any people
who could give him information, he continued his voyage,
passed the Cape of Currents, situated nearly under the
tropics, and advanced beyond the coast of Sofala, including
the city of that name, where Covilham was believed to have
touched, but without discovering any establishment which
could induce him to stop. At length, in one of the first
days of March 1498, he anchored before the city of Mo¬
zambique, then inhabited by Moors or Mahommedan Arabs,
who lived under the authority of a prince of their religion,
and carried on a considerable trade with the Red Sea and
the Indies. The hope of trafficking with the new-comers
procured the Portuguese a favourable reception; but as
soon as it became known that they were Christians, snares
were laid for them, with the intention of massacring them.
Obliged to withdraw from the perfidy of these fanatics, Gama
set out from Mozambique, and sailed northward, along the
coast for Quiloa, conducted by a pilot of Mozambique, whom
he had carried along with him ; but having approached the
land to the north of that city, the currents prevented him
from returning southward, and accordingly he veered away
towards Monbaze, still following the line of the coast. This
city, which was better built than Mozambique, and carried
on a more extensive commerce, was also inhabited by Ma¬
hommedan Moors, who evinced the same hostility towards
the Portuguese as those of Mozambique had done. Gama
therefore withdrew without obtaining any thing, and ad¬
vancing eighteen leagues further, reached Melinda, which
is only three degrees south of the equator. Here he was
more fortunate. Although this city was also peopled with
Mussulmans, commerce appeared to have softened their
manners ; the prince of the country gave the strangers a
most favourable reception, and went on board the Portu¬
guese squadron, where he was received with the greatest
honours. At this place Gama obtained a pilot, one of the
most skilful navigators of the country, called Malemo-Cana,
an Indian of Guzerat, to conduct him to Calicut; and
having left Melinda, he, in twenty-three days, reached the
coast of Malabar, and cast anchor before Calicut on the
20th of May 1498. Here Gama, as his custom was, sent
ashore several of the convicts he carried along with him,
accompanied by a Moor who happened to be on board his
fleet, and who fortunately discovered a countryman of his
own who was then in attendance at the court of Calicut.
They were favourably received by the prince or zamorin,
who granted the Portuguese permission to enter the port,
and consented to receive Gama with the same honours
GAM
which he rendered to the ambassadors of the greatest mo- (
narchs. But this good understanding was soon interrupted. Vu |
The Mahommedan Moors and Arabs, inflamed with a fierce
and bigoted hatred of all Christians, represented the stran- 't
gers to the zamorin as pirates, who came to disturb the ' A
tranquillity of his dominions, with the intention of pillag¬
ing them. Distrust and suspicion were thus excited in the
mind of the prince ; and at length a plot was formed to
burn the Portuguese ships and massacre their crews. Ap¬
prised of this design by Malemo-Cana, the pilot who had
conducted him to Calicut, Gama, who had gone ashore,
sent intelligence to his brother Paul de Gama, to be on
his guard, and at the same time to keep a considerable offing;
and having, by a rare mixture of firmness and address, j
managed to withdraw his people in safety, he immediately
set sail, and having repaired his vessels at the Angedive |
Isles, situated on the coast to the north of Calicut, he pro¬
ceeded on his return to Europe. In passing Melinda, he
took on board an ambassador of the prince of that coun-
try, the only friend whom the Portuguese had yet acquired 1
in India ; and coasting along the African continent in the
opposite direction to that which he had followed in the voy¬
age outwards, he doubled the Cape of Good Hope in the
month of March 1499, and arrived at Lisbon in the Sep¬
tember following, after an absence of more than two years.
The king, Emanuel, received Gama with the greatest mag¬
nificence, celebrated his return with festivities, gave him
the title of Dom, and created him admiral of the Indies.
A second Portuguese fleet was immediately fitted out,
and sent to India under the command of Alvarez Cabral,
who succeeded in establishing a factory at Calicut; but
in his absence the Portuguese were massacred at the in¬
stigation of the Moors. Cabral, however, managed to ob¬
tain the friendship of the King of Cochin, with whom he
contracted an alliance; but the reports made by him on
his return convinced Emanuel that he would never suc¬
ceed in establishing the Portuguese power in India except
by open force. A more considerable armament was ac¬
cordingly fitted out, consisting of twenty vessels, which
were divided into three squadrons, the most numerous of
which, consisting of ten ships, sailed under the conduct of
Gama, whilst the two others, of five each, under the orders
of Vincent de Sodre and Stephen de Gama, left Portu¬
gal separately, with instructions to effect a junction in
India. In this expedition Gama spread the terror of the
Portuguese name along the whole eastern coast of Africa;
formed establishments at Mozambique and Sofala; pu¬
nished the zamorin and people of Calicut for their medi¬
tated treachery during the former voyage ; renewed the
treaty which Cabral had concluded with the king of Co¬
chin ; and, in conjunction with Albuquerque, founded the
port and factory of Cochin, the first of the Portuguese
settlements in India, and the cradle of their power in the
east. They began by violence, and nothing but the he¬
roic and enterprising spirit with which they were ani¬
mated could have enabled them to perform the prodigies
of valour by which they signalised their proceedings, and
triumphed over every effort made for their expulsion.
Gama left the squadron of Vincent de Sodre on the coast
of Malabar, and returned to Lisbon, where he arrived on
the 20th December 1503, with thirteen ships. His title
of Admiral of the Indies was now confirmed, and the king
added to it that of Conde de Videgueyra.
Vasco de Gama, covered with glory, now remained m
absolute repose during the long period of twenty years. At
length the court of Portugal having, in 1524, come to the
resolution of appointing a viceroy of India, Vasco de Gama
was the first person invested with that dignity. But he died
soon after his arrival at Cochin, where his body was depo*
sited until 1558, at which period it was transported to Por"
tugal, where John III. caused the greatest honours to be
GAM
umb paid to it. Gama was a man of the middle height, extreme-
*j| ]y corpulent, and with a red and inflamed visage, which,
3»ni< Under the excitement of passion, assumed an expression
Lawsi downright ferocity. In too many instances, particu-
Jarly during his second voyage, he allowed himself to be
betrayed into an excess of cruelty as impolitic as it was
unrelenting; but it is nevertheless just to add, that this
may in part at least be attributed to the harsh and se¬
vere manners of the times in which he lived. The his¬
tory of his discovery of India has been transmitted to us
by Barros, in his Decades, printed at Lisbon in 1628, and
also by Hernan Lopez de Castanheda, in an extended
account of the conquests of the Portuguese in the East
Indies. In the Collection of Ramusio, in the works of
Faria y Sousa, and in the history of Lafitau, the reader
will also find detailed narratives of this memorable event
in the Portuguese annals. All the world knows that
Camoens made it the subject of his Lusiad. (a.)
GAMBIA, a large river of Negroland, in Africa, run¬
ning from east to west to the Atlantic Ocean.
GAMBIER’S Islands, a group of small islands in the
South Pacific Ocean, discovered by Captain Wilson of the
Duff in May 1797. They extend about five or six miles
in length. An elevated mountain in the middle is in
Long. 225. E. Lat. 23. 12. S.
GAME, in general, signifies any diversion or sport
which is performed with regularity, and conducted ac¬
cording to certain rules.
Games are usually distinguished into those of exercise
and address, and those of hazard. To the first belong
chess, tennis, billiards, and others; to the latter those
performed with cards or dice, as backgammon, ombre,
piquet, whist, and others.
Games, in Antiquity, were public diversions, exhibited
on solemn occasions. Such were the Olympic, Pythian,
Isthmian, and Nemean games, among the Greeks; and
the Apollinarian, Circensian, Capitoline, &c. games, among
the Romans.
GAME LAWS. The term game, in a large sense, seems
to comprehend all animals obtained by fowling and hunt¬
ing, animals ferce naturae, as contradistinguished to tame
animals, such as horses, cows, sheep, and the like, which
do not fly the dominion of man, but generally keep within
the same pastures and closes; but in its stricter accepta¬
tion it applies only to those wild animals which the game
laws and other arbitrary constitutions have distinguished
by that appellation.
The view taken on this subject by Judge Blackstone is
this: By the law of nature, says he, every man, from the
prince to the peasant, has an equal right of pursuing and
taking to his own use all such creatures as are ferae naturae,
and therefore the property of nobody, but liable to be seized
by the first occupant; and so it was held by the imperial
law even so late as the time of Justinian. But this right, like
others of the same kind, may be restrained by positive laws,
and we find has been so restrained by the municipal laws
of many nations. Yet however defensible these provisions
may in general be, on the footing of reason, or justice, or
civil policy, we must notwithstanding acknowledge, that in
their present shape they owe their immediate origin to
slavery, having been introduced into Europe along with the
feodal system. On the Norman conquest, the right of
pursuing and taking such animals as were accounted game
was held to belong to the king, or to such only as were
authorized by him. And this, the learned commentator
says, as well upon the principles of the feodal law, that
the king is the ultimate proprietor of all the lands in the
kingdom, as upon another maxim of the common law, that
these animals are bona vocantia, and, having no other own¬
er, belong to the king by his prerogative. Wherefore, he
concludes, all persons, of what property or distinction so-
G A M
ever, who kill game without the king’s grant, are guilty of
encroaching on the royal prerogative; and those persons
who do so without having what is called a qualification,
are guilty not only of the original offence, but also of the
aggravations created by the statutes for preserving the
game; which aggravations are so severely punished, and
those punishments so implacably inflicted, that the of¬
fence against the king is seldom thought of, provided the
miserable delinquent can make his peace with the lord of
the manor.
The doctrine thus promulgated, novel and startling as
it was, maintained itself long on the mere name and repu¬
tation of the author. It is now, however, admitted to be
incorrect. The law of Canute, noticed by Blackstone,
“ quilibet homo dignus venatione sua, in sylva et in agris
sibi propriis et in dominio suo,” was confirmed by many
succeeding kings ; and there is no instance, civil or crimi¬
nal, in which a person has been sued or prosecuted on be¬
half of the king for taking game, unless he took it out of
some privileged place. On the contrary, there is a cur¬
rent of dicta and decisions showing that owners of land
have uniformly been considered as having a local property
in game, and a right to take it whilst upon their own land.
However, the legislative provisions are in restraint of the
common law right; and these provisions were till lately
many and various, and not a little obscure and intricate.
But in October 1831 an important act was passed to amend
the laws of England relative to game, namely, 1 and 2
Gul. IV. c. 32, which repealed about thirty previous sta¬
tutes on the subject, and, excepting as to game certifi¬
cates, may be looked upon as containing nearly the whole
law in relation to game.
This statute of William begins by enacting that the
word game shall, for all the purposes of the act, be deem¬
ed to include hares, pheasants, partridges, grouse, heath
or moor game, black game, and bustards. It then sets
out the days and times during which game shall not be
killed, declaring that if any person shall kill or take any
game, or use any dog, gun, net, or other engine or instru¬
ment for the purpose of killing or taking any game on a
Sunday or Christmas day, he shall, on conviction, forfeit
and pay, for every such offence, such sum of money, not ex¬
ceeding L.5, as to the justices shall seem meet, together
with the costs of conviction; and prohibiting, under a pe¬
nalty, the killing or taking any partridge between 1st Fe¬
bruary and 1st September; pheasant between 1st February
and 1st October; black game (except in the county of So¬
merset or Devon, or in the new Forest of Southampton) be¬
tween 10th December and 20th August, or in the above
excepted places between 10th December and 1st Septem¬
ber ; grouse or red game between 10th December and 12th
August, or any bustard between 1st March and 1st Sep¬
tember ; and it further declares, that if any person, with in¬
tent to destroy or injure any game, shall at any time put any
poison or poisonous ingredient on any ground, whether open
or enclosed, where game usually resort, or in any highway,
every such person shall, on conviction, forfeit and pay such
sum of money, not exceeding L.10, as to the justices shall
seem meet, together with the costs of conviction ; and fur¬
ther, that if any person licensed to deal in game shall buy
or sell, or knowingly have in his house, shop, stall, posses¬
sion, or control, any bird of game after the expiration of
ten days (one inclusive and the other exclusive) from the
respective days in each year on which it shall become un¬
lawful to kill or take such birds of game respectively as
aforesaid, or if any person not being licensed to deal in
game, shall buy or sell any bird of game after the expira¬
tion of ten days from the respective days in each year on
which it shall become unlawful to kill or take such birds
of game respectively as aforesaid, or shall knowingly have
in his house, possession, or control any bird of game (ex-
309
Game
Laws.
310 GAM
Game cept birds of game kept in a mew or breeding place) after
Laws tbe expiration of forty days (one inclusive and the other ex-
—elusive) from the respective days in each year on which
it shall become unlawful to kill or take such birds of game
respectively as aforesaid, every such person shall, on con¬
viction, forfeit and pay, for every head of game so bought
or sold, or found in his house, shop, possession, or control,
such sum of money, not exceeding L.l, as to the justices
shall seem meet, together with the costs of conviction.
The act then provides that the same, except as therein
mentioned, shall not affect or alter the laws respecting
game certificates; and declares that all regulations and pro¬
visions contained in any act relative to game certificates,
as far as they relate to gamekeepers of manors, and to the
amount of duty for game certificates to be charged upon
or in respect of gamekeepers of manors in the cases spe¬
cified in such act, shall apply to all gamekeepers of lands
appointed under this act; and it further declares, that every
person who shall have obtained an annual game certifi¬
cate shall be authorized to kill and take game, but subject
to the law of trespass, and provided always that no game
certificate on which a less duty than L.3. 13s. 6d. is charge¬
able under the acts relating to game certificates shall au¬
thorize any gamekeeper to kill or take any game, or to
use any dog, gun, net, or other engine or instrument, for
the purpose of killing or taking game, except within the
limits included in hisappointment as gamekeeper; but that
in any case where such gamekeeper shall kill or take any
game, or use any dog, gun, net, or other engine or instru¬
ment, for the purpose of killing or taking game, beyond
such limits, he may be proceeded against as if he had no
game certificate whatsoever. Then follow certain clauses
which determine the rights of landlords in relation to the
game. The act declares, that in all cases where any per¬
son shall occupy any land under any lease or agreement
made previously to the passing of the act, the lessor or
landlord shall have the right of entering upon such land, or
of authorizing any other person or persons who shall have
obtained an annual game certificate to enter upon such
land, for the purpose of killing or taking the game there¬
on ; and no person occupying any land, under any lease
or agreement, either for life or for years, made previously
to the passing of this act, shall have the right to kill or
take the game on such land, except where the right of
killing the game has been expressly allowed to such per¬
son by the lease or agreement, or except where, upon the
original granting or removal of the same, a fine shall have
been taken, or except where, in the case of a term for
years, the lease or agreement shall have been made for a
term exceeding twenty-one years; provided always that
nothing contained in the act shall authorize any person
seised or possessed of land to kill or take the game, or
to permit any other to do so, where, by any deed, grant,
lease, or any written or parole demise or contract, a right
of entry on such land for the purpose of killing or taking
the game has been or shall be reserved or retrieved by,
or given or allowed to, the granter or other person what¬
soever ; nor shall the act affect any reservation or agree¬
ment already made in relation to game, nor in any man¬
ner prejudice the rights of manor, forest, chase, or war¬
ren, nor any of his majesty’s forest rights, nor the rights
of any grantee of the crown ; nor shall the act be deemed
to give to any owner of cattlegates, or rights of common,
upon or over any wastes or commons, any interest or pri¬
vilege which he had not before, nor authorize him to pur¬
sue or kill the game found on such wastes or commons, nor
defeat or diminish the rights and privileges of any lord, or
of any steward of the crown, of any manor, lordship, or
royalty, in or over such wastes or commons; but that the
lord or steward of the crown, of any manor, &c. shall have
the right to pursue and kill the game upon the wastes or
G A M
commons therein, and to authorize any other person who
shall have obtained an annual game certificate to enter i'3
upon sucb wastes or commons for the purpose of pursu- ^
ing and killing game thereon. And it is further enacted
that where the lessor or landlord shall have reserved to
himself the right of killing the game upon any land, it
shall be lawful for him to authorize any other person who
shall have obtained an annual game certificate, to enter
upon such land for the purpose of pursuing and killing
game thereon; and also, that where the right of killing
game is by the act given to any lessor or landlord, in ex¬
clusion of the right of the occupier of the land, or where
such exclusive right has been or shall be specially re¬
served by or granted to, or does or shall belong to, the
lessor, landlord, or any person whatsoever, other than the
occupier of such land, then and in every such case the
occupier, if he shall pursue, kill, or take any game upon
the land, or give permission to any other person so to do,
without the authority of the lessor, landlord, or other per¬
son having the right of killing the game, shall on convic¬
tion forfeit and pay for such pursuit, such a sum of money,
not exceeding L.2, and for every head of game so killed
or taken, such a sum of money, not exceeding L.l, as
the justices shall be pleased to award, together with the
costs of conviction. Then follow certain provisions allow¬
ing lords of manors and stewards of the crown-manors
to appoint one or more gamekeepers to preserve or kill the
game, and with power to seize dogs, guns, nets, and other
engines and instruments used within the limits by uncer¬
tificated persons, and also allowing lords of manors and
stewards of crown-manors to grant deputations to persons
as gamekeepers ; and, after particular regulations respect¬
ing appointments of gamekeepers in Wales, the act declares
that no appointment or deputation of a gamekeeper shall
be valid, unless registered with the clerk of the peace.
These provisions are followed by a series of important
clauses in regard to the possession, purchase, and sale of
game. The act declares, that every person who shall
have obtained an annual game certificate, shall have power
to sell game to any person licensed to deal in game, pro¬
vided always that no game certificate on which a less duty
than L.3. 13s. 6d. is chargeable, shall authorize any game-
keeper to sell game, except on the account and with the
written authority of the master whose gamekeeper he is;
and the act appoints special sessions of the peace, to be
holden in the month of July yearly, for the purpose of
granting licenses to persons therein pointed out to deal in
game; and every person so licensed shall annually, and
during the continuance of his license, and before he shall
be empowered to deal in game under his license, take out
a certificate, with a duty of L.2, to be paid to the collec¬
tor of assessed taxes for the district, under a penalty of
L.20. And further, the act declares, that if any person
licensed to deal in game shall, during the period of license,
be convicted of any offence whatever against the act, his
license shall thereupon become null and void. Other
clauses which follow create penalties for killing or taking
game, or using any dog, gun, or other engine, for the pur¬
pose of searching’ for or killing or taking game without a
game certificate ; for destroying or taking the eggs of any
bird of game, or of any swan, wild duck, teal, or widgeon,
without having right to kill the game, or permission Irom
the person having such right; for selling or offering to
sale any game, without a game certificate or license, or to
unlicensed persons, excepting always innkeepers or ta¬
vern-keepers, who, without license to deal in game, may
sell game for consumption in their own houses, such game
having been procured from some person licensed to deal
in game; for buying game without a license from unli¬
censed persons; lastly, on licensed dealers for buying
game from uncertificated or unlicensed persons, or for
■ji w<\
gam G a M 311
ir Ram not having up a sign-board, and on unlicensed persons
assuming or pretending to be licensed; and the whole is
y dosed by a proviso as to the purchase and sale of game
by the servants of licensed dealers. Then follows the 30th
section, with this preamble: “ And whereas, after the com¬
mencement of this act, game will become an article which
may be legally bought and sold, and it is therefore just
and reasonable to provide some more summary means than
now by law exist for protecting the same from trespassers
whereupon various regulations are made respecting tres¬
pass in search or pursuit of game. These, however, we
shall hereafter specify, because they are substantially the
satne with those contained in an act since passed for Scot¬
land, to which kingdom the unrepealed act 9 Geo. IV. c.
69, also extends.
In this country there was originally, as in England, no
restraint on the taking of game within one’s own land. It
is particularly noticed, that in the time of King Alexan¬
der it was not defended nor forbidden to any man to hunt
nor to chase the hare and fox, and other wild beasts, with¬
out forests and warrens, wheresoever they were found
(M. T. C. c. 52); and as late as the time of King James
III. an act was passed (1474, c. 60), declaring that it should
not be lawful to hunt or destroy game “ in utheris closes
or parkes,” without the owner’s leave. In the following
century the idea of game as the subject of gentlemen’s pas¬
time appears; and the act 1551, c. 9, was passed, to re¬
strain certain modes of detroying birds then commonly
practised, “ quhairthrow the noblemen of the realme can
get na pastime of balking and hunting, like as hes beene
had in times bypast.” In the beginning of the seventeenth
century the principle of the first English qualification act
(13 Rich. II. c. 13), the title of which is, “ None shall hunt
but they who have a sufficient living,” was adopted by the
Scottish legislature in the act 1600, c. 23; and upon that
principle, no doubt, soon followed the statute 1621, c. 31,
which enacts “ that no man hunt or hawk at any time here¬
after, who hath not a plough of land in heritage, under the
pain of L.100 Scots, half to the king and half to the pro¬
secutor. This is the substantive Game Qualification Act
of Scotland; and under it the courts have held, that a qua¬
lified person may communicate the right of shooting to
any individual over the lands of the former; and that a
qualified landlord may hunt on his ground in the hands of
tenants, paying damage; but that neither a servitude of
pasturage nor a lease of land carry a right to kill game,
nor yet a lease of game, as against singular successors; nor
can a qualified person hunt on the property of another
without the owner’s leave.
lo the qualification required by the act 1621 has been
added, by subsequent statutes, that of & game certificate, as
in England, fo make the privilege valuable, various pe¬
nalties have also been enacted against jooac/iers ; and late-
y the act of 9 Geo. IV. c. 69, wras passed, applicable to
oth England and Scotland, to prevent persons going arm¬
ed by night for the destruction of game and rabbits. To
all these is now to be added the' act above alluded to,
namely, 2 and 3 Gul. IV. c. 68, which, though limited to
Scotland, is, as already mentioned, nearly a transcript of
tne 30th and following sections of the late English game
act. It enacts and declares, that if any person shall com¬
mit any trespass, by entering or being in the daytime upon
any and without leave of the proprietor, in search or pur¬
suit o game, or of deer, roe, woodcocks, snipes, quails, land-
81 s, wild ducks, or conies, such person shall forfeit and pay
penalty not exceeding L.2, which is enlarged in the case
m trespass being by a person having his face blacken-
I ' l)Uret*> or disfigured, for the purpose of disguise, or
y persons to the number of five or more together; and
to ,cIares’ such trespassers may be required
» 1 le an^> an(l g*ve their names and abodes, and, on
their refusal so to do, may be arrested. But it is provided, Gamelia
that the act shall not extend against persons hunting or H
coursing with hounds or greyhounds, and being in fresh Gaming,
pursuit of any deer, hare, or fox already started upon any
other land on which such persons were entitled to hunt
or course. The act also declares, that game may be
taken from trespassers not delivering the same up when
lawfully demanded ; and it provides a summary means
for ensuring the conviction and punishment of offenders;
declaring also, that all penalties created by the statute
shall go to the poor of the parish. (u. u. u.)
GAMELIA, in Grecian antiquity, a nuptial feast, or
rather sacrifice, held in the ancient Greek families on the
day before a marriage. It was so called from a custom
they had of shaving themselves on this occasion, and pre¬
senting their hair to some deity to whom they had parti¬
cular obligations.
GAMELION, in the ancient chronology, was the eighth
month of the Athenian year, containing twenty-nine days,
and answering to the latter part of our January and be¬
ginning of February. It was so called, as being, in the
opinion of the Athenians, the most proper season of the
year for marriage.
GAMING, the art of playing or practising any game, par¬
ticularly those of hazard, as cards, dice, tables, and so forth.
Gaming was particularly remarked by Tacitus as dis¬
tinguishing the ancient Germans. “ They addict them¬
selves, says he, in his treatise JDe Moribus Germ. c. 24,
“ to dice, as a serious employment, with such an extrava¬
gant desire to win or lose, that when everything else fails
they will stake even their liberty and their very persons.
The loser goes into a voluntary servitude : though young¬
er and stronger than his antagonist, he suffers himself to
be bound and sold; and this perseverance in so bad a
cause they call the point of honour. ’ This passion we
seem to have inherited; and by the ancient common law
of the land it was not forbidden. Its pernicious conse¬
quences, however, are manifest; and both the legislature
and the courts have interfered to restrain it.
In England there are three principal statutes on the
subject, and a multitude of minor ones, the particular de¬
scriptions and prohibitions of the law being ever behind the
inventions of sharpers and interested men. The first sta¬
tute, 33 Hen. VIII. c. 9, was directed against the inferior
classes, and prohibits to all but gentlemen the games of
tennis, tables, cards, dice, bowls, and other unlawful di¬
versions therein specified, unless in the time of Christmas,
under pecuniary pains and imprisonment. But this was
legislation at once unequal, cruel, and impolitic, and in¬
deed, according to modern experience at least, it is gam¬
ing in high life which particularly requires to be restrained.
Accordingly, by 16 Car. II. c. 7, it was enacted that if
any person shall play at any of the games mentioned in
the second section, namely, cards, dice-tables, tennis, bowls,
skittles, shovel-board, or cock-fighting, horse-races, dog-
matches, foot-races, or other pastimes or games whatsoever,
or shall bet on the side or hands of such as play thereat,
and shall lose any sum or sums of money or other thing
exceeding L.100, at any time or meeting upon ticket, cre¬
dit, or otherwise, and shall not pay down the same at the
time of the loss, the value shall not be recovered ; but all
contracts for the same, judgments, statutes, recognisances,
mortgages, &c. and all other acts, deeds, and securities for
the same, shall be void, and the winner shall forfeit treble
the value, in addition to the sum of L.100, half thereof to
the king and half to the informer. At length came tl?e
gaming act (9 Anne, c. 14), which declares that all bonds
und other securities given for money won at play, or mo¬
ney lent at the time to play withal, shall be utterly void;
that all mortgages and incumbrances oflands made upon
the same consideration shall be and revert to the use o£
312
Gaming.
GAM
the heir of the mortgager; that if any person at any time
or sitting loses L.10 at play, he may sue the winner, and
recover it back by action of debt at law; and in case the
loser does not, any other person may sue the winner for
treble the sum so lost; and the plaintiff may by bill of
equity examine the defendant himself on oath. More¬
over, if any person, by cheating at play, shall win any mo¬
ney or valuable thing, or shall at any time or sitting win
more than L.10, be may be indicted thereon, and shall
forfeit five times the value to any person who will sue for
it, and shall be deemed infamous, and suffer such corpoial
punishment as in the case of wilful perjury. And this
statute of 9 Anne is further enforced, and some deficien¬
cies supplied, by 18 Geo. II. c. 34.
By the first of the above-named acts also (33 Hen. VIII.
c. 9), to which may now be added 58 Geo. III. c. 70, and
3 Geo. IV. c. 114, the keeping a gaming-house was de¬
clared a nuisance, which indeed it is held to be, and an
indictable offence at common law; and the courts largely
construing the word, have held a cockpit a gaming-house
within the meaning of the statute (3 Keb. 510, 2 Burr.
1233). By 9 and 10 Will. III. c. 17, all lotteries were de¬
clared public nuisances ; and all state-lotteries which had
in the interval been allowed were to be discontinued after
4 Geo. IV. c. 60. As to private lotteries, they were pro¬
hibited by various statutes of the reign of George II. under
heavy pecuniary penalties. In the same reign, to prevent
or restrain horse-racing, another kind of gaming, it was
enacted by 13 Geo. II. c. 19, that no plate or match under
LAO value shall be run, under a penalty of L.200 to be
paid by the owner of each horse running, and L.100 by
such as advertise the plate, except at Newmarket and
Black Hambleton, where a race may be run for a less sum
than LAO: but though such horse-races are lawful, yet
they are construed games within 9 Anne c. 14, and con¬
sequently wagers above L.10 are illegal. By 7 Geo- II.
wagers relating to the present or future price of stocks are
declared illegal and void ; and it has been held that a wager
between two electors upon the success of their respective
parliamentary candidates is illegal, because it tends to
corrupt the freedom of election (1 T. R. 56). The law of
wagers is well and succinctly traced by Mr Christian in his
note to 4 Blackstone, 173. Wagers, in general, says he, were
by the common law lawful contracts; and all wagers may
still be recovered in a court of justice which are not made
upon unlawful games, or which are not such as are likely
to disturb the public peace, or to encourage immorality,
or such as will probably affect the interests, characters,
and feelings of persons not parties to the wager, or such
as are contrary to sound policy or the general interests of
the community. And the recent editor of Blackstone sub¬
joins to this note a case lately decided, to show the compre¬
hensive ground on which one of these doctrines, that of
public policy, rests. The case was this. In 1802 the de¬
fendant, in consideration of 100 guineas, agreed to pay the
plaintiff one guinea a day during the life of Bonaparte.
The defendant paid the money for some years, and then
stopped. The action was brought to recover the arrears.
The jury having found for the defendant, on a motion for
a new trial it was contended in support of the verdict that
the wager was illegal, inasmuch as it had a tendency to
create an interest in the plaintiff in the life of a foreign
enemy, and which in the case of an invasion might induce
him to act contrary to his allegiance. The court being
of opinion that the justice of the case had been satisfied,
refused to disturb the verdict; and Lord Ellenborough,
chief-justice, expressed a strong opinion against the lega¬
lity of the wager, as well on the ground before mention¬
ed, as also on the ground that the party suffering under
such a contract might be induced to compass and encou¬
rage the horrid practice of assassination, in order to get
GAM
rid of a life so burdensome to him (16 East. 150). So like- Gan
wise, where a person had given L.100 on condition of^
receiving L.300 if peace were not concluded with France
within a certain time, and he afterwards brought his ac¬
tion to recover the L.300, it was held that the wager
was void, as being inconsistent with general policy; but
he was allowed to recover the L.100 which he had paid,
under a count for so much money received by the defen¬
dant to his use. Indeed we may remark frequent expres¬
sions of regret by the most eminent judges of England,
that the law of wagers in that country is not the same
with that of Scotland ; and some, amongst whom was Jus-
tice Butler (3 T. R. 697), have thought it was not too late
yet to retrace their steps, and to adopt the practice of the
Scotch courts. So in Easter term 1825, Chief-Justice Ab¬
bot refused to allow a cause to proceed in which a person
sought to recover L.100 which had been deposited as a
stake on a dog-fight, observing that all such wagers were
illegal. In like manner, the chief-justice discharged the
jury from giving any verdict in an action to recover a de¬
posit on a wrestling match (Kennedy, K. B. October 29,
1828).
The view taken in Scotland is, that courts of justice
were instituted to redress wrong in the serious transac¬
tions of life; and that wagers and gaming debts do not
partake of the character of serious business, but mere pas¬
time and amusement. The judges therefore look upon
such contracts as sponsiones ludicrce, and will not allow
action for the recovery of sums lost or won by wagering or
betting in any form ; and this is now settled law, and sanc¬
tioned by the judgment of the House of Lords in the case
of Bruce v. Ross, 14th February 1788. Where, how¬
ever, a civil injury arises, though it be out of gaming, the
party will be heard. So, in the case of Paterson, 1830
(8 Sh. and D. 573), a party brought an action setting forth
that he had fairly won money at cards from the defender,
who paid it, but afterwards demanded restitution, alleg¬
ing the pursuer was a cheat at play ; and that the pursuer
thereupon repaid the money on condition that the defen¬
der should preserve silence on the subject, which he fail¬
ed to do; and the defender offered to prove the pursuer
a cheat. The court found the action relevant, and re¬
mitted it to the jury court, where it was tried as a ques¬
tion of defamation.
Scotland is also distinguished from England by the
paucity of its legislative provisions on gaming. By 1621,
c. 14, it was enacted that none play at cards or dice in
any common house, town, hostelrie, or cook’s house, and
that it should not be lawful to play in any other private
man’s house but where the master of the family playeth
himself; and if it should happen any man to win a sum
exceeding 100 merks within the space of twenty-four
hours, or to gain at wagers upon horse-races any sum
above 100 merks, the surplus should go to the poor of the
parish. This act is not altogether in desuetude, as might
be thought from an old case, but it is available only to the
poor, and not to the winner (Straiton, 19th July 1688;
Maxwell, 14th July 1774). To the above act of 1621 are
to be added the acts 9 Anne and 18 Geo. II. above no¬
ticed, which are received in Scotland, but have not always
the same construction given them as in England. Ihus, as
remarked by Mr Brodie (Stair, b. i. tit. 10, sect. 8, note),
it has been held in Nelson v. Bruce, Mor. 9507, and Stew¬
art v. Hyslop, Mor. 9510, contrary to the settled con¬
struction in England, that the nullity was not effectua
against an onerous indorsee not aware of the bill being
granted for a game debt. Mr Brodie gives it as his opi¬
nion that the two Scottish decisions are on principle, ab¬
stractedly from the words of the statute, most consonant
to substantial justice; but the English construction ap¬
pears quite indisputable. (u- u' uv
GAN
GAN
to?1
Chance, or Hazard, in Gaming. Hazard, or chance, is
a matter of mathematical consideration, because it admits
313
of more and less. Gamesters either set out upon an equa
lity of chance, or are supposed to do so. This equality may
be altered in the course of the game, by the greater good
fortune or address of one of the gamesters, by which he
comes to have a better chance, so that his share in the
stakes is proportionably better than at first. This more
and less runs through all the ratios between equality and
infinite difference, or from an infinitely small difference till
it come to be an infinitely great one, by which the game
is determined. The whole game, therefore, with regard
to the issue of it, is a chance of the proportion which the
two shares bear to each other.
The probability of an event is greater or less, according
to the number of chances by which it may happen, com¬
pared with the number of all the chances by which it may
either happen or fail. See Probabilities.
GAMMONING, among seamen, denotes several turns
of a rope taken round the boltsprit, and reeved through
holes in knees of the head, for the greater security of the
boltsprit.
GAMUT, Gam-uI, in Music, a scale on which the mu¬
sical notes, ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la, are sounded in their
several orders and dispositions. See Music.
GANDICOTTA, or Wandicotta, a district of Hin¬
dustan, in the Balaghaut ceded districts, situated between
the fourteenth and fifteenth degrees of north latitude, and
now chiefly comprehended in the Cuddapah collectorship.
The river Pennar crosses it. The principal towns are
Gandicotta, Tadimery, and Anantapooram. Gandicotta
is the capital of the district, situated on the top of a lofty
mountain. There is no passage to the fortress but by a
narrow road cut out of the rock along the edge of the
precipice. The surrounding plain is well watered and
cultivated ; and here was formerly a diamond mine. Lonu.
78. 20. E. Lat. 14.44. N.
GANGES. This great river has its rise in the north¬
ern face of the Himalaya Mountains, and, after a course
of about two thousand miles, falls into the Bay of Ben¬
gal through numerous channels. The remote sources of
the Ganges were long imperfectly known, and afforded a
fertile subject of conjecture and controversy to the geo¬
graphers of Europe. Prior to the commencement of the
nineteenth century, this river had been traced by Hindoo
pilgrims to Gangoutri, the point at which it issues from
the Himalaya Mountains ; but all accounts agreed that its
origin was still more remote. On the side of Thibet it
had been surveyed by lamas or priests, sent for that pur¬
pose by the Emperor Camhi, whose route terminated at
Kentaisse, a range of snowy mountains on the west and
south of Thibet. The most general notion was, that it
nowed within the Himalaya chain of snowy mountains for
many hundred miles, from the imaginary lake of Mapama,
to Gangoutri. In 1808, Lieutenant Webb was sent by the
Hengal government to explore the sources of the Ganges.
About seventeen miles beyond Gangoutri his further
ProS/5ss W£ts stopt by the difficulties of the country,.but
tlie Moonshee who accompanied the party went forward ;
m as he proceeded upwards, after leaving Gangoutri, he
occasionally perceived the river among the snow, which a
ittle higher up so completely filled its bed that no trace
’ 11 . (* be discovered. Five hundred yards further on
again showed itself; but in front was a steep mountain,
'sing UP *'ke a huge wall, from an angle of which the
",ang£s aPPeared to issue, whilst all beyond was an impe-
I •, e, m5(ss of snow. This is the furthest point to
uc t le Ganges has been traced, and may be consider-
as its source; though others think the Dauli to be the
<‘,n .strfam> owing to the length of its course from Gan-
' voT x* ^ ° m^eS up the river is the place called
the Cow’s Mouth. It is a large stone in the middle of the Ganges,
river, the water passing it on each side, and leaving only
a small piece above the surface, to which the fancy of su¬
perstition has given the form of a cow’s head, an animal
held sacred by the Hindoos. From Gangoutri the Ganges
flows, in the upper part of its course among the moun¬
tains, from south-east to north-west; and it is only from
Sookie, where it fairly pierces through the Himalaya range,
that it assumes a course south-west to Hurdwar. Here, in
the latitude of 30° N. it gushes through an opening in the
mountains, and flows with a smooth navigable stream to
its conflux with the Jumna at Allahabad, the first large
river that joins it in Hindustan proper. Its bed is of very
unequal breadth, hrom its first arrival in the plains at
Hurdwar to the conflux of the Jumna, it is generally from
a mile to a mile and a quarter wide, and, compared with
the latter part of its course, tolerably straight. From hence
downward it becomes more winding; till, having succes¬
sively received the waters of the Goggrah, the Soane, and
Gunduck, besides numerous smaller streams, its bed has
attained its full width, which varies from half a mile to
three miles. The stream is always increasing or decreas¬
ing, according to the season ; and in April, when it is
lowest, the principal channel varies from four hundred
yards to about a mile and a quarter. At the height of the
inundation the breadth of the river is of course greater;
and Bishop Heber mentions, that at Boglipoor, about six’
hundred miles from the sea, including the turnings of
the river, the breadth was nine measured miles across.
1 hough the Ganges be fordable in some places above the
conflux of the Jumna, the navigation is never interrupted.
Below, the depth of the channel is increased, the addi¬
tional streams bringing a greater accession of depth than
breadth. At five hundred miles from the sea, the chan¬
nel is thirty feet deep when the river is lowest, and it
continues at least this depth to the sea, when the sud¬
den expansion of the stream deprives it of the force neces¬
sary to sweep away the bars of sand and mud thrown
across it by strong southerly winds ; so that the principal
branch of the Ganges cannot be entered by large vessels.
At about two hundred and twenty miles from the sea, or
three hundred reckoning the windings of the river, com¬
mences the head of the Delta of the Ganges. The two
easternmost branches, named Cossimbazar and Jellinghy
rivers, unite and form what is afterwards denominated
the Hooghly, which is the port of Calcutta, and the only
branch of the Ganges that is commonly navigated by
ships. Below the channel named the Songti Mohana,
where the Ganges sends off these two branches which go
to Calcutta, the main stream loses not only its name, but
the greater part of its sanctity in the eyes of the natives.
The Cossimbazar river is almost dry from October to
May, nor is the Jellinghy river navigable during two or
three of the driest months; so that the only subordinate
branch of the Ganges which is at all times navigable is the
Chandnah river, which separates at Moddapoor, and ter¬
minates in the Hooringotta river. That part of the Delta
called the Sunderbunds consists of a labyrinth of rivers
and creeks, which is two hundred miles broad at the junc¬
tion of the Ganges with the sea. This tract is covered
with woods which are infested with tigers, and its nume¬
rous canals form a complete inland navigation across the
lower part of the Delta. The Ganges, like all tropical
rivers, overflows periodically during the season of the
rains in Bengal, on which it depends for its supplies, and
not, as may be supposed, on the melting of the mountain
snows. Its rise is thirty-two feet, fifteen and a half of
which it rises by the latter end of June, and it is not until
this time that the rainy season ccmmences in the plains.
By the end of April, when the rains from the mountains
have reached Bengal, the rivers begin to rise at the rate
2 R
314
GAN
GAO
Gangoutri of an inch per day for the first fortnight, which augments
|| to two and three inches before any quantity of rain has
Gangpour. fallen; and when the rain becomes general, the river in-
creases, at a medium, to five inches per day. By the lat¬
ter end of July all the lower parts of Bengal are inundat¬
ed. The inundation is at a stand in the middle of August;
and it gradually and slowly decreases in August and Sep¬
tember, and until April, when it again begins to rise. The
quantity of water discharged is calculated in the dry sea¬
son to amount to 80,000 cubic feet per second, and
during the inundation to 405,000 cubic feet. The descent
of the river is about nine inches per mile, and estimat¬
ing the windings of the stream, four inches per mile. In
the dry season the current is three miles an hour; it in¬
creases during the wet season to five or six miles, and in
particular situations to seven or eight miles. On the banks
of the Ganges, where the soil is loose, and the current
rapid, “ such tracts of land,” says Major Itennell, “ are
swept away in one season as would astonish those who
have not been eye-witnesses to the magnitude and force
of the mighty streams occasioned by the periodical rains
of the tropical regions.” Great changes are in this man¬
ner produced in the course of the river, what is lost on
one side being gained on the other by the mere operation
of the stream. In its course through the plains the Gan¬
ges receives eleven rivers, some of which are larger than
the Rhine, besides many others of less importance. The
Goggrah, the Soane, and the Coosy, are the largest of
the tributary streams in Bengal and Bahar. The Brahma¬
pootra has "its rise near the source of the Ganges, and
from hence the two rivers diverge widely asunder; but
afterwards they intermix their waters before they fall into
the sea, the Ganges having then performed a course, in¬
cluding its windings, of about 1500 miles.
GANGOUTRI, a celebrated place of Hindoo pilgri¬
mage, situated among the Himalaya Mountains, in the
province of Serinagur, on the Ganges, which is here not
above fifteen or twenty yards broad, with a moderate cur¬
rent, and not in general above three feet deep. The
course of the river is here north by east; and on the bank
• near Gangoutri there is a small temple about eight or ten
feet high, in which are two images representing the Ganges
and Bhagirathi rivers. The bed of the river adjoining the
temple is divided off by the Brahmins into three basins,
where the pilgrims bathe. One of these portions is dedi¬
cated to Brahma, the other to Vishnu, and the third to
Seva. The pilgrimage to Gangoutri is considered as a
great achievement of Hindoo piety, and efficacious in wash¬
ing away all the previous sins of the devotee, and ensur¬
ing him eternal happiness in the world to come. The
water taken from this sacred spot is exported by pilgrims
to India, and sold at a high price ; it is drawn under the
inspection of a Brahmin, to whom a trifling sum is paid for
the privilege of taking it; and the vessels are then sealed.
In 1808 Lieutenant Webb and his party approached within
sixteen or eighteen miles distance of this consecrated
spot. The pilgrims report that the current of the Gan¬
ges, only a few miles from this place, issues from under a
bed of perpetual snow, where the roads are so bad, that
few persons have been able to penetrate to the spot.
Long. 78. 9. E. Lat. 31. 4. N.
GANGPOUR, a small district of Hindustan, in the
province of Gundwana, situated about the twenty-second
degree of north latitude, and bounded on the north by
the British district of Chuta Nagpoor, in Bahar. It was
annexed to the province of Allahabad during the reign of
Aurungzebe, though it was only reduced under nominal
subjection to that monarch. It is a barren, mountainous,
and unproductive country, still inhabited by uncivilized
tribes of Hindoos. The chief river is the Soank, and the
principal towns are Gangpoor and Padah.
GAN-KING-FOO, a large city of China, situated on
the great river Yang-tse-kiang, and capital of the province
of Kiang-nan. It is a place of considerable trade. Great
part of the space within the walls consists of gardens and <
cultivated ground. The eastern quarter is composed
chiefly of dwelling-houses, and the western of shops, which
are well furnished, particularly with porcelain, horn lan¬
terns, caps, drapers’ and mercers’ goods, &c. Long. 117.
20. E. Lat. 31. 30. N.
GANJAM, a town and sea-port of Hindustan, in the
Northern Circars, and capital of a district of the same
name. It is situated on the north-eastern bank of a river,
which is only navigable during the rainy season, when a
great part of the surrounding country is inundated. It
possesses a fort, which is a regular pentagon on plain
ground, well fortified, and capable, when properly garri¬
soned, of making a respectable defence. Ganjam is one
of the five districts into which the Northern Circars have
been subdivided, and is the residence of a judge and col¬
lector. This port is much frequented by country vessels;
and formerly the East India Company were provided with
a large investment from it. But since the great improve-
ments which have taken place in the cotton manufactures
in England, the demand for India cotton goods has greatly
decreased, and the establishment now scarcely pays its ex¬
penses. Long. 85. 19. E. Lat. 19. 23. N. The district of
Ganjam is in Cicacole, and one of the Northern Circars.
GANTLET, or Gauntlet, a large kind of glove made
of iron, and having the fingers covered with small plates.
It was formerly worn by the cavaliers, when armed at all
points. The word is derived from the French gantelet;
and that from gand or gant, a glove. The casque and gaunt¬
lets were always borne in the ancient marches ot cere¬
mony. Gauntlets were not introduced until about the
thirteenth century. The gauntlet was frequently thrown,
like the glove, by way of challenge.
GANYMEDE, in Mythology, a beautiful youth of Phry¬
gia, son of Tros, and brother of Hus ; but, according to
Lucian, he was the son of Dardanus. Jupiter having been
charmed with him, carried him away, and made him his
cup-bearer in the room of Hebe. Some say that the chief
of the gods caused him to be carried away by an eagle,
whilst others affirm that he was himself the ravisher un¬
der the form of that bird. He deified this youth ; and, to
comfort his father, presented him with some of those very
swift horses upon which the gods indulged in equitation.
GAOL (Gaola, Fr. Geole, that is, Caveola, a cage for
birds) is used metaphorically for a prison. See Prisons.
Gaol Delivery. The administration of justice being
originally vested in the crown, our kings in former times
rode in person through the realm once in seven years, to
judge of and determine crimes and offences; but after¬
wards justices in eyre were appointed, and since that
time justices of assize and gaol delivery. A, commission
of gaol delivery is a patent in the nature of a letter from
the king to certain persons, appointing them his justices,
or two or three of them, and authorizing them to deliver
his gaol, at such a place, of the prisoners in it; for which
purpose it commands them to meet at such a place, at
such time as they themselves shall appoint; and informs
them, that for the same purpose the king has command¬
ed his sheriff of the same county to bring all the prisoners
of the gaol, and their attachments, before them at the day
appointed.
GAONS, a certain order of Jewish doctors who ap¬
peared in the East after the closing of the Talmud. B'6
word gaons signifies excellent or sublime ; as in the divi¬
nity schools we formerly had irrefragable, sublime, reso¬
lute, angelic, and subtile doctors. The Gaons succee e
Gan.
fcj
the Seburmans, about the beginning of the sixth century
Chanan Meischtia was the head of the excellents, an
GAR
Ififiai restored the academy of Pandebita, which had been shut
d up for thirty years.
> iarcii GAP, an arrondissement of the department of the Up-
, per Alps, in France, extending over 445 square miles. It
r js divided into fourteen cantons and 122 communes, and
inhabited by 63,825 persons. The capital, a city of the
same name, is situated on the river Luie, on a kind of basin
formed by hills, over which tower the snow-covered moun¬
tains of the Alps. It is an old and ill-built place, contain¬
ing 8150 inhabitants, who are occupied in making linen and
woollen cloths. There is in the city a museum, containing
collections of the plants, minerals, birds, and antiquities
of the Alps. Long. 5. 59. 42. E. Lat. 44. 33. 37. N.
GARAMOND, Claude, an ingenious letter-founder,
was born at Paris, where he began, in the year 1510, to
found printing types free from all the remains of the Go¬
thic, or, as it is generally called, the black letter, and
brought them to such perfection that he had the glory of
surpassing all who went before him, and of being scarcely
excelled by any of his successors in that useful art. His
types were prodigiously multiplied, both by the great
number of matrices he struck, and the types formed in
resemblance of his in all parts of Europe. Thus in Italy,
Germany, England, and Holland, the booksellers, byway of
recommending their books, distinguished the type by his
name ; and, in particular, the small Roman was byway of
excellence known amongst the printers of these nations by
the name of Gararnond's small Roman. By the special com¬
mand of Francis I. he founded three sizes of Greek types
for the use of Robert Stephens, who by means of them
printed all his beautiful editions of the New Testament,
and other Greek authors. He died at Paris in 1561.
GARASSE, Francis, a remarkable writer, and also the
author of that irreconcilable enmity which still subsists
between the Jesuits and Jansenists, was born at Angou-
leme in 1585, and entered the Jesuits’ College in 1600.
As he had a quick imagination, a strong voice, and a pe¬
culiar turn for wit, he became a popular preacher in the
chief cities of France ; but not content with this honour,
he distinguished himself still more by his writings, which
were bold, licentious, and produced much controversy.
I he most considerable in its consequences was entitled
La Somme Theologique des Veritez capitales de la Religion
Chrkienne, which was first attacked by the abbot of St
Cyran, who observing in it a prodigious number of falsifi¬
cations of the Scriptures and of the fathers, besides many
heretical and impious opinions, conceived that the honour
of the church required him to undertake a refutation of
it. Accordingly he published an answer, whilst Garasse’s
book was also under examination of the doctors of the Sor-
bonne, by whom it was afterwards condemned. Garasse
replied to St Cyran; but the two parties of Jesuits and
Jansenists, of whom these were respectively the cham¬
pions, gradually conceived such an implacable animosity
against each other, that it is not even now likely to sub¬
side. The Jesuits were forced to remove their brother to a
distance from Paris, where, weary of his inactive obscurity,
he begged leave of his superior to attend the sick, when
the plague raged at Poitiers in 1631, and in this charitable
office he caught the prevailing distemper, and died.
GARAWAL, a town of Hindustan, in the province of
Allahabad, and district of Chunar. It is the last town of
any consequence on the frontier between the British pro¬
vinces and those of the rajah of Berar. Long. 83. E. Lat.
24. 50. N.
GAR BE, in Heraldry, a sheaf of any kind of grain,
wne in several coats of arms, and said to represent sum¬
mer, as a bunch of grapes does autumn.
garcias-laso, OrGARCILASO, orGARCILASSO DE
la Veca, a celebrated Spanish poet, was born at Toledo,
in 1503. He was the younger son of Garcilaso, counsel-
G A R 315
lor of state to Ferdinand and Isabella, their ambassador Gardas-
at the court of Rome, and grand commander of Leon, and Laso.
of Sanchette de Guzman, lady of Batres, a considerable
property of the illustrious house of Guzman, where may
yet be seen a fountain which has existed for several cen¬
turies, and still bears the name of Garcilaso. Ferdinand V.
conferred on the father of Garcilaso the name of Vega, in
memory of a single combat which the former maintained
against one of the most valiant of the Moors on the Vega,
or plain of Grenada; and which was celebrated in the Spa¬
nish romances and histories of that age. Garcilaso was in¬
tended by nature for a rural and solitary life, at least if a
judgment may be formed from his poetical productions,
which all breathe nothing but love and peace, and mani¬
fest extreme gentleness ol character. But his birth having
called him to the profession of arms, his life was passed
in camps, and his career was brilliant and tumultuous. He
entered early into the army of Charles V., followed that
monarch in the war of the Milanese (1521), and, though
still young, distinguished himself by his valour, particu¬
larly at the battle of Pavia. In 1523 he served in the
Spanish corps, which, having joined the imperial army,
distinguished itself by its bravery against the Turks. In
acknowledgment of his courage, Charles V. conferred on
him, at Vienna, the cross of the order of St James. Gar¬
cilaso, by his merit, established himself in the good graces
of the emperor; but a gallant adventure for ever deprived
him of the favour which his talents and bravery had won.
One of his cousins having become enamoured of a lady
of the court, who, it seems, had gained the affections of
Charles, Garcilaso favoured by all means in his power the
passion of his relation, whose intentions were honourable.
When the fact became known to the emperor, he sent
the cousin into exile, and banished Garcilaso to an island
in the Danube. During his detention, which was not of
long duration, the latter composed one of his Condones,
in which he deplores his misfortune, and at the same
time celebrates the charms of the country watered by the
divine stream of the Danube {Danubio rio divinoi). In
1535, he served in the expedition which Charles V. un¬
dertook against Tunis, whence he brought back nothing
but wounds and glory. He then passed some time in Na¬
ples and in Sicily, where he indulged in his favourite oc¬
cupation of poetry. Pouring out maledictions on war, as
the bane of nations and the destroyer of human happiness,
he pleased himself with creating an imaginary romantic
Arcadia, free from all the passions, tumults, and anxieties
which distract men in this every-day common-place world ;
but notwithstanding these benign and peaceful pictures
painted by his fancy, he still remained the soldier, and, in
addition to his acknowledged courage, evinced consider¬
able military talents. Hence, in 1536, he marched with
the imperial army into France, having under his orders
thirty companies of Spanish troops. But this was the last
campaign of Garcilaso, who, in the disastrous retreat from
Marseilles, found a death worthy of his valour. A number
of French peasants having occupied a tower, whence they
greatly annoyed the imperial army on its retreat, the em¬
peror ordered Garcilaso to carry it by assault. He obey¬
ed, but executing his order with less prudence than va¬
lour, he mounted the first to the assault, and was over¬
thrown by a mass of stone, which struck him on the head,
and inflicted a mortal wound. He was conveyed in this
state to Nice, where, after lingering twenty hours in great
agony, he expired in November 1536, being then in the
thirty-third year of his age. Arms and letters sincerely
deplored his loss; and the emperor himself was so touch¬
ed, that when the tower had been carried, he caused
twenty-eight peasants who remained out of the fifty who
formed its garrison to be hanged on the spot where the
poet-soldier had fallen. At the age of twenty-eight Gar-
316 GAR
Garcias- cilaso had married an Aragonese lady, Doha Helena de
Laso. Zuniga, by whom he had a son, who, like his father, fell in
the flower of his age (1569), in a combat with the Dutch.
Although the military career of Garcilaso is not without
glory, yet he owes his reputation to his literary merit,
more especially to the reformation he effected in Spanish
poetry, and which forms an epoch in the age in which he liv¬
ed. For several centuries before the birth of Garcilaso, the
Spaniards possessed a species of poetry.1 The first known
compositions were romances, produced probably in the
mountains of Asturias ; and the first people amongst whom
a less rude and incorrect kind of poetry appeared, were the
Valencians and the Catalans, who wrote in their own par¬
ticular language. The last of these troubadours was Jago
Roig, who died at the commencement of the fifteenth cen¬
tury.2 3 In the kingdoms of Leon and Aragon, where the
Castillian dialect prevailed, the only poetical compositions
at first known were these romances, composed of redondil-
las or assonantes? each verse being subjected to a measure
consisting of four trochees. Much about the same time
appeared the verses of the Arte Mayor, composed of tw elve
syllables, like the following, in which Alfonso the Wise re¬
lates that he had learned from a celebrated alchemist how
to make the philosopher’s stone, by means of which he had
been enabled to augment his revenues :
La piedra que Hainan philosophical.
Sabia fazer, e mi la ensenno..
Fizimos la juntos, despues solo yo..
Con que muchas veces crescio mi caudal.
In the same century, that is, about the middle of the thir¬
teenth, a Benedictine named Barceo introduced the verses
called Martelliani by the Italians, and Alexandrine by the
French :
Quiero far una prosa en roman paladino
En el qual suele el pueblo hablar a su vecino.
GAR
measure of the Italians; and his efforts were crowned with Gar, t
success. Garcilaso merely followed Boscan, but, on the L t\
other hand, he had the talent to surpass him, and approach- ^
ed more nearly to the sweetness and softness of Petrarch,
whilst his rival imitated the precision and energy of Dante.
All the contemporary poets united in opposing a reform
the success of which would infer their condemnation; but
although they evoked the shades of their illustrious prede¬
cessors, the genius of the two wise innovators triumphed
over their cabals. Garcilaso and Boscan obtained the title
of Fathers of the Good School; Garcilaso was named the
Spanish Petrarch, the Prince of Spanish Poetry; and the
desired reform was effected. It was followed by good imi¬
tators,4 till the apparition of Andalous Gongora, who ap¬
peared to have undertaken the task of banishing for ever
good taste from his country ; but, in spite of all his efforts,
and those of his partisans, under the reign of Charles V.
and the three Philips, his successors, Spain was fertile in
good poets ; and, in recent times, Iriarte, Cienfuegos, Mo-
ratin, Arellano, Quintana, and, above all, Melendez-Val-
dez, have enabled their countrymen to taste the delights
of true poetry. Boscan, who survived Garcilaso six years,
collected the works of the latter ; but death surprised him
before he was enabled to give them to the world. The
first known edition is that of Venice, 1553, in 8vo. The
celebrated grammarian Sanchez, called in Latin Sanctius,
had corrected what he found defective in the oldest edi¬
tion ; but the most esteemed edition is that of Madrid,
1765, in 16to, containing a preface and notes, which
prove the anonymous editor to have been an able and en¬
lightened man of letters. It is not by the multitude of his
w orks that Garcilaso has secured immortality, since they
are all contained in a small volume; but this volume in¬
cludes all that is necessary to serve as a model to the best
poets of the Spanish nation.
The style peculiar to Garcilaso is the tender and the
pathetic, which predominates, in a high degree, in all his
compositions. Amongst the sonnets, which are thirty in
number, may be particularly distinguished that one which
commences,
O dulces prendas por mi mal halladas;
and also another, not less beautiful, beginning,
Si quexas y lamentos pueden tanto,
which Sismondi has translated with equal elegance and
precision.5 But the composition which forms the glory of
Garcilaso is the first of his three eclogues, which has served
as a model to a crowd of imitators, who have not of course
succeeded in approaching it. This poem, consisting of
about four hundred verses, was written at Naples, where
the author seems to have at once imbibed the spirit of Vir¬
gil and of Sannazaro. Two shepherds, Salicio and Nemo-
roso, meet, and, by their plaintive songs, express the grief
occasioned to the one by the infidelity,
Por fi silencio de la selva umbrosa,
and to the other, by the death, of his shepherdess,
Como al partir del sol la sombra cresce.
In the first, there is a softness, a delicacy, a submission;
But this metre has for a long time fallen into almost total
disuse, except in Spain. In fact, it was only under the
reign of John II. a great protector of letters, who sw ayed
the sceptre from 1401 to 1454, that Spanish poetry assumed
a character truly national. This prince collected around
him the ablest Valentian troubadours, and the most re¬
nowned Castillian poets ; and it was then that the learned
Marquis of Villenas, John of Mena, the Marquis Mendoza
of Santillane, John of the Encina, and others, appeared,
and that versification was subjected to some rules, conform¬
ably to the precepts laid down in Arts of Poetry composed
by the two authors last named. But this versification was
still very rude, when Dante, Petrarch, and Sannazaro had
already made themselves admired in Italy and in all Eu¬
rope, by the excellence and beauty of their compositions.
At length came Boscan and Garcilaso, who, united from
their earliest infancy in the closest friendship, and alike
sensible of the merit of the three great Italian poets, the
perusal of whose works had formed at once their taste and
their understanding, resolved to effect a general reform in
the bad taste which still prevailed in their own country.
Boscan was the first to enter the field. He introduced
the sonnet, the canzoni, the stanze, and the endecasyllabic
1 Coleccion de Poesias Castellanos anteriorcs al Sigh xv. by Don Antonio Sanchez, Madrid, 1782, in 4 vols. 8vo. In this collection
are contained the poem of the Cid, written towards the middle of the eleventh century; that of Alexander the Great, which belongs to
the twelfth ; the pieces of the archpriest of Fita, who lived at the commencement of the thirteenth; and the poems of Barceo, who
died in 1268.
2 Los Danes de Roig, Yalentia, 1735, in 4to.
3 1 he redondillas consist of four verses, in which there is an exact and full rhyme, as razon, corazon, called consonante. The assonantc
is the echo of the final vowel, and not of the final consonant of the verse to which it corresponds, as sano, raso, claro, &c. When the
romance is composed of redondillas, these change rhymes successively ; but when it is composed of assonants, a single vowel predo¬
minates throughout the whole romance.
4. T hese imitators, in adopting the Italian metres introduced by Boscan and Garcilaso, have nevertheless preserved their redondillM,
their assonantes, and their octaves, which had been known in Spain since the fourteenth century.
s Litterature du Midi de VEurope, tome iii. p. 270.
*
GAR
d.i in the second a depth of grief; in both a purity of pastoral
V sentiment, which strike us the more forcibly when we re¬
collect that the writer was a warrior destined to perish a
few months afterwards in leading an assault. Each verse
charms at once by the truth of an exalted but touching
sentiment, by the happy choice of expression, and by a
harmony which never fails to satisfy even the most deli¬
cate ear. Nevertheless, the song of Nemoroso is still
more fascinating than that of his associate, perhaps, be¬
cause it moves us more gently. The passage where he
speaks of the buckle of his mistress’s hair,
Una parte guarde de tu cabellos,
which he carries on his heart, and with which he is resolv¬
ed never to part, has no model, neither among the ancients
nor among the moderns.1 Garcilaso has also written ele¬
gies, of which one was composed at the foot of Mount
iEtna; they are to be found in the same volume. Inde¬
pendently of the rare merit of all his compositions, which
have placed the author in the first rank amongst the lyric
and bucolic poets of his nation, the single eclogue to which
we have just referred would of itself be sufficient to ensure
him immortality.
This poet must not be confounded wfith another person
of the same name, but surnamed the Inca, a Spanish histo¬
rian, born at Cuzco in 1530, who wrote, 1. Part First of
Royal Commentaries, treating of the origin of the Incas,
their laws, and their government, Lisbon, 1609, in folio ;
2. Part Second of the Incas, or General History of Peru,
Lisbon, 1617, in fol.; 3. History of Florida by the Inca,
Lisbon, 1605, in 4to.
GAUD, a department of the south-east of France,
formed in part of the ancient province of Nismes, and of
Uzes and Alais, formerly portions of Languedoc. It is
bounded on the north by the departments of Lozere and
Ardeche, on the east by Vaucluse, on the south-east by
the Mouths of the Rhone, on the south by the Mediterra¬
nean Sea, on the south-west by Herault, and on the west
by Aveiron. It extends over 2314 square miles, contain¬
ing, according to the royal almanack, 599,723 hectares. It
is divided into four arrondissements, thirty-eight cantons,
365 communes, and contains 357,383 individuals, of whom
about one third profess the Protestant religion. There is
great variety in the face of the country. The southern
part, which extends to the sea, and was probably once co¬
vered by it, is a level plain, with many morasses, lakes,
and dykes. The northern parts are higher, and some
ot thern mountainous. The range of the Cevennes Hills
passes through these portions, and from them issue the rivers
icr towards the north, the Lot and the Tarn towards
tie west, the Herault and the Bedourle towards the south,
an the Ardeche and the Garden towards the east, abun¬
dantly watering the valleys on both sides. The soil is
generally either calcareous or schistose, resting on a bed of
gramte, and better adapted for the growth of olives, grapes,
and other fruits, than for corn. The climate, especially to
6 19 mild; snow rarely falls, and quickly disap¬
pears , but, on the other hand, the summers are exces¬
sively hot, and the air arid.
Although some good wheat is grown near Nismes, yet it
. mSTT!ent f°r the few who eat it, and the greater part of
-ne inhabitants are fed with rye, oats, and buck-wheat, and
mnng a great part of the year with chestnuts. This latter,
jj.i ^ t e peasantry, furnishes a meal three times a day,
or nf °! or fried 1° olive oil; and when a bad year
em ldPPens> the sufferings of the poor are excessive.
GAR
The chief products of the department are wine, brandv,
and oil; but large quantities of silk are made in some dis¬
tricts. The yearly production at present is calculated to be
lo0,000 pounds of raw silk; before the Revolution it was
350,000 pounds. The horses and cows have no distin¬
guishing properties, but the sheep are an excellent race,
producing good wool, milk that is made into cheese, and
very savoury meat. The manufacturing industry is not
considerable, consisting of the fabrication of cloth, silks,
hats, glass, earthenware, and perfumery.
The trade of the department is confined to the export
of wine, brandy, raisins, chestnuts, capers, liquorice, coal,
salt, and wool.
GARDA, a beautiful lake in the Austrian dominions in
Italy, called by the ancients Benacus. It is situated at the
oot o the Tyrolean Alps, and formed by numerous rivu¬
lets, chiefly issuing out of the province of Styria. It forms
a river at Peschiera, then called by the name of the Min-
cio. It is about thirty-five miles in length, varying in its
breadth, but nowhere more than fourteen miles across. In
the centre it is said to be three hundred feet deep^ A
small town of the same name is situated on the eastern
side of the lake, which, in the ancient civil wars, was a port
of some importance. On the banks of this lake Bonaparte
defeated the Austrians commanded by Wurmser in 1796.
GARDANT, or Guard ant, in Heraldry, denotes any
beast full faced, and looking right forward.
GARDELEGEN, a city of the Prussian province of
Saxony, the capital of a circle of the same name. It is si¬
tuated on the river Milde, is surrounded with walls, and
contains 540 houses, with 4650 inhabitants, who carry on
linen, woollen, and cotton manufactures, as well as breweries
and distilleries. Long. 14. 15. E. Eat. 52. 32. N.
GARDEN, Francis, better known as one of the Lords
of Session in Scotland, under the title of Lord Garden-
stone, was born at Edinburgh on the 24th of June, in the
year 1721. His father was Alexander Garden of Troup,
an opulent landholder in Aberdeenshire; and his mother
Jane, daughter of Sir Francis Grant of Cullen. After
passing through the usual course of liberal education at the
school and the university, he betook himself to the study
of law; and in the year 1744 was admitted a member of
the Faculty of Advocates.
In his practice as advocate he soon began to be distin¬
guished by a native rectitude of understanding; by that
vivacity of apprehension and imagination which is com¬
monly denominated genius; by manly candour in argu¬
ment, often more persuasive than subtilty and sophistical
artifice; and by powers which, with diligence, might easily
have conducted him to the highest eminence in the profes¬
sion. But the same strength, openness, and ardour of mind,
which distinguished him so advantageously at the bar,
tended to give him a fondness for the gay enjoyments of
convivial intercourse, which was unfavourable to his pro¬
gress in juridical erudition. Shining in the social and con¬
vivial circle, he became less ambitious than he might other¬
wise have been, of the character of an eloquent advocate,
or of a profound and learned lawyer. The vivacity of his
genius was averse from austere and plodding study, whilst
it was captivated by the fascinations of polite learning and of
the fine arts. He, however, became, in 1764, his majesty’s
solicitor-general for Scotland; and he was afterwards ele-
vated to the bench, as a judge both in the Courts of Session
and Justiciary.
In the year 1762 he purchased the estate of Johnston,
in the county of Kincardine ; and a few years afterwards
317
Garda
^ II
Garden.
pnnazaro. {Literature Espagnole, tome i. pR2ol J P 1 U Itahan Pieces of the same description, if we except the Arcadia of
318
GAR
GAR
Gardening, he began to attempt a plan of the most liberal improve-
v*—ment of the value of this estate, by an extension of the vil¬
lage of Laurencekirk, adjoining. In the year 1779, he pro¬
cured it to be erected into a burgh of barony, with a ma¬
gistracy, an annual fair, and a weekly market. He pro¬
vided in it a good inn for the reception of travellers, and
furnished this inn with a library for their amusement. In the
year 1785, upon the death of his elder brother, Lord Gar-
denstone succeeded to the possession of the family estates,
which were considerable. His succession to an ample in¬
come, at a period when the vigour of his constitution was
rapidly yielding to the infirmities of old age, enabled him
to seek relief from his official duties, by a temporary resi¬
dence on the Continent. In the month of September 1786,
he set out from London for Dover, and passed over into
France. After visiting Paris, he proceeded to Provence,
and spent the winter months in the genial climate of Hieres.
In the spring of 1787 he returned northwards, visiting Ge¬
neva, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and the Dutch pro¬
vinces, and passing through Germany into Italy. After
an absence of about three years, he returned to his native
country. His last years were spent in the discharge of the
duties of his office as a judge ; in social intercourse with
his friends ; in cherishing those fine arts, of which he was
an eminent judge ; and in promoting the comfort, and en¬
couraging the industry of his dependents. St Bernard’s
Well, in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh, had long been
distinguished for the medicinal virtues of its waters. But
various circumstances had concurred to throw it into ne¬
glect. The qualities of this mineral water falling under g
Lord Gardenstone’s notice, he was induced to purchase the 1
property of the well; to direct it to be cleared from sur-Gard
rounding obstacles, which contaminated the virtues of the ^
water, or made it inaccessible; to erect a beautiful and
commodious edifice over it; and to appoint proper persons
to distribute the water for a very trivial compensation to
the public. As an amusement during the last two or three
years of his life, when his increasing infirmities precluded
him from more active exercise, and from mingling so fre¬
quently in the society of his friends as was agreeable to his
social and convivial temper, he bethought himself of revis¬
ing some of the jeux d'esprit, and light fugitive pieces, in
which he had indulged the gaiety of his fancy in his ear¬
lier days ; and a small volume of poems was published, in
which the best pieces are, upon good authority, ascribed to
Lord Gardenstone. He revised also the memoranda which
he had made upon his travels, and permitted them to be
sent to press. Two volumes were published, one after an¬
other, whilst his lordship was yet alive; the third appeared
after his death. They met with a very favourable recep¬
tion in the world, and were honoured with the high appro¬
bation of the most respectable writers of periodical criticism.
His lordship’s health had been long declining, and he died
a bachelor, on the 22d of July 1793, lamented by his friends,
and by all to whom his merits and virtues were known.
Garden, a piece of ground properly laid out for orna¬
mental effect, or for the careful cultivation of fruits, flowers,
and vegetable productions.
GAUD E NI N G,
The art of forming and cultivating garden grounds,whe¬
ther of the Ornamental or Culinary kinds. The former,
or Ornamental, commonly called Landscape Gardening,
will be the subject of this article ; the latter, or Culinary
Gardening, will be treated of under the head of Horti¬
culture.
I.—HISTORY OF GARDENING.
Gardening, as Mr Walpole observes,1 was probably one
of the first arts which succeeded to that of building houses,
and naturally attended property and individual possession.
Culinary, and afterwards medicinal herbs, were the objects
of every head of a family; and it became convenient to
have them within reach, without seeking them at random
in woods, in meadows, or on mountains, as often as they
were wanted. When the earth ceased to furnish sponta¬
neously all those primitive luxuries, and cultivation became
requisite, separate enclosures for rearing herbs were re¬
quired. Fruits were in the same predicament; and those
most in use, or which demand attention, must have enter¬
ed into and extended the domestic enclosure. Noah, we
are informed, planted a vineyard, and drank of the wine.
Thus men acquired kitchen gardens, orchards, and vine¬
yards. A cottage, and a slip of ground for a cabbage and a
gooseberry bush, such as we see by the side of a common,
were in all probability the earliest seats and gardens; a
well and bucket succeeded to the Pison and Euphrates of
Paradise. As settlements increased, the orchard and the
vineyard followed; and the earliest princes of tribes pos¬
sessed what are now only accounted the necessaries of a
modern farmer. Matters, we may well believe, remained
long in this situation; and we have reason to think that
for many centuries the term garden implied no more than
a kitchen-garden or orchard.
The garden of Alcinous, in the Odyssey, is the most re¬
nowned in the heroic times. Is there an admirer of Ho¬
mer who can read his description of it without rapture, or
who does not form to his imagination a scene of delights
more picturesque than the landscapes of Tinian or Juan Fer¬
nandez ? Yet what was that boasted Paradise with which
the gods ordain’d
To grace Alcinous and his happy land ?
Why, divested of harmonious Greek and bewitching poe¬
try, it was but a small orchard and vineyard, with some
beds of herbs, and two fountains that watered them, enclos¬
ed within a quickset hedge. The whole compass of the
celebrated garden enclosed only four acres of ground.
The garden of Alcinous was planted by the poet, and en¬
riched by him with the gift of eternal summer, and was no
doubt an effort of imagination surpassing any thing he had
ever seen. As he has bestowed on the same happy prince
a palace with brazen walls and columns of silver, he cer¬
tainly intended that the garden should be proportionally
magnificent. We are sure, therefore, that, as late as Ho¬
mer’s age, an enclosure of four acres, comprehending orch¬
ard, vineyard, and kitchen garden, was a stretch ot luxury
which the world at that time had never beheld.
Previously to this, however, we have in the sacred writ¬
ings hints of a garden still more luxuriously furnished. We
allude to the Song of Solomon, part of the scene of which
is undoubtedly laid in a garden.2 Flowers and fruits are
particularly spoken of as the ornaments and the produce ot
1 History of Modern Gardening, subjoined to the fourth volume of his Anecdotes' of Painting.
* Chap. ii. 1.
GARDENING.
gj8tfy. it; and besides these, aromatic vegetables formed a consi-
derable part of the gratification it afforded. The camphor
and the cinnamon tree, with all trees of frankincense, and
all the principal spices, flourished there.1 Solomon tells us
in another place,2 that he made him great works, namely,
gardens and orchards, and planted in them trees of every
kind. Indeed we must suppose his gardens to have been
both amply and curiously furnished, seeing that the kinds
and properties of the vegetable tribes seem to have been a
favourite study with the royal philosopher, and to have been
deemed a subject worthy of his pen ; for we are told that
he wrote of plants, from the cedar of Lebanon down to the
hyssop of the wall.3 Fountains and streams of water ap¬
pear also to have had a share in the composition.
The hanging gardens of Babylon formed a still greater
prodigy. But as they are supposed to have been formed
on terraces and the walls of the palace, whither soil had
been conveyed on purpose, Mr Walpole concludes that
they were what sumptuous gardens have been in all ages
until the present, unnatural, enriched by art, possibly with
fountains, statues, balustrades, and summer-houses, and
any thing but verdant and rural. Others, however, have
allowed them greater praise ; and they seem, in many re¬
spects, to have been laid out with good taste. Their ele¬
vation not only produced a variety and extent of view, but
was also useful in moderating the heat. Such a situation
would likewise suit a greater variety of trees and plants than
a plain surface, and would contain a larger as well as a more
diversified extent. The suiting of the situation to the na¬
ture of the tree seems, from the account given by Josephus,
to have been one view4 in erecting the building in such a
manner; and the success seems to have been answerable,
as the trees are said to have flourished extremely well,5
and to have grown as tall as in their native situations. On
the whole, then, however different these may appear from
modern gardens, they seem to have been formed with judg¬
ment and taste, and well adapted to the situation and cir¬
cumstances in which they were placed.
It seems probable, from several circumstances, that the
eastern gardens were adjoining to the house or palace to
which they belonged. Thus, King Ahasuerus goes imme¬
diately from the banquet of wine to walk in the garden of
the palace.6 The garden of Cyrus at Sardis, mentioned
by Xenophon,7 was probably contiguous to the palace; as
was that of Attains, mentioned by Justin.8 But the hang-
ing gardens at Babylon were not so much adjacent to the
palace, as part of the palace itself, since several of the royal
apartments were beneath them.8
It is not clear what the taste for gardening was amongst
the Greeks. The Academus, we know, was a wooded
shady place ; and the trees appear to have been of the olive
species. It was situated beyond the limits of the walls,
and adjacent to the tombs of the heroes ; and though we
are nowhere informed of the particular manner in which
this grove was disposed or laid out, it may be gathered
from Pausanias, in his Attica, that it was an elegant orna¬
mented place. At the entrance was an altar dedicated to
Love, which was said to have been the first erected to that
deity. Within the Academus were the altars of Prome¬
theus, of the Muses, of Mercury, of Minerva, and Hercules ;
and at a small distance was the tomb of Plato. So that in
all probability it was highly adapted by art, as well as na¬
ture, to philosophic reflection and contemplation. We are
told by Plutarch, that before the time of Cimon, the Aca¬
demus was a rude uncultivated spot, which was planted by
t lat general, who had water conveyed to it; but whether
319
this water was brought merely for use to refresh the trees, History.
or for ornament, does not appear. It was divided into gym- v—
nasia, or places of exercise, and philosophic walks shaded
with trees; and these are said to have flourished very well,
until destroyed by Sylla when he besieged Athens. ’ Near
the academy were the gardens of the philosophers, of Plato
and of Epicurus; which, however, were probably but small.
The scene of Plato’s Dialogue concerning Beauty is ele¬
gantly described as being on the banks of the Ilissus, and
under the shade of the plantain ; but no artificial arrange¬
ment of objects is mentioned, nor any thing which can lead
us to imagine the prospect to have been any other than
merely natural.
Amongst the Romans, a taste for gardening, any other-
wise than as a matter of utility, seems not to have prevail¬
ed till a very late period; at least the writers on husband¬
ry, Cato, Varro, Columella, and Palladius, make not the
least mention of a garden as an object of pleasure, but sole¬
ly with respect to its productions of herbs and fruits. The
gardens of Lucullus are the first we find mentioned of re¬
markable magnificence, though probably, from the extrava¬
gance to which these had arrived, they were not the first
of the kind. Plutarch speaks of them as incredibly ex¬
pensive, and equal to the magnificence of kings. They
consisted of artificial elevations of ground to a surprising-
height, buildings projecting into the sea, and vast pieces of
water made upon land. In short, his extravagance and ex¬
pense were so great that he thence acquired the appellation
of the Roman Xerxes. It is not improbable, from this ac¬
count, and from the consideration that Lucullus had spent
much time in Asia, in a situation in which he had an op¬
portunity of observing the most splendid constructions of
this kind, that these gardens were laid out in the Asiatic
style. The vast masses of building said to have been erected
might have borne some resemblance, in the arrangement
and style, to the Babylonian gardens; and the epithet of
the Roman Xerxes might be applicable to the taste as well
as to the magnitude and expensive nature of his works.
The Tusculan villa of Cicero, though often mentioned,
is not anywhere described in his works, so as to give an
adequate idea of the style in which his gardens or grounds
were disposed. And there is but little in Virgil relative to
this subject. Pines,10 it seems, were a favourite ornament in
gardens ; and flowers,11 especially roses, were much esteem¬
ed, perfumes indeed having been always highly valued in
warm climates. Virgil places Anchises in"Elysium in a
grove of bays, and is careful to remark that they were of the
sweet-scented kind. The Passtan roses were chiefly valued
for their excellent odour; and on account of this quality
they were placed by Tibullus as ornaments in the Elysian
fields. There appears also to have prevailed amongst the
Romans a piece of luxury relative to gardens, which is
equally prevalent amongst us, namely, the forcing of flowers
at seasons of the year not suited to their natural blowing.
When Roman authors, whose climate instilled a wish
for cool retreats, speak of their enjoyments of this kind,
they sigh for grottoes, caves, and the refreshing hollows
of mountains, near irriguous and shady fountains ; or boast
of their porticoes, walks of planes, canals, baths, and
breezes from the sea. Their gardens are almost never
mentioned except as affording shade and shelter from the
rage of the dog-star. Pliny has left us descriptions of two
of his villas. As he used his Laurentine villa as his win¬
ter retreat, it is not surprising that the garden should form
no considerable part of the account. All he says of it is,
that the gestatio, or place of exercise, which surrounded
1 Cant. iv. 12.
; Keel. ii. 4, 5.
3 1 Kings, iv. 33.
4 Contra Apion, lib. i. § 19.
s Q. Curtius, lib. v.
5 Esther, vii. 7-
’ '(Econ.
8 Lib. xxxvi. c. 4.
* Died. lib. ii.
I • Ecloff. vii. 65, &c.
II Georg, iv. 113.
320
GARDENING.
History, the garden, was bounded by a hedge of box, and, where
that had perished, with rosemary; that there was a walk
of vines; and that most of the trees were fig and mul¬
berry, the soil not being proper for any other sorts. On
the subject of his Tuscan villa he is more diffuse; and the
garden forms a considerable part of the description. And
what constituted the principal beauty of that pleasure-
ground ? Exactly what was the admiration of this coun¬
try above a century ago ; namely, box-trees cut into mon¬
sters, animals, letters, and the names of the master and the
artificer. In an age when architecture displayed all its
grandeur, all its purity, and all its taste; when there arose
Vespasian’s amphitheatre, the Temple of Peace, Trajan’s
forum, Domitian’s baths, and Hadrian’s villa, the ruins
and vestiges of which still excite our astonishment and
curiosity; a Roman consul, a polished emperor’s friend,
and a man of elegant literature and taste, delighted in
what the mob now scarcely admire in a college garden.
All the ingredients of Pliny’s corresponded exactly with
those laid out in this country on Dutch principles. He
talks of slopes, terraces, a wilderness, shrubs methodi¬
cally trimmed, a marble basin, pipes spouting water, a
cascade falling into the basin, bay-trees planted alter¬
nately with planes, and a straight walk whence issued
others parted off by hedges of box and apple trees, with
obelisks placed between every two. There wants nothing
but the embroidery of a parterre, to make a garden in the
time of Trajan serve for a description of one in that of
King William. In one passage indeed Pliny seems to have
conceived that natural irregularity might be a beauty ; in
opere urbanissimo, says he, subita velut illati ruris imitatio.
Something like a rural view was contrived amidst so much
polished composition. But the idea soon vanished, lineal
walks immediately enveloped the slight scene, and names
and inscriptions in box again succeeded to compensate
for the daring introduction of nature.
In the paintings found at Herculaneum there are a few
traces of gardens, as may be seen in the second volume of
the prints. They are all small enclosures, formed by trellis-
work and espaliers, and regularly ornamented with vases,
fountains, and caryatides, elegantly symmetrical, and pro¬
per fqr the narrow spaces allotted to the garden of a house
in a capital city.
From what has been said, it appears how naturally and
insensibly the idea of a kitchen-garden slid into that which
has for so many ages been peculiarly termed a garden,
and by our ancestors in this country distinguished by the
name of a pleasure-garden. A square piece of ground was
originally parted off for the use of the family; and to ex¬
clude cattle, and ascertain the property, it was separated
from the fields by a hedge. As pride and the desire of pri¬
vacy increased, the enclosure was dignified by walls ; and
in climates where fruits were not lavished by the ripening
glow of nature and soil, fruit-trees were assisted and shel¬
tered from surrounding winds by the like expedient; for
the inundation of luxuries, which have swelled into gene¬
ral necessities, have almost all taken their source from the
simple fountain of reason.
When the custom of making square gardens enclosed
with walls was thus established, to the exclusion of nature
and prospect, pomp and solitude combined to call for some¬
thing which might serve to enrich and enliven the insipid
and unanimated partition. Fountains, first invented for
use, received embellishments from costly marbles; and
at last, to contradict utility, tossed their waste of waters
into the air in spouting columns. Art, in the hands of
rude man, had at first been made a succedaneum to na¬
ture ; in the hands of ostentatious wealth, it became the
means of opposing nature ; and the more it traversed the
march of the latter, the more nobility thought its power
was demonstrated. Canals measured by the line w'ere
introduced instead of meandering streams, and terraces H t
were hoisted aloft in opposition to the facile slopes which w
imperceptibly unite the valley to the hill. Balustrades '
defended those precipitate and dangerous elevations, and
flights of steps reunited them to the subjacent flat from
which the terrace had been raised. Vases and sculpture
were added to these unnecessary balconies, and statues fur¬
nished the lifeless spot with mimic representations of the
excluded sons of men. Thus difficulty and expense were
the constituent parts of those sumptuous and selfish soli¬
tudes ; and every improvement which was made seemed
but a step farther from nature. The tricks of water-works
to wet the unwary, not to refresh the panting spectator;
and parterres embroidered in patterns like a petticoat; were
but the childish endeavours of fashion and novelty to re¬
concile greatness to what it had surfeited on. To crown
these impotent displays of false taste, the sheers were ap¬
plied to the lovely wildness of form with which nature has
distinguished each various species of tree and shrub. The
venerable oak, the romantic beech, the useful elm, even
the aspiring circuit of the lime, the regular round of the
chestnut, and the almost moulded orange-tree, were cor¬
rected by fantastic and tasteless admirers of symmetry.
The compass and square were of more use in plantations
than the nurseryman. The measured walk, the quincunx,
and the etoile, imposed their unsatisfying sameness on every
royal and noble garden. Trees were headed, and their sides
pared away ; and many French groves seemed green chests
set upon poles. Seats of marble, arbours, and summer¬
houses, terminated every vista ; and symmetry, even where
the space was too large to permit its being remarked at one
view, was so essential, that, as Pope observed,
each alley has a brother,
And half the garden just reflects the other.
Knots of flowers were more clefensibly subjected to the
same regularity. Leisure “ in trim gardens took his plea¬
sure.” In the garden of Marshal de Biron at Paris, con¬
sisting of fourteen acres, every walk wras buttoned on each
side by lines of flow er-pots.
It does not precisely appear what our ancestors meant
by a bower; it was probably an arbour; sometimes it
meant the whole frittered enclosure, and in one instance
it certainly included a labyrinth. Rosamond’s bower was
indisputably of that kind ; though, whether composed of
walls or hedges, cannot be determined. A square and a
round labyrinth wrere formerly so capital ingredients of a
garden, that in the architecture of Du Cerceau, who lived
in the time of Charles IX. and Henry III., there is scarcely
a ground plot without one of each. In Kip’s Views of the
Seats of our Nobility and Gentry, w e see the same tire¬
some and returning uniformity. Every house is approached
by two or three gardens, consisting perhaps of a gravel
walk and two grass plats or borders of flowers. Each rises
above the other by two or three steps, and as many walls
and terraces, with so many iron gates, that we recollect those
ancient romances in which every entrance was guarded
by nymphs or dragons. Yet though these and such like
preposterous inconveniences prevailed from age to age,
good sense in this country had perceived the want of some¬
thing at once more grand and more natural. These reflec¬
tions, and the bounds set to the waste made by royal spoil¬
ers, gave origin to parks. The latter were contracted fo¬
rests and extended gardens. Hentzner says, that according
to Rous of Warwick, the first park was that at Woodstock.
If so, it might be the foundation of a legend that Henry
II. secured his mistress in a labyrinth; it was no doubt
more difficult to find her in a park than in a palace, where
the intricacy of the woods and various lodges buried in co¬
vert might conceal her actual habitation.
It is more extraordinary, that having so long ago stum¬
bled on the principle of modern gardening, we should have
CARD
story persisted in retaining its reverse, symmetrical and unnatu-
V'-ral gardens. That parks were rare in other countries,
Hentzner, who travelled over a great part of Europe, leads
us to suppose, by observing that they were common in
England. In France they retained the name, but nothing
was more different both in compass and disposition. Their
parks were usually square or oblong enclosures, regularly
planted with walks of chestnuts or limes, and generally
every large town has one for its public recreation. “ One
man, one great man, we had,” says Mr Walpole, “ on
whom nor education nor custom could impose their preju¬
dices ; who, ‘ on evil days though fallen, and with dark¬
ness and solitude compassed round,’ judged that the mis¬
taken and fantastical ornaments he had seen in gardens
were unworthy of the Almighty hand that planted the de¬
lights of Paradise. He seems with the prophetic eye of
taste to have conceived, nay to have foreseen, modern garden¬
ing ; as Lord Bacon announced the discoveries since made
by experimental philosophy. The description of Eden is
a warmer and more just picture of the present style than
Claud Lorraine could have painted from Hagley or Stour-
head.” Mr Walpole then quotes passages illustrative of
this observation; and adds, “ Recollect, that the author
of this sublime vision had never seen a glimpse of any
thing like what he has imagined; that his favourite an¬
cients had dropped not a hint of such divine scenery; and
that the conceits in Italian gardens were the brightest ori¬
ginals that his memory could furnish. But his intellectual
eye saw a nobler plan, so little did he suffer by the loss of
sight. It sufficed him to have seen the materials with which
he could work. The vigour of a boundless imagination told
him how a plan might be disposed that would embellish
nature, and restore art to its proper office, the just improve¬
ment or imitation of it.”
Let us now turn to an admired writer, posterior to Mil-
ton, and see how cold, how insipid, how tasteless, is his ac¬
count of what he pronounced a perfect garden. We speak
not of his style, which it was not necessary for him to ani¬
mate with the colouring and glow of poetry. It is his
want of ideas, of imagination, and of taste, that deserves
censure, when he dictated on a subject which is capable of
all the graces which a knowledge of beautiful nature can
bestow. Sir William Temple was an excellent man ; Mil-
ton, a genius of the first order. We cannot wonder that
Sir William should declare in favour of parterres, foun¬
tains, and statues, as necessary to break the sameness of
large grass plats, which he thinks have an ill effect upon
the eye, when he acknowledges that he discovers fancy in
the gardens of Alcinous. Milton studied the ancients with
equal enthusiasm, but no bigotry; and he had the judgment
to distinguish between the want of invention and the beau¬
ties of poetry. Compare his paradise with Homer’s gar-
Jen, both ascribed to a celestial design. For Sir William,
it is just to observe that his ideas centred in a fruit gar¬
den. He had the honour of giving to his country many
delicate fruits, and he thought of little else than disposing
them to the best advantage.
The best figure of a garden,” says he, “ is either a
square or an oblong, and either upon a flat or a descent;
they have all their beauties, but the best I esteem an ob-
ong upon a descent. The beauty, the air, the view, make
unends for the expense, which is very great in finishing
nui supporting the terrace walks, in levelling the parterres,
mu m the stone stairs that are necessary from one to the
Jther. 1 he perfectest figure of a garden I ever saw, either
it iome or abroad, was that of Moor Park in Hertford-
’ lrtj’ vv'hen I knew it about thirty years ago. It was made
the Countess of Bedford, esteemed amongst the great-
st wits of her time, and celebrated by Dr Donne ; and
*11' very great care, excellent contrivance, and much cost;
Jut greater sums may be thrown away without effect or ho-
vol. x.
E N I N G.
nour, if there want sense in proportion to money, or if na¬
ture be not followed, which I take to be the great rule in
this, and perhaps in every thing else, as far as the conduct
not only of our lives but our governments. (We shall pre¬
sently see how natural this admired garden was.) Because
I take the garden I have named to have been in all kinds
the most beautiful and perfect, at least in the figure and
disposition, that I have ever seen, I will describe it for a
model to those that meet with such a situation, and are
above the regards of common expense. It lies on the side
of a hill, upon which the house stands, but not very steep.
T he length of the house, where the best rooms and of most
use or pleasure are, lies upon the breadth of the garden ;
the great parlour opens into the middle of a terrace gravel
walk that lies even with it, and which may be, as I remem¬
ber, about three hundred paces long, and broad in propor¬
tion ; the border set with standard laurels and at large dis¬
tances, which have the beauty of orange-trees out of flower
and fruit. From this walk are three descents by many
stone steps, in the middle and at each end, into a very
large parterre. This is divided into quarters by gravel
walks, and adorned with two fountains and eight statues in
the several quarters. At the end of the terrace walk are
two summer-houses, and the sides of the parterre are ranged
with two large cloisters open to the garden, upon arches of
stone, and ending with two other summer-houses even with
the cloisters, which are paved with stone, and designed for
walks of shade, there being none other in the whole par¬
terre. Over these two cloisters are two terraces covered
with lead and fenced with balusters; and the passage into
these airy walks is out of the two summer-houses at the
end of the first terrace walk. The cloister facing the south
is covered with vines, and would have been proper for an
orange-house, and the other for myrtles or other more
common greens, and had, I doubt not, been cast for that
purpose, if this piece of gardening had been then in as
much vogue as it is now. From the middle of this par¬
terre is a descent by many steps flying on each side of a
grotto, that lies between them, covered with lead and flat,
into the lower garden, which is all fruit-trees ranged about
the several quarters of a wilderness, which is very shady;
the walks here are all green, the grotto embellished with
figures of shell rock-work, fountains, and water-works. If
the hill had not ended with the lower garden, and the wall
were not bounded by a common way that goes through the
park, they might have added a third quarter of all greens;
but this want is supplied by a garden on the other side
the house, which is all of that sort, very wild, shady, and
adorned with rough rock-work and fountains. This was
Moor Park when I was acquainted with it, and the sweet¬
est place, I think, that I have seen in my life, either before
or since, at home or abroad.”
It is unnecessary to add any remarks respecting this de¬
scription. Any man might design and build as sweet a gar¬
den, who had been born in and never stirred out of Hol-
born. It was not, however, peculiar to Sir William Temple
to think in this manner. How many Frenchmen are there
who have seen our gardens, and still prefer unnatural flights
of steps and shady cloisters covered with lead ? Le Nautre,
the architect of the groves and grottoes at Versailles, came
hither on a mission to improve our taste, and planted St
James’ and Greenwich Parks ; no great monuments, by the
way, of his invention.
But, to do justice to Sir William Temple, we must not
omit what he adds, “ What I have said of the best forms
of gardens is meant only of such as are in some sort regu¬
lar ; for there may be other forms wholly irregular, that
may, for ought I know, have more beauty than any of the
others ; but they must owe it to some extraordinary disposi¬
tions of nature in the seat, or some great race of fancy or
judgment in the contrivance, which may reduce many dis-
2 s
322
GARDENING.
History, agreeing parts into some figure, which shall yet, upon the
''■''■'•iwhole, be very agreeable. Something of this I have seen
in some places, but heard more of it from others who have
lived much among the Chineses, a people whose way of
thinking seems to lie as wide of ours in Europe as their
country does. Their greatest reach of imagination is em¬
ployed in contriving figures, where the beauty shall be
great and strike the eye, but without any order or disposi¬
tion of parts, that shall be commonly or easily observed.
And though we have hardly any notion of this sort of
beauty, yet they have a particular word to express it; and
when they find it hit their eye at first sight, they say the
Sharawadgi is fine or is admirable, or any such expression
of esteem ; but I should hardly advise any of these at¬
tempts in the figure of gardens among us; they are adven¬
tures of too hard achievement for any common hands; and
though there may be more honour if they succeed well,
yet there is more dishonour if they fail, and it is twenty to
one they will; whereas in regular figures it is hard to make
any great and remarkable faults.”
Fortunately Kent and a few others were not quite so
timid, or we might still be going up and down stairs in the
open air. It is true, we have heard much, as Sir William
Temple did, of irregularity and imitations of nature in the
gardens or grounds of the Chinese. The former is cer¬
tainly true ; they are as whimsically irregular as European
gardens were formally uniform and unvaried; but with regard
to nature, it seems as much avoided as in the squares and
oblongs and straight lines of our ancestors. An artificial
perpendicular rock starting out of a flat plain, and connect¬
ed with nothing, often pierced through in various places
with oval hollows, has no more pretension to be deemed
natural than a lineal terrace or a parterre. Mr Joseph
Spence was so persuaded of the Chinese emperor’s pleasure-
ground being laid out on principles resembling ours, that
he translated and published, under the name of Sir Harry
Beaumont, a particular account of that enclosure, from the
collection of the letters of the Jesuits. But except a de¬
termined irregularity, we can find nothing in it which gives
any idea of attention being paid to nature. In short, this
pretty gaudy style is the work of caprice and whim, and,
when we reflect on the buildings, presents no image but
that of unsubstantial tawdriness.
Having thus cleared our way by ascertaining what have
been the ideas on gardening in all ages as far as we have
materials to judge by, it remains to show to what degree
Mr Kent invented the new style, and what hints he had
received to suggest and conduct his undertaking. We have
seen what Moor Park was when pronounced a standard.
But as no succeeding generation in an opulent and luxu¬
rious country contents itself with the perfection established
by its ancestors, more perfect perfection was still sought
after; and improvements had gone on, till London and Wise
stocked all our gardens with giants, animals, monsters,
coats of arms, and mottoes, in yew, box, and holly. Ab¬
surdity could go no farther, and the tide turned. Bridg¬
man, the next fashionable designer of gardens, was far more
chaste; and, whether from good sense, or that the nation
had been struck and reformed by an admirable paper in the
Guardian (No. 173), he banished verdant sculpture, and did
not even revert to the square precision of the foregoing age.
He enlarged his plans, disdained to make every division
tally to its opposite; and though he still adhered much to
straight walks with high clipped hedges, they were only his
great lines ; the rest he diversified by wilderness, and with
loose groves of oak, though still within surrounding hedges.
As his reformation gained footing, he ventured, in "the
royal garden at Richmond, to introduce cultivated fields,
and even morsels of a forest appearance, by the sides of
those endless and tiresome walks which stretched out of
one into another without intermission. But this was not
until other innovators had also broken loose from rigid His
symmetry. ^
The capital stroke, however, the leading step to all that
has followed, was the destruction of walls for boundaries,
and the invention of fosses. A sunk fence may be called
the leading step. No sooner was this simple enchantment
made, than levelling, mowing, and rolling, followed. The
contiguous ground of the park without the sunk fence was
to be harmonized with the lawn within ; and the garden in
its turn wras to be set free from its prime regularity, that it
might assort with the wilder country without. The sunk
fence ascertained the specific garden ; but that it might
not draw too obvious a line of distinction between the neat
and the rude, the contiguous out-lying parts came to be
included in a kind of general design ; and when nature was
taken into the plan, every step that was made pointed
out new beauties and inspired new ideas. At that mo¬
ment appeared Kent, painter enough to taste the charms
of landscape, bold and opinionative enough to dare and
to dictate, and born with a genius to strike out a great
system from the twilight of imperfect essays. He leaped
the fence, and saw that all nature was a garden. He
felt the delicious contrast of hill and valley changing im¬
perceptibly into each other, tasted the beauty of the
gentle swell or concave scoop, and remarked how loose
groves crowned an easy eminence with happy ornament,
and, whilst they called in the distant view between their
graceful stems, removed and extended the perspective by
delusive comparison. Thus the pencil of his imagination
bestow ed all the arts of landscape on the scenes he handled.
The great principles upon which he worked were perspec¬
tive, and light and shade. Groups of trees broke too uni¬
form or too extensive a lawn ; evergreens and woods were
opposed to the glare of the champaign; and where the
view was less fortunate, or so much exposed as to be be¬
held at once, he blotted out some parts by thick shades, to
divide it into variety, or to make the richest scene more
enchanting by reserving it to a farther advance of the spec¬
tator’s step. Thus selecting favourite objects, and veiling
deformities by screens of plantation, and by sometimes al¬
lowing the rudest waste to add its foil to the richest theatre,
he realized the compositions of the greatest masters in
painting. Where objects were wanting to animate his ho¬
rizon, his taste as an architect could bestow immediate ter¬
mination. His buildings, his seats, his temples, were more
the w orks of his pencil than of his compasses.
But of all the beauties which Kent added to the face of
this beautiful country, none surpassed his management of
water. Adieu now to canals, circular basins, and cascades
tumbling down marble steps, that last absurd magnificence
of Italian and French villas. The forced elevation of ca¬
taracts was no more. The gentle stream was taught to
wind seemingly at its pleasure; and where discontinued
by different levels, its course appeared to be concealed by
thickets properly interspersed, and glittered again at a dis¬
tance, where it might be supposed naturally to arrive. Its
borders w ere smoothed, but preserved their waving irregu¬
larity. A few trees scattered here and there on its edges
sprinkled the tame bank which accompanied its meanders;
and when it disappeared among the hills, shades descend¬
ing from the heights leaned towrards its progress, and framed
the distant point of light under which it was lost, as it
turned aside to either hand of the blue horizon. Thus
dealing in none but the colours of nature, and catching its
most favourable features, men saw a new creation opening
before their eyes. The living landscape was chastened or
polished, not transformed. Freedom was given to the
forms of trees ; they extended their branches unrestricted;
and where any eminent oak, or master beech, had escaped
maiming and survived the forest, bush and bramble were
removed, and all its honours were restored to distinguish
GARDENING.
Bcipl .and shade the plain. Where the united plumage of an an-
' dent wood extended wide its undulating canopy, and stood
venerable in its darkness, Kent thinned the foremost ranks,
and left only as many detached and scattered trees as soft¬
ened the approach of gloom, and blended a chequered light
with the thus lengthened shadows of the remaining columns.
Succeeding artists have added new master-strokes to
these touches, perhaps improved or brought to perfection
some which have been named. The introduction of foreign
trees and plants, which we owe principally to Archibald
duke of Argyll, contributed essentially to the richness of
colouring so peculiar to our modern landscape. The mix¬
ture of various greens, and the contrast of forms between
our forest-trees and the northern and West Indian firs and
pines, are improvements more recent than Kent, or but
little known to him. The weeping willow, and every florid
shrub, each tree of delicate or bold leaf, are new tints in
the composition of our gardens. But just as are the en¬
comiums which have been bestowed on Kent’s discove¬
ries, he was neither without assistance nor without faults.
Mr Pope undoubtedly contributed to form his taste.1 The
design of the Prince of Wales’ garden at Carlton House
was evidently borrowed from the poet’s at Twickenham.
There was a little of affected modesty in the latter, when
he said, that of all his works he was most proud of his gar¬
den. And yet it was a singular effort of art and taste to
impress so much variety and scenery on a spot of five acres.
The passing through the gloom from the grotto to the
opening day, the retiring and again assembling shades, the
dusky groves, the larger lawn, and the solemnity of the
termination at the cypresses leading up to his mother’s
tomb, were managed with exquisite judgment; and though
323
Lord Peterborough assisted him “ to form his quincunx Principles,
and to rank his vines,” these were not the most pleasing
ingredients of his little perspective.
Having routed professed art, Kent, like some reformers,
knew not how to stop at the just limits. He had followed
nature, and imitated her so happily, that he began to think
all her works were equally proper for imitation. In Ken¬
sington Garden he planted dead trees, to give a greater air
of truth to the scene; but he was soon laughed out of this
excess. His ruling principle was, that nature abhors a
straight line; and his imitators seemed to think that she
could love nothing but what was crooked. Yet so many
men of taste of all ranks devoted themselves to the new
improvements, that it is surprising how much beauty was
struck out, with so few absurdities. Still in some lights the
reformation seems to have been pushed too far. Though an
avenue crossing a park or separating a lawn, and intercept¬
ing views from the seat to which it leads, are capital faults ;
yet a great avenue cut through woods, perhaps before en¬
tering a park, has a noble air, and announces the habita¬
tion of some man of distinction. In other places, the total
banishment of all particular neatness immediately about a
house, which is frequently left gazing by itself in the middle
of a park, is a defect. Sheltered and even close walks, in
so very uncertain a climate as ours, are comforts ill ex¬
changed for the few picturesque days which we enjoy; and
whenever a family can purloin a warm and even something
of an old-fashioned garden from the landscape designed
for them by the undertaker in fashion^,without interfering
with the picture, they will find satisfaction in those days
which do not invite strangers to come and see their improve¬
ments.
II.—PRINCIPLES OF GARDENING.
Gardening, in the perfection to which it has at length
been brought in Britain, is entitled to a considerable rank
amongst the liberal arts. It is, according to Wheatley,
as superior to landscape painting as a reality to a repre¬
sentation ; it is an exertion of fancy, a subject for taste,
and being released from the restraints of regularity, and
enlarged beyond the purposes of domestic convenience,
the most beautiful, the most simple, the most noble scenes
of nature, are all within its province. For it is no longer
confined to the spots from which it takes its name; but,
as already observed, it regulates also the disposition and
embellishment of a park, a farm, or even a forest. The
business of a gardener is to select and apply whatever is
great, elegant, or characteristic in any of them; to dis¬
cover and to show all the advantages of the place upon
which he is employed; to supply its defects, to correct
Us faults, and to improve its beauties.
SECT. I.—MATERIALS OF GARDENING.
These may be divided into two general classes ; Natu¬
ral and Factitious.
h I he Natural Materials are, according to Wheatley’s
enumeration, Ground, Wood, Water, and Rocks.
h Ground. By this is meant that portion of naked
surface which is included within the place to be improved;
whether that surface be swamp, lawn, roughet, or broken
ground ; and whether it be a height, a valley, a plain, or a
composition of swells, dips, and levels. “ Nothing,” says
. Gilpin, “ gives so just an idea of the beautiful swell-
ings of ground as those of water, where it has sufficient
room to undulate and expand. In ground which is com¬
posed of very refractory materials, you are presented
often with harsh lines, angular insertions, and disagree¬
able abruptnesses. In water, whether in gentle or in agi¬
tated motion, all is easy, all is softened into itself; and
the hills and valleys play into each other in a variety of
the most beautiful forms. In agitated water, abruptnesses
indeed there are, but yet they are such abruptnesses as
in some part or other unite properly with the surface
around them, and are on the whole peculiarly harmoni¬
ous. Now, if the ocean in any of these swellings and
agitations could be arrested and fixed, it would produce
that pleasing variety which we admire in ground. Hence
it is common to fetch our images from water, and apply
them to land; we talk of an undulating line, a playing
lawn, and a billowy surface; and give a much stronger
and more adequate idea by such imagery, than plain lan¬
guage could possibly present.” The exertions of art,
however, are here inadequate, and the artist ought not
to attempt to create a mountain, a valley, or a plain ; he
should but rarely meddle even with the smaller inequali¬
ties of grounds. Rough and broken ground may gene¬
rally be reduced to lawn, or hid with wood; and a swamp
may be drained or covered with water, whilst lawn may be
variegated at pleasure by wood, and sometimes by water.
2. Wood, as a general term, comprehends all trees and
shrubs in whatever disposition; but it is specifically ap¬
plied in a more limited sense, and in that sense we shall
now use it. Every plantation must be either a wood, a grove,
or a clump. A wood is composed both of trees and under-
w ood, covering a considerable space. A grove consists of
He wpe’ Sa-VS Lord I?-vron’ “ was the inventor of that boast of the English, modern gardening. He divides this honour with Milton,
in V WartZlJ hen^e Shears that the enchanting art of gardening, in which this kingdom claims a preference over every nation
Europe, chiefly owes its origin and its improvement to two great poets, Milton and Pope.’ ” (Byron’s Works, vol. vi. p. 408.)
324
GARDENING.
Principles, trees without underwood. A clump differs from either
'''T"*"' only in extent. It may be either close or open: when
close, it is sometimes called a thicket; when open, a group
of trees ; but both are equally clumps, whatever may be
the shape or situation.
One of the noblest objects in nature1 is the surface of a
large thick wood, commanded from an eminence, or seen
from below hanging on the side of a hill. The latter is
generally the more interesting object. Its aspiring situ¬
ation gives it an air of greatness; its termination is com¬
monly the horizon; and, indeed, if it be deprived of that
splendid boundary, if the brow appear above it (unless
some very peculiar effect characterizes that brow), it loses
much of its magnificence. It is inferior to a wood which
covers a less hill from the top to the bottom ; for a whole
space filled is seldom little. But a wood commanded from
an eminence is generally no more than a part of the scene
below; and its boundary is often inadequate to its great¬
ness. To continue it, therefore, till it winds out of sight,
or loses itself in the horizon, is generally desirable; but
then the varieties of its surface grow confused as it retires;
whilst those of a hanging wood are all distinct; the furth¬
est parts are held up to the eye, and none are at a dis¬
tance though the whole be extensive.
The varieties of a surface are essential to beauty. A
continued smooth shaven level of foliage is neither agree¬
able nor natural; the different growths of trees commonly
break it in reality, and their shadows still more in appear¬
ance. These shades are so many tints, which, undulating
about the surface, are its greatest embellishment; and such
tints may be produced with more effect, and more cer¬
tainty, b}r a judicious mixture of greens ; at the same time
an additional variety may be introduced, by grouping and
contrasting trees very different in shape from each other;
and whether variety in the greens or in the forms be the
design, the execution is often easy, and seldom to a cer¬
tain degree impossible. In raising a young wood, it may
be perfect. In old woods, there are many spots which
may be either thinned or thickened ; and there the cha.
racteristic distinctions should determine what to plant, or
what to leave, at least they will often point out those which,
as blemishes, ought to be taken away; and the removal
of two or three trees will sometimes accomplish the de¬
sign. The number of beautiful forms and agreeable mas¬
ses which may decorate the surface is so great, that where
the place will not admit of one, another is always ready;
and as no delicacy of finishing is required, no minute ex¬
actness is worth regarding; great effects will not be dis¬
concerted by small obstructions and little disappointments.
The contrasts, however, of masses and of groups must
not be too strong where greatness is the character of the
wood, for unity is essential to greatness; and if direct oppo¬
sites be placed close together, the wood is no longer one ob¬
ject ; it is only a confused collection of several plantations.
But if the progress be gradual from the one to the other,
shapes and tints widely different may assemble on the
same surface ; and each should occupy a very considerable
space. A single tree, or a small cluster of trees, in the
midst of an extensive wood, is in size but a speck, and in
colour but a spot; the groups and the masses must be
large to produce any sensible variety.
hen, in a romantic situation, very broken ground is
overspread with wood, it may be proper on the surface of
the wood to mark the inequalities of the ground. Rude¬
ness, not greatness, is the prevailing idea; and a choice di¬
rectly the reverse of that which is productive of unity will
produce it. Strong contrasts, even oppositions, may be
eligible. The aim is rather to disjoin than to connect. A
deep hollow may sink into dark green; an abrupt bank
may be shown by a rising stage of aspiring trees, and a Prints
sharp ridge by a narrow line of conical shapes. Firs are
of great use upon such occasions; their tint, their form
and their singularity, recommend them.
A hanging wood of thin forest trees, seen from below, is
seldom pleasing; these few trees are by the perspective
brought nearer together; it loses the beauty of a thin
wood, and is defective as a thick one. The most obvious
improvement, therefore, is to thicken it. But when seen
from an eminence, a thin wood is often a lively and ele¬
gant circumstance in a view; it is full of objects; and
every separate tree shows its beauty. To increase that
vivacity which is the peculiar excellence of a thin wood
the trees should be characteristically distinguished both
by their tints and their shapes ; and such as for their airi¬
ness have been proscribed in a thick wood, are frequently
the most eligible here. Differences also in their growths
are a further source of variety ; each should be consider¬
ed as a distinct object, unless where a small number are
grouped together; and then all that compose the little
cluster must agree: But the groups themselves, for the
same reason as the separate trees, should be strongly
contrasted; the continued underwood is their only con-
nection, and that is not affected by their variety.
Though the surface of a wood, when commanded, de¬
serves all these attentions, yet the outline more frequently
calls for our regard ; it is also more in our power; it may
sometimes be great, and may always be beautiful. The
first requisite is irregularity. That a mixture of trees
and underwood should form a long straight line, can
never be natural; and a succession of easy sweeps and
gentle rounds, each a portion of a greater or less circle,
composing all together a line literally serpentine, is if
possible worse. It is but a number of regularities put to¬
gether in a disorderly^ manner, and equally distant from the
beautiful both of art and of nature. The true beauty of an
outline consists more in breaks than in sweeps; rather in
angles than in rounds; in variety, not in succession.
Every variety in the outline of a wood must be a pro¬
minence or a recess. Breadth in either is not so important
as length to the one and depth to the other. If the for¬
mer ends in an angle, the latter diminishes to a point;
they may have more force than a shallow dent, or a dwarf
excrescence, how wide soever. They are greater devi¬
ations from the continued line which they are intended
to break; and their effect is to enlarge the wood itself,
which seems to stretch from the most advanced point,
back beyond the most distant to which it retires. The
extent of a large wood on a flat, not commanded, can by
no circumstance be so manifestly shown as by a deep re¬
cess ; especially if that recess wind so as to conceal the
extremity, and leave the imagination to pursue it. On
the other hand, the poverty of a shallow wood might
sometimes be relieved by here and there a prominence,
or clumps which by their apparent junction should seem
to be prominences arising out of it. A deeper wood with
a continued outline, except when commanded, would not
appear so considerable.
An inlet into a wood seems to have been cut, if the
opposite points of the entrance tally; and such a show of
art depreciates its merit; but a difference only in the si¬
tuation of these points, by bringing one more forward than
the other, prevents the appearance, though their forms be
similar. Other points, which distinguish the great parts,
should in general be strongly marked. A short turn has
more spirit in it than a tedious circuit; and a line broken
by angles has a precision and firmness which in an undu¬
lated line are wanting; the angles indeed should common¬
ly be a little softened; the rotundity of the plant which
1 See Wheatley’s Observations on Modern Gardening.
«
GARDENING.
325
ncip
. forms them is sometimes sufficient for the purpose; but
* if they are mellowed down too much, they lose all mean¬
ing. Three or four large parts thus boldly distinguished
will break a very long outline. When two woods are op¬
posed on the sides of a narrow glade, neither has so much
occasion for variety in itself as if it were single; if they
are very different from each other, the contrast supplies
the deficiency to each, and the interval between them is
full of variety. The form of that interval is indeed of as
much consequence as their own. Though the outlines of
both the woods be separately beautiful, yet if together
they do not cast the open space into an agreeable figure,
the whole scene is not pleasing; and a figure is never
agreeable when the sides too closely correspond. Whether
they are exactly the same, or exactly the reverse of each
other, they appear equally artificial.
Every variety of outline hitherto mentioned may be
traced by the underwood alone; but frequently the same
effects may be produced with more ease, and with much
more beauty, by a few trees standing out from the thicket,
and belonging, or seeming to belong, to the wood, so as
to make a part of its figure. Even where they are not
wanted for that purpose, detached trees are such agree¬
able objects, so distinct, so light, when compared to the
covert about them, that, skirting along it in some parts,
and breaking it in others, they give an unaffected grace,
which cannot otherwise be given to the outline. They
have a still further effect when they stretch across the
whole breadth of an inlet or before part of a recess into
the wood; they are themselves shown to advantage by
the space behind them; and that space, when seen be¬
tween their stems, they in return throw into an agreeable
perspective.
The prevailing character of a wood is generally gran¬
deur. The principal attention which it requires, therefore,
is to prevent the excesses of that character, to diversify
the uniformity of its extent, to lighten the unwieldiness
of its bulk, and to blend graces with greatness. The cha¬
racter of a grove is beauty. Fine trees are lovely objects.
A grove is an assemblage of these, in which every indivi¬
dual retains much of its own peculiar elegance, and what¬
ever it loses is transferred to the superior beauty of the
whole. To a grove, therefore, which admits of endless
variety in the disposition of the trees, differences in their
shapes and their greens are seldom very important, and
sometimes they are detrimental. Strong contrasts scat¬
ter trees which are thinly planted, and which have not
the connection of underwood; they no longer form one
plantation; they are a number of single trees. A thick
grove is not indeed exposed to this mischief, and certain
situations may recommend different shapes and different
greens for their effects upon the surface; but in the out¬
line they are seldom much regarded. The eye, attracted
into the depth of the grove, passes by little circumstances
at the entrance; even varieties in the form of the line do
not always engage the attention; they are not so appa¬
rent as m a continued thicket, and are scarcely seen if
they are not considerable.
But the surface and the outline are not the only cir¬
cumstances which should be attended to. Though a grove
he beautiful as an object, it is besides delightful as a spot
o walk or to sit in; and the choice and the disposition of
the trees for effects within, are therefore a principal con-
, ration. Mere irregularity alone will not please ; strict
“her is there more agreeable than absolute confusion, and
ome meaning better than none. A regular plantation has
egree of beauty, but it gives no satisfaction, because
i 7?™ that the same number of trees might be more
thoV U ^ arrange(B A disposition, however, in which
is °-n are kr°ken> without varying the distances,
qually improper. The trees should gather into groups,
or stand in various irregular lines, and describe various Principles,
figures ; the intervals between them should be contrasted
both in shape and in dimensions; a large space should in
some places be quite open, whilst in others the trees should
be so close together as hardly to leave a passage between
them ; and in others as far apart as the connection will
admit. In the forms and the varieties of these groups,
these lines, and these openings, principally consists the in¬
terior beauty of a grove.
The force of them is most strongly illustrated at Clare¬
mont, where the walk to the cottage, though destitute of
many natural advantages, and eminent for none, though it
commands no prospect, though the water below it is a
trifling pond, though it has nothing, in short, but inequa¬
lity of ground to recommend it, is yet the finest part of
the garden ; for a grove is there planted in a gently curv¬
ed direction, all along the side of a hill, and on the edge
of a wood, which rises above it. Large recesses break it
into several clumps, which hang down the declivity; some
of them approaching, but none reaching quite to the bot¬
tom. These recesses are so deep as to form great open¬
ings in the midst of the grove; they penetrate almost to
the covert; but the clumps being all equally suspended
from the wood, and a line of open plantation, though
sometimes narrow, running constantly along the top, a
continuation of grove is preserved, and the connection be¬
tween the parts is never broken. Even a group which
near one of the extremities stands out quite detached, is
still in style so similar to the rest as not to lose all rela¬
tion. Each of these clumps is composed of several others
still more intimately united ; each is full of groups, some¬
times of no more than two trees, sometimes of four or five,
and now and then in larger clusters ; an irregular waving
line, issuing from some little crowd, loses itself in the
next; or a few scattered trees drop in a more distant suc¬
cession from the one to the other. The intervals, wind¬
ing here like a glade, and widening there into broader
openings, differ in extent, in figure, and in direction; but
all the groups, the lines, and the intervals, are collected to¬
gether into large general clumps, each of which is at the
same time both compact and free, identical and various.
The whole is a place wherein to tarry with secure delight,
or saunter with perpetual amusement.
The grove at Esher Place was planted by the same
masterly hand ; but the necessity of accommodating the
young plantation to some large trees which grew there
before has confined its variety. The groups are few and
small; there was not room for larger or for more; there were
no opportunities to form continued narrow glades between
opposite lines ; the vacant spaces are therefore chiefly ir¬
regular openings, spreading every way, and great differ¬
ences of distance between the trees are the principal va¬
riety ; but the grove winds along the bank of a large river,
on the side and at the foot of a very sudden ascent, the
upper part of which is covered with wood. In one place
it presses close to the covert, retires from it in another,
and stretches in a third across a bold recess, which runs
up high into the thicket. The trees sometimes overspread
the flat below, sometimes leave an open space to the river,
at other times crown the brow of a large knoll, climb up
a steep, or hang on a gentle declivity. These varieties
in the situation more than compensate for the want of va-
riety in the disposition of the trees; and the many happy
circumstances which concur,
In Esher’s peaceful grove,
Where Kent and nature vie for Pelham’s love,
render this little spot more agreeable than any at Clare¬
mont. But though it was right to preserve the trees al¬
ready standing, and not to sacrifice great present beauties
to still greater in futurity, yet this attention has been a
restraint; and the grove at Claremont, considered mere-
1]!'!
GARDENING.
326
Principles.ly as a plantation, is, in delicacy of taste and fertility of
invention, superior to that at Esher.
It is, however, possible to secure both a present and a
future effect, by fixing first on a disposition which will be
beautiful when the trees are large, and then intermingling
another which is agreeable while they are small. Ihese
occasional trees are hereafter to be taken away; and must
be removed in time, before they become prejudicial to the
others.
The consequence of variety in the disposition is variety
in the light and shade of the grove, which may be improv¬
ed by the choice of the trees. Some are impenetrable
to the fiercest sunbeam; others let in here and there a
ray between the large masses of their foliage ; and others,
thin both of boughs and of leaves, only chequer the scene
around. Every degree of light and shade, from a glare
to obscurity, may be managed, partly by the number, and
partly by the texture of the trees. Differences only in the
manner of their growths have also corresponding effects;
there is a closeness under those the branches of which
descend low and spread wide ; a space and liberty where
the arch above is high ; and frequent transitions from the
one to the other are very pleasing. Still these are not all
the varieties of which the interior of a grove is capable;
trees, indeed, whose branches nearly reach the ground,
being each a sort of thicket, are inconsistent with an open
plantation ; but though some of the characteristic distinc¬
tions are thereby excluded, other varieties more minute
succeed in their place; for the freedom of passage through¬
out brings every tree in its turn near to the eye, and sub¬
jects even differences in foliage to observation. These,
slight as they may seem, are agreeable when they occur;
it is true, they are not regretted when wanting ; but a de¬
fect of ornament is not necessarily a blemish.
It has been already observed, that clumps differ only in
extent from woods, if they are close; or from groves, if
they are open. They are small woods and small groves,
governed by the same principles as the larger, allowances
being made for their dimensions. But besides the pro¬
perties they may have in common Avith woods or with
groves, they have others peculiar to themselves which re¬
quire examination. They are either independent or rela¬
tive. When independent, their beauty, as single objects,
is solely to be attended to; when relative, the beauty of
the individuals must be sacrificed to the effect of the
whole, which is the greater consideration.
The occasions on which independent clumps may be
applied are many. They are often desirable as beautiful
objects in themselves; they are sometimes necessary to
break an extent of lawn, or a continued line whether of
ground or of plantation ; but on all occasions a jealousy of
art constantly attends them, which irregularity in their
figure will not always alone remove. Though elevations
show them to advantage, yet a hillock evidently thrown
up on purpose to be crowned with a clump, is artificial to
a degree of disgust. Some of the trees should therefore
be planted on the sides, to take off that appearance. The
same expedient may be applied to clumps placed on the
brow of a hill, to interrupt its sameness. They will have
less ostentation of design, if they are in part carried
down either declivity. The objection already made to
planting many along such a brow, is on the same princi¬
ple. A single clump is less suspected of art; if it be an
open one, there can be no finer situation for it, than just
at the point of an abrupt hill, or on a promontory into a
lake or a river. It is in either a beautiful termination,
distinct by its position, and enlivened by an expanse of
sky or of water about and beyond it. Such advantages
may balance little defects in its form; but they are lost
if other clumps are planted near it. Art then intrudes, and
the whole is displeasing.
But though a multiplicity of clumps, when each isanPriJ
independent object, seldom seems natural; yet a number W
of them may, without any appearance of art, be admitted
into the same scene, if they bear a relation to each other.
If by their succession they diversify a continued outline
of wood, if between them they form beautiful glades, if
altogether they cast an extensive lawn into an agreeable
shape, the effect prevents any scrutiny into the means of
producing it. But when the reliance on that effect is so
great, every other consideration must give way to the
beauty of the whole. The figure of the glade, of the lawn,
or of the wood, is principally to be attended to. The
finest clumps, if they do not fall easily into the great lines,
are blemishes; their connections and their contrasts are
more important than their forms.
3. Water. All inland Avater is either running or stag¬
nant. When stagnant, it forms a lake or a pool, which
differ only in extent; whilst a pool and zpond are the same.
Bunning waters are either a river, a rivulet, or a rill; and
these differ only in breadth. A rivulet and a brook are
synonymous terms; a stream and a current are genera!
names for all.
Space or expansion is essential to a lake. It cannot be
too large as a subject of description or of contemplation;
but the eye receives little satisfaction when it has not a
form on which to rest. The ocean itself hardly atones
by all its grandeur for its infinity; and a prospect of it is,
therefore, always most agreeable, when in some part, at
no great distance, a reach of shore, a promontory, or an
island, reduces the immensity into shape. An artificial
lake, again, may be comparatively extravagant in its di¬
mensions. It may be so out of proportion to its appen¬
dages, as to seem a waste of water; for all size is in some
respects relative. If this exceeds its due dimensions, and
if a flatness of shore beyond it adds still to the dreariness
of the scene, wood to raise the banks, and objects to dis¬
tinguish them, are the remedies to be employed. If the
length of a piece of water be too great for its breadth, so
as to destroy all idea of circuity, the extremities should
be considered as too far off, and made important to give
them proximity; whilst at the same time the breadth may
be favoured, by keeping down the banks on the sides. On
the same principle, if the lake be too small, a low shore
will, in appearance, increase the extent.
But it is not necessary that the whole scene he bound¬
ed. If form be impressed on a considerable part, the eye
can, without disgust, permit a large reach to stretch be¬
yond its ken; it can even be pleased to observe a tremu¬
lous motion in the horizon, which shows that the water
has not yet there attained its termination. Still short ol
this, the extent may be kept in uncertainty; a hill or a
wood may conceal one of the extremities, and the country
beyond it, in such a manner as to leave room for the sup¬
posed continuation of so large a body of water. Oppor¬
tunities to choose this shape are frequent, and it is the
most perfect of any. The scene is closed, but the extent
of the lake is undetermined ; a complete form is exhibited
to the eye, whilst a boundless range is left open to the
imagination.
But mere form will only give content, not delight; that
depends upon the outline, which is capable of exquisite
beauty; and the bays, the creeks, and the promontories,
which are ordinary parts of that outline, together with
the accidents of islands, of inlets, and of outlets to rivers,
are in their shapes and their combinations an inexhausti¬
ble fund of variety.
Bays, creeks, and promontories, however, though ex¬
tremely beautiful, should not be very numerous. For a
shore broken into little points and hollows has no certain¬
ty of outline ; it is only ragged, not diversified; and the
distinctness and simplicity of the great parts are hurt by
f!
ff
incip.s
GARDENING.
the multiplicity of subdivisions. But islands, though the
channels between them be narrow^, do not so often dero¬
gate from greatness. They intimate a space beyond them
the boundaries of which do not appear, and remove to a
distance the shore which is seen in perspective between
them. Such partial interruptions of the sight suggest ideas
of extent to the imagination.
Though the windings of a river are proverbially descrip¬
tive of its course, yet, without being perpetually wreathed,
it may be natural. Nor is the character expressed only
by the turnings. On the contrary, if these are too frequent
and sudden, the current is reduced into a number of sepa¬
rate pools, and the idea of progress is obscured by the diffi¬
culty of tracing it. Length is the strongest symptom of
continuation. Long reaches are therefore characteristic
of a river, and they conduce much to its beauty ; each is
indeed a considerable piece of water, and variety of beau¬
tiful forms may be given to their outlines.
A river requires a number of accompaniments. The
changes in its course furnish a variety of situations ; whilst
the fertility, convenience, and amenity, which attend it, ac¬
count for all appearances of inhabitants and improvement.
Profusion of ornament on a fictitious river is a just imita¬
tion of cultivated nature. Every species of building, every
style of plantation, may abound on the banks ; and, what¬
ever be their characters, their proximity to the water is
commonly the happiest circumstance in their situation. A
lustre is from thence diffused on all around; each derives
an importance from its relation to this capital feature ; those
which are near enough to be reflected immediately belong
to it, those at a greater distance still share in the anima¬
tion of the scene; and objects totally detached from each
other, being all attracted towards the same interesting con¬
nection, are united into one composition.
In the front of Blenheim was a deep broad valley, which
abruptly separated the castle from the lawn and the plan¬
tations before it; even a direct approach could not be made
without building a monstrous bridge over the vast hollow ;
but this forced communication was only a subject of rail¬
lery ; and the scene continued broken into two parts, abso¬
lutely distinct from each other. This valley has been flood¬
ed, but not filled; the bottom only is covered with waiter,
and the sides are still very high ; but they are no longer
the steeps of a chasm; they are the bold shores of a noble
river. The same bridge is standing without alteration;
but no extravagance remains; the water gives it propriety.
Above it the river first appears, winding from behind a
small thick wood in the valley ; and soon taking a deter¬
mined course, it is then broad enough to admit an island
filed with the finest ti'ees ; others corresponding to them
in growth and disposition stand in groups on the banks, in¬
termixed with younger plantations. Immediately below
the bridge the river spreads into a large expanse ; the sides
are open lawn. On that farthest from the house formerly
stood the palace of Henry II. celebrated in many an an¬
cient ditty by the name of Fair Kosamond’s Bower. A
c ear little spring which rises there is by the country peo¬
ple still called Fair Rosamond’s Well. The spot is now
marked by a single willowr, and near it is a fine collateral
stream, ot a beautiful form, retaining its breadth as far as
it is seen, and retiring at last from the view behind a hill.
Lie main river, having received this accession, makes a
gentle bend; then continues for a considerable length in
one wide direct reach; and, just as it disappears, throws
itself down a high cascade, which is the present termina-
tion. Upon one of the banks of this reach is the garden.
Lie steeps are there diversified with thickets and with
glades; but the covert prevails, and the top is crowned
" it i lofty trees. On the other side there is a noble hanging
"ood in the park. It was depreciated when it sunk into a
lollow, and was poorly lost in the bottom j but it is now
327
a rich appendage to the river, falling down an easy slope Principles,
quite to the water’s edge, where, with overshadowing, it is v—
reflected on the surface. Another face of the same wood
borders the collateral stream with an outline more indent¬
ed and various ; whilst a very large irregular clump adorns
the opposite declivity. This clump is at a considerable
distance from the principal river; but the stream it belongs
to brings it down to connect with the rest; and the other
objects, which w ere before dispersed, are now, by the in¬
terest of each in a relation which is common to all, col¬
lected into one illustrious scene. The castle itself is a pro¬
digious pile of building, which, with all the faults of the ar¬
chitecture, will never seem other than a truly princely ha¬
bitation ; and the confined spot where it was placed, on the
edge of an abyss, is converted into a proud situation, com¬
manding a beautiful prospect of water, and open to an ex¬
tensive lawn, adequate to the mansion, and an emblem of its
domain. In the midst of this lawn stands a column, a state¬
ly trophy, recording the exploits of the Duke of Marlbo¬
rough and the gratitude of Britain. Between this pillar
and the castle is the bridge, which now, applied to a sub¬
ject worthy of it, is established in all the importance due
to its greatness. The middle arch is wider than the Rialto,
but not too wide for the occasion; and yet that is the nar¬
rowest part of the river; but the length of the reaches is
everywhere proportioned to their breadth. Each of them
is alone a noble piece of water; and the last, the finest of
all, loses itself gradually in a wood, which on that side is
also the boundary of the lawn, and rises into the horizon.
All is great in the front of Blenheim ; but in that vast space
no void appears, so important are the parts, so magnificent
is the object. The plain is extensive, the valley broad, and
the wood deep. Though the intervals between the build¬
ing are large, they are filled with the grandeur which build¬
ings of such dimensions and so much pomp diffuse all
around them ; and the river, in its long and varied course,
approaching to every object, and touching upon every part,
spreads its influence over the whole.
In the composition of this scene, the river, both as a part
itself, and as uniting the other parts, has a principal share.
But water is not lost though it be in so confined or so con¬
cealed a spot as to enter into no view; it may render that spot
delightful. It is capable of the most exquisite beauty in its
form ; and though not in space, may yet in disposition have
pretensions to greatness ; for it may be divided into several
branches, which will form a cluster of islands all connect¬
ed together, make the whole place irriguous, and, instead
of extent, supply a quantity of water. Such a sequestered
scene usually owes its retirement to the trees and the thickets
with which it abounds; but, in the disposition of these, one
distinction should be constantly attended to. A river flowing
through a wood which overspreads one continued surface
of ground, and a river between two woods, are in very dif¬
ferent circumstances. In the latter case the wroods are
separate ; they may be contrasted in their forms and their
characters, and the outline of each should be forcibly mark¬
ed. In the former, no outline ought to be decernible; for
the river passes between trees, not between boundaries;
and though in the progress of its course the style of the
plantations may often be changed, yet on the opposite banks
a similarity should constantly prevail, that the identity of
the wood may never be doubtful.
A river between two woods may enter into a view ; and
then it must be governed by the principles which regulate
the conduct and the accompaniments of a river in an open
exposure. But when it runs through a wood, it is never
to be seen in a prospect; the place is naturally full of ob¬
structions ; and a continued opening, large enough to re¬
ceive a long reach, would seem an artificial cut. The river
must therefore necessarily wind more than in crossing a
lawn where the passage is entirely free. But its influence
.328
GARDENING.
Principles, will never extend so far on the sides. The buildings must
be near the banks, and, if numerous, will seem crowded,
being all in one tract, and in situations nearly alike. The
scene, however, does not want variety; on the contrary,
none is capable of more. The objects are not indeed so
different from each other as in an open view ; but they are
very different, and in much greater abundance ; for this is
the interior of a wood, where every tree is an object, every
combination of trees a variety, and no large intervals are
requisite to distinguish the several dispositions ; the grove,
the thicket, or the groups, may prevail, and their forms and
their relations may be constantly changed, without restraint
of fancy, or limitation of number.
Water is so universally and so deservedly admired in a
prospect, that the most obvious thought in the manage¬
ment of it is to lay it as open as possible, and purposely to
conceal it would generally seem a severe self-denial; yet
so many beauties may attend its passage through a vrood,
that larger portions of it might be allowed to such retired
scenes than are commonly spared from the view, and the
different parts in different styles would be fine contrasts to
each other. If the water at Wotton1 were all exposed, a
walk of near tw o miles along the banks would be of a tedi¬
ous length, from the want of those changes of the scene
which now supply, through the whole extent, a succession of
perpetual variety. The extent is so large as to admit of a
division into four principal parts, all of them great in style
and in dimensions, and differing from each other both in
character and in situation. The first two are the least. The
one is a reach of river, about the third of a mile in length,
and of a competent breadth, flowing through a lovely mea¬
dow, open in some places to views of beautiful hills in the
country, and adorned in others with clumps of trees so large
that their branches stretch quite across, and form a high
arch over the water. The next seems to have been a for¬
mal basin encompassed w ith plantations, and the appen¬
dages on either side still retain some traces of regularity,
but the shape of the water is free from them; the size is
about fourteen acres ; and out of it issue tw o broad colla¬
teral streams w inding towards a large river, which they are
seen to approach and supposed to join. A real junction is
however impossible, from the difference of the levels ; but
the terminations are so artfully concealed, that the decep¬
tion is never suspected, and when known is not easily ex¬
plained. The river is the third great division of the wa¬
ter ; a lake into which it falls is the fourth. These two do
actually join, but their characters are directly opposite ;
the scenes which they belong to are totally distinct, and the
transition from the one to the other is very gradual; for
an island near the conflux, dividing the breadth, and con¬
cealing the end of the lake, moderates for some way the
space; and permitting it to expand by degrees, raises
an idea of greatness from uncertainty accompanied with
increase. The reality does not disappoint the expectation ;
and the island, which is the point of view, is itself equal to
the scene. It is large and high above the lake ; the ground
is irregularly broken ; thickets hang on the sides ; and to¬
wards the top is placed an Ionic portico, which commands
a noble extent of water, not less than a mile in circumfer¬
ence, bounded on one side with wood, and open on the
other to two sloping lawns, the least of an hundred acres,
diversified with clumps and bordered by plantations. Yet
this lake, when full in view, and with all the importance
which space, form, and situation can give, is not more in¬
teresting than the sequestered river, which has been men¬
tioned as the third great division of the water. It is just
within the verge of a wood, three quarters of a mile long,
and everywhere broad, whilst its course is such as to admit
of infinite variety without any confusion. The banks are
cleared of underwood, but a few thickets still remain, and on PriJv
one side an impenetrable covert soon begins ; the interval VCr1*
is a beautiful grove of oaks, scattered over a green sward
of extraordinary verdure. Between these trees and these
thickets the river seems to glide gently along, constantly
winding, without one short turn or one extended reach m
the whole length of the way. This even temper in the
stream suits the scenes through which it passes ; they are
in general of a very sober cast, not melancholy, but grave;
never exposed to a glare, never darkened with gloom, nor,
by strong contrasts of light and shade, exhibiting the ex¬
cess of either. Undisturbed by an extent of prospect with¬
out, or a multiplicity of objects within, they retain at all
times a mildness of character ; which is still more forcibly
felt when the shadows grow faint as they lengthen, when a
little rustling of birds in the spray, the leaping of the fish,
and the fragrance of the woodbine, denote the approach of
evening ; whilst the setting sun shoots its last gleams on a
Tuscan portico, which is close to the great basin, but which
from a seat near this river is seen at a distance, through
all the obscurity of the wood, glowing on the banks, and
reflected on the surface of the water. In another still more
distinguished spot is built an elegant bridge, with a colon¬
nade upon it, which not only adorns the place where it
stands, but is also a picturesque object to an octagon build¬
ing near the lake, where it is shown in a singular situation,
overarched, encompassed, and backed with wood, without
any appearance of the water beneath. This building, in
return, is also an object from the bridge ; and a Chinese
room, in a little island just by, is another. Neither of them
is considerable, and the others wdnch are visible are at a
distance ; but more or greater adventitious ornaments are
not required in a spot so rich as this in beauties peculiar
to its character. A profusion of water pours in from all
sides round upon the view; the opening of the lake appears,
and a glimpse is caught of the large basin. One of the colla¬
teral streams is full in sight, and the bridge itself is in the
midst of the finest part of the river ; all seem to commu¬
nicate the one with the other. Though thickets often in¬
tercept, and groups perplex the view, yet they never break
the connection between the several pieces of water; each
may still be traced along large branches or little catches,
which in some places are overshadowed and dim, in others
glisten through a glade, or glimmer between the holes of
trees in a distant perspective ; and in one, where they are
quite lost to the view, some arches of the stone bridge, but
partially seen among the vTood, preserve their connection.
If a large river may sometimes, a smaller current un¬
doubtedly may often, be conducted through a wood. It
seldom adorns, it frequently disfigures, a prospect, where
its course is marked, not by any appearance of water, but
by a confined line of clotted grass, which disagrees with
the general verdure. A rivulet may indeed have consi¬
deration enough for a home scene though it be open, but a
rill is always most agreeable when most retired from public
view. Its characteristic excellencies are vivacity and va¬
riety, which require attention, leisure, and silence, that
the eye may pore upon the little beauties, and the ear
listen to the low murmurs of the stream, without interrup¬
tion. To such indulgence a confined spot only is favour¬
able ; a close copse is therefore often more acceptable
than a high wood, and a sequestered valley at all times
.preferable to any open exposure. A single rill at a very
little distance is a mere w’ater-course ; it loses all its
charms ; it has no importance in itself, and bears no pro¬
portion to the scene. A number of little streams have in¬
deed an effect in any situation, but not as objects; they are
interesting only on account of the character they express,
and the irriguous appearance which they give to the whole.
1 Yale of Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire.
GARDENING.
329
« The full tide of a large river has more force than acti¬
vity, and seems too unwieldy to allow of very quick tran¬
sitions. But in a rill, the agility of its motions accounts
or every caprice; frequent windings disguise its insigni-
icance; short turnings show its vivacity; sudden changes
n the breadth are a species of its variety; and however
antastically the channel may be wreathed, contracted,
md widened, it still appears to be natural. We find an
imusement in tracing the little stream through all the in-
ricacies of its course, and in seeing it force a passage
hrough a narrow strait, expatiate on every opportunity,
truggle with obstructions, and puzzle out its way. A
ivulet, which is the mean between a river and a rill, par-
akes of the character of both. It is not licensed to the
ixtravagance of the one, nor under the same restraints as
he other; it may have more frequent bends than the
iver, and longer reaches than a rill; the breadth of a
tream determines whether the principal beauty results
fom extent or from variety.
The murmurs of a rill are amongst the most pleasing
arcumstances which attend it. If the bed of the stream
ie rough, mere declivity will occasion a constant rippling
mise. When the current drops down a descent, though
mt of a few inches, or forcibly bubbles up from a little
ioIIow, it has a deep gurgling tone, not uniformly continu¬
'd, but incessantly repeated, and therefore more engag-
ng than any. The flattest of all is that sound rather of
he splashing than the fall of water, which an even gentle
lope, or a tame obstruction, will produce. This is less
leasing than the others, but none should be entirely ex-
luded ; all in their turns are agreeable, and the choice of
hem is much in our power By observing their causes we
nay often find the means to strengthen, to weaken, or to
hange them; and the addition or removal of a single stone
ra few pebbles will sometimes be sufficient for the purpose.
A rill cannot pretend to any sound beyond that of a
ittle waterfall. The roar of a cascade belongs only to a
irger stream; but it may be produced by a rivulet to a
onsiderable degree, and attempts to do more have gene-
ally been unsuccessful. A vain ambition to imitate na¬
me in her great extravagancies betrays the weakness of
rt. Though a noble river, throwing itself headlong down
precipice, be an object truly magnificent, it must, how-
ver, be confessed, that in a single sheet of water there is
formality which its vastness alone can cure. But the
eight, not the breadth, is the wonder. When it falls not
nore than a few feet, the regularity prevails ; and its ex-
ent only serves to expose the vanity of affecting the style
j a cataract in an artificial cascade. It is less exceptionable
divided into several parts; for then each separate part
iay be wide enough for its depth, and in the whole, va-
iety, not greatness, will be the predominant character,
mt a structure of rough, large, detached stones, cannot
asily be contrived of strength sufficient to support a great
eight of water; it is sometimes from necessity almost
inooth and uniform, and then it loses much of its effect,
everal little falls in succession are preferable to one great
ascade which in figure or in motion approaches to regu-
irity.
When greatness is thus reduced to number, and length
ecomes of more importance than breadth, a rivulet vies
Uh a river; and it more frequently runs in a continued
eclivity, which is very favourable to such a succession
falls. Halt the expense and labour which are some-
aies bestowed on a river, to give it at the best a forced
Gcipitancy in one spot only, would animate a rivulet
iroughout the whole of its course. And, after all, the
'ost interesting circumstance in falling waters is their
lunation. A great cascade fills us with surprise. But
suiprise must cease; and the motion, the agitation,
ie rage, the froth, and the variety of the water, are
vol. x. J
finally the objects which engage the attention. For these Principles,
a rivulet is sufficient; and they may there be produced
without that appearance of effort which raises a suspicion
of art.
To obviate such a suspicion, it may sometimes be expe¬
dient to begin the descent out of sight; for the beginning
is the difficulty. If that be concealed, the subsequent
falls seem but a consequence of the agitation which cha¬
racterizes the water at its first appearance; and the ima¬
gination is at the same time let loose to give ideal extent
to the cascades. When a stream issues from a wood, such
management will have a great effect. The bend of its
course in an open exposure may afford frequent opportu¬
nities for it; and sometimes a low broad bridge may fur¬
nish the occasion. A little fall hid under the arch will cre¬
ate a disorder, in consequence of which a greater cascade
below will appear very natural.
4. Rocks. Rocks are themselves too vast and too stub¬
born to submit to our control; by the addition or removal
of appendages which we can command, parts may be
shown or concealed, and the characters with their impres¬
sions may be weakened or enforced. To adopt the ac¬
companiments, accordingly, is the utmost ambition of art
when rocks are the subject.
Their most distinguishing characters are, dignity, terror,
BLnA fancy. The expressions of all are constantly wild;
and sometimes a rocky scene is wild only, without pre¬
tensions to any particular character.
Rills, rivulets, and cascades, abound amongst rocks;
they are natural to the scene ; and such scenes commonly
require every accompaniment which can be procured for
them. Mere rocks, unless they are particularly adapted
to certain impressions, though they may surprise, cannot
be long engaging, if the rigour of their character be not
softened b^* circumstances which may belong either to
these or to more cultivated spots; and when the dreari¬
ness is extreme, little streams and waterfalls are of them¬
selves insufficient for the purpose; an intermixture of ve¬
getation is also necessary, and on some occasions even
marks of inhabitants are proper.
Large clefts, sloping or precipitous, with a dale at bot¬
tom, furnish scenes of the wildest nature. In such spots,
verdure alone will give some relief to the dreariness of
the scene ; and shrubs or bushes, without trees, are a suf¬
ficiency of wood. The thickets may also be extended by
the creeping plants, such as pyracantha, vines, and ivy,
to wind up the sides or cluster on the tops of the rocks.
And to this vegetation may be added some symptoms of
inhabitants, but they must be slight and few; the use of
them is only to cheer, not to destroy, the solitude of the
place; and such therefore should be chosen as are some¬
times found in situations retired from public resort. A
cottage may be lonely, but it must not here seem ruinous
and neglected; it should be tight and warm, with every
mark of comfort about it, to which its position in some
sheltered recess may greatly contribute. A cavity also
in the rocks, rendered easy of access, improved to a de¬
gree of convenience, and maintained in a certain state of
preservation, will suggest similar ideas of protection from
the bitterest inclemencies of the sky, and even of occa¬
sional refreshment and repose. But we may venture still
further; a mill is of necessity often built at some distance
from the town which it supplies; and here it would at the
same time apply the w^ater to a use, and increase its agi¬
tation. The dale may besides be made the haunt of those
animals, such as goats, which are sometimes wild and
sometimes domestic, and which, accidentally appearing,
will divert the mind from the sensations natural to the
scene, but not agreeable, if continued long without inter¬
ruption. Ihese and such other expedients will approxi¬
mate the severest retreat to the habitations of men, and
2 T
330
GARDENING.
Principles, convert the appearance of a perpetual banishment into
that of a temporary retirement from society.
But too strong a force on the nature of the place always
fails. A winding path, which appears to be worn, not cut,
has more effect than a high road, all artificial and level,
which is too weak to overbear, and yet contradicts the ge¬
neral idea. The objects therefore to be introduced must
be those which hold a mean between solitude and popu¬
lation, and the inclination of that choice towards either
extreme should be directed by the degree of wildness
which prevails; for though that runs sometimes to an ex¬
cess which requires correction, at other times it wants en¬
couragement, and at all times it ought to be preserved.
It is the predominant character of rocks, which mixes
with every other, and to which all the appendages must
be accommodated; and they may be applied so as greatly
to increase it. A licentious irregularity of wood and of
ground, and a fantastic conduct of the streams, neither of
which would be tolerated in the midst of cultivation, be-
1 come and improve romantic rocky spots; even buildings,
partly by their style, but still more by their position, in
strange, difficult, or dangerous situations, distinguish and
aggravate the native extravagancies of the scene.
Greatness is a chief ingredient in the character of dig¬
nity, with less of wildness than in any other. The effect
here depends more upon amplitude of surface than varie¬
ty of forms. The parts, therefore, must be large. If the
rocks are only high, they are stupendous, not majestic ;
breadth is equally essential to their greatness; and every
slender, every grotesque shape, is excluded. Art may
interpose to show these large parts to the eye, and mag¬
nify them to the imagination, by taking away thickets
which stretch quite across the rocks, so as to disguise
their dimensions; or by filling with wood the small inter¬
vals between them, and thus, by concealing the want,
preserving the appearance of continuation. When rocks
retire from the eye down a gradual declivity, we can, by
raising the upper ground, deepen the fall, lengthen the
perspective, and give both height and extent to those at
a distance. This effect may be still increased by cover¬
ing that upper ground with a thicket, which shall cease
or be lowered as it descends. A thicket, on other occa¬
sions, makes the rocks which rise out of it seem larger
than they are. If they stand upon a bank overspread
with shrubs, their beginning is at the least uncertain;
and the presumption is, that they start from the bottom.
Another use of this brushy underwood, is to conceal the
fragments and rubbish which have fallen from the sides
and the brow, and which are often unsightly. Rocks are
seldom remarkable for the elegance of their forms; they
are too vast and too rude to pretend to delicacy. But
their shapes are often agreeable; and we can affect those
shapes to a certain degree, at least we can cover many
blemishes in them, by conducting the growth of shrubby
and creeping plants about them.
For all these purposes mere underwood suffices; but
for greater effects larger trees are requisite. They are
worthy of the scene, and not only improvements, but ac¬
cessions to its grandeur. We are used to class them
amongst the noblest objects of nature; and when we see
that they cannot aspire to the midway of the heights
around them, the rocks are raised by the comparison. A
single tree is therefore often preferable to a clump; the
size, though really less, is more remarkable ; and clumps
are besides generally exceptionable in a very wild spot,
from the suspicions of art which attends them ; but a
wood is free from that suspicion, and its own character of
greatness recommends it to every scene of magnificence.
On the same principle, all possible consideration should
be given to the streams. No given number of little rills
are equal to one broad river; and in the principal current
some varieties may be sacrificed to importance. But aPr
degree of strength should always be preserved. The wa- V
ter, though it needs not be furious, should not be dull-
for dignity, when most serene, is not languid, and space
will hardly atone for want of animation.
This character does not exclude marks of inhabitants
though it never requires them to tame its wildness; and'
without inviting, it occasionally admits an intermixture of
vegetation. It even allows of buildings intended only to
decorate the scene; but they must be adequate to it
both in size and in character. And if cultivation is in'
troduced, that too should be conformable to the rest - not
a single narrow patch cribbed out of the waste, but the
confines of a country shelving into the vale, and suggestini'
the idea of extent. Nothing trivial ought to find admit¬
tance. But, on the other hand, no extravagance is re¬
quired to support it; strange shapes in extraordinary po¬
sitions, enormous weights unaccountably sustained, trees
rooted in the sides, and torrents raging at the foot of the
rocks, are at the best needless excesses. There is a tem¬
perance in dignity, which is rather hurt by a wanton vio¬
lation of the common order of nature.
The terrors of a scene in nature are like those of a dra¬
matic representation ; they give an alarm, but the sensa¬
tions are agreeable as long as they are kept to such as
are allied only to terror, unmixed with any that are horri-
ble and disgusting. Art may therefore be used to heigh¬
ten them, to display the objects which are distinguished
by greatness, to improve the circumstances which denote
force, to mark those which intimate danger, and to blend
withal here and there a cast of melancholy.
Greatness is as essential to the character of terror as to
that of dignity. Vast efforts in little objects are ridicu¬
lous ; nor can force be supposed upon trifles incapable of
resistance. On the other hand, it must be allowed that
exertion and violence supply some want of space. A rock
wonderfully supported, or threatening to fall, acquires a
greatness from its situation, which it has not in dimen¬
sions ; so circumstanced, the size appears to be monstrous.
A torrent has a consequence which a placid river of equal
breadth cannot pretend to; and a tree, which would be
inconsiderable in the natural soil, becomes important when
it bursts forth from a rock.
Such circumstances should be always industriously sought
for. It may be worth while to cut down several trees, in
order to exhibit one apparently rooted in the stone. By
the removal perhaps of only a little brushwood, the alarm¬
ing disposition of a rock, strangely undermined, rivetted,
or suspended, may be shown; and if there be any soil
above its brow, some trees planted there, and impending
over it, will make the object still more extraordinary. As
to the streams, great alterations may generally be made in
them; and therefore it is of use to ascertain the species
proper to each scene, because it is in our power to enlarge
or contract their dimensions, to accelerate or retard their
rapidity, to form, increase, or take away obstructions, and
always to improve, often to change, their characters.
Inhabitants furnish frequent opportunities of strengthen¬
ing the appearances of force, by giving intimations of dan¬
ger. A house placed on the edge of a precipice, any build¬
ing on the pinnacle of a crag, makes that situation seem
formidable, which might otherwise have been unnoticed.
A steep, in itself not very remarkable, becomes alarming
when a path is carried aslant up the side; a rail on the
brow of a perpendicular fall shows that the height is fre¬
quented and dangerous ; and a common foot bridge thrown
over a cleft between rocks has a still stronger effect. In all
these instances, the imagination immediately transports the
spectator to the spot, and suggests the idea of looking down
such a depth; in the last, that depth is a chasm, and the
situation is directly over it.
I
I/"-
GARDENING.
331
. The different species of rocks often meet in the same
'olace, and compose a noble scene, which is not distinguish-
d by any particular character; it is only when one emi-
lently prevails that it deserves such a preference as to ex-
lude every other. Sometimes a spot remarkable for no-
hing but its wildness is highly romantic; and when this
vildness rises to fancy, when the most singular, the most
ipposite, forms and combinations are thrown together, then
i mixture also of several characters adds to the number of
nstances which there concur to display the inexhaustible
ariety of nature.
So much variety, so much fancy, are seldom found with-
n the same extent as in Dovedale. It is about two miles in
ength, forming a deep, narrow, hollow valley; both the sides
re of rock; and the Dove in its passage between them is
icrpetually changing its course, its motion, and appear-
.nce. It is never less than ten, nor so much as twenty
'ards wide, and generally about four feet deep, but trans-
iarent to the bottom, except when it is covered with a
oam of the purest white, under waterfalls which are per-
ectly lucid. These are very numex-ous, but very different,
n some places they stretch straight across or aslant the
; tream; in others they are only partial, and the water ei-
her dashes against the stones and leaps over them, or pour-
ng along a steep, rebounds upon those below; sometimes
t rushes through the several openings between them, some-
imes it drops gently down, and at other times it is driven
iack by the obstruction, and turns into an eddy. In one
iarticular spot, the valley, almost closing, leaves hardly a
iassage for the river, which, pent up and struggling for
. vent, rages, and roars, and foams, till it has extricated
tself from the confinement. In other parts, the stream,
hough never languid, is often gentle; it flows round a
ittle desert island, glides between bits of bulrushes, dis-
erses itself amongst tufts of grass or of moss, bubbles about
water dock, or plays with the slender threads of aquatic
lants which float upon the surface. The rocks all along
he dale vary as often in their structure as the stream in
Ls motion. In one place, an extended surface gradually
iminishes from a broad base almost to an edge ; in ano-
her, a heavy top hanging forwards, overshadows all be-
eath; sometimes many different shapes are confusedly
umbled together, and sometimes they are broken into
lender sharp pinnacles, which are upright, often two or
hree together, and often in more numerous clusters. On
he one side of the dale they are universally bare, on the
ther they are intermixed with w ood ; and the vast height
t both the sides, with the narrowness of the interval be-
ween them, produces a further variety. For whenever the
un shines from behind the one, the form of it is distinctly
nd completely cast upon the other; the rugged surface on
’hich it falls diversifies the tints; and a strong reflected
ght often glares on the edge of the deepest shadow. The
ocks never continue long in the same figure or situation,
nd are very much separated from each other ; sometimes
'ey form the sides of the valley, in precipices, in steeps,
r Jn stages ; sometimes they seem to rise in the bottom,
ud lean back against the hill; and sometimes they stand
ut fluite detached, heaving up in cumbrous piles, or start-
'g into conical shapes, like vast spars, a hundred feet in
eignt; some are firm and solid throughout; some are
racked; and some, split and undermined, are wonderfully
[Held by fragments apparently unequal to the weight they
astain. One is placed before, one over another, and one
s, at some distance behind, an interval between two. The
langes in their disposition are infinite; every step pro-
nces some new combination ; they are continually cross-
‘g) advancing, and retiring; the breadth of the valley is
ever the same forty yards together. At the narrow pass
llc 1 ^as been mentioned, the rocks almost meet at the
’Pi and the sky is seen as through a chink between them ;
and just by this gloomy abyss is a w ider opening, more Principles,
light, more verdure, more cheerfulness than anywhere else ^
in the dale. Nor are the forms and the situations of the
rocks their only variety. Many of them are perforated by
large natural cavities, some of which open to the sky, some
terminate in dark recesses, and through some are to be
seen several more uncouth arches and rude pillars, all de¬
tached, and retiring beyond each other, with the light shin¬
ing in between them, till a rock far behind them closes the
perspective. The noise of the cascades in the river echoes
amongst them; the water may often be heard at the same
time gurgling near and roaring at a distance ; but no other
sounds disturb the silence of the spot. The only trace of
men is a blind path, but seldom and lightly trodden, by
those whom curiosity leads to see the wonders they have
been told of Dovedale. It seems indeed a fitter haunt for
mere ideal beings; the whole has the air of enchantment.
The perpetual shifting of the scenes, the quick transitions,
the total changes; then the forms all around, grotesque as
chance can cast, wild as nature can produce, and various
as imagination can invent; the force which seems to have
been exerted to place some of the rocks where they are
now fixed immoveable, the magic by which others appear
still to be suspended; the dark caverns, the illuminated
recesses, the fleeting shadows, and the gleams of light
glancing on the sides, or trembling on the stream; and the
loneliness and the stillness of the place ; all crowding toge¬
ther on the mind, almost realize the ideas which naturally
present themselves in this region of romance and of fancy.
The solitude of such a scene is agreeable, on account
of the endless entertainment which its variety affords, and
in the contemplation of which both the eye and the mind
are delighted to indulge. Marks of inhabitants and cul¬
tivation would disturb that solitude ; and ornamental build¬
ings are too artificial in a place so absolutely free from re¬
straint. The only accompaniments proper for it are wood
and water; and by these sometimes improvements may
be made. Variety is the peculiar property of the spot, and
every accession to it is a valuable acquisition. On the
same principle, endeavours should be used, not only to
multiply, but to aggravate differences, and to increase dis-
tinctions into contrasts ; but the subject will impose a cau¬
tion against attempting too much. Art must almost de¬
spair of improving a scene where nature seems to have
exerted her inventive powers.
II. Factitious Accompaniments. These consist of fences,
walks, roads, bridges, seats, and buildings. (See Practical
Treatise of Gardening, p. 593, et seqq.)
1. Yhe fence, where the place is large, becomes neces¬
sary ; yet the eye dislikes constraint. Our ideas of li¬
berty carry us beyond our own species; the imagination
feels a dislike in seeing even the brute creation in a state
of confinement. The birds wafting themselves from wood to
grove are objects of delight; and the hare appears to enjoy
a degree of happiness unknown to the barriered flock.
Besides, a tall fence frequently hides from the sight ob¬
jects the most pleasing; not only the flocks and herds them¬
selves, but the surface they graze upon. These considera¬
tions have brought the unseen fence into general use.
This species of barrier, it must be allowed, incurs a de¬
gree of deception which can scarcely be warranted upon
any other occasion. In this instance, however, it is a spe¬
cies of fraud which we observe in nature’s practice. How
often have we seen two distinct herds feeding to appear¬
ance in the same extended meadow, until, coming abrupt¬
ly upon a deep sunk rivulet, or an unfordable river, we
discover the deception.
Besides the sunk fence, another sort of unseen barrier
may be made, though by no means equal to that, especi¬
ally if near the eye. This is constructed of paling, paint¬
ed of the invisible green. If the colour of the back ground
332
GARDENING.
Principles, were permanent, and that of the paint made exactly to
correspond with it, the deception would at a distance be
complete ; but back grounds in general changing with the
season, this kind of fence is the less eligible. Clumps and
patches of woodiness scattered promiscuously on either
side of an unseen winding fence assist very much in doing
away the idea of constraint.
2. The walk, in extensive grounds, is as necessary as
the fence. The beauties of the place are disclosed that
they may be seen ; and it is the office of the walk to lead
the eye from view to view, in order that whilst the tone
of health is preserved by the favourite exercise of nature,
the mind may be thrown into unison by the harmony of
the surrounding objects.
The direction of the walk must be guided by the points
of view to which it leads, and the nature of the ground it
passes over. It ought to be made subservient to the na¬
tural impediments, the ground, wood, and water, which
fall in its way, without appearing to have any direction of
its own. It can seldom run with propriety any distance
in a straight line ; a thing which rarely occurs in a natu¬
ral walk. The paths of the negroes and Indians are al¬
ways crooked ; and those of the brute creation are similar.
3. The road may be a thing of necessity, as an approach
to the mansion, or a matter of amusement only, as a drive
or a ride, from which the grounds and the surrounding
country may be seen to advantage. It should be the study
of the artist to make the same road answer, as far as may
be, the twofold purpose. The road and the walk are sub¬
ject to the same rule of nature and use. The direction
ought to be natural and easy, and adapted to the purpose
intended. A road of necessity ought to be straighter
than one of mere conveniency. In this, recreation is the
predominant idea; in that, utility. But even in this the
direct line may be dispensed with. The natural roads
upon heaths and open downs, and the grassy glades and
green roads across forests and extensive wastes, are proper
subjects to be studied.
4. The bridge should never be visible wffiere it is not
wanted. A useless bridge is a deception; deceptions are
frauds ; and fraud is always hateful, unless when practised
to avert some greater evil. A bridge without water is an
absurdity; and half an one stuck up as an eye-trap is a
paltry trick, which, though it may strike the stranger, can¬
not fail of disgusting when the fraud is found out. In low
situations, and wherever water abounds, bridges become
useful, and are therefore pleasing objects; they are look¬
ed for, and ought to appear, not as objects of ornament
only, but likewise as matters of utility. The walk or the
road therefore ought to be directed in such a manner as
to cross the water at the point in which the bridge will
appear to the greatest advantage.
In the construction of bridges, also, regard must be had
to ornament and utility. A bridge is an artificial produc¬
tion, and as such it ought to appear. It ranks amongst
the noblest of human inventions ; the ship and the fortress
alone excel it. Simplicity and firmness are the leading
principles in its construction. Mr Wheatley’s observation
is just when he says, “ the single wooden arch, now much
in fashion, seems to me generally misapplied. Elevated
without occasion so much above, it is totally detached
from, the river ; it is often seen straddling in the air, with¬
out a glimpse of water to account for it; and the ostenta¬
tion ot it as an ornamental object diverts all that train of
ideas which its use as a communication might suggest.”
But we differ from this ingenious writer when he tells us
that it is spoiled if adorned, and disfigured if only paint¬
ed of any other than a dusky colour. In a rustic scene,
where nature wears her own coarse garb, “ the vulgar foot
bridge of planks, only guarded on one hand by a common
rail, and supported by a few ordinary piles,” may be in
character ; but amidst a display of ornamented nature, aPri,
contrivance of that kind would appear mean and paltry, \J.
and would be an affectation of simplicity rather than the
lovely attribute itself. In cultivated scenes, the bridge
ought to receive the ornaments which the laws of archi-
tectural taste allow ; and the more polished the situation
the higher should be the style and finishings.
5. Seats have a twofold use; they are useful as places
of rest and conversation, and as guides to the points of
view in which the beauties of the surrounding scene are
disclosed. Every point of view should be marked with a
seat; and, speaking generally, no seat ought to appear
but in some favourable point of view. This rule may not
be invariable, but it ought seldom to be deviated from. In
the ruder scenes of neglected nature, the simple trunk,
rough from the woodman’s hands, and the butts or stools
of rooted trees, without any other marks of tools upon
them than those of the saw which severed them from
their stems, are seats in character; and in romantic or
recluse situations the cave or the grotto are admissible.
But wherever human design has been executed upon the
natural objects of the place, the seat and every other arti¬
ficial accompaniment ought to be in unison ; and whether
the bench or the alcove be chosen, it ought to be formed
and finished in such a manner as to unite with the wood,
the lawn, and the walk, which lie around it. The colour
of seats should likewise be suited to situations. Where un¬
cultivated nature prevails, the natural brown of the wood
itself ought not to be altered ; but where the rural art pre¬
sides, white or stone colour has a much better effect.
6. Buildings probably were first introduced into gar¬
dens merely for convenience, to afford refuge from a sud¬
den shower, and shelter against the wtod, or, at the most,
to be seats for a party, or for retirement. They have
since been converted into objects, and now the original
use is too often forgotten in the greater purposes to which
they are applied. They are considered as objects only;
the inside is totally neglected, and a pompous edifice fre¬
quently wants a room barely comfortable. Sometimes
the pride of making a lavish display to a visitor, without
any regard to the owner’s enjoyments, and sometimes too
scrupulous an attention to the style of the structure, oc¬
casions a poverty and dulness within which deprive the
buildings of part of their utility. But in a garden they
ought to be considered both as beautiful objects and as
agreeable retreats ; if a character becomes them, it is that
of the scene they belong to, not that of their primitive ap¬
plication. A Grecian temple or Gothic church may adorn
spots where it would be affectation to preserve that solem¬
nity within which is proper for places of devotion. They
are not to be exact models, subjects only of curiosity or
study ; they are also seats ; and such seats will be little
frequented by the proprietor, his mind being generally in¬
disposed to so much simplicity, and so much gloom, in the
midst of gaiety, richness, and variety.
But though the interior of buildings should not be dis¬
regarded, it is by their exterior that they become objects;
and sometimes by the one, sometimes by the other, and
sometimes by both, they are entitled to be considered as
characters. As objects, they are designed either to dis¬
tinguish, or to break, or to adorn, the scenes to which they
are applied.
The differences between one wood, one lawn, one piece
of water, and another, are not always very apparent. Ihe
several parts of a garden would, therefore, often appear
similar, if they were not distinguished by buildings; but
these are so observable, so obvious at a glance, so easily
retained in the memory, they mark the spots where they
are placed with so much strength, they' attract the rela¬
tion of all around with so much power, that parts thus
distinguished can never be confounded together. Yet it
i
1
GARDENING.
333
i,)! .bvno means follows that therefore every scene must have
^ its edifice. The want of one is sometimes a variety; and
other circumstances are often sufficiently characteristic.
It is only when these too nearly agree that we must have
recourse to buildings for differences. We can introduce,
exhibit, or contrast them as we please. The most strik¬
ing object is thereby made a mark of distinction, and the
force of this first impression prevents our observing the
points of resemblance.
The uniformity of a view may be broken by similar
means, and on the same principle. When a wide heath,
a dreary moor, or a continual plain, is in prospect, objects
which catch the eye supplant the want of variety. None
are so effectual for this purpose as buildings. Plantations
or water can have no very sensible effect, unless they are
large and numerous, and almost change the character of
the scene; but a small single building diverts the atten¬
tion at once from the sameness of the extent, which it
breaks but does not divide, and diversifies without alter¬
ing its nature. The design, however, must not be appa¬
rent. The merit of a cottage applied to this purpose,
consists in its being free from the suspicion ; and a few
trees near it will both enlarge the object, and account for
! its position. Ruins are a hackneyed device, immediately
detected, unless their style be singular, or their dimen¬
sions extraordinary. The semblance of an ancient British
monument might be adapted to the same end, with little
trouble, and great success. The materials might be brick,
or even timber plastered over, if stone could not easily be
procured. Whatever they were, the fallacy would not be
discernible; it is an object to be seen at a distance, rude, and
large, and in character agreeable to a wild open view. But
no building ought to be introduced which may not in reality
belong to such a situation ; no Grecian temples, no Turk¬
ish mosques, no Egyptian obelisks or pyramids, none im¬
ported from foreign countries, and unusual in this. The
apparent artifice would destroy an effect, which is so nice
as to be weakened, if objects proper to produce it are
displayed with too much ostentation; if they seem to be
contrivances, not accidents, and the advantage of their
position appear to be more laboured than natural.
But in a garden, where objects are intended only to
adorn, every species of architecture may therefore be ad¬
mitted, from the Grecian down to the Chinese; and the
choice is so free, that the mischief most to be apprehend¬
ed is an abuse of this latitude in the multiplicity of build¬
ings. Few scenes can bear more than two or three; in
some, a single one has a greater effect than any number;
and a careless glimpse, here and there, of such as belong
immediately to different parts, frequently enlivens the land¬
scape with more spirit than those which are industriously
shown. If the effect of a partial sight, or a distant view,
were more attended to, many scenes might be filled, with¬
out being crowded; a greater number of buildings would
be tolerated when they seemed to be casual, not forced;
and the animation and richness of the objects might be
attained without pretence or display.
Too fond an ostentation of buildings, even of those
which are principal, is a common error ; and when all has
been done, they are not always shown to the greatest ad¬
vantage. Though their symmetry and their beauties ought
in general to be distinctly and fully seen, yet an oblique
is sometimes better than a direct view; and they are of¬
ten less agreeable objects when entire, than when a part
is covered, or their extent is interrupted ; when they are
bosomed in wood, as well as backed by it, or appear be¬
tween the stems of trees which rise before or above them,
thus thrown into perspective, thus grouped and accom¬
panied, they may be as important as if they were quite
exposed, and are frequently more picturesque and beau-
But a still greater advantage arises from this manage-Principles,
ment in connecting them with the scene. They are con-
siderable, and different from all around them; inclined
therefore to separate from the rest; and yet sometimes
still more detached by the pains taken to exhibit them.
That very importance which is the cause of the distinc¬
tion, ought to be a reason for guarding against the inde¬
pendence to which it is naturally prone, and by which
an object which ought to be a part of the whole is re¬
duced to a mere individual. An elevated is generally a
noble situation. When it is a point or pinnacle, the struc¬
ture may be a continuation of the ascent; and on many
occasions, some parts of the building may descend lower
than others, and multiply the appearances of connectiom
But an edifice in the midst of an extended ridge com¬
monly seems naked alone, and imposed upon the brow,
not joined to it. If wood, to accompany it, will not grow
there, it had better be brought a little way down the de¬
clivity; and then all behind, above, and about it, are so
many points of contact, by which it is incorporated into
landscape.
Accompaniments are important to a building; but they
lose much of their effect when they do not appear to be
casual. A little mount just large enough for it, a small
piece of water below, of no other use than to reflect it,
and a plantation close behind, evidently placed there only
to give it relief, are as artificial as the structure itself, and
alienate it from the scene of nature into which it is intro¬
duced, and to which it ought to be reconciled. These
appendages therefore should be so disposed, and so con¬
nected with the adjacent parts, as to answer other pur¬
poses, though applicable to this; that they may be bonds
of union, not marks of difference, and that the situation may
appear to have been chosen, not made, for the building.
In the choice of a situation, that which shows the build¬
ing best ought generally to be preferred. Eminence, re¬
lief, and every other advantage which can be obtained,
ought to be given to an object of so much consideration.
They are for the most part desirable, sometimes necessary,
and exceptionable only when, instead of rising out of the
scene, they are forced into it, and a contrivance to procure
them at any rate is avowed without any disguise. There
are, however, occasions in which the most tempting ad¬
vantages of situation must be waived; the general compo¬
sition may forbid a building in one spot, or require it in
another; at other times the interest of the particular
group it belongs to may exact a sacrifice of the opportu¬
nities to exhibit its beauties and importance; and at all
times the pretensions of every individual object must
give way to the greater effect of the whole.
The same structure which adorns as an object, may also
be expressive as a character. Where the former is not
wanted, the latter may be desirable, or it may be weak
for one purpose, and strong for the other; it may be grave
or gay, magnificent or simple, and, according to its style,
may or may not be agreeable to the place it is applied to.
But mere consistency is not all the merit which buildings
can claim; their characters are sometimes strong enough
to determine, improve, or correct, that of the scene; and
they are so conspicuous, and so distinguished, that what¬
ever force they have is immediately and sensibly felt. They
are fit therefore to make a first impression; and when a
scene is but faintly characterized, they give at once a cast
which spreads over the whole, and which the weaker parts
concur to support, though perhaps they were not able to
produce it.
Nor do they stop at fixing an uncertainty, or removing
a doubt; they raise and enforce a character already mark¬
ed. A temple adds dignity to the noblest, a cottage sim¬
plicity to the most rural, scenes; the lightness of a spire,
the airiness of an open rotunda, the splendour of a conti-
334
GARDENING.
Principles, nued colonnade, are less ornamental than expressive;
'wothers improve cheerfulness into gaiety, gloom into so¬
lemnity, and richness into profusion. A retired spot,
which might have been passed unobserved, is noticed for
its tranquillity as soon as it is appropriated by some
structure to retreat; and the most unfrequented place
seems less solitary than one which appears to have been
the haunt of a single individual, or even of a sequestered
family, and is marked by a lonely dwelling, or the remains
of a deserted habitation.
The means are the same, the application of them only
is different, when buildings are used to correct the cha¬
racter of the scene; to enliven its dulness, mitigate its
gloom, or to check its extravagance, and, on a variety of
occasions, to soften, to aggravate, or to counteract, parti¬
cular circumstances attending it. But care must be taken
that they do not contradict too strongly the prevailing
idea. They may lessen the dreariness of a waste, but
they cannot give it amenity ; they may abate horrors, but
they will never convert them into graces ; they may make
a tame scene agreeable, and even interesting, not roman¬
tic ; or turn solemnity into cheerfulness, but not into
gaiety. In these, and in many other instances, they cor¬
rect the character, by giving it an inclination towards a
better, which is not very different; but they can hardly
alter it entirely, and when they are totally inconsistent
with it, they are at the best nugatory.
The great effects which have been ascribed to buildings
do not depend upon those trivial ornaments and append¬
ages which are often too much relied on ; such as the fur¬
niture of a hermitage, painted glass in a Gothic church,
and sculpture about a Grecian temple; grotesque or bac¬
chanalian figures to denote gaiety, and death’s heads to
signify melancholy. Such devices are only descriptive,
not expressive, of character ; and must not be substituted
in the room of those superior properties, the want of
which they acknowledge, but do not supply. They be¬
sides often require time to trace their meaning, and to
see their application ; but the peculiar excellence of build¬
ings is, that their effects are instantaneous, and therefore
the impressions they make are forcible. In order to pro¬
duce such effects, the general style of the structure, and
its position, are the principal considerations. Either of
them will sometimes be strongly characteristic alone;
united, their powers are very great; and both are so im¬
portant, that if they do not concur, at least they must not
contradict one another.
Every branch of architecture furnishes, on different oc¬
casions, objects proper for a garden; and there is no re¬
straint on our selection, provided it be conformable to the
style of the scene, proportioned to its extent, and agree¬
able to its character. The choice of situations is also
perfectly free. A hermitage, indeed, must not be close to
a road; but whether it be exposed to view on the side of a
mountain, or concealed in the depth of a wood, is almost
a matter of indifference ; that it is at a distance from pub¬
lic resort is sufficient. A castle must not be sunk in a
dell; but that it should stand on the utmost pinnacle
of a hill, is not necessary; on a lower knoll, and backed
by the rise, it may appear to greater advantage as an ob¬
ject, and be much more important to the general compo¬
sition. Many buildings, which from their splendour best
become an open exposure, will yet be sometimes not ill be¬
stowed on a more sequestered spot, either to characterize
or adorn it; and others, for which a solitary would in ge¬
neral be preferred to an eminent situation, may occasion¬
ally be objects in very conspicuous positions. A Grecian
temple, from its peculiar taste and dignity, deserves every
distinction; it may, however, in the depth of a wood, be
so circumstanced that the want of those advantages to
which it seems entitled will not be regretted. A happier
situation cannot be devised, than that of the temple ofPri
Pan on the south lodge on Enfield Chase. It is of the 'w?
usual oblong form, encompassed by a colonnade; in di-
mensions and in style it is equal to a most extensive
landscape. And yet, by the antique and rustic air of its
Doric columns without bases; by the chastity of its little
ornaments, a crook, a pipe, and a scrip, and those only
over the doors; and by the simplicity of the whole, both
within and without; it is adapted with so much propriety
to the thickets which conceal it from the view, that no
one can wish it to be brought forward, who is sensible to
the charms of the Arcadian scene which this building
alone has created. On the other hand, a very spacious
field, or sheep walk, will not be disgraced by a farm house,
a cottage, or a Dutch barn; nor will they, though small
and familiar, appear to be inconsiderable or insignificant
objects. Numberless other instances might be adduced
to prove the impossibility of restraining particular build¬
ings to particular situations, upon any general principles:
the variety in their forms is hardly greater than in their ap¬
plication. Only let not their uses be disguised, as is often
absurdly attempted with the humbler kinds of buildings.
A barn dressed up in the habit of a country church, or a
farm house figuring away in the fierceness of a castle, are
ridiculous deceptions. A landscape daubed upon a board,
and a wooden steeple stuck up in a wood, are beneath
contempt.
Temples, those favourite and most costly objects in gar¬
dens, too generally merit censure for their inutility, their
profusion, or the impropriety of their purpose. Whether
they be dedicated to Bacchus, Venus, Priapus, or any
other demon of debauchery, they are in this age equally
absurd. Architecture, in this part of its sphere, may
more nobly, and with greater beauty and effect, be ex¬
ercised upon a chapel, a mausoleum, a monument, ju¬
diciously disposed among the natural ornaments. Sir
William Harbord has given us a model of the first kind,
at Gunton in Norfolk: the parish church standing in his
park, and being an old unsightly building, he had it taken
down, and a beautiful temple, under the direction of the
Adams, erected upon its site for the same sacred purpose.
The mausoleum at Castle-Howard, in Yorkshire, the seat
of the Earl of Carlisle, is a noble structure; and as an in¬
stance of the last sort, may be mentioned the temple of
Concord and Victory at Stowe, erected to the memory of
the great Lord Chatham and his glorious war; a beauti¬
ful monumental building, suited to the greatness of the
occasion.
To the great variety above mentioned must be added,
as Mr Wheatley observes, the many changes which may
be made by the means of ruins. They are a class by
themselves, beautiful as objects, expressive as characters,
and peculiarly calculated to connect with appendages into
elegant groups. They may be accommodated with ease
to irregularity of ground, and their disorder is improved
by it. They may be intimately blended with trees and
thickets ; and the interruption is an advantage; for im¬
perfection and obscurity are their properties, and to carry
the imagination to something greater than is seen is their
effect. They may for any of these purposes be separated
into detached pieces; contiguity is not necessary, nor
even the appearance of it, if the relation be preserved;
but straggling ruins have a bad effect when the several
parts are equally considerable. There should be one
large mass to raise an idea of greatness, to attract the
others about it, and to be a common centre of union to
all. The smaller pieces then mark the original dimen¬
sions of one extensive structure, and no longer appear to
be the remains of several little buildings.
All remains excite an inquiry into the former state or
the edifice, and fix the mind in a contemplation of the use
tfi
/f
acipl
GARDENING.
• it was applied to; besides the characters expressed by
- their style and position, they suggest ideas which would
not arise from the buildings if entire. The purposes of
many have ceased. An abbey, or a castle, if complete,
can now be no more than a dwelling: the memory of the
times, and of the manners to which they are adapted, is
preserved only in history and in ruins; and certain sen¬
sations of regret, of veneration, or compassion, attend the
recollection. Nor are these confined to the remains of
buildings which are in disuse ; those of an old mansion
raise reflections on the domestic comforts once enjoyed,
and the ancient hospitality which reigned there. What¬
ever building we see in decay, we naturally contrast its
present with its former state, and delight to ruminate on
the comparison. It is true that such effects properly be¬
long to real ruins. They are, however, produced in a cer¬
tain degree by those which are fictitious. The impres¬
sions are not so strong, but they are exactly similar ; and
the representation, though it does not present facts to the
memory, yet suggests subjects to the imagination. But,
in order to affect the fancy, the supposed original design
should be clear, the use obvious, and the form easy to be
traced. No fragments should be hazarded without pre¬
cise meaning, and an evident connection ; none should be
perplexed in their construction, or uncertain as to their
application. Conjectures about the form raise doubts
about the existence of the ancient structure. The mind
must not be allowed to hesitate ; it must be hurried away
from examining into the reality by the exactness and the
force of the resemblance.
In the ruins of I intern Abbey, the original construction
of the church is perfectly marked; and it is principally
from this circumstance that they are celebrated as a sub¬
ject of curiosity and contemplation. The walls are almost
entire; the roof only is fallen in, but most of the columns
which divided the aisles are still standing. Of those which
have dropped down, the bases remain, every one exactly in
its place; and in the middle of the nave four lofty arches,
which once supported the steeple, rise high in the air
above all the rest, each reduced now to a narrow rim of
stone, but completely preserving its form. The shapes
even of the windows are little altered ; but some of them
are quite obscured, others partially shaded, by tufts of
ivy; and those which are most clear are edged with its
slender tendrils and lighter foliage, wreathing about the
sides and the divisions. It winds round the pillars ; it
dings to the walls; and in one of the aisles clusters at
the top in branches, so thick and so large as to darken
the space below. 'I he other aisles, and the great nave,
<ue exposed to the sky. The floor is entirely overspread
with turf; and to keep it clear from weeds and bushes is
now its highest preservation. Monkish tombstones, and
the monuments of benefactors long since forgotten, appear
above the green sward. The bases of the pillars which
tave fallen rise out of it; and maimed effigies, and sculp-
ture worn with age and weather, Gothic capitals, carved
cornices, and various fragments, are scattered about, or
ic in heaps piled up together. Other shattered pieces,
though disjointed and mouldering, still occupy their ori¬
ginal places; and a staircase much impaired, which led to
a tower now no more, is suspended at a great height, un¬
covered and inaccessible. Nothing is perfect, but memo-
nals of every part still subsist; all certain, but all in de¬
cay and suggesting at once every idea which can occur
in a seat of devotion, solitude, and desolation. Upon such
mo els fictitious ruins should be formed; and if any parts
aie entirely lost, they should be such as the imagination
can easily supply from those which are still remaining.
Is ln<"t traces of the building which is supposed to have
existed are less liable to the suspicion of artifice, than an
nmeamng heap of contusion. Precision is always satis*
335
factory, but in the reality it is only agreeable; in the copy Principles,
it is essential to the imitation.
A material circumstance to the truth of the imitation is.
that the ruins should appear to be very old. The idea is
besides interesting in itself. A monument of antiquity is
never seen with indifference ; and a semblance of age may
be given to the representation by the hue of the materials,
the growth of ivy and other plants, and cracks and frag¬
ments seemingly occasioned rather by decay than by de¬
struction. An appendage evidently more modern than
the principal structure will sometimes corroborate the
effect. I he shed of a cottager amidst the remains of a
temple, is a contrast both to the former and to the pre¬
sent state of the building; and a tree flourishing among
ruins shows the length of time they have lain neglected.
No circumstance so forcibly marks the desolation of a
spot once inhabited, as the prevalence of nature over it.
Campos ubi Troja fuit, is a sentence which conveys a
stionger idea of a city totally overthrown, than a descrip¬
tion of its remains ; but in a representation to the eye, some
remains must appear; and then the perversion of them
to an ordinary use, or an intermixture of a vigorous ve¬
getation, intimates a settled despair of their restoration.
SECT. II. PRINCIPLES OE SELECTION AND ARRANGEMENT
IN THE SUBJECTS OF GARDENING.
1. Of art. In the lower classes of rural improvements,
art should be seen as little as possible; and in the more
negligent scenes of nature, every thing ought to appear
as if it had been done by the general laws of nature, or
had grown out of a series of fortuitous circumstances.
But in the higher departments art cannot be hid; and
the appearance of design ought not to be excluded. A
human production cannot be made perfectly natural, and,
held out as such, it becomes an imposition. Our art lies
in endeavouring to adapt the productions of nature to hu¬
man taste and perceptions ; and if much art be used, do
not attempt to hide it. Art seldom fails to please when
executed in a masterly manner; nay, it is frequently the
design and execution, more than the production itself; that
strikes us. It is the artifice, not the design, which ought
to be avoided. It is the labour, and not the art, which
ought to be concealed. The rural artist ought therefore,
upon every occasion, to endeavour to avoid labour; or, if
indispensably necessary, to conceal it. No trace should
be left to lead back the mind to the expensive toil. A
mound raised, a mountain levelled, or a useless temple
built, convey to the mind feelings equally disgusting.
2. Picturesque, beauty. Though the aids of art are as
essential to gardening as education is to manners, yet art
may do too much. She ought to be considered as the
handmaid, not as the mistress, of nature; and whether she
be employed in carving a tree into the figure of an animal,
or in shaping a view into the form of a picture, she is
equally culpable. The nature of the place is sacred.
Should this tend to landscape, from some principal point
of view, assist nature and perfect it; provided this can be
done without injuring the views from other points. But
do not disfigure the natural features of the place ; do not
sacrifice its native beauties to the arbitrary laws of land¬
scape painting. Nature indeed scarcely knows the thing
mankind call a landscape. Hie landscape painter sel¬
dom or never finds it perfected to his hands; some addi¬
tion or alteration is almost always wanted. Every man
who has made his observations upon natural scenery
knows that the misletoe of the oak occurs almost as often
as a peifect natural landscape; and to attempt to make
up artificial landscape upon every occasion is unnatural
and absurd.
If, indeed, the eye were fixed in one point, the trees
336
GARDENING.
Principles, could be raised to their full height at command, and the
sun be made to stand still; the rural artist might work by
the rules of light and shade, and compose his landscape by
the painter’s law. But whilst the sun continues to pour
forth its light impartially, and the trees to rise in slow
progression, it would be ridiculous to attempt it. Let
him rather seek out, imitate, and associate, such striking
passages in nature as are immediately applicable to the
place to be improved ; let him, in short, “ be various, wild,
and free, as Nature’s selfinstead of sacrificing the natu¬
ral beauties of the place to one formal landscape, let every
step disclose fresh charms unsought for.
3. Of character. Character is very reconcilable with
beauty; and, even when independent of it, has attracted
so much regard as to occasion several frivolous attempts
to produce it. Statues, inscriptions, and even paintings,
history and mythology, and a variety of devices, have been
introduced for this purpose. The heathen deities and
heroes have therefore had their several places assigned to
them in the woods and lawns of a garden; natural cas¬
cades have been disfigured with river gods, and columns
erected only to receive quotations; the compartiments of
a summer-house have been filled with pictures of gambols
and revels as significant of gaiety; the cypress, because
it was once used in funerals, has been thought peculiarly
adapted to melancholy ; and the decorations, the furniture,
and the environs of a building, have been crowded with
puerilities under pretence of propriety. All these devices
are rather emblematical than expressive ; they may be in¬
genious contrivances, and recal absent ideas to the recol¬
lection, but they make no immediate impression ; for they
must be examined, compared, perhaps explained, before
the whole design of them is well understood. And though
an allusion to a favourite or well-known subject of history,
of poetry, or of tradition, may now and then animate or
dignify a scene; yet as the subject does not naturally be¬
long to a garden, the allusion should not be principal. It
should seem to have been suggested by the scene; a tran¬
sitory image, which irresistibly occurred, not sought for,
not laboured, and should have the force of a metaphorj
free from the detail of an allegory.
Another species of character arises from direct imita¬
tion, when a scene or an object, which has been celebrat¬
ed in description, or is familiar in idea, is represented in
a garden. Artificial ruins, lakes, and rivers, fall under this
denomination. The air of a seat extended to a distance,
and scenes calculated to raise ideas of Arcadian elegance
or of rural simplicity, with many more which have been
occasionally mentioned, or will obviously occur, may be
ranked in this class. They are all representations. But
the materials, the dimensions, and other circumstances,
the several scenes superior to any they can receive fromPn,,
allusions. Certain properties, and certain dispositions, of U-!!
the objects of nature, are adapted to excite particular ^
ideas and sensations ; many of them have been occasion¬
ally mentioned, and all are very well known. They re¬
quire no discernment, examination, or discussion, but are
obvious at a glance, and instantaneously distinguished
by our feelings. Beauty alone is not so engaging as this
species of character. The impressions it makes are more
transient and less interesting ; for it aims only at delight¬
ing the eye, but the other affects our sensibility. An
assemblage of the most elegant forms in the happiest si¬
tuations is to a degree indiscriminate, if they have not
been selected and arranged with a design to produce cer¬
tain expressions ; an air of magnificence or of simplicity,
of cheerfulness, tranquillity, or some other general charac¬
ter, ought to pervade the whole; and objects pleasing
in themselves, if they contradict that character, should
therefore be excluded. Those which are only indifferent
must sometimes make room for such as are more signifi¬
cant ; many will often be introduced for no other merit than
their expression ; and some, which are in general rather
disagreeable, may occasionally be recommended by it.
The power of such characters is not confined to the
ideas which the objects immediately suggest; for these
are connected with others which insensibly lead to sub¬
jects far distant perhaps from the original thought, and
related to it only by a similitude in the sensations they
excite. In a prospect enriched and enlivened with inha¬
bitants and cultivation, the attention is caught at first by
the circumstances which are gayest in their season, the
bloom of an orchard, the festivity of a hay field, and the
carols of harvest home; but the cheerfulness which these
infuse into the mind expands afterwards to other objects
than those immediately presented to the eye ; and we are
thereby disposed to receive, and delighted to pursue, a
variety of pleasing ideas, and every benevolent feeling.
At the sight of a ruin, reflections on the change, the de¬
cay, and the desolation before us, naturally occur; and
they introduce a long succession of others, all tinctured
with that melancholy which these have inspired; or it the
monument revive the memory of former times, we do not
stop at the simple fact which it records, but recollect
many more coeval circumstances, which we see, not per¬
haps as they were, but as they are come down to us, ve¬
nerable with age, and magnified by fame. Even without
the assistance of buildings or other adventitious circum¬
stances, nature alone furnishes the materials for scenes
which may be adapted to almost every kind of expres¬
sion. Their operation is general, and their consequences
are infinite. The mind is elevated, depressed, or composed,
as gaiety, gloom, or tranquillity prevails in the scene; and
we soon lose sight of the means by which the character
being the same in the copy and the original, their ef¬
fects are similar in both; and if not equally strong, the de¬
fect is not in the resemblance ; but the consciousness of is formed; we forget the particular objects it presents
an imitation checks that train of thought which the ap- and, giving way to their effects, without recurring to the
pearance naturally suggests. Yet an over-anxious solici- cause, we follow the track they have begun, to any ex-
tude to disguise the fallacy is often the means of expos- tent which the disposition they accord with will allow,
ing it. Too many points of likeness sometimes hurt the It suffices that the scenes of nature have a power toafiect
deception ; they seem studied and forced ; and the affec- our imagination and our sensibility ; for such is the con-
tation of resemblance destroys the supposition of a reali- stitution of the human mind, that if once it is agitated,
ty. A hermitage is the habitation of a recluse; it should the emotion spreads far beyond the occasion. When the
be distinguished by its solitude and its simplicity; but if passions are roused, their course is unrestrained; when
it is filled with crucifixes, hour-glasses, beads, and every the fancy is on the wing, its flight is unbounded; and,
other trinket which can be thought of, the attention is di- quitting the inanimate objects which first gave them the
verted from enjoying the retreat to examining the par- spring, we may be led by thought above thought, widely
ticulars. All the collateral circumstances which agree differing in degree, but still corresponding in character,
with a character seldom meet in one subject; and when till we rise from familiar subjects up to the sublimest con-
they are industriously brought together, though each be ceptions, and are wrapt in the contemplation of whatever
natural, the collection is artificial. is great or beautiful which we see in nature, feel in
But the art of gardening aspires to more than imitation, or attribute to divinity.
It can create original characters, and give expressions to 4. General arrangement. Notwithstanding the nature
1
*
GARDENING.
f wuti
:V fthe
t' mero:
f bject
■Y^
of the place, as already observed, ought not to be sacri¬
ficed to the mansion, the house must ever be allowed to be
a principal in the composition. It ought, in fact, to be con¬
sidered as the centre of the system ; and the rays of art,
like those of the sun, should grow fainter as they recede
from the centre. The house itself being entirely a work
of art, its immediate environs should be highly finished;
but as the distance increases, the appearance of design
should gradually diminish, until nature and fortuitousness
have full possession of the scene.
In general, the approach should be to the back front,
which, in suitable situations, ought to lie open to the pas¬
ture-grounds. On the sides more highly ornamented, a
well-kept gravel walk may embrace the walls; to this the
shaven lawn and shrubbery succeed; next, the grounds
closely pastured; and, lastly, the surrounding country,
which ought not to be considered as out of the artist’s
reach. For his art consists not more in decorating par¬
ticular spots, than in endeavouring to render the whole
face of nature delightful.
Another reason for this mode of arrangement is, that ob¬
jects immediately under the eye are seen more distinctly
than those at a distance, and ought to be such as are
pleasing in the detail. The beauties of a flower can be
discerned on a near view only; whilst at a distance a
roughet of coppice wood, and the most elegant arrange¬
ment of flowering shrubs, have the same effect. The
most rational entertainment the human mind is capable
of receiving is that of observing the operations of nature.
The foliation of a leaf, the blowing of flowers, and the Execution
maturation of fruits, are amongst the most delightful of the
subjects that a contemplative mind can be employed in. ^ei}eral
These processes of nature are slow; and, except the ob- ®uhiects-
ject fall spontaneously under the eye of the observer, the
inconveniences of visiting it in a remote part so far inter¬
fere with the more important employments of life as to
blunt, if not destroy, the enjoyment. This is a strong
argument in favour of shrubs and flowers being planted
under or near our windows, especially those from whence
they may be viewed during the hours of leisure and tran¬
quillity.
Further, the vegetable creation being subject to the
animal, the shrub may be cropped, or the flower trodden
down, in its day of beauty. If therefore we wish to con¬
verse with nature in private, intruders must be kept off,
and the shrubbery be severed from the ground, yet not
in such a manner as to drive away the pasturing stock
from our sight. For this reason, the shaven lawn ought
not to be too extensive, and the fence which encloses it
should be such as will not interrupt the view. But whe¬
ther it be seen or unseen, suspected or unsuspected, is a
matter of no great import. Its utility in protecting the
shrubs and flowers; in keeping the horns of the cattle
from the window, and the feet of the sheep from the gra¬
vel and broken ground; in preserving that neatness on
the outside, which ought to correspond with the finish¬
ings and furniture within; render it of sufficient importance
to become even a part of the ornament.
Ill—EXECUTION OF THE GENERAL SUBJECTS.
Improvements in general may be classed under the
heads of the Hunting-Box, the Ornamented Cottage, the
Villa, and the Principal Residence.
But before any step can be taken towards the execu¬
tion of the design, be it large or small, a map or plan of
the place, exactly as it lies in its unimproved state,
should be made, with a corresponding sketch upon which
to mark the intended improvements. Not a hovel nor a
twig should be touched, until the artist has studied ma¬
turely the natural abilities of the place, and has decided¬
ly fixed in his mind, and finally settled on his plan, the
proposed alterations; and even then, let him temper his
daring with caution.
1. Of Improvements adapted to a Hunting-Box.
Here art has little to do. Hunting may be called the
amusement of nature; and the place appropriated to it
ought to be no further altered from its natural state than
decency and conveniency require. With men who live
in the present age of refinement, a want of decency' is a
want of sense.
Ihe style throughout should be masculine. If shrubs
be required, they should be of the hardier sorts ; the box,
the holly, the laurustinus. The trees should be the oak
and the beech, which give in autumn an agreeable variety
of foliage, and anticipate as it were the season of diver-
sion. A suite of paddocks should be seen from the
muse; and if a view of distant covers can be caught, the
lack-ground will be complete. The stable, the kennel,
and the leaping-bar, are the factitious accompaniments,
in the construction of which simplicity and convenience
should prevail.
2. Of the Style of an Ornamented Cottage.
Neatness and simplicity' ought to mark the style of this
rational retreat. Ostentation and show should be cauti¬
ous y avoided; even elegance should not be attempted,
lough it may not be hid, if it offer itself spontaneously.
Nothing, however, should appear vulgar, nor should sim¬
plicity be pared down to baldness; every thing whimsical
or expensive ought to be studiously avoided; chasteness
and frugality should appear in every part. If a taste for
botany lead to a collection of native shrubs and flowers, a
shrubbery will be requisite; but in this every thing should
be native. A gaudy exotic ought not to be admitted; nor
should the lawn be kept close shaven ; its flowers should be
permitted to blow, and the herbage, when mown, ought
to be carried off, and applied to some useful purpose. In
the artificial accompaniments, ornament must be subordi¬
nate, utility must preside. The buildings, if any appear,
should be those in actual use in rural economics. If the
hovel be wanted, let it appear; and, as a side-screen, the
barn and rick-yard are admissible, whilst the dove-house
and poultry-yard may enter more freely into the compo¬
sition. In a word, the ornamented cottage ought to ex¬
hibit cultivated nature in the first stage of refinement. It
ranks next above the farm house. The plain garb of rus¬
ticity may be set off to advantage; but the studied dress
of the artist ought not to appear. That becoming neatness,
and those domestic conveniences, which render the rural
life agreeable to a cultivated mind, are all that should be
aimed at.
3. Of the Embellishment of a Villa.
This demands a style very different from the preceding.
It ought to be elegant, rich, or grand, according to the
style of the house itself, and the state of the surrounding
country; the principal business of the artist being to con¬
nect these two in such a manner that the one shall not
appear naked or flaring, nor the other desolate and inhos¬
pitable. If the house be stately, and the adjacent coun¬
try rich and highly cultivated, a shrubbery may intervene,
in which art may show her utmost skill. Here the artist
may even be permitted to play at landscapes; for a place
of this kind being supposed to be small, the purpose prin¬
cipally ornamental, and the point of view probably con-
2 u
338 GARDENING.
Execution fined simply to the house, side-screens may be formed, cent; and part of the gardens lie on the declivity, andExe™
of the and a fore-ground laid out suitable to the best'distance spread over the bottom beyond it. This eminence is oft?
General tj,at can caUght. If buildings or other artificial orna- separated by a broad winding valley from another which Ge”ei
ments abound in the offscape, so as to mark it strongly, is higher and steeper; and the descents of both are bro-
they ought also to appear more or less in the fore-ground ; ken by large dips and hollows, sloping down the sides of ' ’
if the distance abound with wood, the fore-ground should the hills. The whole space is divided into a number of
be thickened, lest baldness should offend; if open and scenes, each distinguished with taste and fancy; and the
naked, elegance rather than richness ought to be studied, changes are so frequent, so sudden, and complete, the
lest heaviness should appear. transitions so aitfully conducted, that the same ideas are
It is far from being any part of our plan to cavil unne- never continued or repeated to satiety,
cessarily at artists, whether living or dead; we cannot, These gardens were begun when regularity was in fa-
however, refrain from expressing a concern for the almost shion ; and the original boundary is still preserved, on ac-
total neglect of the principles here in ornamenting the count of its magnificence; for round the whole circuit of
vicinao-es of villas. It is to be regretted that in the pre- between three and four miles is carried a very broad gra-
sent {Practice these principles seem to be generally lost vel walk, planted with rows of trees, and open either to the j
si°-ht of. Without any regard to uniting the house with park or the country ; a deep sunk fence attends it all the
the adjacent country, and indeed seemingly without any way, and comprehends a space of near four hundred acres,
regard whatever to the offscape, one invariable plan of But in the interior scenes of the garden few traces of re¬
embellishment prevails, namely, that of stripping the fore- gularity appear ; and where it yet remains in the planta-
ground entirely naked, or nearly so, and surrounding it tions, it is generally disguised. Every symptom almost
with a wavy border of shrubs and a gravel walk; leaving of formality is obliterated from the ground; and an octa-
the area, whether large or small, one naked sheet of green gon basin in the bottom is now converted into an irregu-
swarth lar piece of water, which receives on one hand two beau-
In small confined spots this plan may be eligible. But tiful streams, and falls on the other down a cascade into
a simple border round a large unbroken lawn only serves a lake.
to show what more is wanted. Simplicity in general is In the front of the house is a considerable lawn, open
pleasing; but even simplicity may be carried to an ex- to the water, beyond which are two elegant Doric pavi-
treme, so as to convey no other idea than that of poverty lions, placed in the boundary of the garden, but not mark-
and baldness. Besides, how often do we see in natural ing it, though they correspond to each other; for still
scenery the holly and the fox-glove flourishing at the foot farther back, on the brow of some rising grounds without
of an oak, and the primrose and the campion adding charms the enclosure, stands a noble Corinthian arch, by which
to the hawthorn scattered over the pastured lawn? And the principal approach is conducted, and from which all
we conceive that single trees footed with evergreens and the gardens are seen reclining back against their hills,
native flowers, and clumps as well as borders of shrubs, They are rich with plantations, full of objects, and, lying
are admissible in ornamental as well as in natural scenery, on both sides of the house almost equally, every part is
within a moderate distance, notwithstanding the extent
4. Of the Principal Residence. of the whole.
Here the whole art centres, and the artist has full scope On the right of the lawn, but concealed from the house,
for a display of taste and genius. He has an extent of is a perfect garden scene, called the queens amphitheatre,
country under his eye, and will endeavour to make tfre where art is avowed, though formality is avoided. The
most of what nature and accident have spread before fore-ground is scooped into a gentle hollow. The planta-
him. Round a principal residence a gentleman may be sup- tions on the sides, though but just rescued from regula-
posed to have some considerable estate, and it is not a rity, yet in style are contrasted to each other. They are
shrubbery and a ground only which fall under the con- on one hand chiefly thickets, standing out from a wood;
sideration of the artist; he ought to endeavour to disclose on the other, they are open groves, through which a
to the view, either from the house or some other point, glimpse of the water is visible. At the end of the hollow,
as much as he conveniently can of the adjacent estate, on a little knoll, quite detached from all appendages, is
The love of possession is deeply planted in every man’s placed an open Ionic rotunda. Beyond it a large lawn
breast, and places should bow to the gratification of their slopes across the view; a pyramid stands on the brow;
owners. To curtail the view by an artificial side-screen, the queen’s pillar in a recess on the descent; and all the
or any other unnatural machinery, so as to deprive a man three buildings, being evidently intended for ornament
of the satisfaction of overlooking his own estate, is an ab- alone, are peculiarly adapted to a garden scene. Yet
surdity which no artist ought to be permitted to be guilty their number does not render it gay. The dusky hue oi
of. It is very different, however, where the property of the pyramid, the retired situation of the queen’s pillar,
another intrudes upon the eye. Here the view may, with and the solitary appearance of the rotunda, give it an air
some colour of propriety, be bounded by a woody screen, of gravity. It is encompassed with wood, and all theex-
The grounds, however, by a proper management, may be ternal views are excluded; even the opening into tic
made independent of whatever is external; and though lawn is but an opening into an enclosure,
prospects are nowhere more delightful than from a point At the king’s pillar, very near to this, is another love y
of view which is also a beautiful spot, yet if in the envi- spot, which is small, but not confined ; for no termination
rons of such a garden they should be wanting, the ele- appears; the ground one way, the water another, retire
gant, picturesque, and various scenes within itself, almost under the trees out of sight, but nowhere meet witi a
supply the deficiency. boundary. The view is first over some very broken groun ,
This is the character of the gardens at Stowe;1 for thinly and irregularly planted; then between two beauti-
there the views in the country are only circumstances ful clumps which feather down to the bottom; and, alter
subordinate to the scenes; and the principal advantage wards across a glade, and through a little grove beyond i,
of the situation is the variety of the ground within the to that part of the lake where the thickets, close upon t e
enclosure. The house stands on the brow of a gentle as- brink, spread a tranquillity over the surface, in which t e
1 See description of the Stowe gardens in Mr Wheatley’s work, already referred to.
4
*
KUti:i
GARDENING.
339
shadows cue reflected. Nothing is admitted to disturb
thu that quiet. No building obtrudes; for objects to fix the
enera eye are needless in a scene which may be comprehended
bJecl, at a glance, and none would suit the pastoral idea it in-
^ spires, of elegance too refined for a cottage, and of sim¬
plicity too pure for any other edifice.
The situation of the rotunda promises a prospect more
enlarged ; and in fact most of the objects on this side of
the garden are there visible. But they want both con¬
nection and contrast; each belongs peculiarly to some
other spot. They are all blended together in this with¬
out meaning, and are rather shown on a map than formed
into a picture. The water only is capital; a broad ex¬
panse of it is so near as to be seen under the little groups
on the bank without interruption. Beyond it is a wood,
which in one place leaves the lake, to run up behind a
beautiful building, of three pavilions, joined by arcades,
all of the Ionic order. It is called Kent's Building. And
never was a design more happily conceived. It seems to
he characteristically proper for a garden; it is elegant,
varied, and purely ornamental; it directly fronts the ro¬
tunda, and a narrow rim of the country appears above the
trees beyond it. But the effect even of this noble object
is fainter here than at other points; its position is not the
most advantageous ; and it is but one amongst many
other buildings, none of which are principal.
The scene at the temple of Bacchus is in character di¬
rectly the reverse of that about the rotunda, though the
space and the objects are nearly the same in both ; but in
this all the parts concur to form one whole. The ground
from every side shelves gradually towards the lake; the
plantations on the further bank open to show Kent’s build¬
ing, rise from the water’s edge towards the knoll on which
it stands, and close again behind it. That elegant struc¬
ture, inclined a little from a front view, becomes more
beautiful by being thrown into perspective, and, though at
a greater distance, is more important than before, because
it is alone in the view; for the queen’s pillar and the ro¬
tunda are removed far aside, and every other circumstance
refers to this interesting object. The water attracts, the
ground and the plantations direct, the eye thither; and
the country does not just glimmer in the offscape, but
is close and eminent above the wood, and connected by
clumps with the garden. The scene altogether is a most
animated landscape; and the splendour of the building,
the reflection in the lake, the transparency of the water,
and picturesque beauty of its form, diversified by little
groups on the brink, while on the broadest expanse no
more trees cast their shadows than are sufficient to vary
the tints of the surface ; all these circumstances, vying in
lustre with each other, and uniting in the point to which
every part of the scene is related, diffuse a peculiar bril¬
liancy over the whole composition.
The view from Kent’s building is very different from
those which have been hitherto described. They are all
directed down the declivity of the lawn. This rises up
the ascent. The eminence being crowned with lofty
wood, becomes thereby more considerable; and the hil¬
locks into which the general fall is broken, sloping farther
out this way than any other, they also acquire an import¬
ance which they had not before; that particularly on
which the rotunda is placed seems here to be a profound
situation; and the structure appears to be properly adapt¬
ed to so open an exposure. The temple of Bacchus, on
the contrary, which commands such an illustrious view, is
itself a retired object, close under the covert. The wood
rising on the brow, and descending down one side of the
V ’ s\10wn to be deep; is high, and seems to be higher
ian it is. The lawn too is extensive; and part of the
oundary being concealed, it suggests the idea of still
breater extent. A small portion only of the lake indeed
General
Subjects.
is visible ; but it is not here an object. It is a part of the Execution
spot; and neither termination being in sight, it has no of the
diminutive appearance. If more water had been admit¬
ted, it might have hurt the character of the place, which
is sober and temperate; neither solemn nor gay; great
and simple, but elegant; above rusticity, yet free from os¬
tentation.
These are the principal scenes on one side of the gar¬
dens. On the other, close to the lawn before the house,
is the winding valley above mentioned, the lower part of
which is assigned to the Etysian fields. These are wa¬
tered by a lovely rivulet, and very lightsome and airy, so
thinly are the trees scattered about them; they are open
at one end to more water and a larger glade, and the rest
of the boundary is frequently broken to let in objects afar
off, which appear still more distant from the manner of
showing them. The entrance is under a Doric arch, which
coincides with an opening among the trees, and forms a
kind of vista, through which a Pembroke bridge just be¬
low, and a lodge built like a castle in the park, are seen
in a beautiful perspective. That bridge is at one extre¬
mity of the gardens, the queen’s pillar is at another, yet
both are visible from the same station in the Elysian fields;
and all these external objects are unaffectedly introduced,
divested of their own appurtenances, and combined with
others which belong to the spot. The temple of Friend¬
ship is also in sight, just without the place ; and within it
are the temples of ancient Virtue and of the British wor¬
thies ; the one in an elevated situation, the other low down
in the valley, and near to the water. Both are decorated
with the effigies of those who have been most distinguish¬
ed for military, civil, or literary merit; and near to the
former stands a rostral column, sacred to the memory of
Captain Grenville, who fell in an action at sea. By placing
here the meed of valour, and by filling these fields with the
representations of those who have deserved best of man¬
kind, the character intended to be given to the spot is
justly and noetically expressed; and the number of the
images which are presented or excited perfectly corre¬
spond with it. Solitude was never reckoned amongst the
charms of Elysium; it has been always pictured "as the
mansion of delight and of joy; and in this imitation, every
circumstance accords with that established idea. The vi¬
vacity of the stream which flows through the vale ; the
glimpses of another approaching to join it; the sprightly
verdure of the green sward, and every bust of the British
worthies, reflected in the water; the variety of the trees,
the lightness of the greens, their disposition, all of them
distinct objects, and dispersed over gentle inequalities of
the ground; together with a multiplicity of objects both
within and without, which embellish and enliven the scene ;
give it a gaiety which the imagination can hardly con¬
ceive, or the heart wish to be exceeded.
Close by this spot, and a perfect contrast to it, is the
alder grove; a deep recess in the midst of a shade, which
the blaze of noon cannot brighten. The water seems to
be a stagnated pool, eating into its banks, and of a pecu¬
liar colour, not dirty, but clouded, and dimly reflecting the
dun hue of the horse-chestnuts and alders which press
upon the brink; the stems of the latter, rising in clusters
from the same root, bear one another down, and slant
over the water. Misshapen elms and ragged firs are fre¬
quent in the wood which encompasses the hollow ; the
trunks of dead trees are left standing amongst them; and
the uncouth sumach, and the yew, with elder, nut, and
holly, compose the underwood. Some limes and laurels
are intermixed, but they are not many; the wood is in ge¬
neral of the darkest greens ; and the foliage is thickened
with ivy, which not only twines up the trees, but creeps
also over the falls of the ground. These are steep and
abrupt. Ihe gravel-walk is covered with moss; and a
340
GARDENING.
Execution grotto at the end, faced with broken flints and pebbles,
of the preserves, in the simplicity of its materials, and the duski-
General ness 0f i(.s colourj all the character of its situation. Two
little rotundas near it were better away ; one building is
sufficient for such a scene of solitude as this, in which
more circumstances of gloom concur than were perhaps
ever collected together.
Immediately above the alder grove is the principal emi¬
nence in the gardens. It is divided by a great dip into
two pinnacles, upon one of which is a large Gothic build¬
ing. The space before this structure is an extensive
lawn. The ground on one side falls immediately into the
dip; and the trees which border the lawn sinking with
the ground, the house rises above them, and fills the in¬
terval. The vast pile seems to be still larger than it is,
for it is thrown into perspective, and between and above
the heads of the trees, the upper story, the porticoes, the
turrets, and balustrades, and all the slated roofs, appear
in a noble confusion. On the other side of the Gothic
building, the ground slopes down a long-continued decli¬
vity into a bottom, which seems to be perfectly irriguous.
Divers streams wander about it in several directions. The
conflux of that which runs from the Elysian fields with
another below it is full in sight; and a plain wooden
bridge thrown over the latter, and evidently designed for
a passage, imposes an air of reality on the river. Beyond
it is one of the Doric porticoes which front the house ; but
now it is alone; it stands on a little bank above the wa¬
ter, and is seen under some trees at a distance before it.
Thus grouped, and thus accompanied, it is a happy inci¬
dent, concurring with many other circumstances to dis¬
tinguish this landscape by a character of cheerfulness and
amenity.
From the Gothic building a broad walk leads to the
Grecian valley, which is a scene of more grandeur than
any in the gardens. It enters them from the park, spread¬
ing at first to a considerable breadth, then winds, grows
narrower, but deeper, and loses itself at last in a thicket,
behind some lofty elms, which interrupt the sight of the
termination. Lovely woods and groves hang all the way
on the declivities; and the open space is broken by de¬
tached trees, which, near the park, are cautiously and
sparingly introduced, lest the breadth should be con¬
tracted by them ; but as the valley sinks, they advance
more boldly down the sides, stretch across or along the
bottom, and cluster at times into groups and forms, which
multiply the varieties of the larger plantations. These
are sometimes close coverts, and sometimes open groves.
The trees rise in one upon high stems, and feather down
to the bottom in another; and between them are short
openings into the park or the gardens. In the midst of
the scene, just at the bend of the valley, and command¬
ing it on both sides, upon a large, easy, natural rise, is
placed the temple of Concord and Victory ; at one place
its majestic front of six Ionic columns, supporting a pedi¬
ment filled with bas relief, and the points of it crowned
with statues, faces the view; at another, the beautiful
colonnade, on the side, of ten lofty pillars, retires in per¬
spective. It is seen from every part; and impressing its
own character of dignity on all around, it spreads an awe
over the whole. But no gloom, no melancholy, attends
it. The sensations it excites are rather placid, but full
of respect, admiration, and solemnity. No water appears
to enliven, no distant prospect to enrich, the view; the
parts of the scene are large, the idea of it sublime, and
the execution happy ; it is independent of all adventitious
circumstances, and relies on itself for its greatness.
The scenes which have been described are such as are
most remarkable for beauty or character, but the gardens
contain many more ; and even the objects in these, by
their several combinations, produce very different effects,
within the distance sometimes of a few paces, from the Ex
unevenness of the ground, the variety of the plantations, of t ?
and the number of the buildings. The multiplicity of the fieii *
last has indeed been often urged as an objection to Stowe • Mk |
and certainly, when all are seen by a stranger in two or '"'V A
three hours, twenty or thirty capital structures, mixed
with others o. inferior note, do seem too many. But the
growth of the wood every day weakens the objection, by
concealing them one from the other. Each belongs to a
distinct scene ; and if they are considered separately, at
different times, and at leisure, it may be difficult to de¬
termine which to take away. Yet still it must be acknow¬
ledged that their frequency destroys all ideas of silence
and retirement. Magnificence and splendour are the cha¬
racteristics of Stowe. It is like one of those places cele¬
brated in antiquity, which were devoted to the purposes
of religion, and filled with sacred groves, hallowed foun¬
tains, and temples dedicated to several deities; the re¬
sort of distant nations, and the object of veneration to half
the heathen world. This pomp is, at Stowe, blended with
beauty ; and the place is equally distinguished by its
amenity and its grandeur.
In the midst of so much embellishment as may be in¬
troduced into this species of garden, a plain field or a
sheep-walk is sometimes an agreeable relief; and even
wilder scenes may occasionally be admitted. These in¬
deed are not properly parts of a garden, but they maybe
comprehended within the verge of it; and the proximity
to the more ornamented scenes is at least a convenience,
that the transition from the one to the other may be easy,
and the change always in our option. For though a spot
in the highest state of improvement be a necessary appen¬
dage to a seat, yet, in a place which is perfect, other cha¬
racters will not be wanting. If they cannot be had on a
large scale, they are acceptable on a smaller ; and so many
circumstances are common to all, that they might often
be intermixed; they may always border on each other.
But on this head it would be in vain to attempt to lay
down particular rules. Different places are marked by
sets of features as different from each other as are those
in men’s faces. Much must be left to the skill and taste
of the artist; and let these be what they may, nothing
but mature study of the natural abilities of the particular
place to be improved can render him equal to the execu¬
tion, so as to make the most of the materials that are
placed before him. Some few general rules may never¬
theless be laid down. The approach ought to be conduct¬
ed in such a manner that the striking features of the place
shall burst upon the view at once. No trick, however,
should be made use of. All should appear to fall in na¬
turally. In leading towards the house, its direction should
not be fully in front, not exactly at an angle, but should
pass obliquely upon the house and its accompaniments, so
that their position with respect to each other, as well as
the perspective appearance of the house itself, may vary
at every step ; and having shown the front and the prin¬
cipal wing, or other accompaniment, to advantage, the ap¬
proach should wind to the back front, which, as has been
already observed, ought to lie open to the park or pastur¬
ed grounds.
The improvements, and the rooms from which they are
to be seen, should be in unison. Thus, the view from the
drawing-room should he highly embellished, to correspond
with the beauty and elegance within. Every thing here
should be feminine, elegant, beautiful, such as attunes the
mind to politeness and lively conversation. Ihe break¬
fasting room should have more masculine objects in view,
wood, water, and an extended country for the eye to roam
over ; such as allures us imperceptibly to the ride or the
chase. The eating and banqueting rooms need no exte¬
rior allurements.
*
GARDENING.
341
<« «ut ’ There is a harmony in taste as well as in music. Va-
plfth' riety, and even wildness upon some occasions, may be ad-
r; ener, mitted; but discord cannot be allowed. If, therefore, a
p]ace be so circumstanced as to consist of properties to-
f "Y' ta]]y irreconcilable, the parts ought, if possible, to be se¬
parated in such a manner that, like the air and the reci¬
tative, the adagio and the allegro, in music, they may set
off each other’s charms by the contrast. These observa¬
tions may be illustrated by Mr Wheatley’s description
and proposed improvement of Persefield, near Chepstow',
in Monmouthshire; a place upon which nature has la¬
vished her favours, and which has been spoken of by Mr
Gilpin, and other writers, in the most flattering terms.
Persefield is situated upon the banks of the river Wye,
which divides Gloucestershire and Monmouthshire, and
which was formerly the boundary between England and
Wales. The general tendency of the river is from north
to south; but about Persefield it describes by a winding
course the letter S somewhat compressed. The grounds of
Persefield are lifted high above the bed of the river, shelv¬
ing, and form the brink of a lofty and steep precipice to¬
wards the south-west. The lower limb of the curvature is
filled wdth Perse-wood, which makes a part of Persefield ;
but it is an impenetrable thicket of coppice wood, which
dips to the south-east down to the water’s edge, and, seen
from the top of the opposite rock, has a good effect. The
upper limb receives the farms of Llancot, rich and highly
cultivated, broken into enclosures, and scattered with
groups and single trees ; two well-looking farm houses in
the centre, and a neat white chapel on one side, forming
altogether a lovely little paradisaical spot. The lowliness
of its situation stamps it with an air of meekness and hu¬
mility; and the natural barriers which surround it add
that of peacefulness and security. The picturesque farms
do not form a low flat bottom, subject to be overflowed
by the river ; but take the form of a gorget, rising fullest
in the middle, and falling on every side gently to the
brink of the Wye; except on the east side, where the top
of the gorget leans in an easy manner against a range of
perpendicular rock, as if to show its disk with advantage
to the walks of Persefield
This rock stretches across what may be called the
Isthmus, leaving only a narrow pass down into the fields
of Llancot, and joins the principal range of rocks at the
lower bend of the river. To the north, at the head of the
latter, stands an immense rock, or rather a pile of im¬
mense rocks heaped one above another, called Windcliff;
the top of which is elevated as much above the grounds
of Persefield as those are above the fields of Llancot.
Ihese several rocks, with the wooded precipices on the
side of Persefield, form a circular enclosure, about a mile
in diameter, including Perse-wood, Llancot, the Wye, and
a small meadow lying at the foot of Windcliff.
The grounds are divided into the upper and lower lawn
by the approach to the house ; a small irregular building,
standing near the brink of the precipice, but facing down
the lower lawn, a beautiful ground, falling “ precipitately
every way into a valley which shelves down in the mid¬
dle, and is scattered with groups and single trees in an
excellent style. The view from the house is soft, rich,
and beautifully picturesque ; the lawn and woods of Perse¬
field, and the opposite banks of the river; the Wye, near
its mouth, winding through meadows green as emerald,
•n a manner peculiarly graceful; the Severn, here very
oroad, backed by the wooded and highly cultivated hills
of Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, and Somersetshire. Not
one rock enters into the composition. The whole view con¬
sists of an elegant arrangement of lawn, wood, and w'ater.
Hie upper lawn is a less beautiful ground, and the view
iom it, though it command the “ cultivated hills and rich
'alleys of Monmouthshire,” bounded by the Severn, and
backed by the Mendip Hills, is much inferior to that from Execution
the house. To give variety to the view's from Persefield, °f the
to disclose the native grandeur which surrounds it, and General
to set off its more striking features to advantage, walks °U
have been cut through the woods and on the face of the ^
precipice which border the grounds to the south and east.
The first point of view is marked by an alcove, from which
are seen the bridge and the town of Chepstow', with its
castle situated in a remarkable manner on the very brink
of a perpendicular rock washed by the Wye ; and beyond
these the Severn shows a small portion of its silvery sur¬
face. Proceeding a little farther along the walk, a view
is caught which the painter might call a complete land¬
scape. ^ I he castle, with the serpentine part of the Wye
below' Chepstow, intermixed in a peculiar manner with
the broad waters of the Severn, forms the fore-ground,
w hich is backed by distant hills ; the rocks, crowned with
w'ood, lying between the alcove and the castle, to the
right, and Castlehill farm, elevated upon the opposite
banks of the river, to the left, form the tw7o side-screens.
Ihis point is not marked, and must frequently be lost to
the stranger. The grotto, situated at the head of Perse-
wood, commands a near view of the opposite rocks, mag¬
nificent beyond description. The littleness of human art
was never placed in a more humiliating point of view ; the
castle of Chepstow, a noble fortress, is, compared with the
natural bulwarks, a mere house of cards.
1 _ Above the grotto, upon the isthmus of the Persefield
side, is a shrubbery, strangely misplaced; an unpardon¬
able intrusion upon the native grandeur of this scene. Mr
Gilpin’s observations upon this, as upon every other occa¬
sion, are exceedingly just. “ It is a pity the ingenious
embellisher of these scenes,” says he, “ could not have
been satisfied with the great beauties of nature which he
commanded. The shrubberies he has introduced in this
part of his improvements, I fear, will rather be esteemed
paltry.” “ It is not the shrub which offends; it is the
formal introduction of it. Wild underwood may be an
appendage of the grandest scene ; it is a beautiful appen¬
dage. A bed of violets or of lilies may enamel the ground
with propriety at the foot of an oak; but if you introduce
them artificially in a border, you introduce a trifling for¬
mality, and disgrace the noble object you wish to adorn.”
The walk now leaves the wood, and opens upon the lower
lawm, until, coming near the house, it enters the alarming
precipice facing Llancot; winding along the face of it in a
manner which does great honour to the artist. Sometimes
the fragments of rock which fall in its way are avoided, at
other times partially removed, so as to conduct the path
along a ledge carved out of the rock ; and, in one instance,
a huge fragment, of a somewhat conical shape, and many
yards high, is perforated, the path leading through its
base. This is a thought which will hand down to future
times the greatness of the proprietor’s taste; the design
and the execution are equally great; not a mark of a tool
to be seen; all appears perfectly natural. The arch-way
is made winding, so that on the approach it appears to be
the mouth of a cave; and, on a nearer view, the idea is
strengthened by an allowable deception ; a black dark hole
on the side next the cliff, which, seen from the entrance be¬
fore the perforation is discovered, appears to be the dark¬
some inlet into the body of the cave.
From this point, that vast enclosure of rocks and preci¬
pices which marks the peculiar magnificence of Persefield
is seen to advantage. The area, containing in this point
of view the fields of Llancot and the lower margin of
Perse-wood, is broken in a manner peculiarly picturesque
by the graceful winding of the Wye; here washing a low'
grassy shore, and there sweeping at the feet of the rocks
which rise in some places perpendicular from the water;
but in general they have a wooded offset at the base,
342 GARDENING.
Execution above which they rise to one, two, or perhaps three or selves to his view, or at most as if nothing was wanted but
of the four hundred feet high; exposing one full face, silvered his own penetration and judgment to find them out. The ofti'
General ao.e? an(j bearded with ivy, growing out of the wrinkle- w^alk should therefore be conducted in such a manner that Gene
Subjects. j|ke gearns an(i fissures. If one might be allowed to com- the breaks might be quite natural, yet the points of view Subjei
pare t]ie paltry performances of art with the magnificent obvious, or requiring nothing but a block or stone to mark i'
works of nature, we should say that this enclosure resem- them. A stranger at least wants no seat here ; he is too
bles a prodigious fortress which has long lain in ruins. It eager in the early part ot his walk to think of lounging
is in reality^one of nature’s strongholds, and as such has upon a bench. From the cold bath he would ascend the
probably been frequently made use of. Across the isth- steep, near the top of which a commodious bench or benches
mus, on the Gloucestershire side, there are the remains of might be placed. The fatigue of ascending the hill ’would
a deep intrenchment, called to this day the ; and require a resting-place; and there are few points which
tradition still teems with the extraordinary warlike feats afford a more pleasing view than this ; it is grand, without
which have been performed among this romantic scenery, being too broad and glaring.
, prom the perforated rock, the walk leads down to the From these branches he would enter the forest part,
cold bath, seated about the mid-way of the precipice, in Here the idea of nature in her primitive state would be I
this part less steep; and from the cold bath a rough path strengthened ; the roughnesses and deer to the right, and
winds down to the meadow, by the side of the Wye, from the rocks in all their native wildness to the left. Even
whence the precipice on the Persefield side is seen with Llancot might be shut out from the view' by the natural
every advantage; the giant fragments, hung with shrubs shrubbery of the cliff. The lover’s leap, however, might
and ivy, rise in a ghastly manner from amongst the under- remain ; but no benches, nor other work of art, should
wood, and show themselves in all their native savageness, here be seen. A natural path, deviating near the brink
From the cold bath upward, a coach-road, steep and diffi- of the precipice, would bring the spectator down to the
cult, leads to the top of the cliff, at the upper corner of the lower corner of the park, where benches should be placed
upper lawrn. Near the top of the road is a point which in a happy point, so as to give a full view of the rocks and
commands one of the most pleasing views of Persefield; native wildnesses, and at the same time to hide the farm
the Wye sweeping through a grassy vale which opens to houses, fields, and other acquired beauties of Llancot.
the left; Llancot backed by its "rocks, with the Severn im- Having satiated himself with this savage scene, he would
mediately behind them, and which, seen in this point of be led, by a still rustic path, through the labyrinth, when
view, seems to be divided from the Wye by only a sharp the shrubbery, the lawn with all its appendages, the grace-
ridge of rock, with a precipice on either side ; and behind ful Wye, and the broad silver Severn, would break upon
the Severn the vale and wooded hills of Gloucestershire. the eye with every advantage of ornamental nature. The
• From this place a road leads to the top of Windcliff. transition could not fail to be striking. And from this soft
The face of nature probably affords not a more magnificent scene he would be shown to the top of Windcliff, where in
scene. Llancot in all its grandeur, the ground of Perse- one vast view he would unite the sublime and beautiful of
field, the castle and town of Chepstow, the graceful .wind- Persefield.
ino-s of the Wye below, and its conflux with the Severn ; One particular only remains to be noticed. A place
to”the left the forest of Dean ; to the right the rich marshes which is the residence of a family all the year, is defective
and picturesque mountains of South Wales ; a broad view if some portion of it be not set apart for the enjoyment of
of the Severn, opening its sea-like mouth ; the conflux of a fine day, for air, and exercise, in winter. To such a spot
the Avon, with merchant ships at anchor in King-road, and shelter is absolutely essential; and evergreens being the
vessels of different descriptions under sail; Aust Cliff, and thickest covert, are therefore the best; their verdure also
the whole vale of Berkeley, backed by the wmoded swells of is then agreeable to the eye ; and they may be arranged
Gloucestershire, the view terminating in clouds of distant so as to produce a beautiful mixture of greens, with more
hills, rising one behind another, until the eye becomes certainty than deciduous trees, and wdtb almost equal va-
unable to distinguish the earth’s billowy surface from the riety. They may be collected into a wood ; and through
clouds themselves. that wood gravel-walks may be led along openings of a
The leading principle of the improvement proposed by considerable breadth, free from large trees which would
Mr Wheatley is, to “ separate the sublime from the beauti- intercept the rays of the sun, and winding in such a man¬
ful ; so that in view ing the one, the eye might not so much ner as to avoid any draft of wind, from whatever quarter
as suspect that the other wyas near. it may blow. But when a retreat at all times is thus se-
“ Let the hanging walk be conducted entirely along the cured, other spots may be adapted only to occasional pur-
precipices, or through the thickets, so as to disclose the poses, and be sheltered towards the north or the east on
natural scenery, without once discovering the lawn or any one hand, whilst they are open to the sun on the other,
other acquired softness. Let the path be as rude as if The few hours of cheerfulness and warmth which its
trodden only by wild beasts and savages, and the resting beams afford are so valuable as to justify the sacrifice
places, if any, as rustic as possible. Erase entirely the pre- even of the principles of beauty to the enjoyment of
sent shrubbery, and lay out another as elegant as nature them; and therefore no objections of sameness or formality
and art could render it before the house, swelling it out can prevail against the pleasantness of a straight wa
into the lawn towards the stables ; betw-een which and the under a thick hedge or a south wall. The eye may, how-
kitchen-garden make a narrow winding entrance. Con- ever, be distorted from the screen by a border before it,
vert the upper lawn into a deer-paddock, suffering it to where the aconite and the snowdrop, the crocus ant ie
run as wild, rough, and forest-like, as total negligence would patica, brought forward by the warmth of the situation,
render it.” will be welcome harbingers of spring; and on the oppo-
The visitor would then enter the hanging wmlk by a se- site side of the walk little tufts ot laurustines, an 0
questered path at the lower corner of the lawn, pursuing it variegated evergreens, may be planted. Ihe spot, tins
through the wood to beneath the grotto, and round the enlivened by a variety of colours, and even a degree o
headland, or winding through Perse-wood, to the perfo- bloom, may be still further improved by a green-house,
rated rock and the cold bath, without once conceiving an The entertainment which exotics afford peculiarly be ong
idea that art, or at least that much art, had been made use to this part of the year; and if amongst them be m e^
of in disclosing the natural grandeur of the surrounding spersed some of our earliest flowers, they will there o
objects, which ought to appear as if they presented them- before their time, and anticipate the gaiety of the seaso
i
n
*
GAR
$gjn( which is advancing. The walk may also lead to the
stoves, where the climate and the plants are always the
same. And the kitchen-garden should not be far off; for
that is never quite destitute of produce, and always an ac¬
tive scene. The appearance of business is alone engag¬
ing; and the occupations there are an earnest of the hap-
GARDINEIi, Stephen, bishop of Winchester and
lord chancellor of England, was the illegitimate son of
Dr Lionel Woodville or Wydeville, dean of Exeter, and
brother to.Elizabeth, queen-consort of Edward IV. He
received his academical education at Cambridge, and,
after passing some time in the family of the Duke of Nor¬
folk, was appointed secretary to Cardinal Wolsey. This
situation initiated him in the conduct of affairs, and proved
the foundation of his rise at court. In 1525 he was em¬
ployed to draw up the plan of the alliance with Francis I.;
in 1527 he was sent to Rome to negotiate the divorce of
Henry VIII. from Catharine of Aragon ; and he advanced
so rapidly in favour, that he was styled primary secretary
of the most secret councils, and described by the cardinal-
minister as dimidium sui, or the half of himself. During
his residence at Rome, the pope having fallen dangerous¬
ly ill, Gardiner set all engines to work to endeavour to ob¬
tain the keys provisionally for Wolsey, and secured the suf¬
frages of about a third of the college of cardinals in behalf
of his master; but this scheme was rendered abortive by
the recovery of Clement. In the matter of the divorce, Gar¬
diner reported that all solicitations at Rome would, in his
opinion, be fruitless ; that the pope was immoveable in the
resolution to do nothing himself; but that he might be in¬
duced to confirm such a sentence as the king could obtain
from the legates. Persuaded of the soundness, as well as
sincerity of this opinion, Henry recalled Gardiner, and,
soon after his arrival, declared him secretary of state.
About this time, 1529, he obtained his first ecclesiastical
preferment, the archdeaconry of Norfolk, which wras con¬
ferred on him by Bishop Nix of Norwich. Gardiner was
now particularly consulted by the king in the affair of the
divorce; and when Cardinal Campejus declared the cause
evoked to Rome, he found out Cranmer, and introduced
him to the king, a step which proved the ruin of Wolsey.
In 1531 he was installed in the archdeaconry of Leices¬
ter, and soon afterwards advanced to the rich see of Win¬
chester. As Bishop of Winchester he assisted in the court,
where, in May 1533, sentence was passed by Cranmer,
declaring the king’s marriage with Catharine null and
void; and the same year he went as ambassador to the
French king at Marseilles. On his return, being called on
to acknowledge the king’s supremacy, he readily complied,
and published a defence of it, entitled De Vera et Falsa
Obedientia. In 1535 he resumed his embassy to France,
during which he declared against a religious league with
tiie protestant princes of Germany, and advised a political
alliance. In 1538 he was sent as ambassador to the Ger¬
man diet at Ratisbon, where he incurred the suspicion of
maintaining a secret correspondence with the pope. On
the death of Cromwell, long his rival in the king’s favour,
the university of Cambridge elected him its vice-chancel¬
lor; and, in return for this honour, Gardiner, on all occa¬
sions, gave it the benefit of his interest at court. But,
hke other courtiers, he was subject to all the vicissitudes
of Henry’s capricious favour; and, with all his suppleness
and address, he on several occasions narrowly escaped im¬
prisonment, if not something worse. This, indeed, is the
more remarkable, as the proofs of his want of honest and
sound principles are manifold. He was ever the servile
and ready instrument of the king’s will, and made no scru¬
ple m taking part in any proceeding, however disgraceful
GAR 343
pier seasons to which they are preparative. By these e»Gargarism
pedients even the winter may be rendered cheerful in a it
place where shelter is provided against all but the bitter- Garonne,
est inclemencies of the sky, and agreeable objects and
interesting amusements are contrived for every hour of
tolerable weather.
in itself, which seemed calculated to advance his interest
or secure his safety. In the, proceedings against Catha¬
rine of Spain, Anne of Cleves, Catharine Howard, Anne
Boleyn, Sir Thomas More, and Bishop Fisher, Gardiner
was equally active in lending himself to the vindictive ca¬
prices of the despot whom he served ; and no motive of
gratitude, no suggestion of humanity, no awakening of con¬
science, seem ever to have prevented him from yielding the
basest compliance with the wishes of the tyrant. In the
reign of Edward VI. he opposed the Reformation, and
being deprived for disobedience and contempt, was impri¬
soned in the Tower; but on the accession of Queen Mary
he was set at liberty, and again invested with power. The
unprincipled sycophant under the wayward and ferocious
Henry, now proved himself an unrelenting persecutor
under the bigoted Mary; and it is even said that he was
transported with joy on hearing of the martyrdom of La¬
timer and Ridley. But his career was now approaching to
its close. He died on the 12th of November 1555, at the
age of seventy-two. It is said that on his deathbed the
retrospect of his life and conduct filled him with horror,
and that he often repeated the words, Erravi cum Petro,
sed non jievi cum Petro, I have sinned with Peter, but I
have not wept with Peter. His principal works are, 1. De
Vera et Falsa Obedientia, 1534; 2. Palinodia dicti libri;
3. A Necessary Doctrine of a Christian Man, set forth by
the King’s Majestie of England, 1543; 4. An Explanation
and Assertion of the true Catholic Faith, touching the most
blessed Sacraifient of the Altar, 1551; 5. Confutatio Ca-
villationum quibus Sacrosanctum Eucharistiae Sacramen-
tum ab impiis Capernaitis impeti solet, 1551, composed
while a prisoner in the Tower.
GARGARISM (from ya^ya^co, to wash the mouth), a
gargle. Its use is to cleanse the mouth and throat with,
when affected with inflammations, ulcerations, and the
like.
GARLAND, a sort of chaplet made of flowers, feathers,
and sometimes precious stones, and worn on the head in
the manner of a crown. The word is formed from the
French guirlande, and that of the barbarous Latin gar-
landa, or Italian ghirlanda. Menage traces its origin from
gyrus through gyrulus, to gyrulare, gyrlandum, ghirlan-
dum, and at length ghirlanda and guirlande ; but Hick re¬
jects this derivation, and brings the word from gardel han-
da, which in the northern languages signify a nosegay art¬
fully wrought with the hand.
GARNET, in Natural History, a beautiful gem, of a
red colour, with an admixture of blue. See Gem and Mi¬
neralogy.
GARNET DENNIS, an island in the Eastern Seas,
about forty-two miles in circumference, and inhabited by
blacks. Long. 151. 25. E. Lat. 2. 30. N.
GARONNE, Upper, a department in the south-west
of France, formed out of the ancient district Toulousain,
a part of Upper Languedoc, and the district of Commin-
ges, a portion of Gascony. It is bounded on the north by
the department of Tarn-Garonne, on the east by those of
the Tarn and the Aude, on the south-east by that of
Arriege, on the south by Spain, and on the west by the
departments of the Upper Pyrenees and the Gers. The
extent is 2470 square miles, or, according to the royal
almanack, 642,533 hectares. The civil divisions are four
344
G A R
GAR
Garrick-
arrondisseraents, thirty-five cantons, and 605 communes,
inhabited by 427,856 individuals.
The face of the country, in by far the greatest portion
of the northern division of the department, consists ot low
hills, and broad valleys between them ; but the southern
part is a mountain district, which rises gradually towards
the Spanish frontier, where some of the elevations attain
the height of 10,000 feet. In the northern part the land
is generally fertile ; but in the southern it is sterile, and,
in the valley8*is better adapted for pasture than for tillage.
The chief river, which gives name to the department, is
navigable for boats above Toulouse, to Cazeres for small
boat's, and below that city to the sea for variously-sized
larger vessels. In the Pyrenees are some small lakes:
from one of them, the Seculego, is a waterfall into an¬
other, the Espingo, which is near 800 feet high, and the
latter lake is 4500 feet above the level of the sea. In no
part of the world is there a greater variety of picturesque
scenery than the Pyrenees present within this depart¬
ment.
The inhabitants, like the others in these southern de¬
partments, speak a peculiar patois, in which many Latin
and Spanish words are intermixed. In some parts ot
the Pyrenees, especially in the Valley of Luchon, are
found the Cretins, there called Cagots, with large and in¬
distinct articulation, and a great degree of stupidity, who
reside in dwellings separated from the other inhabitants,
by whom all connection with them is viewed with abhor¬
rence. The singularity is, that none of this race are found
on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees.
The agriculture, except on the mountains, is well con¬
ducted, and the harvests, especially of wheat, are very abun¬
dant; besides which, much maize is occasionally grown.
The neighbourhood of Toulouse is one of the most fruitful
of France, as well in corn as in pasture for cattle. Much
fruit is produced, and the vineyards are extensive, yield¬
ing wine of a medium quality, most of which is consumed
at home, or converted into brandy. The woods yield some
ship-timber and fuel, but suffered much during the Re¬
volution.
There are no mines worked except of iron upon a small
scale, though copper and lead are to be found in several
parts. The manufacturing industry is almost confined to
Toulouse, the capital, where linen, woollen, and silk goods
are fabricated extensively, as well as snuff, starch, china,
paper, hats, hose, and some other articles. In the Pyre¬
nees there is a considerable contraband trade carried on
with Spain.
GARRICK, David, the greatest actor of his age and
country, wras born at the Angel Inn at Hereford, in the
beginning of 1716. His father, Captain Peter Garrick,
was a French refugee, and had a troop of horse, which were
then quartered in that city. This rank he maintained in
the army for several years, and had attained a majority at
the time of his death, which, however, prevented him from
ever enjoying it. Mr Garrick received the rudiments of
his education in the free school at Litchfield, which he
afterwards completed at Rochester, under the celebrated
Mr Colson, afterwards mathematical professor at Cam¬
bridge. Dr Johnson and he were fellow-students at the
same school; and it is a curious fact, that these two cele¬
brated persons came up to London in the same coach,
with the intention of pushing themselves into active life.
On the 9th of March 1736, he was entered at the honour¬
able society of Lincoln’s Inn. The study of the law,
however, he soon quitted, and followed for some time the
employment of a wine-merchant; but that too having dis¬
gusted him, he at last gave way to the irresistible bias of
his mind, and joined a travelling company of comedians at
Ipswich in Suffolk, under the assumed name of Lyddal.
Having in this poor school of Apollo gained some acquaint¬
ance with the histrionic art, he burst at once upon the (; •
world in the year 1741, in all the splendour of perfection, wj
at the little theatre in Goodman’s Fields, then under the ''
direction of Henry Giffard.
The character which he first performed was that of
Richard III., in which, like the sun bursting from behind
a cloud, he displayed in the earliest dawn even more than
noontide brightness. His excellence dazzled and asto¬
nished every one; and certainly, perceiving a young man,
in his twenty-fourth year, and in reality a novice to the
stage, reaching at one single step to that height of perfec¬
tion which maturity of years and long practical experience
had not been able to bestow on the most distinguished
performers of the English stage, was a phenomenon which
could not but become the object of universal speculation,
and of as universal admiration. The theatres at the west
end of the town were deserted; Goodman’s Fields, from
being the rendezvous of citizens and citizens’ wives alone,
became the resort of all ranks of men; and Garrick con¬
tinued to act till the close of the season.
Having very advantageous terms offered him for per¬
forming in Dublin during part of the summer, he went
over to that city, where he found the same just homage
paid to his merit which he had received from his own
countrymen. To the service of the latter, however, he
esteemed himself more immediately bound; and therefore,
in the ensuing winter, he engaged himself to Mr Fleet-
wood, then manager of Drury Lane. In this theatre he
continued till the year 1745, when he again went over to
Ireland, and continued there the whole season, as joint-
manager with Mr Sheridan, in the direction and profits
of the theatre-royal in Smock Alley. From Dublin he
returned to England, and was engaged for the season of
1746 with Mr Rich at Covent Garden. This was his last
performance as a hired actor; for in the close of that sea¬
son Mr Fleetwood’s patent for the management of Drury
Lane being expired, and that gentleman having no incli¬
nation further to pursue a design by which, from his want
of acquaintance with the proper conduct of it, or some
other cause, he had considerably impaired his fortune,
Mr Garrick, in conjunction with Mr Lacy, purchased the
property of that theatre, together with the renovation ot
the patent, and in the winter of 1747 opened it with the
greater part of Mr Fleetwood’s company, and with the
additional strength of Mr Barry, Mrs Pritchard, and Mrs
Cibber, from Covent Garden.
Were we to trace Mr Garrick through the several oc¬
currences of a life so active, busy, and full of events as his,
we should swell this account beyond all due compass. Suffice
it to say, that he continued in the unmolested enjoyment of
his fame and unrivalled excellence to the moment of his
retirement. His universality of excellence was never once
attacked by competition. Tragedy, comedy, farce; the
lover and the hero ; the jealous husband who suspects his
wdfe without cause, and the thoughtless lively rake who
attacks her without design; were all alike his own. Rage
and ridicule, doubt and despair, transport and tenderness,
compassion and contempt; love, jealousy, fear, fury, an
simplicity ; all in turn took possession of his features, whilst
each of them appeared to be the sole possessor of his
heart. In the several characters of Lear and Hamlet,
Richard, Dorilas, Romeo, and Lusignane ; in his Ranger,
Bayes, Abel Drugger, Kitely, Brute, and Benedict, yo«
saw the muscular conformations wdiich your ideas attache
to them all. In short, Nature, the mistress from whom
alone this great performer borrowed all his lessons, being
in herself inexhaustible, this her favourite son, marked ou
as her truest representative, found an unlimited scope or
change and diversity in his manner of copying from Jj.
various productions. There is one part ot theatrical e«n
duct which ought unquestionably to be recorded to
GAR
[tjck Garrick’s honour, since the cause of virtue and morality,
S^-and the formation of public manners, are considerably de¬
pendent upon it; and that is, the zeal with which he aim¬
ed at banishing from the stage all those plays which carry
with them an immoral tendency, and pruning from those
which do not absolutely, on the whole, promote the inte¬
rests of vice, such scenes of licentiousness and libertinism
as a redundancy of wit and too great liveliness of imagina¬
tion have induced some of our comic writers to indulge in,
and to which the sympathetic disposition of an age of gal¬
lantry and intrigue has given sanction. The purity of the
English stage has certainly been much more fully establish¬
ed during the administration of this theatrical minister than it
had ever been during preceding managements. He seems to
have carried his modest, moral, chaste, and pious principles
with him into the very management of the theatre itself, and
rescued performers from that obloquy which had attached
to the profession. Of those who were accounted black¬
guards, unworthy the association of the world, he made
gentlemen, united them with society, and introduced them
to all the domestic comforts of life. The theatre was no
longer esteemed the receptacle of all vice ; and the moral,
the serious, the religious part of mankind, did not hesitate
to partake of the rational entertainment of a play, and pass
i cheerful evening, undisgusted with licentiousness, and un-
;orrupted by the immorality of the exhibition.
Notwithstanding the numberless and laborious avoca-
ions attendant on his profession as actor, and his station
is manager, yet still his active genius was perpetually
jursting forth in various little productions in the dramatic
ind poetical way, the merit of which cannot but make us
•egret his want of time for the pursuance of more exten¬
sive and important works. It is certain that his merit as
in author is not of the first magnitude ; but his great know-
edge of men and manners, of stage effect, and his happy
urn for lively and striking satire, made him generally suc-
:essful; and his prologues and epilogues in particular,
yhich are almost innumerable, possess such a degree of
elicity, both in the conception and execution, as to be, in
act, unequalled. His ode on the death of Mr Pelham
an through four editions in less than six weeks. His
ale on Shakspeare is a masterly piece of poetry, and,
vhcn delivered by himself, produced great effect. His al-
erations of Shakspeare and other authors have been at
inies successful, and at times exploded. The exclusion
f the gravedigger’s scene from Hamlet will never be for-
lotten to him by the inhabitants of the gallery at Drury.
I hough necessary to tne chasteness of the scene, they can-
iot bear to lose so much true sterling wit and humour;
nd it must be owned, that exuberances of this kind, though
hey hurt the uniformity, yet increase the luxuriance of the
me.. Amongst his alterations may be mentioned, Every
hm in his Humour, altered from Ben Johnson; Romeo
nd Juliet, Winter’s Tale, Catherine and Petruchio, Cym-
f ine’ Hamlet, &c. altered and made up from Shakspeare;
gamesters, a comedy, from Shirley ; Isabella, from Sou-
erne. To these we may add, as original productions,
• >e Farmer’s Return, and Linco’s Travels, interludes ;
mardian, Lethe, Lying Valet, Miss in her Teens, Male
joquet, Irish Widow, and other comedies in two acts ; En-
nanter, a musical entertainment; and Lilliput. The Christ-
M\V a ° ^ ascr'ke<d to him, and many others.
e now bring him to the period of his retirement in the
pnng of 17 di, when, full of fame, having acquired a splen-
* or^urle’ an(l advancing into years, he thought proper
| o seek the repose of private life, in order to enjoy that
'b'u ed and honourable ease which he had so wrell earned
■ e. a^tivity and the merits of his dramatic reign. But
0,r . eed was the period allotted to him for this tran-
urt errent; for °.n the 20th of January 1779> he de-
c t us life, leaving no one rival in excellence upon
GAR 345
earth to compensate for his loss, or a hope of our ever Garrison
meeting with his like again. Garrick’s Correspondence II
has recently been collected and published, in two volumes Garter.
4to, with a Life prefixed.
GARRISON, in the art of war, a body offerees, dis¬
posed in a fortress, to defend it against the enemy, or to
keep the inhabitants in subjection, or even to be subsist¬
ed during the winter season. Hence garrison and winter
quarters are sometimes used indifferently for the same
thing, whilst at other times they denote different things.
In the latter case, a garrison is a place in which forces are
maintained to secure it, and where a regular guard is kept,
as a frontier town, a citadel, castle, tower, and the like. The
garrison should be always stronger than the townsmen. Du
Cange derives the word from the corrupt Latin garnisio,
which the later writers use to signify all manner of muni¬
tion, arms, victuals, and the like, necessary for the defence
of a place and sustaining a siege.
GARROWS, a mountainous district of Hindustan, on
the north-east frontier of Bengal, tributary to the British.
It is situated between the 25th and 26th degrees of north
latitude. Its boundaries are said to be Rangamutty on the
north and Assam on the east, though its limits have never
been exactly ascertained. 1 he country is mountainous,
but fertile and tolerably well inhabited. The chief rivers
which flow from the hills are the Nati, the Maharishi, the
Sumaserry, and the Mahadeo. The rivers are of a sandy,
gravelly bottom, and contain limestone and iron ore. In
the bed of the Mahadeo is found abundance of coals: these
might be a valuable article of import into Bengal; but the
inhabitants, still in a barbarous state, are ignorant of the
art of mining. The people are of a stout make, vigorous
and athletic, but ill looking. They are not so dark as those
in Bengal. They go nearly naked ; and although calling
themselves Hindoos, eat all kinds of food, and drink spi¬
rituous liquors. They worship Mahadeva ; and at Banjam,
a pass in the hills, they worship the sun and moon. They
are poor and barbarous in their habits. Their houses are
of the rudest description, being raised on piles three or
four feet from the ground. The houses of the better classes
are more neatly executed. They are said to be cheerful
in their dispositions and mild in their manners. At the foot
of the Garrow Hills reside a tribe of people called Hajins,
who are more like the Hindoos, and who will not kill a cow.
GARSTANG, a market-town of the county of Lancas¬
ter, in the hundred of Amounderness, 228 miles from Lon¬
don. It was incorporated by Charles II., but returned no
member to parliament. There is a market on Thursday.
The population amounted in 1801 to 731, in 1811 to 790,
in 1821 to 936, and in 1831 to 929.
GARTER, Order of the, a military order of knight¬
hood, the most noble and ancient of any lay-order in the
world, instituted by Edward III. The knights companions
are generally princes and peers; and the king of England
is the sovereign or chief of the order. The number of
knights was originally twenty-six ; but six were added in
1786, on account of the increase of the royal family. They
are a college or corporation, having a great and little seal.
Their officers are a prelate, chancellor, registrar, king-at-
arms, and usher of the black rod. They have also a dean,
and twelve canons and petty canons, vergers, and twenty-
six pensioners or poor knights. The prelate is the head.
This office is vested in the Bishop of Winchester, and has
ever been so. Next to the prelate is the chancellor, which
office is vested in the Bishop of Salisbury, who keeps the
seals. The next is the registrar, who by hi« oath is to
enter upon the registry, the scrutinies, elections, penalties,
and other acts of the order, with all fidelity. The Dean of
\V indsor is always registrar ex officio. The fourth officer
is Garter and king-at-arms, being two distinct offices unit¬
ed in one person. The Garter carries the rod ajid sceptre
2 x
346 GAR GAR
Garter, at the feast of St George, the protector of this order, when The garter, which is of blue velvet bordered with fine Gai
the sovereign is present; he notifies the election of new gold wire, having commonly the letters of the mottu of ^
knights, attends the solemnity of their installation, carries the same, is, at the time of election, buckled upon the
the garter to foreign princes, and others; and he is the left leg by two of the senior companions, who receive it
principal officer within the college of arms, and chief of the from the sovereign, to whom it was presented upon a vel-
heralds. (See King-at-arms.) All these officers except vet cushion, by the Garter king-at-arms, with the usual re-
the prelate have fees and pensions. The college of the or- verence, whilst the chancellor reads the following admoni-
der is seated in the castle of Windsor, within the chapel of tion, enjoined by the statutes : “ To the honour of God
St George, and the charter-house, erected by the founder omnipotent, and in memorial of the blessed martyr St
for that purpose. The habit and ensign of the order are, George, tie about thy leg, for thy renown, this noble gar-
a garter, mantle, cape, george, and collar. The three first ter ; wear it as the symbol of the most illustrious order,
were assigned the knights companions by the founder, and never to be forgotten or laid aside ; that thereby thou
the george and collar by Henry VIIL mayest be admonished to be courageous ; and having un-
The Garter challenges pre-eminence over all the other dertaken a just war, in which thou shalt be engaged, thou
parts of the dress, by reason that from it the noble order mayest stand firm, valiantly fight, and successfully con-
is denominated ; that it is the first part of the habit pre- quer.” The princely garter being then buckled on, and
sented to foreign princes and absent knights, who, as well the word of its signification pronounced, the knight-elect
as all other knights-elect, are therewith first adorned ; is brought before the sovereign, who puts about his neck,
and it is of so great honour, that by the bare investiture kneeling, a dark blue ribbon, whereunto is appended,
with this noble ensign, the knights are esteemed compa- wrought in gold within the garter, the image of St George
nions of the greatest military order in the world. It is on horseback, with his sword drawn, encountering the
worn on the left leg, between the knee and calf, and is dragon. In the mean time, the chancellor reads the fol-
enamelled with this motto, Honi soit qui mol y pense ; the lowing admonition : “ W ear this ribbon about thy neck,
meaning of which is, that King Edward having laid claim adorned with the image of the blessed martyr and soldier
to the kingdom of France, retorted shame and defiance of Christ, St George, by whose imitation provoked, thou
upon those who should dare to think amiss of the just en- mayest so overpass both prosperous and adverse adven-
terprise he had undertaken for recovering his lawful right tures, that having stoutly vanquished thy enemies both of
to that crown ; and that the bravery of those knights body and soul, thou mayest not only receive the praise of
whom he had elected into this order was such as would this transient combat, but be crowned with the palm of
enable him to maintain the quarrel against those who eternal victory.” Then the knight elected kisses the so-
thought ill of it. vereign’s hand ; thanks his majesty for the great honour
The mantle is the chief of the vestments made use of done him; and rises up and salutes all the companions
upon all solemn occasions. The colour of the mantle is severally, who return their congratulations,
by the statutes appointed to be blue. The length of the Since the institution of this order there have been eight
train of the mantle alone distinguishes the sovereign from emperors and twenty-eight kings, besides numerous sove-
the knights companions. To the collar of the mantle is reign princes, enrolled as companions thereof. Its origin
fixed a pair of long strings, anciently woven with blue silk is somewhat differently related. The common account is,
only, but now twisted round, and made of Venice gold that the Countess of Salisbury at a ball happening to drop
and silk, of the colour of the robes, with knobs or buttons, her garter, the king took it up and presented it to her
and tassels at the end. The left shoulder of the mantle with these words, Honi soit qui maly pense, evil to him
has from the institution been adorned with a large garter, who evil thinks. This accident, it is said, gave rise to the
with the device. Within this is the cross of the order, order and the motto, it being the spirit of the times to mix
which was ordained to be worn at all times by King love and war together; but as in the original statutes of
Charles I. At length the star was introduced, being a this order there is not the least conjecture to countenance
sort of cross irradiated with beams of silver. The collar is such a feminine institution, credit cannot be given to such
appointed to be composed of pieces of gold in fashion of tradition. Camden, Fern, and others, take it to have been
garters, the ground enamelled blue, and the motto gold, instituted on occasion of the victory obtained by Edward
When the knights wear not their robes, they are to have over the French at the battle of Crescy. That prince, say
a silver star on the left side ; and they commonly bear some historians, ordered his garter to be displayed as a
the picture of St George, enamelled on gold, and set signal of battle; and in commemoration thereof, he made
with diamonds, at the end of a blue ribbon, crossing the a garter the principal ornament of the order, erected in
body from the left shoulder. They are not to appear memory of this signal victory, and a symbol of the indis-
abroad without the garter, on penalty of six shillings and soluble union of the knights.
eightpence paid to the registrar. It appears from Rastel’s Chronicle, that this order was
The manner of electing a knight companion into this devised by Richard I. at the siege of the city of Acre,
most noble order, and the ceremonies of investiture, are when he caused twenty-six knights to wear thongs of blue
as follows : When the sovereign designs to elect a com- leather about their legs, and that it was perfected in the
panion of the Garter, the chancellor belonging to this nineteenth year of Edward III. In 1551 Edward VI.
order draws up the letters, which, passing both under the made some alterations in the ritual of this order, which he
sovereign’s sign manual and signet of the order, are sent composed in Latin, the original being still extant in his
to the person by Garter principal king-at-arms ; and are own hand-writing. He there ordained that the order
in this rnanner, or to the same effect: “ We, with the should no longer be called the order of St George, but
companions of our most noble order of the garter, assem- that of the garter ; and, instead of the george, hung at
bled in chapter, holden this present day at our castle at the collar, he substituted a cavalier bearing a book on the
Windsor, considering the virtuous fidelity'you have shown, point of his sword, with the yNoxhprotectio graven on the
and the honourable exploits you have done in our service, sword, and verhum Dei on the book,
by vindicating and maintaining our right, &c. have elect- Garter principal King-at-Arms. This office was in-
ed or chosen you one of the companions of our order, stituted by Henry V. Garter, and principal king-at-arnis,
Therefore, we require you to make your speedy repair are two distinct offices united in one person. Garters
unto us, to receive the ensigns thereof, and be ready for employment is to attend the service of the order of the
your installation. garter, for which he is allowed a mantle and badge, a
irve
GAR
house in Windsor Castle, and pensions both from the so¬
vereign and knights, and, lastly, fees. He also carries the
rod and sceptre at every feast of St George, when the so-
i'"'*' vereign is present, and notifies the election of such as are
newly chosen ; attends the solemnity of their installations,
takes care of placing their arms over their seats, and car¬
ries the garter to foreign kings and princes ; for which ser¬
vices it has been usual to join him in commission with
some peer, or other person of distinction. The Garter’s
oath relates only to services being performed within the
order, and is taken in chapter before the sovereign knights.
Garter is also a term in heraldry, signifying the moiety
or half of a bend.
GARTH, Sir Samuel, an English poet and physician,
was descended from a good family in Yorkshire. He was
admitted into the college of physicians at London in 1663.
He at that time zealously promoted and encouraged the
erecting of the dispensary for the relief of the sick poor,
by giving them advice gratis, and medicines at low rates.
This work of charity having exposed him and many other
physicians to the envy and resentment of several persons
of the same faculty, as well as apothecaries, he ridiculed
them, with peculiar spirit and vivacity, in a poem called
the Dispensary, in six cantos, which is highly esteemed.
He was one of the most eminent members of the famous
society called the Kit Kat Club, which consisted of noble¬
men and gentlemen distinguished by excellent parts, and
affection to the house of Hanover. Upon the accession of
George I. he was knighted, and made physician in ordinary
to his majesty, and physician general to the army. Nor
were these more than just rewards of his merit as a phy¬
sician. He had gone through the office of censor of the
college in 1702; and had practised with great reputation,
and a strict regard to the honour and interest of the fa¬
culty, never stooping to prostitute the dignity of his pro¬
fession, through mean and sordid views of self-interest, to
any, even the most popular and wealthy characters. In
a steady adherence to this noble principle, he concurred
with the celebrated Dr Radcliffe, with whom he was also
frequently joined in physical consultations. He had a most
extensive practice, but was very moderate in his views of
advancing his own fortune ; his humanity and good nature
inclining him more to make use of the great interest he
had with persons in power, for the support and encourage¬
ment of other men of letters. He chose to live with the
sjreat in that degree of independence and freedom which
became a man possessed of a superior genius, of which he
was daily giving fresh proofs to the public. One of his
last performances in polite letters was his translation of
the fourteenth book, and the story of Cinnus in the fif¬
teenth book, of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. These, together
with an English version of the rest, were published in
1717; and he has prefixed to the whole an excellent pre¬
face, in which he not only gives an idea of the work, and
points out its principal beauties, but shows the uses of
the poem, and how it may be read to most profit. The
hstemper which seized him the ensuing year, and termi¬
nated his life, caused a general concern, which was par¬
ticularly testified by Lord Lansdowne, a brother poet.
He died, after a short illness, which he bore with great
natience, in January 1719.
GARVE, Christian, an eminent German philosopher
lnd essayist, was born on the 7th of January 1742, at Bres-
au, where his father exercised the trade of a dyer. He
’tudied at the universities of Frankfort, Halle, and Leip-
G A S
sic, at which last place he obtained a professorship of phi¬
losophy ; but was soon compelled to resign it, in conse¬
quence of bad health. He returned to his native town,
where he continued to spend the remainder of his life in
retirement. In his last years he suffered much from a
painful and incurable disease, which he endured with the
most philosophical fortitude. He died at Breslau on the
1st of December 1798. The character of Garve was ex¬
ceedingly amiable, both as a man and a philosopher. His
erudition was great; and his writings bear witness both to
the extent of his knowledge and the accuracy of his judg¬
ment. Kant paid him the compliment of saying, that he
was “ a true philosopher, in the legitimate acceptation
of the word. Garve invented no system of his own, nor
did he attach himself to the tenets of any one master. He
belonged to that class of philosophers who, without adopt¬
ing any particular theory, take an impartial view of all
systems of doctrine, and seek truth wherever it is to be
found. I he just and rational views which he inculcated
on the subject of our moral and social duties, entitle him
to the praise of a genuine practical philosopher. The
history of philosophy is indebted to him for several new
and ingenious illustrations; and he has left us a faith¬
ful though rapid sketch of the ancient and modern doc¬
trines respecting the fundamental principles of moral phi¬
losophy. His style is uniformly simple, perspicuous, and
correct.
The principal works of Garve are, 1. Dissertatio de non-
nullis quae pertinent ad logicam probabilium, 1766, 4to;
2. Dissertatio de ratione scribendi historiam philosophi-
cam ; 3. A Prize Essay in German, on the Inclinations,
which was crowned by the Royal Academy of Berlin,
1769, 4to ; 4. Progr. legendorum philosophorum nonnulla
et exemplum, 1770, 4to; 5. Remarks on the character
and writings of Gellert, 1770, 8vo, in German (this trea¬
tise was translated into French, and inserted in the French
translation of Gellert’s works by Pajon) ; 6. A dissertation,
in German, on the union of morals and politics, Breslau,
1788, 8vo ; also translated into French ; 7. Essays, in Ger¬
man, on various subjects in literature, morals, and social
life (of these, three volumes, we believe, were published
during the author’s life, and two have been added since
his death); 8. A Sketch, in German, of the most remark¬
able principles of moral philosophy, from the time of Aris¬
totle to the present day; which was first prefixed to his
translation of Aristotle’s Ethics, and afterwards printed
separately, Breslau, 1798, 8vo; 9. Some observations on
the most general principles of morals, in German, ibid.
1798, 8vo. Besides these works, Garve wrote a number
of literary essays, which were inserted in various perio¬
dical publications. He also translated into German a
variety of works, particularly from the English, many of
which he enriched with valuable notes. Amongst these
we may notice the Ethics, Rhetoric, and Politics of Aris¬
totle ; Cicero’s Offices; Burke on the Sublime and Beau¬
tiful ; Smith’s Wealth of Nations ; Fergusson’s Principles
of Moral Philosophy; and Paley’s Principles of Morals
and Politics. (See the Biographic Vniverselle, tome xvi.
art. Garve, by Degerando.)
GAS, in Chemistry, a general name for all permanently
elastic fluids, which are obtained by chemical processes,
as azotic gas, muriatic acid gas, nitrous gas. It is derived
from the German gascht or gast, signifying the ebullition
attending the expulsion of elastic fluids from substances
in a state of effervescence.
348
GAS-LIGHT.
Import¬
ance of
.light.
Phospho¬
rescent
Gas-Light. Light, whether obtained from natural or artificial
' sources, is so necessary for the correct and successful
execution of almost every operation of human industry,
that whatever is calculated to simplify the means of pro¬
curing it, or to increase its intensity, cannot fail of being
attended with the most beneficial consequences to civiliz¬
ed society. For every purpose to which it is applied, it
must be admitted that the light of day, when it can be
enjoyed freely and without interruption, is, by far, the
most suitable ; but in large and crowded cities, as well as
in less favourable situations in point of climate, where the
sun is sometimes shrouded for days together in dense and
impenetrable clouds, it becomes expedient to compensate
for the absence of his rays by artificial substitutes, which,
however inferior in brilliancy and general usefulness, may
nevertheless answer sufficiently well in those cases where
a less ample supply of light is requisite.
Some substances, denominated ‘phosphorescent, have the
property of absorbing the solar rays, on being exposed for
substances. a short time to their influence, and of emitting the light
which they thus imbibe when they are afterwards placed
in the dark; but the feeble and transient illumination
which they shed, though sufficient to indicate their lumi¬
nous condition, is totally unfit to afford such a supply of
light as is necessary for conducting any of the operations
of art, which must be performed with care and precision.
Substances During the process of combustion, however, a variety
from which of inflammable substances, both of animal and vegetable
artificial origin, are found to give out light, as well as heat, when
tanftT °b" they undergo that species of decomposition; and hence,
iUne ‘ from the earliest periods of human societjq it has been
customary to burn substances of that description, for the
purpose of obtaining artificial light. These substances,
which were generally of a fatty or oleaginous nature, are
found, when analyzed, to be composed chiefly of carbon
and hydrogen. When they are exposed to a certain pitch
of temperature they are resolved into some of the com¬
pound gases which result from the union of these ele¬
ments, particularly carburetted and bicarburetted hydro¬
gen, or olefiant gas, both of which are highly inflammable,
and yield, during their combustion, a fine white light.
To facilitate the decomposition, and carry on the combus¬
tion with due economy, a quantity of some fibrous sub¬
stance, in the form of a wick, is connected with the olea¬
ginous matter, for the purpose of causing it to burn slow¬
ly and effectually. Accordingly, if the flame be sudden¬
ly extinguished, the inflammable gas which is formed by
the decomposition of the matter in immediate contact
with the wick is observed to escape from it, and may be
again set on fire by the application of a lighted taper.
When the light obtained from -these substances must
be frequently conveyed from place to place, no arrange¬
ment can be more convenient for their decomposition
than that which is effected by means of the wick; but if
it be to remain in a permanent position, it will frequently
be more advantageous to resolve the oleaginous matter
into gas, and then transmit it, in that state, through pipes,
to the various points where it is to be consumed.
Though the different substances which have been used,
from the earliest times, for yielding artificial light, have
always been actually resolved into gas before they under-
w-ent the process of combustion, that fact was entirely un¬
known till pneumatic chemistry unfolded the properties
of the aerial bodies, which perform so many importantGas-L
functions in the economy of nature, as well as in the pro- W
cesses of the arts. The use of gas for the purpose of ilia,
mination is therefore of recent date ; but though late in
its origin, the successive improvements which the inven¬
tion has received, from the joint labours of chemists and
practical engineers, have carried it, in a few years, to a
pitch of perfection to which little can be added, either to
simplify the processes for producing the gas itself, or im¬
proving its quality.
Besides matters of an oleaginous nature, it hasbeenas-Discov
certained that pit-coal and other bituminous substances°fcoal
yield, when they are exposed in close vessels to a high
temperature, a large quantity of aerial matter, which is
found to consist of various gases, most of which are ex¬
tremely inflammable. This fact seems to have first at¬
tracted the notice of the Reverend Mr Clayton, who gives
an account of it in a memoir on the subject, which he pub¬
lished in the Transactions of the Royal Society for the
year 1739; and as his experiments furnish the earliest
evidence of the possibility of extracting from coal, by
means of beat, a permanently elastic fluid of an inflam¬
mable nature, we shall give the account of the discovery
in his own words : “ Having introduced a quantity of coal
into a retort, and placed it over an open fire,” he states
that “ at first there came over only phlegm, and after¬
wards a black oil, and then likewise a spirit arose which
I could noways condense ; but it forced my lute, or broke
my glasses. Once when it had forced my lute, coming
close thereto in order to repair it, I observed that the
spirit which issued out caught fire at the flame of the
candle, and continued burning with violence as it issued
out in a stream, which I blew out and lighted alternately
for several times. I then had a mind to try if I could
save any of this spirit; in order to which I took a turbi¬
nated receiver, and putting a candle to the pipe of the re¬
ceiver whilst the spirit rose, I observed that it catched
flame, and continued burning at the end of the pipe, though
you could not observe what fed the flame. I then blew
it out and lighted it again several times; after which 1
fixed a bladder, squeezed, and void of air, to the pipe ot
the receiver. The oil and flame descended into the re¬
ceiver, but the spirit still ascending, blew up the bladder.
I then filled a good many bladders therewith, and might
have filled an inconceivable number more ; for the spirit
continued to run for several hours, and filled the bladders
almost as fast as a man could have blown them with his
mouth ; and yet the quantity of coals distilled was incon¬
siderable.
“ I kept this spirit in the bladders a considerable time,
and endeavoured several ways to condense it, but in vain;
and when I had a mind to divert strangers or friends, I
have frequently taken one of these bladders, and pricked
a hole therein with a pin, and compressing gently the
bladder near the flame of a candle till it once took fire, it
would then continue flaming till all the spirit was com¬
pressed out of the bladder; which was the more surpris¬
ing, because no one could discern any difference in the
appearance between this bladder and those which are fill¬
ed with common air.”1
It is evident from this narrative, related with so muchfxpw
simplicity, that an accident which happened to Mr Clay-^j
ton’s apparatus was the means of leading to the discovery^
1 Mr Clayton alludes to the discovery of the gas he obtained from coal, in a letter to the Royal Society, dated May 12, 1G88.
G A S-L I G H T.
349
^ r j ti0f coal-gas ; but it does not appear that he or any other
^''individual thought of applying the discovery to any prac¬
tical purpose till the year 1792, when Mr Murdoch, who
then resided at Redruth, in Cornwall, commenced a series
of experiments upon the properties of the gases contained
in different substances. In the course of his researches
he found that the gas obtained by distillation from coal,
peat, wood, and other inflammable substances, yielded a
fine bright light during its combustion ; and it occurred
to him, that by confining it in proper vessels, and after¬
wards expelling it through pipes, it might be employed
as a convenient and economical substitute for lamps and
candles.
f i^restnf Mr Murdoch’s attention to the subject having been in-
f'i.ligh] terrupted for some time by his professional avocations,
he resumed the consideration of it in 1797, when he ex¬
hibited publicly the results of his more matured plans for
the preparation of coal-gas. The following year he con¬
structed an apparatus at Soho foundery for lighting that
establishment, with suitable arrangements for the purifi¬
cation of the gas ; and these experiments, Dr Henry states,
“ were continued with occasional interruptions until the
epoch of the peace in 1802, when the illumination of the
Soho manufactory afforded an opportunity of making a
public display of the new lights; and they were made to
constitute a principal feature in that exhibition.”
In the brief sketch which we mean to give of the pro¬
gress of gas-lighting, it may be noticed that the Lyceum
Theatre in London was lighted with gas in the course of
the years 1803-4, under the direction of Mr Winsor, who
is entitled to no small commendation for the warm inte¬
rest he took in drawing the public attention to the sub¬
ject; and in 1804-5 Mr Murdoch had an opportunity of
carrying his plans into effect on a still larger scale, by
means of the apparatus erected under his superintendence
in the extensive cotton-mills of Messrs Philips and Son
of Manchester.
It has been alleged that gas-lights wrere used in France
<1 in before that mode of illumination was known in this coun-
* W- try; but as the earliest exhibition of these lights, on which
the claim of priority of discovery is founded, took place
at Paris in 1802, it is evident, from the foregoing state¬
ments, that the exhibition alluded to was ten years sub¬
sequent to the first experiments of Mr Murdoch on the
subject.
11 s-woi it might have been interesting, in a statistical point of
j0n view, to have laid before our readers an account of the
extent to which gas-lighting has been carried throughout
the kingdom; but in a matter which is still in progress, it
is not easy to procure documents that would be applica¬
ble to any particular period of time. At the close of the
year 1822, it appears, by the report of Sir William Con¬
greve, that the capital vested in the gas-works of the
metropolis amounted then to about a million sterling;
while the pipes, connected with the various establishments,
embraced an extent of upwards of a hundred and fifty
miles. So rapid, indeed, has been the progress of this
new mode of illumination, that, in the course of a few
years after it was first introduced, it was adopted by all
the principal towns in the kingdom, for lighting streets, as
well as shops and public edifices. In private houses it
found its way more slowly, partly from an apprehension,
not entirely groundless, of the danger attending the use
°f it; and partly, from the annoyance which was experi¬
enced in many cases, through the careless and imperfect
manner, in which the service-pipes were at first fitted up.
hese inconveniencies have been, in a great measure, if
not wholly removed, by a more enlarged knowledge of the
management of gas; and at present there are few pri¬
vate houses, in large towns, which are not either partial-
y> or entirely lighted up by it.
Of the Site and general Arrangement of the Apparatus for Gas-Light.
the Production and Purification of Coal-Gas.
In describing the site and general arrangements of a Site and
gas establishment, it is not easy to give directions re-general ar-
specting points, which must be regulated, in every case,ranSe'
by circumstances of a local nature ; but when a choice 0fments-
ground is in our power, a spot ought to be selected hav¬
ing a central situation with regard to the buildings, streets,
&c. it is to supply with light, and standing as nearly as
possible on a medium level with them. When the manu¬
factory is placed considerably below that level, the gas is
apt to be propelled with too much velocity through the
burners; and when above it, an opposite inconvenience
is experienced, the gas being in that case necessarily
subjected to an extra pressure, by which the chance of its
escape through any imperfection of the pipes is propor¬
tionally increased. Of the two evils, therefore, the least
objectionable is that in which the situation of a gas-work
is below the mean level of the streets.
But besides the conditions favourable to an equable and
uniform distribution of the gas at the different points to
which it may be conducted, there are other considerations
scarcely less important, which, in selecting a proper site
for the erection of the establishment, ought not to be dis¬
regarded. Among these may be reckoned a regular supply
of water for the various manipulations of the work; and
facility of access for the delivery of coal, and the removal
of the coke, tar, and other products of the distillation. Nor,
in fixing the situation of an establishment which is profes¬
sedly erected for the public benefit, ought the comfort or
the interest of individuals to be entirely overlooked; for
though a gas-work may not prove, under proper manage¬
ment, a nuisance, it can never be considered to be any
advantage to the neighbourhood in which it is placed.
The apparatus for the production and purification of coal- Apparatus
gas consist, in the first place, of suitable vessels for decom- f°r the pro¬
posing by heat the coal from which the gas is to be pro-(Juc.tion anfl
cured; secondly, of a series of pipes for conveying off the gas, ^ ^catit)I1
and conducting it into proper receptacles, where it may° Sas’
be separated from the grosser products, which tend to im¬
pair the brilliancy of the light it is capable of yielding ;
thirdly, of the condensing apparatus, for removing more ef¬
fectually the tar and other condensible substances that come
over with the gas ; fourthly, of the purifying apparatus, for
abstracting the sulphuretted hydrogen, carbonic acid, &c.
by which the gas is contaminated ; and, fifthly, of the
gasometer or gas holder, with its tank, into which the gas
is finally received in a purified state.
Of the Retorts, or Vessels for decomposing the Coal.
The vessels employed for the decomposition of coal and
other substances capable of yielding carburetted hydro¬
gen, by their destructive distillation, are usually formed
of cast iron, and termed retorts. Various shapes have been
adopted in the construction of these vessels ; nor have their
forms been more varied than the modes in which they
have been disposed, in the furnaces erected for their re¬
ception. In most instances, they have been constructed
of a cylindrical shape, varying in length, and diameter.
Those first employed were placed with their axis in a ver¬
tical direction; but experience soon showed that this po¬
sition was extremely inconvenient, on account of the dif¬
ficulty it occasioned of removing the coke, and other resi¬
duary matters, after the coal had been carbonized. At¬
tempts were made to remedy this inconvenience, by en¬
larging the size of the retort, and introducing the coal en¬
closed in a proper grating of iron, having the form of a
cage. The increased dimensions of the retort, from which
the principal advantage to be derived from this arrange
350
GAS-LIGHT.
Modes of
heating
Form of
retorts.
Gas-Light, ment was expected, were found, however, to present great
obstacles to the complete carbonization of the coal; for
though the disengagement of gas during the first stages
of the process was sufficiently copious, it diminished rapid¬
ly the longer the distillation was continued ; a crust of coke
being formed next the heated metal, which not only op¬
posed the transmission of the temperature to the internal
mass of coal, but gradually prevented, by its accumula¬
tion, the extrication of the gas from the undecomposed
portion of it.
The retorts were, therefore, next placed in a horizontal
position, as being not only more favourable to the most
the retorts. econom;ca] distribution of the heat, but better adapted to
the introduction of the coal, and the subsequent removal
of the coke, after the carbonization was carried to a due
extent. At first the heat was applied directly to the
lower part of the retort, but it was soon observed that the
high temperature to which it was necessary to expose it,
for the perfect decomposition of the coal, proved destruc¬
tive to it, and rendered it useless long before the upper
part had sustained much injury. The next improvement
was accordingly to interpose an arch of brickwork between
it and the furnace, and to compensate for the diminished
intensity of the heat by a more diffused distribution of
it over the surface of the retort. This was effected by
causing the flue of the furnace to return towards the
mouth of the retort, and again conducting it in an oppo¬
site direction, till the heated air finally escaped into the
chimney.
This arrangement, which on the whole has been found
to be the best, and is now generally used, seems to admit
of little improvement, unless with respect to the shape of
the retort. The cylindrical form has the advantage of
possessing great durability, but it is not so well fitted for
rapid decomposition of the coal (on which depends much
of the good qualities of the gas) as the elliptical shape.
Retorts presenting a saddle-shaped section, when they
are supposed to be cut transversely, appear to be prefer¬
able even to those of an elliptical form ; but the greater •
expense of casting them, together with their inferiority in
point of durability, has prevented them from coming into
extensive use.
The temperature, best suited for the production of gas
from coal, being what the workmen term a bright red, was
found to be very destructive to the retorts, when they
were exposed to the direct action of the fuel; and accord¬
ingly means were employed to protect them from the
rapid oxidation which they suffered under these circum¬
stances, by interposing between them and the furnace, a
partition of fire tiles or arched bricks, with side flues for
the admission of the heated air. This arrangement is re¬
presented in fig. 1, Plate CCLV., where a is the retort, g
the grate of the furnace, e the fire-brick arch, and f, f
the side flues.
With the view of occupying less room, and saving the
expense of fuel, several retorts are sometimes set together
in an oven of brickwork, and heated by a smaller number
of furnaces than there are of retorts. By this arrange¬
ment the fuel is certainly economized; but the plan is
liable to the objection, that when any one of the retorts is
worn out, those connected with it cannot be used till the
faulty one is replaced; and though various expedients
have been proposed for obviating that inconvenience, none
of them can be said to have effectually answered the pur¬
pose. Fig. 2 and 3 represent varieties in the oven plan
of setting retorts.
Fuel for The fuel required for carbonizing a given quantity of
oarboniza- coal may be stated to be, in general, about two fifths of
tlon" its weight. It has been affirmed, indeed, that the decom¬
position has been effected at some establishments with less
than twenty-five per cent.; 1 ut if the retorts are maintain¬
Tempera
ture best
suited.
Oven plan
of setting
retorts.
ed at a proper temperature, and the carbonization is car-Gas-F,
ried to a due extent, the fuel, however well economized,
will rarely be less than from thirty-five to forty per cent,
of the coal it is employed to decompose.
The quantity of gas produced during the time the coalQuam ,
is undergoing decomposition is extremely variable. From of
a small retort, exposed for eighty-five minutes to a bright yielded!
red heat, which was kept up with the utmost possible uni-0031-
formity, the following results were obtained from eight
pounds of the Wemyss coal:
Cub. Ft. Cub. In.
In 1st ten minutes 6 235
2d do 8 980
3d do   8 1254)
4th do 5 784
5th do 4 1450
6th do 3 313
Last twenty-five minutes 6 1660
43 1492
At the time the process was terminated the extraction
of aeriform matter had nearly ceased, so that the quan¬
tity of gas yielded by a pound of the coal was about five
and a half cubic feet. The same coal carbonized on the
large scale yielded, when the process was carried on for
four hours, at the rate of four and one third cubic feet of
gas per pound. The weight of the coke in the above ex¬
periment was 32,050 grains; and as the weight of the gas,
the specific gravity of which was ‘65, must have been
15,026 grains, the tar and other residuary products, in¬
cluding the sulphuretted hydrogen abstracted by the pro¬
cess of purification, must have amounted to 8924 grains.
When the decomposition is effected on the large scale, Quandt
the quantity of gas is found to vary with the quality of of gas
the coal, and the manner in which the operation is con-obtainei!
ducted. According to Mr Peckstone, a chaldron of New-™®
castle Wallsend coal yields 10,000 cubic feet, being at the
rate of 370^ cubic feet per hundredweight. At Edin¬
burgh a hundredweight of cannel coal yields 430 feet
and a similar return from coal of the same species is ob¬
tained at Glasgow, and other towns in Scotland.
The quality of the gas yielded by coal varies greatly at Quality
different periods of the carbonizing process. The firstsliun
products, when the coal has not been previously well dried,
consist almost entirely of aqueous vapour and carbonicth(fca5rtll
acid ; these are succeeded by light carburetted hydrogen,nization,
olefiant gas, and sulphuretted hydrogen, which gradually
diminish in quantity till towards the close of the process,
when almost the only products are carbonic oxide, and hy¬
drogen. Hence if the process be carried on too long, the
gases obtained in the latter stages of it will not only be
useless for the purpose of yielding light, but the fuel em¬
ployed for their production will be expended in wasting
the retorts to produce substances which, we shall after¬
wards find, are calculated to impair the illuminating power
of the gases with which they are mixed. In the case of
cannel coal, the interval between the charges of the re¬
torts should not exceed three and a half or four hours;
nor in the case of the Newcastle coal, which is not so
easily decomposed, ought that interval to extend beyond
six hours.
The Condensing Main and Dip Pipes.
From the retorts the gas, after its production,
by bent pipes, called the dip-pipes, into what is termed
the condensing main, which is a large cast-iron pipe, about ^
twelve or fifteen inches in diameter, placed in a horizon¬
tal position, and supported by columns in front of the
brickwork which contains the retorts. This part of a gas
apparatus is intended to serve a twofold purpose: First, to
h
G A S-L I G H T.
^Li t. condense the tar and grosser products of distillation; and,
secondly, to allow each of the retorts to be charged singly
without permitting the gas produced from the rest, at
the time that operation is going on, to make its escape. To
accomplish these objects, one end of the condensing main
is closed by a flanch ; and the other, where it is connect¬
ed with the pipes for conducting the gas towards the tar
vessel and purifying apparatus, has, crossing it, in the in¬
side, a semi-flanch or partition, occupying the lower half
of the area of the section, by which the condensing vessel
is always kept half full of liquid matter.
The dip-pipe, represented by bcdh, fig. 1, Plate CCLV.,
is connected by a flanch i, with a branch-pipe rising from
the upper side of the condensing main; and as the lower
end of it dips about two inches below the level of the
liquid matter, it is evident that no gas can return and
escape, when the mouth-piece m of the retort is removed,
until it has forced the liquid matter over the bend cd; a
result which is easily prevented by making dh of a suit¬
able length. The upper part of the branch be of the dip-
pipe is generally furnished with a ground plugy>, to allow
the removal of the tarry matter, which is apt to accumulate,
in a concrete state, at the lower part of the pipe where it
is nearest the furnace.
Of the Tar Apparatus.
port. After emerging from the lower end of the dip-pipe, the
jeof iS gas, now bereft of a considerable portion of the vapour of
water, tar, and oleaginous matter, which ascend with it
the t ^ro.m retor^ conveyed by pipes, for the purpose of
iarat : being completely freed from these impurities, into contri¬
vances where a more perfect condensation takes place.
As the subsequent purification of the gas depends, in no
small degree, upon the perfect separation of the tar and
other condensible products by which it is accompanied,
the construction of the vessels best calculated for attain¬
ing that end, is a matter of the utmost importance ; and
indeed it may be justly affirmed, that unless that separa¬
tion be effectually accomplished, the action of the chemi¬
cal agents, to which the gas is afterwards exposed, must
be limited and imperfect.
The first arrangements, employed for the purpose of
condensation, were all constructed on the supposition that
the object would be best attained by causing the gas to
travel through a great extent of pipes, surrounded by cold
water, and winding through it, like the worm of a still, or
ascending upwards and downwards in a circuitous manner.
One of these condensers is represented by figs. 4, 5, 6, and?,
1 late CCLV., where ABCD is the bottom of the condenser,
and EGHF the top; IKLM and PQRO show the pipes in
elevation. SKLI and SORT are sections of the vessel
below the condenser, for the reception of the tar, and other
condensible products. This vessel is divided by plates
into a number of compartments which have no communi¬
cation with each other, except at the bottom, for allowing
tbe tar to be drawn off, by one discharging pipe abc. The
gas is admitted at V, and after a repetition of ascents and
i escents, escapes at W, to be afterwards conveyed to the
purifying apparatus.
A cylindrical pipe being the most capacious of all pipes
laving the same surface, an improvement upon the con-
enser as here described, was conceived to be gained by
causing the gas to pass between plates of metal, forming
a succession of narrow chests or galleries; an arrange¬
ment y which every portion of the gas being brought into
ore immediate contact with the sides of the condenser,
was concluded the condensation would be proportion-
R,/ 1G°1rf comP^efe- Such an apparatus is represented by
th !i ’ ’ ant^ ^ate CCLV., where ABDC represents
c ottom of the condenser, E the entrance, and F the exit
351
pipe of the gas, which passes between the plates, as indi- Gas-Light,
cated by the arrows. The bottom of the plates a, a, a
have a slight inclination, so as to cause the condensed
products to flow towards the openings a, b, c, where they
are conveyed by pipes into the general receptacle below,
and afterwards drawn off by the cock H.
These tar vessels, and others of a similar form to ac-Improved
complish the same purpose, are constructed on the sup- cpnstruc-
position that the tar and other condensible products are^on 0^t^ie
held in a state of suspension in the gas by heat; and that^g aPPara'
nothing more is necessary to produce their deposition,
than exposure to a reduced temperature. As it appear¬
ed, however, that a large portion of the gas, after leaving
the condensing main, was enveloped in thin films of tar
and oleaginous matter, it occurred to the writer of this
article that the disengagement of it, froirfc the vesicles in
which it was enclosed, might be more effectually promot¬
ed by interrupting it in its progress through the condenser,
than, by mere exposure to cold; and in conformity with
this idea, he found that when the gas was forced to make
its way through brushwood, placed in proper vessels for
the purpose, the separation of the tar was more complete,
than by the ordinary modes of condensation. ABCD,
I? Flate CGLVL, represents a tar condenser construct¬
ed on that principle, abed are large vessels, either of
a square or cylindrical form, for containing the brush¬
wood and loose materials through which the gas is made
to pass; E being the pipe where it enters, and F the pipe
where it escapes, ef, ef, pipes for conveying the con¬
densed products into the horizontal pipe GH, which com¬
municates with the tar receptacle M, by the bent pipe IK.
The vessels containing the brushwood may be surrounded
with cold water, or with the tar pumped up from the tar
receptacle; but as the loose materials, through which the
gas passes, seem to have the principal share in condensing
the tar, it appears to be of little consequence whether the
vessels containing it be surrounded with cold water or
not, provided the apparatus be placed in a shaded situa¬
tion. m, m, are man-hole doors for cleansing or removing
the brushwood when it becomes clogged with tar; an
operation which it may be necessary to perform once a
year.
Of the purifying Apparatus for separating the Gases unfit
for the purposes of Illumination.
With the two compounds of hydrogen and carbon, viz. Impurities
olefiant gas, and light carburetted hydrogen, which are of coal-gas.
yielded by coal during its destructive distillation by heat,
several other products are obtained, which are not only
useless for the purpose of illumination, but calculated to
diminish the brilliancy of the light which is afforded by
these gases, and even to prove a source of serious nuisance
during their combustion. Among these products of a de¬
leterious nature, are carbonic acid, and sulphuretted hydro¬
gen; and, in smaller quantity, carbonic oxide, nitrogen, and
hydrogen. The first two are by far the most objectionable
of these impurities; and fortunately, their separation can
be effected more easily than that of the others, whose pre¬
sence is of less importance.
Carbonic acid is readily absorbed by any of the alkalis How sepa-
or earthy bodies, in a caustic state; and sulphuretted hy-rated,
drogen, which possesses many of the properties of an
acid, unites not only with the alkalis and alkaline earths,
with which it forms a species of salts termed hydrosulphu-
rets, but also with the metallic oxides, most of which it
reduces.
. ^le alk£dis being too expensive to be used for separat-Different
mg carbonic acid and sulphuretted hydrogen from coal-s^ates in
gas, a more economical substitute, and which answers the which nme
purpose almost equally well, is found in quicklime. This ^e purpSe
G A S-L I G H T.
Liquid
lime, or
cream of
lime.
substance is accordingly used in every gas establishment lime no longer fit for the purpose of purification is remov-Gas.Lj
on the large scale, in some form or another, for the last ed by the bent pipe g. The gas, ascending upwards in
step of the purifying process to which coal-gas is submit- this machine, has to pass in its progress among all the
ted to render it fit for combustion. It is employed in two arms of the inclined axis; and being thus exposed to the
perpetual spray of the liquid lime, the supply of which is
constantly and regularly renewed, it finally escapes at &
in a purified state.
One of the objections against the method of purifyingobjecti(|
by the cream of lime, or lime in a liquid state, is, that to the u;
unless the gas be previously freed entirely from tar, thatoflime,
substance, enveloping it with a thin film of oleaginous mat-tlle%i
ter, which has little tendency to unite with water, carriesstate'
the gas along with it in rolling bubbles, so that the inter¬
states ; either in the condition of a thin paste, which the
workmen call the cream ol lime, or of a moistened powder,
such as lime assumes when it is slaked with a little more
than theusualquantity of water. The apparatus must there¬
fore be accommodated, in its construction and arrangement,
to these different conditions of the purifying material.
When the lime is used in a liquid state, the gas is made
to pass through it so as to be as much as possible expos-
One of the arrangements adopted for
ed to its action.   D .
the purpose is represented by fig. 2, Plate CCL\T., where nal parts of it can thus scarcely ever come into contact
m is an oblong close vessel, divided into a number of with the purifying materials. In some of the arrange-
compartments formed by vertical partitions, which are ments, indeed, which we have described, mechanical con-
fastened to the top and’sides, but open at the bottom, trivances are employed to agitate and disperse the gas,
The lower margin of the partitions is perforated with nu-
Purifica-
tion pro-
moted by-
agitation.
with the view of exposing every portion of it, more or less,
merous small holes through which the g&s passes from to the action of the lime; but these modes ol promoting
one compartment to another; the cream of lime being the efficacy of the process cannot be resorted to without
introduced in such quantity that its surface is above the the aid of some moving power, which, in many cases,
level of the uppermost row of holes. The gas enters by must necessarily be attended with considerable trouble,
the pipe c, and, after bubbling through the holes in the as well as additional expense. There is another objection
partitions, from cell to cell, makes its escape in a purified to which this method of purification, even if it required
state by the pipe d. The liquid line is introduced from not the assistance of machinery, must always be liable;
time to time at b, and run off, after being unfit for the namely, that the olefiant gas upon which the illuminating
purpose of purification, by the pipe e. power mainly depends, is largely absorbed by water, in-
It being highly conducive to the success of the purify- somuch that either oil or coal gas, standing a few days
ing process that a succession of fresh portions of the liquid over that fluid, suffers a great deterioration of its quality,
lime should be brought in contact with the gas as it passes and becomes in every respect less fit for the purposes of
through it, the material is kept, at some establishments, in illumination. When lime is used in the dry state, or ra-
a state of constant agitation by means of machinery for ther in the state of a moistened powder, for purifying
the purpose. Fig. 3 represents an arrangement of that coal-gas, neither of these objections is at all applicable;
kind which is used at some of the London gas-works, and when the arrangements for that mode of purification
aaa is a flat cylindrical vessel in which the purification is are contrived with a due regard to the simplicity and
performed, the gas entering by the pipe c and escaping convenience of the manipulations, the separation of the
by the pipe d. In the inside of this vessel is another of useless and noxious gases is effected more easily, and not
a similar form ff, terminating at the bottom in a broad less effectually, than by the method of liquid lime. The
horizontal flanch or circular plate gg, and having revolv- abstraction of the sulphuretted hydrogen becomes more
ing within it an agitator hh, which works in an air-tight' perfect, by adding to the lime a small portion of the per-
stuffing box. The gas being forced by the pressure from oxide of manganese, which being a cheap substance, adds
the retorts to descend below g, is more effectually expos- very little to the expense of the process. This method
ed in its progress to the action of the lime by the com- of purifying coal-gas having been adopted with the utmost
motion produced by the agitator, and finally ascends, in success in many gas establishments, we shall now proceed
a purified state, through the pipe d. Fresh portions of to explain the nature of the apparatus by which it is car-
the purifying material are supplied from the vessel k by ried into effect.
means of the connecting pipe b; and the cream of lime, Figs. 1 and 2, Plate CCLVII., represent the e\eva*;1j)n^PP®1
after being saturated with the impurities, is withdrawn at and plan of an apparatus for dry lime, with the valves forf^1.'
In large establishments the gas is forced in succes- regulating the direction ol the gas when the purifying
sion through several vessels of the kind described, the materials require to be changed. PO and QR represent
cream of lime being changed in each of them at different double chests, formed of plates of cast iron, and which
times, to render its action more uniform and regular.
To supersede the necessity of using a series of purifiers,
the following arrangement has been adopted, which seems
well calculated to insure great regularity of action, with a
simplification in the means of attaining it: aa, bb, fig. 4, is
a cylindrical vessel, placed in a slanting position, and hav¬
ing a number of internal partitions h, h, rising nearly as
are thus capable of being water-luted at mn, by means of
an inverted vessel of the same form abed, and which is
made of sheet iron. This vessel, when the purifying pro¬
cess is going on, is kept down by means of cross bars g,g;
and it is furnished with a stop-cock k, for allowing the
common air to escape from it when it is let down into its
position, and also for allowing the admission of that air,
lllg iX ilUiiJUCI UL JlltvJI Util paiLlLiUIJO U) U) 1 IdiJlg 11 cell ltio ^JWOlllUll} dll'-*, ciiovy AKJi. tAixvy Tf #
high as its axis, in which there works a spindle M, carrying when it must be raised for the purpose of changing tie
purifying materials, without which the atmospheric pres¬
sure would render it extremely difficult to remove the
vessel, x, x are bolt-eyes for hooking the tackle which
is employed to lift the inverted chest abed. The pipe 1
by which the gas is introduced rises above the level o
round with it a number of arms of unequal lengths l, l.
These arms act as agitators of the liquid lime contained
in the different cells, formed by the partitions h, h. The
cylinder aa, bb terminates at the upper extremity in a ves¬
sel aa, ff, which is surmounted by another vessel agg, in ^        ,
which the cream of lime is prepared. Through the open- the lime contained in the uppermost sieve, so that t ie
ing e a vertical axis descends, giving motion to the inclin- gas, after issuing from it, spreads itself as pointed out by
ed one k by means of two bevelled wheels. To the verti- the arrows, and descends downwards through the severa
cal spindle ii are attached an inverted cup m, operating layers of lime o, o, till it reaches the bottom of the ches,
as a valve; and the arms n, n for agitating the cream of where it makes its escape at V, to pass, if necessary,
lime before it is introduced into the vessel The gas through a similar process in another chest, f, h repre-
is introduced at c, and escapes at d; and the cream of sent sections of the valves, which are luted with mercury
- Li*
GAS-LIGHT.
h (or with water when they are made sufficiently deep), and
-»».arranged in such a manner that the pair G, H, and the
pair L, M, one of which must always be open when the
other is shut, are so connected by a chain passing over
a pulley, that the same operation, which shuts the one,
necessarily opens the other. The valves I and K, which
must in some cases be both shut at the same time, are
raised and depressed by separate levers. The weights N
serve to keep the valves in their proper position, when
they are adjusted to a particular mode of transmitting
the gas.
of Having thus given a general description of the various
giDg.parts of the apparatus, we shall now proceed to explain
afesthe manner of managing the valves when the gas is to
pass through either of the chests singly, or through both
in succession. If it is to be transmitted through the chest
OP only, then the valves H and M must both be open ;
ind of course G and L would be shut; also both K and
[ must be shut. Again, if the gas were to be transmitted
through the chest QR only, then the valves G and L
must be open, and all the rest would be shut. Lastly, if
;he gas is to pass through both chests in succession, then
;he valves G, M, and K must be open, and all the rest
shut; or if wre wished to make the gas pass through the
:hests in a different order, the state of the valves might
)e reversed.
tity The quantity of lime necessary for purifying a given
enevolumeof coal-gas varies with the quantity of sulphur
A Contained in the coal from which the gas is produced,
md may be rated at from a tenth to a twentieth part of
the weight of the coal. It is proper, however, to examine
it intervals, during the progress of the purification, the state
)f the gas by such chemical tests as are calculated to de¬
ed the presence of any of the deleterious substances with
vhich it is usually contaminated. Thus, carbonic acid is
readily discovered by agitating a small portion of the coal-
;as with lime water in a limpid state, the solution being
juickly rendered turbid when the most minute quantity
)f that gas is present. Sulphuretted hydrogen is disco¬
vered with equal facility by causing a small current of
:oal-gas to play against a slip of paper moistened with a
veak solution of acetate of lead, or nitrate of silver,
)oth of which instantly become black when they are ex-
)osed to the action of sulphuretted hydrogen.
Having thus explained the nature of the various pro-
:esses, by which coal-gas is freed from the different im-
mrities with which it is contaminated, in the crude state,
ve shall next describe the structure of the vessels which
ire employed for storing it up, after it is duly purified and
itted for use.
Gasometers for receiving and containing the Gas before it is
consumed.
ityo As many disadvantages would be experienced by at-
eten empting to adjust the production of the gas to the rate
l Tits consumption, it is found to be more convenient, as
rell as more economical, to store up such a portion of it,
luring the day, as shall compensate for the deficiency of
he supply that may be furnished during the time the gas
s consuming, in the course of the evening. The capacity
f the vessels used for this purpose, which are called^rasome-
must be regulated by a regard to that consideration.
orm 1 he form of the gasometer is generally that of an invert-
353
ed cylindrical cup, the diameter of which, when economy Gas-Light,
is studied, ought to be double of its depth, or at least not -~y-^
more than two or three inches less. Gasometers are usu¬
ally composed of sheet iron, varying in weight from two to
three lbs. to the square foot, well riveted at the joints,
and kept in shape by means of stays and braces formed of
cast or bar iron. The sheet iron is made to overlap at the
joints, a slip of canvass well besmeared with white-lead be¬
ing interposed to secure perfect tightness. The prismatic
shape, though occasionally adopted, is not so convenient
as the cylindrical, partly on account of the difficulty of
making it retain its form, and partly on account of the
greater quantity of material, compared with the capacity,
that is necessary for its construction.
The gasometer is furnished with a tank, of the same form Tank of
with itself, but a little larger in dimensions, for containing gasometer,
the water, in which it is suspended at different altitudes, by
means of a chain and counterpoise, moving over pullies.
The tank is sometimes built of stone, but more frequently it
is constructed of cast-iron plates bolted together by flanches,
with an interval between them of about three eighths of an
inch, which is afterwards filled up with iron cement.1
A gasometer, such as has been described, is represented Counter-
b7 late CCL\ III., in which aaaa is the gasometer,poise and
dd the suspension chain, cc the pullies, and e the counter-chain,
poise; also bb is the tank, and ff the pipes for introducing
and conducting off the gas.
As the gasometer, when it is immersed in the water of
the tank, suffers a loss of weight equal to that of the por¬
tion of fluid it displaces, it is evident that unless some ar¬
rangement be made to counteract the varying pressure
which must thus result from the different depths to which
it may be immersed, the gas contained in the gasometer will
be expelled, at different times, wdth a varying force. If,
however, the weight of the chain of suspension, or rather
the weight of that portion of it whose length is the same as
the height to which the gasometer ascends, be equal to half
the loss of weight which the gasometer sustains by immer¬
sion in water, a perfect compensation will be made, and an
equilibrium will hold between the gasometer and its coun¬
terpoise, at all altitudes. Thus, if the weight of the gasome¬
ter were five tons, or 11,200 lbs., and it lost by immersion
a seventh part of its weight, or 1600 lbs., then the weight
of that portion of the chain, equal in length to the highest
ascent of the gasometer, would require to be 800 lbs., and
the weight of the counterpoise 11,200 — 800, or 10,400 lbs.
lbs.
For, the gasometer being immersed, its virtual
weight is 11,200 — 1600, or  9,600
Weight of portion of chain now acting with the gas¬
ometer   800
Sum is the weight of counterpoise  10,400
Again,
The gasometer being elevated out of the water, its
weight is  11,200
Weight of chain now acting in opposition to it  800
Difference is the weight of counterpoise 10,400
Though the compensation, by this adjustment of the
weight of the chain, answers the purpose in the most effec¬
tual manner, the following method is by some deemed pre¬
ferable. Let the counterpoise (instead of having the form
as shown at e in the figure) consist of a long cylindrical or
re smiu I T? ir°n Ce’Tlent 18 recommended by Peckstone : Take iron turnings or borings, and pound them in a mortar till they
.mvdernn'nn Pass ^rough a fine sieve; then with one pound of these borings, so prepared, mix two ounces of sal ammoniac in
navho u /?V,UnCe °f«TerS °.f sulPj?ur’ b-v rubbing them well together in a mortar; and afterwards keep the mixture dry till it
ioned and ^ . he" U 18 S0’ lor ever^ P"1 tl?ereof’ ffv measure, take twenty parts of iron borings, prepared as above men-
mr wan r ? hem Wel1 U,8ether ,in a o’ortar or other iron vessel. The compound is to be brought to a proper consistency by pour-
voi, 8 1' °Ver 11 aS 11 18 mmng 5 and when used 11 must be alTli<?d hetween the flanches by means of a blunted caulking iron.
2 Y
354
G A S-L I G H T.
Gas-Light, prismatic body, as represented by the dots g, g, having the the entire gasometer is rendered air-tight, at the line ofGas.4
area of its horizontal section equal to the area of a similar junction. Various other contrivances have been proposed ^
section of the plates of the gasometer, and be allowed to for saving room; but most of them answer the purpose so
descend into the water as the gasometer rises out of it. imperfectly, that they are scarcely deserving of being no-
Also let the chain J be of a weight equal (length for length) ticed. We shall, however, give a description of one of
to a column of water of equal bulk with the counterpoise, them, invented by M. Clegg, in which the gas is expelled
Then, if the weight of the gasometer be, as already sup- by the partial revolution of the gasometer,
posed, 11,200 lbs., the weight of the counterpoise must be This kind of gasometer is represented in fig. 3, aaaRevoh
the same; but the weight of that portion of the chain being the cistern filled with water to the height of thegasome
which, by the above arrangement, was only equal to half dotted line; b the axle, which is hollow at each end, and
the loss of weight sustained by the gasometer when im- works on friction sectors; ddd, a vessel supported by arras
mersed, must now be equal to the whole of that weight. proceeding from the axle, and formed of parts of two con-
lbs. centric cylinders, shut at each end, and also at g, except
Then, the weight of the gasometer in the water is, where the entrance and exit gas-pipes passing from g to
as before 9,600 the hollow axis are connected (one of these only is shown
Weight of the chain now acting with the gasometer, 1,600 in the figure, the other being directly behind it); the end/j
  is left open, and when the gasometer is filled with gas it is
Weight of counterpoise, now out of the water 11,200 just immersed in the water ; i a pulley to which isattach-
Again, ed a chain and weight k, disposed as represented. The
The weight of the gasometer, out of the water, is... 11.200 whole apparatus is constructed so as to be an equilibrium
Weight of the chain, now acting in opposition to in every position, the framing being made heavy at that
the gasometer 1,600 part of the circle to which the gas-holder does not extend,
 so as to counterbalance the matter opposed to it. The
Weight of the counterpoise, in water 9,600 gas enters at one of the hollow ends of the axis, and
Pressure Though we have only shown, in both these modes of passes through one of the tubes g into the gasometer;
for expell- compensation, that an equilibrium between the gasometer and it is discharged under any required pressure, obtain-
ingthegas. and its counterpoise holds, in the extreme cases, it would ed by means of the weight ky through the other tube be-
be easy to prove that the same thing must subsist, at all the hind g, into the opposite extremity of the axis. Though
intermediate elevations of the gasometer. At the same time this kind of gasometer is more expensive than one ot
it must be obvious that these contrivances, however well equal capacity of the common form, yet requiring a shal-
calculated they may be to secure the equilibrium alluded low cistern for working in, it may be resorted to in some
to, can have no effect in expelling the gas; and therefore, cases with advantage.
when it is wished that the contents of the gasometer shall The gas is commonly introduced and conducted off by Pipes I
issue from it under a certain pressure, the weight of the pipes, passing under the bottom of the tank for containingintrodi
counterpoise must be diminished to a suitable extent, the water, in which the gasometer floats; and as these31
Thus, if it were required that the pressure employed for pipes are in many cases considerably below the level of the
expelling the gas should be equal to that produced by a street pipes with which they communicate, they are apt
column of water three fourths of an inch deep, then it to be filled up in the course ot time with the condensed
would be necessary to diminish the weight of the counter- water which passes off in a vaporous state with the gas. To
poise by the weight of a column of water having the same remedy this inconvenience, it is necessary to place vessels
diameter with the gasometer, and an altitude of three for receiving that water, in connection with the entrance
fourths of an inch. If the diameter of the gasometer and exit pipes, so contrived that the accumulated water
above mentioned were, for example, 35 feet or 420 inches, may be easily removed from them when required. One
the weight of a cylindrical portion of w ater having that of these vessels, which are improperly termed syphons, is
diameter, and a depth of three fourths of an inch, would represented by fig. 9. When the wrater rises to the height
be, in grains, d, e, it is drawn oft' by means of a small suction pump,
4202 X -7854 X f X 252-5 = 26236876 grs. or 3748 lbs. introduced into the pipe ac, which reaches within about an
Hence it would be necessary to make the counterpoise inch of the bottom of the syphon. To prevent too much
3748 lbs. lighter than it was supposed to be, according to water being removed, and thus allowing the gas to escape
the above-mentioned arrangements, in order that the gas at ac, the lower end of the pipe of the suction pump should
might issue from the gasometer, under a pressure of three be perforated with small holes to as great a distance as
fourths of an inch of water. If the calculation were con- the water is to be left in depth ; or, if deemed preferable,
ducted with extreme accuracy, the specific gravity of the the upper end of the pipe ac may be rendered air-tight by
gas ought also to be taken under consideration; but the a screw ed cap.
object to be attained is not of so delicate a nature as to re- When access to the bottom of the tank is difficult, svi-
quire an attention to such minute circumstances. Besides, vel or flexible-jointed tubes, disposed so as to rise and fa
we shall afterwards find that the value of the arrangements with the gasometer, are sometimes resorted to. Jointet
we have described for obtaining an uniform and equable tubes, connected by means of water-lutes, are also occa-
pressure is greatly diminished ; and these are even entire- sionally employed, and they are found to answer the pur-
ly superseded by a contrivance called the governor, to be pose very well in situations where the water is not ex¬
afterwards explained. posed to frost. One of these is represented in fig. a
Particular In situations where a sufficient depth of the tank can- being the pipe by which the gas is introduced, b a vertica
forms of not be easily obtained, an expedient may be resorted to, pipe admitting of a small angular motion on the axis or
gasometers-sujq, as js represented in fig. 2. The gasometer con- support c, and connected with a by means of a water-lute
sists of two parts, separable from each other; the one, joint. The upper end of b is united in a similar manner
abba, having the form of the common gasometer, and the with one end of the pipe d, which is connected at the op-
other, cccc, being open at the top as well as the bottom, posite end by means of a like entrance with the extremity
but connected with the other by a channel running around of the pipe/, attached to the top of the gasometer; y15 il
the bottom, which is filled with water. The lower part regulating radius bar, centred to a bracket, which is fas -
has a recurved form at the top ; and this portion of it en- ened to the pipe d, and working on a fixed pivot at ?• A
tering into the channel, becomes water-luted, by which gasometer, as it rises and falls, carries/along with it, a11
G A S-L
rvi thus in the rest of the apparatus a motion is induced, cor-
y-'*’ responding with the connection of the different parts.
Of the Main and Service Pipes.
The gas being duly purified and prepared for combus¬
tion, the next point to be considered is the transmission of
it from the gasometer to the various places where it is to be
consumed. As it must sometimes be conveyed, particular¬
ly in the case of large establishments, to the distance of
several miles, it is evident that unless the diameters of the
various pipes through which it is to be conducted have a
due relation to the quantity of gas to be transmitted, there
will be a danger either of incurring an unnecessary expense,
by making the pipes too large ; or, what is still worse, of be¬
ing exposed to a deficiency of supply, by making them too
small. The first object, therefore, to be ascertained by
the engineer, is the probable number of lights that may be
required in the various streets and lanes in which these
pipes are to be laid; and these being known, the corre¬
sponding quantity of gas, according to the quality of it,
may be afterwards computed. With regard to the relative
dimensions of the pipes at different distances from the gas-
work, the only general rule to be observed is, that the sum
of the areas of the sections of the main-pipes proceeding
immediately from the gasometer, should be equal to the
sum of the areas of the sections of the various branch-pipes
which they supply with gas ; and this rule, with some little
modification, should be followed in the case of the subor¬
dinate ramifications.
?i'- In the case of good coal-gas, we may safely reckon that
ot one fourth of a cubic foot of it will furnish the light of a
moulded candle for an hour, of which one pound will, when
the candles are burnt in succession, last forty hours. On
tliis supposition, and assuming that the pressure upon the
gas in the gasometer is equal to three fourths of an inch of
water, the diameters of pipes necessary for conveying va-
ious quantities of gas may be stated as follows :—
leterl
lin
This table has been deduced partly from theoretical con-
iiderations, and partly from the results of experiment.
Jeckstone affirms, in his work on Gas-lighting, that a pipe
en inches in diameter is capable of transmitting 50,000
'ubic feet of gas per hour, under a pressure of one inch of
water, while, according to the statement of Mr Creighton,
>uch a pipe would scarcely convey the tenth part of that
juantity, under a pressure of from four eighths to three
ourths of an inch of water. It is impossible to reconcile
-hese discordant statements, either by an allowance for the
lifference of pressure, or the difference of the specific
gravities ot the gases ; for it ought to be kept in view that
he discharge of gas is directly proportional to the square
oot of the height of the column of water by which it is
messed, and inversely as the square root of the specific
Diameter of
Pipe in Inches.
Quantity of Gas in
Cubic Feet per Hour.
Equivalent Number
of Candles.
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
4
20
50
90
380
880
1.580
2,480
3.580
4,880
6,380
8,090
10,000
16
80
200
360
1.520
3.520
6,320
9,920
14,320
19.520
25.520
32,360
40,000
l G H T. 355
gravity of the gas. Both of these propositions, however, Gas-Light,
must be greatly modified by friction, and consequently by 'w-v'w/
the lengths of the pipes through which the gas is conveyed.
In the supply stated to be furnished by pipes of different
dimensions, we have deemed it safest rather to underrate
the quantity, than overrate it.
The main-pipes are usually made of cast iron, joined to¬
gether with socket joints, in lengths of three yards. The
depths of the sockets vary in pipes of different sizes, from
three to six inches, part of them being fitted with gasket
to bring the centres of the pipes into line, and the remain¬
der with lead after the gasket has been driven home with
suitable chisels or caulking irons. The depth of lead to
secure a good joint, should not be less than an inch and a
half; the interval between the spigot and socket being
from three eighths to seven eighths of an inch, according
to the diameter of the pipe.
As a considerable quantity of water is carried off by the Necessity
gas in the state of vapour, which is afterwards condensed of giving
in the pipes, some arrangement must be made for its col- PT6.8 a Pro-
lection and occasional removal; and accordingly, in layingp^i^cl1'
the pipes, care must be taken to give them a regularity ofna 10n*
declivity towards one or more points, where proper syphons,
close vessels, and cocks must be placed, to receive and dis¬
charge the collected water. When these precautions are
neglected, or when the levels are inaccurately taken, much
annoyance is experienced; and as the evil can only be cor¬
rected by lifting and rejoining the pipes, the utmost atten¬
tion should be paid to guard against it at first.
For stopping off the gas in large pipes, valves luted with
water or mercury, according to the degree of pressure to
be resisted, are usually employed. One of the most simple
forms of these valves is represented in fig. 8, Plate CCLV1II.
where aa is the valve, having the shape of an inverted cy¬
lindrical cup, which is raised and depressed by a rod c pass¬
ing through an air-tight stuffing-box; and bb an annular
cavity or interval, partially filled with water or mercury,
into which the valve descends when it is shut.
To convey the gas from the main-pipes, and distribute Service-
it through the various apartments of dwelling-houses, pipes pipes,
made of block-tin are generally used; these being more
durable and better adapted to the purpose than pipes com¬
posed of copper or any other metal. In arranging the in¬
terior fittings, the same precautions must be. observed as
were recommended in the case of the main-pipes, viz. to
give the various branches a due degree of inclination, so
as to cause all the condensed water to flow to one or more
points, where proper cocks must be placed for its removal.
Unless this be done, the lights will be apt to flicker, or be
extinguished at times altogether. Nor is it of trivial mo¬
ment to enjoin the workmen, when they are soldering the
service-pipes, to avoid with the utmost care allowing any
of the melted metal to find its way into the inside of the
pipes; it being in a great measure to this circumstance,
that the deficiency in the supply of gas, so frequently com¬
plained of, is chiefly owing.
Of the Governor or Regulator.
The quantity of gas consumed in large towns varying Use of re-
greatly at different times, it is evidently a matter of somegulator.
importance to the public, as well as to the manufacturers
of gas, that the supply of it should be duly adjusted to the
consumption; so that when the lamps are once regulated
to a proper height of flame, they may continue afterwards
to burn with the same steady light throughout the whole
of the evening. Any contrivance that can accomplish so
desirable an object must save a great deal of trouble to the
consumer of gas, and much unnecessary waste of it to the
manufacturer; and such is the design of the governor or
regulator. Fig. 5, Plate CCLVI. represents one of these con-
356 GAS-L
Gas-Light, trivances, a being the pipe proceeding from the gasometer,
by which the gas is admitted, and / the pipe by which it
escapes; c is a valve of a conical form, fitted to the seat b,
and raised and depressed by means of the rod dg, to which
it is attached; ddd is an inverted conical vessel, formed of
sheet iron, which ascends and descends in the exterior ves¬
sel ee, in which water is contained to the level represented.
The gas, entering at a, passes through the valve, fills the
upper part of the inverted vessel dd, which it thus partially
raises, and escapes at/. If the pressure from the gasome¬
ter be unduly increased or diminished, the buoyancy of
ddd will be increased or diminished in like proportion, and
the valve being by this means more or less closed, the
quantity of gas escaping at f will be unaltered. And not
only will the governor accommodate itself to the varying
pressure of the gasometer, but also to the varying quanti¬
ties of gas required to escape at f for the supply of the
burners. Thus, if it were necessary that less gas should
pass through / in consequence of the extinction of a por¬
tion of the lights, the increased pressure which would thus
be produced at the gasometer would raise the governor,
and partially shut the valve, till the state of it was duly
adapted to the requisite supply of gas.
Fig. 6 is another contrivance for the same purpose,
which acts in a similar manner. The gas enters at a, and
escapes at/ The valve c, with its stem, is attached to the
inverted vessel d, which is suspended in a cistern of water
gg, and moves upon a pivot at e. The action of this ap¬
paratus is the same as that of the contrivance vre have
already described. Both of them must be regulated by
weights applied to the vessels dd; but these being once
accommodated to the supply of gas, no further adjustment
will afterwards be necessary.1 *
The Gas-Meler.
Design of The gas-meter is a simple but ingenious mechanical
niete^5" contrivance, the design of which is to measure and record
the quantity of gas passing through a pipe in any given in¬
terval of time. The expense of these machines has hither¬
to formed the principal objection against their use ; but al¬
ready they are largely employed by several gas companies
in England as well as in Scotland. They will probably be
. found, upon trial, to be no less advantageous to the con¬
sumer than to the manufacturer of gas, by allowing the
former to use gas without any unnecessary wraste of it, and
securing to the latter a fair and regular price for the quan¬
tity of it actually consumed.
Fig. 7, Plate CCLVI., exhibits sections of one of these
gas-meters, w'here cc represents the outside case, having
the form of a flat cylinder; a is a tube which enters at the
centre for admitting the gas, and b is another for convey¬
ing it off to the burners ; g,g are two pivots, one supported
by the tube a, and the other by an external water-tight
cup, projecting from the outside casing, and in which is
contained a toothed wheel h, fixed upon the pivot, and con¬
nected with a train of wheel-work (not shown in the figure)
to register its revolutions. The pivots are fixed to and
support a cylindrical drum-shaped vessel ddd, having open¬
ings e, e, e, e, internal partitions ef,ef,ef,ef, and a centre
V^eceffff’ as represented in the figure. The machine is
filled with water, poured in at h up to the level of i, and
gas being admitted under a small pressure at a, it enters
into the upper part of the centre piece, and forces its way
through such of the openings / as are from time to time
above the surface of the water. By its action upon the
partition nearest in contact with the water (to the right
hand of the figure, in which all the partitions or openings
I
T G H T.
are shown), a rotatory motion is communicated to the cv-G r
Under; the gas from the opposite chamber being at the
same time expelled by one of the openings e, and after- ^
wards escaping at b, as already mentioned.
As the quantity of gas which passes through the machine
in any given time depends not only upon its internal di¬
mensions and the number of revolutions which it performs
but also upon the level of the surface of the water in which
the cylinder revolves, due care must be taken to maintain
the water at the same level, for the regular action of the
meter. This is easily accomplished, by pouring in water
when necessary, till the superfluous quantity is discharged
by an orifice properly placed for the purpose.
Burners.
The most economical mode of consuming gas, so as toPrin i
obtain Irom a given volume of it the greatest possible upon wt
quantity of light, both in degree and duration, is a pro-Ugh'
blem of no less importance than that of the most suitable^™'
arrangements for its production and purification. The™m*)“i'
presence of oxygen, in some form or another, being es-!,1011,]^
sentially necessary to produce ordinary combustion, it
follows, that from whatever cause that principle may be
deficient in quantity, the combustion must be imperfect;
and when this is the case, it appears that the light yield¬
ed by the combustible body is also diminished in a pro¬
portional degree. On the other hand, if the quantity of
oxygen brought into contact with the combustible body be
more than sufficient for its entire combustion, the super¬
fluous quantity of that gas, instead of augmenting the ef¬
fect, can only lower the temperature, and diminish, it may
be presumed, in a corresponding degree, the intensity of
the light. This must be the consequence if the brilliancy
of the light yielded by a combustible body depends at
all upon the temperature to which it is exposed during
its combustion; and that this is the case may be inferred
from the simple fact of causing the flame of a jet of gas
to play, first against a sheet of ice, and then against a bar
of red-hot iron, when the difference of the light will be
such as to leave no doubt of the influence of temperature
upon its intensity. A similar result is obtained by bring¬
ing the flames of two separate jets into contact, when an
obvious increase of light is perceived. From these simple
facts it may be inferred, that though a certain quantity
of common air must be brought into contact with the
inflamed gas to produce the greatest intensity of light,
whatever exceeds that quantity will not only be useless,
but, byr diminishing the temperature of the flame, must
tend to impair the brilliancy of its light.
But though the immediate cause of the light is proba¬
bly the high temperature to which the carbonaceous por¬
tion of the gas is exposed, the condition in which the
carbon exists, at the time it is so exposed, is of the ut¬
most importance to the effect. According to the opinion
of Sir Humphry Davy', as adopted by Drs Christison
and Turner, “ a white light is emitted only by those gases
which contain an element of so fixed a nature as not to
be volatilizable by the heat caused during the combustion
of the gas; and that in coal-gas this fixed element is
charcoal, formed by the gas undergoing decomposition
before it is burnt. The white light is caused by the char¬
coal passing into a state, first of ignition, and then of com¬
bustion. Consequently no white light can be produced by
coal or oil gas, without previous decomposition of the gas.
“ That the gas undergoes decomposition before it burns,
and that the carbonaceous matter is burnt in the white
part of the flame in the form of charcoal, is shown by
'ft!
*
1
i
I
l
n
1 The regulator, which was originally invented by Mr Clegg, was afterwards improved by Mr Crosley, who enjoys, by patent, the
exclusive right of furnishing it. The gas-meter was also invented by Mr Clegg, and is constructed with great accuracy by Mr Crosle).
j:
G A S-L I G H T.
357
r f placing a piece of wire-gauze horizontally across the white
** / art 0f the flame, when a large quantity of charcoal will
be seen to escape from it unburnt. And that this pre¬
vious change is necessary to the production of a brilliant
white light, will appear, if we consider the kind of flame
which is produced when decomposition does not previous¬
ly take place. For example, if the gauze be brought
down into the blue part, which always forms the base of
the flame, no charcoal will be found to escape. Or, if the
gauze be held at some distance above the burner, and the
gas be kindled not below but above it, by which arrange-
ruent the air and the gas are well mixed previous to com¬
bustion, the flame is blue, and gives hardly any light.
The reason is obviously, that in both cases the air is at
once supplied in such quantity in proportion to the gas,
that the first effect of the heat is to burn the gas, not to
decompose it.” (Edin. Phil. Journ. No. XXV.)
_ ^ To these statements it may be added, that if a jet of
;esii oil or coal gas, burning with a fine yellow flame in com-
icing^mon air, be suddenly surrounded with an atmosphere of
"^/oxygen gas, the colour instantly changes into a pale blue,
0 'yielding the most feeble light; nor does the flame reco¬
ver its brilliancy till the oxygen is largely diluted with
carbonic acid, when it burns for a short time with greater
splendour than at first. For though the light is greatly
enfeebled when the combustion of the gas takes place in
pure oxygen, it becomes much more vivid when the com¬
bustion is carried on in air, which is more largely charged
with oxygen than common air. Hence the brilliancy of
the light appears to depend upon two conditions:
The perfect combustion of a portion of the gas, in an un¬
decomposed state; 2dly, the temperature produced by
that combustion upon the residual part, in a decomposed
state. When a large portion of the gas is consumed in
the first condition, the temperature is higher; but the un¬
decomposed part is then too small in quantity to yield an
intense light, in consequence of the attenuated state of
the carbon ; and, on the other hand, when a small portion
of the gas is consumed in the undecomposed state, the
temperature produced is too feeble to raise the tempera¬
ture of the now partially decomposed part to a sufficient
pitch for the full ignition of the carbon,
eral The conditions which thus seem to be necessary^ for
dple obtaining the greatest portion of light from the combus-
job-ition of a given quantity of gas, while they are perfectly
^consistent with the most anomalous facts presented by
•tion.^.lat Process> so they appear to afford the only sure prin-
mraclples upon which we can proceed in the construction of
gas-burners. One of the most obvious conclusions dedu-
cible from these principles is, that whatever be the form of
the gas-burner, its construction should be such, that while
it admits as much air, it should never admit more than is
barely sufficient for the perfect combustion of the gas.
According to the experiments of Dys Christison and
tsot lurner, the character best fitted for single-jet burners
land aPPearS tobeab°ut on« twenty-eighth of an inch for coal-
ner. an^ one forty-fifth for oil-gas. As these dimensions,
however, must vary with the quality of the gas, we con¬
sider one thirty-sixth of an inch to be more applicable to
the gas obtained from cannel coal, if its specific gravity
he not less than -65. Every form of burner composed of
separate jets, in which the gas is made to issue in a hori¬
zontal or oblique direction, gives a consumption which
increases in a much faster ratio than the light which it Gas-Light,
yields; and consequently, however beautiful such burners
may be in appearance, they are far from being economical.
One of the most useful forms of a burner with single
jets, is where there are two holes, and their directions are
so inclined as to cause the streams of issuing gas to cross,
and exhibit during their combustion a broad continuous
flame. Tin's burner, which is termed a swallow-tail, is well
adapted for street-lights, as it gives a powerful light, and
consumes a small quantity of gas. When the gas is emit¬
ted by a narrow slit at the top of the burner, the burner
receives the name of a hat-wing. Fig. 11, Plate CCLVIII.
But of all the forms of the burner, that upon the Ar-
gand principle, in which the holes are arranged in a circle,
so as to admit the air to have access to the flame, exter¬
nally as well as internally, is the most economical, and
the best calculated to secure the complete combustion of
the gas. The diameter of the holes should, in this burner,
be about the fortieth part of an inch for coal-gas of an
ordinary good quality, and the distance between them
should be such as to allow the separate flame of the dif¬
ferent jets to unite together and form a continuous hol¬
low' cylinder of light. Fig. 12.
The construction of burners, and the most economical
mode of consuming gas, having been examined with much
philosophical precision by Drs Christison and Turner, we
shall extract from their elaborate dissertation on the sub¬
ject, the most valuable and important conclusions which
these learned individuals deduced from their experiments ;
and this we do with greater confidence, because the re¬
sults they obtained coincide very exactly with those we
procured, when engaged in the same inquiry. The three
leading points to which they directed their attention were,
ls£, the length of flame most suitable for different burn¬
ers ; 2dly, the form, magnitude, and position of the orifices
through which the gas is discharged ; and, 2>dly, the mo¬
difications of the light produced by the glass chimney of
the Argand burner.
With regard to the length of flame which afforded the Length of
greatest light compared with the expenditure of gas, they flame,
found that, in the case of the jet, the best length for coal-
gas was about five inches, and for oil-gas about four
inches. When the flame was kept shorter, the quantity
of gas consumed was greater in comparison of the light
which it yielded ; but no advantage was gained by increas¬
ing the length beyond that mentioned as the most suit¬
able for each gas; the combustion becoming less perfect,
and beginning to be accompanied with the escape of the
carbon in the form of smoke. Thus they found that, in
the case of coal-gas having the specific gravity *602, while
the lights emitted from a two-inch and a five-inch flame
were as 556 to 1978, the corresponding expenditures were
to each other as 605 to 1437. But the light, in an eco¬
nomical point of view, must be estimated inversely as the
quantity of gas from which it is obtained ; and hence the
ratio of the lights, in reference to the expenditure, was as
6"of t0 T45f’ be‘no as 100 to 150.
In the case of Argand burners, the augmentation of the
light, in a ratio greater than the expenditure, was exem¬
plified in a still more remarkable degree. Thus the fol¬
lowing results were obtained wfth coal-gas of the specific
gravity -605, by elevating the flame of a five-holed burner,
successively from half an inch to five inches.
Length of Flame.
Light  
Expenditure.
Ratio of light to expenditure
Half-Inch.
18-4
83-7
100
One-Inch.
92-5
148
282
Two-Inch.
259-9
203-3
560
Three-Inch.
308-9
241-4
582
Four-Inch.
332-4
265-7
582
Five-Inch.
425-7
318-1
604
1
358
GAS-LIGHT.
Gas-Light. Hence the light is increased about six times for the same
expenditure, by raising the flame from half an inch to
three or four inches; but very little is gained by any ad¬
ditional increase of the flame beyond that length, in the
description of burners with which the experiments were
made.
These facts receive a satisfactory explanation from the
general principles which we have already laid down with
respect to the combustion of the luminiferous gases.
When the flame is short, the supply of oxygen for the
combustion is too great; almost the whole of the gas is
thus consumed before any portion of it can undergo the
decomposition which is necessary for the evolution of
light; while the temperature of the flame being reduced
by the superfluous air which brushes along its surface, the
intensity of ignition, and with it the splendour of the
light, is proportionally diminished. This explanation is
well illustrated by partially shutting the central part of
the burner, and thus interrupting the supply of air to the
internal surface of the flame ; the moment this is done,
the length of the flame is increased, and a visible improve¬
ment of the light takes place, thus indicating that more
air was previously brought in contact with the gas than
was requisite for its perfect combustion.
Magnitude The second point to which Drs Christison and Turner
and posi- directed their attention was the construction of the burner
orifices 6 ^tse^’ Part>cularly the magnitude and position of the ori-
1 ' flees at which the gas is emitted during its combustion.
The same principles which explained the relation between
the light and the expenditure, in the case of flames of dif¬
ferent lengths, suggested the rule for regulating the di¬
mensions of the orifices; and accordingly they justly in¬
ferred that, in a single jet, the diameter of the aperture
ought to be such as to ensure the complete combustion
of the gas, without rendering it more vivid than is neces¬
sary for that effect. If the orifice be too small, the greater
portion of the gas is liable to be consumed without suf¬
fering a previous decomposition, and thus the light is ex¬
tremely feeble; and, on the other hand, if the orifice be
too large, the surface of the flame exposed to the action ’
of the air being too small in comparison of the discharge
of gas, the combustion is imperfect, and the carbon, after
being separated from the hydrogen, either burns at a low
temperature with a dusky flame; or, what is still worse,
a large portion of it passes off in the state of smoke. In
conformity with these views, they recommend, as we
have already stated, a twenty-eighth of an inch for coal-
gas, and a forty-fifth for oil-gas, as the most suitable di¬
mensions for single jets. They acknowledge, however,
that their experiments with coal-gas were too limited to
justify them in using very confident language on the sub¬
ject; and we have therefore the less hesitation in stating
that we consider an orifice, varying in diameter from a
thirty-second to a thirty-sixth of an inch, as better adapt¬
ed to coal-gas of a specific gravity between ‘62 and 'lO.
In Argand burners the diameter of the orifices ought to
be a little smaller. Drs Christison and Turner state that
the diameter which appeared to answer best for coal-gas
of the specific gravity *6, when the holes are ten in a cir¬
cle of three tenths of an inch radius, was a thirty-second
of an inch. We consider this, however, to be too great
for coal-gas of a better quality, and would recommend, in
preference, apertures varying in diameter from a thirty-
sixth to a fortieth of an inch.
Distance of The distance between the jet-holes of Argand burners
jet o es. js a matter of no less importance than the diameter of the
orifices, and must be regulated by the same principles.
When they are so far asunder that the flames of the sepa¬
rate jets do not coalesce, no advantage is derived from
the Argand form; but when they unite, and compose an
uniform and unbroken surface of flame, the light is con-
Orifices of
Argand
burners.
siderably greater, compared with the expenditure of
than is obtained from detached jets. In order to de^eN^^
mine the most suitable distance at which the orifices of
Argand burners should be placed, Drs Christison and Tur¬
ner took a burner six tenths of an inch in diameter, which
they caused to be drilled with eight, ten, fifteen, twenty,
and twenty-five holes, a fiftieth of an inch in diameter •
and having determined, with each of these burners, the
light and expenditure, in the case of oil-gas, they obtained
the following results.
Burners.
Light 
Expenditure.
Ratio of light to ex-1
penditure j
VIII.
360
367
98
X.
360
318
113
XV.
391
296
132
XX.
409
289
141
XXV
382
275
139
As the standard of comparison was a single jet, burning
with a four-inch flame, the ratio of the light yielded by
which to the expenditure was expressed by 100, it was
inferred that no advantage is gained by giving the jets the
Argand arrangement with a burner of the dimensions
above mentioned, if the holes are only eight in number;
and that the gain does not increase after the number
reaches to twenty. In the former case the distance of
the holes must have been *2356 inch, or nearly one fourth
of an inch, and, in the latter, '0945 ; so that the most ad¬
vantageous distance for jet-holes of a fiftieth of an inch
in diameter would seem to be about y^jths of an inch.
For coal-gas burners, however, the distance between the
jet-holes ought to be increased in a ratio varying inversely
with the quality of the gas, or directly as the diameters
of the orifices themselves. Hence, if the coal-gas were of
an ordinary quality, the jet-holes should not be less than
one eighth nor more than one sixth of an inch from each
other.
The distance between the orifices being once assumed,Diameter
serves to determine the diameter of the circle of holes, of®!6
Thus, in a burner of eighteen holes, each a seventh of anof!lole!'
inch asunder, the circumference ought to be IS X = =
2-57 inches, and consequently the diameter of the circle
2A7
of holes should be — , -■ - = ’818 inch. If the breadth of
3-1416
the rim be supposed a tenth of an inch, and perhaps it
ought not to exceed that quantity, it may be proper, in
the case of the larger burners, to contract the lower part
of the central air-hole, on account of the supply of air to
the inside surface of the flame increasing in a faster ratio
than the number of jets.
The only remaining point to be considered with respectGlass
to the burner is the glass chimney, which serves at once chinny*
to protect the flame from irregular currents of air, and to
convey to the gas a due supply of it during combustion.
When the interval between the chimney and the external
part of the flame is too great, the tendency of the air to
flow through the air-hole is diminished, and the flame
contracts towards the top, where it yields a dusky light,
and indicates a disposition to smoke. The diameter ot
the chimney should therefore be reduced until it is per¬
ceived that the upper part of the flame is enlarged, and
acquires the same diameter as the lower part. When this
is the case, the colour of the flame is improved in bright¬
ness, and none of the carbon is uselessly wasted in the
formation of smoke. On the other hand, if the supply of
air to the external surface of the flame be diminished be¬
yond a certain extent, either by reducing the diameter of
G A S-L I G H T.
359
Ligbtlie glass chimney, or by any other means, the flux of air
Y^-*tlirough the central air-hole is unduly increased, the flame
diverges in the form of a tulip till it touches the chim¬
ney, and the supply of air to the outside of the flame being
thus interrupted, smoke is again produced. Hence the
greatest degree of light, in relation to the expenditure of
gas, may be expected to be obtained when the supply
of air to the external and internal surface of the flame
is so adjusted by the diameter of the chimney that the
flame is perfectly cylindrical, neither burning with too
much vivacity, nor showing any tendency to smoke.
The length of the glass chimney is of much less import¬
ance than its diameter, and may vary from five to six
inches.
Apparatus for Preparing Oil- Gas.
posi- When tallow or oleaginous matter of any kind is raised
of oi:to a certain pitch of temperature, it is resolved into va¬
rious gases, of which the compounds of carbon and hydro¬
gen, viz. olefiant gas or bicarburetted hydrogen, and light
carburetted hydrogen, are the principal, both in point of
quantity and quality, for the purposes of illumination. As
oil contains in its composition a portion of oxygen, exist¬
ing most probably in union with hydrogen in the state
of water, that substance also yields, during its destructive
distillation, a considerable quantity of carbonic oxide, as
well as traces of carbonic acid, hydrogen, and even nitro¬
gen. With these products, all of which are of a determi¬
nate character, is found in greater or lesser abundance a
quantity of a very inflammable vapour,1 which seems to be
a compound of carbon and hydrogen,
able Oil-gas owes its illuminating power chiefly to the pro-
re ^ portion of olefiant gas which it contains, and the oleagi-
P8, nous vapour which is diffused through it; and as both of
these ingredients vary exceedingly with the temperature
at which the decomposition is effected, the quality of oil¬
gas is extremely fluctuating. When the temperature is
too high, a portion of the olefiant gas and oleaginous va¬
pour is resolved, by the deposition of carbon, into light car¬
buretted hydrogen ; and though the quantity of gas from
a given portion of oil is thus increased, the quality of it
is diminished in a still higher ratio. On the other hand,
d the temperature be rather too low, a larger quantity of
I, alefiant gas, mixed with a greater proportion of oleaginous
vapour, is obtained ; but as the latter is gradually and ra¬
pidly condensed when the gas is allowed to stand over
water, the higher illuminating power of this richer gas
is more than counterbalanced by the deficiency in its
quantity, and the deterioration to which it is liable by
keeping.
,r'' are indebted to Dr Henry of Manchester for the
i s of first; analysis of the aeriform compounds obtained by the
nr decomposition of oil by heat; and though his elaborate re¬
searches can scarcely be said to have led to the determi¬
nation of the precise products of that decomposition, they
turmsh data from which their true nature may be infer¬
red, with a probability nearly as great as that which be-
ongs to the results of direct experiment. The principal
difficulty of the analysis consists in determining the con¬
dition in which the elementary principles of carbon and
lydrogen exist in union with each other, and reconciling
ic various suppositions that may be made respecting the
ompounds thus formed, with the specific gravity which
belongs to the original gas, supposed to be produced by Gas-Light,
their mixture. '
The results of Dr Henry’s first experiments were pub¬
lished in 1805; but it was not till about ten years after
that period that an apparatus for decomposing oil, on a
large scale for economical purposes, was constructed. In
1815 a patent was obtained by Mr Taylor, in which he
was afterwards joined by Mr Martineau, for producing
gas from oil, by means of an apparatus which was em¬
ployed with little variation in all the oil-gas establish¬
ments, which were subsequently formed in various parts
of the country. The general arrangements adopted in
that apparatus will be readily understood from figs. 5, 6,
and 7, Plate CCLVIII.
The retort aaaa, has the form of a horse-shoe, being
recurved and furnished with two mouth-pieces. The
grate of the furnace is represented by b. The oil which
is contained in the cistern c, is conveyed by means of a
tube tt, furnished with a stop-cock for regulating the dis¬
charge, and allowed to drop into the retort upon fragments
of brick or coke heated to redness, to promote the decom¬
position. ihe gas, after its production, ascends from ihe
retort, at the opposite limb where the oil entered through
the upright pipe by which it is conveyed into a close
vessel hh, which is surrounded with cold water in the cis¬
tern ii. From the bottom of the vessel hh, a worm or
spiral tube hh ascends, and after a few convolutions around
hh, terminates in the pipe l, which descends into the air¬
tight chest mm. The gas leaving the vessel hh, is con¬
ducted by the spiral tube hk, depositing in its progress
any portion of the oil that may have come over with it in
a volatilized state, and escapes from the lower end of the
pipe l, into the chest mm, which contains water to the
depth represented. After quitting the pipe l, the gas is
forced to traverse the inclined partition n, in a zig-zag
manner, by means of diagonal ribs attached to its lower
side, till gradually ascending, it escapes at the upper end,
and rising through the water, finally passes off at g to the
gasometer.
Oil being decomposed at a loss of nearly fifty per cent. Loss incur-
the conversion of it into gas, after a protracted, but inef-re(l V ef¬
fectual competition with coal, has been gradually aban-yertin£ oil
doned on the large scale, even in those places where, fromint0 gas‘
the interest they had in the whale-fisheries, there was
the strongest inducement to foster the unfounded preju¬
dices, which prevailed for some time against the use of
coal-gas. The exaggerated advantages which it was pre¬
tended would be derived from compressing oil-gas, and
thus rendering it portable, served to prolong the gross
delusions on the subject, under which the public mind,
led astray as it was, not less by novelty than by erroneous
statements, so long laboured; nor were these delusions fully
removed, until a demonstration was given of the failure
of the scheme, in the decay of the costly edifices, and ex¬
pensive apparatus, which, in defiance of all sober calcula¬
tion, had been constructed for carrying it into effect.
Methods for determining the Illuminating Power of the
Gases.
Having described at considerable length the nature of
the various manipulations by which gas is prepared, both
from coal and oil, we shall now explain the methods which
seem best calculated to determine their respective illu-
ind hydroffe^^O^Vi^tTiPKP t0 t f P™nts f Mr Faraday, of two distinct compounds of carbon
>t’hydrogen The otbli rnmnnnn [7 7 7. 77^7 ^7 analyS1?’Is GomP«sed of six proportions of carbon and three
ionLf Son and fm.r nr r 77 Dr Th.0fmson has g£en the name of quadra-carturetted hydrogen, consists of four propor-
auretted hydrogen Uie eCKr”' m & (7erent state of aggregation from that in which they exist in bicar-
nyurogen, the elementary constituents of which are in the same proportion. J
T»
360
G A S-L I G H T.
sity of
light, by
the me¬
thod of
shadows.
Gas-Light, minating powers; it being by these methods that we ac-
quire a knowledge of one of the most important tests, by
which the comparative value of the gases can be ascer¬
tained.
Determi- The first and most obvious of these tests is to deter-
nation of mine the intensity of the light which the gases are capa-
the inten- ^]e 0f diffusing during their combustion, upon a white and
smooth surface, directly exposed to its emanations. The
determination of that intensity is obtained with the great¬
est accuracy, not by a direct comparison of the degree of
illumination shed on two separate surfaces, but by means
of a happy contrivance, first proposed by Count Rumford,
which allows the illuminated surfaces to be contrasted
with each other on the same ground, and so closely ad¬
joining, that the eye can readily detect the slightest dif¬
ference between them. The contrivance, which is ex¬
tremely simple and easily applied, is as follows: Let A
and B, fig. 8, Plate CCLVI., be two luminous objects ; EF a
smooth and white surface, having the same inclination to
the rays of light emitted by A and B ; and CD an opaque
cylindrical rod parallel to the surface EF; then it is evi¬
dent that aa and bb will be the shadows of CD, in reference
to the lights A and B. But the shadow aa being illumi¬
nated by the light B, and the shadow bb by the light A, it
follows that if these shadows be perfectly the same, in point
of intensity of shade, the light yielded by A and B must be
the same in degree. If the shadows, however, be different,
one of the lights must be removed either further f rom EF
or brought nearer to it, until the shades seem to be ex¬
actly alike, when the light shed upon EF by A and B,
must, in point of intensity, be, as before, the same. But
the intensity of light, like that of other emanations pro¬
ceeding in straight lines from a central point, being in¬
versely as the square of the distance, the relative de¬
grees of light emitted by A and B, must, in conformity
with that principle, be proportional to the squares of their
respective distances from the surface, on which the sha¬
dows are projected. Thus, if the light A was at the dis¬
tance of fifteen feet, and the light B at the distance of
twenty-five feet, their relative illuminating powers would-
be as the square of fifteen to the square of twenty-five ;
that is, as 225 to 625, or as 9 to 25. As the quantity of
gas consumed in the same time to yield the supposed
lights might be different, it is evident that a correct esti¬
mate of the absolute value of the gases, for the purpose
of illumination, would not be duly determined, unless that
circumstance were also taken into account. But the eco¬
nomical value of the gases, yielding equal degrees of
light, being inversely as the quantities consumed, it fol¬
lows that that value will be directly as the squares of the
distances, at which the shadows are the same, and inversely,
as the rate of consumption. Thus, if we now suppose that
the gas yielding the light A consumed three cubic feet,
in the same time that the gas yielding the light B con¬
sumed five cubic feet, the value of the former would be
to that of the latter, as is to or as three to five. In
obtaining the necessary data for determining the ratio of
the lights, it may be proper to add, that the screen on
which the shadows are projected should be guarded with
the utmost care from all extraneous light. See Photo¬
meter.
Though the determination of the intensity of light by
the method of shadows is extremely simple, and capable,
chlorine tOyyPgn tiie necessary experiments are carefully managed,
thcfualit °* leat^ng t0 th0 precision which the nature of the pro-
of gas]a 1 'V blem requires, it has been proposed, by those more con¬
versant with chemical researches, to ascertain the relative
value of the gases used for illumination, by finding the
quantity of olefiant gas which they contain under equal
volumes ; it being assumed that the illuminating power of
the compound combustible gases derived from the decom¬
position of oil and pit-coal, is directly proportional to tlieGas.^
quantity of that gas existing in their constitution. Though
that supposition is by no means a matter of certainty,% '
even of probability, we shall nevertheless briefly explain
the mode of analysis which is recommended by those who
have adopted it. According to the experiments of Dr
Henry, chlorine has no action upon any of the gases ob¬
tained from oil or coal, when the influence of light is
carefully excluded, with the exception of olefiant gas;
and as chlorine and olefiant gas unite together in equal
volumes, this property affords an easy mode of deterrain-
ing the quantity of the latter which may exist in any
compound gas of which it forms a constituent part. All
that is required for the purpose is to add somewhat more
chlorine than is absolutely necessary for uniting with the
olefiant gas, and to allow the mixture to remain about
fifteen minutes completely excluded from light. The ex¬
tent of the absorption being thus observed, half the quan¬
tity' of the gas which has disappeared of the whole mix¬
ture will be olefiant gas. Thus, if twenty parts of chlo¬
rine by measure were added to twenty-five of coal-gas,
and if the mixture, after being allowed to remain a suffi¬
cient length of time in the dark, was found to occupy
thirty-six measures, the absorption would be nine mea¬
sures, and consequently the coal-gas must have contained
four and a half measures of olefiant gas, or eighteen per
cent. The quantity per cent, of olefiant gas is determined
without calculation, by adding to fifty measures of the
gas to be analysed an equal volume of chlorine; when
the diminution of volume, in the graduated jar, is the
quantity which the gas contains per cent, of olefiant gas.
Dr Fyfe states that the illuminating power of the differ¬
ent specimens of oil and coal gas which he subjected to
this test bore a pretty exact ratio to the quantity of ole¬
fiant gas they contained. One great advantage to be de¬
rived from this method of testing the quality of any spe¬
cies of carburetted hydrogen containing olefiant gas in
its composition, is, that it admits of a comparison being
made between gases in different places and at different
times, without the necessity of transporting them to a
distance, and making a simultaneous examination of their
illuminating properties.
The specific gravity of oil and coal gas, and the quan-Specific
tity of oxy'gen which they require for their perfect com-gravityc
bustion, have also been proposed as means of ascertaining0^ “
their illuminating powers. The latter, however, even.11^^
it were a correct test, is determined with considerable dif-^yr
ficulty; and that little reliance can be placed upon the quality,
former, may be inferred from the fact, that some of the
gases which are component parts of oil and coal gas have
a great specific gravity, without possessing any illuminat¬
ing power. This will readily be perceived from the sub¬
joined table.
Applica¬
tion of
Gases.
Olefiant gas  
Garb, hydrogen.
Hydrogen 
Carbonic oxide..
Carbonic acid...
Specific Gravity.
•970
•556
•069
•972
1-538
Quantity of Oxy¬
gen for 100
Volumes.
300
200
50
50
None.
Of these gases, carbonic oxide and carbonic acid pos¬
sess the greatest specific gravity; while the latter is not
only destitute of every illuminating property, but calcu¬
lated, as we shall afterwards show, to deteriorate to a
great extent the quality of the luminiferous gases with
which it may happen to be mixed.
GA S-LIGH T.
>Ljgl Comparative Merits of Oil and Coal Gas.
361
the same degree of light. The deterioration produced on Gas-Light.
... c . . . , the oil-gas was therefore thirty-seven per cent, and that
Itfe. Pough th" examination of the relative values of oil on the coal-gas about thirty-six and a third. AccordingDetSa-
3«f an? coal gas for the purposes of illumination might seem to the experiments of Drs Christison and Turner, when tlon of £as
igase: to be an inquiry little calculated to awaken party feeling, or the oil-gas was of the best, and the coal-gas of avera-eb,y keeping
lead to any grea diversity of statement, there is perhaps no quality, their relative illuminating powers were as 100 to
subject of investigation that has been conducted with less 260. This result, which was obtained from data obviously
candour and impartiality Nor is this remark merely ap- unfavourable to coal-gas, cannot be admitted as exhibit-
plicable to the individuals who had an obvious interest in ing a fair estimate of the illuminating power of the two
supporting the superiority of either gas; for even men of gases; and as it may be presumed that, in some of the
science, to whom it was apparently a matter of indiffer- other experiments which they performed with a view to
ence which of the gases ought to be preferred, lent in too determine the same point, the effect of keeping the gases
many instances their authority to the delusive and erro- for different lengths of time over water may have been
neous statements, which for a season misled public opi- overlooked, the results they obtained, which make the
mon on the subject. , relative powers of illumination as 100 to 233, are of
As experience, the test to which all speculative doc- less value. It appears that oil-gas suffers more by keen-
tnnes relating to economy and public utility must ulti- ing, even when it is not preserved over water, than coal-
mately V'eR lias already decided that, in this country at gas. This seems to be owing to the deposition of an ethe-
east, no establishment for manufacturing gas from oil can real oil, already noticed, which remains suspended in the
compete with one in which it is prepared from coal, it is gas for a short time after it has been prepared but which
ess necessary now than it was formerly to lay before our gradually separates from it when it cools, or is allowed to
■eaders a minute account of the comparative advantages remain in a state of repose. It is a singular fact that
if the two systems ; but as there may still be cases where, though the specific gravity of oil-gas, after it has’ been
rorn the scarcity of coal and the abundance of oil, it conveyed for some distance through pipes, is materially
mght be doubtful which of them should be adopted, we diminished by the loss of this oleaginous vapour, scarcely
ha 1 briefly consider some of the leading points connected any trace of the latter is to be found in the vessels for col-
vith the two modes of illumination. These may be dis- lecting the condensed matter, between the manufactory
:ussed under the heads of, 1st, the illuminating power of and the houses of the consumers of the gas. The dete-
he gases; 2d, their purity; 3d, their heating power; 4ith, rioration, however, is undoubted, and in some cases it
heir safety ; and, 5^, their econoiny. amounts to thirty per cent. We have even found that
lve 1st, She Illuminating Power.—Ilns property may be the best oil-gas, if kept for several weeks over water, be-
wer on.S/defled eit !.e.r, in regard t0 the relative light yielded comes so much debased in quality as to require 600 cubic
and 'y th.e,flames of the gases> when equal surfaces are taken, inches per hour to yield the light of one candle. Coal-
r with respect to the absolute quantity of light fur- gas suffers also by keeping, but in an inferior degree; the
ished by equal volumes of the gases. In the former olefiant gas, which it contains less abundantly, being more
ase, though the light of oil-gas is certainly more bril- largely absorbed, in the case of oil-gas, by the water over
ant than that of coal, the difference is so slight that which it stands.
Uw/nf11!11 f0 detKCt. ^ uy ithe eje’ °r fVen by the The niean result deduced by the writer of his article, Relative
umnt^f^thf^afl^n h111,!11 th® att.ei; caso> when the con- from a very considerable number of experiments per-muminat-
umpt of the gas, as well as the light which it yields, is formed with great care, and by means of suitable appara-ing P°wer
aken into account, it cannot be denied that the advan- tus for the purpose, is that 100 cubic inches of oil-gas are of oil and
age is considerably in favour of oil-gas. In consequence, equal in illuminating power to 160 of coal-gas, both beingcoal gas’
oweyer.ofthe greatdiversity of condition in which the of good quality. The coal-gas, it may be proper to men¬
tion, was produced from cannel coal, and purified without
coming in contact with water, by dry lime, or at least
quicklime slightly moistened, and mixed with a small
portion of the peroxide of manganese. The oil-gas was
vfp nml Mr I V \i ’  "‘"S ^ t'1 ln Plost cases obtained by the patent apparatus of Taylor
yte and Mr Leslie, when they are as one to one and a and Martineau. ^
I twoaanria<;COfrdinG t0 ^ Dalt0n’ wben.tbey are as one 2d> T/le Purity.—Under the head of purity we may Purity of
inedbvMessr^pflV lhe greatast deV,,ttloa/f wore ob- consider the offensive smell belonging to the materials oil and coal
f by Messrs I hilhps and laraday, and by Mr Ricardo, from which the gases are obtained ; to the products con-gas-
,d IITLmakmg t le ^t10 aS^°ne t0 three and a half’’ nected with their decomposition ; and also to the gases
h at fr as one t0 fou1r- The writer of this article, themselves, as well as the tendency which the gases may
irh nf tf t le between the two gases when have to produce, during their combustion, substances ca-
nnse lil lT ^ 0t ^ bGSt- fluabty\fbund that a very pable of being deleterious to health, or injuring any kind
med ie sPe^lb^^avityof which was 1-054, con- of household furniture exposed to their influence. With
elded The hglft^nf^lArJii Cubl*J Fn ^ rfPec'to the first of these nuisances, it cannot be doubted
,jn 9nr i thwteen and a half tallow candles, that oil is more apt to prove offensive to the neighbour-
■ hour wChLiCa™»f8 ‘0 <r 'he ligh.of a candle for hood than coal. The latter, if kept for some months,
is W coal-gas, the specific gravity of which only loses the water it had imbibed in the bowels of the
inr and COn1San;ed at tbe rate of 3900 cubic inches Per earth, and is thus rendered more fit for yieldin' a better
ibic inches' -he isht1.°fKthirfteen candlas’ being 300 Sas’ as wel1 as one more abundant in quantity f whereas
•nrn tlf t0 glve tbe bgbt of a candle for an hour, the former becomes rancid and fetid by keening and
swashtoetWPefIy,entSt!leilluminatingpOVVeroftheoi1' emits’ by exposure, effluvia which are equallyPoffensive
operto adrthL ^r0^38^ it?T' be and unwholesome. The mere emptying of oif from one
er water rn h ^ 01,;gas> afte/ bein& h0?1 five days vessel to another, and especially the melting of some
.ur for the HgiZfo31 fl f, 82 fUblC \nchesPer 'lt> which is necessary before it can be introduced
a similar ™ f j rnd ef and tbat the coal-gas ^P1 lnto the retorts, is attended with a degree of nuisance
'medTitThe^rate'of0^t*nle^, con" which no caution can entirely prevent.' To counterba-
vol. x. f 409 CUblC lncheS per hour’ and gave lance these ^advantages, it must be admitted that the
2 z
vo gases are prepared, both with respect to their produc-
on and purification, the most discordant statements have
een given on this point. According to Mr Brande, oil-
as and coal-gas give equal degrees of light, when their
)lumes are as one to two and a half; according to Dr
362
GAS-LIGHT.
Gas-Light, products which result from the decomposition of coal are
not only of a more offensive nature, but more abundant
in quantity than those which are obtained from oil; and
though the extent of the nuisance which they occasion is
greatly diminished in well-regulated coal-gas works, by
confining them in close vessels, it is impossible altogether
to prevent the annoyance to the neighbourhood, which
their removal from time to time produces.
With respect to the smell of the two gases, they are so
nearly the same when the gases are properly purified,
that it would be difficult to pronounce which of them is
least unpleasant. At any rate, when they are properly
burnt, and consumed without any portion of them being
permitted to escape, no disagreeable odour is percep¬
tible ; and, in this respect, either of them has a decided
advantage over tallow or oil used for the purpose of yield¬
ing light, and burnt, according to the ordinary mode, with
gas, of which, by the acknowledged constitution of that gas; Gas.
76 must have consisted of hydrogen in a condensed state.
The remaining 62 parts were composed, by the analysis of
that able chemist, of
Nitrogen  3.1
Carb. hydrogen .46-5
Carb. oxide  9’3
Hydrogen  3T
Smell of
the gases,
62
But 46*5 parts of carburetted hydrogen contained, in a
condensed state, 93 parts of hydrogen ; to which adding
the simple hydrogen 3*1, and the portion of the same gas
contained in the olefiant gas 76, we obtain 172T for the
whole quantity of hydrogen in the oil-gas.
Again, Dr Henry states that 100 measures of coal-gas
having the specific gravity ’650 yielded thirteen of olefiant
gas, which therefore contained in the condensed state 26
a wick.
Impurities The most serious objection, however, against the use of of hydrogen. The remaining 87 parts consisted, according
of coal-gas, coal-gas, was grounded on the various impurities with to his analysis, of
in its crude which, in its crude state, it is more or less contaminated. Nitrogen  1'3
state. These impurities consist, as already stated in a preceding Carb. hydrogen 82-2
part of this article, of tar, carbonic acid, sulphuretted hy- Carb. oxide  3’5
drogen, and carbonate of ammonia, some of which are so  
offensive that, without being freed from them, coal-gas could 87
never be brought into competition with oil-gas. When But as 82-2 parts of carburetted hydrogen must have con-
coal-gas was first introduced, neither the tar nor the sulphu- tained, in the condensed state, 164-4 parts of hydrogen;
retted hydrogen was so completely separated from it as to if to this be added the hydrogen of the olefiant gas
render it fit for being used in private dwelling-houses ; and we obtain 190-4 for the whole quantity of hydrogen in
accordingly strong prejudices continued to operate against the coal-gas. Combining the results thus obtained with
it, long after the cause which gave them birth had ceased the numbers expressing the ratio of the volumes of the
to exist. As it is now generally admitted, however, that gases, giving equal degrees of illumination, it appears that
coal-gas is so effectually purified, in many establishments the quantity of water generated by oil-gas will be to that
for its production, as not to exhibit the slightest trace of generated in the same time by coal-gas, as 100 X 172-1 to
sulphur when exposed to the most delicate tests for de- 160 X 190-4, being as 17,210 to 30,464, or as five to nine
tecting the presence of that substance, its value for the
purpose of illumination, as contrasted with that of oil-gas,
must rest chiefly on considerations of economy. It has
been alleged, indeed, by Mr Brande, that though no indi-
nearly. Hence coal-gas must produce nearly twice as
much watery vapour in an apartment, during its combus¬
tion, as oil-gas yielding the same degree of illumination.
 , _ o . To determine how far the moisture thus generated may Calculi-
cations of the existence of sulphur in coal-gas could be dis- be regarded as a nuisance, we shall make an exact calcu-tionoftl
covered in it before it was burnt, he could never procure lation in the case of an apartment, which we shall suppose
any which did not afford traces “ very minute” of sulphu- to be twenty feet long, sixteen feet broad, and eleven feet^
rous acid during its combustion. But if he had submitted high, and containing therefore 6,082,560 cubic inches. To
oil-gas to the same ordeal he would have obtained a like light a room of these dimensions in the way commonly
result; a portion of sulphur being expelled from the coke done with coal-gas would require three Argand burners,
which is used in the retorts for decomposing the oil, and each yielding the light of ten candles, and consuming about
which sulphur accordingly unites itself with the gas at the 10,000 cubic inches of gas per hour. Now, as 100 cubic
moment of its formation, and may be detected by exposing inches of coal-gas of ordinary quality contain, as we have
the condensed aqueous vapour which is formed during its already seen, 190-4 of hydrogen in a condensed state, the
combustion, to the action of the nitrate or acetate of bary- quantity of the latter gas consumed by the burners would
be 19,040 cubic inches, which would yield 4284 grains ot
tes. In this respect, therefore, the two gases must be ad¬
mitted to be on the same footing.
Aqueous Under the head of purity it may not be improper to no¬
vapour ge- tice the quantity of aqueous vapour which is produced
during the combustion of the gases, by their union with
aqueous vapour per hour. This quantity of water, diffused
equally over the whole apartment, would add about
part of a grain to the moisture previously existing in each
cubic inch. This may appear to be a very inconsiderable
aerated
comb us-113 t^ie oxygen of the atmosphere, as the water thus formed quantity ; but as it is about a fifth part of the whole of the
tion of the may be conceived to possess in some measure the charac- moisture capable of existing in the air of the atmosphere
gases. ter of a nuisance. To obtain a correct estimate of the at the ordinary temperature of our rooms in winter, it
quantity of this water, generated in any case, it will be ne- would be sufficient to occasion perfect dampness in an
cessary to take into account the proportional relation be- apartment, at that season, in the course of four hours, in
tween the volumes of the gases yielding equal degrees consequence, however, of the external cold, this state ot
of illumination, and the quantities of hydrogen contained things never takes place, the greater part of the floating
in these volumes. With respect to the former of these vapour being reduced to the liquid form by condensation
points, we have already stated that 100 volumes of oil-gas against the windows, long before the air of the apartment
are equal to 160 of coal-gas ; but the actual composition is generally affected by it.
of the gases is still involved in some obscurity. Accord- 3d, The Heating Power.—As the heating power of g38 t
ing to the experiments of Dr Henry,1 100 measures of oil- may be regarded as being, in many cases, an advantage
gas having the specific gravity -906 contained 38 of olefiant ther than a nuisance, we shall merely state the results pre-
I
1 Transactions of the Royal Society for 1821.
i
*
G A S-L I G H T.
363
l.duced by the combustion of certain volumes of oil and with common air, of producing the most violent explosions, Gas-Li-ht
•coal gas, m reference to the light which each of them the former was almost exempt from that source of accident
yielded, when they were exposed to that process. The Nor was this absurd and erroneous opinion confined to the
apparatus we used for the purpose was extremely simple, ignorant and ill-informed upon the subject; for we find
and of the following construction : abefffhcd fig 9, Plate that Sir W. Congreve, in the report which h^ drew up for
CCLVI, represents a double vessel, composed of two con- the instruction of the British Government, on the state of
centric cylinders oftin-plate, which was furnished with a hd; gas-light establishments in the metropolis, actually af-
the external cylinder, was six inches in diameter, and firms in that document, that “ the most important feature
the internal one /% three inches, the former being twe ve in the use of oil-gas is its safety; as, from the very narrow
nches deep and the latter six From the bottom of the in- limits of the explosive mixture that can be formed of this
ternal cylinder proceeded two tin tubes, tkl, the use of which gas and atmospheric air, it is scarcely possible that an acci-
vas to carry off the air contaminated by combustion. When dent can occur.” Now, with rerard to the limits of exnlo-
:he apparatus was used, a quantity of water at a fixed tem- sion thus adverted to, we have found, by the most precise
lerature was poured into the space between the cylinders, experiments, varied in every conceivable way, that in o-e-
ill it stood at a mark nn in the inside ; a burner m, con- neral one volume of oil-gas will not explode with less than
aiming a known quantity of gas, and yielding a light equal three and a half volumls of common^ nor with more
;o that of a certain number of candles, was then introduced, than sixteen volumes; the explosion being most violent
md allowed to remain exactly at the same distance from^7, when the common air is ten times the volume of the ms •
ill the water reached a given temperature, the time of its in which case we found that a third part of a cubic inch of
loing so being carefully noted with a seconds watch. To oil-gas was capable of displacing with violence a cvlindri
piard against the errors arising from the dissipation of the cal mass of iron upwards of forty pounds in weight One
,eat during the progress of the experiments, equal por- specimen of oil-gas of the specific gravity 1-054, when it
10ns of pounded ice were sometimes mixed with the water, was newly prepared, and which, being kept two davs be-
ind a thermometer was applied from time to time to the came of the specific gravity -955, could not be made to ex
ipper extremities of the tubes t/e/, to ascertain whether plode with less than seven and a half volumes of common
ny of the heated an-escaped before it imparted the whole air; but it continued to explode till it was mixed with
fits calorific influence to the water. _ twenty-one volumes, when that effect could no longer be
The following result was obtained with oil-gas having produced. In the case of coal-gas the explosive range was
he specific gravity -970, the rate of consumpt being 3054 more definite, and less subject to variation in the
ubic inches per hour, with the light of 10-55 candles.  n 1 * •-
Temperature of water at commencement 49°-0
After ten minutes   .5
... twenty ditto 115-0
... thirty ditto 139-5
... forty ditto 161-0
ditto   -o
sixty ditto   .5
propor¬
tions of its admixture with common air, than oil-gas; the
limits being between five and sixteen of common air to one
of the gas, almost invariably. The violence of the explo¬
sion was also greatly inferior to that of an equal volume of
oil-gas, as might readily be inferred from its constitution.
And not only are the explosions of oil-gas more formidable
than, those of coal-gas, but, in consequence of the specific
gravity of the former approaching nearer to that of com¬
mon air, they are, contrary to the assertion of Sir W. Con-
Atrain railP +i 'c * . - -greve, more likely to occur; so that in both these respects
Abain, with coal-gas the specific gravity of which was oil-gas must be pronounced to be more dangerous than
50, and which consumed at the rate of 3583 cubic inches coal-gas.
or hour when it yielded the light of ten candles, the As it must be evident from what we have stated tint n r
illowmg results were obtainedconsiderable degree of danger may be connect with the JZS
use ol gas, whether obtained from oil or from coal, it may danger at-
not be improper now to examine a little more in detail tendillS
Hence 3054 cubic inches of oil-gas raised the tempera-
ire of 270 cubic inches of water 146°i in an hnnr.
Temperature of water at commencement 48°-0
After ten minutes 81 -0
... twenty ditto  113-8
... thirty ditto 140 -5
- ftrty ^tto  
... titty ditto 181-5
... sixty do  jpg .q
ence 3583 cubic inches of this coal-gas raised the tem-
irature of 270 cubic inches of water 148° in an hour.
As the heating power, without regard to the light, must
' directly as the temperature communicated, and inverse-
as the quantity of gas expended in the same time, the
mating power of oil-gas is to that of coal-gas, according to
c above experiment, as ^ to or as 100 t0 86.
hen the relative illuminating powers of the gases are
5n .C0.ns‘dere(i’ the heating powers seem to be nearly
tfip r °nct W \°le greater> in the case of coal-gas,
the ratio of about 105 to 100.
4th, The Safety of using the GW—The explosive force
e gases, when they are mixed with various propor-
n of common air, and the limits within which the ex-
nshLy *s ^fined in the case of each gas, may be
nsiuered under this head. ^
1 th^nm thu 0thP^ delu?ive statements brought forward
’ lintv tlc 1 confidence in favour of oil-gas, it was even
darned, that while coal-gas is capable, when mixed
_ . a       
the real extent of this evil, in order that, by a due know-the use of
ledge of the sources from which it is most likely to arise, SaS‘
we may be prepared to guard against its consequences ;
or, if that be wholly impossible, to enable us at least to
judge how far the economy, and other advantages of this
mode of obtaining artificial light may be regarded as an
adequate compensation, for the risk incurred in adopting
it. On this.subject, where the safety of the public is so
extensively involved, we wish to use the language of cau¬
tion, but not that of timidity; and while we admit that in
a few instances accidents of the most fatal nature have
occurred from the use of gas, we hesitate not to affirm
that these accidents might generally be traced either to
gross ignoiance, or culpable negligence, on the part of
those who were the victims of them. Accordingly, we
find that since the nature of gas has become better known,
the accidents from its use are few and trifling. The dan-The sub-
ger, however, was regarded by the British legislature toject taken
be of too serious a nature to be left entirely to the discre-uP V £°-
tion of the manufacturers of gas; and an inquiry into theverament.
subject was accordingly instituted in 1814, by order of the
Secretary of State for the Home Department. This led
to a report from the Royal Society, which was followed
by a more minute examination of the subject by Sir Wil¬
liam Congreve, who was appointed by Government to
piepaie a report on the state of the gas-works, in and
!
364
Gas-Light.
GAS-LIGHT.
Danger of
explosion,
at the gas¬
ometer-
house.
Danger of
explosion
by light¬
ning.
about the metropolis. In this report, which was laid be¬
fore the public in 1824, Sir William Congreve arranges
the dangers from the explosion of gas, as well as those
arising from peculiar defects in the construction of the
works, under three heads :—
Is*. That which may occur at the gasometer.
2dly, That which may arise after the gas is expelled
from the gasometer, in its passage through the main-pipes
under the streets. _ .
Sdly, That which accompanies the use of it in the
building where it is consumed.
In considering the chance of explosions occurring at the
gasometer-house, he begins with remarking, that,, in the
first filling of a new gasometer with gas, or in refitting one
which, from any cause, may have been emptied, there is
no contrivance for “exhausting the atmospheric air;” and
accordingly accidents, he states, have actually occurred in
the first filling. In proof of this assertion he .mentions
that “ an explosion happened at Manchester, in conse¬
quence of the people carrying lights about the gasometer
to ascertain if it was air-tight in the act of filling, and
very serious mischief ensued. The gasometer was blown
to pieces, the house destroyed; one man is said to have
been killed, and others severely injured.” Now, this
source of danger is easily avoided, not by any “ contriv¬
ance for exhausting the air,” but simply by expelling it
before the gas is introduced; precisely in the same man¬
ner as the gas itself is expelled by the pressure of the
gasometer.
The next cause of explosion to which he adverts, is
that arising from a gasometer not perfectly air-tight be¬
ing prevented from sinking by some defect in its chain of
suspension. This, however, is a very imaginary case, and
so unlikely to happen, that it is quite unnecessary to exa¬
mine the supposed consequences by which it would be
followed, these being of so contingent a nature as to be
barely within the range of possibility.
If the causes of explosion which we have noticed admit
of being obviated by a proper construction of the gas ap¬
paratus, and a moderate degree of caution on the part of
the workmen, there are others which Sir William Congreve
has mentioned that are scarcely deserving of any conside¬
ration, such as the danger of explosion by lightning, and
the chance of the counterpoise of the gasometer falling
by the breaking of its suspension-chain. On the first of
these sources of danger he remarks, “ That it appeared
to him such a combustion by lightning or otherwise would
produce very destructive effects to the neighbouring build¬
ings and gasometers, merely by the sudden rarefaction and
expansion of the air caused by it; and would, in fact, pro¬
duce a violent detonation and concussion, without sup¬
posing any combination of oxygen and hydrogen, but
merely by the simple conflagration of the hydrogen.”
Are we to infer from these observations, that Sir William
Congreve thought it possible that hydrogen can undergo
any species of conflagration, however “ simple,” without
the presence of oxygen ? or did he merely mean to af¬
firm, that if a gasometer were destroyed by lightning, and
its contents violently discharged into the air, the dreadful
effects would be produced which he describes ? As we
cannot suppose he entertained the former opinion, we need
merely say with respect to the second, that it is not only in
the highest degree improbable, but calculated to excite
alarm when no reasonable cause for it exists. For, grant¬
ing that a gasometer were struck by lightning, the elec¬
tric fluid would either glide silently along its metallic
sides to the earth, or, if it penetrated the gas, produce no
change on its condition beyond a slight and partial en¬
largement of its bulk.
With respect to the danger arising from the breaking
of the suspension-chain of the gasometer, Sir W. Congreve
■Gis.],
stated, that the gasometers are made so heavy as to re-
quire sometimes a counterpoise of six or seven tons; and
he adds, that “ if one of these weights should be detach-
ed while the gasometer is at work, the pressure of that
gasometer on the gas would, on a sudden, be so greatly
increased, that the lamps connected with it would imme-
diately flare up to a great height, and in many situations
(in shops particularly) set fire to the premises before the
lamps could be turned off.” This seems to be a most
alarming source of danger; and the importance of it
weighed so much on the mind of Sir William, that he
mentions it in more than one part of his Report. It may
be proper, therefore, to examine how far it is calculated
to produce the direful consequences which he dreaded
from its occurrence. The sudden disengagement of a
weight of six or seven tons, with the increase of a corre¬
sponding pressure on the gasometer, appears at first sight
to be an event likely to be attended with some of the
evils, which, it is so confidently stated, would result from
it; but the case is quite a hypothetical one ; and had Sir
W. Congreve reflected for a moment that the pressure of
even six or seven tons diffused over a surface of 1200
square feet, would be no more than 550 grains on a square
inch, or equal to the pressure of about two inches of wa¬
ter, he never would have introduced into his Report such
a groundless cause for alarm. The truth is, that the fall¬
ing of the counterpoise would increase the pressure upon
the gas from three fourths of an inch to perhaps two and
a half inches of water; and, by doing so, might excite a
little momentary surprise on the part of the consumers of
the gas, at the unusual size of their lights; but such an
occurrence could not by any means produce the fatal con¬
sequences ascribed to it.
The danger to which the community is exposed
the risk of accidents, by the transmissions of the w ,
through the main-pipes, and its escape from these by leak-^*
age, into cellars and other subterraneous places, where it^(
may accumulate in considerable quantity, in admixture^
with common air, is deserving of more serious examina¬
tion. It is to this cause, indeed, that we must ascribe the
principal accidents that have happened from the use of
gas; and the utmost care ought to be taken to guard
against their occurrence. The best protection from this
source of danger is to be found by trying, with a forcing
pump, all the pipes before they are laid, and executing
the different joints, where they are connected, with a suit¬
able quantity of lead, and in the most careful manner.
When clay can be easily procured, additional security
is obtained by beating it well into the tracks after the
pipes are laid, so as to surround them with a coating of it
to the extent of several inches. This precaution is not
only a safeguard against the escape of the gas, but highly
conducive to the durability of the pipes.
The last kind of danger to be considered is that which Dai?
attends the use of gas, through ignorance or negligence, mg
the building where it is consumed. It has already beeI' e
stated, that coal-gas will not explode unless it be mixed^
with more than three, but less than fifteen times its own^a
bulk. If we take the last proportion, being the one fromsui®
which danger is most to be apprehended in dwelling-
houses, it appears that the air of an apartment could not
be brought to a state which would place it within the
range of explosion, unless it contained a quantity of gas>
in admixture with it, equal to one fifteenth part of itselt.
The most probable way of such a state of things occurring,
would be the neglect of turning the stop-cocks of the
burners after the extinction of the light. If this were
done in an apartment fifteen feet square and ten feethig ,
and containing therefore 2250 cubic feet, it would r^ir®
at least 150 cubic feet of gas to be thrown into it betor
the adulterated air could explode. Now 150 cubic e
$
il '
s fa
lii
*
^ighlpf
::is.
GAS-LIGHT.
gas would afford a light equal to that of sixty candles
jurningfor ten hours together,—a quantity of light which,
>eing ten times more than could ever be required for an
ipartment of the size specified, it may reasonably be con-
luded, that unless a room were of very small dimensions,
nd furnished with more gas burners than necessary, little
anger could arise even from the culpable neglect of the
top-cocks. At the same time it ought to be noticed, that if
he air of a room were undisturbed, it is possible that a
imited portion of it, sufficient to occasion a dangerous
xplosion, might be brought to a detonating condition in
he immediate vicinity of the burner, though the rest of
he air in the apartment were not in that state. On the
diole, therefore, while we are decidedly of opinion that
he risk of using gas is a great deal less than is generally
Tiagined, perhaps the best security to the public will be
mnd to result from an exaggerated representation of its
angers. lime, and the experience of its advantages, will
radually remove unfounded prejudices against its us*e,
nd ultimately render it the most general, as well as the
lost useful and economical, mode of obtaining artificial
light.
ive 5th, The Economy of Oil and Coal Gas Having exa-
se doined at some length the more important of the physical
roperties of the two gases, so far as these are connected
nth their utility for the purpose of illumination, we shall,
istly, consider the relative advantages which they possess
i a commercial point of view. From a due consideration
f these properties, it can scarcely be doubted that, if the
vo gases could be procured equally cheap, so as to afford
n equal extent and an equal degree of illumination at the
ime expense, most people would be disposed to give a
reference to oil-gas. The reasons however for doing so
re by no means of a kind to supersede the necessity of
istituting a comparison between the costs of their pro-
uction; and in this respect, indeed, we shall find reason
) wonder by what sophistry and misrepresentation oil-gas
ould have maintained so long a doubtful competition with
oal-gas.
Though the results of experiments on a small scale are
equently inapplicable to extensive establishments, and,
i the hands of rash and speculative men, often lay the
dier,undation 0^' ruinous consequences, yet, when examined
teiy Uh due caution, they are far from being of no value,
ted. ut, on the contrary, frequently furnish data from which
I iuch useful information is derived. Thus, we can as-
. ertain from experiments on such a scale, what quantity
gas is yielded from a particular species of coal, and
hat quantity is obtained from a certain kind of oil.
rom experiments of that description, it has been found
iat a pound ofcannel coal yields, at an average, from five
1 six cubic feet of gas, and a gallon of whale-oil from
glity to a hundred cubic feet of it; and hence we may
;; ifely infer, that sixteen pounds of that species of coal
ould produce as much gas as a gallon of whale-oil.
ow, sixteen pounds of coal, at 15s. per ton, would cost
td.; and therefore, if we reckon the oil at 2s. per gallon,
"ould appear that coal-gas costs little more than one
^entieth part of an equal volume of oil-gas. It must not
3 inferred, however, from this result, that it would be
oportionally more advantageous to employ coal in pre-
rence to oil, for the manufacture of gas; it being possi-
e the smaller expense of the process of decomposi-
^n, and the difference of the illuminating powers of the
365
gases, may compensate, to a certain extent, for so great an Gas-Light,
inequality in the cost of the materials of production. It
will be necessary, therefore, to consider these points in
detail, before we can form a true estimate of the relative
economy of the two modes of illumination.
Before entering upon this inquiry, it may be proper to
mention that a gallon of whale-oil of the specific gravity
•925 weighs almost exactly 53,950 grains. It will be ne¬
cessary to keep this fact in view, to check the extrava¬
gant statements which have been given respecting the
number of cubic feet of gas yielded by a gallon of oil,
which in some cases have been rated so high that the
weight of the gas would have exceeded the weight of the
materials from which it was pretended to be derived. On
this point we have it in our power to furnish the result of
two years experience, from an exact register of the quan¬
tity of gas yielded by the patent apparatus of Taylor and
Martineau, at Kinfauns Castle, the residence of Lord
Gray, from which it appears to be exactly 70| cubic feet.
Hence the prime cost of a thousand cubic feet, if the oil
were L.25 per ton, would be 28s., independently of the
expense of manipulation, and the interest of capital. If
we allow it to be only 26s., as stated by the patentees
themselves, we shall find that, even on this admission, oil¬
gas cannot for a moment bear a comparison in point of
economy with coal-gas. For if we compare this cost of
oil-gas, which, we must remember, is exclusive of the ex¬
pense of production, with the actual cost of a thousand
cubic feet of coal-gas, which at an average may be reckon¬
ed 5s. 3d., including every expense of outlay, we shall
find the one to bear to the other the ratio of about five to
one. But as coal-gas is inferior in illuminating power to
oil-gas, in the proportion of 100 to 160, by allowing for
this difference of quality, it would appear that the prime
cost of coal-gas is less than one third of the cost of the
mere oil requisite to yield an equivalent quantity of oil¬
gas.1
One of the delusive representations respecting oil-gas, The light
by which the public were for a season misled, was, that yielded by
more light was obtained from oil reduced to the ga-°^'£as ^ess
seous state, than that substance is capable of yielding
when it is burnt in the ordinary way. The incorrectness, from oil
however, of this assertion is clearly demonstrated by the consumed
following exposition : a gallon of whale-oil consumed within the ordi-
a wick, in a good Argand lamp, we found, by the methodnaiT way
of shadows, to yield the light of ten tallow candles forse-
venty hours, or that ot seven hundred candles for one hour.
But, according to the statement of Taylor and Martineau,
one and a half cubic feet of oil-gas give the light of ten
candles for the same time; and therefore a gallon of oil,
yielding seventy and three fourths cubic feet, ought to
afford the light of 472 candles for an hour. Hence the
loss of light by decomposing the oil is in the ratio of 700 to
472, or about thirty-two and a half percent. This result
coincides very nearly with that which we obtain by com¬
paring the weight of the gas with the original weight of
the oil, as already stated to be obtained at Lord Gray’s gas-
work. For the weight of seventy and three fourths cubic
feet of oil-gas having the specific gravity -92 (the average
specific gravity we found it to have), ought to be 34,573
grains; and as a gallon of oil weighs 53,950 grains, the
loss by decomposition is 19,377 grains, or nearly thirty-
six per cent. J
It appears from these statements, that while coal is con-
At the Perth gas-work it appears, by the result of a year’s experience, that 6,179,670 cubic feet of coal-eas are sold for L ‘’HOO
e off wS*; Vate of near1^ «s- yd’ for a thousand cubic feet, or 14s. for an equivalent quantity of oif-4 But the cost of
I d interest of capUal^a loss^of^ ^ •26S■, *eVident’ ^ With°U1t ^ing into account the expensed the manipulations
^petition with W°U ^ °n 'eVery 2CS’ exPended for 0lI> in order to enable oil-gas to be brought into
366
G A S-L I G H T.
Advan¬
tages of
coal-gas
over oil-
Gas-Light. verted by its decomposition at a gas-work into a substance
' greatly more valuable than the material in its original con¬
dition, oil is reduced by the same process into one of di¬
minished value; insomuch that the manipulations and the
capital expended upon an oil-gas establishment are ac¬
tually applied to reduce to the extent of thirty per cent,
the intrinsic value of the raw material, which, it was pre¬
tended, they improve in an equal degree. Add to this,
that the loss of gas in the main pipes is found to be
fully twenty per cent., and it follows that the light from
oil-gas is obtained at twice the expense at which it may
be procured immediately from the oil itself.
Hints respecting the Improvement of Coal- Gas.
Of all the combustible bodies having an elementary
character, carbon and hydrogen are not only the most
widely and copiously diffused throughout the three king¬
doms of nature, but best adapted by far for the evolution
of light during their combustion. It is only, however,
when they are united together in due proportion that
they answer the purpose most effectually; and, indeed,
in a separate state, their illuminating powers are so feeble,
that even when their combustion is accelerated and ren¬
dered more perfect by the presence of oxygen, the light
they yield is yet unfit for many of the useful ends to which
light is subservient. The substances in which carbon and
hydrogen are united in the best proportion, for the pro¬
duction of light, are pit-coal in the mineral kingdom, and
oils and fatty matter in the animal and vegetable.
The great abundance of coal, and the comparative
cheapness at which it can be obtained, give it a decided
advantage in point of economy over oleaginous matter,
whether of animal or vegetable origin ; while the pro¬
cesses of decomposing it, with the view of converting it
into a volatile and elastic product, have been so much
improved as to render the gas which it yields equally fit
for the purpose of illumination with the more costly gases
obtained from the oils.
The gas produced by the decomposition of coal and
oleaginous matter at a high temperature is a compound
of carbon and hydrogen, and consists chiefly of two gases,
in which these elementary substances exist in definite
proportions. One of these gases is termed carburetted
hydrogen, and the other olefiant gas or bicarburetted hy¬
drogen. The former contains one atom of carbon united
with two atoms of hydrogen, and the latter an atom of
each of these elements.
Of these two compounds of hydrogen and carbon, that
yielded by which contains the largest proportion of the latter ele-
nient f’ound to yield, during its combustion, the most
gen chiefly kr^ant an^ ^iat to *or a l°nger period of time,
derived ^ And, indeed, so great is the difference in these respects,
from the that the hydrogen may not improperly be regarded as the
mere solvent or vehicle of the carbon, acting the part of
wick, and thus presenting that substance in a state suffi¬
ciently comminuted for its more perfect combustion.
Accordingly, the more abundantly the hydrogen is im¬
pregnated with carbon, the greater may we expect to be
its illuminating power, and the fitter in every respect for
yielding artificial light. These views are fully supported
by experiment; for not only is the brilliancy of the light
modified by the quantity of carbon held in solution by the
hydrogen, but the time which a given portion of the gas
takes to consume away by combustion is affected by it in
a still greater degree.
To determine in what ratio the illuminating power of
Light
carbon.
the gases obtained both from oil and coal was reducedC
by diluting them in various proportions with hydrogen W
we instituted a series of experiments, the results of whichbeie-i
are of considerable importance, inasmuch as they decid-tioiltj
edly indicate, not only that the mixture is deteriorated
but that the same quantity of carbonaceous matter yields
less light the more largely it is diluted with hydrogen. ^
In the first experiment we took a portion of coal-gas
of the specific gravity *67, which we found consumed at
the rate of 4400 cubic inches per hour, and yielded the
light of eleven candles, being 400 cubic inches per hour
for the light of one candle. This gas being diluted with
a fourth part of its bulk of pure hydrogen, acquired the
specific gravity *55, and wasted away at the rate of 6545
cubic inches per hour, yielding the light of ten candles.
As a fifth part of the compound gas was hydrogen, the
remaining four fifths, amounting to 5236 cubic inches,
was the quantity of the coal-gas which, in its diluted
state, gave the light of ten candles for an hour; so that
524 cubic inches of the original coal-gas were requisite to
give the light of one candle for the same time. But, in
its unmixed state, 400 cubic inches were sufficient to give
the light of one candle for an hour; and consequently,
the deterioration occasioned by the dilution was in the
ratio of 524 to 400, or of 100 to 76, being 24 per cent.
It must be distinctly kept in view that the deterioration
has been reckoned, not with respect to the whole volume
of the mixture (in which case it would have been 39 per
cent.), but simply in reference to the coal-gas itself, and
therefore the experiment, so far as it goes, justifies us in
adopting the conclusion, that had the hydrogen existed
originally in union with the coal-gas, the latter would
have improved in quality 24 per cent, by its abstraction;
because the residuary portion would not only have lasted
longer, but yielded during its combustion a superior light.
In a second experiment, conducted in a similar manner,
in which the proportion of hydrogen was one third of the
quantity of the coal-gas, the deterioration was 27 percent.;
in a third experiment, the proportion of hydrogen being
a half of the volume of the coal-gas, the deterioration
amounted to 31 per cent.; and, in a fourth experiment,
the quantity of hydrogen being exactly equal to that of
the coal-gas, the deterioration extended to 36 per cent.
These results indicate a progressive deterioration intheGenm
quality of coal-gas by the admixture of hydrogen; andconclu.
the important conclusion to which they lead is, that thesl0D!'
abstraction or removal of the latter, though diminishing
the entire volume, would improve the nature of the resi¬
duary portion, not only in a higher ratio than the loss
which the whole sustained in its bulk, but render that
portion capable of yielding, for a longer period of time, a
greater light than it could have done in its original state.
Hence it may be inferred that the illuminating power of
coal-gas, whether considered with respect to the cost of
its production or the intensity of its light, admits of being
improved; first, by impregnating the hydrogenous ele¬
ment more largely with carbon ; secondly, by preventing
the disengagement of hydrogen in a free state during the
carbonization of the coal; and lastly, by detaching a por¬
tion of that gas from coal-gas when it already exists in
admixture with it.
The first of these modes of improvement seems to beMofe
practicable, at least to a certain extent, by thoroughly^
drying the coal1 before it is introduced into the retorts, and ” '
modifying the pressure under which the gas is generated.
The second, by intermixing with the coal some substance
which is at once capable of uniting with the hydrogen,
* The coal for'makmg gas ought to be kept for several months well protected from moisture before it is used for the purpose-
I his is a point ot the utmost importance in the manufacture of gas.
I
- A- '*
Ill'1,
G A S-L I G H T.
367
joht nd of being afterwards detached, in its combined state,
18 ;om the coal-gas with which it is mixed. Such a sub-
:ance is sulphur; and accordingly we find that the coal
i which sulphur abounds, though it yields an impure gas,
et, when duly purified, that gas is of a superior quality
) what is obtained from coal containing sulphur in more
Daring quantity. With respect to the third mode of im-
rovement, we are unfortunately, in the present state of
ur knowledge, acquainted with no method of detaching
| ydrogen from the gases with which it is mixed in oil or
Dal gas, that would not impair the illuminating power of
lese gases, to a greater extent perhaps than the benefit
iat would be derived from the removal of the hydrogen.
To determine the diminution of the illuminating power
roduced by separating the particles of the inflammable
i(s by<as during its combustion, and thus diminishing the tem-
larc-igrature of the flame, it occurred to the writer of the
’ts resent article, that nitrogen, neither having the property
q. f supporting combustion, nor of adding to the quantity of
irabustible matter submitted to that process, was well
tted to answer the intended purpose; and accordingly,
i mixing coal-gas of ordinary quality (which, when burnt
ione, yielded the light of twelve candles when it con¬
amed 5400 cubic inches per hour) with varying portions
’nitrogen, results were obtained which implied that the
minution of the intensity of the light proceeded in a
tio much more rapid, than was observed when the gas
as diluted with hydrogen. Thus, when six volumes of
e coal-gas were mixed with one volume of nitrogen, the
:penditure per hour was 6000 cubic inches, and the
jht equivalent to that of nine candles, being 667 cubic
dies per hour for the light of one candle, But one
tth of the whole being nitrogen, the remaining four
uhs, amounting to 556 cubic inches, was the quantity of
e coal-gas, which, in its diluted state, afforded the light
a candle for an hour. On the other hand, the quanti-
of the coal-gas requisite, in its unadulterated state, to
ve an equal degree of illumination, being 5^°, or 450
bic inches, it follows that the deterioration was in the
tio of 556 to 450, or 100 to 81 nearly.
By diluting the same coal-gas with other proportions of
trogen as subjoined, and afterwards applying to each of
e results the same kind of reduction, as that which we
ve already made, we have deduced the following table,
lich exhibits the gradual deterioration of the illuminat-
g power of the same quantity of coal-gas, produced by
£ mere separation of the atoms of the gas, during its
mbustion.
Volumes of Volumes of Illuminating
Coal-gas. Nitrogen. Power.
60 0 100
60 10 81
60 12 69
60 15 55
60 20 37
60 30 29
60 60 4
When carbonic acid was used instead of nitrogen, simi-
' results were obtained ; only the deterioration was con-
lerably greater. Thus, when five volumes of the coal-
s were mixed with one volume of carbonic acid, the il-
minating power was reduced from 100 to 30, whereas
the case of the nitrogen it was from 100 to 69. It is
erefore a fortunate circumstance that carbonic acid,
nch is so apt to be generated during the production of
al-gas, and has so debasing an influence upon its illu-
nating power, is readily absorbed by a variety of sub-
| inces; while nitrogen, the less injurious, as well as the
[iS abundant accompaniment, cannot be separated from
e other gases with which it may exist in mixture, by
■ y process yet known.
i bo-
Deterioration of Gas by keeping it after it is prepared. Gas-Light.
Both oil and coal gas suffer, by keeping, a gradual loss
in their power of illumination, which seems to increase in
a more rapid ratio than the time they are kept. The de¬
terioration, though greatest when the gases are allowed
to stand over water, takes place in a considerable degree
even when they are kept over oil, or in air-tight vessels.
Hence it may be presumed that the carbon held in solu¬
tion by the hydrogen, is separated from that element,
partly by its own gravity, and partly perhaps by uniting
with the oxygen of a portion of the water over which it is
suspended.
To whatever cause the deterioration is owing, the fact it- Deteriora-
self is undoubted. Thus, an oil-gas which, when newly pre- tion of oil
pared, had the specific gravity 1-054, gave the light of a can- and cod¬
dle for an hour when it consumed 200 cubic inches ; kept^as’ whren
two days, it gave the same light with a consumpt of 215^gr°ver
cubic inches per hour*; and kept four days, it required,
for the same light, 240 cubic inches per "hour. In the
case of a portion of coal-gas, which, when newly prepared,
required 404 cubic inches to yield the light of a candle
for an hour; the same gas kept two days required 430
cubic inches; and kept four days, 460 cubic inches to
yield the same light. These results indicate a progres¬
sive deterioration in the quality of the gases, increasing
with the length of time they are kept; and it is deserv¬
ing of remark, that in both gases the diminution of the
illuminating power decreases in a faster ratio than the
time increases. After being kept three weeks, the oil¬
gas was so much debased in quality that it required 606
cubic inches of it to yield the light of a candle for an
hour; and hence its illuminating power was reduced to
one third of what it was when the gas was newly made.
From these experiments it may obviously be inferred, that
both oil and coal gas should be used as soon as possible
after they are prepared.
Economy of Coal- Gas.
Among the advantages which have resulted from theGassupe-
introduction of coal-gas, we may reckon, ls£, its compa-riorto
rative cheapness; and, 2dly, its superiority to all the other other
modes of artificial illumination. modes of
In forming a comparative estimate of the cost of coai-tioi^b^th
gas, and that of the other means employed for procuring jn p’0-nt 0p
artificial light, we may contrast it with the expense of economy
wax, tallow, and oil, the ordinary substances used for the and conve-
purpose. It deserves to be remarked, however, that while mence.
the price of coal, in consequence of the regular and abun¬
dant supply of that article, is liable to little fluctuation,
the cost of wax, tallow, and oil, on account of the more
precarious nature of the sources from which they are ob¬
tained, varies exceedingly in different seasons. The very
extensive use, too, into which coal-gas has been brought,
has produced a considerable effect upon the price of oil
and tallow, as well as of wax; so that a comparative esti¬
mate of the expense of procuring the same extent of illu¬
mination from coal-gas and from these substances, must
appear less favourable to the former than would have been
the case, had the comparison been made when gas was
first introduced. But assuming that a pound of tallow
candles, which last, when burnt in succession, forty
hours, costs ninepence; that a gallon of oil, yielding the
light of six hundred candles for an hour, costs two shil¬
lings ; that the expense of the light from wax is three
times as great as from tallow ; and that a thousand cubic
feet of coal-gas cost nine shillings; we may state the re¬
lative cost of the same degree of illumination from these
different substances, after making a suitable allowance for
w-aste, wicks, &c. to be as follows :
s
368
G A
GAS
Gascoigne
II
Gassendi.
From wax 100
From tallow 25
From oil 5
From coal-gas 3
But the light obtained from coal-gas is not only pro¬
cured at a smaller expense; it is also more convenient
for most purposes than the light yielded by other sub¬
stances. In the ordinary mode of lighting by tallow and
oil, the light derived from their combustion cannot be di¬
minished in intensity without considerable disadvantage
and trouble; whereas, in the case of gas, it may be redu¬
ced in an instant from the most perfect splendour to the
feeblest degree of illumination, by the simple adjustment
of the stop-cock. The advantages arising from this easy
method of regulating the light of gas, when it is used in
the chambers of the sick, and indeed in all apartments,
where a variable, but uninterrupted supply of light must
be kept up, can only be duly estimated by those who have
experienced them. To every branch of manufacturing
industry vphich requires a steady and powerful light, the
benefits which have resulted from the introduction of
coal-gas are not less important. In many operations th r
light may be conveyed by means of flexible pipes, con- V
nected together with ball and socket-joints, so as to be
almost in contact with the fabric it is intended to illumj
nate, without the slightest risk of injury ; and it may be
kept in the same state for many hours in succession or
altered, as circumstances may render necessary.
For lighting churches, theatres, and other public build-
ings, wdiere a strong and uniform light is required eas
answers the purpose more effectually than any other mode
of illumination ; partly, from the facility of its application
and partly, from the diversified and tasteful manner in
which the jets of flame may be exhibited in various kinds
of burners.
As a street light, its superiority is universally admitted •
and from that application of gas it cannot be doubted that
the metropolis, and other large towns, have derived great
additional security against the perpetration of nocturnal
crimes, as well as the means of carrying on the ordinary
business of life during the evening, with nearly the same
convenience, as during the full light of day. (v. v. v.)
GASCOIGNE, George, an English poet of some name
in the early part of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, was born
at Walthamstow in Essex, of an ancient family, and edu¬
cated at both universities, but principally at Cambridge.
From thence he removed to Gray’s Inn, and commenced
student of the law; but having a genius too volatile for that
study, he travelled in foreign parts, and for some time served
in the army in the Low Countries. He afterwards went to
France, where, it is said, he became enamoured of a Scot¬
tish lady, and married her. At length being, as Wood says,
weary of vanities, he returned to England, and settled once
more in Gray’s Inn, where he wrote most of his dramatic
and other poems. The latter part of his life he spent in
his native village of Walthamstow, where he died in the
year 1578. He had the character of a polite gentleman,
an eloquent and witty companion, et vir inter poetas siii
seculi prcestantissimus. His plays, first printed separately,
were afterwards, with several other poems, reprinted in two
volumes 4to ; the first of which appeared in 1577, the se¬
cond in 1587.
GASPAR STRAIT, a passage in the Eastern Seas, be¬
tween the east coast of the island of Banca and the west
coast of the island of Billiton, which connects the Java and
the China seas. It is about fourteen leagues broad, and is
divided in the middle by an island called Middle or Pas¬
sage Island. There is also an island in the strait, called
Gaspar Island, which is about five miles in extent.
GASSENDI, Peter, one of the most celebrated philo¬
sophers France has produced, was born at Chantersier, near
Digne in Provence, in 1592. When a child, he took par¬
ticular delight in gazing at the moon and stars as often as
they appeared in clear unclouded weather ; and the plea¬
sure he thus experienced frequently drew him into bye
places, so that his parents had often to seek him, not with¬
out many anxious fears and apprehensions. They there-
lore put him to school at Digne, where, in a short time, he
made such extraordinary progress in learning, that some
persons who had seen specimens of his genius resolved to
have him removed to Aix, in order to study philosophy
under Fesaye, a learned Carmelite friar. This proposal
was so disagreeable to his father, who intended to breed
him up in his own way to country business, that he wrould
consent to it only upon condition that his son should re¬
turn home in two years at farthest. Accordingly, young
Gassendi, at the end of the appointed time, repaired to
Chantersier ; but he had not been long there when he was
invited to become professor of rhetoric at Digne, before he
was quite sixteen years of age ; and he had been engaged
in that office but three years, when his master Fesaye dy¬
ing, he was made professor in his stead at Aix. When he
had been a few years at the latter place, he composed his
Paradoxical Exercitations against Aristotle, which having
fallen into the hands of Nicholas Peiresc, that great patron
of learning joined with Joseph Walter, prior of Valette, in
promoting the author; and the latter having entered into
holy orders, was first made canon of the church of Digne
and doctor of divinity, and then advanced to the warden-
ship or rectory of that church. Gassendi’s fondness for as¬
tronomy grew with his years ; and as his reputation daily in¬
creased, he was in the year 1645 appointed royal professor
of mathematics at Paris. This professorship being chiefly
designed for astronomy, our author read lectures on that
science to a crowded audience. However, he did not hold
this place long; for a dangerous cough, accompanied by
inflammation of the lungs, obliged him in the year 1647
to return to Digne for the benefit of his native air.
Antiquarian, historian, biographer, natural philosopher,
naturalist, astronomer, geometrician, anatomist, preacher,
metaphysician, hellenist, dialectician, an erudite scholar, an
able critic, and withal an elegant writer, Gassendi ranged
through nearly the whole circle of the sciences and arts, at
a period when the sciences and arts had been but recently
revived ; and throughout his laborious and ingenious re¬
searches he constantly manifested an excellent spirit. He
w as the first disciple of Bacon in France, the friend of Ga¬
lileo and Kepler, the opponent of Descartes, and the pre¬
cursor of Newton and of Locke. For an eloquent and com¬
prehensive view of his labours and researches as a meta¬
physician, the reader is referred to the first Dissertation,
prefixed to the present work.
The principal works of Gassendi are, 1. Exercitationes
Paradoxicae adversus Aristotelem, Grenoble, 1624; -•
Phaenomenon rarum Romae observatum, Amsterdam and
Paris, 1630; 3. Epistolica Dissertatio in qua praecipua
printipia philosophic Robert! Fluddi deteguntur, Paris
1631 ; 4. Mercurius in Sole visus et Venus invisa, Pans,
1631 ; 5. Proportio Gnomonis ad Solstitialem umbram ob-
servata, Massiliae, 1636 ; 6. Observatio de Septo Cordis
pervio, Louvain, 1640 ; 7. Disquisitio Metaphysica adver¬
sus Cartesium, Paris, 1642 ; 8. De Vita N. Fabr., ParL
1641; 9. Epist. xx. de apparente magnitudine Solis, Pans,
1641 ; 10. De Motu impresso a motore translate, Pans,
1649 ; 11. Novem Stellae visae circa Jovem, Paris, 1643; IJ-
Disquisitio Metaphysica, seu dubitationes et instantia ad-
4
i
itric
'i
th.
GAT
versus Cartesii Metaphysicam, Amsterdam, 1644 ; 13. Vita
Sancti Dominici primi Diniensis Episcopi, 1644; 14. Ora-
tio inauguralis, Paris, 1645 ; 15. De Proportione qua gra-
via decidentia accelerantur, 1646 ; 16. Apologia ad versus
B. Morinum, Lyons, 1649; 17. De Vita et Moribus
G A U
Epicuri, libri vii. Lyons, 1647 ; 18. Jnstitutio Astronomica,
Paris, 1647; 19. De Vita, Moribus, et Placitis Epicuri,
fee., Lyons, 1649; 20. Syntagma Philosophic Epicuri, ibid.
1649; 21. Pieces relatives a la Discussion 61evee entre
'lassendi et Morin, Paris, 1650; 22. Lettre a Honore
3ouche, historien de Provence, 1652 ; 23. Job. Caramuel
id Gassendum, et Fr. Gassendi responsio de infallibilitate
Papa.', 1660; 24. Appendix Cometae, Lyons, 1658; 25.
Tychonis Brahci, Copernici, Purbachii, et Regiomontani
itae, Paris, 1654 ; 26. Romanum Calendarium compendi-
ise expositum, ibid. The works of Gassendi have been
ollected by Montmart and De Sorbiere, in the complete
dition published at Lyons in 1658, and reprinted at Flo-
ence in 1728, in 6 vols. folio, to which are subjoined Syn-
agma Philosophicum de Gassendi and Commentarii de
ebus coelestibus. Gassendi died at Paris in the year 1658,
ged sixty-three.
GASTRIC, in general, something belonging to or con-
iccted with the stomach.
Gastric Juice, a thin pellucid liquor, which distils from
ertain glands in the stomach, for the dilution, &c. of the
jod.
GASTROMANCY, or Gastromantia, a kind of di-
ination practised amongst the ancients by means of words
roceeding or seeming to proceed out of the belly. The
rord is Greek, yaer^ofiavrua, composed of yutrrr^, belli/, and
uvrm, divination. There is another kind of divination
died by the same name, which is performed by means
t‘ glasses or other round and transparent vessels, within
hich certain figures appear by magic art. It is so called
ecause the figures appear as it were in the belly of the
Dssels.
GASTRORAPHY, in Surgery, the operation of sew-
ig up wounds of the abdomen.
GASTROTOMY, of yac-r^, and rs/ii/w, I cut, the ope-
ition of cutting open the belly, otherwise called the Cccsa-
xin section.
GATAKER, Thomas, a learned critic and divine, was
Arn at London in 1574, and studied at St John’s College,
ambridge. He was afterwards chosen preacher at Lin-
)ln’s Inn, a situation which he quitted in 1611 for the rec-
'ry of Rotherhithe in Surrey. In 1620 he made a tour
'rough the Low Countries; and in 1624 he published at
ondon a book entitled Transubstantiation declared by
e confession of the Popish Writers to have no necessary
undation in God’s Word, of which he likewise wrote a
.'fence. In 1642 he was appointed one of the assembly
divines, and was engaged with them in writing annota-
>ns upon the Bible. He died in July 1654, in the eigh-
j -th year of his age. Besides the above works, he pub-
ihed, 1. A Dissertation upon the Style of the New Tes-
ment; 2. De Nomine Tetragrammato, in defence of the
! ode of pronouncing the word Jehovah in England; 3.
e Diphthongis, sive Bivocalibus; 4. An Edition and
ranslation of Marcus Antoninus’s Meditations ; 5. A Col-
rtion ot Sermons in folio ; and many other works. His
ety and charity were exemplary ; and his modesty was so
oat, that he declined all ecclesiastical dignities and court
elements. His extensive learning was admired by Sal-
asius ar|d other great men abroad ; his house was a pri-
to seminary for young gentlemen of this nation; and
any foreigners resorted to him to receive advice in their
idies.
or Geth, a city of the Philistines, and one of
eir five principalities. It is celebrated as having given
rt i to Goliath. David made a conquest of Gath in the
vol. x. 1
beginning of his reign over all Israel; and it continued
subject to the kings his successors till the declension and
decay of the kingdom of Judah. Rehoboam rebuilt or
fortified it, Uzziah retook it, und Hezekiah once more
reduced it under his subjection. Gath stood about five
or six miles from Jamnia, about fourteen south of Joppa,
and thirty-two west of Jerusalem.
GAUBlUS, Jerome-David, professor of medicine at
Leyden, and afterwards fellow of the royal society of
London, was born at Heidelberg in the year 1705. Prom
the Jesuits he received the rudiments of his education,
and was much esteemed by them on account of his abili¬
ties ; but his father afterwards sent him to the orphan-
house of Halle, lest he should be obliged to abjure his re¬
ligion. Ihe nature of the discipline, however, he found
much too severe, and at his own request his father removed
hhn. His teacher at this hospital attributing the dislike
of young Gaubius to the want of genius, urged him to
give his son some mechanical employment; but his father
thought proper to indulge his ardent desire after know¬
ledge, and accordingly sent him to Amsterdam to study
under his uncle John, who was an eminent physician there.
After prosecuting his medical studies for some time at
Hordwyk, he resolved to visit Leyden, where Boerhaave
was then professor, and his penetrating eye soon discover¬
ed that Gaubius was possessed of talents above mediocrity.
This celebrated man honoured him with unlimited access
to his house, delighted in imparting instruction to him, and
gradually forwarded the cultivation of his mind. Gaubius
took the degree of doctor at the age of twenty, after a dis¬
putation on the nature of solids, containing an abstract of
the system which he himself subsequently followed in prac¬
tice. He then travelled through various parts of Europe,
and when he returned to Heidelberg by way of Strasburg,
he was appointed city physician at Deventer, in the pro¬
vince of Overyssel; but he soon afterwards removed to Am¬
sterdam. Boerhaave never lost sight of his favourite pu¬
pil; and when the infirmities of old age and indefatigable
labour induced him to resign his chair, Gaubius was upon
his recommendation appointed to succeed him. In 1738,
he published his Instructions for Writing Recipes, which
was received with merited approbation, as he had reduced
the art from a mechanical into a scientific form. His
Principles of Nosology is perhaps his most masterly per¬
formance, as it evinced that he was highly worthy of such
a preceptor. The next publication of Gaubius, which ap¬
peared in 1771, was his Adversaria varii Argumenti, a
work which was particularly interesting to chemists; and
his oration on the two-hundredth anniversary of the aca¬
demy of Leyden attracted considerable notice, as in it he
traced out, with his accustomed acuteness, the principal
epochs of the arts and sciences in Holland. He was like¬
wise the author of numerous and valuable papers in the
Transactions of the Society of Haerlem, and editor of
many excellent performances, amongst which may be
mentioned Cramer’s Elementa artis docimasticce, Albinus
de presagienda vita et morte, and Swammerdam’s Book of
Nature, which he partly translated. Llis literary merit
spread his fame beyond the bounds of his native country,
and pupils repaired to Leyden from every part of Eu¬
rope. In addition to his widely extended reputation, he
was blessed with the enjoyment of good health till he at¬
tained seventy years of age; and he died on the 29th of
November 1780, in his seventy-fifth year. The Institu-
tiones Pathologies Medicinalis was deemed so valuable by
Professor Ackermann, that he published a fourth edition of
the work at Nuremberg in 1787.
GAUDEN, John, an English prelate of considerable
talents, but of a temporising and interested character,
was the son of John Gauden, vicar of Mayfield in Essex,
where he was born in the year 1605. Having received
3 A
369
Gaubius
II
Gauden.
^  
370 G A U
G A U
Gauden. the rudiments of his education at Bury St Edmund’s in
Suffolk, he was removed to St John’s College, Cambridge,
where he made considerable proficiency in learning, and
took his degree in arts. About 1630 he was presented
to the vicarage of Chippenham in Cambridgeshire, and he
also obtained the rectory of Brightwell in Berkshire. This
last preferment having brought him near Oxford, he en¬
tered himself of Wadham College in that university, and
became tutor to some noblemen and several young gentle¬
men who were placed under his care. In 1635, he took
his degree as bachelor in divinity, and in 164)1 he was re¬
ceived as doctor in the theological faculty. At the com¬
mencement of the civil war he had become chaplain to
the Earl of Warwick, a Presbyterian leader; and having
ranged himself on the same side as his patron, he, in the
end of November, after the close imprisonment of Lord
Strafford, preached a sermon before the House of Com¬
mons, which proved so agreeable to that assembly, that
it is said they presented him with a large silver tankard,
bearing the inscription, Donum honorarium populi Angli-
cani in Parliamento congregate Johanni Gauden ; a token
of their esteem, which, if the story be true, may seem to
be the stronger for its singularity and unseemliness.1 His
discourse seems to have consisted of an invective against
the ecclesiastical policy of the court; and it was not only
preached at a critical time, but on the solemn occasion of
the sacrament being first taken by the whole house. As
a reward for so conspicuous a service to the parliament¬
ary cause, he soon afterwards received the valuable liv¬
ing of Booking in Essex, which he held through all the
succeeding changes of government; forbearing of neces¬
sity to use the liturgy, and complying with all the con¬
ditions which the law then required from the beneficed
clergy. He was also chosen one of the assembly of di¬
vines who met at Westminster in 1643; but it has been
disputed whether he took the covenant, though his own
evasive answers seem rather to confirm the opinion that
he had. It is said that he wrote a Protestation against
the trial of the king in 1648, and likewise an Invective
against those of the army and their abettors who mur¬
dered Charles I.; but neither of these pieces was pub¬
lished until two years after the Restoration; and even if
the former had appeared at the needful time, it would
have been disregarded, seeing that the solemn declaration
of all the Presbyterian clergy of London against bringing
Charles to trial had proved unavailing.
But the most remarkable production with which the
name of Gauden has been connected is the famous E/zwi/
BcufiXixri, or Portraiture of his Sacred Majesty in his So¬
litude and Sufferings, which appeared after the execu¬
tion of Charles I., and in the course of a year passed
through fifty editions. The Eikon Basilikd seems to
have been intended to produce a favourable effect du¬
ring the king’s trial; but its publication was retarded
until some days after his death, by the jealous and ri¬
gorous precautions adopted by the regicides. The im¬
pression made on the public by a work which purported
to convey the pious and eloquent language of a dying
king could not fail to be very considerable; and though
its genuineness was from the beginning doubted or dis¬
believed by some, including Milton, Goodwyn, and Lilly,
yet unbounded faith in its authenticity as the produc¬
tion of Charles himself soon became one of the funda¬
mental articles of the royalist creed. At the Restora¬
tion, Gauden was promoted to the see of Exeter, whence
he was in 1662 translated to that of Worcester. But he
was so far from being satisfied with this promotion, that
he looked upon it as an act of injustice. He had, it
appears, applied to the king for the rich bishopric of \Vjn.
Chester, which he flattered himself with the hopes of ob¬
taining ; and, when he failed, the vexation he suffered on
account of this disappointment is believed to have has¬
tened his death, which took place on the 20th of Septem¬
ber 1662. Gauden was the author of many controversial
pieces, suited to the temper of the times, and to his own
views, which were always those of a selfish and temporis-
ing divine.
The question, Who wrote the Eikon Basilike? which
Gauden published as King Charles’s private meditations
has, as our readers must be aware, been long agitated; but
the controversy seems at length to have been ended by a
verdict upon the whole case in favour of Gauden as the
author. At the moment of the Restoration, this comply,
ing person, who had thundered before the parliament
against the ecclesiastical policy of the court, appears to
have had as little public claim on the favour of Charles II.
as any clergyman who had conformed to the religious
principles of the parliament and the protectorate; and
he was accordingly stigmatized by some zealous royalists
as “ the false apostate.” He was sufficiently a Presby¬
terian in party to make him no favourite with the court;
yet he was not so decided a Presbyterian in principle as
to have that influence amongst his party which could make
him worth so high a price as a mitre. Those who dis¬
pute his claim to be acknowledged as the writer of the
Eikon, will not ascribe his preferment to transcendent
abilities ; he is not mentioned as having ever shown kind¬
ness to the royalists; there is no trace of his having cor¬
responded with the exiled court; he contributed nothing
to the recall of the king, nor indeed had he the power of
performing such atoning services. Yet, though thus with¬
out the shadow of a claim to preferment on any puhlic
ground, and indeed one of the last persons whom the
court might be supposed to have been inclined to promote,
Gauden was, nevertheless, on the 3d of November 1660,
appointed Bishop of Exeter, and, in a few months, he re¬
ceived no less than L.20,000 for the renewal of leases.
Nor was he at all satisfied with this advancement. In
fact, he had scarcely arrived at his episcopal palace, when,
on the 21st of December, he wrote a letter to Lord Chan¬
cellor Clarendon, complaining bitterly of the “ distress, in¬
felicity, and horror” of such a bishopric, and lamenting
“a hard fate which,” he reminds the chancellor, he “had
before deprecated.” “ I am not so unconscious,” he adds,
“ to the service done to the church and to his Majesty’s fa¬
mily, as to bear with patience the ruin heaped on me.
Are these the effects of his liberal expressions, who told
me I might have what I would desire ?” Five days after¬
wards (26th December 1660) he wrote another letter, in
which he says, “ Dr Morley once offered me my option,
upon account of some service which he thought I had dm
extraordinary for the church and royal family, of which
he told me your Lordship was informed” Gauden appears
soon afterwards to have written to Sir E. Nicholas, secre¬
tary of state, a letter expressed so as to be read by the
king; and on the 19th January 1661, he received an an¬
swer, in which there is the following sentence: “As for
your own particular, he (the king) desires you not to be dis¬
couraged at the poverty of your bishopric at present, and
if that answer not the expense that was promised you, his
Majesty will take you so particularly into his care, that he
bids me assure you shall have no cause to remember Hock¬
ing.” On the 21st of January the importunate prelate
again addressed to Clarendon a letter explicitly stating
the nature of the services, which was probably rendered
necessary, in his opinion, by the continued silence of the
1 fhe journals make no mention of the tankard, but bear “ that the thanks of this house be given to Mr Gaudy and Mr Mor«
ley for their sermons last Sunday, and that they be desired, if they please, to print the same.” {Cum. Journ. ii. 40.)
G A U
iderrchancellor, and distinctly claiming “what goes under the
— «late blessed king’s name, the E/xwv or Portraiture of hys
G A U
371
Majesty in hys Solitudes and Sufferings,” as his own pro¬
duction. “ This book and figure,” he says, “ teas wholly
and only my invention, making, and designe, in order to
vindicate the king’s wisdome, honor, and piety. My
wife indeed was conscious to it, and had an hand in dis¬
guising the letters of that copy which 1 sent to the king in
he Isle of Wight by favour of the late Marquise of Hert¬
ford, which was delivered to the king by the now Bishop
)f Winchester (Duppa) : hys majesty graciously accepted,
)wned, and adopted it as hys sense and genius, not only
vith great approbation, but admiration. Hee kept it with
iym; and though hys cruel murtherers went on to perfect
ijs martyrdome, yet God preserved and prospered the
look to revive hys honor, and to redeeme hys majesty’s
lame from that grave of contempt and abhorrence or in-
amy, in which they aymed to bring hym.” The bishop
vrote three more letters to Clarendon on the 25th Jan-
iary, the 20th February, and the 6th March ; and, at last,
he chancellor replied to his numerous applications in a
etter dated the 13th of March 1661, in which Gauden’s
laim is unequivocally admitted. After many apologies
or delay, and professions of good will towards his impor-
unate correspondent, Clarendon says, “ The particular
ihich you often renewed, I do confesse was imparted to me
nder secrecy, and of which I did not take myself to he
t liberty to take notice, and truly, when it ceases to
e a secret, I know nobody will he gladd of it but Mr
lilton; I have very often wished I had never been trusted
nth it.”
Now this, taken in conjunction with Gauden’s imme-
iate promotion to the episcopal dignity after the Restora-
on, and the letter of the secretary of state, Sir E. Nicho-
s, above referred to, appears to us to be decisive of the
hole question as to the authorship of the Eikon. “ It
proper to remark here,” says Sir James Mackintosh,1
that all the letters of Gauden are still extant, indorsed
y Lord Clarendon, or by his eldest son. In the course
three months, then, it appears that Gauden, with un-
sual importunity and confidence, with complaints which
ere disguised reproaches, and sometimes with an ap-
oach to menaces, asserted his claim to be richly reward-
1 as the author of the Eikon. He affirms that it was sent
1 the king by the Duke of Somerset, who died about a
onth before his first letter, and delivered to his majesty
! Duppa, bishop of Winchester, who was still alive,
e adds, that he had acquainted Charles II. with the se-
et through the Duke of York; that Morley, then bishop
Worcester, had informed Clarendon of it; and that
orley himself had declared the value of the service to
such as to entitle Gauden to chuse his own preferment,
a e,r ^)us enabled Clarendon to convict him of false-
0 Vff -S WaS un^rue’ in three or four circumstan-
s, differing indeed in their importance as to the main
| testion, but equally material to his own veracity. A
I t-h ^ 'p0r(^ *rom Duppa would have overwhelmed him
i infamy. Some of the communications were made
tore the Duke of Somerset’s death, on the 24th of Oc-
Jer. How easy was it for the chancellor to ascertain
'ether the information had been given to the king and
. ™t ler! Morley was his bosom friend, and the spiri-
' director of his daughter Anne, duchess of York. How
iny ot ier persons might have been quietly sounded by
.numerous confidential agents of a great minister, on a
• sac ion which had occurred only twelve years before !
^ ^ suppose that a statesman then at the zenith of his
s a ness could not discover the truth on this subject
without a noise like a judicial inquiry, would betray a sin- Gauging
gular ignorance of affairs. Did Clarendon relinquish with- II
out a struggle his belief in a book which had doubtless ^aul'arna'
touched his feelings when he read it as the work of his
royal master ? Even curiosity might have led Charles
IL, when receiving the blessing of Duppa on his (Dup-
pa’s) deathbed, to ask him a short confidential question,
lo how many chances of detection did Gauden expose
himself? How nearly impossible is it that the king, the
duke, the chancellor, and Morley, should have abstained
from the safest means of inquiry, and, in opposition to
their former opinions and prejudices, yielded at once to
Gauden s assertion, without any evidence of its truth?”
_ Sm James Mackintosh then goes on to show, that the pre¬
vious belief of the royalist party in the genuineness of the
Eikonyery much magnifies the improbability of such suppo¬
sitions. “ 4 he truth,” says he, “ might be discovered from
the parties appealed to, and conveyed to the audacious
pretender without any scandal. There was no need of
any public exposure. A. private intimation of the false¬
hood of one material circumstance must have silenced
Gauden. But what, on the contrary, is the answer of
Lord Clarendon ? The decisive words, at length extort¬
ed from him, ‘ When it ceases to be a secret, I know no¬
body will be glad of it but Mr Milton,’ express such an
unhesitating assent to the claim as could only have flowed
from inquiry and evidence. By confessing that the secret
had been imparted to him, he admits the other material
part of Gauden’s statement, that the information came
through Morley. It may also be remarked, that Gau¬
den, if his story was true, chose the persons to whom he
imparted it both prudently and fairly. He dealt with it
as a secret the disclosure of which would injure the royal
cause ; and he therefore confined his communications to
the king’s sons and the chancellor, who could not be in¬
disposed to the cause by it, and whose knowledge of it
was necessary to justify his own legitimate claims. Had
it been false, no choice could have been more unfortunate.
He appealed to those who, for ought he knew, might have
in their possession the means of instantly demonstrating
that he was guilty of a falsehood so impudent and peri¬
lous that nothing parallel to it has ever been hazarded by
a man of sound mind. How could Gauden know that the
king did not possess his father’s manuscript, and that Roy-
ston the printer was not ready to prove that he received it
from Charles I. through hands totally unconnected with
Gauden ?”
1 his reasoning seems to be quite decisive; but as the case
is argued on every point in the masterly article to which we
have already alluded; and as the objections which have
from time to time been raised against Gauden’s claim are
there victoriously refuted, whilst the peculiar character
of the book itself is shown to be such as to destroy all
probability of its being the composition of Charles I.; we
shall content ourselves with referring the reader to the
Edinburgh Review, vol. xliv. p. 2, et seqq. taken in conjunc¬
tion with Dr Wordsworth’s book entitled Who wrote Icon
Basilike, Cambridge, 1824.
GAUGING. See Mensuration.
GAuaiNG-Rod, an instrument used in gauging or mea¬
suring the contents of any vessel. That usually employed
is the four-foot gauging rod. It is commonly made of box,
and consists of four rules, each a foot long, and about three
eighths of an inch square, joined together by three brass
joints; by which means the rod is rendered four feet long
when the four rules are quite opened, and but one foot
when they are all folded together.
GAUKARNA, a town of Hindustan, in the province of
1 Edinburgh Review, vol. xliv. p. 15.
1 f
G A U
G A V
Gaul. North Canara. It consists of five hundred houses, inter-
spersed with cocoa-nut trees; and has a temple dedicated
to Mahadeva. Salt is made in the neighbourhood; but it
is of bad quality, and is scarcely saleable. Long. 74. 25. E.
Lat. 14. 32. N.
GAUL, an extensive country in the west of Europe, the
boundaries of which in the later times ot the Romans
were, on the west the Atlantic, on the north the German
Ocean, on the east the river Rhine and Alps, and on the
south the Mediterranean and Pyrenees.
To the earliest writers we find no part of this country
known, except a small portion to the south along the coast
of the Mediterranean, and at that time it seems to have
had no general name. The tribes on the coast were Be-
bryces and Ligures, and in the interior they only knew
that the people were called Celtae. The extent of their
kingdom, and the shape of their land, remained perfectly
unknown to the Greeks. Through Pytheas (about 334,
b. c.) they first discovered that it was bounded to the north
by the ocean, and that the inhabitants in the interior re¬
sembled each other in their manner of living. They there¬
fore concluded that the Cel tec extended over the whole of
the north-western portion of Europe. It was not till the
conclusion of the second Punic war (201, b. c.) that the
Romans began to acquire a firm footing in the south of
Gaul, and thereby to obtain somewhat more accurate in¬
formation respecting the interior. Scipio the elder dis¬
covered that there was a river Liger, Loire, in the country,
and a commercial city of the Celtm situated upon it. Still
their knowledge was confined to a few scanty facts, and it
was the Gallic wars of Csesar which at last enabled them
to form a correct idea of the country. They saw that the
river Rhine separated the Celtae from a perfectly different
people, the German!, and they became acquainted with the
Belgae, formed by a mixture of the tw'o, and whose name
they had never before heard. From this period no pro¬
vince of the. kingdom became better known, nor more fre¬
quently travelled through, than Gallia, on account of the
wars with the Germani, and its proximity to Britain.
Gaul was inhabited by four tribes, dissimilar to each other
both in language and customs. The Aquitani, of Iberian
origin ; the Ligures, dwelling from the foot of the Pyrenees
along the coast as far as the river Arno in Italy ; the Belgse,
of Germanic and Celtic origin; and the Celtae or Galli in the
Roman language, who may be considered as the principal
nation in the country, Their possessions extended from
the extremities of Bretagne, through the whole country
lying between the Seine and Garonne, as far as the Rhine
and the Alps. There seems every reason ta believe that
these Celtae came from the east, along the banks of the
Danube ; at least we find them in the very earliest ages
settled in the south of Germany, and in the greater part
of Hungary. That their occupation of Gaul must have
taken place at an early period, is proved by the immigra¬
tion of large bodies into Italy in the reign of Tarquinius
Priscus (616-578, b. c.).
Before the time of Cassar, the Celts lived throughout
the country, divided into a number of small tribes, having
each an aristocratic constitution, such as Poland once en¬
joyed. There was no king over the whole; but in many
of the tribes we find a prince at their head. Every thing
was transacted in the national assemblies, where the nobles
only had a place. The lower orders seem to have been
regarded in not much better light than slaves. In a coun¬
try possessed by so many independent tribes, there must
of course have been continual disputes; and scarcely a
year passed without war. The less strong united them¬
selves to their more powerful neighbours, and made com¬
mon cause with them in their vrars. The whole power
seems to have been generally in the hands of the nobility,
who had regular guards to protect their persons and dig¬
nity. All ancient writers speak of the strange mixture
of excessive levity in the character of the Celts with fool¬
hardiness and timidity. They were of a slender form, ro¬
bust, furious in the first assault, but unable to persevere
when fatigue and hardships were to be endured.
In the reign of Augustus, Gallia was first divided into
regular provinces by Agrippa. These were Aquitanica,
Belgica, Lugdunensis, and Provincia Romana, or Narbo-
nensis. The inhabitants led a quiet and peaceful life
under the dominion of the Romans, though they occa¬
sionally broke out in rebellion, which was generally caused
by the oppression of the tax-gatherers and governors.
Julius Vindex, a noble of Gaul, made an attempt in the
reign of Nero to free his country from a foreign yoke;
but though he managed to collect an army of a hundred
thousand men, they were easily defeated by the disci-
plined troops of the Romans. The rebellion of the Ba-
tavi, and of the German and Belgic tribes, threatened more
danger at a later period ; but it was put down partly by
force and partly by conciliatory measures. The inhabit¬
ants of Gaul continued to cultivate their fields in peace
till the end of the second and third centuries, when the
Francs and Alemanni began to make incursions into their
territory. See France.
GAUNGRA, a district belonging to the Nagpoor Mali-
rattas, in the province of Berar, situated about the twenty-
second degree of north latitude. The country is moun¬
tainous, and is intersected by the Japtee river; but very
little is known respecting it.
GAUZE, in Commerce, a very thin, slight, transparent
kind of stuff, woven sometimes of silk, and sometimes only
of thread. To warp the silk for making gauze, a peculiar
kind of mill is used, upon which the silk is wound. This
mill is a wooden machine, about six feet high, having an
axis placed perpendicularly in the middle, with six large
wings, on which the silk is wound from off the bobbins by
the axis turning round. When all the silk is on the mill,
another instrument is used to wind it off again upon two
beams ; and this being done, the silk is passed through as
manyr little beads as there are threads of silk, and thus
rolled upon another beam to supply the loom. The gauze
loom is much like that of the common weavers, though it
has several appendages peculiar to itself.
GAVEL, in Law, tribute, toll, custom, or yearly reve¬
nue ; of which we had in old time several kinds.
Ga VEL-Kind, a tenure or custom belonging to lands in
the county of Kent. The word is said by Lambard to be
compounded of three Saxon words, gyfe, eai, kyn, or omnibus
cognatione proximis data. Verstegan calls it gavelkind,
or give all kind, that is, to each child his part; and Taylor,
in his history of gavelkind, derives it from the British ga¬
vel, that is, a hold or tenure, and canned, generatio or fami¬
liar and so gavel canned might signify tenura generationis.
It is universally known what struggles the Kentish men
made to preserve their ancient liberties, and with how
much success those struggles were attended. And as it is
principally here that w e meet with the custom of gavelkind,
though it was and is to be found in some other parts ot
the kingdom, we may fairly conclude that this was a part
of these liberties; agreeably to Mr Selden’s opinion, that
gavelkind, before the Norman conquest, was the general
custom of the realm. The principal and distinguishing
properties of this kind of tenure are these: 1. The tenant
is of age sufficient to alienate his estate by feoffment, at
the age of fifteen. 2. The estate does not escheat incase
of an attainder and execution for felony ; their maxim be¬
ing, “ the father to the bough, the son to the plough.” > •
In most places, he had the pow er of devising lands by will,
before the statute for that purpose was made. 4. ihe
lands descend, not to the oldest, youngest, or any one son
only, but to all the sons together; which was indeed an*
l| i
Ktu
GAY
iently the most usual course of descent all over England,
iough in particular places particular customs prevailed.
GAVOTTA, or Gavotte, is a kind of dance, the air
f which has two brisk and lively strains in common time,
ach of which strains is twice played over. The first has
sually four or eight bars ; and the second contains eight,
.velve, or more. The first begins with a minim, or two
rotchets, or notes of equal value, and the hand rising;
nd it ends with the fall of the hand upon the dominant
r mediant of the mode, but never upon the final, unless
be a rondeau. The last begins with the rise of the
and, and ends with the fall upon the final of the mode.
Tempi di Gavotta, is when only the time or movement
' a gavotte is imitated, without any regard to the mea-
ires or number of bars or strains. Little airs are often
mnd in sonatas, which have this phrase to regulate their
otions.
GAWELGUR, a strong fortress of Hindustan, in the
mvince of Beraf. Its situation is elevated on a high and
icky hill between the Poornah and Taptee rivers. It
insists of a citadel with an inner fort, which fronts the
irth, where the rock is most inaccessible ; and the citadel
defended by an outer fort, and both are very strongly
rtified, and the ascent by the road is very long and
eep, and well defended. Notwithstanding these strong
^fences, it was taken by the army under General Wel-
sley, on the 14th of December 1803, after a siege of
ily two days, and was restored to the rajah on the con-
usion of the peace. Gawelgur is thirty-two miles north-
irth-west from Ellichpoor. Long. 77.52. E. Lat. 21.46. N.
GAY, John, a celebrated English poet, descended from
i ancient family in Devonshire, was born at Exeter, and
iceived his education at the free school of Barnstaple in
lat county, under the care of Mr William Rayner. He
as bred as a mercer in the Strand ; but having a small
rtune, independently of business, and considering the
tendance on a shop as a degradation of those talents
Inch he knew himself to be possessed of, he quitted that
'cupation, and applied himself to other pursuits, includ-
ig the indulgence of his inclination for poetry. In 1712
e find him secretary^, or rather domestic steward, to the
luchess of Monmouth, a station in which he continued
ntil the beginning of the year 1714, when he accompanied
ie Earl of Clarendon to Hanover, whither that noble-
lan was dispatched by Queen Anne. At the close of the
ime year, the queen’s death recalled him to England,
here he lived in the highest estimation and intimacy of
iendship with many persons of the first distinction in
oint both of rank and abilities. He was even particular-
' noticed by Queen Caroline, then princess of Wales, to
liom he had the honour of reading in manuscript his tra-
edy of the Captives; and in 1726 he dedicated his Fables,
y permission, to the Duke of Cumberland. From the
auntenance thus shown to him, and numberless promises
>ade him of preferment, it was reasonable to suppose,
lat he would have been provided for in some office suit-
1 to his inclination and abilities. But instead of this, in
727, he was offered the place of gentleman usher to one
f the } 'oung princesses ; an office which, looking on it as
a indignity to a man whose talents might have been so
uich better employed, he thought proper to refuse ; and
>nie pretty warm remonstrances were made on the occa-
ion by the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry, his sincere
lends and zealous patrons, which terminated in these two
oble personages withdrawing from court in disgust. Mr
uiy s dependence on the promises of the great, and the
isappointments he met with, he has figuratively describ-
d in his fable of the Hare with many Friends. However,
ie extraordinary success which he met with from the pub-
c made ample amends both in respect to satisfaction and
molument; for in the season of 1727-28 appeared his
GAY
Beggar s Opera, the success of which was not only unpre¬
cedented, but almost incredible. It had an uninterrupt¬
ed run in London of sixty-three nights in the first season,
and was renewed in the ensuing one with equal approba¬
tion. It spread into all the great towns of England ; it
was played in many places to the thirtieth and fortieth,
and at Bath and Bristol to the fiftieth time ; it made its
progress into Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, in which last
country it was acted for twenty-four successive nights;
and it was even performed at the island of Minorca. Nor
was the fame of this opera confined to the reading and
representation alone, for the card-table and drawing-room
shared with the theatre and closet in this respect; the
ladies carried about the favourite songs of the piece en¬
graven upon their fans; and screens and other pieces of
furniture were decorated with designs from it. In short,
the satire of this production was so striking, so appa¬
rent, and so perfectly adapted to the taste of all de¬
grees of people, that it overthrew the Italian opera, that
dagon of the nobility and gentry, which had so long se¬
duced them to idolatry, and which Dennis by the la¬
bours and outcries of a whole life, and many other writers
by the force of reason and reflection, had in vain en¬
deavoured to drive from the throne of public taste. The
profits of this piece were so very great, both to the au¬
thor and the manager Mr Rich, that it gave rise to a
quibble, which became frequent in the mouths of many,
namely, that it had made Rich gay, and Gay rich. It has
been asserted, indeed, that the author’s own emoluments
from it were not less than L.2000. This success induced
Mr Gay to write a second part, which he entitled Polly.
But the disgust subsisting between him and the court,
together with the misrepresentations made of him as hav¬
ing been the author of some disaffected libels and sediti¬
ous pamphlets, occasioned^ prohibition and suppression of
it to be sent from the lord chamberlain, at the very time
when every thing was in readiness for the rehearsal of the
piece. A very considerable sum, however, accrued to the
author from the publication of it afterwards in quarto.
Mr Gay wrote several other pieces in the dramatic line,
and many valuable compositions in verse. Amongst the
latter, his Trivia, or the art of Walking the Streets of
London, though his first poetical attempt, is far from be¬
ing the least considerable, and is what recommended him
to the esteem and friendship of Mr Pope. But as, among
his dramatic works, his Beggar’s Opera did at first, and
perhaps ever will, stand as an unrivalled masterpiece, so,
among his poetical works, his Fables hold the same degree
of estimation ; the latter having been almost as universal¬
ly read as the former was represented, and both equally
admired. Mr Gay’s disposition was sweet and affable,
his temper generous, and his conversation agreeable and
entertaining. But he had one foible, too frequently inci¬
dent to men of literary abilities, and which subjected him
at times to inconveniences which otherwise he might have
avoided, namely, an excess of indolence, without any know¬
ledge of economy. Hence, although his emoluments were,
at some periods of his life, very considerable, he was at
others greatly straitened in his circumstances ; nor could
he prevail on himself to follow the advice of his friend
Dean Swift, whom we find in many of his letters endea¬
vouring to persuade him to purchase an annuity as a re¬
serve for the exigencies of old age. Mr Gay chose rather
to throw himself on patronage, than secure to himself an
independent competency by the means pointed out to
him ; and hence, after having undergone many vicissi¬
tudes of fortune, and being for some time chiefly support¬
ed by the liberality of the Duke and Duchess of Queens¬
berry, he died at their house in Burlington Gardens, in
December 1732. He was interred in Westminster Abbey,
and a monument erected to his memory, at the expense
of his noble benefactors, with an inscription expressive of
their regards and his own deserts, and an epitaph inverse
by Mr Pope.
GAYA, a small island in the Eastern Seas, on the
north-west coast of Borneo. It is six or eight miles in
circumference; and there are many smaller islets in the
vicinity. Long. 116. 2. E. Lat. 7. N.
GAYAH, or Boodh Gayah, a town of Hindustan, in
the province of Bahar. It is one of the most celebrated
places of Hindu pilgrimage, having been the birthplace
of Boodh or Buddha, one of the supposed incarnations of
the Deity. Many extraordinary ceremonies are perform¬
ed here by those who frequent the sacred spot. Amongst
these, many of the female pilgrims, especially widows,
are in the practice of shaving their hair, and devoting
themselves from that time to a life of sanctity. The
whole business is under the superintendence of Brahmins,
who permit any person to enter the temple and approach
the idol, which is that of a man sitting cross-legged, and
so very rudely carved as to indicate a very remote anti¬
quity. The Bengal government derive from the resort
of pilgrims to this sacred place an annual revenue of
L.16,000. Long. 85. 5. E. Lat. 24. 49. N
GAZA, or Gazis, Theodore, born at Thessalonica,
now Salonica, a famous Greek, who came to reside in
Italy after the capture of his native city by the Turks in
1429. After having professed Greek at Sienna, Gaza
repaired to Ferrara, on the invitation of the duke, and
founded in that city an academy, of which he was the
first rector. He taught Greek there for several years,
and with so much success, that when he had quitted
Ferrara to go to Rome, whither he was called by Pope
Nicolas V., it became the usage among the friends of
Greek literature not to pass before the house which he
had occupied without uncovering; and this usage sub¬
sisted long after his death. It was about 1455 that Gaza
proceeded to Rome. He knew perfectly the Latin, which
he had studied under Victorio de Feltre; and the pope
wished to employ him in translating into that language
some of the best Greek authors. The translation of the
Problems of Aristotle, which he undertook, produced a
quarrel between him and George of Trebizond, who had
already translated them ; but it procured him the esteem
and protection of Cardinal Bessarion. He also translated
the Problems of Alexander of Aphrodisus, the Tactics of
iElian, the Treatise on Composition by Dionysius of Ha¬
licarnassus, the five Homilies of St John Chrysostom on
the incomprehensible nature of God, the History of Ani¬
mals by Aristotle (Venice, 1476, in fob), and that of
Plants by Theophrastus (Paris, 1529, in 8vo). The two
last translations formed the principal occupation of his
latter years. They have been frequently reprinted; but
the estimation in which they were once held has been
considerably diminished. Gaza translated into Greek two
works of Cicero, the Treatise on Old Age, and the Dream
of Scipio; versions which, though now forgotten, were
formerly in great request, if at least we may judge from the
number of editions. Amongst the original productions of
Gaza will always be distinguished his Greek Grammar,
in four books; an excellent work, and very often printed
either in whole or in part. It is written in Greek; but
Erasmus has translated into Latin the first two books,
and other learned men, Heresbach, Tusanus, Crocus, and
Elias Andre, have completed the translation, and illus¬
trated it by remarks. The Greeks attach the greatest
value to this grammar. In 1768, the deacon Neophytus
published at Bucharest, where he was professor of Greek,
an immense commentary of 1298 pages in folio on the
fourth book alone; and more recently, in 1780, Daniel
Keramefs, a monk of Patmos, and professor of Greek in
the gymnasium of that island, caused to be printed at
Venice another commentary on the same book. Gaia is r
also author of a Greek Letter to Philelphus, on the orio-in j
of the Turks, printed with the Latin translation ofSebas- Gek
tian Casteillon, in the History of the Turks by Chalcon-
dylas, Bale, 1556, and with the version of Leo Alacci in
his Symmicla, Cologne, 1653 ; of a paraphrase in Greek
of the Batrachomyomachia, published not many years ago,
by Fontani, from a manuscript of Florence; and of a
Treatise on the ancient months, which Perellus has trans¬
lated into Latin, and of which there have been several
editions, amongst others that of Paris, 1530, in 8vo. In
Fabricius, in Hodius (r/e Greeds Illustribus), and in the
Bcerner, the reader will find the titles of the unedited
works of Gaza. What has not been printed of his is of so
little importance that it is doubtful if any one will ever
think of publishing them. His commentary on the Deli¬
neations of Philostratus appears, however, to merit more
attention, although it is not improbable that he who
should give himself the trouble of searching for and exa¬
mining it, would only find scholia of but little importance.
Theodore Gaza died in 1478, in possession of a benefice
in the Abbruzzi, which he had obtained by the favour of
Cardinal Bessarion. (a.)
Gaza, a principal city, and one of the five satrapies of
the Philistines. It was situated about a hundred stadia
from the Mediterranean, on an artificial mount, and strong¬
ly walled round. It was destroyed by Alexander the Great,
and afterwards by Antiochus. Gaza is now only a large
village, and is divided into two parts, called Upper and
Lower, both of which, taken together, are designated
Gazara. There is here, however, a considerable manu¬
facture of cotton, and great quantities of ashes for mak¬
ing soap are also prepared.
GAZETTE, a newspaper, or account of the transac¬
tions of all the countries in the world, printed on a loose
sheet or half sheet. This name is with us confined to
that paper of news published by authority. The word is
derived from gazetta, a Venetian coin, which was the
usual price of the first newspaper printed there, and
which was afterwards given to the paper itself. The first
gazette in England was published at Oxford, whilst the
court resided there, in a folio sheet, dated 7th November
1665. On the removal of the court to London the title
was changed to that of the London Gazette.
GAZNA, a city of Asia, once much celebrated, and
the capital of a very extensive empire. It was taken by
the Moguls in the year 1222.
GAZ YPOOR, a district of Flindustan, in the province of
Allahabad, and zemindary of Benares, situated about the
26th degree of north latitude. It is bounded on the north
and east by the river Goggrah, on the south by the Ganges,
and on the west by the district of Joanpore. It is one of
the most fertile districts in India, remarkably well supplied
with water; and has also been long celebrated for its otto
of roses and rose water. Besides grain of all kinds, it pro¬
duces cotton and sugar, as well as opium, and very fine
indigo. It also supplies an investment of calicoes. The
chief towns are Gazypoor, Azimpoor, and Dooryghaut.
Gazypoor, a town of Hindustan, in the province of
Allahabad, and capital of the abpVe district. It is situated
on the bank of the Ganges, and contains a palace and a
handsome mosque. In its vicinity are extensive canton¬
ments for three regiments of cavalry. Long. 83. 33. E.
Lat. 25. 35. N.
GEBY, or Gibby, an island in the Eastern Seas, sur¬
rounded by a cluster of smaller isles. It is situated in the
passage between the islands of Waygoo and Gilolo, on the
equinoctial line. It is about twenty-five miles long by three
broad, and lies between the 129th and the 130th degrees
of east longitude. It is little known in the interior. The
rise of the tides here, even at spring tide, is only five feet.
G E D
fig. GEBY ZEH, or Gebsa, a small town of Asia Minor,
' supposed to be the ancient Lybissa, where there is a mount,
Ides.-eported to be the tomb of Hannibal. Twenty-five miles
—';ast-south-east of Scutari.
GED, William, an ingenious though unsuccessful artist
'a goldsmith in Edinburgh), who deserves to be noticed on
iccount of his attempt to introduce an improvement in the
irt of printing. The invention, first practised by Ged in
725, may be shortly described. From any types of Greek,
toman, or other character, he formed a plate for every
age, or sheet, of a book, from which he printed, instead
f using a type for every letter, as is done in the common
/ay. This was first practised, but on blocks of wood, by
ie Chinese and Japanese, and pursued in the first essays
f Coster. “ This improvement.” says James Ged, the in-
entor’s son, “ is principally considerable in three most im-
ortant articles, viz. expense, correctness, beauty, and uni-
irmity.” In July 1729, William Ged entered into part-
ership with William Fenner, a London stationer, who was
■ receive half the profits, in consideration of his advancing
flip mnnpv ronniclto Tp n/r.. ®
GED
1 the money requisite. To supply this, Mr John James^
len an architect at Greenwich, was taken into the scheme,
id afterwards his brother Mr Thomas James, a letter-
mnder, and James Ged, the inventor’s son. In 1730,
icse partners applied to the university of Cambridge for
le printing of Bibles and common prayer books by blocks
stead of single types ; and, in consequence, a lease was
aled to them, on the 23d April 1731. In this attempt
ey invested a large sum of money, and finished only two
ayer books, when it had to be relinquished, and the
ase was afterwards given up. Ged imputed his disap-
lintment to the villany of the pressmen, and the ill treat-
ent of his partners, particularly Fenner, whom John James
id he were advised to prosecute, but declined it. He
turned to Scotland in 1736, where he gave his friends a
ecimen of his performance, by an edition of Sallust
inted according to his method, tabellis seu laminis fusis.
it being still unsuccessful, and having failed in obtaining
Jiess from Fenner, who died insolvent, he was preparing
ain to set out for London, in order to join with his son
. mes as a printer there, when he died, on the 19th Octo-
r 1749. Ihe date of his birth is unknown.
GEDDES, Alexander, a learned Scotch Catholic di-
ie and eminent biblical critic, was born in the parish of
Jthven in Banffshire, in the year 1737. His parents
ie respectable, although not opulent. His father was a
mer, who deemed no trouble too great in order to pro-
i re mr his children as liberal an education as possible.
>ti ather and mother were of the Catholic persuasion,
1 ‘theonly book of consequence which the former had
; !lls llbrary was an English translation of the Bible, in
1 . young Geddes was instructed with such care and
. ention that he was able to give an account of the his-
1 ^ °tl* ^,e^ore reached the eleventh year of his
; e. Ihe first instructions he received, after those of his
J rents, veie communicated by a school-mistress in the
^imty, by whom he was so much distinguished that it
l ?aine the first mental gratification which, in his own opi-
1 ai, ie ever felt. He was next placed under the tuition of
‘ ‘Tf man froni the city of Aberdeen, who had been en-
f jecl by a proprietor for the education of his own child-
iLw / ,Wards went t0 a Place called Scalan, in the
gmands, where those were to be trained up who de-
• G fi0, .ev°fe. thomselves to the Catholic priesthood,
j nis ^heir education at some foreign university,
p Vl-WaS’lr\this obscure retreat, that Geddes laid the
mation of that intimate acquaintance with the learn-
• nf,uage® by which he was so eminently distinguish-
v,. > le ,subsequent part of his life. He went to the
a 3rvvqr!ini[erSlt^ iat ^ar‘s ,n the year 1758, and soon
s egan the study of rhetoric in the college of
Flavarre. By the strength of his genius, and his indefa¬
tigable attention, he soon reached the head of this class,
although he had to contend with two veterans; and be¬
came the favourite of Vicaire, the professor, whose friend¬
ship lasted till the close of his life.
Instead of entering into the philosophical class at the
usual time, Geddes studied that subject at home, in order
to facilitate his theological studies, on which he entered
under MM. Bure and de Sauvent, at the college of Na-
vane; whilst Lavocat at the Sorbonne was his Hebrew
pieceptor. His progress in the oriental languages was
so great that Professor Lavocat urged him strongly to
continue at Paris ; but his friends prevailed with him to
return to his native country in 1764. His first charge as
a priest was in a Catholic chapel in the county of Angus,
from which he removed to Traquair in 1765, and became
chaplain to the earl of that name, where he remained for
about three years. This situation was most agreeable to
his literary pursuits, as he had unlimited access to an exten-
siye hbiaiy, which greatly assisted him in the prosecution
oi his favourite studies. He left the earl’s house in the
year 1/68, and returned to Paris, where he devoted his
time during the following winter to the perusal of books
and manuscripts in tbe king’s libraries, making large ex¬
tracts fiom scarce copies, particularly such as were in the
Hebrew tongue.
In the spring of 1769 he returned to his native country,
and became pastor of a congregation at Auchinhalrig,
in Banffshire, where he was for some time involved in pe¬
cuniary difficulties, out of which he was extricated by the
libeiality of the Duke of Norfolk. These were occasion¬
ed by the debts he incurred in building a new chapel for
his flock, and in making the parsonage house one of the
neatest and most convenient in Scotland. With the view
of bettering his circumstances he commenced farmer; but
as he had to borrow money to stock his farm, and as the
crops failed for three successive seasons, he was under the
necessity of abandoning this scheme in a much poorer
condition than when he first projected it. His unwearied
exertions, however, joined to the assistance of friends,
again relieved him, and he was enabled to discharge in an
honourable manner every claim against him of a pecuniary
nature.
In the year 1.7/9 he resigned his pastoral charge at
Auchinhalrig, which was a heavy blow to the members
of his congregation, as the zeal and diligence with which
he discharged the duties of his ministerial function had
endeared him to all. He was also justly esteemed for
his attention to the instruction of youth. Next year the
university of Aberdeen conferred on him the degree of
doctor of laws, a literary honour which had never been
bestowed by that body on any Roman Catholic since the
Reformation. He afterwards went to London that he
might prosecute his favourite studies with greater faci¬
lity, and give the world his English translation of the
Old and New Testament, to which he had turned his
attention for a number of years. He officiated for some
months. aftei his arrival at the imperial ambassador’s
chapel in Duke Street, until the term of Easter 1782,
when it was suppressed by order of the Emperor Joseph
IL, after which Dr Geddes seems to have declined en¬
tirely the exercise of his clerical functions.
No sooner had the design of Dr Geddes, relative to a
new translation of the Bible, been made public, than he
met with formidable opposition from his Catholic brethren ;
an event which the doctor seems with good reason to have
anticipated. His own words on this occasion were, “ I
expect not excessive profits from excessive exertion. I
trust I shall never want meat, and clothes, and fire; to a
philosophical and contented mind, what more is neces-
saiy ? He was many years employed in preparing this
375
Geddes.
376
Geddes.
'—
G E D
important work for the press before he had any prospect
of adequate success. In addressing the English Catho¬
lics on the subject of his translation, he says, “ At any
rate, I do what I think it my duty to do, and do it fairly and
openly. In the following pages ye will find neither pal¬
liation nor disguise. I pour out my sentiments with the
same sincerity as if I were before the tribunal of Him who
is to judge the living and the dead. Mistake I may, but
prevaricate I never will.” He discovered this noble spirit
in every action of his life, and in all his transactions and
intercourse with mankind, although he did not conciliate
the regard of those who could have bestowed upon him
the most effectual assistance.
After spending much of his life in biblical studies, he
met with a long and cruel interruption. “ I had but little
hope of ever fiving in a situation to resume them,” says
he, “ when Providence threw me into the arms of such a
patron as Origen himself might have been proud to boast
of; a patron who, for these ten years past, has, with a
dignity peculiar to himself, afforded me every convenience
that my heart could desire towards the carrying on and
completing of my arduous work.” It is needless to inform
the public, that the patron to whom the learned doctor
here alludes was Lord Petre. For this munificence, con¬
tinued throughout the whole of his life, and even beyond it
by his will, Christians of every denomination will feel sen¬
timents of gratitude, if they are qualified to form a true
estimate of the advantages of free and impartial inquiry.
His prospectus of a new translation of the Bible in 4to
was published in 1786, and a letter to the Bishop of Lon¬
don on the same subject appeared in 1787. His proposals
were printed in 1788.
In tbe year 1792 the first volume of this translation was
published, dedicated to his patron Lord Petre, containing
the first six books of the Old Testament. Soon after this
volume made its appearance, three apostolic vicars, call¬
ing themselves the Bishops of llama, Acanthos, and Cen-
turiae, issued a pastoral letter, addressed to their respec¬
tive flocks over which they presided, warning them against
the reception of Dr Geddes’ translation. In his reply to
the Bishop of Centuriae we find these words : “ Perhaps,
my lord, you wish to have another occasion of exercising
your episcopal authority, and of playing with censures as
children do with a new ball. I wish your lordship much
joy of the bauble ; but however, my lord, beware of play¬
ing too often with it. Read St Chrysostom on ecclesias¬
tical censures, and learn from him a little more modera¬
tion. Permit an old priest to tell you that it is a very
great ornament in a young bishop. As to myself, my lord,
I am not afraid of your threats, and shall laugh at your
censures as long as I am conscious that I deserve them
not. You cannot hinder me from praying at home; and
at home I will pray, in defiance of your censure, as often
as I please. The Chief Bishop of our souls is always ac¬
cessible ; and through him I can, at all times, have free
access to the Father, who will not reject me, but for vo¬
luntary unrepented crimes. In the panoply of conscious
innocence, the whole thunder of the Vatican would in vain
be levelled at my head.”
The second volume of his translation, owing to a va¬
riety of interruptions, did not make its appearance till the
year 1797, to which was prefixed a dedication to her royal
highness the Duchess of Gloucester, as an early, sponta¬
neous, and liberal encourager of the work. In this volume
the doctor gives up, and boldly combats, the absolute in¬
spiration of Scripture, believing that the Hebrew,' like all
other historians, wrote from such human documents as
they could find, and were of consequence liable to similar
mistakes. This latitude of thinking naturally led the doc¬
tor to give up as fabulous, and wholly unworthy of the di¬
vine benevolence, every command, precept, and injunc-
G E F
tion, which appeared unworthy even of human authority.Geflu i
He denied, of consequence, that the command given to wt;
destroy the Canaanites could have had God for its author.
Dr Geddes was a man of extensive literature, uncommon '
liberality of thinking, and the friend of all mankind; a
man of integrity, honour, and benevolence ; in the strictest
sense of the word a genuine Catholic, one whose love of
truth was so invincible, that neither hopes nor fears could
induce him to conceal it.
As a controversial writer, JDr Geddes was eminently
distinguished by his letter to Dr Priestley, in defence of
the divinity of Jesus Christ; and by one to a member of
parliament, on the expediency of a general repeal of the
penal statutes which have a respect to religious opinions.
In the spring of the year 1800 he published an Apology
for the Roman Catholics of Great Britain, in which he
zealously defended his peculiar tenets; but displayed a
commendable moderation when he mentioned the injuries
to which he himself and brethren were subjected by the
continuance of persecuting laws ; and when he argued in
behalf of abolishing all legal disabilities, he discovered
the soundest logical understanding.
The principal works of Dr Geddes are, 1. Select Satires
of Horace, London, 1779, 4to ; 2. Prospectus of a new
Translation of the Bible, ibid. 1786, 4to ; 3. Letter to the
Bishop of London, containing doubts, queries, &c., relative
to a vernacular translation of the Holy Scriptures, ibid.
1787, 4to ; 4. Letter to Dr Priestley, in which the author
attempts to prove by one prescriptive argument that the
divinity of Jesus Christ was a primitive tenet of Christiani¬
ty, ibid. 1787, 8vo ; 5. Epistola Macaronica ad fratrem de
iis quee gesta sunt in nupero Dissentientium conventu,
1790, 4to ; 6. Carmen Saeculare pro Gallica gente tyranni-
di aristocraticae erepta, 1790, 4to ; 7. Encyclical Letter of
the Bishops of Rama, Acanthos, and Centuriae (Walms-
ley, Gibson, and Douglas), with a continued commentary
for the use of the vulgar, 1791 ; 8. The first book of the
Iliad of Homer verbally rendered into English verse, 1792,
8vo ; 9. L’Avocat du Diable, 1792, 4to ; 10. CarminaSae-
cularia tria, pro tribus celeberrimis libertatis Gallicae epo-
chis, 1793, 4to ; 11. The Battle of Bangor, or the Church’s
Triumph, an heroi-comic poem, 1797, 8vo; 12. Transla¬
tion of the Bible, vol. i. 1792, vol. ii. 1797 ; 13. A Modest
Apology for the Roman Catholics of Great Britain, address¬
ed to all moderate Protestants, 1800, 8vo ; 14. Bardoma-
chia, poema Macaronico-Latinum, 1800, 4to ; 15. Paci fe-
liciter reduci Ode Sapphica, 1801, 4to; not to mention a
variety of fugitive pieces, and contributions to periodical
publications. He had corrected and prepared his transla¬
tion for the press up to the hundred and eighteenth psalm,
when he was seized with an excruciating distemper, which
put a period to his life on the 26th of February 1802.
GEFLEBORG, one of the provinces of Northern Swe¬
den, extending from latitude 60. 10. to 62. 25. north, ant
from longitude 17. 15. to 21. 43. east, being 8008 square
miles in extent. It comprehends four cities and 1807 insu¬
lated establishments, w ith 79,100 inhabitants. It is genef
ly a hilly country, but abounding in extensive lakes. JNot
more than one fiftieth part of the land is cultivated, ant
much of that yields but scanty crops of rye or oats; but m
bad years, food is so scarce that the rind of the fir-trees is
used as a substitute for other aliment. The chief pro are
is iron, millstones, whetstones, and wood for fuel and bui -
ing. Spinning and weaving for the families are conduc e
in each house, and their home-made woollen goods ar
both warm and durable. _ - ,
Gefleborg, a city, the capital of the province o
same name, in Sweden. It stands on the river ’ (
which collects the waters of several lakes, and conveys ]
to the Gulf of Bothnia. It contains 1200 houses, an" 0 ,
inhabitants. It is a town of considerable trade for t e
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GEL
>ort of iron, wood, pitch, and tar, and has some manufac-
ures of sail-cloth, coarse linen, and leather, and some sugar
• -fineries, distilleries, and breweries. Long. 17. 3. 10. E
^ ,at. 60. 39. 45. N.
GEFREES, a bailiwick of the circle of the Upper Maine,
i the kingdom of Bavaria, extending over 101 square
iiiles. It contains two cities, two market-towns, and fifty-
iree villages, with 20,980 inhabitants. It produces some
)rn, but better hemp and flax, and much timber from the
rests, which are very extensive. Some little gold and
Iver is found in the mountains. The capital is the town
Bernech, containing about 1000 inhabitants,
z GEHENISiA, a Scripture term which has given some
ouble to the critics. The authors of the Louvain and Ge-
wa versions retain the word gehenna as it stands in the
reek, and so does M. Simon ; the English translators ren-
t it by “ hell” and “ hell-fire,” and so do the translators
' Mons and Father Bohours. The word is formed from the
ebrewgehinnom, or valley of Hinnom. In that valley,
fich was near Jerusalem, there was a place named 7b-
;«*» where some Jews sacrificed their children to Moloch,
■ making them pass through the fire. King Josias, to
nder this place for ever abominable, made it a cloaca or
, mmon sewer, into which all the filth and carcasses in the
' y were thrown. The Jew’s further observed, that there
us a continual fire kept there to burn and consume those
(rcasses ; for which reason, as they had no proper term in
tfir language to signify “ hell,” they made use of gehenna
I gehinnom to denote a fire unextinguishable.
GEHREN, a market-town of the duchy of Schwartzbur"--
> nderhausen, in Germany. It stands at the junction of
n3 r*vers W ohlrose and Schobser, and contains 208 houses
i \ 1411 inhabitants. It is the capital of a bailiwick com-
f mending two other towns, thirteen villages, and three
iidets, with 9391 inhabitants.
. GEISLINGEN, a bailiwick of the kingdom of Wurtem-
llig, in the circle of the Danube. It extends over 134
snare miles, and comprehends three cities, three towns,
ail sixty villages, with 22,680 inhabitants. The capital,
C i ooTmC name, on ^1C Rohrbache, contains 400 houses
rrl 2240 inhabitants, who are famed for their wood, horn,
W ivory turnery ware, and part of whom are employed in
mon spinning by means of machinery, and also in making
w machinery.
• iELDERS, a town of the Prussian province of Cleeve-
“ .s> «n the river Nierse, which runs into the Rhine. It
ci tains 394 houses, and 3470 inhabitants, who are employ-
eim cloth and linen weaving, and in the tanneries.
jElders, or Guelders, a province of the Netherlands,
coiposed out of the ancient province of the same name,
ji tie addition of the districts of Sevenaer, Huissen, and
fl'lshurg, ceded by Prussia. It extends over 2094 square
tl" i!’ ai - n°nt"Uns 24,9’177 inhabitants. On the sea shore
and is flat; and, by being well drained and embanked,
fertile in pasture. In the island formed by the Leek,
i Khme and the Waal, it is sandy and rather hilly; and
e south of the Maas it is boggy and marshy. It is
Muered as the most healthy of the provinces of the Ne-
w |IKiS" ^!e chief products °i the soil are butter, cheese,
wif i UC :.w^ea.t’ ^ar*’ raI)e*seed, and oil, tobacco, hops,
GEL
J mts, and fruit. _ There is considerable manufacturing
c]|lsry exercised in making diaper and damask table-
i* and other linen, in tanneries, in paper-making, in
AilY’ • V1 other iron g°ods- The division is into four
WThief' tlat °* ^rnllem’ 0jt> Zutphen, of Nemwegen,
th Furghtegott, was born on
hb ather at HaynJrchen’ near Freyberg, where
soi i i 38 a, c'ergynian* He was extraordinary profes-
Wur r/1 '' at ^eipsic, and a distinguished writer
)l x 6 ^ermans' ^ hen only thirteen years of age he
showed himself possessed of poetical genius ; but having
none to guide his taste for composition, he was led to imi¬
tate Gunther, Neukerch, and Hanke, men of indifferent
abilities. He studied theology at Leipsic in 1734, and re¬
turned home at the expiration of four years, when he com¬
menced public speaker; but his timid disposition prevented
him from shining as an orator in the pulpit. The delicacy
of his constitution forbidding him to aspire after extensive
learning, he confined himself to the acquisition of that
which might render him useful. He was much respected
for his first attempts in poetry, called Amusements of Rea¬
son^ and Wit, which appeared in 1742.
The labour which he found requisite for the composition
o sermons inclined him to lay aside the clerical profession,
and devote himself wholly to the instruction of youth, in
which he not only implanted knowledge in the minds of his
pupils, but also inspired them with the love of religion and
virtue. He was made master of arts in 1744, and publish¬
ed the fiist volume of his Fables in the ensuing yGar. His
Swedish Cotmtess was the first German romance deserving
of notice. He gave the world the second part of his Fa¬
bles in 1748, although two years before this period he had
been much afflicted with an hypochondriacal affection. In
1/51 he was solicited to accept the office of extraordinary
professor of philosophy, together with a decent salary, which
was augmented on the termination of the war.
Assailed by unconquerable lowness of spirits and con¬
firmed melancholy, lie still exhibited the same patience,
resignation, and universal philanthropy, as he had ever
shown, qualities which excited the admiration of the enemy
during the war. His sufferings continued to increase in
severity, and at last terminated his existence on the 13th
of December 1769. He contributed much to the improve¬
ment of the taste and morals of his countrymen, and their
gratitude for his services made them deeply lament his
loss. His praise was resounded by every voice, and his
likeness was cast in gypsum and moulded in wax; it was
engraved on copper, and represented in sculpture and in
painting.
^ It is said of this amiable man and captivating writer, bv
Kutner, who wrote the lives of German authors, that it
will probably be a century before the appearance of another
poet, so fully qualified to excite the love and admiration of
his contemporaries, and to obtain so powerful an influence
o\ ci the taste and habits of thinking of all descriptions of
men. It would indicate too much partiality to call him a
genius of the first class, but he certainly was a most agree¬
able and fertile writer; a poet to whom religion and vir¬
tue are deeply indebted; an able reformer of public man¬
ners, and fonder of affording consolation than of plunging
into despondency. “ As long,” says Kutner, “as the Ger¬
mans shall understand their present language, will the works
of Gellert be read; and his character will be honoured
while virtue is known and respected.” The following is a
list of his principal works: 1. Dissertation on the Episto-
lary Style; 2. Canticles, or Religious Poetry; 3. Moral
and Didactic Poetry; 4. Tales and Fables; 5. Comedies,
Leipsic, 1 /4o, in 8vo; 6. The Swedish Countess of C * * *
Leipsic, 1746, in 8vo; 7. Mixed Works; 8. Dissertations
on Literature and Morals, Leipsic, 1747, in 8vo; 9. Moral
Lessons, published after his death bv J. Schleeel and
G. L. Heyer, Leipsic, 1770, in 2 vols.^vo. g
GELLI, John Baptist, an eminent Italian writer, w’as
born of mean parents, at Florence, in the year 1498. He
was bred a tailor, some say a shoemaker; but he had such
an extraordinary genius, that he acquired several languages,
and made uncommon progress in the belles-lettres; and,
though he continued to work at his trade, became acquaint¬
ed with all the wits and learned men at Florence, and his
merit wras universally known. He was chosen a member
of the academy there, and the city made him a burgess.
3 B
377
Gelli.
378
GEL
GEM
Gelon.
Gellibrand He acquired the highest reputation by his works, which are,
1. Capricej del Bottajo, Florence, 1548, in 8vo; 2. La
Circe, Florence, 1549, in 8vo; 3. Two comedies in prose,
one entitled La Sporta, and the other Lo Errore ; 4. Tutti i
Trionfi, Carri, Mascherate o Canti carnascialeschi, or songs
composed for the popular festivities of Florence, from the
time of Lorenzo the Magnificent till l559 ; 5. Various
translations from the Latin, as the Hecuba of Euripides,
from the Latin of Erasmus, the Life of Alphonso of Este,
Duke of Ferrara, from the Latin of Paulus Jovius, &c.
Gelli died in 1563.
GELLIBRAND, Henry, a laborious astronomer of the
seventeenth century, was born in the year 1597. Though
he was not without prospects of advancement in the church,
yet he became so enamoured of mathematical studies, that
on the death of his father he became a student at Oxford,
contented himself with his private patrimony, and devoted
himself solely to this study. On the death of Mr Gunter,
he was recommended by Mr Briggs to the trustees of
Gresham College, for the astronomical professorship there ;
and to this he was elected in the year 1627. As Mr Briggs
died in 1630, before he had finished his Trigonometria
Britannica, the work was, at his request, completed by
Gellibrand. He wrote several other things, chiefly tend¬
ing to the improvement of navigation ; and died in 1636.
GELLIUS, Aulus, a celebrated Roman, who flourish¬
ed under Antoninus Pius, a. d. 140, and died about the
beginning of the reign of Marcus Aurelius. Of his pri¬
vate history we can only collect a few facts. He was the
disciple of Fronto and Sulpicius Apollinaris ; and as it
was still the custom in his time for the young nobility to
complete their education at Athens, it appears that Gel-
lius proceeded to that city, and studied philosophy under
Taurus and Peregrinus Proteus. On his return to Rome
he attended the philosopher Favorinus, many of whose
maxims he has transmitted to us. He is known to us
particularly for a work entitled Noctes Atticce, in twenty
books, which he composed principally whilst residing on a
small property belonging to him near Athens. It is still
complete, with the exception of the eighth book. It con¬
sists of a number of extracts, which the author had made
in the perusal of Greek and Latin authors, formed into a
collection without our being able to perceive any particu¬
lar connection or methodic arrangement. It is, however,
of great value, as it furnishes us with many curious facts
respecting the language, history, and antiquities of the
ancients, as well as with numerous fragments of earlier
writers now entirely lost, by which we are enabled to clear
up many obscure points in ancient history. His style has
been too highly commended by some, and decried by
others. It is frequently careless, and there is a fondness
displayed for obsolete expressions, those particularly used
by the older comic writers, which gives it an air of affec¬
tation. Editions: Editio princeps ex recens. Jo. Andreae,
Rom. 1469, 1472; ed. cum not. et emend. Gronov. Lugd.
Bat. 1687 ; Biponti, 1784; ed. A. Lion. Gutting. 1824. (See
Steinbrenner; Erzalungen nach Aulus Gellius, Zerbst.
1829.)
GELNHAUSEN, a town, or rathercity, of Hesse Cassel,
in the province of Hanau. It is on the great road from
Frankfort to Saxony, which causes much active trade.
The situation is fine, overlooking the river Kinsig; and the
position being strong, was occupied by the Bavarian army
to impede the French in their retreat after the defeat
they had sustained at Leipsic in 1813. The Bavarians
were however defeated, and Bonaparte secured the pas¬
sage for his troops. It contains many inns, and 3140 in¬
habitants.
GELON, one of the most illustrious characters which
Sicily produced, the chief transactions of whose life ex¬
tend from the period when he became Prince of Gelon,
491, to his death, 478 b. c. He was descended from a fa-
mily who had come from Telos, an island of the Egean Sea,
into Sicily, when the city of Gela was founded. Here
Gelon was born ; and when Hippocrates fell in battle, the
inhabitants of Gela made an attempt to free themselves
from the dominion of his children. Gelon, however, es¬
poused their cause ; but when he had defeated their army,
the opportunity to make himself tyrant of his native place
was too favourable to be allowed to escape. His au-
thority being established at Gela, he was invited by some
exiles from Syracuse to use his influence to restore them
to their country. In this too he was successful, and thus
became sovereign of Syracuse, which he made the capi-
tal of his kingdom, 488 b. c.
It was now the policy of Gelon to embellish and improve
the city of which he had made himself master. To increase
its population, he compelled the inhabitants of Camarina,
of Megara, and a portion of those of Gela, to take up their
residence in his new abode j but he soon had affairs of a
more important nature to occupy his attention. The power
of the Carthaginians had already begun to make itself
felt beyond their own immediate vicinity; and Gelon
was not slow in perceiving that he must prepare for a for¬
midable contest. He made application to the Greeks for
assistance, 484 b. c.; but they refused to interfere; and
by his own resources he succeeded in defeating the Car¬
thaginians. It was now his turn to prove to the Greeks
the folly of the policy which they had pursued. He refus¬
ed to aid them, 480 b. c., when they were threatened with
invasion by Xerxes, unless they consented to declare him
commander-in-chief of the Grecian forces. To such a
proposition they would not deign to listen, and in the
mean time Gelon found sufficient employment in opposing
the attacks of the Carthaginians. The two armies met
near the city of Himera; and by a stratagem of Gelon,
the Carthaginians were completely defeated, and their ge¬
neral Ham dear killed.
From this period Gelon seems to have devoted himself
to promote the happiness of his people. He increased
the wealth of his kingdom, and employed himself infram-
in°- a code of laws on just and sound principles. On his
de'athbed he named his brother Hiero as his successor;
and the high respect with which he was regarded by the
Syracusans induced them to acquiesce in the appoint¬
ment. (Herodotus, vii. 153, 166; Diodorus Sic. xi. 21-
25. See Hiero.)
GEM, a common appellation for all precious stones,
and particularly for those which are employed in jewel¬
lery. Brilliancy of lustre, richness of hue, and the most
perfect transparency, are the desiderata of this class of
minerals; and the value of those specimens in which such
characters are combined is enhanced according to their
size, in an extremely rapid ratio. At the head of the
gems stands the diamond, which, for brilliancy of lustre,
or water as it is termed, has not a rival. As else¬
where stated, it is principally the production of certain
parts of Hindustan and Brazil, where it occurs in alluvial
soil, or in conglomerate of the most recent formation.
The oriental ruby, when perfect in transparency and co¬
lour, and of considerable size, vies with the diamond in
value. Its most noted locality is the Capellan Mountains,
near Syrian, in the kingdom of Ava. Next in order is
the sapphire, which varies from a rich dark blue to a very
slight tinge of the same colour, sometimes presents distinc
colours in the same specimen, and is frequently transparen
and colourless. It is met with in considerably larger masses
than the preceding, and is only found in Ceylon,
peculiar colour of the emerald is well known. No gem
more frequently made mention of in sacred history, an
none even at the present day stands in higher estima io
amongst the crowned heads of the East. The aquaman
Gem,
t
i
appe
a oian
GEM
.of lapidaries is, mineralogically speaking, a pale-blue va-
•iety of the same species, though one of very inferior va-
ue. Topazes occur under an infinity of forms, and are
bund in most quarters of the globe. From the changes
diich they undergo when exposed to heat, besides the
ine colours they present naturally, topazes are peculiarly
dapted to the purposes of the lapidary. The richest co-
wred garnets are the production of Ceylon and Green-
ind. Chrysolites of a brilliant pale-green colour are
rought to Great Britain from Constantinople; hyacinths
fa deep red from Ceylon; and tourmalines of a great
ariety of hues from all parts of the world. The opal,
nd many varieties of quartz, as the amethyst, onyx,
irde, cats-eye, and agate, are also occasionally included
nder the general denomination of gem.
Generally speaking, the different species of precious
;ones occur in small masses. All of them are found in a
rystalline state, and present the peculiar forms which
ature has assigned them. Many of these forms are sin-
ularly beautiful; and their variety, particularly in the
iamond and topaz species, is as great as any other class
If the mineral kingdom affords. It is not, however, un-
er these splendid forms that the gems are most com-
lonly found. Most of them are the productions of In-
ia, Ceylon, Pegu, or Brazil, where, having been washed
om their matrix in some of the primitive ranges, they are
Elected, in a rolled and rubbed state, in the channels of
ic rivers. Every trace of their original form is thus fre-
jently lost; and, to add to the distress of the crystallo-
•apher, fine stones rarely come through the hands of In-
an lapidaries without receiving farther abrasion or cut-
ling. This circumstance of their so rarely presenting
stinctive forms renders the peculiar hardness of this
ass of stones a most important characteristic, and one
Inch, whatever be their external shape or appearance,
m never be mistaken. By this means too the real stone
easily distinguished from the fictitious, which is occa-
nnally made to bear so close a similitude, that an un-
actised eye finds it almost impossible to detect the dif-
rence.
GEMAPPE, or Jemmappes, a village of the Nether-
nds, in the province of Hainault, near the river Scheldt,
i the road from Valenciennes to Mons. It is remarkable
i the victory gained by the French under Dumouriez
er the Austrians in 1792, by which the former became
isters of the Austrian Netherlands.
GEMBLOUX, a town of the province of Namur, in the
cle of that name. It is situated on the river Orneau,
*contains 1660 inhabitants, who are employed mostly
the iron manufacture. It is remarkable for the battle
j ight near it in 1578, when the Austrians were defeated
1 the Spanish army under the command of Don Juan of
- istria.
GEMINI, in Astronomy, the Twins, a constellation or
• 'Z p i^16 zocHac’ t^ie third in order, representing Castor
ad 1 ollux. These names are also given to two stars in
t s constellation. Castor is a star of the third, and Pol-
°tthe second magnitude. The former, seen through a
'cscope, is a beautiful double star, that is, two stars of the
i and sixth magnitudes, one of which revolves about
'■other, forming a binary system.
aEMlNIANI, a celebrated musician and composer, was
1 n at Lucca in the year 1680. He received his first in¬
actions in music from Alessandro Scarlatti; and after
Ji0 ;^Came a Pupd of Carlo Ambrosio Lunati, surnamed
v\ T>) U* a mos*' celebrated performer on the violin ; after
flA * a f • became a disciple of Corelli, and under him
A led Jus studies on that instrument. In the year 1714
towfi!-0 ^n8land, where in a short time he so recom-
D'tv6 , ims<df by his exquisite performance, that all who
esse to love and understand music were captivated
GEM
379
with hearing him. Many of the nobility laid claim to the Geminiani.
honour of being his patrons ; but he seemed chiefly to at-
tach himself to Baron Kilmansegge, chamberlain to King
George I. as elector of Hanover, and a favourite of that
prince. In 1716 he published and dedicated to his patron
twelve sonatas a violino, violone, e cembalo; the first six with
fugues, or double stops as they are vulgarly called; the
last with airs of various measures, such as allemandes, cou-
rantes, and jiggs. This publication was so well relished by
the baron, that he mentioned Geminiani to the king as an
excellent performer; in consequence of which our musi¬
cian had the honour to perform before his majesty, in con¬
cert with the celebrated Handel, who played on the harpsi¬
chord. But though Geminiani was exceedingly admired,
yet he had not a talent for associating music with poetry,
nor do we find that he ever became a public performer;
he was therefore^ obliged to depend for his subsistence on
the friendship of his patrons and the profits which accrued
to him from teaching. He had also the misfortune to be
an enthusiast in painting ; and the versatility of his temper
was such, that, in order to gratify this passion, he not only
suspended his studies, and neglected to exercise his talents,
but involved himself in debts. In 1727 he was offered the
place of master and composer of the state music in Ireland ;
but this could not be conferred on a Catholic, and Gemi¬
niani refused to change his religion; upon which it was
given to Matthew Dubourg, a young man who had been
one ot his pupils, and was a celebrated performer on the
violin. Geminiani then set himself to compose parts to the
opera quinta of Corelli ; or, in other words, to make con¬
certos of the first six of his solos. This work he complet¬
ed, and, with the help of a subscription, at the head of
which were^ the names of the royal family, published in
1726. In 1 / 52 he published his opera seconda, which con¬
tains a celebrated minuet that goes by his name. He pub¬
lished many other pieces, the profits of which did not much
mend his circumstances; but this perhaps was owing to
his rambling disposition and enthusiastic fondness for paint¬
ing. He was also an utter stranger to the business of an
orchestra, and had no idea of the labour and pains neces¬
sary in the instruction of singers for the performance of
music to which they were strangers. The consequence of
this was, that a concerto spirituale, which he had advertised
for his own benefit in 1748, failed in the performance. The
audience, however, compassionated his distress, and sat
very silent till the books were changed ; when the perfor¬
mance was continued with compositions of the author’s
own, which he executed in such a manner as has never
been forgotten. The profits arising from this performance
enabled him to take a journey to Paris, where he staid
long enough to get plates engraven for a score of solos, and
the parts of two operas of concertos. About the year 1755
he returned to England, and advertised them for sale. In
1761 Geminiani went over to Ireland, and was kindly en¬
tertained there by Mr Matthew Dubourg, who had been
Ins pupil, and was then master of the king’s band in Ire¬
land. I his person, through the course of his life, had ever
been disposed to render him friendly oflices; and it was
but a short time after Geminiani’s arrival at Dublin that he
was called upon to do him the last. It appears that Gemi¬
niani had spent many years in compiling an elaborate trea¬
tise on music, which he intended for publication ; but soon
after his arrival at Dublin, by the treachery of a female ser¬
vant, who, it was said, had been recommended to him for
no other end than that she might steal it, it was conveyed
away, and could not be recovered. The greatness of this
loss, and his inability to repair it, made a deep impression
on his mind, and, as it is conjectured, hastened his end ; at
least he survived it but a short time, ending his days on the
17th ot September 1762. The following list comprehends
the whole ot his publications, except two or three articles
380 GEN GEN
Gemish- of small account, viz. twelve solos for a violin, opera prima ; tors, or a summary account of the relations and alliances Genea]
khana six concertos in seven parts, opera seconda; six concertos of a person or family, both in the direct and collateralgica^.
I 11. in seven parts, opera terza} twelve solos for a violin, ope- line. T-he word is Grieek, ytvrctXciy/a, which is formed of |
Genealogy.qUarfa . six sojos for a violoncello, opera quinta; the ysvos, race or lineage, and Xoyog, discourse. Genm.'
' same made into solos for a violin; six concertos from his GENEALOG1CA Arbor, or Tree of Consanguinity, tion'
opera quarta ; six concertos in eight parts, opera settima ; signifies a genealogy or lineage drawn out under the figure W','v
rules for playing in taste ; a treatise on good taste ; the ait of a tree, with its root, tiunk 01 stem, and hianclies. ^he
of playing the violin ; twelve sonatas from his first solos, genealogical degrees are usually represented in circles,
opera undecima ; llipieno parts to ditto ; lessons for the ranged over, under, and beside each other. This the
harpsichord ; Guido Armonica ; supplement to this ; the Greeks called stemmata, a word signifying crown, garland,
art of accompaniment, two books ; his first two operas of or the like.
concertos in score ; and the Enchanted Forest. Of his GENERAL, an appellation given to whatever belongs
solos the opera prima is esteemed the best. Of his con- to a whole genus.
certos some are excellent, others of them scarcely pass the General, in the art of wrar, he who commands a bri-
bounds of mediocrity. The sixth of the third opera not gade, a division, a corps, or an army. See Army.
only surpasses all the rest, but, in the opinion of the best General is also used for the chief of an order of monks,
judges of harmony, is the finest instrumental composition or of all the houses and congregations established under
extant. the same rule. Thus we say the general of the Francis-
GEMISHKHANA, or Silver-house, a town of Asia cans, Cistertians, and so on.
Minor, on the borders of Armenia, so called from a silver GENERALISSIMO, called also captain-general, and
mine in its neighbourhood, which, however, has greatly simply general, is an officer who commands all the mili-
declined in its produce. The town is better built than tary powers of a nation; who gives orders to all the other
most towns in the Turkish dominions, and is said to con- general officers, and receives no orders himself excepting
tain 7000 inhabitants. It is thirty miles south from Tre- from the king. M. Balzac observes, that the Cardinal de
Richelieu first coined this word, of his own absolute au-
GEMONIiE ScALiE, or Gradus Gemonii, amongst the thority, upon his going to command the French army in
Romans, was much the same as gallows or gibbet in Eng- Italy. _ # .
land. Some say they were thus denominated from the GrEisERATE3 in Music, is used to signify the opera-
person who raised them; others, from the first criminals tion of that mechanical power in nature, which every
who suffered on them; and others, from the verb gemo, I sound has in producing one or more different sounds,
sigh or groan. The gradus gemonii, according to Publius Thus any given sound, however simple, produces along
Victor or Sextus Rufus, was a place raised on several with itself its octave, and two other sounds extremely
steps, whence criminals were precipitated ; others repre- sharp, namely, its twelfth above, that is to say, the octave
sent it as a place whereon offenders were executed, and of its fifth, and the other the seventeenth above, or, in
afterwards exposed to public view. The gemoniae scalce other words, the double octave of its third major. Whe-
were in the tenth region of the city, near the temple of ther we suppose this procreation of sounds to result from
Juno. Camillus first appropriated the place to this use in an aptitude in the texture and magnitude of certain par-
the year of Rome 358. tides in the air, for conveying to our ears vibrations that
GENAPPE, a town of the Netherlands, in the province bear those proportions, one to another, as being deter-
of South Brabant, between Brussels and Namur. Being mined at once by the partial and total oscillations of any
near to Waterloo, it became the scene of some bloody con- musical string, or from whatever economy of nature we
flicts on the evening after the great battle of the 18th of choose to trace it, the power of one sound thus to pro-
June 1815. It contains 1400 inhabitants. duce another, when in action, is said to generate. Ihe
GENDER, among grammarians, a division of nouns, or same word is applied by Signior Martini and his followers,
names, to distinguish the two sexes. This was the origi- to any two sounds which, when simultaneously heard, pro-
nal intention of gender; but afterwards words, which had duce a third. _
no proper relation either to the one sex or the other, had GENERATED, or Genited, is used by some matne-
genders assigned them, and this was at length established matical writers for whatever is produced, either in arith-
by custom. Hence genders vary according to the lan- metic, by the multiplication, division, or extraction o
guages, or even according to the words introduced from roots; or in geometry, by the finding of the contents,
one language into another. Thus, arbor in Latin is femi- areas, and sides; or of extreme and mean proportionas,
nine, but arbre in French is masculine; and dens in Latin without arithmetical addition and subtraction,
is masculine, but dent in French is feminine. The orien- GENERATING Line, or Figure, in Geometry,^ ^
tal languages frequently neglect the use of genders, and which, by its motion of revolution, produces any ot er
the Persian language has none at all. The Greeks and figure, plane, or solid.
Latins generally content themselves with expressing the GENERATION, in See Physiology.
genders by different terminations ; as bonus equus, a good Generation is used, though somewhat improper), o
horse; bona equa, a good mare. But in English we fre- genealogy, or the series of children issuing from t ic sarn
quently go farther, and express the difference of sex by stock. Thus the gospel of St Matthew commences wi
different words, as boar, sow; boy, girl; buck, doe; bull, the book of the generation of Jesus Christ. Ihe a
cow; cock, hen ; dog, bitch, and so of others. We have only and more accurate translators, oi generation u
about twenty-four feminines distinguished from the males the word genealogy. or
by the variation of the termination of the male into ess ; Generation is also used to signify a Pe0P^e’ race’ -
of which number are abbot, abbess ; count, countess ; ac- nation, especially in the literal translations of the c Pj
tor, actress; heir, heiress ; prince, princess, which is all ture, where the word generally occurs wherever tea
that our language knows of any thing like genders. The has generatio, and the Greek yei/£07f. or
Greek and Latin, besides the masculine and feminine, Generation is also used in the sense of an age>^
have the neuter, common, and doubtful gender ; and like- the ordinary period of man’s life. 1 hus we say,
wise the epicene, or promiscuous, which under one single third and fourth generation. In this sense his o
gender and termination includes both the kinds. usually reckon a generation the space of thirty-three y
GENEALOGY, an enumeration of a series of ances- or thereabouts.
.
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GEN
■jtor GENERATOR, in Music, signifies the principal sound
r sounds by which others are produced. Thus the lowest
va- ; for the treble of the harpsichord, besides its octave,
w vill strike an attentive ear with its twelfth above, or G in
it, and with its seventeenth above, or E in alt. The C,
icrefore, is called their generator, the G and E its pro-
acts or harmonics. But in the approximation of chords
ir G, its octave below is substituted, which constitutes a
fth from the generator, or lowest C ; and for E, is like-
ise substituted its fifteenth below, which, with the above-
icntioned C, forms a third major. To the lowest notes,
icrefore, exchanged for those in alt by substitution, the
enominations of products or harmonics are likewise given,
hilst the C retains the name of their generator. But still,
^cording to the system of Tartini, two notes in concord,
hich when sounded produce a third, may be termed the
incurring generators of that third. (See Generation
tarmonique, by M. Rameau ; also the delineation of
artini’s system, called The Power and Principles of Har-
ony.)
GENESIS, the first book of the Old Testament, con-
ining the history of the creation, and of the lives of the
•st patriarchs. The book of Genesis stands at the head
’ the Pentateuch. Its author is held to be Moses, and
contains the relation of 2369 years, or from the begin-
ng of the world till the death of Joseph. The Jews were
• rbidden to read the beginning of Genesis, and the be-
nning of Ezekiel, until they had attained thirty years of
re. The Hebrews call this book Beraschith, because it
:gins with that word, which, in their language, signifies
principio, or in the beginning. The Greeks give it the
ime Genesis, Ysvi<fi(, production, generation, because it
gins with the history of the production or generation of
1 beings. This book, besides the history of the creation,
mtains an account of the original innocence and fall of
an; the propagation of mankind ; the rise of religion ;
e general defection and corruption of the world; the
duge; the restoration of the world; the division and
nopling of the earth; and the history of the first patri-
chs till the death of Joseph. It was easy for Moses to
! satisfied of the truth of what he delivered in this book,
cause it came down to him through a few hands; for
I 3m Adam to Noah there was one man, Methuselah, who
'cd long enough to see them both ; in like manner Shem
nversed with Noah and Abraham, Isaac with Abraham
id Joseph, from whom the records of this book might
Ifsily be conveyed to Moses by Amram, who was con-
mporary with Joseph.
Genesis, in Geometry, denotes the formation of a line,
ane, or solid by the motion or flowing of a point, line,
surface.
GENETHLIA, in Antiquity, a solemnity observed in
emory of some person deceased.
GENE fHLIACI, in Astrology, persons who erect ho-
scopes, or pretend to foretell what shall befall a man by
?ans of the stars which presided at his nativity. The
Drd is formed from the Greek origin, generation,
i tivity. fhe ancients called them Chaldcei, and also by
c general name ot mathematici; accordingly, the various
'il and canon laws, which we find made against the ma-
ematicians, only respect the genethliaci or astrologers.
iey were expelled from Rome by a formal decree of the
nate, and yet found so much protection from the credu-
y of the people that they remained unmolested in the
|[y- Hence an ancient author speaks of them as homi¬
ng genus quod m civ date nostra semper et vetabitur et re-
| <ebitur.
GENEVA, a canton of Switzerland, comprehending the
y of that name, and the territory around it to the ex-
ot of about ninety-eight square miles, with about 44,000
mbitants, four fifths of whom reside within the city.
GEN
Geneva, the largest city of Switzerland, is situated on the
Lake of Geneva, where the river Rhone issues from it, and
is divided by that river into two parts of unequal size. The
streets are narrow, the houses lofty, and the appearance,
except on the boulevards, is gloomy. It contains five re¬
formed, one Lutheran, and one Catholic church, and about
30,000 inhabitants. It is a place of great activity in many
branches of manufacture. The chief of these in amount
is watchmaking and jewellery, in which many workmen are
employed. lanning, calico-printing, twine-spinning, hat¬
making, whitesmiths’ work, copper utensils, saddlery, silk
and woollen shawls, besides copperplate and letterpress
printing, are all occupations carried on, and the amount
of which exported to other countries is very considerable.
I he fisheries in the Lake of Geneva and on the Rhone are
also important branches of industry. Many individuals
are said to have amassed very large fortunes, which they
employ extensively in speculations in the funds of all na¬
tions, in banking, and in exchanges.
Much learning still exists in the city, and in former
times it produced men of eminence in most branches of
literature and science, among wdiom may be mentioned
Calvin, Diodati, Tronchen, Casaubon, Rousseau, Neckar,
Bonnet, and others. Long. 6. 4. 49. E. Lat. 46. 12.15. N.
See Switzerland.
Geneva Lake. This lake is in the shape of a crescent.
Switzerland forms the hollow, and Savoy the convex part,
the greatest breadth being about twelve miles. The coun¬
try on the side of Savoy is full of high and craggy moun¬
tains ; but from Geneva to the environs of Lausanne it
slopes to the margin of the lake, and is very rich and fer¬
tile. The banks rise considerably in the neighbourhood
of Lausanne, and form a most beautiful terrace, with a
rapid descent a few miles beyond the town. In the neigh¬
bourhood of Vevay a plain begins, and continues for a
great way beyond the end of the lake, but is contracted
towards the water by the approach of the mountains. The
lake itself appears at a distance of a beautiful blue colour,
and the water is very clear and transparent. Near Ge¬
neva the coast of the lake abounds with pebbles; between
that city and Lausanne it is sandy; from thence to Chillon
it is bounded by hard calcareous rocks ; and the extremity
of the shores is a marsh formed by mud collected from
the river Rhone. The greatest depth of this lake found
by M. de Luc is a hundred and sixty fathoms.
Geneva, or Gin, among distillers, an ordinary malt spi¬
rit, distilled a second time, with the addition of some ju¬
niper berries.
GENEVIEVE, Fathers or Religious of, the name of
a congregation of regular canons of the order of St Augus¬
tin, established in France. The congregation takes its
name from the abbey of St Genevieve, which is the chief
of the order, and whose abbot is the general thereof. The
abbey itself took its name from St Genevieve, the patroness
of the city of Paris, who died in the year 512. Five years
after her death, Clovis erected the church of St Genevieve,
under the name and invocation of St Peter, where her re¬
lics are still, or were till lately preserved, her shrine visit¬
ed, and her image carried in procession with great cere¬
mony upon extraordinary occasions.
GENEVOIS, a province of Savoy, with the title of
dukedom, in the kingdom of Sardinia, and on the borders
of Switzerland. It extends over 682 square miles, contains
three cities, and 147 towns and villages, with 69,867 in¬
habitants. By the congress of Vienna this province, as
well as those of Chablais Faussigny, and the upper part of
Chambery, wherein Rumelly is situated, are declared to
be for ever neutral territories. The capital of the pro¬
vince is Annecy.
GENIAL, an epithet given by the Pagans to certain
gods who were supposed to preside over generation. The
381
Geneva
Lake
I!
Genial.
382
GEN
GEN
Genii genial gods, says Festus, were Earth, Air, Fire, and Water.
II The twelve signs, together with the sun and moon, were
Genlis. ajso sometimes ranked in the number.
GENII, a sort of intermediate beings, believed by the
Mahommedans to exist, between men and angels. They
are of a grosser fabric than the latter, but much more ac¬
tive and powerful than the former. Some of them are
good, others bad, and they are capable of future salvation
or damnation like men. The orientals pretend that these
genii inhabited the world many thousand years before the
creation of Adam, under the reigns of several princes,
who all bore the common name of Solomon; that falling
at length into an almost general corruption, Eblis was
sent to drive them into a remote part of the earth, there
to be confined; and that some of that generation still re¬
maining were by Tahmurath, one of the ancient kings of
Persia, forced to retreat into the famous mountain of Kaph.
They also established several ranks and degrees among
this kind of beings, some being called absolutely Jin,
others Peri or fairies; some Div or giants, others Tac-
win or fates.
GENITES, among the Hebrews, those descended from
Abraham, who were without any mixture of foreign blood.
The Greeks distinguished by the name of genites such
of the Jews as were descended from parents who, during
the Babylonish captivity, had not allied with any gentile
family.
GENITIVE, in Grammar, the second case of the de¬
clension of nouns. The relation of one thing considered
as belonging in some manner to another, has occasioned
a peculiar termination of nouns, called the genitive case ;
but in the modern languages a sign is made use of to ex¬
press the relation of this case. In English the particle of,
in French de or du, is prefixed. But in strictness there are
no cases in either of these languages, inasmuch as they
do not express the different relations of things by differ¬
ent terminations, but by prepositions, which is otherwise
in the Latin.
GENIUS, a good or evil spirit or demon, whom the an¬
cients supposed to watch over every person, to direct his
birth, accompany him in life, and be his guard till death.
Amongst the Romans the name genius was, according to
Festus, given to the god who had the power of doing all
things, deum qm vim obtineret rerum omnium gerendarum ;
but Vossius (Z>e Idoli) prefers reading genendarum, and
Censorious frequently uses gerere for gignere. According¬
ly St Augustin (De Civitate Dei) relates, after Varro, that
the genius was a god who had the power of generating all
things, and presided over them when produced. Festus
adds that Aufustius spake of the genius as the son of god,
and the father of men, who gave them life. Others, how¬
ever, represented the genius as the peculiar or tutelary god
of each place; and it is certain that the last is the most
usual meaning of the word. The ancients had their genii
of nations, of cities, of provinces, and the like. Nothing
is more common than the inscription on medals of Genius
Populi Rom., the genius of the Roman people; or Genio
Pop. Rom., to the genius of the Roman people. In this
sense genius and lar were the same thing; as, in effect,
Censorinus and Apulius affirm they were.
Genius, in literature and the fine arts, a natural talent
or disposition to do one thing more than another, or the
aptitude a man has received from nature to perform well
and easily that which others can do but indifferently and
with a great deal of pains.
GENLIS, an arrondissement of the department of the
Oise, in France, extending over 530 square miles. It is
divided into seven cantons, and these into 151 communes,
inhabited by 73,912 persons. The capital, of the same
name, is a city situated on the river Nonnette. It is an ill-
built place. The cathedral has the loftiest tower of any in
France. It contains nine other churches, two hospitals <• \
with 940 dwellings, and 4520 inhabitants. It has manu- w!”91’
factories of linen, lace, leather, cutlery, and some cotton ^
spinning. Long. 2. 29. 53. E. Lat. 49. 12. 8. N.
GENOA, a duchy forming a part of the kingdom of
Sardinia, in Italy, which, till the congress of Vienna, was
the ancient republic of that name. On the north it is
bounded by Piedmont, Parma, and Tuscany, on the east
by Massa-Corrara, on the south by the Mediterranean
Sea, and on the west by Nice. It extends over 2420
square miles. It vras before transferred to the king 0f
Sardinia, and divided into provinces ; but when the Ligu-
rian republic was established by the French, it was by them
formed into four departments. These lines of demarca¬
tion have, however, been abolished, and now the duchy is
formed into fifteen circles or arrondissements, the bounda¬
ries and extent of which are not accurately defined, but
each of which has its separate intendancy. The popula¬
tion is 009,500, living in nineteen cities and 725 towns
and villages.
The duchy is a narrow strip of land bordering on the
Mediterranean, and enclosed by the Apennines, .which
separate it from the rest of Italy. It may be viewed in
two parts : Istf, The mountains, which are mostly bare and
barren, except in some valleys between them, and are im¬
passable, except by two roads which lead to Piedmont
and eastern Italy; 2dly, the sea-coast, where the land
rises slip by slip in the form of terraces, and is for the most
part sandy on the lower elevation; whilst on the higher,
what little soil there is is mixed with slate.
The greater part of the land belongs to the old Genoese
noble families, or to the clergy; and the cultivator either
farms it at a rent in produce, or on joint account with the
proprietor. The whole duchy scarcely grows as much
wheat, maize, and barley, as serves for three months’ con¬
sumption. and the deficiency is supplied either from Pied¬
mont or from more remote countries. The chief product
of the soil is the olive, the oil of which forms the most
valuable article of export; but besides that, large quan¬
tities of oranges, citrons, pomegranates, and pine-apples,
are sent to France, to Switzerland, and to Germany. Figs,
almonds, capers, truffles, and morels, are exported to more
distant markets. Chestnuts are grown abundantly on the
mountains, and, with potatoes, form among the poorer
classes substitutes for bread. The wine in general is of a
bad quality, with few and insignificant exceptions. The
cultivation of silk is moderate in quantity and inferior in
quality. The fishery is pursued wdth little success, as the
fish is scarce, except those of the smaller kinds.
The manufactures sank during the revolutionary scenes
which the republic of Genoa witnessed; but they have
been gradually returning to their former prosperity oflate
years. They now make silks and silk hosiery, fine thin
wroollens, hats, shoes, paper, chocolate, white lead, silver
goods, and much candied fruit, which form articles of ex¬
port. The restoration of the Bank of St George, which
has now a capital of 1,220,000 livres, has been found high¬
ly beneficial to commerce. The other sea-ports, besides
Genoa, are Spezzia, Savona, Porto Maurizzio, Vintigmiha,
Finale, and Sestri. The population at present amounts to
about 80,000.
Genoa, a city, the capital of the duchy of that name,
is the seat of an archbishop, of the government boards,
and of the senate. It is in the form of an amphitheatre,
the streets rising above one another from the sea-shore,
so that it has a magnificent appearance at a distance, h
is surrounded with fortifications, which are very extensive,
as they enclose both gardens and fields. The interior o
the enclosure or city consists of irregular and narrow
streets, in which magnificent palaces and houses six sto¬
ries high are crowded together. The Strada Novi an
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/he Strada Balbi, which consist of palaces, are not more
'-Jian twenty-four feet wide, and the Piazza Reale is the
jnly part which is tolerably open and airy. The city con-
ains, besides the cathedral, fifty-two parish churches, and
sixty-nine others belonging to different convents. There
ire several hospitals, two of which receive 1000 patients
>ach, and several other charitable institutions. There is
i university, with a library of 70,000 volumes and 1000
nanuscript works, besides other establishments for in-
truction in the fine arts and the sciences.
The most remarkable object is the harbour, enclosed
iy two moles, each 7000 feet in length, at the termination
if which stand the light-houses. It is capable of receiving
hips of the greatest draught of water, which are secure
gainst all winds but that directly south. More than 3000
essels, besides coasters, enter it yearly. The inhabitants
re industrious, and provide many articles for commerce,
/Inch are noticed in the account of the duchy in this
/ork. The theatres and other conveniences are numer-
us, and splendidly conducted, as in other Italian cities,
jong. 8. 53. 2. E. Lat. 44. 23. 48. N.
GENOVESI, Anthony, an eminent Italian writer, was
orn on the 1st of November 1712, at Castiglione, near
alerno, in the kingdom of Naples. From his earliest
ears he showed an uncommon capacity ; but after receiv-
ig such education as his native village could afford, his
ither obliged him to devote himself to the study of scho-
istic theology, with a view to the ecclesiastical profes-
on. In a short time he distinguished himself as a pro-
cient in dialectics; but having formed an attachment to
young woman, he was on the point of sacrificing to her
1 his professional prospects, when his father, who had
otained a knowledge of the circumstance, removed him
) another village, where he found a priest who diverted
is attention to different objects. Having been afterwards
^communicated by the Archbishop of Conza, for acting
part in a comedy, he returned to Castiglione, where,
aving found his mistress married, he re-assumed the cas-
>ck, and took priest’s orders at Salerno in 1736. Here
e soon distinguished himself so much by his talents and
aowledge, that the archbishop of this town confided to
im the chair of eloquence. At this period Genovesi was
mere school theologian ; but a friend of his, a young ec-
esiastic, now made him aware that there were sources
f knowledge beyond the scholastic sphere, more exten-
ve, more interesting, and more real, than those to which
6 had hitherto applied. Genovesi entered into this new
itellectual world by the perusal of some romances ; from
iese he proceeded to the study of history ; and, stepping
om one subject to another, he finally applied himself to
le study of modern philosophy, and read with attention
ie works of Leibnitz and Locke. In the hope of acquiring
ill further information, he repaired to the capital; and
> he did not possess the necessary means of maintaining
imself there, he resolved to exercise the profession of ad-
icate; but having become disgusted with the details of
ractice, he soon sacrificed his hopes of fortune to the
leasures of study. He improved his knowledge of the
reek, and of several of the modern languages, attended
1 the most celebrated professors of the university of
spies, and soon perceived the imperfections of the exist-
g system of public instruction.
Notwithstanding the progress which philosophy had
ade in other countries, the kingdom of Naples was, at
iat period, in a state almost retrograde, or at least sta-
onary. Genovesi felt this, and he resolved to accom-
ish certain reforms in the system of education, with a
ew to the amelioration of the condition of his country-
en. None ever succeeded better in this generous de-
gn. Although there existed at Naples a university ce-
brated for the learning of several of its professors, the
pupils had long been accustomed to carry on their studies Genovesi.
in private schools. Genovesi having conceived the design
of opening one of these seminaries, he procured the ap¬
pointment of extraordinary professor of metaphysics in
the university, in order that he might appear before the
public in a known character. He had formed peculiar
methods of his own in all the faculties which constitute
the philosophical course ; and his first essays induced him
to publish his Elements of Metaphysics, of which the first
volume appeared in 1743, and afterwards, in 1745, his
System of Logic.
In these two works he made ample use of the doctrines
of Bacon, Descartes, Leibnitz, and Locke; and having
substituted philosophical doubt for implicit belief, the ob¬
servation of nature for the speculations of the schools, and
reason for authority, this was sufficient to cause him to
be denounced as an infidel, or at least as an irreligious
person, by those who still adhered to the scholastic me¬
thods. He would probably have fallen a sacrifice to these
prejudices, had he not been supported by Galiani, archbi¬
shop of Tarentum, grand almoner of the king, and grand
master of the university; but notwithstanding this protec¬
tion, he experienced some trouble and difficulty in obtain¬
ing the professorship of moral philosophy; and he was dis¬
appointed in an attempt to procure the chair of theology.
The unjust and obstinate hostility which he suffered on
account of his theological works diverted him, for some
time, from this dangerous path of inquiry, and brought
him back to that of philosophy. He published a continu¬
ation of his Elements of Metaphysics, but, with every new
volume, he continued to experience the censures and oppo¬
sition of the partisans of the scholastic routine. Amongst
these were the Cardinal Spinelli, archbishop of Naples,
and an Abbe Magli, whom Genovesi covered with ridi¬
cule, in his work entitled Lettere a un Amico Provinciale.
In spite of these continual jarrings, Genovesi obtained the
approbation and esteem of Pope Benedict XIV., of seve¬
ral cardinals, and of most of the learned men who at that
period flourished in Italy. Of this number was Intieri, a
Florentine, who having spent a long time at Naples, be¬
came much attached to that country. This man, as dis¬
tinguished for his philanthropical qualities as for the ex¬
tent and solidity of his acquirements, was still more esti¬
mable on account of the use which he made of his for¬
tune. It is to him that Italy is indebted for her first
chair of political economy; he founded it, at his own ex¬
pense, with the sanction of government, in the university
of Naples, under three conditions, namely, that the lec¬
tures should be given in Italian, that Genovesi should
be the first professor, and that, after his death, no ec¬
clesiastic should succeed him.
Genovesi opened his first course of lectures on the 5th
of November 1754, with great success. The novelty and
the interest of the subject, the eloquent style and agree¬
able manner of the professor, attracted a crowd of auditors,
and made a deep and lively impression. Nothing, indeed,
was talked of but agriculture and commerce. To gratify
the taste of the public for these new inquiries, he after¬
wards published his Lectures on Commerce, and Carey’s
Account of the Trade of England, translated into Italian
by his brother, and enriched with notes by himself. His
Lectures on Commerce was indisputably the most interest¬
ing work he had hitherto published. There are some
errors, indeed, in his method, and even in his doctrines ;
but the work contains many important truths relative to
every department of public administration, and a good
application of analysis to subjects which had not hitherto
been sufficiently investigated. Finally, it had the merit
of being the first work which introduced into Italy, and
particularly into the kingdom of Naples, a taste for the
study of political economy.
384
GEN
GEN
(lentiah. The great success of these lectures, which were deli-
  ' livered in Italian, induced Genovesi to draw up a com¬
plete code of philosophy in that language. It was at this
time the custom in Italy, and particularly at Naples, to
teach every thing in Latin ; a practice which prevented
knowledge from spreading among those classes to whom
that language was not familiar; and the Neapolitans, at
that period, wanted education perhaps more than any
other people. He had published, in Italian, his Medita-
zioni Filosqfiche, on religion and morals ; and his Lettere
Accademiche, on the utility of the arts and sciences ; a
treatise written in opposition to the well-known work of
Rousseau on that subject. Following out his plan, he be¬
gan to recast all his Latin works, to improve their form,
and to give them a more interesting character. The first
which he published was his treatise on Logic; a work
which went through several editions. He afterwards
published his Metaphysics, divided into three parts ; the
first containing an essay on cosmology, the second on the¬
ology, and the third on anthropology. In 1767, he pub¬
lished part of a work on the Science of the Rights and Du¬
ties of Man ; but this work was never completed. In all
his writings, and particularly in his Meditations and Let¬
ters, the style is somewhat affected ; at the same time
they present us with a good exposition of the ideas and
systems of the most celebrated philosophers.
After the suppression of the order of the Jesuits, when
it became a question with the government whether they
ought to be reinstate’d in their superintendence of public
instruction, Genovesi was consulted, and his advice was,
to replace the scholastic chairs by schools of mathema¬
tics, physics, and history; and he proposed one chair for
the illustration of Cicero’s Offices.
From the commencement of the year 1763, Genovesi
had felt the symptoms of a dangerous malady; but he
continued to teach and to write to the last day of his life ;
and before his death he had the satisfaction of witnessing
the great success of his labours. Since the days of Te-
lesius and Campanella, no school had attained more credit
and celebrity at Naples than that of Genovesi. Pupils,
some of them men of the most illustrious rank, flocked to
his lectures; and those who heard him generally adopted
his ideas and followed his maxims. He handled the most
abstruse subjects in the most agreeable manner, and in a
style almost poetical; a circumstance which gave him a
great command over the attention, as well as over the
judgment, of his pupils. Indeed all that Italy has since
produced in philosophical and economical science may be
said to have originated in the school which he founded.
He died of an attack of dropsy, on the 22d of September
1769, aged about fifty-seven.
The following list of Genovesi’s works is taken from
Fabroni, Vitat Ltalorum doctrina excellentium : 1. Disci-
plinarum metaphysicarum Elementa Mathematicum in mo-
rem adornata, 1744)-1751, 4 vols. 8vo; 2. Elementorum
Artis logico-criticae libri quinque, Naples, 1745 ; 3. Dis-
corso sopra alcuni trattati d’Agricoltura, ibid. 1753 ; 4.
Lettere Accademiche, ibid. 1764; 5. Storia del Commercio
della Gran Brettagna, &c. 1757 ; 6. Delle Lezioni di Com¬
mercio; 7. Discorso sopra I’Agricoltura, with a translation
of Tull s Husbandry ; 8. Discorso sul volgarizzamento del
Saggio Francese sulf Economia de’ grain, Naples, 1765;
9. Meditazioni Filosofiche sulla Religione e sulla Morale,
ibid. 1766; 10. Della Filosofia del giusto e dell’ onesto,
1766—1776, 3 vols.; ll.Universae Christianae Theologiae
elementa dogmatica, historica, critica, a posthumous work,
Venice, 1771, 2 vols. 4to.
GENTIAH, a small district of Hindustan, situated on
the north-east of Bengal, bounded on the south by Sylhet,
and on the north by the Garrow Mountains. The inha¬
bitants are Hindus of the Brahminical persuasion, and are
governed by their own rajah, who is tributary to the An
glo-Indian government.
Gentiah, the capital of the above district, lies without
the pale of the Company’s territories, being situated in
long. 91. 54. E. and lat. 25. 10. N.
GENTILE, in matters of religion, a pagan, or worship,
per of false gods. The origin of this word is deduced from
the Jews, who called all those who were not of their name
gojim, or gentes, which in the Greek translations of the
Old Testament is rendered ra sflwt; and in this sense it
frequently occurs in the New Testament. The Latin
church also used gentes in the same sense as gentiles, espe¬
cially in the New Testament. But the word gentes soon
obtained another signification, and no longer meant all such
as were not Jews, but those only who, being neither Jews
nor Christians, followed the superstitions of the Greeks and
Romans. In this sense it continued amongst the Chris¬
tian writers, till their manner of speech, together with their
religion, was publicly and by authority received in the em¬
pire ; and then, in treatises and laws concerning religion,
gentiles signified pagans, in opposition to Jews and Chris¬
tians ; and in civil affairs the word was used to signify all
such as were not Romans.
Gentile, in Roman law and history, a name which
sometimes expresses what the Romans otherwise called
barbarians, whether they were allies of Rome or not; but
this wrord was used in a more particular sense to indicate
all strangers and foreigners who were not subject to the
Roman empire.
GENTILESCHI, Horatio, an Italian painter, was
born at Pisa in 1563. After having made himself famous
at Florence, Rome, Genoa, and other parts of Italy, he re¬
moved to Savoy; whence he proceeded to France, and at
last, upon the invitation of Charles I., came over to Eng¬
land. He was well received by that king, who appointed
him lodgings in his court, together with a considerable sa¬
lary, and employed him in his palace at Greenwich, and
other public places. The most remarkable of his perform¬
ances in England, were the ceilings of Greenwich, and
York House. He also executed a Madona, a Magdalen, and
Lot with his twro daughters, for King Charles; all which he
performed admirably well. He made several attempts in
face painting, but with little success; his talent lying alto¬
gether in histories, with figures as big as the life. After
twelve years continuance in England, he died at eighty-four
years of age, and was buried in the Queen’s Chapel, at So¬
merset House.
GENTILIS, Albericus, a laborious jurisconstdt of the
sixteenth century, with more erudition than taste or judg¬
ment, was born in 1551 at Castello-di-San-Genesio, in the
march of Ancona, and studied at Perugia, where he took
the degree of doctor in civil law at the age of twenty-one.
Soon afterwards he obtained the situation of judge in the
city of Ascoli; but not having it in his power to profess
there in security the Protestant religion, of which he was
an ardent follower, he went to seek an asylum in Carniola,
and ultimately in England. During his stay at London,
where he continued for several years, he lived entirely on
the bounty of some generous friends of the sciences. At
length the Earl of Leicester, his protector, procured him,
in 1587, the chair of law in the university of Oxford, of
which he was chancellor. This place, with the appoint¬
ment which Gentilis soon afterwards received of perpe'
tual advocate of the subjects of the king of Spain, in all
causes which they might have in England, enabled him 10
spend the remainder of his days in comfort. He died at
the commencement of the year 1611. The labours o
Albericus Gentilis in jurisprudence give him but sma
claims to our esteem. His views are often erroneous, an
the sound doctrines which may be found in his works are
buried in a mass of citations without end, from the pm‘0*
Geatil
„ !
Gentilis1
Sn
GEN
'ilis ophers, fathers, poets, historians, and jurisconsults. This
'X normous erudition betrayed him into inconsistencies in
• tie- iatters of importance ; and hence has Bayle reproached
• im with having indirectly sanctioned Catholic opinions
n some controverted points, although he was otherwise a
°alous Protestant. But his treatises on the law of na-
ons have rendered his name worthy of a place in the his-
>ry of jurisprudence. His book De Jure Belli contains
tcellent views on a science which Aristotle and Cicero
j ive not even touched on ; and if the author has not suf-
:iently fathomed his subject, and too frequently decided
p the precepts of religion and morality questions which
■e purely political, he has at least the merit of having fur-
shed abundant materials to Grotius, who knew better how
■ use them. An exact list of his works may be found in
ie Memoires of Niceron (tomes xv. and xx.) ; but it may
: sufficient here to indicate the following: 1. Liber Condi-
3num, Wittemberg, 1580, 8vo ; 2. De Juris Interpreti-
js dialog! sex, London, 4to; 3. De injustitia bellica Ro-
anorum actio, Oxford, 1590, 8vo ; 4. De Jure Belli li-
•i tres, Hanau, 1598, 8vo ; 5. Disputationes duae, prima
> actoribus et spectatoribus fabularum non notandis, se-
inda de abusu mendacii, Hanau, 1599, 8vo; 6. Ad Joan-
timRainoldum de Ludis Scenicis epistolae duae, Middel-
irg, 1699, 4to; 7. Disputationes tres, prima de libris
iris Canonic!, secunda de libris Juris Civilis, tertia de
atinitate veteris Bibliorum versionis male accusata, Ha-
tu, 1604 and 1605, 8vo ; 8. De Linguarum mixtura dis-
itatio parergica, Hanau, 1604, 8vo. (a.)
Gentilis, Scipio, brother to the preceding, and also a
vilian of some note, left his native country that he might
icnly profess the Protestant religion. He obtained the
ofessorship of Roman law at Altorf, through the influence
Hugues Doneau, in which situation he soon distinguished
inself by his success as a teacher, combining considerable
arning with a brilliant imagination, and a ready elocu-
m. He died of a dysentery, on the 6th of August 1616,
, aving several works, amongst which may be mentioned,
De Donationibus inter virum et uxorem libri iv. Frank-
Urt, 1604, in 4to; 2. De Erroribus Testamentorum a
| sstatoribus ipsis commissis, et de dividuis et individuis
ligationibus, Strasburg, 1699, in 8vo.
GENTLEMAN. Under this denomination are com-
ehended all above the rank of yeomen, and hence noble-
en are truly called gentlemen.
Hie word is formed of the French gentilhomme, or ra-
, er of gentil, fine, fashionable, becoming, and the Saxon
honestus, or honesto loco natus. The same significa-
m belongs to the Italian gentilhuomo, and the Spanish hi-
■ 'kl°i or hijo dalgo, that is, the son of somebody, or a per¬
il of note. If we go farther back, we shall find gentleman
iginally derived from the Latin gentilis homo ; which was
ed amongst the Romans to signify a race of noble persons
the same name, born of free or ingenuous parents, and
^ lose ancestors had never been slaves or put to death by
j v. Hence Cicero in his Topics says, Gentiles sunt, qui
I fef se eodem sunt nomine, ah ingenuis oriundi, quorum
j yorum nemo servitutem servivit, qui capite non sunt dimi-
'ti. Some hold that it was formed from gentile, meaning
: gan; and that the ancient Franks, who conquered Gaul,
l'h converted to Christianity, were called gentiles by the
,*1 fives, as being yet heathens. Others state, that in the
;y cline of the Roman empire, as recorded by Ammianus
ircellinus, there were twro companies of brave soldiers, the
i e called gentiles, and the other scutarii; and that hence
* i derive the names gentleman and esquire. (See Esquire.)
i ns opinion is confirmed by Pasquire, who supposes the
i pellation <7ettfr7es and ecuyers to have been transmitted
II u® fr°m the Roman soldiery ; especially as it was to the
guiles and scutarii, the bravest of the soldiery, that the
yncipal benefices and portions of land were assigned.
vol. x.
GEO
385
GENTOOS. See Hindustan. Genu-
GENUFLEXION (from genu, knee, and flecto, I bend), flexion
the act of bowing or bending the knee, or rather of kneel- II
ing down. The Jesuit Rosweyd, in his Onomasticon, shows ,Geoffr°y-
that genufluxion, or kneeling, was a very ancient cus-
tom in the church, even under the Old Testament dis¬
pensation ; and that this practice was observed through¬
out all the year, excepting on Sundays, and during the time
from Easter to Whitsuntide, when kneeling was forbidden
by the council of Nice. Others have shown, that the cus¬
tom of not kneeling on Sunday had obtained from the time
of the apostles, as appears from Irenseus and Tertullian;
and the Ethiopian church, scrupulously attached to the
ancient ceremonies, still retain that of not kneeling at divine
service. Jhe Russians esteem it an indecent posture to
worship God upon the knees. Baronius is of opinion that
genuflexion was not established in the year of Christ 58,
founding on that passage in Acts (xx. 36) where St Paul is
expressly mentioned as kneeling down at prayer ; but Sau-
rin shows that nothing can thence be concluded. The same
author also remarks that the primitive Christians carried
the practice of genuflexion so far, that some of them had
worn cavities in the floor where they prayed; and St Je¬
rome relates of St James, that he had contracted a hardness
on his knees equal to that of camels.
GENUS, among metaphysicians and logicians, denotes a
number of beings which agree in certain general properties
common to them all, so that a genus is nothing else but an
abstract idea, expressed by some general name or term.
Genus, in Rhetoric. Authors distinguish the art of
rhetoric, as also orations or discourses, into three genera
or kinds, namely, demonstrative, deliberative, and judicial.
To the demonstrative kind belong panegyrics, genethlia-
cons, epithalamiums, and funeral harangues ; to the deli¬
berative, persuasions, dissuasions, and commendations; to
the judicial, defences and accusations.
Genus, in Natural History, a subdivision of any class
or order of natural beings, whether of the animal, vegetable,
or mineral kingdoms, which agree in certain common cha¬
racters.
Genus, in Music, by the ancients called genus melodice,
is a certain manner of dividing and subdividing the prin¬
ciples of melody ; that is, the consonant and dissonant in¬
tervals, into their concinnous parts. The moderns con¬
sidering the octave as the most perfect of intervals, and
that on which all the concords depend, in the present
theory of music the division of that interval is considered
as containing the true division of the whole scale. But
the ancients went to work somewhat differently. The dia-
tessaron, or fourth, was the least interval which they ad¬
mitted as concord; and therefore they sought first how
that might be most conveniently divided, and then con¬
stituted the diapente and diapason. The diatessaron be¬
ing thus, as it were, the root and foundation of the scale,
what they called the genera, or kinds, arose from its vari¬
ous divisions; and hence they defined the genus modulandi
the manner of dividing the tetrachord, and disposing its
four sounds as to succession. The genera of music were
three; the enharmonic, the chromatic, and the diatonic.
The first two were variously subdivided; and even with
regard to the last, though it is commonly reckoned not to
have any species, different authors have proposed different
divisions, but without giving any particular names to the
species, as was done in the two others.
GEOCENTRIC, in Astronomy, is applied to a planet,
or its orbit, to denote that it is concentric with the earth,
or has the earth as its centre or the same centre with the
earth.
GEOFFROY of Monmouth, Bishop of St Asaph, call¬
ed by our ancient biographers Gallofridus Monumentensis.
Leland conjectures that he was educated in a Benedictine
3 c
38(5 GEO
Geoffroy. convent at Monmouth, where he was born about the be-
ginning of the twelfth century, and that he afterwards be¬
came a monk of that order. Bale, and after him Pits, call
him archdeacon of Monmouth ; and it is generally believed
that he was created Bishop of St Asaph in the year 1151 or
1152, under the reign of King Stephen. Some time after¬
wards he repaired to the court of Henry II. who received
him with distinction, and fixed him near his own person by
the gift of a rich abbey. The canons of St Asaph hav¬
ing to no purpose urged Geoffroy to return to his diocese,
profited by the decision of a synod held at London to make
him a last offer either to resume the administration of that
part of the church committed to his care, or to consent that
a successor should be appointed in his charge. In 1175,
Geoffrov divested himself of his bishopric; but he had soon
reason to repent this step, since he lost the benefices which
had been conferred upon him by Henry II. He is be¬
lieved to have died about the year 1180. His history, which
was probably completed after the year 1138, contains a fa¬
bulous account of British kings, from the Trojan Brutus
to the reign of Cadvvallader in the year 690. But Geoffroy,
whatever may be thought of his credulity, was not the in¬
ventor of the stories which he relates. His history is a
translation from a manuscript written in the British lan¬
guage, and brought to England from Armorica by his friend
Gualterus, or Gauthier, archdeacon of Oxford. But the
achievements of King Arthur, Merlin’s prophecies, speech¬
es, and letters, were chiefly his own addition. Geoffroy
takes credit to himself for being the first who wrote the
history of the times that preceded the establishment of
Christianity in England; but as he admits that in every
thing which concerns the kings of Saxon origin, he mere¬
ly translated into Latin from the work which had been
sent him by the archdeacon of Oxford, it does not appear
that he has much cause to plume himself on this score,
or that he can lay claim to the credit of originality, and at
the same time escape the charge of invention. Wharton’s
excuse, that fabulous histories were then the fashion, and
popular traditions a recommendation of a book, may be
available to a romancer, but is ridiculous when alleged in
behalf of an historian. In as far, however, as he merely
translated, he is not to be held responsible for the legends
which he published in a Latin version; and although his
history as a whole is doubtless a tissue of counterfeit
facts and fabulous anecdotes, yet there seems to be no
sufficient ground for the reproaches which have been cast
upon him by Twin and Wear, who have chosen to brand
him as the father of lies. In an age of profound igno¬
rance and boundless credulity, the wildest fictions were
greedily swallowed, and the supernatural, the miraculous,
or the impossible, easily amalgamated with the unques¬
tioning faith of a superstition founded on the prostration
of reason. Belief may be honest, though its object is
falsehood. Besides, as Pits and Nicolson have observed,
Geoffroy may be relied on, in the account he gives of
events which either fell under his own observation, or in
regard to which he had it in his power to procure accu¬
rate information. He was not an inventor of fables; and
those which he retailed he derived from the source
already indicated, namely, the Armorican .manuscript
brought to England by Gualterus. His works are, 1.
Origo et gesta Regum et Principum Britannise, sive His-
toria Britonum ab iEnea et Bruto, Paris, Badius, 1517,
in 4to, reprinted in the Britannicarum rerum Scriptores,
Heidelberg, 1587, in folio ; 2. Versio prophetiarum Am-
GEO
brosii Merlini, Frankfort, 1603, in4to; 3. VitaMerliniCa r
ledonii; 4. Commentarius in prophetias Merlina utriusque •
5. Epistolae ad Gualterum Oxoniensem archidiaconutn' ^
6. De Exilio Ecclesiasticorum; 7. An abridgment of the
History of Gildas ; 8. Latin verses on different subjects
A treatise De corpore et sanguine Christi is also attributed
to him ; but Fabricius is of opinion that the author of this
work is William, abbot of St Thierry at Reims.
GEOFFROY, Stephen Francis, a physician eminent
for his chemical and botanical knowledge, was born at
Paris on the 13th of February 1672, where his father kept
an apothecary’s shop, and had been several times in the
magistracy. He received a liberal education ; and, whilst
prosecuting the study of medicine, he had conferences at
his father’s house with Cassini, Duverney, Homberg, and
other men of distinguished eminence. At Montpellier he
attended the lectures of the ablest professors of physic, and
afterwards visited the south of France, carefully viewing
every object deserving of his attention. He accompanied
Count de Tallard to England in 1698, where he became
acquainted with the leading men of science, and was ad¬
mitted a member of the Royal Society. He next went
into Holland, and in 1700 he accompanied the Abbe de
Louvois in a tour to Italy. On his return, he became a
licentiate in 1702, and, in two years after, he was created
doctor of medicine. One of his theses was A vermibus ho-
minum ortus interitus? which was translated into French
under this title, Si VHomme a commence par etre vers? for
the sake of some ladies of high rank, by whom it wras deem¬
ed interesting.
Geoffroy did not hastily commence the practice of me¬
dicine, continuing the prosecution of his studies in retire¬
ment for some years. He appeared nowise anxious to
push himself forward, although his knowledge made him
often be consulted by several gentlemen of the faculty;
and he felt so concerned for the recovery of his patients,
that it imparted to him an air of melancholy, which at first
alarmed them, till they became acquainted with the cause.
In 1709, he wras appointed by the king professor of physic
to the Royal College, vacant by the death of the cele¬
brated Tournefort, and began with lectures on Materia
Medica ; but in 1712, Fagon resigned to him the chemical
chair, and on both subjects Geoffroy lectured with unwea¬
ried assiduity. He was twice chosen as dean by the fa¬
culty of Paris, and from the year 1699 he filled a place
in the Royal Academy of Sciences. Anxious to discharge
his various functions with credit, his health at last sunk
under fatigue, and he died upon the 5th of January 1731.
He is known to the chemical world by his table of affini¬
ties, which is far superior to any that had appeared before
his time. His greatest work was his History of the Materia
Medica, which was published in an unfinished state, after
his death, Paris, 1741, in 3 vols. 8vo. This learned and
laborious author enriched the Memoires of the Academy
of Sciences with different articles, the principal of which
were, 1. Table des Differents Rapports observes en Chimie
entre differents Substances, and Eclaircissements sur cette
Table, 1718 and 1720; 2. Observations sur le Vitriol et
sur le Fer, 1713; 3. Sur les Dissolutions et sur les Fer¬
mentations que 1’on peut appeler froides, parce quelles
sont accompagnees du refroidissement des Liqueurs dans
lesquelles elles se passent, 1700; 4. Examen des eaux de
Vichy et de Bourbon 1’Archambault, 1702; 5. Detail de
la maniere dont se fait 1’Alun de roche en Italic et en
Angleterre, 1702.
387
geography.
INTRODUCTION.
c. The term Geography, derived from two Greek words,
a, the earth, and I write, signifies a description of
J e earth. The description to which this title is applied
ay be more or less general; either embracing such truths
i ly as belong to the earth considered as one whole, or
, tending to particulars which belong to and distinguish
te several countries spread over its surface. In which¬
ever of these two aspects the subject be regarded, a vast
I Id opens to the view of the observer. In order to give
{mil and accurate description of the earth, it w ould be re-
< isite to consider it in reference to its motion, figure, and
i ignitude ; in reference to its relation to the other bodies
< the universe, and more especially to the planetary sys-
t n of which it forms a part; in reference to its surface,
; diversified by land and sea, mountains and valleys, lakes
dd rivers; in reference to the materials which compose
i crust, and to its internal structure; in reference to the
t istitution of the atmosphere with which it is surrounded,
a 1 the effects arising from the variations in atmospheri-
ti pressure, temperature, and humidity. Nor would it be
emgh to consider the earth only as a mass of inert and
organized matter ; it would be necessary to regard it in
i relations to vegetable and animal life; and to trace the
ppnomena which these, in their endless variety, present
nits various divisions and provinces. It would still fur-
t r be necessary to view' it as the abode of man himself,
a 1 as modified by his existence ; divided into states and
kigdoms; adorned with cities, and all the noble monu-
mnts of civilized life.
Such is an outline of the picture which geography, in
t most unlimited meaning of the term, should exhibit of
t! globe. To fill up this picture in all its parts, it would
iidently be necessary to call in the aid of the whole circle
o the sciences. But the description is usually of a less
eiended character, being confined chiefly to the more ob-
v ns and striking features of the various regions and coun-
tu s of the earth.
n the wide range which the subject presents, several
di sions and subdivisions are suggested by the different
views in which the earth may be considered. The three Introduo
following divisions are the most important: tion.
1. Mathematical Geography, which illustrates, on astro-
nomical principles, the figure, magnitude, and motion of
the earth ; teaches how to determine the positions of places
on its surface; explains the construction of globes, with
their application to the solution of problems; and shows
how the whole or any portion of the earth’s surface may,
chart prinCip GS °f Pr°jection> be delineated on a map or
2. Physical Geography, which treats of the mutual re¬
lations of the diversified objects found on the surface of the
earth, including the atmosphere by which it is surrounded :
and explains the causes, whether of a chemical or mechani¬
cal description, that produce the modifications and changes
winch they continually undergo.
3. Political ov Historical Geography, which describes
the earth as divided into countries, occupied by various
nations, and improved by human art and industry. It
traces the circumstances and character of the different
races and tribes of mankind, explaining their social insti¬
tutions, and ascertaining the place which each occupies in
the scale of civilization.
From this general arrangement of the subject, it is evi¬
dent that geography depends for its rank as a science on
its intimate connection with various branches of knowledge,
which, taking their rise from investigations instituted in re¬
ference to the nature and mutual relations of the objects on
the earth, or connected with it, furnish those accurate views
which must be obtained before any thing like a precise de¬
scription can be given of the globe we inhabit, or of any
portion of it. With regard to what belongs to Physical
Geography, we must refer the reader to the articles Physi¬
cal, Geography, Mineralogy, Meteorology, &c. in
this work. What belongs to Political or Historical Geogra¬
phy will be found under the names of the respective coun- '
tries. The following article will be limited to a view of
,1 ^ °   d. view UJ
the progress of Geographical Discovery, and to a brief ex¬
planation of the principles of Mathematical Geography.
I. VIEW OF THE PROGRESS OF GEOGRAPHICAL DISCOVERY.
liere are many circumstances in the condition of man
W'ch connect him so closely with the globe which he in-
hfits, as to render absolutely necessary to his existence
a nowledge of at least the neighbourhood of the spot
J/e 'J18 lot is cast. It is from the earth that he must
«\ e the means of subsistence and accommodation, the
Sr.8 °" wbich his industry is to be exerted, and those
!''cts in the exchange of which commerce consists. In
stage of his progress, therefore, from barbarism to
P ization, he must employ some attention and observa-
' , in order to discover in what respects the objects with
8ii V- f Is. surroun(letl are qualified to contribute to the
'' ? 118 wants, and to his comfort and convenience.
W iTu- roams the forest in the savage state, he
iiA? e nniself acquainted with many circumstances, a
ilk C l?6 °* 'V^Cp ,is necessary either to give him success
e c iase, or to direct him in retracing his steps to the
ml ere -1e lia.S fixed his dwelling. But it is not until
umtfd “1 society, and that neighbouring com-
2L b aye begun to hold mutual intercourse, that those
t>rs and passions are effectually aroused which stimu¬
late to the arduous pursuits of geographical discovery.
Commerce and war, with the spirit of adventure which
usually accompany them, have without doubt been among
the first causes of geographical research. In the train of
these have followed the workings of avarice and the aims
of ambition. As the human mind has advanced in its ca¬
reer of improvement, curiosity, with an enlargement of
views and desires, have been called into action; and voy¬
ages have been undertaken for the express purpose of dis¬
covering new countries and exploring unknown seas.
In tiacing the effects which these causes have produced
in the gradual increase of geographical knowledge, it will
contribute to distinctness to keep in view a threefold divi¬
sion, which the subject naturally assumes, namely, ancient
geography, extending from the earliest period of history
down to the time when, the Roman empire having been
overrun by barbarous nations from several quarters, Europe
was overwhelmed in the darkness which preceded the re¬
vival of learning; the geography of the middle ages, ex-
tendmg from the revival of letters to the fifteenth century,
when the discoveries of the Portuguese began to lay a
388
History.
geography.
wider foundation for the science ; and modern geography,
which embraces the most recent discoveries, and is pro¬
gressively improving by the accessions which it is receiv¬
ing from the labours and science of modern travellers and
navigators. , c
The Phoenicians are the earliest commercial people ot
correct accounts. I his
whose discoveries we have any
people seem first to have explored the coasts of the Medi
terranean. Their navigators at length extending their
voyages through the Straits of Gades, now called the Straits
of Gibraltar, entered the Atlantic Ocean, and visited the
western coasts of Spain and Africa. In many places to
which they resorted they planted colonies ; and sought, by
instructing the inhabitants, in some measure, in their arts
and improvements, to open a wider sphere for their com¬
merce. The learned Bochart, led by the analogy between
the Phoenician tongue and the oriental languages, has en¬
deavoured to follow the tracks of the Phoenicians, both
along the shores of the Mediterranean and those of the
Atlantic. These analogies are not always sure guides ;
but there seems no reason to doubt that Cadiz was origi¬
nally a Phoenician colony, and it is not likely that this was
the only one formed by that enterprising people.
The Arabian Gulf, or Red Sea, offered to the I hoem-
cians another field of naval and commercial exertion, to
the improvement of which the distance of lyre, the empo¬
rium of their trade, was the only obstacle. This induced
them to make themselves masters of Rhinocrura or Rhino-
colura, the port in the Mediterranean nearest to the Red
Sea. Commodities purchased in Arabia, Ethiopia, and In-
dia were landed at Elah, the safest harbour in the Red Sea
towards the north ; thence they were conveyed over land
to Rhinocolura ; and being there reshipped, they were cm-
ried to Tyre, whence they were distributed over the world.
The wealth and power which accrued to the Phoenicians
from their being in the sole possession of the lucrative
trade of the East, incited the Jews, their neighbours, un¬
der the prosperous reigns of David and Solomon, to desire
a participation in its advantages. Their conquest of Idu¬
mea, which stretches along the Red Sea, put it in the
power of Solomon to fit out a fleet; while his alliance with
Hiram, king of Tyre, enabled him to command the skill of
the Phoenicians for the conducting of the voyage. Passing
through the Straits of Babelmandel, they carried on com¬
merce in the Indian Ocean ; and so distant were the coun¬
tries to which they traded, that the voyage occupied no
less than three years. But though the Jews thus for a
time engaged in the pursuits of trade, yet the tendency ot
their institutions, which were expressly designed to pre¬
serve them a separate people, was unfavourable to the de¬
velopment of the commercial spirit which their monarchs
wished to foster among them. This, joined with the divi¬
sion of the kingdom on the death of Solomon, proved fatal
to their rising greatness as a commercial people, and ex¬
cluded them from ranking among the nations who have
contributed to the advancement of geographical knowledge,
It is perhaps impossible to fix with certainty the limits
which bounded the geographical researches of the Phoeni¬
cians, on account of the difficulty there is of assigning the
precise places marked out by the names then given to the
countries to which they traded. The length of time occu¬
pied in the voyage, and the nature of the cargoes brought
home, with a few other circumstances of the same vague kind,
are the only particulars afforded to direct us in the deter¬
mination. Thus the country of Ophir, to which the Phoe¬
nicians navigated the ships of Solomon, must be ascertain¬
ed by the facts that the voyage thither and homeward oc¬
cupied three years, and that the cargo consisted of “ gold
and silver, ivory, and apes, and peacocks.” Among the
various opinions which have been entertained respecting
the position of this distant country, the most probable ap¬
pears to be that it was situated on the eastern coast of
Africa, as far south as Sofala. To this quarter every indica¬
tion seems clearly to point; and whatever objections may
appear to stand in the way, in consideration of the remote¬
ness of the region, and the difficulties to be encountered,
these admit of being answered by a reference to the length
of time required for the voyage, and to the wealth, naval
skill, and ample resources, at the command of the monarchs
engaged in the traffic.1
The Carthaginians, a Phoenician colony, retained in full
vigour the commercial spirit of the parent state. They
did not, however, attempt to divide with Tyre the wealth
and power which she derived from the monopoly of the
trade carried on in the Arabian Gulf. They directed their
efforts to the opposite quarter, and sailing through the
Straits of Gades, pushed their researches far beyond the
bounds which had been reached by the mother country in
this part of the globe. They visited not only all the coast
of Spain, but likewise that of Gaul, and penetrated at
length as far as the south-w'estern coast of Britain, where
they obtained tin from the mines of Cornwall or in traffic
with the natives. Nor was it only towards the northward
that they directed their efforts ; they explored also the re¬
gions southward of the straits, and' sailing along the west¬
ern coast of Africa almost as far as the northern tropic,
they planted colonies, as the Phoenicians of Tyre had for¬
merly done, with a view to prepare the natives for carry¬
ing on commercial intercourse. The Atlantic Ocean was
destined to conceal for ages from the inhabitants of the old
world the immense regions which lie beyond it. But the
Carthaginians extended the boundary of navigation west¬
ward by the discovery of the Fortunate Islands, now known
by the name of the Canaries.
The enlargement of views gradually generated by this
spirit of commercial enterprise led at length to voyages o
which discovery was the special object. The circumnavi¬
gation of Africa was one of the earliest attempts of this
1 The regions always spoken of in Scripture as the most remote with which the Hebrews and Phoenicians
Tarshish, Ophir, the Isles’, Sheba, and Dedan, the River, Gog, Magog, and the North Without entering ^to any discuss^,
may give what appear to be the most probable conclusions with regard to the positions ot the countries o \v ic bringing
plied. Tarshish is a country from which two voyages are spoken of in Scripture as being made; one by t ic i e< i t .Aductions
iron, silver, lead, and tin, the produce of Spain and Britain ; the other by the Red Sea, bringing gold, ivory, an o ^ P ntrVi
of tropical Africa. These two voyages, though at first sight they appear incongruous if supposed to be mace 0 1 0fgpain
may be reconciled by supposing that Tarshish is fundamentally Carthage, which monopolized almost entirely t ie con t
and Britain, and was the medium through which the commodities ot the west wrere distributed; and that le nani con.
African metropolis was extended to the whole of the continent of Africa. The Isles are the whole southern coas a o . , V ijrs 0Ii
sisting either of real islands or peninsular tracts. Sheba is the southern portion of that part of the coast of -• ra na w 1
the Red Sea; while Dedan lies upon the opposite coast, that borders on the Persian Gulf. Thesecountries rose o c, ;nt0 thelat-
portance in consequence of the valuable commodities which were imported into the former from the African coas , am jes0f
ter from India. Thence arose the traffic carried on by “ the companies of Sheba,” or caravans, and by u the trave ing
Dedanim.” The River was the name always applied to the Euphrates. Gog, Magog, and the North, appear to e
land in the interior and north of Asia Minor, Phrygia, Galatia, Cappadocia, and Paphlagonia, regions in which may ap.
the peculiarly rude and formidable aspect which belonged to the countries to which in ancient times the names in ques
plied. (See Encyclopedia of Geography, by H. Murray, Esq.)
GEOGRAPHY.
389
ry-
jl'0
nile
jifi
Id
is l
ars>
]®l
d'
iaii
dll
it,
lid
utd
11
lei
(B
ietl
licl
kid
le
mila
tre
inn
alii
lOIl!
idj
lent
.
die
iir
;
idp
nd made by the ancients. The direction which the coast
kes beyond the Mediterranean on the one hand, and the
ed Sea on the other, suggested the idea of a peninsula
• lich it might be possible to sail round. This voyage was
i st undertaken by the Egyptians ; a people exceedingly
i erse to engage in naval affairs, but who at this time were
i led over by Necho, a monarch whose active spirit prompt-
i him to engage some Phoenicians to descend the Arabian
idf, and, coasting along Africa, to endeavour to return by
12 Straits of Gades. Herodotus narrates in a few words
12 result of this enterprise, which was undertaken about
,; hundred and four years before the Christian era. He
«. ^S) “ the Phoenicians, setting sail from the Red Sea, made
13ir way into the southern sea; and when autumn ap-
I cached they drew their vessels to land, sowed a crop,
; d waited till it was grown ; when they reaped it, and
tain put to sea. Having spent two years in this manner,
j the third year they reached the pillars of Hercules, and
r urned to Egypt, reporting what does not find belief with
r;, but may perhaps with some other person; for they
> d that in passing Africa they had the sun on their right
] nd. In this manner Lybia was first known.”
This passage has given rise to much controversy among
li3 learned. But the voyage here so briefly described
(es not seem to involve any impossibility, notwithstanding
t; then infant state of navigation ; and the circumstance
ich the historian objects to as incredible is the very point
v ich, from its coincidence with what we know should have
Ibpened, renders the story more worthy of belief.
Xerxes king of Persia, according to Herodotus, gave a
s tilar commission, about four hundred and eighty years
1 ore the Christian era, to one of his satraps, named Sa-
tipes, who, for a heinous offence, had been condemned to
( . If successful in the accomplishment of this voyage,
tiiaspes was to escape a cruel death; but the difficulties
v re too great to be surmounted by a navigator brought
i amidst the luxury and indulgence of the Persian court.
1 ving procured from Egypt a vessel and crew, he passed
tiough the Straits of Gades, entered the Atlantic Ocean,
a; 1, bending his course towards the south, coasted the con-
t cnt of Africa, until, after several months, he probably
r elied the coast of Sahara. The frightful and desolate
S'>res along which he sailed, and the tempestuous ocean
vich beat against them, combined to fill his mind with
i nn, and to shake his resolution. He retraced his course
t the straits; and hoping perhaps that the labours he had
i lergone in the partial accomplishment of the task im-
] ;ed on him would be accepted by his royal master as a
sdicient atonement for his oft’ence, or that the offence itself
) ’lit in a great measure be forgotten, he returned home
i-1 presented himself before Xerxes. The cause which he
signed for the failure of the ultimate object of his mis-
“u was, that he had encountered a sea so full of herbage
ttt his passage was completely obstructed. This reason
(le grounds of which have never been satisfactorily ex-
Jil'ned, though it has been alleged that obstacles of this
peription occur in that part of the sea which lies between
t Cape Verd Islands, the Canaries, and the coast of Afri-
f appeared so ridiculous to Xerxes, that he ordered the
ptence of death by crucifixion, which had been pronoun-
1 ^ uI)on Sataspes, to be immediately executed.
Ihit the most celebrated voyage of antiquity undertaken
f the purpose of discovery was the expedition under Han-
1 fitted out by the authority of the senate of Carthage, and
a the public expense, and that with the view of attempting
Complete survey of the western coast of Africa. Of all
t| voyages performed by the Phoenicians and Carthagi-
ns, this is the only one of which we have an authentic
tfrative. Mercantile jealousy prevented these two great
o nmercial states from communicating to other nations the -
pbwledge which they acquired of the remote regions of
the earth ; and from this cause, when the maritime power History,
of the former was annihilated by Alexander’s conquest of
Tyre, and the empire of the latter was overthrown by the
Roman arms, all monuments of their great skill in naval
affairs appear in a great measure to have perished. Even
the account of the voyage of Hanno (Periplus Hannonis)
has been considered by its learned editor Mr Dodwell as
a spurious work. But the arguments of M. de Montes¬
quieu and of M. de Bougainville appear fully to establish its
authenticity, which the learned world now generally admit.
Hanno set sail with a fleet of sixty vessels, so construct¬
ed that, according to the mode of ancient navigation, he
could keep close in w ith the coast. We are told that, in
twelve days after leaving the Straits of Gades, he reached
the island of Cerne ; that proceeding thence, and follow¬
ing the direction of the coast, he arrived, in seventeen
days, at a bay, which he called The West Horn. From
this he advanced to another bay, which he named The
South Horn. The objects which are described as having
been seen by Hanno in his progress belong to tropical
Africa. But in attempting to ascertain the places which
he visited, or the utmost distance which he sailed south¬
ward, much difficulty and uncertainty are experienced.
Bougainville supposes Hanno to have reached the Gulf
of Benin, and contends that this limit, distant as it is, can¬
not be regarded as beyond wffiat may be conceived to have
been accomplished by the most skilful navigator of antiqui¬
ty. Major Rennell shortens the distance considerably by
conceiving the voyage to have been extended no further
southward than Sherbro Sound, a little beyond Sierra Leone.
He thus obtains the advantage of avoiding a difficulty in¬
volved in the hypothesis of M. de Bougainville; namely,
the supposition of ancient ships having sailed upwards of
seventy geographical miles in a day. At the same time,
the arguments which support the one hypothesis are equal¬
ly applicable to the other.
According to the views of M. Gosselin, however, the
voyage must be confined to much narrower limits south¬
ward than even those assigned by Major Rennell. He sup¬
poses it to have terminated about the river Nun ; an opi¬
nion which he supports by alleging that, in such a voyage,
the progress must necessarily have been slow. The Car¬
thaginian navigator had to encounter all the obstacles and
dangers incident to a course held along a shore, and in a
sea, which were equally unknown. He must have found
himself impeded by the requisite examination of every part
of the coast, as well as by the many precautions which the
safety of the fleet under his command must have rendered
constantly necessary. With regard to the circumstances
given in the narrative which appear to point to tropical
Africa, M. Gosselin supposes that the same aspect of life
and nature may, at that distant period, have belonged to
Morocco, then thinly peopled by the rude native tribes,
which is now specially characteristic of more southern re¬
gions.
Amidst such diversity of opinion among the learned, it
is not easy to decide in reference to a subject beset with
so many difficulties. If we assume either of the more re¬
mote distances assigned for the termination of the voyage,
Cerne must be identified with the isle of Arguin ; and, on
Major Rennell’s hypothesis, the Gulfs of Bissago and Sher¬
bro present those numerous islands desci’ibed by Hanno,
to which there are no islands corresponding on any other
part of the coast. On the whole, however, the most li¬
mited distance seems preferable, if we admit that part of
M. Gosselin’s hypothesis which assigns to Morocco fea¬
tures of man and of nature that are usually held to be cha¬
racteristic of tropical Africa.
The circumnavigation of Africa was an enterprise which
in ancient times not only called forth the naval efforts of
the most powerful maritime states, but which also awaken-
390
GEOGRAPHY.
History, ed the ambition of private adventurers. Eudoxus, a na-
tive of Cyzicus, being sent on a mission to Alexandria, at
that time the seat of naval enterprise and geographical
knowledge, his ardent mind, naturally biassed to these pur¬
suits, was aroused to action by the spirit which prevailed
in that city. He began his career under the auspices of
Ptolemy Euergetes, the reigning Egyptian monarch, who
fitted out a fleet, and placed it under his command. Ac¬
cording to the destination assigned him, Eudoxus descend¬
ed the Arabian Gulf, and proceeded probably as far as the
southern shore of Arabia. Thence he appears to have re¬
turned, after a prosperous voyage, with a valuable cargo of
aromatics and precious stones. But of this wealth he ap¬
pears to have been deprived by Euergetes. After the death
of this monarch, which in a short time took place, his widow
Cleopatra sent Eudoxus on another voyage, in the course of
which he was driven by unfavourable winds on the coast of
Ethiopia, where he was kindly received by the inhabitants,
and carried on with them an advantageous traffic. After
other vicissitudes of fortune, he was induced by circumstan¬
ces which occurred in his adventurous life to leave the court
of Egypt, and repair to the commercial city of Cadiz, in
Spain, and there to fit out an expedition for the purpose
of African discovery. At Massilia (Marseilles), and other
maritime places through which he passed on his way to
Cadiz, he took care to make known his views and hopes of
success, and to invite all who were actuated by any spirit
of enterprise to accompany him. He succeeded in fitting
out a ship and two large boats; on board of which he car¬
ried not only goods and provisions, but artisans, medical
men, and even players on musical instruments. This was
no doubt proceeding on a magnificent scale. But his crew
was ill calculated to second his bold undertaking. To
avoid the danger of stranding, Eudoxus was anxious to
keep the open sea. His companions, however, alarmed at
the swell, forced him to adopt the usual mode then follow¬
ed of sailing along the shore ; a measure which led to the
disaster which he had anticipated. With one vessel of a
lighter construction, on board of which was put the more
valuable part of the cargo, Eudoxus pursued his voyage
until he reached a part of the coast inhabited by a race
of people that appeared to him to speak the same language
with those whom he had found on the opposite side of the
continent. Judging from this circumstance that he had
ascertained the main object of his voyage, he returned and
endeavoured to obtain the assistance of Bocchus, king of
Mauritania. Suspecting, however, treachery on the part
of that monarch, he again had recourse to Spain. Here he
was again successful in equipping another expedition, con¬
sisting of one large vessel fitted for the open sea, and an¬
other of smaller size for the examination of the coast. This
was a judicious preparation for the accomplishment of the
object in view ; but with regard to the issue of the voyage
no accounts of any authority have been preserved.
Such are the leading circumstances connected with the
voyages of Eudoxus, which are narrated by Strabo ; and,
notwithstanding the scepticism and severe criticisms of
that geographer, there is really nothing to which the candid
reader can reasonably refuse his belief. Prejudices, found¬
ed, for the most part, on his own want of information, led
Strabo to treat likewise as fabulous the relation of the only
ancient voyage having Europe, and more particularly the
British isles, for its object, of which we have any detailed
account.
Pytheas, a Massilian navigator, undertook an expedition
about three hundred and twenty years before the Christian
era. He steered northward ; and after examining the
coasts of Spain and Gaul, he sailed round the island of
Albion; and, stretching still farther to the north, he dis¬
covered an island, the Ultima Thule of the ancients. What
island th^ was the learned are not agreed. It has been sup¬
posed to be the modern Iceland ; but this implies too great
an extent of open sea for an ancient navigator to traverse •
and besides, six days, the period during which he is said to
have navigated to the northward of Albion before he made
his discovery, are too short a time to admit of his reachino-
Iceland. Others, amongst whom is Malte-Brun, have con¬
sidered Jutland as Ultima Thule. But it should be kept
in view that Pytheas uniformly regarded Thule as British
a character which he could scarcely conceive to belong to
Jutland, seeing he could have reached that peninsula only
by a long course along the coasts of Germany, which must
have impressed on his mind the idea that he had left far
behind him every thing belonging to Britain. On the whole
Shetland seems best entitled to be considered as the an¬
cient Thule, and suits well with the appellation which Py¬
theas gives it, when he expressly calls it the “ furthest of
the Britains.1’
Strabo endeavours to throw discredit on the statements
of Pytheas, by starting objections long known to be of the
most groundless description; and it is an advantage which
the traveller and navigator possess who describe faithfully
the grand features of nature, that, however prejudice may
dim their reputation for a time, yet will their accuracy as
well as veracity at length, in the progress of knowledge,
appear, and secure for them the respect and applause of
mankind. At the same time, it must be admitted that, in
describing what he saw beyond his Ultima Thule, the
statement given by Pytheas, as reported by Strabo, assumes
a somewhat fabulous character. He asserted, it seems,
that beyond Thule there commenced what wras neither
earth, sea, nor air, but a confused blending of all the three.
But even here some allowance is to be made for the work¬
ings of imagination under very peculiar circumstances, and
a readiness, not unnatural, to believe reports which repre¬
sented him to have reached the extremity of the habitable
globe. If his language is not too literally interpreted, it
will be found to convey a strongly figurative, but not altoge¬
ther imperfect, description of the state of the sea and sky in
these climes, which have been so little favoured by nature.
The conquests of Alexander the Great, by making known
the East, enlarged the bounds of geographical knowledge.
Though the course of his expedition was for the most part
by land, his mind was equally intent on commerce and ma¬
ritime discovery. Checked as he had so long been in the
career of his victories by the opposition and efforts of the
republic of Tyre, he had an opportunity afforded him ol
observing the vast resources'of a maritime power, and at
the same time of forming a judgment respecting the im¬
mense wealth to be derived from commerce, especially from
that carried on with India, which he found to be wholly in
the hands of the Tyrians. With a view to secure this com¬
merce, as soon as he had completed the conquest of Egypt,
he founded the city of Alexandria, and thus established for
it a station preferable in many respects to Tyre. After
his final victory over the Persians, his march in pursuit of
Bessus, who had carried off Darius into Bactriana, often led
him near to India, and among people accustomed to much
intercourse with it, from whom he learned many things con¬
cerning the state of the country, that served so to confirm
and inflame a desire which he had long cherished of extend¬
ing his dominion over those regions, that he was induced to
conduct his army from Bactria, for the purpose of invasion,
across that ridge of mountains which form the northern
barrier of India. After passing the Indus, Alexander di¬
rected his march to the Ganges, which, from the accounts
he heard of it, and of the countries through which it
he was eager to reach. The route which he found it neces¬
sary to follow, in consequence of being successively engag¬
ed in hostilities with various native princes, led him througn
one of the richest and best peopled countries in India, now
called Punjab. In his ultimate object, however, he failed*
History,
GEO GRAPH Y.
|ls march being performed during the rainy season, his
J f iops had already suffered so much, that notwithstanding
1 fr} high degree in which he possessed all those qualities
tit secure an ascendency over the minds of soldiers, he
vs unable to persuade them to advance beyond the banks
o the Hyphasis, the modern Beyah, which was according-
1 the utmost limit of Alexander’s progress in India.
By this expedition, Alexander first opened the know-
Idge of India to the people of Europe ; and as he was ac-
onpanied, wherever he went, by skilful surveyors, Diog-
m es and Baeton, who measured the length and determin-
ejthe direction of every route taken by the army, he fur-
mlied a survey of an extensive district of it, more accurate
tlm could have been expected from the short time he re-
mined in that country. The memoirs drawn up by his
o.cers likewise afforded to Europeans their first authentic
iiurmation respecting the climate, the soil, the produc-
tins, and the inhabitants of India.
Though Alexander did not penetrate to the Ganges, his
enedition prepared the way to the knowledge of that mag-
iwcent stream. For soon after, Seleucus, one of his suc-
osors, sent Megasthenes as his ambassador to Palibothra,
tl capital of a powerful nation on the banks of the Gan-
M. The site of Palibothra w as probably the same as that
oithe modern city of Allahabad, at the junction of the
r \:r Jumna with the Ganges. This embassy brought new
a:l opulent provinces of India into view, an acquaintance
tv h which served to raise still higher the idea generally
ei ertained of the value and importance of the country.
The island Tajuroiowe, so celebrated among the ancients,
v ich appears, notw ithstanding some great mistakes with
rpect both to extent and position, to be the modern
( don, seems not to have been known in Europe even by
nine before the age of Alexander. In consequence, how-
e r, of the enlightened and active curiosity with which
Ir explored every country which he subdued or visited,
sue knowledge of it was at length obtained; and, after
h time, it is mentioned by almost every ancient geogra-
pi'r. _
Whilst Alexander was attempting to penetrate into In-
d:, a numerous fleet was assembled by officers whom he
fill left on the banks of the Hydaspes, the modern Behat
o Chelum, with orders to build and collect as many ships
a they could. The destination of this fleet wras to sail
HWn the Indus to the ocean, and from its mouth to pro-
c d to the Persian Gulf, with a view of opening a com-
omication between India and the centre of his dominions.
Alien Alexander reached the banks of the Hydaspes
chis return, he committed the conduct of this expedi-
't'i to Nearchus. The voyage down the Indus derived
s endour from the greatness and magnificence of the ar-
Mnent, which consisted of an army of a hundred and
tfinty thousand men, and two hundred elephants, and of
a eet of nearly twro thousand vessels. Alexander hirn-
S! accompanied Nearchus in his navigation down the
I '-r, with one third of the troops on board; whilst the
rnainder, in two divisions, one on the right and the other
o the left of the river, accompanied them in their pro-
g ss. Having reached the ocean after the lapse of nine
5j™ths, Alexander left Nearchus and his crew to pursue
A ir voyage, and conducted his army back by land to
h sia. A coasting voyage of seven months brought
. irchus, with the fleet, in safety, up the Persian Gulf
11) the Euphrates. It was at the mouth of the Indus
t the Greeks witnessed for the first time, and that with
Banishment and terror, the ebb and flow of the sea; a
p nomenon scarcely perceptible in the Mediterranean, to
rtC1 ^le^r navigation had formerly been confined. In
progress of the voyage they were also struck with sur-
P e on observing phenomena belonging to the midsum-
of the tropics. At noon objects were observed to
project no shadows, or to project small shadows declining
to the south. Their attention was still further attracted
by the new appearance of the sky. Stars which they
had been accustomed to see high in the heavens were
now seen near the horizon. Some stars to the north dis¬
appeared, while other stars formerly invisible were seen
in the south.
I he opening of a communication between tbe Red Sea
and the Persian Gulf was with Alexander qnother great
object of ambition. But though with this view he seems
to have sent expeditions down both seas, he failed in his
attempts to accomplish this project.
Among the Romans, navigation and commerce, the
handmaids of geographical science, wrere never made ob¬
jects of pursuit, except in so far as they were found to be
necessary to forward their schemes of universal dominion.
Their conquests opened indeed the west, as those of
Alexander had made known the east; and it might be
truly said of that great people, that as they wrere the con¬
querors, so they were the surveyors of the world. Every
new war produced a new survey and itinerary of the coun¬
tries which were the scenes of action; so that the mate¬
rials of geography were accumulated by every additional
conquest. Some fragments of the itineraries thus com¬
posed still remain. The most memorable is that which
bears the name of Antoninus, and which may be described
as a mere skeleton road-book, exhibiting nothing more
than the names of places, and their distances from each
other. The Jerusalem Itinerary, which details minutely
the route from Bordeaux to that holy city, is of the
same description.
A more remarkable monument, however, is the Peu-
tingerian Table, which forms a map of the world, con¬
structed on the most singular principles. The map is
twenty feet long and only one foot broad, so that we can
easily conceive how incorrectly the proportion of the dif¬
ferent parts is exhibited. Along the high road which
traverses the Roman empire in the general direction of
east and west, objects are minutely and accurately repre¬
sented; but of those objects which lie to the north and
south of it, only some general notion is conveyed. The
Peutingerian Table serves as a specimen of what were
called Itinera Picta, the “ painted roads” of the ancients,
intended for the clearer direction of the march of their
armies.
While the Romans by their surveys contributed much
to increase the mass of materials out of which the struc¬
ture of geographical science was to be reared, they never
attempted themselves to combine these materials into
one harmonious system. They imbibed in no degree the
commercial spirit of the great maritime states of the an¬
cient world, Carthage, Greece, and Egypt, which their
valour and discipline obliged to submit to their dominion.
But whilst the trade of the conquered countries continued
to be carried on through nearly the former channels after
they were reduced to the form of Roman provinces, the
wealth accumulated in the capital of the world gave rise
to a demand for luxuries of every description. This, com¬
bined with the comparative peace and security which for
a long time prevailed after the complete establishment of
the Roman dominion, gave new vigour to commercial en¬
terprise. Alexandria continued the great centre of na¬
val affairs. Obstacles which in the time of Alexander
were deemed insurmountable, were completely overcome.
Irade with India through Egypt acquired new energy,
and was carried on to a greater extent. Continued in¬
tercourse with the shores of India at length made known
to navigators the periodical winds which prevail in the
Indian Ocean ; and taking advantage of these, pilots were
emboldened to abandon the slow and dangerous course
along the coasts, and to make the open sea their high-
392
History.
GEOGRAPHY.
way. Their course was from.Ocelis, at the mouth of the gnomon as 2131 to 600; an observation which makes the Hi«
Arabian Gulf, to Nelkunda (Nelisuram), on the western meridian altitude of the sun at Marseilles on that day w
shores of the Indian continent (the coast of Malabar), /0° 27^. Ihe merit of the invention of the gnomon in
which seems to have been the utmost limit of the ancient Greece is ascribed to the astronomical school of Miletus,
navigation in that quarter of the globe. The extensive and particularly to Anaximander and Anaximenes. There
regions which stretch beyond this to the east were very is reason, however, to believe that this method of obser-
imperfectly known by the reports obtained from a few vation was originally invented by the Egyptians; and
adventurers who visited them by land. . that Thales, who travelled into Egypt, carried thence the
If we now bring into one view the amount of informa- knowledge of it into Greece. It has even been conjec-
tion possessed by the ancients respecting the habitable tured that the Egyptian pyramids and obelisks were in-
<dobe, we shall find that it was extremely limited. It tended for the same purpose with the gnomon; and,
was at those places on the earth where the human mind though it would be extravagant to imagine that this was
displayed greatest activity and enterprise that this know- their sole use, this opinion appears to be countenanced by
ledge was naturally accumulated. Proceeding from these the fact of their being placed in the direction of the four
stadons, the boundary which separated the known from cardinal points.
the unknown part of the world was gradually enlarged ; The determination of the length of the meridian shadow
but the regions comprehended within it constituted still at the solstices for different parts of the earth, by obser-
but a small portion of the whole. In Europe the exten- vations made with the gnomon, is important as being the
sive provinces in the eastern part of Germany were but first step towards connecting geography with astronomy;
little known, while the whole of that vast territory which and, when combined with just conceptions of the globular
now forms the countries of Denmark, Sweden, Prussia, figure of the earth, leads, by a simple train of thought, to
Poland, and Russia, was buried in the deepest obscurity, the notion of latitude by which the position of a place
The inhospitable and dreary climes within the arctic circle is fixed relatively to north and south. The position with
were yet unexplored. In Africa little was known beyond regard to east and west is the only other element neces-
the countries stretching along the Mediterranean Sea, sary for fixing the absolute situation of the place on the
and those bordering on the western shore of the Arabian surface of the earth. It might have been supposed not
Gulf. In Asia the rich and fertile countries beyond the to be more than a reflecting mind could easily accomplish,
Ganges, whence the commerce of modern times has to reach the conception of both these elements, and to
drawn the most valuable commodities for the comfort and apply them to use. Yet so slow w^as the progress towards
embellishment of civilized society, were known, if known the apprehension of the principles on which an accurate
at all, only by the most vague and uncertain reports, system of geography might be founded, that from the
The immense regions on the north occupied by the wan- days of Thales and his immediate successors, who flou-
derino- tribes called in ancient times by the general names risked in the sixth century before the Christian era, there
of Sarmatians or Scythians, and which are now inhabited appears to have been little done for the impiovement of
by various tribes of Tartars, and by the Asiatic subjects geography, as a science, until the establishment of the
of Russia, seem never to have been penetrated. Add to famous astronomical school of Alexandria. Pythagoras
this, that the fertile and populous regions within the tor- had indeed maintained the true system of the world, by
rid zone were imagined to be uninhabitable ; and we have placing the sun in the centre, and giving the earth both
ample proof that the geography of the ancients was very a diurnal and annual revolution; but this doctrine was so
imperfect. much in advance of the age in which he promulgated it,
Having thus far given a succinct view of the progressive that it was soon lost sight of.
steps by which the earth’s surface, considered merely as Eratosthenes was the first who reduced geography to
tracts of territory inhabited by men, gradually became a regular system, and laid its foundations on clear and so-
known, it will be proper next to trace briefly the advances lid principles. Under the patronage of the Ptolemies, he
made towards arranging into a systematic form the mate- had access to the materials collected by Alexan er, is
rials accumulated. Science required that the relative po- generals and successors, as well as to the immense mass
sitions of places, with their distances from each other, of documents accumulated in the Alexandrian library,
should be ascertained in such a manner as to furnish fixed At an early period of the history of astronomica science,
principles on which the whole, or any portion, of the sur- the vulgar opinion that the earth is a flat surface, wi n
face of the earth might be represented or delineated with the heavens resting upon it as a canopy, was rejected,
due regard to its figure and dimensions. but it was not at once that distinct conceptions o i sgo
The first rude attempt made by the early geographers bular figure were acquired. It was only as astronomic*
to determine the position of places appears to have de- observations increased that the doctrine or its sp erl^ ;
pended on the division of the earth into climates, distin- was fully established. This point had been game w
guished by the species of animals and plants produced in Eratosthenes began his labours; and what he en eav
each. Thus the appearance of the negro, the rhinoceros, to accomplish was to delineate, in strict con ormi y
and the elephant, suggested to them the line of division this principle, the known parts of the eart i s sur acY,
where the torrid zone began towards the north, and end- With this view, founding his system on t ic use
ed towards the south. But instead of this very vague me- gnomon, he supposed a line to be tiaced t irougi c
thod, another was soon adopted, which consisted in observ- places, in all ot which the longest day was now
ing at places the length of the longest and shortest day. exactly of the same length. I his line woui ^
This was determined with some accuracy by means of a be a parallel to the equator. But though ns me . n.
gnomon, a method of observation much used by the an- correct in principle, the want of accurate observa i
cients. An upright pillar of a known height being erect- dered it uncertain in practice. The line was s ppj.
ed on a level pavement, by observing the lengths of the to comprise all the leading positions w iic i ay ^
meridian shadows, they were enabled to trace the pro- though they did not actually come within its
gress of the sun from tropic to tropic. The most ancient western extremity was the Sacred Promon
observation with the gnomon which we meet with is that (Cape St Vincent); thence it passed throug ^
of Pytheas, in the days of Alexander the Great. Pytheas of Gades. Proceeding eastward, it passe y0 ^
observed at the summer solstice at Marseilles, that the Sicilian Sea, and near the southern extrenn V . ^
length of the meridian shadow was to the height of the Peloponnesus, and was continued through ie ^
GEOGRAPHY.
bodes, and the Bay of Issus; whence entering Cilicia,
id crossing the Euphrates and the Tigris, it was extend-
1 to the mountains oflndia, and terminated at the remote
ty of Thinae, situated on the Eastern Ocean. The pa-
Jlel thus drawn was understood to pass through all those
aces where the longest day was fourteen hours and a half,
stretched the whole length of what was supposed to be
e habitable world, and measured about 70,000 stadia;
; distance corresponding, according to the estimate of
ratosthenes, to about 140 degrees, which is rather more
i an one third of the circuit of the globe.
This first parallel drawn through Rhodes was ever af-
trwards preferred as the basis of ancient maps; inas-
mch as it was traced through the middle of the Medi-
trranean, along the coasts of which were situated the
jincipal nations of antiquity. Following out the same
j ppy thought which he had thus successfully made the
{ oundwork of his system, Eratosthenes was induced not
dy to trace other parallels at certain intervals from the
fist, as one through Alexandria, another through Syene,
id a third through Meroe; but also to trace, at right
rgles to these, a meridian, passing through Rhodes and
jjexandria southward to Syene and Meroe. As the progress
Viich he thus made towards the completion of what he
Id so skilfully conceived, naturally tended to enlarge
In ideas concerning geographical science, he attempted
vaat seemed a stiil more difficult undertaking, namely,
tldetermine the circumference of the globe by the actual
n asurement of a segment of one of its great circles,
'he method he pursued has already been pointed out in
tl; article Astronomy, page 730. There is a differ-
ti:e among ancient authors respecting the result ob-
t|ned by Eratosthenes. The great majority, however,
site it to be 252,000 stadia, which give exactly 700 sta-
ti. for a degree of the equator, and 555 stadia for the
cgree of longitude upon the parallel drawn through
Bodes.
The knowledge of the circumference of the earth is a
ri;essary element in the construction of maps ; and hence
tl: most eminent of the ancient astronomical geogra-
fprs made repeated endeavours to determine it with ac-
cracy. Possidonius, by an astronomical observation, de-
tl mined the arch of the meridian between Rhodes and
ilbxandria to be a forty-eighth part of the whole circum-
flence. With regard to the distance between these two
Ffces, 5000 stadia were the reputed distance ; but Eratos-
ttnes had made it only 3750 stadia upwards of 170 years
Hore, and betwixt these two Possidonius had to make
ct>ice. The former number gives 240,000 stadia for the
vole circumference, the latter 180,000 stadia. Of this
lit result, which gives 500 stadia for a degree of the equa-
t, Possidonius is reported by Strabo to have approved,
hr want of the knowledge of the true length of the sta-
ciim, it is now impossible to judge of the actual quantity
aligned either by Eratosthenes or Possidonius as the mea-
®>e of the earth’s circumference; but the great uncer-
tJnty about the distance between the points of observa-
h i in the'case of the determination of the latter astro-
e ner renders his conclusion of no value.
Notwithstanding the soundness of the principles which
Id now been laid down for the delineation of the globe,
n;ch remained to be done, in the way of observation, be-
Be: an accurate representation of the whole, or a portion
o die earth’s surface, could be given. Both the latitudes
ad longitudes of the ancients are erroneous; more espe-
c ,1y the latter. This is what might be expected at that
«!ly period. But in setting out from the Sacred Promon-
;!jy °f Iberia, the meridian of which the ancients made
tl ir first meridian, the errors in longitude accumulate, as
W advance eastward, with a regularity, as well as rapidity,
* ich is very surprising. The regularity of their increase
JOL. x.
induced M. Gosselin to conclude that they were to be at¬
tributed, not to the imperfection of independent observa¬
tions, but to some general cause, which he endeavoured
to assign by imagining that Eratosthenes had access to
some early map, found probably by Alexander or his ge¬
nerals in some country in the East, where astronomy had
been successfully cultivated; and that misapprehensions
respecting the principle of delineation employed, which
M. Gosselin supposes to have been that on which the
plane chart is constructed, had led him into a regular sys¬
tem of errors. In the plane map the length of a degree
of longitude is supposed to be the same at all distances
from the equator. By taking for granted that Eratosthe¬
nes took his distances from a map of this kind, on which
the parts of the globe had been accurately laid down,
but that he divided the stadia expressing these distances,
not by /00, the number of stadia in a degree at the equa¬
tor, as he ought to have done, but by 555, the number
corresponding to the parallel of Rhodes, M. Gosselin ob¬
tains results which have a wonderful coincidence with the
positions actually given by Eratosthenes. These results,
however, are deduced from a hypothesis which is unsup¬
ported by any evidence, except what may be supposed to
arise from this coincidence. A more probable solution
seems to be that Eratosthenes determined his longitudes
from the itinerary measures, which he reduced to degrees
at the rate of 700 stadia to a degree at the equator, and
of 555 to a degree at the parallel of Rhodes; and that
the errors are the consequences of the exaggerated ac¬
counts which merchants and travellers of that age gave
of the distances over which they passed ;—their exagge¬
rations, of course, bearing some proportion to the length
and hardships of the journeys undertaken.
The knowledge as yet possessed by geographers with
regard to the outline of the habitable globe was far from
being such as to enable them to delineate it with any de¬
gree of precision. This circumstance, combined with the
unavoidable errors in latitude and longitude, produced
very great distortions in the representations given of the
countries on the surface of the globe. Under the guid¬
ance of sound principles of science, however, it was now
certain that these imperfections would gradually disappear.
Hie improvements introduced into geography by Era¬
tosthenes were perfected in principle by Hipparchus. This
celebrated astronomer, who flourished between a hundred
and sixty and a hundred and thirty-five years before the
Christian era, was the first who undertook the arduous
task of forming a catalogue of the stars, and fixing their
relative positions. His object was to transmit to pos¬
terity a knowledge of the state of the heavens at the
period of his observations. The extremities of the ima¬
ginary axis round which the heavens perform their di¬
urnal revolution suggest two fixed points by which the
position of the great circle of the celestial sphere called
the equator is determined. If a great circle be supposed
to pass through these points and any star, the position of
the star will be ascertained if we measure in degrees and
parts of a degree the arch of the meridian circle inter¬
cepted between the star and the equator, and also the
arch of the equator intercepted between a given point in
it, and the meridian circle passing through the star.
Upon this principle did Hipparchus arrange the stars ac¬
cording to their places in the heavens, a work in which
he appears, however, to have been in some measure anti¬
cipated by Timocharis and Aristillus, who began to ob¬
serve about two hundred and ninety-five years before the
Christian era. The great improvement which he intro¬
duced into geography consisted in this, that he applied to
the determining of the position of any point on the sur¬
face of the earth the same artifice which he had already
so happily introduced in the arrangement of the constel-
3 D
393
History.
394
GEOGRAPHY.
Historj. lations; and thus furnished the means of ascertaining the
relative situations of places with a precision which no
itinerary measurements could possibly attain. If we sup¬
pose the earth to be a globe concentric with the celestial
sphere, and intersected by the planes of the celestial equa¬
tor and meridian, the principle on which the application
of this artifice to the terrestrial sphere depends becomes at
once obvious. Hipparchus made a considerable number
of observations of latitude, and pointed out how longitudes
might be determined by observing the eclipses of the sun
and moon. Great as this improvement was, its import¬
ance seems not to have been duly estimated until the days
of Ptolemy ; for none of the intermediate authors, such as
Strabo, Vetruvius, and Pliny, have given the least hint of
the latitude and longitude of any one place in degrees
and minutes, though all of them have given minutely the
geographical position of places according to the length and
shadows of the gnomon. Strabo, indeed, even justifies
his neglect of the astronomical principles introduced by
Hipparchus. “ A geographer,” says he, “ is to pay no at¬
tention to what is out of the earth ; nor will men engaged
in conducting the affairs of that part of the earth which is
inhabited, deem the distinction and divisions of Hippar¬
chus worthy of notice.”
The true principles of geography being pointed out
by the application of latitude and longitude to places on
the earth, the way was opened for the improvement of
maps, which, with the single exception of the map drawn
by Eratosthenes, had hitherto been little more than rude
outlines and topographical sketches of the different coun¬
tries.
No maps more ancient than those formed to illustrate
Ptolemy’s geography have reached modern times ; but
the earliest of which there is any account are those of
Sesostris, of whom it is said, that having traversed great
part of the earth, he caused his marches to be recorded
in maps; and that he gave copies of these maps not only
to the Egyptians, but to the Scythians, whose astonish¬
ment he thus greatly excited.
Some have imagined that the Jews made a map of the'
Holy Land when they gave the different portions to the
nine tribes at Shiloh. For on that occasion, as we are
informed by the sacred historian, men were sent “ to
walk through the land, and to describe it:” and when
they had accomplished the object of their mission, by de¬
scribing “ it by cities into seven parts, in a book,” they
returned unto Joshua. What is here said, however, does
not fully determine whether their mensuration of the
land was only recorded in numbers, or regularly projected
and digested into the form of a map.
The first Grecian map on record is that of Anaximan¬
der, mentioned by Strabo, which some have conjectured
to have been a general map of the then known world.
It has further been imagined to be the same with that
referred to by Hipparchus under the designation of The
Ancient Map, and which in some few particulars he pre¬
ferred to that of Eratosthenes.
But some idea of the nature of the maps of those early
days will be best obtained from the map of Aristagoras, king
of Miletus, which is minutely described by Herodotus. The
historian tells us that this map, which was traced on brass or
copper, Aristagoras showed to Cleomenes, king of Sparta, in
order to induce him to attack the king of Persia, even in his
palace at Susa, for the purpose of restoring the lonians to their
ancient freedom. It contained the intermediate countries
to be traversed in that march. We must not interpret,
however, the words of Herodotus too literally, when he
describes it as containing “ the whole circumference of
the earth, the whole sea or ocean, and all the rivers.”
Keeping in view the state of geography at that period, it
may justly be concluded, that notwithstanding this pomp¬
ous form of expression, the sea meant only the Mediterra- h
nean, and therefore the earth or land the coasts of that sea,
and more particularly Asia Minor, extended towards the
middle of Persia : by the rivers must be meant the Halys,
the Euphrates, and the Tigris, which Herodotus mentions
as necessary to be crossed in the expedition in question.
The map contained one straight line, called the royal high¬
way, embracing all the stations or places of encampment be¬
tween Sardis and Susa, so that it was properly an itinerary.
The principle on which Eratosthenes constructed his
map we have already considered. With regard to its ex¬
tent, it seems to have contained little more than the states
of Greece, and the dominions of the successors of Alex¬
ander, digested from the surveys of the marches of that
great general. He had some faint idea respecting the wes¬
tern parts of Europe, which he had acquired from the voy¬
age of Pytheas; but not such a conception as to enable
him to delineate their outline on a chart. According to
the report of Strabo, he was quite unacquainted with Spain,
Gaul, Germany, and Britain, he was equally ignorant of
Italy, the coasts of the Adriatic, Pontus, and of all the coun¬
tries toward the north. His errors with regard to the dis¬
tances of places were in some instances enormous. The
distance of Carthage from Alexandria he represents at
15,000 stadia, instead of 9000.
It was not until Ptolemy commenced his labours that
the improvements pointed out by Hipparchus were effec¬
tually applied to perfect the system which Eratosthenes
had so happily begun. Ptolemy composed his system of
geography, which escaped amidst the general wreck which
has consumed so many other ancient books of science, in
the reign of Antoninus Pius, about 150 years after the
opening of the Christian era. At this period the Koman
empire had reached its utmost extent, and all the provin¬
ces had been surveyed, and were well known. The mate¬
rials then in existence, and in the possession of Ptolemy
for completing his great work, were the proportions of the
height of the gnomon and its shadow, at the time of the
equinoxes and solstices, taken by different astronomers;
calculations founded on the length of the longest days;
the measures or computed distances of the principal roads
contained in the surveys and itineraries ; and the various
reports of travellers and navigators, whose determinations
of the distances of places often rested, however, on no better
foundation than hearsay and conjecture. Among these va¬
rious particulars, there evidently existed considerable differ¬
ences in point of authority. But Ptolemy undertook the
difficult and laborious task of comparing, and reducing into
one system, which should possess the order and beauty ot
science, this apparently incongruous mass. He converted
and translated the whole into a new mathematical language,
expressing in degrees and minutes the latitude and longi¬
tude of each place, according to the principles laid down
by Hipparchus, but which had been allowed by geogra¬
phers to lie useless for upwards of two hundred and fifty
years. It is in Ptolemy’s work, which consists of eight
books, that we find for the first time the mathematical prin¬
ciples of the construction of maps, both general and par¬
ticular, as well as of several projections of the sphere.
Notwithstanding that the light of accurate science thus
directed the steps of the first geographer of antiquity, he
was far from reaching the precision at which he aimed.
This arose from the imperfection of the original materials
upon which his work is based in reference to its details-
With regard to the remoter boundaries of the then known
world, in all its quarters, a wonderful advancement in know¬
ledge had been made since the days of Eratosthenes an
of Strabo. But still that additional information was not
fitted to make up for the want of astronomical observations,
by which alone accuracy could be secured. Besides, m
relation to places situated beyond the limits of the Roman
nry
W
geography.
jmpire, and therefore out of the range alike of astrono-
1 tiers and surveyors, it was almost impossible for Ptolemy
ot to commit mistakes. Thus his errors arose from the
rnorance of the age ; and are of such a character as to
dmit of being removed only as opportunities are afforded
f obtaining the requisite data by the strict application
f the principles derived from mathematical and astrono-
lical science.
Ptolemy adopted the measure of a degree at 500 stadia,
wording to the standard of Possidonius, instead of follow-
g the measurement of Eratosthenes, which gives 700 sta-
a to a degree. But M. Gosselin has accused him of an
•ror of a more serious kind ; because, if really committed,
would have indicated a strange neglect of what a geo-
•apher should make his first care. This error consists in
i suming one measure for the degree of latitude (the mea-
re of Eratosthenes, 700 stadia) and another for the degree
longitude at the equator. Such a hypothesis would evi-
ntly be inconsistent with the globular figure of the earth,
may reasonably be doubted, however, whether M. Gos-
: I in’s accusation is well founded ; for, though it seems sup-
I rted hy the fact, that while Ptolemy has changed mate-
i illy all the longitudes of Eratosthenes, the latitudes along
Je great line remain the same, and are in general correct,
t is circumstance may be accounted for sufficiently from
c ler causes. Rhodes, and several other points of this
bat line, were fixed with regard to latitude by observa-
t ns approximating to the truth, while the elements for
otermining the longitudes were derived entirely from the
i neraries. To the north and south of the great central
lie, which alone was fixed upon sound data, errors in lati-
t:le accumulate as rapidly as those in longitude are found
tdo in proceeding eastward.
One of the most remarkable errors in the geographical
vrk of Ptolemy is the great length assigned to the
Iiditerranean. Reckoning from the Straits of Gades to
tl bottom of the Bay of Issus, where Alexandretta, or
Sitnderoon, now stands, he makes the difference of lon-
gj ide no less than sixty-two degrees, which is upwards
oi wenty and a half degrees above the truth. This amaz-
i> error, which affected all our maps more or less until
t! beginning of the last century, was produced in conse-
q nee of his having put too much confidence in the sup-
P ed surveys of different persons of reputation recorded
b Strabo, and who appeared to confirm the accuracy of
e h other’s computation. According to their united tes-
ti ony, the whole length of the Mediterranean was about
2500 stadia, which, being converted into degrees of lon-
gnde according to the method of Ptolemy, of allowing
4'l stadia to a degree of longitude on the parallel of
Bbdes, give about 66° 15'. This is 4° 15' more than
w it are given by Marinus, whom in this particular Pto-
b y strictly follows.
^iny quotes from Agrippa a computation of the length
of he Mediterranean, which makes it 3440 Roman miles;
b’ in quoting it he adds a suspicion that there is an error
whe numbers. When converted into degrees of longi-
Ri \ the result of this computation gives 58° 20'. As,
«< ever, the length given by Strabo amounted, as we have
se i, to 66° 15', Ptolemy seems to have chosen a middle
F i between these two erroneous computations, and to
£ - adopted 62° for the difference of longitude in ques-
there is another ancient computation quoted
a_ by Pliny from Polybius, according to which the length
j )c> Mediterranean is stated to be 2440 Roman miles.
t j tolemy followed this estimate, he would have ob-
t*[~d for a result 41° 4', which is not far from the truth.
bus we see that the circumstances under which Pto-
CJ' wrote rendered it impossible for him to avoid mis-
and that he might be misled even when more accu-
results were within his reach.
395
The great obstacle with which the ancients had to con- History,
tend was the finding of the longitude with accuracy, a pro -
blem for the solution of which it was long before there
was discovered any method sufficiently exact. This ac¬
counts for the erroneous longitudes of Ptolemy, and more
especially for the length of time, even many centuries, du¬
ring which the remarkable error with regard to the length
of the Mediterranean remained undiscovered and uncor¬
rected.
We have now traced the history of geography from the
earliest period of which we have any information, to the
time when it assumes a scientific character. We shall
conclude our account of ancient geography by shortly no¬
ticing the principal geographers of antiquity, some of w hom
have not yet been mentioned, while others have only been
quoted in tracing the rise and progress of the science.
I he intimate connection between geography and "the
sciences of geometry and astronomy, rendered the former
an object of attention to many who anciently cultivated
the latter. We have already mentioned Anaximander and
Anaximenes, of the school of Miletus. Democritus, Eu¬
doxus of Cnidus, and Parmenides, are also reported to have
improved geography; and to the last is attributed the divi¬
sion of the earth into zones. These were followed by Era¬
tosthenes, who lived about two hundred and forty years
before the Christian era; by Hipparchus about eighty years
afterwards; by Polybius, Geminus, and Possidonius. Era¬
tosthenes wrote three books on geography, some passages
of which Strabo criticises, though he frequently defends
him against Hipparchus, who appears to oppose his opinions
with some degree of affectation. Polybius also wrote on
geography; as did likewise Geminus and Possidonius, who
are frequently quoted by Strabo. Polybius, according to
Geminus, argued with considerable acuteness for the pos¬
sibility of the torrid zone being inhabited; and he even
adduced plausible arguments to prove that the countries
under the equator enjoy a more temperate climate than the
countries do that are situated near the tropics.
We must not here omit a geographer and geometer
who lived about the time of Alexander the Great. This
was Dicearchus of Messina, a disciple of Theophrastus,
who wrote a description of Greece in iambic verses, of
which some fragments yet remain. But what chiefly
renders him remarkable is, that he measured geometri¬
cally several mountains, to which an excessive height
had been before assigned.
With Dicearchus we may notice another geometer,
Xenagoras, a disciple of Aristotle, mentioned by Plutarch
in his life of Paulus ^Emilius, who occupied himself in the
measurement of mountains. He found the height of
Mount Olympus to be fifteen stadia.
In some of the latter periods which preceded the Chris¬
tian era there were several writers on geography, as Ar-
temidorus of Ephesus, who wrote a geographical work of
eleven books, of which nothing remains ; Scymnus ofChio,
author of a description of the earth in iambic verses, which
remain in a very mutilated state ; Isidorus of Charax, who
gave a description of the Parthian empire ; and Scylax of
Caryades, author of a voyage round the Mediterranean,
which is still extant.
I he works of all these geographers are, however, but
small in comparison with the Geography of Strabo ; a work
in seventeen books, which has come down to us entire.
This is one of the most valuable works of antiquity, both
from the spirit of discussion which runs through it, and
the number of curious particulars which the author has
collected from different geographers and navigators who
preceded him, and of whose works nothing remains ex¬
cept these extracts. Strabo lived in the reigns of Augus¬
tus and Tiberius, and was nearly contemporary with Pom-
ponius Mela. This latter geographer wrote a work De Situ
396 GEOGRAPHY.
History. Orbis, which, though little more than a bare summary, is
valuable as it gives us a sketch of what was known in his
time respecting the state of the habitable globe. Besides
Mela, Rome produced in the most flourishing era of its
literature another eminent geographer, Pliny. He devot¬
ed two books of his extensive work on natural history to a
system of geography. His intimate connection with the
imperial family, and with' many of the most eminent com¬
manders of the time, appears to have given him access to
all the military measurements, as well as to the general
survey of the Roman empire. Thus furnished with a
greater store of authentic materials than any former wri¬
ter, he has introduced a great number of itinerary details,
which are for the most part accurate and valuable. Ju¬
lius Solenus has also treated of geography in his Polyhis-
tor, a compilation sufficiently valuable from the number of
curious particulars which are there collected.^ Marinus
of Tyre was another geographer who appears to have
been distinguished, though his works have perished. Even
under the Roman empire Tyre continued to be the seat
of an extensive commerce; indeed the commercial rela¬
tions of her citizens appear to have extended over a wider
portion of the earth’s surface than ever. The enlarged
materials furnished by the lengthened journeys of his
countrymen, which brought them even to the confines of
China, Marinus collected, and sought to apply to them
the astronomical principles of Hipparchus, so that he
might give to geography a new and more accurate form.
Ptolemy, whom Marinus preceded by a short time, em¬
ploys a great part of his first book in discussing the means
employed by the Tyrian geographer for fixing the rela¬
tive position of places ; and from the references and ex¬
tracts it appears that the system of Marinus partook large¬
ly of the imperfections of a first effort.
The enlarged and scientific views of Ptolemy we have
already considered. Some time after Ptolemy lived Diony¬
sius, commonly called the Periegetic, from the title of a
work in verse composed by him, namely, his Periegesis, or
Survey of the World. This work was translated into La¬
tin verse by Priscianus, and afterwards by Avienus. There
is, besides, a description by Avienus, of the maritime
coasts, in iambic verses, of which there remain about
seven hundred.
The difficulty of procuring the small and scattered pieces
of most of these authors, with those ot a few others not
here enumerated, induced the learned Hudson to collect
them into one work, consisting of four volumes octavo,
which were published in the years 1698,1702,1712, under
the title of Geographic veteris Scriptores Grcci minores.
The originals are accompanied with Latin translations,
and notes and dissertations on each by Dodwell. This is
a very valuable collection.
We now proceed to consider the progress of geography
during the middle ages. From the days of Ptolemy to
the revival of letters in Europe, little was done for its
solid improvement. The calamities that ere long over¬
whelmed the Roman empire, involved in the general pro¬
gress of the intellectual darkness which settled on the
world even the imperfect knowledge possessed by the
ancient geographers. While barbarous nations poured in
from several quarters, art and science ceased to be culti¬
vated. The union by which the Roman power had bound
together mankind being now dissolved, Europe was divid¬
ed into small and independent, and for the most part hos¬
tile communities, which had but vague conceptions re¬
specting the situation of each other, while no intercourse
subsisted between their members. With regard to re¬
mote regions all knowledge was lost; their situations, their
commodities, and almost their names, were unknown.
Amidst this ignorance there were but few channels open
through which knowledge could be obtained. One cir¬
cumstance, however, prevented commercial intercourse Hi«t
with foreign nations from being altogether suspended. ^^ ,
The opulence and luxury of imperial Rome had long given >
life and energy to commercial enterprise: that stimulus
was now withdrawn; but Constantinople still remained,
the last refuge of ancient arts, and taste, and elegance,
when the rest of Europe was overspread with barbarism.
Fortunately that city had escaped the destructive rage
of die fierce invaders ; and there, under the cherishing
influence of a demand for foreign productions and luxu¬
ries, commerce continued to flourish. Alexandria con¬
tinued to be the emporium whence they imported the
commodities of the East Indies, until Egypt, falling under
the power of the Arabians, ceased to be a province of the
Roman empire. After this event the industry of the
Greeks succeeded in discovering a new channel by which
Constantinople might still be supplied with the produc¬
tions of India. These were first conveyed up the Indus
as far as that river is navigable, thence by land-carriage
they were brought to the Oxus, and were carried down
that river to the Caspian Sea. Entering there the Volga,
they were conveyed up it, and thence were again trans¬
ported by land until they reached the Tanais, down which
they were conveyed to the Euxine Sea, where vessels
from Constantinople awaited their arrival. By this cir¬
cuitous route was a channel of intercourse kept open with
the most distant countries of the East; and an extensive
knowledge of remote regions was still preserved in the
capital of the Greek empire, while the rest of Europe was
sunk in the grossest ignorance.
The missions sent for the conversion of the northern
pagans to Christianity served somewhat to illustrate the
geography of Europe; though there is sufficient proof
that the monks employed were, in many instances, them¬
selves grossly ignorant, some not even knowing the capi¬
tal of their own country, or the cities nearest to their own.
Something was also done by the great sovereigns of Eu¬
rope towards dispelling the prevailing ignorance of the age
on matters connected with geography. Nor did the pi¬
ratical exploits of the Danes and Norwegians under their
great sea-kings fail to make them acquainted with the
seas and maritime coasts where they carried on their de¬
vastations. But it was in the East that a gleam of light
and knowledge began to appear, which seemed to be the
harbinger of the noon-day splendour of science, that should
dispel the darkness of ignorance which had so long op¬
pressed the human mind. Under the influence of a fa¬
naticism which prompted them to own no law but the
koran and the sword, the followers of Mahomet had rush¬
ed from the heart of Arabia, and had carried their con¬
quests over half the world. At length, however, under a
race of humane and polished princes, having contracted a
relish for the sciences of the people whose empire they
had contributed to overturn, they stood for some time
distinguished as the most learned of nations. They trans¬
lated into their own language the books of several of the
Greek philosophers. The valuable work of Ptolemy was
one of the first; and hence the study of geography became
an early object of their attention. But the advancement
which the science made in their hands towards precision
was slow; for they copied and retailed all Ptolemy s prin¬
cipal errors. Still, in all the countries that were under
Mahommedan dominion numerous observations were ma e,
which, though not always strictly correct, wereentite
to be considered as a step beyond the calculations ma e
merely from the itineraries by the Alexandrian geogra¬
phers. In the beginning of the ninth century, under tne
caliph Alrnamon, who may rank among the most dis in
guished patrons of science that ever filled a throne, ey
measured a degree of latitude on the plains of Sinjab
Shinar, near Babylon, with a view to determine the cir
GEOGRAPHY.
imference of the earth. The tables of Abulfeda and
ilug Beg, and of Nazir Eddin, edited by Grsevius, and
published by Hudson, furnish materials that are still of
;e in the construction of the maps of the interior of Asia.
The progress and success of the Moslem arms removed
e obscurity in which many countries had until then been
,, ncealed, as well as the barbarism in which they had been
, nk. And even beyond the limits of the Mahommedan
jrld they pushed their researches, by sending missions
bth to the east and to the west, which they explored
their remotest limits. At that time Europe remained
norant of the improvements made by the Arabians,
lough she was destined in subsequent ages to perfect
i eir discoveries.
At length the long period of barbarism which accom-
j.nied and followed the fall of the Roman empire, du¬
ng which the traces of whatever had embellished so-
<ety, or contributed to the comfort and convenience of
j e, were almost entirely effaced, drew to a close. In-
ustry began again to shed its blessings on mankind,
; d Italy was the country where its benign influences
' ?re first perceptible. Having from the operation of va-
Dus causes again obtained liberty and independence, the
Alians soon began to feel the impulse of those passions
r iich serve most powerfully to arouse men to activity and
«terprise. The reviving demand for the comforts and
Ikuries of life led to the revival of foreign commerce,
ift'ie valuable commodities of the East were at first ob-
< med at Constantinople. But the exorbitant price de-
nnded at that mart, in consequence of the circuitous
rate by which they were conveyed thither, induced the
iulians to resort to other ports, as Aleppo and Tripoli,
(i the Syrian coast, and at length to Egypt itself. After
lie Soldans had revived the commerce with India in its
tcient channel by the Arabian Gulf, Venice, Genoa,
i sa, rose from inconsiderable towns to wealthy and po-
]|lous cities. Their trade extended to all the ports in
te Mediterranean, and even beyond the straits to the
li vns on the coasts of Spain, France, the Low Countries,
lid England ; and from these points they diffused through
liirope a taste for the luxuries and enjoyments of civi-
II2d life, which they at the same time furnished the
i 'ans of gratifying.
It was not long ere an event occurred, the most extra-
(ilinary perhaps in the history of human society, which
{ ve a new impulse to the European mind, and forcibly
f) ected its view eastward to the regions of Asia. Under
tD influence of a high-wrought enthusiasm, the martial
frit of the Europeans was aroused, and vast armies,
< nposed of all the nations of Christendom, marched to-
| r(^s Asia on the wild enterprise of delivering the Holy
J nd from the dominion of Infidels. The crusades, how-
<)2r blind the zeal from which they took their rise, had a
v y favourable influence on the intellectual state of Eu-
t*)e, and prepared it for receiving the light of science
ich was soon to dawn upon it. Interesting regions,
kbwn hitherto only by the scanty reports of ignorant and
C dulous pilgrims, were now made the object of atten-
f > and research. Not only was the way opened for the
I ropean nations acquiring a correct knowledge of the
It ly Land, with the kingdoms of Jerusalem and Edessa,
*< nded by the victorious crusaders; but the extensive
10ns over which the Saracens and the Turks had ex-
t ded their empire began to be explored. Search was
Bir made in the writings of the ancient geographers; nor
mi t improbable that some light was derived even from
|- Arabian writers. Religious zeal, the hope of gain,
nbmed with motives of mere curiosity, induced seve-
5; persons to travel by land into remote regions of the
I|'t> far beyond the countries to which the operations of
ei usaders extended. Prompted by superstitious ve-
397
neration for the law of Moses, and by a desire of visiting History,
his countrymen in the East, whom he hoped to find pos- W-y-O
sessed of wealth and power, Benjamin, a Jew of Tudela,
in the kingdom of Navarre, set out from Spain in the year
1160, and travelling by land to Constantinople, proceeded
through the countries to the north of the Euxine and
Caspian Seas. He then journeyed towards the south, and
traversed various provinces of the further India, until, hav¬
ing reached the Indian Ocean, he embarked and visited
several of its islands ; and at length, after thirteen years,
returned by the way of Egypt to Europe. In his progress
he had acquired much information respecting a large por-
tmn of the globe, then altogether unknown to Europeans.
Various missions were sent by the pope and by Chris¬
tian piinces, for purposes which led them to traverse the
remote provinces of Asia. Father John de Plano Carpini,
at the head of a mission of Franciscan monks, and Father
Ascolmo, at the head of another mission of Dominicans,
were m the year 1246 sent by Innocent IV. to enjoin
Kayuk Khan, the grandson of Zengis, who was then at the
head of the Tartar empire, to embrace Christianity, and to
cease from desolating the world by his arms. In fulfilling
the commands laid upon them by the head of the Chris¬
tian church, the mendicants had an opportunity of visiting
a great part of Asia. Carpini, having taken his route
through Poland and Russia, travelled through the northern
provinces as far as the extremities of Thibet; whilst Asco-
lino, who appears to have landed somewhere in Syria, ad¬
vanced through the southern provinces into the interior
parts of Persia.
Father William de Rubruquis, a Franciscan monk, hav¬
ing been sent in the year 1253 on a mission by St Louis of
France, in search of an imaginary personage, a powerful
khan of the Tartars, who was reported to have embraced
the Christian faith, made a circuit through the interior
parts of Asia more extensive than that of any European
who had hitherto explored them. He had the merit of
being the first modern traveller that gave a true account
of the Caspian, which had been correctly described by the
early Greeks as an inland separate sea; but a notion after¬
wards prevailed that it was connected with the Northern
Ocean. Rubruquis ascertained that it had no connection
with the ocean or any other sea. The account of his jour¬
ney was so little read, however, that the old error was re- 1
peated in books of geography long after his time.
While the republics of Italy, and, above all, the state of
Venice, were engaged in distributing the jewels, the spices,
and the fine cloths of India over the western world, it was
impossible that motives of curiosity, as well as a desire of
commercial advantage, should not be awakened to such a
degree as to impel some to brave all the obstacles and
dangers to be encountered in visiting those remote coun¬
tries where these precious and profitable commodities were
produced. A considerable number accordingly are record¬
ed as having penetrated a greater or less depth into the
interior of Asia. But of all the old travellers the fame is
eclipsed by that of Marco Polo, who has always ranked
among the greatest discoverers of any age. This extraordi¬
nary man was a noble Venetian, whose family, according to
the custom of his country, engaged in extensive commerce.
Nicolo Polo, and MaffeoPolo, the father and uncle of Mar¬
co, were merchants, who, in partnership, traded chiefly with
the East; and in pursuit of their mercantile speculations
had already visited Tartary. The recital of their travels
on their return fired the youthful imagination of Marco,
then between seventeen and eighteen years old. Having,
when in the East, gained the confidence of Kublai Khan,
the great conqueror of China, at whose court they had re¬
sided for a long time, he had sent them back to Italy, ac¬
companied by an officer of his court, that they might repair
to Rome as his ambassadors to the pope, of whom, and
398
GEOGRAPHY.
History, the potentates of the western world, they had given him an
 ample account. After many delays they were now, about
the year 1265, to set out on their return to the court of
Kublai, bearing the papal letters and benediction; and it
was resolved that young Marco should accompany them.
After a journey that occupied no less than three and a half
years, and in the progress of which they passed through
the chief cities in the more cultivated parts of Asia, they
reached Yen-king, near the spot wdiere Pekin now stands,
where they were honourably and graciously received by
the grand khan. Struck with the appearance of young
Marco, the khan condescended to take him under his pro¬
tection, and caused him immediately to be enrolled among
his attendants of honour. By prudence and fidelity Marco
gained so high a place in the esteem and confidence of his
protector, that for seventeen years, during which he re¬
mained in his service, he was employed in confidential mis¬
sions to every part of the empire and its dependencies.
He made more than one voyage on the Indian Ocean, and
traded with many of the islands. Besides what he learned
from his own observation, he collected from others many
things concerning countries which he did not visit. Con¬
sidering the very favourable circumstances in which he
was placed for geographical research, as well as his passion
for travelling, which seems to have increased with his op¬
portunities of gratifying it, it is not surprising that, after
the long period of his wanderings in Asia, he should have
returned to Europe possessed of the knowledge of many
particulars, until his time unknown, respecting the 'eastern
parts of the world. Marco, being afterwards made a pri¬
soner by the Genoese, was induced, with a view to beguile
the tediousness of his confinement, to dictate a narrative of
his travels. His information was so far in advance of the
age, that his veracity was exposed to the most injurious
suspicions. But, if we make allowance for some tincture
of credulity, characteristic of the times in which he lived,
his narrative is supported in all its essential points by mo¬
dern information.
While great accessions were thus made to the stock of
knowledge possessed by the nations of Europe respecting
the habitable globe, their ideas were at the same time gra¬
dually enlarged; and an adventurous spirit was generated,
which prepared them for attempting further discoveries.
Still their efforts were limited by certain bounds, in conse¬
quence of the imperfect state of navigation. Whatever
conceptions a daring mind might venture to form respect¬
ing the existence of unknown regions, separated from the
known continents by the mighty expanse of the Atlantic
Ocean, mankind had not yet so obtained the dominion of
the sea as to be able to bring such conceptions to the
test of experiment. It was not until the fortunate disco¬
very of the polarity of the magnetic needle, and the conse¬
quent construction of the mariner’s compass, that man was
enabled to visit every part of the globe which he inhabits.
This important discovery was made by Flavio Gioia, a ci¬
tizen of Amalfi, a town of considerable trade in the king¬
dom of Naples, about the year 1302. Encouraged by the
possession of this sure guide, by which at all times and in
all places he could with certainty steer his course, the na¬
vigator gradually abandoned the timid and slow method of
sailing along the shore, and boldly committed his bark to
the open sea. At the commencement of the fifteenth cen¬
tury, however, navigation appears to have advanced very
little beyond the state which it had reached before the
downfall of the Roman empire. But it was now destined
to make rapid progress. The growing spirit of enterprise,
combined with the increasing light of science, had prepared
the states of Europe for entering upon that great career of
discovery, of which the details constitute the materials for
the history of modern geography.
Portugal took the lead in this new and brilliant path.
Her first attempt was to discover the unknown countries Hist ■
situated along the western coast of Africa. Notwithstand- 1
ing the vicinity of that great continent, and the strong in-
ducement afforded, in the fertility of the countries already
known in it, to its further exploration, Cape Non had hi-
therto limited the researches of the Portuguese, and had
been regarded as an impassable barrier. In the year 1412,
however, ships sent out for discovery doubled this formid¬
able promontory, and reached Cape Bojador, a hundred and
sixty miles to the southward, which became in its turn the
boundary of Portuguese navigation ; and it continued to be
so for upwards of twenty years. Under the coasting system,
which still continued to be practised, it was not likely that
the obstacles presented by its rocky cliffs, which stretch a
considerable wTay into the Atlantic, would soon have been
overcome. But a sudden squall of wind having driven out to
sea the vessel next dispatched, this event fortunately led to
the discovery of Porto Santo ; whence in a little time Ma¬
deira was discovered, being first mistaken for a small black
cloud in the horizon ; and at length, when the Portuguese
by their voyages thither had gradually become accustomed
to a bolder navigation, Cape Bojador was doubled. Thus,
by repeated efforts, the Portuguese navigators gradually
approached the northern boundary of the torrid zone.
Here their progress was for some time arrested, not by
any physical difficulties, but in consequence of the influ¬
ence which the opinion of the ancient mathematicians and
geographers, whom they had hitherto followed as their
guides, that excessive heat rendered the middle regions of
the earth uninhabitable, had upon their minds. Expe¬
rience, however, at length enabled them to triumph over
ignorance and prejudice. A powerful fleet, fitted out in
1484, after discovering the kingdoms of Benin and Congo,
advanced above fifteen hundred miles beyond the equator.
Their intercourse with the natives enabled them to obtain
information concerning those parts of the country which
they had not visited. Not only had they detected the er¬
ror" of the ancients in reference to the torrid zone, but
they found also that the direction of the coast was very dif¬
ferent from what the description given by Ptolemy had led
them to expect. They saw reason to conclude that the
continent gradually became narrower as they proceeded
southward ; so that there was room to believe that the an¬
cient accounts respecting the circumnavigation of Africa
were really founded in truth. New and more extensive
prospects were thus opened to them; and the finding of a
passage to India by sailing round the southern extremity
of Africa became a favourite project. In the year 1488
the lofty promontory which terminates that continent was
descried by Bartholomew Diaz ; but it was not until about
ten years after that it was doubled, and the coast of Mala¬
bar reached, by Vasco de Gama.
Meanwhile, the Cape de Verd Islands, which are said
to have been known to the ancients, but afterwards lost
sight of, had been discovered in 1446; and soon after the
Azores Isles. When we consider the distances at which
these two groups of islands lie from the land, the former
being upwards of 300 miles from the coast of Africa, and
the latter distant 900 miles from any continent, it may be
concluded that the Portuguese, when they entered so bold¬
ly into the open seas, had made no inconsiderable progress
in the art of navigation. _ ,
But brilliant as is the lustre which these discoveries she
around the Portuguese name, their glory would have been
still more dazzling had they seconded the profound views
of Columbus, which led him to the discovery of the few
World. That illustrious man and skilful navigator, by re¬
volving in his mind the principles on which the Portuguese
had founded their schemes of discovery, and carried t em
into execution, was led to conceive that he could imPr||v^
on their plan, and accomplish discoveries which they a
geography.
ory. ,iitherto attempted in vain. From the time that they had
'-'-doubled Cape Verd, the great object at which the Portu¬
guese aimed was to find a passage by sea to the East In-
ies. The direction in which their efforts were made im¬
bed necessarily a long and hazardous voyage, should they
ven be successful in accomplishing their design. But as
ie Atlantic Ocean stretched westward to an unknown dis-
ince, was it not possible that it might reach the shores of
lose very countries to which it was thought so desirable
> find a naval route ? This supposition was perfectly con-
stent with the known globular figure of the earth; and it
as evident, on the same principle, that the further India
retched to the east, the nearer it must approach to the
estern shores of Europe and Africa. Such was the idea
iggested to the mind of Columbus, by the knowledge
liich he possessed of navigation and geography, both in
eory and practice. While he found his views confirmed
i / a careful comparison of the observations of modern pi¬
ts with the hints and conjectures of ancient authors, he
■came thoroughly convinced that the navigator who should
1 ive the boldness to cross the Atlantic Ocean, would have
s toils rewarded by the most important discoveries.
, These ideas had presented themselves to the mind of
1 jlumbus as early as the year 1474; but it was not until
e year 1492, after several years of fruitless solicitation,
; d of discouragements and disappointments of the most
• xatious kind, that he obtained the patronage of Ferdi-
i nd and Isabella, who then governed the united king-
(i ms of Castile and Arragon, and was by them put in pos-
f ision of the means of carrying his schemes of discovery
To execution. With no more suitable an armament for
1; great enterprise than three small vessels, having ninety
rm, mostly sailors, on board, and victualled for twelve
ninths, he sailed from the port of Palos in Andalusia
( the third day of August, and steered for the Canaries.
' king then his departure from Gomera, one of the most
visterly of these islands, he stretched into unknown seas;
8:1 holding his course due west, reached Guanahani,
ti3 of the Bahama Islands, on the 12th day of October.
Ater employing some time in making further discoveries,
II returned to Spain to announce the success of his under-
tling, the fame of which soon spread over Europe, and
ecited general attention. It was no easy matter to deter-
n ie what relation the newly-discovered countries bore to
t ,! regions formerly known. Columbus’s own views on
tf subject were in strict conformity with the idea which
hi taken so firm a hold of his mind, namely, that India
ni;ht be reached by sailing towards the west. He ima¬
ged that the islands he had visited were some of those
wch were said to lie contiguous to the remote shores of
Aa. In this opinion he was confirmed by the coincidence
wich he thought he could trace between certain names
g m to places by the natives, and the appellations known
tdelong to countries situated in India. He thought he
cold recognise, in the answer given to his inquiries after
tb situation of the mines which yielded gold, the name Ci-
Wffo, by which Marco Polo and other travellers in the
•El t designated the island Japan. Ignorant of their lan-
gT ge, and unaccustomed to their pronunciation, he even
®1 )osed that they spoke of the great khan; and hence
"luded that the kingdom of Cathay or China, described
: Uarco Polo, was not far off. The same erroneous opi-
ni i was still further riveted in his mind, by what he sup-
jfc'id an identity between the animal and vegetable pro-
dutions of the East Indies and those of the countries which
"Gad discovered.
I hs second voyage led to the discovery of several more
ie group of islands now called the West Indies, a name
?! 11 them in conformity with the original notions of the
I overer. It was on his third voyage that he discovered
vast continent of America. Having unexpectedly
found the island of Trinidad, with the neighbouring land,
he encountered, before he was aware of danger, the ad¬
verse currents and tumultuous waves occasioned by the
resistance which the waters of the Orinoco oppose to the
tides in the ocean. His attention was thus forcibly called
to the immense body of water which is here poured into
the Atlantic. This he was convinced was vastly too great
to be supplied by any island ; and hence he concluded that
he had now reached the continent which he had sought
through so many dangers.
1 he tenacity with which an ingenious and enterprising
mind adheres to a scheme wdiich it has once proposed to
itself as an object of pursuit, was strikingly evinced by Co¬
lumbus, whose thoughts still dwelt with eagerness on his
original and favourite plan of opening a new passage to
India. It was not enough that he had astonished mankind
by finding a new continent; he conceived the idea that
beyond it there might lie a sea extending to the coasts of
Asia, and that by diligent search some strait might be
found which would conduct him into this sea, or some nar¬
row neck of land, by crossing which it might be reached.
To determine this important point, though hitherto his
services had met with the most unworthy returns, though
years crept upon him, though worn out by fatigue and
broken with infirmities, he still undertook with alacrity
another voyage. By a lucky conjecture he directed his ef¬
forts towards the east of the Gulf of Darien ; but he search¬
ed in vain for a strait; and though he frequently wTent on
shore and advanced into the country, he never penetrated
so far as to enable him to descry the great Southern Ocean.
After the first steps had been taken, the progress of dis¬
covery over the globe was astonishingly rapid. No ex¬
pense or danger deterred even private adventurers from
fitting out fleets, crossing oceans, and encountering the rage
of savage nations in the most distant parts of the earth.
Before Columbus had reached the continent at the mouth
of the Orinoco, Newfoundland had been discovered by Ca¬
bot, a Venetian by descent, but sailing under the auspices
of England. He had also coasted along the present terri¬
tory of the United States, perhaps as far as Virginia. In
the next two or three years, the Cortereals, a daring fami¬
ly of Portuguese navigators, began the long and unavailing
search of a passage round the northern extremity of Ame¬
rica. They sailed along the coast of Labrador, and enter¬
ed the spacious inlet of Hudson’s Bay. Two of them un¬
fortunately perished in this enterprise. In the year 1501
Alvarez Cabral, a Portuguese navigator, destined for India,
having stood out to sea in order to avoid the variable
breezes and frequent calms which he was sure to meet
with on the African coast, to his surprise, came upon the
shores of an unknown country, the coast of Brazil, which
he claimed for Portugal. Amerigo Vespucci, a Florentine
gentleman, who had already sailed along a great part of
Terra Firma and Guyana, now made two extensive vov-
ages along the Brazilian coast. Soon after his return he
drew up and transmitted to one of his countrymen an ac¬
count of his adventures and discoveries, in which he insi¬
nuated that to him belonged the honour of having first dis¬
covered the continent in the New World. His perform¬
ance, which was the first description published of the new¬
ly-discovered countries, circulated rapidly, was read with
admiration, and became the means of procuring for its au¬
thor the high honour of giving his name to the w hole con¬
tinent. Not many years elapsed before the conjecture of
Columbus respecting the existence of an ocean beyond the
continent which he had discovered was found to be true ;
and his favourite project of opening a passage to India by
steering westward was actually accomplished. By crossing
the narrow isthmus of Panama, Nunez Balboa reached the
Pacific Ocean in the year 1513; and in 1521 Magellan dis¬
covered and sailed through the famous straits which bear
399
History. '
400 GEOGRAPHY.
History, his name. After twenty days occupied in navigating this the opposite coasts, to enable the geographers of the time Hist-,.
s—dangerous channel, he beheld spread out before him the to avoid this error. When maps of different dates are com- w.^
boundless expanse of the great Southern Ocean. Direct- pared, we find, as we descend towards modern times, a gra-
ing his course to the north-west, he continued his voyage dual progress towards accuracy in the representations given
for nearly four months without discovering land. From of the earth’s surface. This is what might be expected;
want of provisions, and from sickness, he and his crew suf- for all maps should be considered as unfinished works, in
fered dreadful distress. But when about to sink under which there will always be something to be corrected, or
their sufferings, they fell in with the Ladrone Islands, something new to be inserted.
where they found refreshments in abundance. From these At the period of the revival of letters in Europe, the la-
isles he proceeded on his voyage, and was not long of dis- titudes and longitudes, as given by Ptolemy, were univer-
covering the Philippines. Here, in an unfortunate quarrel sally received with implicit confidence. When checked,
with the natives, he was slain, with several of his principal however, by actual observation, they were found to differ
officers. But his surviving companions, pursuing their voy- materially from the truth. 1 he latitudes in many instan-
age, and returning to Europe by the Cape of Good Hope, ces were found very erroneous ; that of Byzantium, for ex-
solved the great problem of the circumnavigation of the ample, exceeded the truth by two degrees. As nearly the
earth. same excess was found to exist in some other cases, many
After the discovery of the Pacific Ocean by Balboa, the geographers, unwilling to renounce the authority of Ptole-
investigation of the western coasts of America went spec- my, concluded that this difference had arisen from a change
dily forward. Expeditions were soon sent out both north- having taken place in the position of the earth’s axis, in
ward and southward; so that nearly a full view was ob- consequence of which the latitudes of all the places in Eu-
tained of the immense range of coast which the American rope were increased. Ihe progress of observation showed
continent presents to the Pacific Ocean, and at the same that this opinion was untenable, and that before geogra-
time of its great interior breadth. phy could rest on a sure basis, a general revision of ancient
On the other hand, discovery in the eastern world was graduation was indispensably necessary. The only obser-
no less rapid. Within twenty years from the time that Ga- vations employed by the ancients for determining longi-
ma reached India by the way of the Cape of Good Hope, tudes were those of the eclipses of the moon; but it was
all the coasts of Hindustan, those of Eastern Africa, of found that the results derived from this source could not
Arabia, and Persia, had been explored. Navigators had be depended on. In the year 1610, Galileo, having dis-
penetrated to Malacca and the Spice Islands. They had covered three of Jupiter’s satellites, pointed out the use
learned the existence of Siam and Pegu; and it was only which might be made of their eclipses for finding longi-
the characteristic jealousy of the rulers of the Celestial Em- tudes. But this method, which gives the greatest degree
pire that prevented them from entering the ports of China, of accuracy, was turned to little account, until 1668, when
The scientific geographer had now abundance of mate- Cassini published his tables of the revolutions and eclipses
rials to arrange and digest into one systematic whole. He of these satellites. Ihree years afterwards, by means of si-
was now called upon to give such a delineation of the multaneous observations made by him and Picard at Paris,
earth’s surface, as should connect together the ranges of and in the observatories of lycho Brahe at Copenhagen,
eastern and western discovery, and should exhibit the true the difference of longitude of these two important points,
outline and relative positions of countries, as these had been which had been long a matter of dispute, was finally deter-
demonstrated by the astronomer and navigator. The an- mined. Since that time, other accurate methods of find-
cient system of geography, to which the Arabs seem close- ing the longitude have been discovered ; and the instru-
ly to have adhered, was founded on the idea of the whole ments employed in observation have been brought to a
earth being surrounded by an ocean as by a great zone, high degree of perfection. rI he refinements and improve-
This the Arabians characterized as the “ Sea of Darkness,” ments of modern science have been brought to bear upon
an appellation most usually given to the Atlantic ; while the the great problem of determining the figure of the earth,
northern sea of Europe and Asia, as inspiring still more which, though nearly, is not exactly spherical. (See Fi-
gloomy and mysterious ideas, was styled the “ Sea of Pitchy cure of the Earth.) The labours of scientific men to
Darkness.” Such notions could not now keep possession of obtain accurate results on this subject have contributed
the human mind, though it was only by degrees that man- much to the improvement of geography. I he expeditions
kind could be expected to be enlightened by doctrines sent out under Maupertuis to the arctic circle, and under
which were not only new, but seemed likewise to be con- Condamine to the equator, afforded an opportunity of niak-
tradicted by the evidence of sense. The fundamental ing various observations of latitude and longitude in regions
principles of a systematic arrangement had, as we have al- of w'hich no delineation resting upon proper data had hither-
ready seen, been known from the time of Hipparchus, and to been given. Within the last thirty years, trigonome-
had been reduced to practice by Ptolemy. But the want trical surveys of France and England have been executed,
of astronomical observations, or even of accurate surveys, which have nearly completed the delineation of these
which navigators seldom furnished, and for which science countries.
had not indeed yet provided suitable instruments, placed it Much advantage has accrued to geographical science,
still beyond the resources of modern geography to give any in point of accuracy and precision, from the application
thing like a just representation of the two hemispheres, in modern times of a sound and judicious criticism to t ie
The Venetian geographers were the first who attempted a immense mass of materials which had been accumulating
systematic arrangement of the immense regions recently for ages. The labours of M. d’Anville, in the eighteen
discovered, adjusting them to each other, and to the mass century, were employed with great success in this depar
of information previously possessed. But a series of Ve- ment. He undertook the revision of the whole system
netian maps, preserved in the king’s library, show how on which the delineation of the world, and of the coun-
much their skill was counteracted by the difficulties with tries into which it is divided, had hitherto been matte,
which they had to contend. Instead of exhibiting the vast and by unhesitatingly rejecting every particular that ^
ocean which separates the east coast of Asia from the west not rest on positive authority, he removed many fabe 0
coast of America, the two continents are represented ei- uncertain features, and cleany distinguished the know
ther as meeting, or as separated only by a narrow strait, from the unknown parts of the giobe. Major Rennell a
The voyage of Magellan across the Southern Ocean had skilfully arranged and illustrated the important materia
not shown with sufficient distinctness the presentation of collected respecting India. Various authors have m ®
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GEOGRAPHY. 401
■yi t rn times cultivated another interesting field of inquiry, who had been dispatched by the Hudson’s Bay Company History,
tje comparison between ancient and modern geography, to explore the limits of the coast in this direction, sailed
{d the tracing of the rise and progress of early discovery, down the Copper.Mine River, and discovered its entrance
Oese researches were diligently pursued by Vossius, into the sea; and again, when, in 1780, Sir Alexander Mac-
bchart, and other learned men of the seventeenth cen- kenzie traced also to the sea another river about twenty de-
try, and with still more success by Rennell, Vincent, grees farther to the west. Thus were there furnished
ad Mannert, who appear to have pushed them as far as strong grounds to believe that the pole was surrounded by
tfey admit, though much darkness still rests on some parts an ocean which separated the northern coasts of Asia and
.othe inquiry. Gosselin, notwithstanding that he has ap- America, making these two continents altogether distinct
j ed to the subject a great extent of investigation, as well from each other ; and that through this ocean lay the long-
£, much skill and force of criticism, has failed, on account sought course which would certainly conduct the naviga-
fl the peculiar views in which he indulged, to make any tor -who should succeed in forcing his way through the
s id addition to the science. . ice and storms of the polar regions, from the Atlantic into
' The discoveries made by the Spaniards and Portuguese the North Pacific Ocean.
Id,greatly increased the stock of geographical informa- The determination of this great geographical question,
tn. Still much remained to be done. The desire of so long agitated, has recently called forth the utmost ef-
fiding a short and convenient route to India still conti- forts of the British government. In 1818 an expedition
red to supply a stimulus to exertion in the way of dis- was sent out to Baffin’s Bay under the command of Cap-
every. The English and Dutch made extraordinary ef- tain Ross, without leading to any important result, as he
fits, and encountered fearful dangers and disasters, with was led to conclude that no opening existed. Lancaster
t ) expectation of effecting a passage by the north-east, Sound had, however, forcibly attracted the attention of
a ng the northern shores of Asia. A coast beset with the Lieutenant Parry, second in command ; and on returnino-
iis of the Polar Seas presented, however, obstacles too with a new expedition under his immediate command, he
fmidable to be overcome ; though recent researches ap- succeeded in penetrating through Lancaster Sound, which
pr to show that no barrier of land intervenes. But there he found gradually to widen till it opened into the Polar
vis still another quarter where an attempt might be made ; Sea. He found a chain of large islands to lie parallel to
ail to this point the commercial nations of Europe failed the American coast; and among these he continued his
r ; to direct their efforts. The jealousy of Spain long navigation until the accumulation of ice in the straits and
j- ivented the other European states from visiting the channels through which he had to pass stopped his fur-
rrth-western coast of America, so that they remained ig- ther progress. This circumstance induced him to make
ri ant of the vast breadth to which the continent spreads his next attempt through Hudson’s Bay, by the channel
o as it advances towards the north. They adopted, in- of the Welcome, which had as yet been but imperfectly
<lj‘d, the opinion that, like the southern extremity, the explored. Here he succeeded in reaching a point consi-
ni them terminated in a point or cape. This left room derably beyond that at which Middleton had represented
t hope for a north-western passage into the Pacific Ocean, the bay as terminating. He found at length a narrow
bisailing round the imaginary cape. The English took the strait communicating with the Polar Sea, but so encum-
njjst decided lead in the exploratory voyages to which bered with ice as to preclude the hope of its ever af-
t)se views gave rise. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth, fording an open passage. He was therefore again sent
fiibisher and Davis were sent out on three successive out to renew his efforts in the first direction, where he
vrages, which led to the discovery of the entrance into had already obtained partial success. But the obstacles
II dson’s Bay by the former navigator, and of the entrance which he had formerly been unable to overcome still
ii > Baffin’s Bay by the latter. These two capacious basins continued, and prevented him from making any material
vu-e afterwards discovered by the intrepid navigators addition to his former discoveries. Whilst these skil-
viose names they bear. In sailing round the great sea fully-conducted voyages were in progress, Captain Frank-
wiich he had discovered, Baffin mistook the great open- lin was sent out at the head of two successive expedi-
hi into Lancaster Sound for a mere gulf; a misapprehen- tions by land, and, by actual survey, ascertained three
s-1 which checked for a time any further attempts in that fourths of the boundary coast; his operations terminating
q frier, as navigators were led to expect success only at a point beyond the 149th degree of west longitude,
tlbugh the channel of Hudson’s Bay. In 1631, Fox ex- On the other hand, an expedition under Captain Beechy,
pfed a part of that great opening on the north of Hud- sent to meet Captain Franklin on his second toilsome
sit s Bay, called Sir Thomas Roe’s Welcome, which seem- journey, passed the Icy Cape of Cook, and penetrated
e mow to hold out almost the only hope of accomplishing nearly as far as the 156th degree of west longitude, leav-
tli object sought. The assertion of Middleton, an officer ing only seven degrees, or 160 miles, between the far-
inhe service of the Hudson’s Bay Company, that he had thest point thus reached and the utmost limit reached by
•hovered the head of the Welcome to be completely Captain Franklin. The results of this investigation ap-
Ciiiied, and the circumstance of two other navigators, who peared to prove that the whole of the northern coast of
iWi e sent out the following year, failing to effect any thing, America extends in a line not varying much from the pa¬
pa meed an impression on the public mind that the pas- rallel of the seventieth degree of latitude. But Captain
si so long sought had no existence. Ross, in the late expedition fitted out by himself, has
he discoveries of Cook in the North Pacific Ocean, found a large peninsula stretching as far north as seventy-
w' ire he found the American coast stretching away in four degrees of latitude. The existence of a naval pas-
a )i th-westerly direction, joined to the circumstance that, sage farther to the north, in the line of Captain Parry’s
W m he penetrated through the strait discovered early first voyage, is, however, still probable.
he last century by Behring and Tchirikof, which se- The discovery of a new continent greatly enlarged, as
pmtes America from Asia, the coast appeared there to we have seen, the views of mankind respecting the consti-
e’ -md indefinitely to the north, seemed not only to con- tution of the globe. But imagination, no longer limited in
the conclusion that no passage into the North Pacific its range by the notion of a circumambient ocean that
rid an Wa® llere t0 1)6 exPectetl i but also that the Ame- could not be passed, soon gave rise to the belief of a south-
|m continent extended northward in one unbroken mass, ern continent, which was supposed necessary to balance
PJ'iaps even to the pole. The groundlessness of these the land in the northern regions of the earth. The im-
• s became apparent when, in the year 1771, Mr Hearne, mense body of water that was found to occupy so large a
GEOGRAPHY.
402
History, portion of the known regions of the southern hemisphere
gave ample room for supposing this unknown continent to
be of vast dimensions. It was imagined that it might equal
in extent as well as in wealth the American continent.
Nor was it considered necessary to exclude it from the
map of the world till its existence should be proved. It
appears in all the early maps as an immense mass of land
surrounding the south pole, and presenting to the ocean
one unbroken coast. The discovery of certain great insu¬
lar tracts in the South Seas, which, from ignorance of their
true nature, navigators might mistake for continental pro¬
montories or portions of coast, no doubt at first gave some
countenance to the belief of the existence of antarctic land.
But the delusion was gradually dispelled before the light
afforded by further discovery. The Portuguese, in less than
twenty years after their passage of the Cape of Good Hope,
pushed their researches to the most remote islands in the
Indian Ocean, including Java and the Moluccas. They
appear also to have observed some part of the coast of New
Guinea. The Spaniards during their early and adventurous
career put forth strenuous exertions to explore the South¬
ern Ocean, and several of the groups of islands scattered
over its surface were discovered by their navigators. In
1607, the Dutch having wrested from the Portuguese Java
and the Spice Islands, established in them the centre of
their Indian dominion. A great maritime power being
thus placed so near to the northern shores of the largest
portion of land on the globe that is regarded as an island,
it became almost impossible that New Holland could long
remain unknown. It was discovered early in the seven¬
teenth century, and was long supposed to form a part of
the great southern continent. Van Diemen, the Dutch
governor of India, sent out several vessels successively to
explore its coasts. Hertog, Carpenter, Nuytz, and Ulaming,
made very extensive observations on the northern and west¬
ern shores, but found them so dreary and uninviting that
no settlement was attempted. In the year 1644 the eastern
coasts were visited by Tasman, who, proceeding beyond
his predecessors, reached the southern extremity of Van
Diemen’s Land, to which he gave its name ; but he failed
to discover that it is a separate island. Pursuing his course
eastward, he surveyed next the western coast of New Zea¬
land, and returned home by the Friendly Islands. He
thus proved that New Holland was no part of the southern
continent, even should such a continent exist. Cook, by
ranging along the borders of the southern pole, where he
found only isles and firm fields of ice, showed that the hy¬
pothesis of an austral continent had no foundation. The
eastern side of New Holland was discovered by Captain
Cook in the year 1770, who by his extensive operations in
that quarter left little to be done towards completing the
full circuit of it. The same great navigator likewise se¬
cured glory to his country and to himself by completing
the survey of the Great Pacific Ocean. Some of the inte¬
resting groups of islands scattered over its vast surface had
already been made known by the previous voyages of By¬
ron, Wallis, and Carteret. Cook fully traced the great
chain of the Society Islands and the Friendly Islands. He
determined also the form and relations of New Zealand,
New Caledonia, and other great lands and islands in that
region of the globe.
The extensive island of New Holland has recently be¬
come doubly interesting from the important relations which
now subsist between it and Europe. In the year 1788 the
establishment of a British colony on the east coast paved
the way for a more complete survey. By the different ex¬
peditions undertaken from 1795 to 1799, chiefly under the
direction of Bass and Flinders, the east coast, together with
Van Diemen’s Land and Bass’s Strait, which separates that
island from New Holland, were accurately explored. In
1801 an expedition was sent out by the British government
under the command of Captain Flinders, for the purpose o*1 it | •
surveying a large portion of the coast. These surveys W* !
were prosecuted with unremitting ardour and perseverance
At the same time that Captain Flinders was carrying on ' ^
his survey, the French captain Baudin was employed on the
same service, and in some parts the discoveries of these na
vigators intermingle. Some additional observations have
more recently been made ; and by these various expeditions
the whole coast of New Holland and Van Diemen’s Land
has been accurately surveyed, the position of every ooint
has been ascertained, and every inlet and bay has been
traced to its termination.
In tracing the history of geographical discovery, it can¬
not fail to be observed, that while discovery by sea has
been pursued with great advantage, on account of the ra¬
pidity of its progress and the extent of its range, the
slower and more confined operations of the discoverer bv
land are no less necessary to make known the interior fea¬
tures and circumstances of the different countries.
The British dominion in India has led to much additional
information respecting the interior of Asia; information
which is, however, in many respects, only the revival of
ancient knowledge. The great mountainous chain which
forms the northern boundary of India has been traced and
found in many places to tower to such heights as to exceed
the Andes, long supposed to be the highest mountains in
the world. The source of the Ganges, and that of the In¬
dus, with the early courses of these great rivers, have been
found to be situated quite differently from what had been
supposed to be their position by modern geographers. The
mountainous territories of Cabul and Cashmere, the high
interior table-land of Thibet, and the vast sandy plains of
Meckran, have all been more or less explored. Information
of an authentic character has also been recently obtained
respecting the formerly celebrated capitals, Bochara and Sa¬
markand. But a wide field still remains for future research.
The continent of Africa, however, is the quarter of the
globe which, more than any other, has baffled the efforts of
those who would explore its interior. The vast sandy de¬
serts, high mountains, and impenetrable forests which occur
on its surface, joined with the unremitting wars carried on
between the petty tribes, and the deeply-rooted antipathy
of the African Mahommedans towards the Franks, have
presented obstacles of the most formidable kind. The an- >
cients, whose knowledge of the African coasts was very ira- :
perfect, except where they border on the Mediterranean
and the Red Sea, were accustomed to penetrate into the
inland provinces, and are said to have been acquainted 1
with many parts of it which are now altogether unknown.
At an early period of modern history reports that Prester
John, the Christian prince, who had been sought for in vain
in the East, was to be found in the interior of Africa, in¬
duced the Portuguese to explore Abyssinia; but the ac¬
counts which they gave of the extent of that country were
greatly exaggerated. From the western coast they dis¬
patched embassies into the interior in quest of the object
of their search ; and on one occasion they appear to have
reached the city of Tombuctoo, and to have obtained at
Benin some information concerning the great interior king¬
dom of Ghana. Tombuctoo has been for many centuries
the grand emporium of the central trade of Africa; and on
this account an eager desire has been felt in Europe, ever
since the rise of discovery and commercial enterprise, to
visit it and establish an intercourse with it. All attempt
however, to reach it made by European merchants and tra¬
vellers have until recently been entirely baffled. Its actua
condition, and even magnitude, are still involved in very
considerable uncertainty. Major Laing resided there a
considerable time, and made the most diligent inquiries.
but the fatal catastrophe which terminated his career pre
vented the result from ever reaching Europe.
GEOGRAPHY.
a. But the grand object connected with the interior of Afri-
o* ci by which the attention of Europeans has been from the
• fist chiefly excited, is its great central river, the Niger.
r$]\e interest with which this stream has been regarded has
ji -cn from the remarkable nature of the regions through
wich it flows, and still more from our ignorance, combined
jdh the various and contradictory rumours which were so
]i ,g abroad respecting its course and termination. Hero-
d ;us is the earliest author who affords any ideas applicable
tijthis subject. He mentions an expedition into the inte-
rir of Africa, undertaken by some Nasamonian youths,
up, being taken prisoners, were carried to a great city in-
h itited by negroes, and situated on the banks of a river
ui:ch flowed from west to east. This stream he conjec-
tip to be the remote source of the Nile ; but the parti-
c ars given appear to leave little doubt that it was the
$Mjer. A similar hypothesis was adopted by Strabo, Mela,
a;i Pliny, identifying the waters of these two great rivers.
Bib Ptolemy, whose residence in Alexandria afforded him
amle means of information, rejects altogether the idea of
aij communication between them. He describes the Niger
auerminated on the west by Mount Mandrus (Mandingo),
ai as giving rise to several extensive lakes as it proceeds
gits course. His statements do not, however, involve any
tl ig positive as to the direction in which it flows. The
Wens or Arabians are the next great source of informa-
tic ; for in the course of the dissensions which took place
arung their dynasties in Northern Africa, large bodies
ci sed the desert, and founded kingdoms on the eastern
p;» of the shore of the Niger, of which the kingdom of
G ina was the most splendid. According to their testi-
nnty, the Niger flows from east to west, and discharges
it If into the sea, by which they understood the Atlantic,
or,treat circumambient ocean. With regard to its source,
th r generally regarded it as the same with that of the Egyp-
tia Nile, identifying the two rivers in the early part of
th r course. Some were of opinion that the waters of the
NTr did not reach the sea; so that they must have sup-
pod them to be discharged into a lake. The system
adbted by modern Europeans was derived from Leo Afri-
caits, who retained the delineation of the Niger as flowing
tn east to west, and falling into the ocean, but instead
of briving it from the Nile, supposed it to rise from the
lal of Bornou, lying deep in the interior of Africa. B'ol-
loi ug this hypothesis, all the early European navigators,
wl i they saw the two broad estuaries of the Senegal and
G«ubia, concluded that one or both gave egress to the wa-
tei of the Niger. In the beginning of the seventeenth
ce ury, the Trench and English having each formed a set-
tkicut, the one on the Senegal and the other on the Gam-
biawere induced by the hope of gain to seek a route up
thiii; rivers to the city of Tombuctoo ; and in this enter-
pric they proved the falsity of the opinion which had been
so img held. The streams were traced so near to their
soi e as to become little more than rivulets; whilst the
wcnrers were still far from the great central emporium of
Afi'a, and from the great plain through which the Niger
understood to flow. This result led the two great
Wch geographers Delisle and D’Anville to construct
ou < in which the Niger, after the lapse of so many ages,
w» igain represented as flowing to the eastward. Instead
403
of a single stream pursuing a course across the whole Mathema-
breadth of Africa, and falling into the Atlantic, D’Anville deaf Geo-
distinguished three rivers; the Senegal flowing westward, £raPffv-
the Niger flowing eastward into a lake in Wangara, and
another river still farther east, and flowing in the opposite
direction. The data on which this scheme rests were never
fully made public.
Still new doubt was thrown around this subject b/ the
reports collected by Mr Lucas, who travelled under the
auspices of the African Association, and who was assured
at I ripoli, by a native merchant, that the river flowed with
rapidity in a westerly direction. The time, however, at
last arrived when these conflicting opinions were to be si¬
lenced, and new light thrown on the subject, by the labours
of our illustrious modern traveller Mr Park. In his first
expedition, on reaching Sego, he beheld “ the long-sought
majestic Niger, glittering in the morning sun, as broad as
the 1 hames at Windsor, and flowing slowly to the east¬
ward, and directing its course into the depths of interior
Africa. Here, then, was a new point from which theory
and conjecture might start in endeavouring to ascertain
the termination of the Niger. By the persevering exer¬
tions of the British government, an expedition has, however,
at length actually made its way into the unknown interior
of Africa, and has finally led to the solution of the grand
problem which had so long puzzled geographers, as well as
exercised their ingenuity. Without entering further into
details, it will be sufficient to observe, that instead of only
one river being found flowing through the great African
plain in one direction, there were several rivers discovered
flowing in different directions; all of which, it appears, have
been considered at different times, and under different cir¬
cumstances, the Niger. Hence had arisen the various
statements which for ages involved the subject in such
deep mystery. The great central stream of Africa has now'
been very completely traced, whilst much light has been
obtained respecting the regions through which it flows. It
was reserved for Lander finally to trace the course of the
Niger to the Gulf of Benin,where its waters are discharged
through a succession of estuaries, extending along the coast
a space of about 300 miles. Thus, by means of this river
and its numerous tributaries, the prospect is now opened
to British commerce of being able to penetrate into the
most inland and finest regions of the African continent.
In all parts of the habitable globe the spirit of research,
which has already done so much, is still active; nor is it
directed only to the determining of the outlines of contG
nents and countries, or to the marking of the leading fea¬
tures of mountains, rivers, and cities, with their relative
positions and distances. These are regarded by the geo¬
graphical inquirer merely as affording a proper basis on
which to rest the description of the earth considered as the
habitation of man, and as affording him amply the means
of improvement and happiness. The picture can be com¬
pleted only by the continued labours of the scientific ob¬
server, who makes the earth, with its various productions,
whether natural or artificial, the treasures hid in its bosom,
the animals found upon its surface, and, above all, the hu¬
man beings who people its different regions (and these in
all their mutual bearings and relations), the objects of at¬
tentive examination and study.
II.—MATHEMATICAL GEOGRAPHY.
CJIK I PRINCIPLES AND DEFINITIONS
RESTRIAL SPHERE.
OF THE TER-
belongs; the relative positions of places on its surface •
and the methods of delineating the whole or any part of
its surface. Several of these topics belong as much to
trennf ti £ •'    wrv astronomy as to geography; for the former science re-
its'llnt- 116 hfe7re’ niagmtu^e> and motion of the earth ; gards the earth, on the one hand, as the grand observa-
ations to the other bodies of the system to which it tory whence the phenomena of the heavens are contem-
e ^ave already stated that mathematical geography
404
GEOGRAPHY.
Mathema- plated by man; and, on the other hand, as itself consti-
tical Geo- tuting a portion of the planetary system, the laws of which
it is the object of the astronomer to investigate and ex-
p]a;n> it is only, indeed, by celestial observation that the
position of a point on the surface of the earth can be accu¬
rately determined ; so that the first principles of geogra¬
phical science must necessarily he drawn from astronomy.
We take for granted, then, the doctrine of the celestial
sphere ; the globular form, the magnitude, and motion of
the earth, with the phenomena arising out of and depend¬
ing upon its motion. These points are fully discussed in
the article Astronomy, part ii. It will be necessary,
however, for the sake of distinctness, to state briefly such
of the results derived from the reasoning there employed
as belong specially to the subject of this article.
The doctrine of the earth’s rotundity is that with which
the student of geography must first make his mind fami¬
liar. To the eye the earth appears a circular plane, at
the centre of which the spectator imagines himself placed ;
whilst the heavens, spread over his head like a magnificent
canopy, seem to meet the earth all round in a circle which
bounds the view. The space comprehended within this circle
is found to present often a very irregular surface, rising into
mountains, or sinking into cavities, so as apparently to ex¬
clude the idea of its bearing any resemblance to a portion of
a globe or sphere. This is, how ever, nearly its true figure.
Were w^e placed at such a distance from the earth that
the eye would be able to take in at one glance the vast
mass in its full dimensions, it would present the appearance
of a circular disk, of greater or less diameter according to
our distance. If viewed on all sides, its circular form would
remain unchanged ; a property characteristic of no other
body but a globe or sphere. The highest mountains would
be found to bear so little proportion to the whole bulk, as
to cause no perceptible deviation from the globular form ;
and the same thing may be said of the difference which
exists between the polar and equatorial diameters, though
that quantity amounts to about twenty-eight miles.
The portion of the earth, then, seen from any point
above its surface, is to be regarded as the segment of a
sphere, which increases in extent according as the eye is
more elevated. Knowing the semidiameter of the earth,
and the height of the eye above the surface, it is easy to
find the diameter of the circle which bounds our view on
the earth ; supposing, as is the case at sea, that no object
should intervene to obstruct our vision. Thus,let AB (Plate
CCLIX. fig. 1) be the height of a mountain on the earth’s
surface. From A draw the line AD, a tangent to the sur¬
face in any direction ; D will be the most distant point
seen by a spectator whose eye is placed at A, the summit
of the mountain. If the line AD be supposed to be carried
round the point A, while it at the same time continues to
be a tangent to the surface, until, having passed through
every possible position, it returns to that from wdiich it set
out, the point D will trace the circumference of the circle
which bounds the terrestrial view, and of wdiich the ra¬
dius will not differ much from AD. Now AD being a
tangent to the arch BD, we have AD2 = (SBC + AB)
X AB = SBC X AB nearly, since AB must always be
very small compared with SBC, the diameter of the earth.
Assuming the diameter equal to 7913 English miles, we
have AD2 = 7913 X AB; or, if AB is expressed in feet,
7913
AD2 = X AB. Hence, extracting the square root
of the numerical part, we obtain
AD = 1-3S41S6 VAB.
The result obtained from this formula will deviate from
the truth in consequence of the effect of refraction. The
error arising from this cause is found to vary from ^ to
of the whole distance. At a medium, refraction may be
considered as increasing the distance by about or '0714 Mat' t
of the whole. Applying this correction to the above for.
mula, it becomes gnjj, |
AD = 1-3115 VAB.
For example, if the Peak of Teneriffe is 13,358 English
feet in height, then AD = 1*3115 Vd3358 = 145*8 tni]eS
is the radius of the circle which bounds the view from
that elevation.
The circle bounding terrestrial vision, wdfich we have
now been considering, does not, except when the eye is
close to the surface of the earth, coincide with the sensible
horizon as deteYmined by a plane passing through the eye
along the line HO, and perpendicular to the vertical line
CZ. (See Astronomy, p. 754.) The angle contained
between the visual ray AD and the horizontal plane, is
called the dip of the horizon. For ordinary purposes,
however, it is sufficiently accurate to say that the sensible
horizon is the circle which bounds the view, where the
heavens and the earth appear to meet. To this circle the
rational horizon is parallel, being determined by a plane
passing through the centre of the earth perpendicular to
the vertical line CZ, and continued in every direction to
the sphere of the heavens. Let NESQ (Plate CCLIX.
fig. 3) be the terrestrial sphere, of which C is the centre;
HO is the rational horizon of the point M.
The rotatory motion of the earth determines the posi¬
tion of the line NS (Plate CCLIX. fig. 3), on which it re¬
volves, and which is called its axis. The two points N, S,
in which the axis meets the surface, are called the poles
of the earth. The circle EQ upon the earth, the plane of
which passes through C the centre, and is perpendicular to
NS the axis, is called the equator or equinoctial line. This
circle is equidistant from the poles of rotation, and its plane
coincides with the plane of the celestial equator. The ra¬
tional horizon and equator being two great circles of the
terrestrial sphere, that is, the plane of each passing through
the centre, they are mutually bisected. This is a property
which belongs to all great circles. Any great circle NFS
passing through the two poles is called a meridian. Any
given point P may have a meridian passing through it; and
the plane of that circle will coincide with the plane of the
celestial meridian which passes through the zenith of that
point. Every meridian cuts the equator at right angles.
The horizon HO corresponding, to any point M upon the
globe, is divided into four equal parts by the equator and
the meridian passing through that point. The points of di¬
vision are called the four cardinal points. Those through
which the meridian passes are called the north and south
points of the horizon. Those points, again, through which
the equator passes are called the east and west points.
The earth is divided by the horizon into two hemi¬
spheres, called the upper, and loiver or under hemispheres;
by the equator it is divided into the northern and south¬
ern hemispheres ; and by the meridian, into the eastern and
western hemispheres.
The position of any point P on the surface of the earth
is determined by referring it to the co-ordinate circles,
the equator and meridian. The distance PA of the place
P from the equator, measured in degrees and parts of a
degree on the meridian passing through the place, is call¬
ed its latitude, which is said to be north or south, accord¬
ing as the place is situated in the northern or southern
hemisphere. The arch EA of the equator, intercepted
between the meridian passing through the place P an
some particular meridian NMS, called the first meridian,
as being that fixed on from which the reckoning is to com¬
mence, is called the longitude of the place in question,
and is east or west, according as the place is situated m
the eastern or western hemisphere in reference to the r
meridian. The difference of longitude between two pbces
ina. the arch of the equator intercepted between their meri¬
no- ans; and is found by subtracting or adding the longitudes,
if* wording as the places are on the same or on opposite sides
^ ' the first meridian. The ancients assumed for their first
eridian that of the Fortunate Islands, which they conceiv-
1 to be the western limit of the habitable world. In lat-
r times, the meridian passing through Ferro, one of the
anary Islands, and nearly coinciding with that of the an-
ents, was used as the first meridian by the geographers
many countries. But in modern systems of geography
e first meridian is that which passes through the capi-
1 of that country, or through an observatory, if there is
,\e in or near the capital, from which the position of
iher meridians is determined. By British geographers
e meridian of the observatory at Greenwich is reckoned
e first meridian. It is usual to call the semicircle NFS,
; ,ssing through the two poles and a given place, the me¬
dian of that place ; and the other semicircle NRS passing
bjrough the opposite point on the globe, the opposite me¬
dian. All places lying under the same meridian have
life same longitude, and at all of them noon or any other
1 ur occurs at the same instant of absolute time. With
^ard to places that lie towards the east and west of the
iKridians of each other, this is not the case. The sun in
1 s apparent diurnal revolution moves over fifteen degrees
i an hour; so that at a place in fifteen degrees east lon-
j ;ude, noon occurs an hour earlier than at places under
i s first meridian, and at a place in fifteen degrees west
ligitude, an hour later; and each fifteen degrees by
Tiich the longitude east or west is increased, makes an
i ditional hour of difference in the time at which noon
osurs. Hence longitude, and difference of longitude,
sty be estimated in time, allowing fifteen degrees to an
llur, or one degree to four minutes.
If a small circle MPK, or mpk, be drawn parallel to the
GEOGRAPHY.
405
equator at any distance from it, all the places through Matbema-
which that small circle passes will have the same latitude.tical Geo-
Such small circles are accordingly called parallels of lati- SraPhJ-
tude. The difference of latitude between two places is
the arch of the meridian intercepted between their paral¬
lels of latitude, and is found by subtracting or adding
the latitudes, according as the places lie on the same or
on opposite sides of the equator.
On the hypothesis of the earth being a perfect sphere,
the degree of latitude must be assumed as everywhere
of the same length. Actual observation shows that this
is not exactly the case, but that the length of the degree
increases slightly as we proceed from the equator towards
either pole (see Figure of the Earth), so as to indicate
a flattening of the surface in the latter regions, or that the
earth is ot a spheroidal figure. This, however, we do
not at present take into view. With regard to the de¬
gree of longitude, it is at the equator of the same length
with the degree of latitude. But on both sides of the
equator it decreases gradually on account of the meridians
approaching each other until they intersect at the poles.
At the equator a degree of longitude is the 360th part of
the circumference of a great circle of the terrestrial
sphere; at every point to the north or south of the equa¬
tor it is the 360th part of the circumference of a small
circle, of which the radius is equal to the cosine of the la¬
titude. Now, since similar portions of the circumferences
of circles are to one another as their radii, if we put L
for the length of the degree of longitude at the equator,
and L/ for its length in a latitude denoted by l, we have
rad.: cos. Z:: L : L'. Hence, radius being unity, we obtain
L' rz L X cos. 1.
From this formula the following table is calculated; the
length of the degree of longitude at the equator being
assumed equal to 69’06 English miles.
-1 showing the Length of a Degree of Longitude for every Degree of Latitude, in Geographical and in English Miles.
Lat.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
Geo. Miles.
59-99
59-96
59-92
59-85
59-77
59-67
59-55
59-42
59-26
59-09
58-90
58-69
58-46
58-22
57-96
57-68
57-38
57-06
56-73
56-38
56-01
55-63
55-23
54-81
54-38
53-93
53-46
52-98
52-48
51-96
Eng. Miles.
69-05
69-02
68-96
68-89
68-80
68-68
68-55
68-39
68-21
68-01
67-79
67-55
67-29
67-01
66-71
66-38
66-04
65-68
65-30
64-90
64-47
64-03
63-60
62-09
62-59
62-07
61-53
60-98
60-40
59-81
Lat.
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
Geo. Miles.
51-43
50-88
50-32
49-74
49-15
48-54
47-92
47-28
46-63
45-96
45-28
44-59
43-88
43-16
42-43
41-68
40-92
40-15
39-36
38-57
37-76
36-94
36-11
35-27
34-41
33-55
32-68
31-79
30-90
30-00
Eng. Miles.
59-20
58-57
57-92
57-25
56-57
55-87
55-15
54-42
53-67
5290
52-12
51-32
50-51
49-68
48-83
47-97
47*10
46-21
45-31
44-39
43-46
42-52
41-56
40-59
39-61
38-62
37-61
36-60
35-57
34-53
Lat.
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
Geo. Miles.
29-09
28-17
27-24
26-30
25-36
24-40
23-44
22-48
21-50
20-52
19-53
18-54
17-54
16-54
15-53
14-52
13-50
12-47
11-45
10-42
9-39
8-35
7-31
6-27
5-23
4-19
3-14
2-09
1-05
0-00
Eng. Miles.
33-48
32-42
31-35
30-27
29-19
28-09
26-98
25-87
24-75
23-62
22-48
21-34
20-19
19-04
17-87
16-71
15-54
14-36
13-18
11-99
10-80
9-61
8-42
7-22
6-02
4-83
3-61
2-41
1-21
0-00
GEOGRAPHY.
406
JVIathema- If a great circle be supposed to be drawn on the
tical Geo- terrestrial sphere, cutting the equator obliquely at an an-
graphy. ^ twenty-three and a half degrees, this circle
w;]} mark out the course of the sun through the year, and
is called the ecliptic. It corresponds with the celestial
ecliptic, and is divided in the same manner into signs and
degrees. The parallel of latitude which passes through
the point of the ecliptic in which the sun is placed on any
particular day, shows to what points of the earth’s surface
the sun is vertical on that day. The two parallels BLD,
bid, which touch the ecliptic at the points where it recedes
farthest from the equator to the north and south, are called
the tropics; the one, BLD, the northern tropic, or the
tropic of cancer; and the other, bid, the southern tropic, or
the tropic of capricorn ; because they touch the ecliptic in
the first points of these signs. These circles lie in the
planes of the corresponding circles in the celestial sphere.
Of the two poles, that which lies in the northern he¬
misphere is called the north or arctic pole ; and the op¬
posite, lying in the southern hemisphere, is called the
south or antarctic pole. The two parallels of latitude
FG, fg, which encircle these poles respectively at an an¬
gular distance equal to the obliquity of the ecliptic, are
called the polar circles, the one the north or arctic, and
the other the south or antarctic.
Suppose a great circle to be drawn on the terrestrial
sphere everywhere equally distant from that point on the
surface to which the sun is vertical at any given time ; this
circle is called the circle of illumination, because it sepa¬
rates the enlightened from the dark hemisphere of the
earth. It is upon the position of the circle of illumina¬
tion that the equal or unequal lengths of the days and
nights throughout the year depend over the face of the
earth. At every season of the year this circle bisects the
equator, so that under the equator the days and nights
are always equal. When the sun is over either of the
equinoctial points E, Q (Plate CCLIX. fig. G), the circle of
illumination bisects not only the equator, but likewise all
the parallels to the equator, in consequence of cutting them
at right angles ; and hence, as the parallel of latitude pass-'
ing through any point on the earth’s surface may be regard¬
ed as the path along which that point is carried by the
diurnal motion of the earth, at that season of the year the
days and nights are equal over all the earth. When the
sun is over any other point of the ecliptic, the parallels of
latitude are cut obliquely by the circle of illumination, so
that they are divided by it into two unequal parts (Plate
CCLIX. fig. 7, 8) ; and hence the days and nights are un¬
equal all over the earth, except at the equator. If the sun
is in north declination (fig. 7) at all places to the north of
the equator, the days are longer than the nights ; but at all
places to the south of the equator the nights are longer
than the days; because with regard to places to the north,
the larger portion of the parallel of latitude lies within
the enlightened hemisphere, while with regard to places
to the south the larger portion lies within the dark he¬
misphere. The reverse has place when the sun is in
south declination (fig. 8). When the sun is over the north¬
ern tropic BD (fig. 7), or over the southern tropic bd
(fig. 8), the day is then the longest or shortest of the
year; and the adjacent polar circle is wholly in the light,
and the opposite one wholly in darkness. Thus, within
the arctic and antarctic circles the inhabitants have their
light and darkness extended to a great length; the sun
sometimes skirting round a little above the horizon for
many days together, and at another season never rising
above the horizon at all, but making continual night for a
considerable length of time.
Such are the circles supposed to be drawn on the ter¬
restrial sphere. Though these circles are altogether ima¬
ginary, and have really nothing corresponding to them on
the earth’s surface, yet as the positions of the correspondin M
circles in the heavens can be accurately determined bvSal S'1
observation on the celestial bodies, they become actual! g<*pk
as effective for fixing the relative positions of places on '
the globe of the earth, and for other purposes of geom
phy, as if that globe were reduced to such a magnitude a"
to admit of its being grasped by the hand of man, and
surveyed by a single glance of his eye.
The height NO of the pole (Plate CCLIX. fig. 2) adja.
cent to any place M above HO the horizon of that place is"
equal to the latitude of the place ; for the arches MO and
EN are equal, each being a quadrant; and taking away
from each the common arch MN, the remaining arch N0^
the elevation of the pole N, is equal to the remaining
arch ME, the latitude of the place M.
Hence there are, with regard to the horizon, three po¬
sitions of the terrestrial sphere, as there are of the celes¬
tial, depending on the latitude of the place. If an observ-
er were placed on the pole, the latitude being 90°, his ho¬
rizon would coincide with the equator, and all the paral¬
lels of latitude would be parallel to the horizon. This is
the parallel position of the sphere, which is represented in
Plate CCLIX. fig. 3. Again, if an observer were placed on
any point of the equator, the latitude being 0, the poles
of the earth must be in the horizon ; and from the proper¬
ties of the sphere, the equator, and all the small circles
parallel to the equator, must be at right angles to the
horizon. This is the right position of the sphere which is
represented in fig. 4. With regard to an observer placed
at any point between the equator and either pole, the axis
of the earth lies obliquely to the plain of his horizon,
which is therefore cut obliquely by the equator and all the
small circles parallel to the equator: this is the oblique po¬
sition of the sphere, and is that represented in fig. 2.
The method of determining the latitude of a place, and
the difference of longitude between two points on the
earth’s surface, is given in the article Astronomy, part
iv. chap. i. prob. ix. and x. The latitudes and longitudes
of two points on the surface of the earth being given,
the angular distance may be found; and hence the length
of a degree on the earth’s surface being known, the dis¬
tance between the points may be expressed in miles.
I bus, let A and B be two points on the earth’s surface
(Plate CCLIX. fig. 5) ; let P be the adjacent pole, and FA,
PB the meridians passing through A and B: then PA and
PB will be the complements of the latitudes, and therefore
given; and the spherical angle APB will be the differ¬
ence of the longitudes, and therefore also given. In the
spherical triangle PAB, the base AB of which is the dis¬
tance required, we have therefore two sides and the in¬
cluded angle, so that the base AB can be found. Put D
and D' for the complements of the given latitudes, and
P for the difference of .the given longitudes; then, by
spherical trigonometry, we have
Cos. AB zr cos. D cos. D' + sin. D sin. D'cos. P.
By assuming tan. p = tan. D cos. P, this formula may
be reduced to the more convenient form
Cos. AB = CQS-D eos. (D' p)
cos. <p
From the above expression the number of degrees and
parts of a degree contained in the arch intercepted be¬
tween the points A and B are to be found; and allowing
for each degree 69-06 English miles, the distance will be
obtained, expressed in English miles, which will neces¬
sarily differ a little from the truth, in consequence of
the earth not being truly spherical. To determine tbe
distance between two points on the earth’s surface with
precision, requires the application of some of the most re¬
fined improvements in modern mathematics. See Figure
op the Earth.
^ma-
reo
hy.
n As an example of the above formula, let it be required to
Hnd the distance between Edinburgh and Constantinople.
Colat. of Edinburgh 34° 3' — E> : its long. 3° 127 W.'
Colat.of Constantinople 48° 59’— D': its long. 28° 55'E.
Difference of longitude =^2° 7^TP.
oeography.
407
Tan. D = tan. 34° S' = 9-829805
Cos. P — cos. 32° 7' — 9-927867
Tan. <p, 29° 47' 9-757672
D' = 48° 59'
D'—<p= 19° 12' Its cosine = 9-975145
Cos. D ±= 9-918318
Arith. compl. cosine <p — 0-061525
Cos. AB, 25° 38'... = 9^954988.
Hence the arch of a great circle of the sphere inter-
pted between Edinburgh and Constantinople is 25° 38'
1770 English miles nearly.
Each of the four quadrants into which the horizon is
ivided by the equator and the meridian is supposed to
1 divided into eight equal parts ; so that the whole cir-
'j inference is divided into thirty-two equal parts, which
if caIlefl Points °f the compass; and to each point of
n-ision a name is given indicating its position with regard
t the four cardinal points. °
The position of one place with regard to another, as es-
tnated by the points of the compass, is called the bearinq
< the former from the latter. Thus, when a place is said
1 bear N-E- (north-east), N.N.E. (north-north-east),
i. the meaning is, that it lies in the direction of those
pints in the horizon from the present position of the ob-
E ver. If a series of points be assumed on the earth’s sur-
Ee, so. situated that all of them, when taken in regular
secession, he towards any the same point of the com¬
ps, except either of the four cardinal points, the assum-
ii points lie, not in the circumference of a circle of the
siiere, but in a sort of spiral line, the characteristic pro-
fpty of which is, that it cuts all the meridians at the same
agle. This line is called a rhumb line ; and, whilst it con-
tkially approaches the pole, it can never arrive at it, ex-
cwt after an infinite number of revolutions. In passing
t refore, from one point of the surface of the globe to
a ither, by pursuing the direction in which the latter lies
Wm the former, we do not take the shortest way, which
11 of a Kreat circle, but move over a portion of a
ri mb line, passing through the two points. This is the
i1; described by a ship, whilst her course is continually
Jfccted towards one and the same point of the compass.
IAP. II. OF THE SURFACE OF THE EARTH, AND ITS
GENERAL DIVISIONS l DEFINITIONS.
he surface of the earth contains about 196,663,400
is -Refill8-' Ry mi'ch 1the lar«er portion of this space
tl InrJ mu1 1S’ ’ndeecl’ more tban twice the extent of
Lt i 10 sui‘face of the land is exceedingly diver-
o, inktm-S'eVe,irvhere risinS *nt0 hills and mountains,
lnt0 valleys, and sometimes stretching out into
ai ti Sreat extent. Amongst the most extensive plains
a> the sandy deserts of Arabia and Africa, the infernal
te in P Ur0^earjEussia’ and a tract of considerable ex-
of evp] ' USS'a j ^ 0 and But the most remarkable extent
w 1 t^°Und 18 th,e VaSt table-P]ain of Thibet in Asia,
el ip ti'C m?st.eievated tract of level ground on the
P- ,' , .be PnnciPal mountain ridges are the Alps and
in “sif lip Eur°Pe’.the Altai and Himalaya Mountains
dcor Cnrdlir°Un-taicS ^ Att,aS .in Africa’ aad the An-
ca ties of ill Clt?S,ln ®outh America. The greatest con-
wt |.rs np ti G ^ 0 )e are those which are occupied by the
ot the ocean ; and of these by far the largest forms
the bed of the Pacific Ocean, which, stretching from the Mathema
eastern shores of Asia and of New Holland to the western tied Geo.
coast of America, covers nearly half the globe. The con- graPhJ-
cavity next in extent is that which forms the bed of the ’'Y''*-'
Atlantic Ocean, extending between the new and the old
worlds; and a third concavity is occupied by the Indian
Ocean. I he Arctic and Antarctic Oceans fill up the re¬
maining concavities. 1
SmaHer collections of water which communicate freely
with the oceans are called seas (Plate CCLIX. fig. 9 1) .
and of these, the principal are the Mediterranean, theBal-
tm, the Euxine or Black Sea, and the White Sea. Seas
sometimes take their names from the countries near which
they flow; as the Irish Sea, the German Ocean. Some large
collections of water, though they have no immediate con-
rnnnTlT1] h5great body °f waters>being on all sides sur-
unded by land, are yet called seas; as the Caspian Sea.
A part of the sea running up into the land, so as to
foim a large hollow, is called a bay or gulf (fig. Q 2) as
tie Bay of Biscay, the Gulf of Mexico ; but if the hollow
be small, it is called a creek, a road, a haven.
When two large bodies of water communicate by a nar¬
row pass between two adjacent lands, the pass is called a
s rai ^aits (fig. 9, 3), as the Strait/ of Gibraltar
the Straits of Dover, the Straits of Babelmandel. A chan¬
nel ,s a wider kind of strait. The water usually flows
through a strait with considerable force and velocity
forming what is called a current; and frequently this cur¬
rent, as in the case of the Straits of Gibraltar, flows con¬
tinually in the same direction.
A body of fresh water entirely surrounded by land is
called a lake (fig. 9, 4), as the. Lake of Geneva, Lake
Champlain. ’
A considerable stream of water rising inland, and drain¬
ing a portion of country more or less extensive, discharging
!ts waters into the sea, is called a river. A smaller stream
o. the same kind is called a rivulet, or brook (fig. 9, 5).
ie great extent of land which forms the rest of the
surface of the globe is divided into innumerable portions •
two of vast extent, but the rest of comparatively small
dimensions. I he portions of the land which are of o-reat
extent aie called continents, the one the eastern conti-
nemt, or the old world, comprehending Europe, Asia, and
Africa; the other the western continent, or new world,
comprehending North and South America. New Holland
is a third portion of land, however, which has by some been
also reckoned a continent on account of its great extent.
A portion of land entirely surrounded by water is call¬
ed an island (fg. 9, a), as Britain, Ireland, Jamaica, Ma-
cagascar. According to the strict meaning of this defini¬
tion, the largest por tions of land on the surface of the globe
may be said to be islands; for there is every probability
that each of the continents is everywhere bounded by
the sea. But this is an extent of signification in which
the term island is not employed ; and New Holland is the
largest portion of land which is called an island. When a
number of smaller islands lie near each other they are
said to form a group of islands (fig. 9, b).
A portion of land which is almost entirely surrounded by
Ca If -yr Pemns'da (fig. 9, c), as the peninsula
of Malacca, the Morea or Grecian Peloponnesus, &c. The
term peninsula is often applied to a large extent of coun-
try. I hug we speak of Spain as a peninsula. Indeed
Africa itself may be considered as a vast peninsula, being
connected with Asia only by the narrow isthmus of Sue!
I he narrow neck of land which joins a peninsula to the
main land, or which connects two tracts of country toge¬
ther, is called an isthmus (fig. 9, d). The most remarkable
isthmuses in the world are, the Isthmus of Suez, which
joins Africa and Asia, and the Isthmus of Darien, which
connects the continents of North and South America.
408
GEOGRAPHY.
Mathema- A narrow tract of land stretching out into the sea, and
tical Geo- appearing to terminate in a point, is called a cafe (fig. 9,
graphy. The most remarkable capes are, the Cape of Good
Hope, at the southern extremity of Africa; Cape Horn,
at the southern extremity of South America; and the
North Cape, at the northern extremity of Europe. A
large portion of land jutting out into the sea is called a
promontory (fig. 9,/).
It may assist the memory to keep in view the analogy
which subsists between the denominations of land and those
of water. The large portions of land called continents
correspond to the extensive tracts of water called oceans ;
islands are analogous to lakes; peninsulas to seas or gulfs ;
isthmuses to straits; capes to creeks; and so with the
others.
Until of late, in systems of geography, the earth used
to be considered as divided into four quarters; Europe,
Asia, Africa, and America. A classification in which the
whole world is arranged under seven divisions has now
however been very generally adopted: These divisions are,
Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, South America,
Australasia, and Polynesia. With regard to the last two,
the one, Australasia, or South Asia, comprehends certain
of the great islands, particularly New Holland, which are
usually considered as belonging to Asia; and the other,
Polynesia, signifying many islands, comprehends all the
smaller islands which are scattered over the great ex¬
panse of the Pacific Ocean.
This arrangement and classification of the parts of the
earth’s surface are founded on the most obvious points of
distinction. We shall now explain two divisions employed
by the ancients, which are founded upon different princi¬
ples ; that into zones, and that into climates.
The division into zones is suggested by the different
degrees of temperature which prevail in different regions
of the earth. The temperature of a country depends on
a variety of circumstances (see Physical Geography) ;
but of these, one of the most obvious is the position of the
sun with regard to the zenith. The more nearly his rays
are received vertically, the higher will be the temperature ;
and, on the contrary, the more obliquely they fall, the less
effect will they produce in raising the temperature. Now
to every point of the earth’s surface between the tropics
the sun is vertical twice in the year. It is in this region,
then, that the highest temperature will prevail. Again,
within the polar circles the sun’s rays at all times fall very
obliquely ; and for a length of time they do not reach these
two regions of the globe at all. Here, then, the tempera¬
ture must be lower than any where else, as all other places
enjoy more of the sun’s genial influence. In the two regions
between the tropics and the polar circles, a medium tem¬
perature is found, increasing as we approach the former,
and diminishing as we approach the latter. Thus is the
earth’s surface divided, by the two tropics and two polar
circles, into five zones, distinguished from one another by
the prevailing temperature in each. That between the
tropics is called the torrid zone, because there the heat
is understood to be extreme. This region, which has
the equator passing through the middle of it, the an¬
cients, indeed, considered as uninhabitable. The two re¬
gions comprehended within the arctic and antarctic po¬
lar circles are called the northern and southern frigid
zones, on account of the severity of the cold which there
prevails. The two regions situated between the tropics
and the polar circles, the one in the northern hemi¬
sphere, bounded by the tropic of cancer and the arctic cir¬
cle, the other in the southern hemisphere, bounded by
the tropic of capricorn and the antarctic circle, are call¬
ed the northern and southern temperate zones, because
there neither the heat nor cold is excessive; but the heat
reaches the highest temperature of summer, and the cold
sinks to the lowest temperature of winter, without either Math* [
becoming extreme. tica!^ '
As each tropic lies about 23-|° from the equator, the ,
breadth of the torrid zone is about 47°, or nearly 3240 Eng-
lish miles. The breadth of each of the frigid zones, that
is, from the circumference of the polar circle to the pole, is
23J>-°, or nearly 1620 miles; so that there remains for the
breadth of each of the temperate zones about 43°, or
nearly 2970 miles. The superficial content of each zone
is easily calculated by the ordinary rules of mensuration.
Let s be the surface of a segment of the sphere, d the
diameter of the sphere, and h the height of the segment;
then
s = 3-1416 dh.
To apply this formula ; let NESQ (Plate CCLIX. fig, 3)
be the sphere divided into five zones. It is evident that,for
the torrid zone, A must be equal to LZ, or to twice the sine
of BE to the radius EC ; that for each of the temperate
zones h must be equal to LR or Ir, the difference of the
sines FE and BE to the same radius CE ; and that for the
space comprehended within each polar circle, /t must be
equal to NR, the excess of the radius NC above CR, the
sine of FE corresponding to the radius. Hence, if we put
m for twice the natural sine of the arch BE; for the differ,
ence of the natural sines of the arches BE and FE; and
for the excess of radius above the natural sine of FE, suc¬
cessively ;—since in the case of the terrestrial sphere CE
or CN is equal to 3956 miles, we have h = 3956 »i. Put¬
ting, therefore, instead of d, its value, 7912, and giving the
above formula a logarithmic form, we obtain
Log. s — log. m -|- 7-9926935.
Now, for the torrid zone, mz=2 nat. sin. 23° 30' == -7975.
Hence,
Log. m = 1-9017307
7-9926935
s ~ 78419520 .'.....log.= 7-8944242.
The torrid zone contains, therefore, about 78,419,500
square miles.
Again, for each of the temperate zones, we havent
— nat. sin. 66° 30'—nat. sin. 23° 30'= -51831. Hence,
Log. m — 1-7145896
7-9926935
s = 50966300 log. -_= 7-7072831.
So that each of the temperate zones contains about
50,966,300 English square miles.
Lastly, for the space contained within each of the po¬
lar circles we have m — rad. — sin. 66° 30' =1 — 0-91706
r= -08294: Hence,
Log. m = 2-9187640
7-9926935
s = 8155630 log. = 6-9114575.
The portion of the surface of the globe comprehended
within each polar circle is therefore nearly equal to
8,155,600 square miles.
It is evident that the superficial content of any other
zone of the terrestrial sphere may be found by the above
formula, by putting m equal to the difference of the natu¬
ral sines corresponding to the latitudes of the parallels by
which the zone is bounded.
If it is required to find the area of a segment of a zone
bounded at both extremities by meridians, it is only neces¬
sary to find first the area of the whole zone, and then to mu -
tiply the result by the number of degrees and parts °^a ( e'
gree in the length of the segment, and to divide by 3o •
Thus, the number of square miles contained in the portion
of the torrid zone terminated by two meridians which are
separated from each other by 8° 45' is equal to ,
X 8f -v- 360, which gives 272,290 square miles. By (livid'
GEOGRAPHY. 409
ina.;^ any particular country or district into segments of Besides dividing the surface of the globe into zonesMathema-
'e<W ;nes by means or parallels or latitude, its area can easily and climates, the ancients likewise distinguished the in- tical Geo-
Gj 1 calculated. _ > habitants of the different regions of the earth by the par- graPhy*
The division of the earths surface, into climates was ticular direction in which the shadows of bodies are pro-
iployed by the ancients for ascertaining the situation of jected in each region, and by some other circumstances de-
They supposed the northern and southern hemi- —K ^   ^ ' ■■ ’ ■ ■’
] ices.
Siheres to be each divided into small zones, to which they
gve the name of climates, the extent and situation of
thh zone being determined in the following manner. At
tb equator the day is always equal to the night, and con-
sits therefore of twelve hours. Here the first climate
tile. Commencing at this same parallel at which the first
trminated, the second climate extended to latitude 16°
4>, where the longest day is thirteen hours. Here the
t;rd climate began, and was extended in like manner to
pending on the position of the sun relatively to the zenith
or to the meridian. The inhabitants of the torrid zone
have their shadows at noon projected, sometimes towards
the south and sometimes towards the north, according
to the position of the sun in the ecliptic. They were
therefore called by the ancients Amphiscii, a term de-
Hgan, and extended to that parallel where the longest rived from autpt, about, and <rx/a, a shadow. In the tem-
oy was 122 hours, which corresponds to 8° 34' of lati- perate zones, the sun is at noon always on the same side
of the zenith. Hence the shadows of objects at noon
always fall in the same direction; in the northern tem¬
perate zone towards the north, and in the southern tem-
. perate zone towards the south. The inhabitants of these
tut parallel where the longest day is 13£ hours. By pro- regions were accordingly called Heteroscii, from meos,
ceding in this manner, the space between the equator different, and <rx/a. Within the polar circles the sun does
ail each polar circle was divided into twenty-four cli- not always rise and set every twenty-four hours, as in the
rites, each of such a breadth as to make half an hour of other zones ; but for a certain number of days in our sum-
ctference in the length of the longest day at the two pa- mer he never sets to places within the arctic polar circle,
r lels of latitude by which the climate was bounded. Hav- nor rises to places within the antarctic ; and the contrary
i, • reached the polar circles northward and southward, takes place for a certain number of days during our winter,
were the longest day is twenty-four hours, they divided The number of days during which the sun is present or
tt space within each polar circle in such a manner as to absent increases as we advance from the polar circle to-
wke the difference in the length of the longest day at wards the pole. When the sun continues above the ho-
|f beginning and termination of each climate one month, rizon for twenty-four hours or upwards, the shadows will
make a complete circuit round the objects from which
they are projected; hence the inhabitants of the frigid
zones were called Periscii, from wsg/, about, and <s%ia.
Again, the inhabitants of two places which lie under
the same meridian, and have the same latitude, but are
situated on opposite sides of the equator, were called, re¬
latively to each other, Antoecii, from am, opposite to, and
onuu, a habitation. At such places the hours of the day
will always correspond, but the seasons of the year will
be opposite. The inhabitants of two places which have
the same latitude, and are situated on the same side of
the equator, but under opposite meridians, were called
Pericecii, from mp, about, and o/x/a. They have always
the same season of the year at the same time; but any
hour of the day at the one place corresponds to the same
hour of the night at the other. The inhabitants of two
places which have the same latitude, but are situated on
opposite sides of the equator, and under opposite meri¬
dians, are called Antipodes to each other, from am, oppo¬
site to, and ffous, a foot. They have always opposite sea¬
sons and opposite hours.
Ji'iice, as the poles are alternately illuminated for six
ninths, there were just six climates within each polar
ode.
Table of Climates.
q u
Climates.
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.
IX.
X.
XI.
XII.
XIII.
XIV.
XV.
XVI.
XVII.
XVIII.
XIX.
XX.
XXI.
XXII.
XXIII.
XXIV.
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
Latitude of
the Higher
Parallel.
T)eg. Min.
8 34
1G
24
30
36
41
45
48
51
54
56
58
59
61
62
63
64
64
65
65
66
66
66
66
43
10
46
28
21
29
59
57
28
36
25
57
16
24
20
8
48
20
46
6
20
28
32
67
69
73
78
84
90
23
50
39
31
5
0
Breadth of
the Climate.
Deg.
8
8
7
6
5
4
4
3
2
2
2
1
1
1
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Min.
34
9
27
36
42
53
8
30
58
31
8
49
32
19
8
56
48
40
32
26
20
14
8
4
51
27
49
52
34
55
Longest Day
under the
Higher
Parallel.
Hours. Min.
12 30
13
13
14
14
15
15
16
16
17
17
18
18
19
19
20
20
21
21
22
22
23
23
24
0
30
0
30
0
30
0
30
0
30
0
30
0
30
0
30
0
30
0
30
0
30
0
Months.
1
2
3
4
5
6
^OL. X.
CHAP. III.—DESCRIPTION AND USE OF THE GLOBES.
When geographers became familiar with the doctrine
of the sphericity and motion of the earth, it was an obvi¬
ous step to have recourse to an artificial sphere for illus¬
trating that doctrine. From a very early period, accord¬
ingly, the instruments called the terrestrial and celestial
globes have been employed for this purpose. A sphere made
of metal, ivory, plaster, paper, pasteboard, or some other
convenient substance, is suspended in a brass ring NES
(Plate CCLX. fig. 1), of somewhat greater diameter, on two
pins N, S, upon which it can be made to revolve. The
sphere, thus suspended, is placed in a frame BMC, which
may be in many respects variously constructed, according
to the taste of the workman ; but its upper part BC always
consists of a broad ring made of metal or wood, and sup¬
ported in a horizontal position. The inner circumference
of this ring is equal to that of the brass circle in which
the globe is suspended ; and two notches in its inner edge,
diametrically opposite to each other, receive the brass
ring, which also rests in a groove below, in such a posi-
3 v
410
geography.
MaUiema- tion that the plane of the horizontal ring bisects the a great circle on the globe. It is graduated on one side, Jim,,,
tical Geo- sphere. By this arrangement the globe can be made to and is furnished with a nut and screw at one end, for the hcalg^
 1  * \ • ' i 1  A. ™ if fVi of tri fit r» KrQ'ZPn Ti._
is to measure degrees on the surface of the globe in any
direction.
The compass is simply a magnetic needle suspended
over the centre of a circle, on the circumference of which
are marked the thirty-two points of the compass. It is
fixed to the under part of the frame in which the globe
is suspended, and is used for the purpose of placing the
meridian due north and south.
On the terrestrial globe the land and water which com¬
pose the surface of the earth are delineated, with the
various divisions belonging to each. If we suppose the
globe to be six or seven feet in diameter, the true height
of the mountains on the earth’s surface must be reduced,
in order to be represented on the globe in due proportion
to its bulk, in the ratio of 7912 miles to six or seven feet;
graphy. revolve on its axis, and the brass circle can be made to purpose of making it fast to the brazen meridian. Its use
slide round in its own plane. On the surface of the globe
are delineated the equator or equinoctial line, situated
exactly in the middle between the two points on which
the globe is suspended, and divided into 360 degrees;
the ecliptic, divided into twelve signs, and each of these
subdivided into thirty degrees; the two tropics j the
two polar circles, with as many more parallels to the equa¬
tor as are found convenient; and generally twenty-four
meridians passing through the points of suspension, which
represent the poles. The first meridian is usually made
to pass through the intersections of the equator and eclip¬
tic, the points of the vernal and autumnal equinoxes ; and
from the former of these points the reckoning of the de¬
grees on the equator and ecliptic begins. The brass
circle in which the globe hangs may be made to repre- . .
sent the meridian of any given point on the surface of that is, the height of the protuberance on the globe which
the wlobe, by simply bringing the given point under it _ shall represent any particular mountain must be somewhat
by turning the globe round on its axis. Hence the brass about the six millionth part of the actual elevation of the
circle is called the universal meridian. It is divided, by mountain above the general surface ot the earth. Apply
the equator and two poles, into four quadrants, each of this to the highest mountain in the world, which does not
which is graduated; and on the semicircle NES (Plate exceed five and a half miles in height; the elevation of the
CCLX. fig. 1) the degrees are reckoned from the equa¬
tor towards either pole, while on the opposite semicircle
they are reckoned from either pole towards the equator.
On the broad horizontal circle of the frame in which the
globe stands are drawn several concentric circles, the outer
of which is divided into 365 equal parts, answering to the _ _ _
number of days in the year; whilst the other circles are globe having a smooth surface.
graduated, the innermost (or rather another circle con- But in order to render the representation more com-
centric with it, but larger) being, besides, divided into plete, it may be supposed necessary that the terrestrial
thirty-two equal parts corresponding to the points of the globe should be enclosed in a hollow sphere which would
compass. The circle next the outer edge forms the ca- represent the heavens surrounding the earth on all sides,
lendar, and it has the names of the months arranged in or¬
der around it, whilst the divisions are distributed so as
to mark the number of days in each. The adjacent circle
contains the signs and degrees of the ecliptic, so arranged
that against each day of the year is found the point of represent the earth, big. 3, Plate CCLX., represents a
the ecliptic in which the sun is situated on that day. sphere of this description, which will be sufficiently un-
The innermost circle represents the horizon ; and the two derstood by inspection. I he ordinary way, however, ot
notches in which the brazen meridian rests pass through representing the heavens, proceeds on the supposition that
the north and south points. It is divided into four qua- the eye of the observer is placed, not in the centre of the
drants by the cardinal points; and the degrees of the two celestial sphere, but beyond its bounds, so as to look down
quadrants, which form the northern semicircle, are reck- on a convex surface. I hus are the stars and constella-
oned from the east and west points towards the north ; tions represented in their relative positions on the celestia
while the degrees of the other two quadrants are reckoned globe (fig. 2), with which the concave surface of the vi-
from the east and west towards the south. sible heavens is easily compared.
Such is a general view of the parts which belong alike Besides answering the general purposes of illustration,
to both globes, the terrestrial and the celestial. A more
minute description seems unnecessary, as a careful in¬
spection of the globes themselves, with their appendages,
will convey a much more distinct conception of them than —r j ,
can be given either by description or by drawings. It on which the solution of a problem depends, and to ar-
will be necessary, however, to describe shortly the ho- range on the globe these circumstances, according to t eir
rary or hour-circle, the quadrant of altitude, and the natural order and dependence, and the result is at once
compass. obtained. We proceed to give a few of the more usetui
The hour-circle is a small circle of brass, divided into problems, with their solutions by the globes,
twenty-four equal parts corresponding to the hours of the
day, the divisions being reckoned in two twelves to suit j. Solution of Problems by the Terrestrial Globe.
the hours before and after noon. This circle is fixed _ .
on the axis of the globe, having its centre coinciding Prob. 1. To find the latitude and longitude of a give
with the north pole. It can be adjusted with the hand to place.
any meridian, but is at the same time tight enough to be Bring the place under the graduated edge of
moved along with the globe. Some globes have the hour meridian, then the degree of the meridian immediacy
circle fixed on the meridian, with an index that admits of over it is its latitude north or south, and the degree
being adjusted with the hand, but is carried round with the equator cut by the meridian is its longitude eas o
the globe. west. • i h ine
The quadrant of altitude is a thin flexible slip of brass, Pros. 2. The latitude and longitude of a place ben
equal in length to one fourth part of the circumference of given, to find the place itself on the globe.
protuberance representing it on a globe of the supposed
dimensions would be about one seventeenth part of an inch
above the general surface. It is seldom, however, that
globes are made of this size. One third of the supposed
diameter is more near to the ordinary dimensions. Hence
we see with what propriety the earth is represented by a
In conformity with this idea the armillary sphere was
contrived, in which the several circles of the system of
the world, put together in their natural order, are repre¬
sented, with a small globe in the centre of the sphere to
the globes furnish also the means of resolving with facility,
and with a degree of accuracy sufficient for ordinary pur¬
poses, many problems in geography and practical astro¬
nomy. It is only requisite to consider the circumstances
*
*
GEOGRAPHY.
411
2tta- Bring the point of the equator corresponding to the
'3eo- ;iven longitude to the brazen meridian ; under the degree
V* f latitude on the meridian the place is found.
^ Prob. 3. To find the distance between any two places
n the globe.
Lay the quadrant of altitude over the two places, and
lark the number of degrees between them. The degrees
lay then be converted into English miles, if required, by
lultiplying by 69-06.
Prob. 4. The hour at any one place being given, to find
hat hour it is at any other place; or to find the differ-
ice of longitude between the places in time.
Bring the place at which the hour is given to the bra-
;n meridian, and set the index, or the hour-circle, to
iat hour; then turn the globe till the other place comes
1 nder the meridian, and the index, or the hour-circle,
ill show the hour required. The difference between the
me found and the time given is the difference of the
; bgitudes of the places in time.
Prob. 5. To rectify the globe for a given place.
Elevate the pole that is adjacent to the place as many de-
•ees above the wooden horizon as are equal to the latitude.
Prob. 6. To find at what hour the sun rises and sets
a given place, for any given day.
Rectify the globe for the latitude of the place; find
om the wooden horizon the sun’s place in the ecliptic
r the given day, and bring it to the meridian. Set
e index to XII., and turn the globe till the sun’s place
imes to the eastern edge of the horizon, the index will
iow the hour of rising; then turn the globe till the sun’s
ace comes to the western edge of the horizon, and the
dex will show the time of setting.
By doubling the hour of sunrise, we obtain the length
the night; and by doubling the hour of sunset, we ob-
in the length of the day. It is evident also that the
me arrangement of the globe will give the point of the
>mpass on which the sun rises and sets, by simply ob-
rving what point of the circle of rhumbs, on the wooden
>rizon, is cut by the sun’s place in the ecliptic at the
ne of rising and setting. Further, by observing when
e sun is about eighteen degrees below the eastern and
estern parts of the horizon, the time of the beginning
the morning twilight, and of the ending of the evening
'ilight, is found.
Prob. 7. To find the sun’s declination for a given day of
given month, and to what places the sun will be vertical
that day.
Bind, on the wooden horizon, the sun’s place in the
liptic for the given day ; bring that point of the ecliptic
the meridian, the degree immediately over it on the
sridian is the declination north or south. Turn round
e globe till it has made a complete revolution; and to
cry place which passes under that degree of the meri-
m, the sun will be vertical on that day.
Prob. 8. The hour and day being given at a particular
l ice, to find where the sun is then vertical.
I Bind the sun’s declination by the preceding problem;
ping the given place under the meridian, and set the in-
' x the given hour; then turn the globe till the index
ints to XII. noon; and all the places under the meri-
J'Tn will have noon at the given time; and that place
iich is under the degree of the meridian that corre-
“onds with the sun’s declination will have the sun in the
• nith.
Prob. 9. The hour and day being given at a particular
1 ice, to find where the sun is then rising or setting, and
'ere it is noon or midnight.
Rectify the globe for the given place ; and having pre-
ms]y found by last problem the place to which the sun
i vertical at the given time, bring that place to the me-
uin. Ihen, to all the places under the western edge
of the horizon the sun is rising, and to those under the Mathema-
eastern he is setting; to those under the upper half of tical Geo-
the meridian it is noon, and to those under the lower gral'hy-
half it is midnight.
Prob. 10. A place in the torrid zone being given, to
find on what two days of the year the sun will be vertical
to that place.
E’ind the latitude of the place; turn round the globe,
and note the two points of the ecliptic which pass below
the degree of latitude on the meridian. Find in the ca¬
lendar circle of the wooden horizon the days correspond¬
ing to these two points of the ecliptic, and these are the
days required.
Prob. 11. To find the sun’s meridian altitude at a given
place on a given day.
Rectify the globe for the latitude of the place; bring
the sun’s place for the given day to the meridian; count
the number of degrees between that place and the hori¬
zon for the altitude required.
Prob. 12. To find the altitude of the sun at any given
place and hour.
Rectify the globe for the latitude ; bring the sun’s place
to the meridian, and set the index to XII. noon ; turn the
globe till the index point at the given hour; fix the qua¬
drant of altitude on the meridian at the degree of lati¬
tude, and lay it over the sun’s place; count the number
of degrees on the quadrant between that point and the
horizon for the altitude required.
Prob. 13. To find all the places to which a lunar eclipse
is visible at any instant.
Find the place to which the sun is vertical at the given
time ; rectify the globe for the latitude of that place, keep¬
ing the place under the meridian; set the index to XII.
noon ; then turn the globe till the index point to XII. mid¬
night ; the eclipse will be visible to all those places which
are above the horizon.
Prob. 14. Any place in the north frigid zone being
given, to find how long the sun shines there without set¬
ting, and how long he is totally absent.
Rectify the globe for the latitude of the place; bring
the ascending signs of the ecliptic to the north point of
the horizon, and note at what degree the ecliptic is inter¬
sected by that point; find on the wooden horizon the day
and month corresponding to that degree; from that day
the sun begins to shine continually. Next, bring the de¬
scending signs to the north point of the horizon, and by ob¬
serving at what degree the ecliptic is now cut, and referring
to the horizon, we find the time when the sun ceases to
shine without setting, which is the termination of the
longest day. By proceeding in the same manner with the
southern point of the horizon, we will find the beginning
and end of the longest night.
Prob. 15. Two places being given, to find the angle
which a great circle passing through them makes with the
meridian of each.
Rectify the globe for both places successively, bring¬
ing in each case the place for which the globe is rectified
to the meridian; fix the quadrant of altitude in each ope¬
ration on the meridian over the place for which the globe
is rectified, and lay it over the other place ; the two arches
intercepted successively on the horizon between the qua¬
drant and the meridian measure the angles required. It
is evident, that if both places lie on the same meridian,
the angle is 0; and that if both lie on the equator, the
angles will be each 90°.
If a ship be supposed to sail from the one place to the
other, on a great circle of the terrestrial sphere (which
supposition implies that the ship’s course is altered every
instant), then the one angle found by this problem will
be the course with which the ship left the one place, and
the other angle the course with which she arrived at the
GEOGRAPHY,
412
Mathema-other place. The arch of the great circle intercepted he¬
lical Geo- tween the places would be the distance sailed.
t graphy. ^ Pros. 16. To construct a horizontal dial by the globe
for a given latitude.
Rectify the globe for the latitude; bring the first meri¬
dian under the brazen meridian, and note the arches of
the horizon intercepted between the southern point and
the several meridians in the eastern and western hemi¬
spheres. If the number of meridians drawn on the globe
be twenty-four, which is usually the case, the arches in¬
tercepted on the horizon will measure the angles which
the hour-lines make with the meridian. To find the
angles corresponding to half hours and quarters, turn
the globe gradually from its position in which the first
meridian was under the brazen meridian, noting for each
arch of 3° 15' of the equator that passes under the brazen
meridian, the arch of the horizon intercepted between
the southern point and the first meridian ; the arches thus
found give the positions of the lines corresponding to the
half hours and quarters. The style of the dial represents
the axis of the earth, and must therefore make with the
plane of the horizon an angle equal to the latitude of the
place.
A direct north or south dial for any latitude may be
constructed in the same manner, by considering it as a
horizontal dial for a latitude which is the complement of
the given latitude.
Bring the given star to the meridian, and set the index M
to the given hour; turn the globe till the index points to ticalG111'
XII. noon, and note the degree of the ecliptic cut by the
meridian ; the day of the month which corresponds to that ''•vO
degree is the day required.
Pros. 7. The latitude of a place, the altitude of a star
and the day of the month, being given ; to find the hour of
the night.
Rectify the globe for the latitude ; bring the sun’s place
to the meridian, and set the index to XII.; fix the qua*
drant in the zenith, then move the globe and the qua¬
drant till the star comes under the degree of the quadrant
which denotes the given altitude, and the index will show
the hour required.
Pros. 8. The year and day being given, to find the
place of a planet.
Find the sun’s place for the given day, and bring it to
the meridian ; set the index to XII.; then find in the Nau¬
tical Almanack the time when the planet passes the me¬
ridian on the given day, and turn the globe till the index
points to the hour thus found; find in the almanack the
declination of the planet for the same day, and under it
on the globe is the place of the planet.
These are a few of the more important problems that
can be resolved by the globes, and will be sufficient to il¬
lustrate the principle of solution. The solution of pro¬
blems by the armillary sphere depends upon the very same
principles.
II. Solution of Problems by the Celestial Globe.
Pros. 1. To find the latitude and longitude of any star.
Bring the pole of the ecliptic to the meridian. Then,
having fixed the quadrant of altitude over the pole, place it
over the given star; the number of degrees between the
ecliptic and the given star is the latitude; and the num¬
ber of degrees between the edge of the quadrant and the
first point of Aries indicates the longitude.
Prob. 2. To find a star’s place in the heavens, its lati¬
tude and longitude being given.
Place the extremity of the quadrant of altitude on the
pole of the ecliptic, and make its graduated edge cut the
ecliptic in the longitude of the star; then the star will
be found under the degree of the quadrant that denotes
its latitude.
Prob. 3. To find the x-ight ascension and declination of
the sun or of a star.
Bring the sun’s place, or the star, to the meridian; the
degree of the equator cut by the meridian gives the x'ight
ascension, and the degree of the meridian over the sun’s
place, or the star, shows the declination north or south.
Prob. 4. The latitude of a place, the day and hour
being given, to arrange the celestial globe so as to exhi¬
bit the appearance of the heavens at that place and time.
Rectify the globe for the latitude of the place; bring
the sun’s place for the given day to the meridian; set the
index to XII.; then turn the globe till the index point to
the given hour. In this position, the globe will represent
the actual appearance of the heavens.
Prob. 5. To find the time when any of the heavenly
bodies rises, sets, or comes to the meridian, on a particu¬
lar day at a given place.
Rectify the globe for the latitude of the place; bring
the sun’s place to the meridian, and set the index to XII.;
then turn the globe till the star comes to the eastern edge
of the horizon; the index will show the time of rising.
Next, turn the globe till the given star comes to the west¬
ern edge of the horizon ; the index v/ill show the time of
setting. Lastly, bring it to the meridian, and the index
will show the time of its culmination or southing.
Prob. 6. To find on what day of the year any given
£tar comes to the meridian at a given hour.
CHAP. IV.—OF THE CONSTRUCTION AND USE OF MAPS.
In representing the geographical divisions of the earth’s
surface, two objects are to be kept in view; on the one
hand, to exhibit accurately to the eye the relative posi¬
tion of the different countries ; and, on the other hand, to
give a delineation sufficiently minute to furnish a distinct
knowledge of the necessary details. As the globe has very
nearly the exact figure of the earth, the representation
which it affords of the surface fulfils the first of these ob¬
jects in the most perfect manner; but to attain the second
it would be requisite to enlarge the globe beyond all con¬
venient size. A globe of the ordinary dimensions serves
almost no other purpose in this respect, but to convey a
clear conception of the earth’s surface as a whole; exhi¬
biting the figure, extent, position, and general features of
the great continents and islands, with the intervening
oceans and seas. To obtain a detailed representation of
any part of the earth’s surface, geographers have therefore
found it necessary to have recourse to Maps, in which
countries are delineated on a plane, while the mutual pro¬
portions of the distances of places are preserved as nearly
as possible the same as on the globe.
For the construction of maps different mathematical hy¬
potheses have been adopted.
By one method of construction, that of projection, the
boundaries of countries, and their more remarkable fea¬
tures, are represented according to the rules of perspec¬
tive, on the supposition of the eye being placed on some
point of the sphere, or at some given distance from it,
which may be increased indefinitely. Wherever the eye
is supposed to be situated, the representation thus ob¬
tained answers very well, provided the surface to be repre¬
sented is of small extent, and the point of view, or project¬
ing point, is nearly over the centre; but when the sur¬
face is of great extent, for example, a whole hemisphere,
those places which are situated near the border of the pro¬
jection are in all of them much distorted.
Another method, that of development, is founded on the
supposition that the spherical surface to be represented is
a portion of a cone, of which the vertex is situated some-
i
• %
f!(H’
na-ncre in the polar axis produced, and the conical surface
o i supposed either to touch the sphere in the middle paral-
] of the map, or to fall within the sphere at the middle pa-
^ riel, and without it at the extreme parallels. The surface
( the cone is then supposed to be spread out into a plane.
A third method, which depends on the development of a
oiindrical surface, is that according to which maps are so
ciineated as to have the parallels of latitude and circles
in longitude respectively represented by parallel straight
lilss. By this method marine charts are constructed. As
tc rhumb makes equal angles with every meridian, it ne-
ci sarily, according to this method of delineation, becomes
aitraight line. Such a representation of the earth’s sur-
fije is commonly called Mercator s Chart, although the
GEOGRAPHY.
413
An accurate idea of the orthographic projection of any Mathema^
line or figure may be obtained by holding it up in the tical Geo¬
light of the sun, and observing the shadow formed on a
plane perpendicular to the direction of the sun’s rays. The
rays which pass close to the figure are the perpendiculars
to the plane of projection, and the shadow is the ortho¬
graphic projection of the figure.
From the nature of this projection, the orthographic
representation of half the surface of the globe shows
nearly the true figure and proportions of countries about
the middle of the map, that is, directly opposite to the
supposed position of the eye ; but towards the extremi¬
ties the true figure and position of the countries are im¬
perfectly exhibited. ~~
For (this reason this method of pro
iijention is due to an English mathematician, Edward jection is seldom employed in geography, but in astro-
Vright. nomy it is frequently used. We shall give, however, the
; These are the three principal methods employed to re- orthographic projection of the sphere on the plane of the
pj-sent to the eye the several countries on the surface of equator and on the plane of the meridian,
tl: earth. To project the Sphere orthographically on the Plane of the
Equator. From any point C as a centre, with any radius
CA (Plate CCLX. fig. 4), describe the circle ABD. Let
this circle represent the equator, upon the plane of which
it is required to project the sphere orthographically. It
is evident that the centre C will be the projection of the
poles of the equator, and that since the planes of the me¬
ridian circles are perpendicular to the plane of the equa-
I. Construction of Maps by Projection.
The representation of any portion of the earth’s surface
Gained by projection, varies, of course, its character ac-
erding to the several situations of the eye and of the
jifne of projection, in relation to the meridians, parallels,
ail various points or places so represented. It is usual to tor, these circles will be projected into diameters, making
amme the plane of a great circle of the sphere as the
j:|ne of projection, and to suppose the eye situated at
sine point in a straight line perpendicular to this plane,
ail passing through the centre of the circle. If the dis-
tjce of the eye from the plane of projection be supposed
i jefinitely great, the projection is called the orthographic ;
fit is supposed to be upon the surface of the sphere, the
with each other the same angles as do the planes of the
meridians. Let A 90, B 180, be two perpendicular dia¬
meters ; they will represent two meridian circles at right
angles to each other: divide the semicircle B 90 D into
twelve equal parts at the points 15, 30, 45, &c., and let
diameters be drawn through the points of division; then
the twenty-four radii CB, C 15, C 30, &c. will be the pro-
j: jection is called the stereographic ; and if the eye is jections of the twenty-four meridians usually drawn upon
the globe, any one of which, as BC, may be considered
as the first meridian.
Next, it is evident that the parallels of latitude will be
projected into circles, which have C for their common
centre, and of each of which the radius will be equal to
that of the corresponding parallel of latitude, or to the
cosine of the latitude of the parallel. Let us suppose that
a parallel is drawn on the globe for every tenth degree of
latitude; then divide the quadrant AB into nine equal
parts, at the points 80, 70, 60, &c.; from these points of
division let fall perpendiculars upon BC, meeting it in the
skposed to be in such a position, that the projections of
t: meridians and parallels of latitude are nearly equidis-
tl t, as the meridians and parallels themselves are upon the
ghe, the projection is called the globular. In order to
ailily these projections to the construction of maps, we
nst attend to the properties of each.
1. Orthographic Projection of the Sphere.
The fundamental principle in this projection is, that the
r resentation of any point on the sphere is where a per-
pidicular from that point meets the plane of projection.
II nee it follows that the projection of a line of any kind points 80, 70, 60, &c.; the lines C 80, C 70, C 60, &c.
iddetermined by supposing perpendiculars to fall from are equal to the cosines of the arches B 80, B 70, B 60,
ei ry point in that line upon the plane of projection, and &c. to the radius BC. From the centre C, therefore, de-
a ne to pass through the points of intersection of these scribe circles with these lines as radii; and these circles
Plpendiculars with that plane. will be the projections of the parallels corresponding to
t the proposed line be a straight line, its orthogra- the 80th, 70th, 60th, &c. degrees of latitude.
Pfc projection will also be a straight line, being the in- Lastly, the projections of tire polar circles and of the
tisection of the plane of projection with the plane per- tropics may be found by setting off from the point A to¬
wards B, and from the point B towards A, twenty-three
and a half degrees, drawing perpendiculars to BC through
the points of division, and describing circles from C as a
centre through the points in which these perpendiculars
cut BC.
Thus will the projection of the sphere upon the plane
, „ of the equator be completed. The representation given
f the proposed line be the circumference of a circle, of of the polar regions in a map of this description is toler-
ch the plane is perpendicular to the plane of projec- ably correct, but the countries towards the equator are
h i, its orthographic projection will be a straight line very much distorted.
efial to its diameter. To project the Sphere orthographically on the Plane of
f the proposed line be the circumference of a circle, of the Meridian. From any point C as a centre, with any
Tieh the plane is neither parallel nor perpendicular to distance CA (Plate CCLX. fig. 5), describe a circle
“ n1on“ ^ •  PASB, to represent the meridian circle, on the plane of
which it is required to project the sphere orthographical¬
ly. Draw the diameters PS and AB at right angles to
each other : then may PS be assumed as the projection of
P hcular to it passing through the proposed line.
f the proposed line be the circumference of a circle
Mallei to the plane of projection, its orthographic projec-
ti i will also be a circle of the same diameter ; since the
't ile and its projection are the equal and parallel extre-
B'ies of the cylinder formed by the perpendiculars fall-
1*: upon the plane of projection.
- - —V 11C1W1CI JJcUclIlUl I1UI |JUipeilUlUUlcU IU
n plane of projection, its projection will be an ellipse,
njig the curve in which the plane of projection intersects
cylinder formed by the perpendiculars falling upon it
m1 n every point in the circumference of the circle.
414
GEOGRAPHY.
Mathema-the meridian which is at right angles to the plane of pro-
tical Geo- jection; and AB will be the projection of the equator,
graphy. s;nce tp,at circ]e cuts all the meridians at right angles.
The other meridians cutting the projecting plane obliquely
are projected into ellipses, having PS for their common
transverse axis, and the cosines of their inclinations to
the projecting plane for their several semiconjugate axes.
Let the quadrant AS be therefore divided into six equal
parts in the points 15, 30, &c. from which let 15ra, 30n,
&c. be drawn perpendicular to AC, and meeting it in m,
n, &c. Describe the ellipses PmS, P«S, &c. having a com¬
mon transverse axis PS, and Cm, Cn, &e. for their semi¬
conjugate axes: these ellipses are the projections of the
meridians passing through every fifteenth degree of the
equator.
Again, to project the parallels of latitude : Divide either
of the quadrants AP or BP into nine equal parts, in the
points 10, 20, 30, &c. and draw through the points of di¬
vision straight lines parallel to AB, the projection of the
equator: these lines are the projections of the parallels
on the one side of the equator to every tenth degree of
latitude. The parallels on the other side of the equator
are to be drawn in the same manner; as are also the tro¬
pics and polar circles, the former at 23^° on each side of
the equator, and the latter at 23^° from the poles.
In this projection there is great distortion in the appear¬
ance of the regions about the poles, and of all the coun¬
tries near the meridian PASB. It is as we approach the
centre of the map that this distortion begins so far to dis¬
appear as to allow a projected portion of the earth’s sur¬
face to acquire any considerable resemblance to its delinea¬
tion on the globe.
2. Stereographic Projection of the Sphere.
In the stereographic projection of the sphere the eye is
supposed to be situated at one of the points where the
surface of the sphere is intersected by a straight line pass¬
ing through the centre, and perpendicular to the plane on
which the projection is to be made. This plane, as we
have already remarked, is that of a great circle of the
sphere; so that the point on the sphere at which the eye
is supposed situated will be everywhere 90° distant from
the circumference of that circle whose plane is assumed
as the plane of projection. In order that the lines and
circles on the sphere may be visible to the eye in this
position, it will be necessary to suppose the sphere to be
transparent. Let, then, ABEC (Plate CCLX. fig. 6) be a
great circle drawn on a sphere of this description, and pass¬
ing through the eye at E. Let EG be a plane passing
through a, the centre of the sphere, in such a manner as
to cut the plane of the circle ABEC at right angles in the
diameter HK, and to make each of the arches EH, EK,
equal to 90°: then EG will be the plane of projection.
Draw EA the diameter of the sphere passing through the
eye ; also draw EB, EC, to B and C, any two points in the
circumference of the circle ABEC ; and let the lines EA,
EB, EC, intersect the plane EG in the points a, b, c. By
the fundamental principle of the stereographic projection,
namely, that the representation of any point is where
the straight line drawn from it to the eye intersects the
plane of projection, the points a, b, c are the projections of
the points A, B, C. It is evident also that the line be, in
which the planes EBC and EG intersect each other, is
the projection of the line BC, or of the arch BAG; and
that the lines ab, ac, are the projections of the arches AB,
AC.
Since Eai is a right angle, ab is the tangent of the angle
uE6 to the radius Ea. But the angle aEb is measured by
half the arch AB : hence ab is the tangent of half the
arch AB, or its semitangent. Thus it appears, that if a
great circle pass through the projecting point E, any arch
of it reckoned from the opposite point of the sphere is u ,
projected into a straight line passing through the centre
and equal to the semitangent of that arch.
Let BDC be any circle drawn on the sphere, and hav- ^fv
ing BC for a diameter. Take D any point in the circum¬
ference of that circle, and draw ED intersecting the plane
EG in the point d. If the point D be carried round the
circumference BCD, the line ED will trace the surface
of a cone of which BDC is the base; and the line bde
(the intersection of the plane EG with the conical sur¬
face), which is traced by the point d, is the projection of
the circle BCD.
Now, it can be demonstrated that the angles EBC
ECB, are equal to Ec5, E6c, each to each; so that the
cones EBC, E6c are similar. Hence the projection kk
is a circle, whose diameter be is found by taking ab and
ac equal to the semitangents of the arches AB, AC.
Thus it appears that every circle of the sphere is, ac¬
cording to the stereographic projection, represented by a
circle ; but a circle can be described when three points in
the circumference are given, or when two points in the
circumference and the radius are given. Hence this pro¬
perty renders the projection of the sphere by this method
very easy.
Another very elegant and important geometrical pro¬
perty of this projection is, that any two straight lines
touching the sphere at one and the same point are re¬
presented by two straight lines which make with each
other on the plane of projection an angle equal to that
contained by the touching lines themselves. Hence also
the angle formed by any two circles of the sphere is equal
to the angle formed by their projections.
When it is further considered that the stereographic pro¬
jection gives a representation of a hemisphere, in which
the parts about the extremity of the map are less dis¬
torted than in the representation obtained by the ortho¬
graphic projection, it must be concluded that the former
method is preferable to the latter.
To project the Sphere stereographically on the Plane of tk
Equator. Upon C as a centre (Plate CCLX. fig. 7) de¬
scribe a circle ABGE to represent the equator, on the
plane of which it is required to project the sphere; or
rather that hemisphere which lies remote from the point
of sight. As the eye must be supposed to be situated at
the pole, it is evident that the centre C will be the pro- ;
jection of the opposite pole, and that the meridians will
be projected into straight lines passing through C, and di¬
viding the circumference of the circle ABGE into as many
equal parts as there are meridians supposed to be drawn
on the globe. If there are twenty-four meridians, then
draw AG any diameter, and divide the semicircle AEG
into twelve equal parts. Through the points of division
draw diameters, as BCE, FCK, DCEI, &c., and the radii
thus found will be the projections of the meridians cor¬
responding to every fifteenth degree of the equator, any
one of which may be assumed for the first meridian.^
Again, to project the parallels of latitude; let AG and
BE be perpendicular diameters. Divide the quadrant
AB into nine equal parts in the points 10, 20, 30, &c-
From E to the several points of division draw straight
lines intersecting AC in the points 10, 20, 30, &c. l“e
lines C 10, C 20, C 30, &c. are the semitangents ot the dis¬
tances of the several parallels of latitude from the pole-
Hence the points 10, 20, 30, &c. are the points ot intt,r-
section of the projected parallels with the projected me¬
ridian AG. Upon C, then, as a centre, at the distances
C 10, C 20, C 30, &c. describe concentric circles, and these
will be the projections of the parallels corresponding to
every tenth degree of latitude. The tropics and po|ar
circles are found in the same manner. .
To project the Sphere stereographically on the Pl(l1ie l
*
GEOGRAPHY.
415
a. aWeridian. From the centre C (Plate CCLX. fig. 8), with
> air radius CA, describe the circle ASBP to represent the
• niridian on the plane of which it is required to project
J tlj sphere stereographically. As the eye, in this case, is
sipposed to be situated at a point in the equator, that cir-
c will be projected into a straight line passing through
tl centre C: let it be represented by the diameter AB.
E;iw the diameter PS perpendicular to AB ; then will PS
reresent the meridian passing through the eye, and P and
Siill be the poles. To project the other meridians, divide
tl quadrant AP into nine equal parts (supposing a me¬
dian to pass through every tenth degree of the equator)
atfhe points 10, 20, 30, &c., and from S draw straight
liiis to these points of division intersecting AC in the
pints 1, 2, 3, &c. The lines C 1, C 2, C 3, &c. are the
switangents of the arcs of the equator which measure
tli distances of the points in which the several meridians
ce the equator from the point of the sphere opposite to
tl: eye. Hence the points 1, 2, 3, &c. are the points
infhich the projected meridians will intersect the project-
eeequator AB. But the projected meridians also pass
tbugh the points P and S. In each, therefore, there
ai three points given. If we describe, then, the arches
P S, P 2 S, P 3 S, &c. these arches will be the projec-
tns of the meridians on one side of that passing through
tl point opposite to the projecting point, and those on
th other side are to be found in like manner.
: tgain, by dividing each of the quadrants PA, PB into
nij; equal parts, we find two points in each of the paral-
le; oflatitude. A third point in each will be found by
driving straight lines from B to each of the points of di-
vnn 80, 70, 60, &c. so as to intersect PC in the points
8,i 6, &c.; for the lines C 8, C 7, C 6, &c. are the semitan-
getsof the arcs intercepted upon that meridian of which
P is the projection between the several parallels and the
polit of the sphere opposite to the projecting point. De-
sooe, then, the several arches through the three points
fo nd in each; and in this manner the parallels on one
sin of the equator are found. Proceed in the same man-
ruiwith regard to the parallels on the other side of the
eciator, and with regard to the tropics and polar circles,
ar the projection will be completed. It is evident that
th centres of all the projected meridians will lie in the
lin AB, or in that line produced ; and from the construc-
ti' i it is easy to show that the distance of the centre of
easi projected meridian from the point C is equal to the
latent of the inclination of the meridian to the plane of
priection; while the radius of the projected meridian is
etjfal to the secant of the same angle.
urther, the centres of all the projected parallels ofla-
titiile lie in the line PS, or in PS produced; and the
ccilre of each projected parallel is distant from C by the
se nt of the arch which measures the distance of the pa-
tatl from the pole ; while the radius of the projected pa-
ra I is equal to the tangent of the same arch.
h ‘project the Sphere stereographically on the Plane of
tw lorizonfor a given Latitude. We must here suppose
t“lfeye to be situated at the point of the sphere op-
Pt> te to the place of which the latitude is given. From
tn centre C (Plate CCLX. fig. 9), with any radius CN, de-
sciMe a circle NWSE to represent the horizon upon which
1 required to project the sphere. To avoid intricacy
an ag the lines necessary to be drawn for the construc-
hc let the subsidiary circle N'W'S'E'(Plate CCLXI. fig. 1)
beiescribed with the same radius. Through C, the centre
tch circ]ej draw two diameters WE, NS (Plate CCLX.
), and W'E', N'S'(Plate CCLXI. fig. 1), intersecting
ej other at right angles. Let the diameters NS, WE
thUc fig. 9) be the projections of the meridian of
ygrven place, and of a semicircle at right angles to that
f uian, and passing also through the given place. It is
evident that the points N, W, S, E are the four cardinal Mathema-
points of the horizon. On the circumference of the sub- tical Geo-
sidiary circle N'W'S'E (Plate CCLXI. fig.l) take N'P'equal ;
to the given latitude ; and draw the straight line W'P'
intersecting CN' in P: then will CP be the semitangent
of the distance of the pole from the point on the sphere op¬
posite to the projecting point. Make therefore CP (Plate
CCLX. fig. 9) equal to CP (Plate CCLXI. fig. 1), and the
point P is the projection of the pole. Draw the diameters
P'P> FA'(Plate CCLXI. fig. 1) at right angles to each other;
then will E'A' be equal to the latitude; and by drawing
W'A' to intersect CS' in A, we obtain CA the semitangent
of the distance of the point in which the equator intersects
the meridian from the point of the sphere opposite to the
projecting point. Make CA (Plate CCLX. fig. 9) equal to
CA (Plate CCLXI. fig. 1); and through the three points
W, A, E, describe an arch of a circle; the arch WAE
will be the projection of the equator. Next, we shall show
the manner of drawing the parallels of latitude, by taking
as an example the two parallels which are twenty and for¬
ty degrees distant from the pole. In the subsidiary circle
(Plate CCLXI. fig. 1) take P' 20 and P' 40, equal to 20°
and 40° on each side of P'. Draw from W' to the points
thus found, straight lines intersecting CN' and CS' in the
points a, b, and c, d. The lines ab and cd are the diame¬
ters of the projected parallels corresponding to 50° and
70° of latitude. Make C«, Ci, Cc, Cd (Plate CCLX. fig. 9)
equal to Ca, Cb, Cc, Cd (Plate CCLXI. fig. 1) respectively,
and upon ab and cd as diameters describe circles; these
circles are the projections of the parallels required. In
the same manner are the other parallels of latitude, the
tropics, and the polar circles to be drawn.
Again, to project the meridians ; the straight lines NP,
PS, are the projections of the opposite meridians which
pass through the north and south points of the horizon.
The meridian circle, which is at right angles to that re¬
presented by NS, passes through the east and west points
of the horizon, so that three points in it* projection are
given, namely, the points W, P, £; its projection may
therefore be drawn. But it may be -more conveniently
found by considering that the meridian in question makes
with the plane of projection an angle equal to the given
latitude : the centre of its projection, which is in CS"pro¬
duced, must therefore be distant from the point C by the
tangent of the given latitude, and its radius will be equal to
the secant of the same. From the point S' (Plate CCLXI.
fig. 1) draw S'D, touching the circle in S', and meeting P'p
produced in D ; then DS' and DC are the tangent and se¬
cant of the given latitude. In CS produced (Plate CCLX.
fig. 9) take CB equal to DS'; and on B as a centre de¬
scribe an arch through the point P, which will also pass
through W and E. The arches PW, PE will represent the
opposite meridians, which are at right angles to the me¬
ridian of the place for which the projection is made.
With regard to the other meridians, it is not difficult to
see that their centres will lie in a straight line GH (Plate
CCLX. fig. 9) drawn through B at right angles to CB;
and that the distance of the centre of each projection from
the point B will be equal to the tangent of the inclination
of the corresponding meridian circle to that meridian cir¬
cle which passes through the east and west points; while
the radius of the projection will be equal to the secant of
the same inclination. Let us suppose, then, that the me¬
ridians are to make with each other angles each equal to
15° : at the point P make the angles BP 15, BP 30, &e.
equal to 15°, 30°, &c. respectively, and let P 15, P 30,
&c. meet the line GH in the points 15, 30, &c. Upon
these points, as centres, describe through the point P the
arches tnPm', nPn’, &c.; then will Pm, Pn, &c. Pm’, Pnr,
&c. be the projected meridians required. In this manner
the projection may be completed.
416
GEOGRAPHY.
Mathema- 3_ Globular Projection of the Sphere.
tical Geo¬
graphy. jn t]ie globular projection of the sphere, a point is as-
sumed for the position of the eye, at a finite distance from
the centre greater than the radius, and so situated that
the degrees in the representation shall be nearly equal to
each other, and the deviations from equality in the repre¬
sentations of equal portions of the spherical surface thus in
some measure corrected. To determine the position of the
point of view so as to answer these conditions, let ADBF
(Plate CCLXI. fig. 2) be a section of the sphere made by
a plane passing through C the centre, and through the
point E which is assumed as the projecting point re¬
quired. Through C draw EB, meeting the circumference
ADBF in A and B, and draw the diameter DF at right
angles to EB. Bisect the quadrant DB in I, and draw
El meeting DC in G; the point G will be the projec¬
tion of the point I. But by hypothesis the projections
of equal arches are nearly equal: let then DG be as¬
sumed equal to GC. Join DB, and draw Cl meeting
DB in H. Join GH, and draw IK parallel to DC, or
at right angles to AB. Then it is evident that DH is
equal to HB ; and therefore DH : HB :: DG : GC. Hence
the line GH is parallel to CB; and we have IH : HC : :
(IG : GE : :) KC : CE. But IH is equal to BK, and
HC to KC : therefore BK : KC :: KC : CE, and we have
BK • CE = KC2 = IK2 = BK • KA. Hence CE is equal
to KA; and taking away the common part AC, there
remains EA equal to KC or to IK : that is, EA, the dis¬
tance of the point of view above the surface, is equal to
the sine of 45°. If the radius CA be divided into 100
equal parts, EA is therefore nearly equal to 71 of these
parts.
This projection was first suggested by M. Delahire,
and the approximation which it gives to equality in the
projection of equal arches of a circle perpendicular to the
plane of projection is considerable. The circles of the
sphere are, according to this method of projection, repre¬
sented by ellipses. An approximation to this method is,
however, generally all that is aimed at. The circles of
the sphere are represented by circles ; and, without any
regard to the distance of a projecting point, the degrees
of longitude on the equator and of latitude on the meri¬
dian are made all equal to one another; the plane of the
meridian being assumed as the projecting plane. The
following is the construction by which such a representa¬
tion of a hemisphere of the earth’s surface is obtained,
i From the centre C (Plate CCLXI. fig. 3), with any ra¬
dius CA, describe a circle PASB to represent the meridian
on which it is required to project the hemisphere. Draw the
diameters AB, PS, at right angles to each other; and let
PS represent the meridian of which the plane is at right
angles to the plane of projection: then AB will be the
projection of the equator, and the points P and S, the
projections of the poles.
To project the parallels on the north side of the equa¬
tor, divide each of the quadrants PA, PB, into nine equal
parts: also divide the radius CP into the same number
of equal parts. Let 80, 70, 60, &c. d, e, f, &c. be the
points of division : the parallel corresponding to 80° of la¬
titude will pass through the three points 80, d, 80 ; that
corresponding to 70° of latitude through the three points
70, e, 70, and so on. Describe circles, accordingly,
through these points, and the parallels on the north side
of the equator will be drawn. In the same manner are
the parallels on the south side of the equator to be pro¬
jected, as are also the tropics and polar circles.
Again, to project the meridians, divide the radius AC in¬
to six equal parts in the points a, b, c, &c., and through the
points P and S, and these points of division, describe circles
PaS, P6S, &c. Proceed in the same manner on the other
side of PS, and the circles thus described will represent!^
the meridians passing through every fifteenth degree of ticalcj;
the equator, anyone of which may, in laying down places Pipk '
by their latitudes and longitudes, be assumed for the first *
meridian. Plate CCLXII. is a planisphere, or map of the
world, projected in this manner.
II. Construction of Maps by Development.
The practical application of the three methods of pro-
jection which we have now explained, to the construction
of maps, is usually confined to the representation of a he¬
misphere ; whilst for the delineation of the geographical
features of a single country, the method of development
is commonly employed. The particular purpose for which
a map is to be used may make it more or less important
that it should exhibit, with all the precision that can be
attained, some particular features of the country repre¬
sented. The purposes of civil government require maps
that give the true figure and dimensions of territory. For
military affairs, maps that give correct distances are chief¬
ly useful; whilst for the purposes of the navigator, the
bearings of places, one from another, must be correctly,
and, at the same time, simply exhibited. The first two
objects are nearly gained in ordinary maps. But, for the
attainment of the last, a map of a peculiar construction,
called Mercators Chart, has been invented; which,while
it answers completely the purpose of the navigator, is not
immediately applicable to any other.
It is an obvious property of a cone and of a cylinder,
that the surface of each admits of being spread out on a
plane. If a cone be laid with its slant side on a plane, the
former will coincide with the latter along a line stretching
from the point of contact in the base to the apex of the
cone. Hence, if the cone is rolled round, whilst the apex
continues at the same point, every point upon the surface
of the cone will come in contact with a corresponding
point in the plane surface; so that a sector of a circle will
be described, with which the surface of the cone, if ex¬
panded, would exactly coincide. A cylinder admits of
being rolled along a plane surface in a similar manner.
But this is not the case with respect to a sphere. For,
since a sphere touches a plane only in a point, if the for¬
mer be rolled along the latter in one direction, the sue-
cessive points of contact will mark out a straight line. A
narrow zone of the sphere may, however, be supposed,
without great error, to coincide with the surface of a cone
or cylinder; and this hypothesis gives rise to a twofold
construction by development, that by the development oi
a conical surface, and that by the development of a cylin¬
drical surface.
1. Development of the Curve Surface of a Cone.
Let NAME (Plate CCLXI. fig. 4) be a section of the
sphere by the plane of the meridian. Let NM represent ^
the axis ; then AB drawn through the centre C, at right
angles to NM, will represent the diameter of the equatoi.
Take EF, any arch of the meridian, and bisect it in the
point G. Through G draw LD a tangent to the circle
NAME, and meeting the axis MN produced in the point
L. Let the plane figure LGMB be now supposed to m-
volve about the axis LM; then will the circle NAM
generate a sphere, and the line LD will generate a coni¬
cal surface, which will touch the sphere. Further, tie |
points E, G, F will describe circles, which will be para' (
lels of latitude. If EF be an arch of not many deoreeA
the zone comprised between the parallel circles zA ] | |
will nearly coincide with the corresponding portion of t o
conical surface intercepted between the planes of
same circles. Take any point H in the circumfereno
GEOGRAPHY.
To find L'G', L'E', L'P.
61° 61°
50° 50°
2)111
55° SO7 — mid. lat. 5C
Log. cot. mid. lat. 55°
30',
3437*7 losr. 3*5362680
L'G' = 2362'*7.
G'E' or G'F' = 330'*0
L'E' =
L'F -
2692'*7
2032'* 7
Chord of arc F's
,ofae circle described by G, the middle point of the arch
E and join LH, HK, The point K being the centre of
th circle GHg.
. et us now suppose the conical surface comprehended
be/een the straight lines LG, LH, and the arch GH, to
be*;pread out into a plane L'G'H'. Then it is evident
th the arch GH on the middle parallel, of which the ra-
(}i is HK, the cosine of the middle latitude, is changed
in an arch G'H' of which the radius is L'G' = LG, the
co.ngent of the middle latitude. In the line L'G', and
in /G' produced, take G'F', G'E' equal to the arch EG or
G Then, on the point L' as a centre, at the distances
U , L'F' describe the arches EV, F's, and the plane sur-
fa, E'Fsr may be considered as nearly equal to the sphe-
ru surface comprehended between the meridians pass¬
im through G and H, and the arcs of the parallels Ee, Yf
in TCepted by these meridians. Hence, if any tract of
coatry situated on the corresponding portion of the
eaih’s surface be delineated on the plane E'F'sr, the re-
pnentation of it thus obtained will bear a near resem-
bLiCe to its delineation on the globe, the resemblance in¬
cusing according as the zone comprehended between
th extreme parallels is diminished in breadth.
uch is the principle of the conical development. Let
us ow consider how the line L'G'and the angle G'L'H' are
to e determined, so as to suit the space E'F'sr to any
grin difference of longitude and given middle latitude ;
alii in what manner the parallels of latitude and the meri-
di; s are to be drawn on that surface.
h have already seen, that L'G' is equal to the cotan-
ger, of the middle latitude to the radius of the sphere,
if he radius of the sphere be considered equal to unity,
th trigonometrical tables will give the length of L'G' in
pa s of the radius. But it will be more convenient to
ha:; it expressed in minutes of a degree. Now, since
thiiemicircumference is to radius as 3*1416 is to 1, if we
pu R for radius, we have 3*1416 : 1 :: 180 X 60 : R
— 437*7, which is the radius expressed in minutes of a
deree. Hence L'G' expressed in the same manner will
bo qua! to
3437*7 X cotan. middle latitude,
gain, since the arch GH is equal in length to the arch
G1' by hypothesis, the angle GKH measured by the
fomer, must be to G'L'H' measured by the latter, as the
ra us L'G' is to the radius GK; that is, if we put D for
th difference of longitude, and pfor the angle G'L'H', we
wi have D : p : : (L'G': GK :: cot. mid. lat. : cos. mid.
lat :) rad. : sine mid. lat. Hence we obtain
p = D X sine mid. lat.
he angle L' being thus determined, and the lines L'G',
G'F' being known, and expressed in minutes of a de-
, we can describe the figure E'F'sr, so that it shall be
mmodated to any given middle latitude and given dif¬
fer ice of longitude. Then having divided E'F' into as
mi y equal parts as there are minutes in the difference of
lat ude, or as there are some given number of minutes
, the points must be ascertained through which the
lels intended to be drawn pass, and from L' their corn-
centre, these parallels are to be drawn accordingly,
parallels E'r, F's are in like manner to be divided
into as many equal parts as there are minutes, or
given number of minutes, in the difference of longi-
: and points being ascertained in each of these paral¬
lel; through which the meridians proposed to be drawn
pa: the straight lines joining the corresponding points
artithe meridians required. It is by this method that
connon maps of particular countries are constructed.
15 an example, let it be required to construct a map of
Gr .t Britmn and Ireland, which must extend from 50° must be placed so as to form an angle of^
titude to about 61° north, and from 2° east to about \
H vest longitude.
' 4* x.
417
Mathema¬
tical Geo¬
graphy.
2)11 = diff. of lat. — 660'
30' zr 330' = G'E'or G'F'.
9*8371343
.log. 3*3734023
To find the angle G'L'H'.
Log. sine mid. lat. 55° 30' 9*9159937
Diff. of long. = 13° =780' log. 2*8920946
Angle G'L'H' = 643' = 10° 43' log. 2*8080883
To find the chords of the arcs EV, F's.
Chord of arc E'r = \  log* 3*7312180
l X sin. i L 8*9695999
Chord of arc E'r = 502'*1 log. 2*7008179
_ f 2 L'F' log. 3*6091033
~ \ X sin. ^ L' 8*9695999
Chord of arc F's = 379'* 1 ...log. 2*5787032
Having now determined the four sides of the trapezoid
formed by the meridians E'F' and rs, and the chords of
the arches E'r, F'^, it is easy to describe that trapezoid,
the length of the sides being measured on any convenient
scale of equal parts, which is to be considered as a scale of
minutes of a degree on the meridian. Let it be described
accordingly (Plate CCLXI. fig. 5), and let the sides E'F',
rs, be produced to meet in a point, which will be the point
L'. Then, from that point as a centre describe the arches
E'r, F's, and divide these arches each into thirteen equal
parts, since the difference of longitude is 13°. Also, di¬
vide E'F' and rs each into eleven equal parts correspond¬
ing to the given difference of latitude 11°. Having fixed
upon the number of meridians and parallels of latitude
that are to be drawn, describe from the point where the
lines E'F', rs, intersect when produced, as a centre, the
parallels through the proper points of division in E'F' or
rs ; and draw straight lines joining the proper correspond¬
ing points of division in E'r, F's for the meridians : we shall
here suppose the meridians and parallels to be drawn for
every second degree. Number the degrees of latitude
and longitude as in the figure, and the map is prepared
for having traced upon it the outline of the coasts of the
British isles, and places laid down according to their lati¬
tudes and longitudes.
It is evident that if the point in which E'F' and rs inter¬
sect each other becomes very distant, it may be exceed¬
ingly troublesome, or practically impossible, to describe
from it as a centre the parallels of latitude. An obvious
remedy for this inconvenience is, to join together two ru¬
lers, as AB, AC (Plate CCLXI. fig. 6), at the point A, in
such a manner as that they may contain an angle equal to
the angle in the segment which has for its arch the parallel
to be drawn. If the edges of the rulers be made, by means
of two pins, to slide over the extremities D, E of the pa¬
rallel, a pencil fixed at the angular point A will trace the
parallel on the map. In the present instance the rulers
360° —10° 43' _\
2 _
174° 38' 30".
3 G
418
GEOGRAPHY.
Mathema- The conical development has been variously modified,
tkal Geo- so as t0 remove as much as possible its defects. Thus,
giaphv.^ one modification was given by the Rev. Patrick Murdoch
in the London Philosophical Transactions, 1758. He sup¬
posed the cone to pass through points of the meridian
between the middle latitude and the extremities of the
arch to be projected, its side being parallel to the tan¬
gent at the middle latitude, while the points where the
cone intersects the meridian are so situated as that the
conic surface is exactly equal to the spherical surface
which it represents. Let M denote the arch of the me¬
ridian to be represented in the map; then, according to
this method of development, L'G', the radius of the middle
parallel on the map, is equal to
chord of arch M ...
  T-Hjr-jr  X cot. mid. lat.
arch M
the cotangent being supposed to be expressed by the ra¬
dius of the sphere. In other respects the construction is
the same as in the ordinary conical projection.
But the simplest and most successful method of re¬
medying the defects of the conical development is that
known by the name of Flamsteed's projection. The Eng¬
lish astronomer by whom this method was invented, and
whose name it bears, made use of it in constructing his ce¬
lestial atlas. He developed all the parallels of latitude
on the sphere into straight lines, and also one of the me¬
ridians, namely, that which passes through the middle of
the chart. To this meridian the lines representing the
parallels are perpendicular, and the length of each is the
same with that of the parallel on the sphere which it re¬
presents. Dividing the parallels in the projection into
equal parts, in like manner as the parallels on the sphere
are divided, he supposed curved lines to be drawn through
the corresponding points of division, and these curve lines
represent the meridians. Flamsteed employed this pro¬
jection in representing the position of the stars ; but it is
also made use of in geography, particularly for the deli¬
neation of countries which extend on both sides of the
equator.
To suit it more effectually to this purpose, it has under¬
gone, however, a modification of very considerable impor¬
tance, as it corrects in some measure the distortion in the
figure of countries lying near the extremities of the map,
which arises from the obliquity of the curve lines repre¬
senting the meridians to the straight lines representing
the parallels of latitude, which increases as the former re¬
cede from the centre of the map. On the globe the me¬
ridians cut all the parallels of latitude at right angles;
and by employing concentric circles instead of straight
lines, as in Flamsteed’s projection, to represent the paral¬
lels of latitude, the curves representing the meridians on
the map may be made more nearly to fulfil this condition.
For this purpose the common centre of the circles, which
is situated in a straight line drawn through the middle of
the map as an axis, is so assumed that the radius of the
middle parallel of latitude is equal to the cotangent of
the middle latitude; an assumption which diminishes as
much as possible the obliquity of the angles made at the
intersections of the curves which represent the meridians,
with the circles which represent the parallels. In the
position of the common centre of the circles representing
the parallels of latitude, this modified projection of Flam¬
steed coincides with the ordinary conical projection.
We shall exemplify this construction by showing how
to describe, according to it, the parallels and meridians
for a map of Europe.
Let the map be supposed to extend from 35° to 70°
north latitude. Hence the middle latitude will be 52° 30',
and the radius of the middle parallel of the map (being
equal to 34377-7 X cot. 52° 30') will be equal to 3637'-8.
Draw, then, any line LE (Plate CCLXI. fig. 7) for tj .
axis of the map ; and assuming any point C for the point 0f tn ' •
intersection of the axis with the parallel of middle lati- |Lk ‘
tude, set off1 the length of the radius of that parallel from ^vv ^
C to L, taken from any convenient scale of equal parts
which is to be considered as a scale of minutes of a de¬
gree. Thus the point L, the common centre of the circles
representing the parallels, is determined.
Let us now suppose that a parallel is to be drawn
through every tenth degree of latitude; that is, thronuh
40°, 50°, 60°, 70°. As the middle latitude exceeds 50°
by 150 minutes, take 150' from the scale of equal parts
and set it off from C to 50. Again, take 600, which are
equal to 10°, from the scale of equal parts, and setoff
that distance from 50 to 40, from 50 to 60, and from 60
to 70. The point E, corresponding to 35°, is found by
setting off 300' from the point 40. If we were to proceed
according to Flamsteed’s method, as originally employed
by him, it would be necessary to draw straight lines
through the points E, 40, 50, &c. perpendicular to DE,
and therefore parallel to each other, and to make these
lines equal respectively to the portions of the parallels on
the sphere which they represent; then, dividing each line
on both sides of the axis into as many equal parts as are
indicated by the number of meridians intended to be
drawn on each side of the axis, through the extremities
and corresponding points of division to trace curve lines
to represent the meridians. In this case the point L
would not be required. But in the modification of the
method which we are now exemplifying, from the point
L as a centre an arch of a circle is to be described
through each of the points E, 40, 50, &c. and each of
these arches of longitude is to be made equal to the arch
of the parallel on the sphere which it represents. Let us
then fix upon some meridian of a given number of de¬
grees of longitude to the eastward and westward of that
represented by the line DE, which is to be so drawn as
to fulfil this condition. Let AB and ah be the meridians
assumed, the former 30° to the westward, and the latter
30° to the eastward, of DE.
The arch BE or />E is equal in length to an arch of 30°
on the parallel of latitude 35°. Now, the latter arch may
be determined in geographical miles or minutes of the
meridian by means of the table (page 405), showing the
length of a degree of longitude for every degree of lati¬
tude in geographical miles. Thus, 30° on the parallel
of 35° latitude is found equal to But the arch
BE is of the same length. Therefore we have BE or Ml (
= 1474'-5.
We might next find the angle which the arch BE sub¬
tends at the centre L, and thus determine the points B
and h. But it is more convenient to find the chordof the
arch, which may be easily done as follows:
Put a for any arch of a circle whose radius is r. Then
Q& % % .
sin. a — a— —r nearly, if the arch is not very great.
or*
In this expression put instead of a, and it becomes
a3
sin. ±a = ±a — nearly.
Doubling both sides of this equation, and observing
that 2 sin. \a — chord of a, we obtain
chord of a = a nearly.
24?'2 J
For arches not exceeding 30°, this formula will give the
length of the chord with sufficient exactness. Let us ap
ply it to find the chord of the arch BE.
Here a — 1474,-5, and r — LE = 3687'‘8
geography.
Log. a — 3-168637
3
Log. r = 3-566767
2
419
J Log. a3 — 9-505911 Log. r2 — 7-133534
Log. 24 r~ — 8-513745 Log. 24 = 1-380211
Ilf. of arch and chord 9-8, 0-992166 Log.24r2=8-5l3745
Hence the chord of the arch BE is 1464'*7 of the me-
riian. Taking this number from the scale of equal parts,
aiil setting it off from E towards B and b, the points B and
ijre determined.
Proceeding in the same manner, we may find the arches
oiilO0 of longitude, with their chords, on the other paral-
le of latitude; and thence determine the remaining
puts through which each of the projected meridians AB,
Anpasses. The curves drawn through these points will
h> the representations of the two meridians which have
3if of longitude to east and west of the meridian repre-
st.ted by DE.
'he points in which the projections of the intermediate
rrridians intersect the projected parallels, may be found
b'dividing each parallel into thirty equal parts from the
W, both towards the right and left; then, by tracing
ci ves through the proper corresponding points of divi-
si i, as many meridians may be represented as are judged
tc >e necessary. If the map is to extend farther than 30°
oi each side of its middle meridian, the division of the
pullels may be extended to the necessary distance be-
yi d the meridians AB and ab.
> t is a consequence of the properties of this projection,
th distances on the map may be readily and accurately
musured by a scale of equal parts. This scale may be
ccstructed as follows:
>raw a straight line AB (Plate CCLXI. fig. 8) equal to
at assumed number of degrees of latitude. If we assume
Sfilegrees, AB will be equal to DE. From B draw an in-
(Unite line liC, making with AB nny angle. Then, since
A( is equal to 35°, or to 2417 English miles nearly, take
2^7-from any convenient scale of equal parts, and set that
ditmee off from B towards C, making BD equal to 2417.
Fu n the same scale of equal parts take 100, or 200, &c.
(“he present instance we shall take 500), according to the
m her of miles which each of the divisions of the scale
is itended to represent; and with this distance in the
co passes set off from B towards C the divisions Bm, mn,
npvq; the remaining part qD, being only 417, will not
ag|i contain it. Join AD; and through the points of
dnaon m, n, p, q, draw straight lines parallel to AD, and
inrsecting AB. Each of the divisions of AB thus found
^"represent 500 miles, with the exception of that ad-
ja( it to A, which will correspond to 417 miles. The dis-
tano of two places of the map applied to this scale will
gn the distance in English miles.
I • Development of the Carve Surface of a Cylinder.
ie principle of this development is analogous to that
o i e conical, and may be illustrated in a similar manner.
Le|Jthe arch AB (Plate CCLXI. fig. 9) be a fourth part of
a.ttndian,antI the lines AC, BC to the centre ; these
ln" will be at right angles to each other, so that if we sup-
P<MjBC to represent the semiaxis of the sphere, then AC
wi be the radius of the equator. Let EF be any arch of
| icndian, and let it be bisected in G. Through G draw
fi pe.rI^ndicular AC, or parallel to BC. If the plane
)g i- IIDGAC be supposed to revolve round BC as an
HtIj \ arC^ will describe one half the surface of
fq> lere, the line DH will describe the surface of a
cylinder, the point A will describe the equator, and
fioints E, F, G, will describe parallels of latitude. If
J ,e a arch, the zone of the sphere which it de-
s ml* nearly coincide with the corresponding zone
of the cylinder. Any tract of country delineated upon Mathema-
the former may, therefore, be nearly represented upon the tical Ge°-
latter; and the cylinder being developed, the meridians 8raphy-
will be represented by parallel and equidistant straight
lines, as will also the parallels of latitude; the lines re¬
presenting the former being at the same time at right
angles to the lines representing the latter. Let EJfe be
a portion of the zone described by EF comprehended be¬
tween two meridians of which the difference of longitude
is equal to the difference of latitude of the parallels de¬
scribed by the points E and F. The breadth of the map
lepiesenting this portion will be equal to the arch Gy of
the middle parallel of latitude. But since the difference
of latitude and difference of longitude are supposed equal,
arch Gy is the same part of the middle parallel that
EF is of the meridian. Hence we have rad. : cos. mid.
lat. : : EF : Gyso that Gy may be found in minutes of
the meridian. Upon this principle depends the construction
of the plane chart, which is said to have been invented by
Flenry, son of John king of Portugal.
As an example, let it be required to construct a plane
chart extending from 30° to 50° north latitude, and from 5°
to 25° west longitude. Here the difference of latitude and
difference of longitude are each equal to 20°, and the middle
latitude is 40°. Hence we have EF, the length of the chart,
equal to 1200', and the breadth of it equal to 919'-25. Con¬
struct a parallelogram EFfe (Plate CCLXI. fig. 10), of
which the sides EF, Ff are respectively equal to 1200
and 919"25 taken from any the same scale of equal parts,
which is to be considered as a scale of minutes of the me¬
ridian. Divide EF and if each into four equal parts, and
through the points of division draw straight lines parallel
to F/and EF, and these lines will represent the parallels
of latitude and meridians for every fifth degree of latitude
and longitude. If it is required that the chart should ex¬
tend to a greater number of degrees of longitude east or
west, the parallels of latitude may be produced, and addi¬
tional meridians drawn on the left of EF, or on the right
offf
I he plane chart has nothing to recommend it but its
simplicity. The degree of longitude bears to the degree
of latitude its proper proportion only at the middle parallel
of latitude, where the sphere and the cylinder are supposed
to inteisect each other. Hence the rhumbs, as shown by
this chart, are altogether erroneous, except when the places'
between which the rhumb is drawn are very near the
equator.
The utter inadequacy of the plane chart to serve the
purposes of navigation, induced ingenious men to turn their
thoughts to the problem of constructing a chart in which
the rhumbs should be straight, lines, and at the same time
the bearings of places accurately represented. The first
condition of the problem is satisfied in the cylindrical de¬
velopment which we have already explained, since in it
the meridians are represented by parallel straight lines; so
that the line that makes equal angles with them all must
be a straight line. We are now to consider by what mo¬
dification of this development the other condition may
be satisfied. This can be accomplished in no other way
than by preserving at every point on the map the ratio of
the degree of longitude to the degree of latitude, the same
as it is at the corresponding point of the globe. Let us
suppose then that a cylinder is constituted on the equator
as a base, and has its axis coincident with that of the globe.
Let us suppose further that the globe, with its usual deli¬
neations upon it, is expanded as if it were inflated, so as to
meet the cylinder, all its parts stretching in such a man¬
ner as that the meridians lengthen in the same proportion
as the parallels do, until every part of its surface touches
the concave gurface of the cylinder; then will each parallel
have the same diameter as the equator, and the meridians will
420
GEOGRAPHY.
Mathema-be straight lines parallel to each other; but from the equa-
tical Geo- tor towards each pole they will be gradually increased in
graphy. iength at each point, so as to preserve the exact proportion
'ij*- y between the degree of the meridian and the degree of lon¬
gitude on the parallel which passes through that point.
jf* the cylinder be now spread out on a plane surface, it
will present a chart having the important properties re¬
quired ; the rhumbs will be represented by straight lines,
and the bearings of places will be accurately shown.
Such is the principle of Wright's, or, as it is usually
called, Mercators chart. A chart of this description was
first published by Gerard Mercator in the year 1556. It
is not known on what principle he proceeded in construct¬
ing it; but it is certain that the true principles of the con¬
struction were unknown to him, for these were first found
by Edward Wright of Caius College, in Cambridge.
It remains to inquire how the lengthened meridians are
to be determined so that the chart may be constructed.
This problem can be accurately resolved only by the as¬
sistance of the fluxional calculus (see Fluxions). But
we may approximate to the solution by reasoning as fol¬
lows :
Let AB (Plate CCLXI. fig. 11) be a quadrant of the me¬
ridian ; draw AC, BC, to the centre ; and let BC represent
the semi-axis ; then AC will be the radius of the equator;
and if any point D be taken in the quadrant AB, the arch
AD will be the latitude of the point D. Draw AG, CG, the
tangent and secant of the arch AD, and DE, DF, its sine
and cosine. The increase which the arch AD acquires in
being transferred from the sphere to the cylinder is made
at every individual point of the arch, so that the whole
augmentation is the sum of these indefinitely small incre¬
ments. Let us suppose, then, that AD is divided into a
number of small portions, for example, into minutes. Since
similar arches of circles are to one another as their radii,
and the radius of any parallel is the cosine of the latitude
of that parallel to the radius of the sphere, if we put L for
any latitude, we have rad. : cos. L : : F of the meridian :
V on the parallel whose latitude is L. But from the similar
triangles GAC, CED, it is evident that CD : CE : : CG :
CA; that is, for any latitude L, rad. : cos. L : : sec. L:
rad. Therefore we have, sec. L : rad.:: P of the merid.: 1%%
on the parallel whose latitude is L; and this applies alike ticalff
to every minute of which the arch AD is made up. Let us
now suppose a minute on any one parallel to become equal
to a minute on the equator, or to a minute of the meri¬
dian, by the parallel being brought into coincidence with
the surface of the cylinder, in consequence of the expan¬
sion of the spherical surface. The minute on the meridian
undergoes a corresponding increase. Let d denote it in
its lengthened state ; then, taking for granted that the in¬
crease on each minute of the meridian depends entirely on
that of the higher of the two parallels which pass through
its extremities, we obtain
sec. L : rad. : : d
hence d—
P of equator, or V of meridian;
sec. L X P of mer.
rad.
Let P of the meridian be now assumed as the radius;
then d = sec. L to the radius 1' of the meridian ; or, since
secants to dilferent radii are proportional to one ano¬
ther, and we only require proportional quantities, we have
simply
d — sec. L.
Thus the increased minute on the chart for each suc¬
cessive minute of which the arch AD on the sphere is
made up, is proportional to the secant of the latitude of the
higher of the two parallels which pass through the extre¬
mities of that minute. Let m denote the number of mi¬
nutes in the arch AD, and take L = P, 2', 3', &c ml
successively ; and we obtain for the lengthened meridian
corresponding to AD,
sec. 1' + sec. 2' + sec. i f+,&c + sec. m!.
If, instead of dividing AD into minutes, we had divided it
into smaller portions, the approximation would have been so
much the nearer to the truth. Upon this principle a table
of the lengthened meridians corresponding to every de¬
gree and minute of latitude, called a table of meridional
parts, is calculated ; and by means of such a table Merca¬
tor’s chart is easily constructed. The following table shows
the length of the enlarged meridian for every fifth degree
of latitude:
Lat.
0°
5
10
15
20
Merid. Parts.
0-00
300-38
603-07
910-46
1225-14
Lat.
25
30
35
40
45
Merid. Parts.
1549-99
1888-38
2244-29
2622-69
3029-94
Lat.
50
55
60
65
70
Merid. Parts.
3474-47
3967-97
4527-37
5178-81
5965-92
Lat.
75
80
85
90
Merid. Parts.
6970-34
8375-20
10764-62
Infinite.
The approximate numbers obtained in the manner now
pointed out are sufficiently correct for all nautical purposes,
and indeed might be carried to any degree of accuracy.
From the more rigorous investigation afforded by the
fluxional calculus, it is found that the enlarged meridian is
proportionally equal to the logarithmic tangent of an arch
found by adding to 45° half the arch of latitude reckoned
from the equator. Thus, the meridional parts correspond¬
ing to 40° of latitude are equal to the logarithmic tangent
of (45° -j- 20°) — log. tan. 65° — 33133; and the meri¬
dional parts corresponding to 50° are equal to log. tan. (45°
25°) = log. tan. 70° = 43389. These two numbers will
be found to be nearly proportional to the numbers set
down in the above table as denoting the meridional parts
corresponding to 40° and 50°.
To construct Mercatoi-’s chart: Draw two straight lines
WE, NS (Plate CCLXI. fig. 12), cutting each other at right
angles in the point C. Of these lines, WE is to represent
the equator, and NS the meridian passing through the
middle of the chart. From any convenient scale of equal
parts set off equal parts on the equator both ways from F
These divisions are to represent degrees of longitude; am
if the size of the chart will admit, each should be subdivu -
ed into minutes. Assuming the equator as a scale of mi¬
nutes, set off from C towards the north and south on tie
middle meridian the number of minutes in the enlarge
meridian, corresponding to each degree of latitude, as
shown by a table of meridional parts. Draw straight lines
through every fifth or every tenth degree of the eClu?.°r
and divided meridian, and at right angles to them,
lines at right angles to the equator will be the I”e.ridianJ
and those at right angles to the divided nl^rl, anLat;.
therefore parallel to the equator, will be parallels o
tude. Any one of the meridians may be assumed as
first meridian. ;tjs
To find the bearing of any one place from anotn >
only necessary to draw a straight line from the one
other, and to observe the angle which that line majce ^
the meridians: that angle is the bearing require ,
course on which a ship must be steered in sailing
I
*
GEO 421
value, unless for showing, by comparison with later works, Geomancy.
the changes which have taken place. Amongst modern
works we may mention Playfair, Pinkerton, and particu¬
larly Murray’s Encyclopaedia of Geography (the latest), in
the English language. In the French language there are
General Treatises by Mentelle and Malte-Brun, of which
last there is an excellent English translation. In the Ger¬
man language we may mention Die Erdkunde, or, Allge-
meine Vergleichende Geographic, von Carl Ritter; an ela¬
borate and valuable, but most voluminous work, published
in Berlin, of which the first volume, on Africa, appeared
in 1822, and the second, third, and fourth, on Asia, at
subsequent periods, down to this present year (1834*).
Apparently it will extend to ten or twelve volumes of 1000
or 1200 pages each, octavo.
On the general construction of maps there is a trea¬
tise by Jamieson. This is in a popular style. Full in¬
formation relating to the construction of maps of every
kind, and even to the details of engraving and lettering,
may be found in Memorial Topographique et Militaire.
This work, in six numbers, was composed at the general
depot of war, in the time of Bonaparte, by order of the
minister. Mathematical disquisitions on the construction
of maps have been given by Delahire, Mem. de 1’Acad. des
Sciences, 1701; Euler, Acta Acad. Petropolitanae, vol. i.
of first part; Lorgna, Principi de Geografia, 1789 ; Cassini,
Acad, des Sciences, 174)5; Clairaut, idem, 1733; La¬
grange, Acad, de Berlin, 1779. There is a valuable Me-
moire sur la Projection des Cartes Geographiques, 1810,
by Henry, given as a sequel to Memorial Topographique.
The subject is also fully treated by Puissant, in Traite de
Topographic, &c. 1807. As to maps, what has been said
of books will apply to them ; the latest are likely to be the
best. Those of Arrowsmith, Faden, Carey, Hall, and Gar¬
diner, are deserving of full confidence.
The best globes we know are those by Carey and Gar¬
diner. We particularly I'ecommend the large terrestrial
globe of this last artist, as the finest we have ever
seen.
GEO
llL ie one place to the other. Thus, if L be the Lizard
Iw' 'oint on the chart, and M the east end of the island of
ladeira, draw LK parallel to NS, and the angle KLM
* | ill be the course to be steered from the Lizard to reach
ladeira. The distance of the places may be found by
jnsidering that it is the hypotenuse of a right-angled tri-
igle of which the proper difference of latitude (not the
leridional difference) is one side, and the course the ad-
cent angle.
Plate CCLXIII. is a chart of the world according to Mer¬
itor’s projection. The great elongation of the degrees of
titude as we advance northward and southward, ren-
ers this projection very defective, in as far as the figure
id the relative magnitudes of places are concerned. But
lis is a purpose which it was not intended to serve. It
oes answer perfectly the purposes for which it was ori-
inally constructed, and has supplied what before its in-
sntion was a desideratum in geography.
To complete a map after the circles of latitude and
mgitude on the globe have been projected on the plane
irface by any one of the foregoing methods which is
iund most convenient, in any particular case, the various
bjects within the range of the map are to be delineated
n it in such a manner as to present to the eye as instruc-
ve a view as possible of the tract of country represented,
'he methods employed to give distinctness and extent to
ie information conveyed, will be best learned from the
dual examination of good maps, both general and parti-
ular. Various problems might be proposed to be resolved
y maps; but these the intelligent student of geography
•ill find no difficulty, either in proposing to himself or re¬
aving.
Descriptive Geography being a branch of knowledge
hich is continually changing by the progress of discovery
nd political revolution, the latest works on the subject
•ill of course supersede those which have gone before,
fence it has happened that the geographical works of
ichard, Gordon, Salmon, and Guthrie are now of little
GEOLOGY. The rapidly progressive state of this
oience has induced us to defer the consideration of it till
e reach the head of Mineralogy ; under which it will
e fully treated.
GEOMANCY, Geomantia, a kind of divination, per-
irmed by means of a number of little points or dots,
lade on paper at random, and considering the various
nes and figures which those points present, and thence
)rming a pretended judgment of futurity, and deciding
any question proposed. The word is formed from the
Greek ysa, or terra, earth, and /iavrs/a, divination; the
ancient custom being to cast little pebbles on the ground,
and thence to form conjectures, instead of the points af¬
terwards made use of. Polydore Virgil defines geomancy
to be a kind of divination performed by means of clefts or
chinks made in the ground, and of which he conceives
the Persian Magi to have been the inventors.
422
GEOMETRY.
HISTORY OF THE SCIENCE.
History. The properties of bodies maybe resolved into twoclasses;
one comprehending those which belong to all bodies what¬
soever, and another, such as belong only to particular bo¬
dies. Amongst the properties of the first class we may con¬
sider extension, magnitude, figure, divisibility, impenetra¬
bility, inertia, weight, mobility, &c. Some of those of the
second are solidity, liquidity, transparency, and the like.
Of these properties, extension, magnitude, figure, and divi¬
sibility, are the subject of Geometry. The discussion of
other properties of body belongs to Physics, called also
Natural Philosophy.
The objects of geometry having been continually pre¬
sented to the human mind, and being of such a nature as
could at all times be perfectly comprehended, it may be
supposed that the science would in some form or other
exist from the very beginning of society. Indeed there is
a natural geometry which all possess, and which must have
been employed in the divisions of property and the erec¬
tion of dwellings in every age. The name of the science
indeed indicates its origin, for it is derived from
the science of land-measuring.
According to the testimony of Herodotus, the science
was first cultivated in Egypt. He had been informed at
Memphis and. Thebes, that Sesostris the king had divided
the lands amongst his subjects, giving to each an allotment,
for which an annual tribute was to be paid. The overflow¬
ing of the Nile, however, disturbed the landmarks, and ren¬
dered it necessary to re-adjust them by measurement; and
hence the origin of geometry, which in the course of time
passed from Egypt into Greece. There are two things to
be here noticed ; the assertion of a verification depending
on geometry, and the particular opinion of Herodotus as
to the origin of the science. If, as some chronologers have
supposed, Sesostris be tire same as the King Sesac, or Shi-
shac, who made war on Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, it
would follow from Herodotus, that geometry had its origin
not more than about a thousand years before the Christian
era. It might, however, be earlier; for the operation of
measuring the land indicated a science which had made
some progress. Aristotle has attributed the invention of
geometry to the Egyptian priests, who, living secluded from
the world, had leisure for study. But however this might
be, all ancient writers are agreed in giving the Egyptians
the credit of having been the earliest cultivators of geometry.
The philosopher Thales, who lived 640 years before
Christ, brought the sciences, and particularly mathematics,
into Greece from Egypt, whither he had gone in quest of
knowledge at an advanced period of life. Diogenes Laer¬
tius relates that he there measured the height of the obe¬
lisks by means of their shadows; and Plutarch says, that
this display of skill in geometry astonished the king Ama-
sis. This shows that the Egyptians had not then advanced
far in geometrical knowledge. Proclus also has recorded
that Thales, by geometrical principles, determined the dis¬
tance of vessels remote from the shore. On his return to
Greece he founded the Ionian school, so called from Ionia,
his native country. His celebrity for learning excited the
attention of his countrymen, and drew to him disciples.
There appears to have been some slight traces of geo¬
metry in Greece at a still earlier period. We allude to the
geometrical construction of a triangle by Euphorbus of
Phrygia, and the discovery of some properties of figures.
These, however, were probably just the natural geometry
common to all ages. The rule and compasses, most im.
portant instruments, have been referred to the ages "of
fable, the honour of the invention of the latter having been °
ascribed to the nephew of Daedalus, and that of the square
and level to Theodorus of Samos, one of the architects of
the temple of Ephesus. But there are no certain indica¬
tions of geometry as a science before Thales. He laid its
foundation in Greece, and infused into his countrymen a
taste for the science. He is said to have applied a circle
to the measurement of angles, and to have discovered va¬
rious px-operties of triangles, by comparing, them one with
another. In particular, he discovered the important pro¬
position that all angles in a semicircle are right angles, a
discovery which greatly delighted him, and for which he
expressed his gratitude to the Muses by a sacrifice. Pro¬
clus has recorded that he made many discoveries in the
science, which, however, have gone to the common stock
of geometrical knowledge that had accumulated before
Euclid collected it into a system, and the authors of which
are unknown. It is probable that the greater part of the
disciples of Thales were geometers, but few of their names
have descended to us. Ameristus and Anaximander are
the only ones now known. Of the former we only know
that he was a skilful geometer. The latter wrote a kind of
elementary treatise or introduction to geometry, the ear¬
liest work of the kind that is known to have existed.
Thales wras succeeded in his school by Anaximander,
who is said to have invented the sphere, the gnomon, and
geographical charts. These required a considerable know¬
ledge of geometrical science. It has been said that he at¬
tempted the grand practical geometrical problem of measur¬
ing the magnitude of the earth. This probablyhas originated
in his being the inventor of representations of its surface.
The honour of being the first to measure the earth seems
to belong to another. Anaximander was followed by Anaxi¬
menes, born at Miletus 540 year's b. c. He is said to have
invented sun-dials, and thus must have known both astro¬
nomy and geometry ; indeed a desire to understand the
former would prove a strong stimulus to the study of the
latter. He had as his disciple and successor Anaxagoras,
who being persecuted for his opinions, employed himself
in prison in trying to square the circle. This is the first
notice on record of an attempt to resolve what appears now
to be an insoluble problem, on which no modern geometer
will spend his time. It might, however, have a very differ¬
ent aspect to the ancient mathematicians.
Pythagoras, born about 580 years b. c., was one of the
greatest men of antiquity". According to some he was a
Tuscan, whilst others say he was a Tyrian ; but his name
is better known than his origin. At the age of eighteen
he became the disciple of Thales, and imbibed deeply his
opinion of the importance of temperance and economy of
time as necessary to success in the study of philosophy. In
the infancy of science knowledge was only to be acquired
by travel, the men of different countries standing in the place
of our modern books as the depositories of learning. Pytha¬
goras visited Phoenicia, Chaldea, and India. In the annals of
this last country the remembrance of the philosophical tra¬
veller is still preserved. He afterwards went into Egypt,where
he is said to have remained twenty-two years, holding in¬
tercourse with the priests. The long duration of his abode
is not probable, as the knowledge he seems to have acquir¬
ed did not correspond to so protracted a residence. Whits
GEOMETRY.
fto'
i Egypt, he is said to have consulted the columns of Sothis,
■ which that celebrated person had inscribed the princi-
les of geometry. He returned to Samos, his adopted coun-
•y, and there opened his school; but not finding auditors,
e removed to Italy, and took up his abode in Cortona, a
)wn in the territory of Tarentum, where he found many
isciples, and acquired a great reputation. He is said to
ave discovered the important theorem in geometry, that
i a right-angled triangle the squares on the sides contain-
,g the right angle are together equal to the square on the
de opposite to it; and on this account he is said to have
icrificed an hundred oxen in gratitude to the Muses. The
tcrifice is probably a fable. The shedding of blood was
jntrary to his moral principles, and so many oxen were
jt likely to be at the disposal of a philosopher. In his
hool, geometry made great progress, and was augmented
■j several new theories, such as that of the incommensu-
bility of certain lines, in particular that of the side of a
uare to its diagonal. The theory of the regular solids
id its origin also in the Pythagorean school, a doctrine
hich requires an extensive knowledge of geometry. This
ibject, now neglected amidst the riches of modern ma-
ematics, because of its small utility, was in the beginning
'great importance, on account of other discoveries which
ust have been incidentally made in its prosecution. Dio-
mes Laertius has attributed to Pythagoras the discovery
at of all figures having the same boundary, the circle
nong plane figures, and the sphere among solids, are the
ost capacious. If this was so (a thing doubtful), he is the
•st on record who considered isoperimetrical problems.
The Pythagorean school sent forth many philosophers
id mathematicians : amongst the latter, Philolaus and Ar-
lytas held a distinguished rank. Of Philolaus we know
it little. He held to its full extent the Pythagorean doc-
ine of the motion of the earth round the sun as a centre,
id was the first to unveil it. He composed a work on
echanics, and thus has a claim to be associated with Eu-
>xus and Archytas as inventors of that part of mathema-
:s. He had a tragical end, having been massacred by
e people of the small republic of which he had been a
gislator. We know more of Archytas. He was the au-
or of a solution of the problem of two mean proportionals,
e was also one of the first who made use of the geome-
ical analysis, which, according to Proclus, he had learned
om Plato, and by its assistance he made many discoveries
geometry. We pass over his mechanical inventions,
le of which, the artificial pigeon, which winged its way
trough the air, certainly savours of the marvellous. Ar-
lytas is said to have been blamed by Plato for applying
iometry to mechanics ; but if this was so, it might be for
te manner of the application. His solution of the problem
finding two mean proportionals gives support to this
mjecture; for although ingenious, it has the defect of re¬
aring a motion which cannot be executed.
Democritus of Abdera cultivated geometry extensively,
has been conjectured that he was one of the first who
eated of the contact of circles and spheres, and of irra-
j lines and solids.
Hippocrates, who lived about the year 380 b. c. was ori-
nally a merchant; but having no turn for commerce, he
d not prosper. To renovate his affairs, he went to Athens,
1( t lcre f°r the first time became acquainted w ith geome-
y> which seemed to suit his particular turn of mind. In
ie Pr°secution of this study he discovered that the curvi-
leal space, caiied from its form a lime, comprehended
) naif the circumference of one circle and the fourth of
ie circumference of another (their concavities being turned
ie same way), was equal to a rectilineal space, viz. the
ca of a right-angled triangle, whose hypothenuse was the
ameter of the circle, and its sides each equal to the ra¬
ws of the quadrantal arc. This could not be considered
as a true quadrature of a curvilineal space ; it was merely
a geometrical juggle, by which a common space being taken
from tw^o equal curvilineal figures, one of the remainders
was by a sort of chance a rectilineal figure. The first true
quadrature of a curvilineal space is due to Archimedes.
Hippocrates attempted the quadrature of the circle ; but,
if his mode of reasoning has been truly handed down to us,
' he committed a great oversight. This is the first recorded
paralogism in geometry. He was more successful in treat¬
ing of the duplication of the cube, which he showed to de¬
pend on the finding of two mean proportionals between
two given lines. He was also the first who composed ele¬
ments of geometry, but these have been lost. He appears
to have retained the mercantile spirit, insomuch that he
accepted money for teaching geometry. On this account
he was expelled the Pythagorean school; a measure some¬
what hard, considering his reduced circumstances.
Two geometers, Bryson and Antiphon, appear to have
lived about the time of Hippocrates, and a little before
Aristotle. ’I hey are only known by some animadversions
of the latter on their attempts to square the circle. Before
this time geometers knew that the area of a circle was
equal to a triangle whose base is equal to its circumference,
and altitude equal to its radius. This truth could not es¬
cape the observation of the early geometers. Bryson er¬
roneously believed that, by a geometrical construction, he
could find the circumference, in which case the quadrature
would have been easy. Antiphon, it appears, proceeded
by increasing continually the number of sides of an in¬
scribed regular polygon, and considered the circle to be
equal to the ultimate result; a process perfectly correct,
and the same in effect as that by which Archimedes found
the area of the parabola.
From tbis brief view of the progress of geometry dur¬
ing the first two centuries after its introduction into
Greece, we pass to the school of Plato, in which geometry
completely changed its character, and advanced with in¬
creased vigour and more rapid strides. Hitherto its sub¬
jects had been of the most elementary nature ; now, how¬
ever, the views of geometers became more enlarged, and
a new era in the science commenced. Although the dis¬
ciple and successor of Socrates, who had no taste either
for mathematical or physical science, Plato held them
in the highest estimation ; and, imitating the earlier sages
of Greece, he undertook voyages and journeys to improve
his mathematical knowledge. He visited Egypt to con¬
verse with the priests, and Italy to consult with the cele¬
brated Pythagoreans Philolaus, Timaeus of Locris, and
Archytas. With the last of these he contracted a parti¬
cular friendship. He went also to Gyrene to hear the dis¬
courses of the mathematician Theodorus; and on his re¬
turn to Greece, when he had founded his school, he made
the mathematics, particularly geometry, the basis of his
instructions; and his disciples, encouraged by his exam¬
ple and his exhortations, applied with ardour to the study
of that science. He never allowed a day to pass without
making his disciples acquainted with some new truth. He
placed over his school this inscription, Let no one ignorant
of geometry enter here. He held that the Divinity conti¬
nually geometrizes; meaning thereby, no doubt, that the
laws by which the universe are governed are in accord¬
ance with the doctrines of mathematics. It does not ap¬
pear that Plato composed any work expressly on the ma¬
thematics ; but his invention of the geometrical analysis
may be considered as one of the greatest improvements
the science has received. The theory of Conic Sections
originated in the Platonic school; and a third discovery
was that of Geometrical Loci, a theory not only beautiful
and interesting on account of the abstract truths which it
unfolds, but also by reason of its great importance in the
resolution of geometrical problems. The celebrated pro-
423
History.
History, blem concerning the duplication of the cube was agitated
about his time ; but its origin was earlier ; for Hippocrates,
as has been already stated, had reduced it to the finding
of two continued mean proportionals. Plato himself gave
a solution of the problem ; and it was also resolved by Ar-
chytas, Eudoxus, Eratosthenes, and Menaechmus. The
solutions of eleven of the ancient geometers have been
preserved in the Commentary of Eutocius on Archimedes’
Treatise concerning the Sphere and Cylinder. It is proba¬
ble that the trisection of an angle, a problem of the same
degree of difficulty as the duplication of the cube, excited
the efforts of the Platonic school. We have indeed no
positive testimony in favour of this conjecture ; but the
progress of the human mind does not allow us to doubt
that the problem was of great antiquity. After the solu¬
tion of the very simple problem, the bisection of an angle,
it was natural to think of dividing it into three equal
angles ; and those who first thought of the latter problem
would no doubt be astonished to find, that two problems
so like in appearance should yet differ so much in the dif¬
ficulty of their solution. The trisection of an angle, and
the duplication of a cube, are in fact problems of such a
nature that they cannot be resolved by straight lines and
circles alone, the only lines admitted by the ancients into
their elements of geometry. The reason of this impossi¬
bility would not be apparent to the ancient geometers,
although it is made evident by the modern doctrines of
algebra.
The names of the individuals to whom we owe the par¬
ticular discoveries which have been specified have not
come down to us; they must therefore be regarded as be¬
longing to the Platonic school generally. Proclus has re¬
corded the names of a number of the geometer's of that
school. Some of advanced years attended it as friends
of its celebrated head, or from respect to his doctrines;
others, chiefly young persons, as disciples. Of the first
class were Laodamus, Archytas, and Theaetetus: Lao-
damus was one of the earliest to whom Plato communi¬
cated his method of analysis before he made it public, and
he is said to have profited much by the possession of this
instrument of discovery. Archytas was a Pythagorean,
having extensive knowledge in geometry and mechanics.
He frequently visited Plato at Athens; but in one of his
voyages he perished by shipwreck. Theaetetus was a rich
citizen of Athens, who had studied along with Plato under
Socrates. He appears to have cultivated the theory of
the regular solids, called now the Platonic bodies.
The progress of geometry now required that its elements
should be new modelled. This was done by Leon, a scho¬
lar of Neoclis, or Neoclides, a philosopher who had studied
under Plato. To Leon has been ascribed that part of the
solution of a problem called its determination, which treats
of the cases in which the problem is possible, and of those
in which it cannot be resolved. Eudoxus of Cnidus was
one of the friends and contemporaries of Plato ; he gene¬
ralized many theorems, and thereby greatly advanced geo¬
metry. It is believed that he cultivated the conic sec¬
tions ; and even the invention of these has been ascribed
to him. He resolved the problem of the duplication of
the cube ; and it is to be regretted that Eutocius, who
speaks with contempt of his solution, has not recorded it
with others in his Commentary on Archimedes. Diogenes
Laertius has attributed to him the invention of curve lines
in general; from which we may infer, that other curves
besides the conic sections were known in the school of
Plato. Archimedes, in his Treatise on the Sphere and Cy¬
linder, says that Eudoxus found the measure of the py¬
ramid and cone, and that he was especially occupied with
the contemplation of solids. Some have given him the
credit of being the writer of the fifth book of Euclid,
which treats of proportion. Amongst the numerous ma¬
thematicians of the Platonic school, there was one, Cra-
tistus, who is particularly mentioned by Proclus. He was
a remarkable person; for his knowledge of his science was
in a manner innate. There was no problem of that time
however difficult, which he could not resolve by his natu"
ral geometry. He was the Pascal of antiquity. There
were two brothers, Menaechmus and Dinostratus, who also
greatly distinguished themselves. The former, a particu-
lar disciple of Plato, extended the theory of the conic sec¬
tions. Eratosthenes seems to attribute to him the merit
of having invented them; at any rate, he was the first
who solved the problem of doubling a cube by means of
these curves. Dinostratus followed in the path of his
brother, and advanced geometry by his discoveries. He
is particularly known as the reputed inventor of a curve
called the qnadratrix, by which he seems to have intend¬
ed to divide an angle or an arc of a circle in any given ratio.
The curve takes its name from a property by which, could
it be constructed geometrically, the quadrature of the
circle would be obtained. According to Pappus, Dinos¬
tratus discovered this property of the curve ; and probably
this is the reason why it has been called the quadratrix
of Dinostratus, just as we say the spiral of Archimedes.
Indeed there is some ground for believing that the curve
was invented by Hippias, a philosopher and skilful geo¬
meter, contemporary with Socrates.
It was chiefly in geometry that the followers of Plato
excelled. In this they imitated their leader, who direct¬
ed his attention to abstract speculations, rather than to
the study of nature. The conic sections, one of their
most refined and profound geometrical theories, remained
merely an intellectual speculation from its first invention
till the days of Kepler and Newton, when it acquired a
high importance on account of the discovery' that the or¬
bits of the planets are conic sections.
The school of Plato, after the death of its founder, was
divided into two others, which, although opposed to each
other on various points, yet agreed in holding the mathe¬
matics in esteem, and in regarding them as an indispensa¬
ble preparation for the study of philosophy. It is record¬
ed, that a person ignorant of geometry and arithmetic
having presented himself for admission into the school of
Xenocrates, the successor of Plato after Speusippus, he
was repelled by its chief, with an intimation that he was
not properly prepared for the study of philosophy: Ansas
philosophorum non habes, said the philosopher.
The mathematics, thus encouraged and protected, con¬
tinued to be cultivated and improved. The celebrated
geometer Euclid was of this school; and it may be con¬
jectured, from the age in which he lived, that he had ac¬
quired his knowledge under the tuition of the first succes¬
sors of Plato. So also, we may presume, was Aristaeus,
another celebrated geometer of antiquity, though little
known in our time, because his works have perished.
We learn, however, from Pappus, that he was one of the
ancients who contributed the most to the progress of the
sublime geometry. He was the author of two excellent
works ; one a treatise on The Conic Sections, in five books,
which contained a great part of what Apollonius has
given in the first four books of his work ; the other, also in
five books, treated of Solid Loci. Pappus, in prescribing
a course of study to his son, places this last work next in
order after the Conics of Apollonius. Hence we may in¬
fer that the propositions which it contained were of a
higher order of difficulty, and required a previous know¬
ledge of the conic sections. Euclid entertained great es¬
teem for Aristacus. We may hence conclude that he was
either his disciple or his intimate friend. .
The pure mathematics were less cultivated in theschoo
of Aristotle than they had been in that of Plato; they were
not, however, neglected; for, unlike the modern peripa
GEOMETRY.
r. tics, who discouraged the study of geometry, Aristotle
J ias deeply versed in the science, as may be inferred
)tn his writings, which abound in examples drawn from
:ometry.
Although the mathematics received but little addition
the Aristotelian school, still they had some cultivators,
f these, Theophrastus was the principal. He wrote some
^atises relating to them, particularly a complete history
i these sciences down to his time, a work which has un-
j-tunately been lost. It consisted of four books on the
] story of geometry, six on that of astronomy, and one
< that of arithmetic. We have great reason to regret
te want of the sure light which this work, had it come
(wn to our times, would have thrown on the origin and
j ogress of these sciences, instead of which, we have only a
iv glimmerings, that serve to make the darkness sen¬
ile, but not to dissipate the obscurity. Another dis¬
ole of Aristotle, Eudemus, composed a history of the
i ithematics. This consisted of six books on the history
< geometry, and as many on that of astronomy. We
re to these all we now know concerning the origin of
use sciences; for it is from this source that Proclus,
' icon, and Diogenes Laertius have drawn the few notices
iiich they have transmitted to us.
We come next to a new epoch in the history of the an-
< nt mathematics. This was the institution of the school
< Alexandria. However memorable this event may have
Ln in the history of general literature, it is more espe-
t illy remarkable in that of the mathematics; for in this
i ebrated school all the mathematical sciences were cul-
I ated with a degree of care not inferior to that which
Id been bestowed on pure geometry in the school of
] ito, and with corresponding success.
The period which immediately followed the death of
j exander proved one of trouble and confusion. The vast
cipire founded by that conqueror was dismembered by
I principal captains ; and Egypt was the portion which
II to one of them, Ptolemy Lagus. As soon as he had
e ablished tranquillity in his dominions, Lagus turned his
mention to the sciences; and by his encouragement of
t :ir cultivators, he drew to him many of the learned of
( eece; and his capital soon rivalled Athens as the resort
( men of knowledge and talent. These constituted the
iexandrian school. The perfection of this celebrated
(t ablishment is mainly due to his son and successor Pto-
1 ly Philadelphus, who bestowed on the learned men he
I 1 induced to settle in his capital, protection and liberal
t :ouragement. Amongst those who resorted to this in-
£ :ution, none has been more celebrated than the Greek
§ )rneter Euclid. His country is unknown; and of the
i aits of his life no notice has reached us. It appears that
had resided in Greece, and studied geometry under
t ■ disciples of Plato. Thence he went to Alexandria,
) uced probably by the liberality of the first Ptolemy.
Ippus has described him as gentle and modest, and en-
t taining a particular regard for those who could contri-
e to the progress of the mathematics. His character
med a contrast to that of Apollonius, another geo-
i ter, who was vain, and delighted in depreciating his
cntemporaries. We may suppose that Euclid was not
II cli of a courtier, from his reply to Ptolemy, who in-
< red of him whether there was not an easier way to a
, )'v*e(ige of geometry than the study of his Elements.
- jere is no royal road to geometry,” was his answer,
i iave elsewhere (see Euclid) given a full account of
5 distinguished geometer and his writings.
ie great excellence of the Elements of Euclid must
rease our regret for the loss of a treatise which he com-
1 e on Porisms. Of this work, all that has come down
| modern times is an abstract, inserted by Pappus Alex-
rmus in his Mathematical Collections. This, however,
vol. x.
425
has suffered so much from time, that all we can imme- History,
diately learn from it is, that the ancients put a high value
on porisms, and regarded them as an important part of
their analysis. The efforts of modern geometers had been
exerted in endeavouring to discover the nature of porisms,
but without much success. At length Dr Robert Simson,
with a zeal and perseverance not to be surpassed, succeed¬
ed in divining their nature, and even in restoring a great
number of Euclid’s propositions. These form a part of
the posthumous works of this distinguished geometer.
Leaving the Alexandrian school, our attention is drawn
to Sicily, which gave birth to Archimedes, a geometer
whose genius has been the admiration of all who have come
after him. His life was written by Heraclides; but this
precious piece of biography, so well calculated to interest
our curiosity, has unfortunately perished. Archimedes
was born 28/ years before our era. He was the relation
and friend of Hiero, king of Syracuse. Plis skill as a me¬
chanician is universally known; but it is only as a geome¬
ter that we shall speak of him here. Endowed with a
mind of the highest order, he exerted it in the extension
of mathematical science. The measure of curvilineal
magnitude was a subject new in his time, concerning
which but little was known. Archimedes attached himself
to this branch by predilection, and opened new views,
which have engaged the attention and exercised the ge¬
nius of such men in modern times as Kepler, Cavalieri,
and Dr Wallis. The last of these has called him a man
of prodigious sagacity, who first laid the foundations of al- *
most all that had given celebrity to the seventeenth cen¬
tury of our era.
The writings of Archimedes were numerous. We have
two books by him on the sphere and cylinder, which ter¬
minate in the fine geometrical discoveries, that the solidi¬
ty and surface of the sphere are respectively two thirds of
the solidity and surface of the circumscribing cylinder,
with which he was so much delighted, that he desired that
these figures should be inscribed on his tomb. His book
on the measure of the circle is a kind of supplement to
his treatise on the sphere, which supposed a knowledge of
that measure. The determination of the exact ratio of the
diameter to the circumference was, as at present, a pro¬
blem not to be resolved; but he found limits to that ratio,
and an approximation to it sufficiently accurate for the or¬
dinary wants of the arts, which was all that he attempted.
He might, however, have carried his approximation far¬
ther, as was afterwards done by Apollonius, and by Philo,
another geometer less known.
Archimedes having succeeded in measuring the sphere
and cylinder, bodies long the study of geometers, he opened
a new field of inquiry in his Treatise on Conoids and Sphe¬
roids. All his determinations are now familiar to geo¬
meters ; his processes of reasoning are highly ingenious,
but withal somewhat intricate. Indeed we question whe¬
ther many modern mathematicians have had patience to
go through his investigations, considering that the same
conclusions can now be reached by much shorter me¬
thods.
The properties of the spiral, invented by his friend Co-
non, and the quadrature of the parabola, are among the
additions made to the ancient geometry by Archimedes.
I his last was a grand step in the progress of geometry;
because it was the first curvilineal space legitimately
squared, and the only one, until the application of the mo¬
dern methods of analysis. In latter times the notion of in¬
finity has been introduced into geometry, and has contri¬
buted greatly to its extension. The ancients, however,
carefully avoided this term, which might have injured the
stability of the science. Their theory of exhaustions sup¬
plied its place, and was a safe, although a laborious and
indirect way of establishing truth. The writings of Archi-
3 H
426
GEOMETRY.
History, medes give the finest examples of its application. We
pass over the mechanical and optical inventions of this
great man, and only observe that they indicate a state of
considerable perfection in the geometrical science of that
period.
The writings of Archimedes are the most important of
the few classic remains of ancient geometry which we now
possess. The subjects of which they treat, being less ele¬
mentary, are now less studied than those in the Elements
of Euclid. Every geometer, however, should have read
them at least once in his life. The earliest edition of his
writings was published at Basle in 1644). It was in Greek,
with a Latin translation by Venatorius, the two versions
being printed as separate volumes, and accompanied by
the Commentary of Eutocius. There have been many edi¬
tions of his works. Of these we shall only notice two;
that of Torelli, in Greek and Latin, published at Oxford
in 1792, and a French translation of his writings by Pey-
rard, the learned editor and translator of Euclid’s works.
Returning to the school of Alexandria, we have to men¬
tion Eratosthenes, a geometer as well as an astronomer.
Indeed he was one of those uncommon men, whose genius
embraces all subjects ; for he was also an orator, a poet, an
antiquary, and a philosopher. His extensive knowledge in¬
duced the third Ptolemy to make him his librarian. He
chiefly cultivated geometry and astronomy, and has been
classed with the three great geometers of antiquity, Aris-
taeus, Euclid, and Apollonius, who had improved geome¬
trical analysis. Pappus mentions a work by Eratosthenes
on this subject, in two books. He has told us its title,
but has not described its exact object, which can therefore
only be conjectured. He gave a solution of the problem
of the duplication of the cube, which Eutocius has pre¬
served in his Commentaries on Archimedes; and he ap¬
plied his geometrical and astronomical science to the so¬
lution of the grand problem, the measurement of the mag¬
nitude of the earth, which, however, had been attempted
before his time.
Apollonius of Perga appeared as a geometer in the
Alexandrian school, about the time when Archimedes
had finished his career. It might be a question which of
these two great men was endowed with the higher genius ;
for such was the estimation in which Apollonius was held
at the period in which he lived, that he obtained the ap¬
pellation of the great geometer. He was the most pro¬
found and fertile writer that has ever treated ol geome¬
try. His works which have survived the ravages of time,
or have been restored by modern geometers, with the ad¬
dition of the Data and Porisms of Euclid, this last also a
restoration, constitute nearly all which we now know of
that beautiful subject, the ancient geometrical analysis.
Whoever would understand it, and acquire skill and faci¬
lity in its application, would do well to study with care
the various works of Apollonius which have been restored,
if not exactly according to the letter, at least in the true
spirit of the originals. A full account of the writings of
this distinguished geometer has been given as an article
of biography (see Apollonius) ; it is therefore unneces¬
sary to enumerate them here.
The ancient mathematicians addressed their writings to
others, their particular friends. It is in this way that the
names of some of their contemporaries have descended to
us, although their writings have been lost. Apollonius
dedicated the first three books of his Conics to Eudemus,
a geometer, and in such, terms as show that he addressed
himself to one well acquainted with the subject. He says
that he had been encouraged to study the subject by
Naucrates; and he requests Eudemus to communicate
what he had written to Philonides, also a geometer. Eu¬
demus having died, he addressed the fourth book to At¬
tains, and speaks of Thrasydeus, with whom Conon of
Samos, a little anterior to his time, had held acorrespon- Hist,
dence on the conics ; also of Nicoteles the Cyrenean, who Wy
it seems had a controversy with Conon. The regret which
Archimedes expresses for the loss of Conon gives us rea¬
son to believe that he was a profound geometer. We
know also that he was an astronomer. Archimedes dedi¬
cated several of his works to Dositheus, another geome¬
ter, whose name has thus become known to us.
It was about this period that the geometer Nicomedes
lived. He was the inventor of the Conchoid, a curve
which served to resolve two remarkable problems, thedu-
plication of the cube, and the trisection of an angle.
The period which comprehended the ages of Euclid,
Archimedes, and Apollonius, was that in which the sci¬
ence of geometry shone forth with the greatest splen¬
dour. It had been in a state of gradual improvement
from the time of Thales. Now, however, it seems to have
arrived at a degree of perfection beyond which its cultiva¬
tors did not carry it. We may suppose that the science
of astronomy took its place, and presented a new and
more inviting field of discovery. Hipparchus, the father
of astronomy, was also a geometer; for we find him applying
its principles, combined with arithmetic, to his science.
There were geometers who were also mechanicians.
These, as well as the astronomers, probably cultivated
geometry alone as connected with their own science.
Gemimus of Rhodes lived between the time of Hippar¬
chus and the beginning of our era. He was the author
of a work on geometry, and another on astronomy. The
former, which is lost, was probably a historical commen¬
tary, a sort of development of geometrical discoveries.
Proclus seems to have drawn from it all that he has said
on the history and metaphysics of geometry. Its loss is
matter of regret. Ctesibius, and Hero his disciple, were
celebrated as mechanicians. The former lived in the
middle of the second century before Christ. Philo of
Byzantium was also a celebrated mechanician. Possjdo-
nius was at once geometer, astronomer, mechanician, and
geographer. He deserved well of geometry, for having
repelled the attack of Zeno the Epicurean, who had at¬
tempted to invalidate its principles and certainty. Dio-
nysiodorus was a skilful geometer, as appears by his solu¬
tion of a difficult problem of Archimedes. Theodosius
was the author of a work on the geometry of the sphere,
which has descended to our times. It appears to have
been studied as a classic in the English universities. Dr
Barrow gave an edition of it, along with the writings oi
Archimedes, and the four books of the Conics of Apollo¬
nius, in 1615. The best edition is that of Hunt, printed
at Oxford 1707.
The study of the mathematical sciences, which languish¬
ed in the first century of the Christian era, revived a lit¬
tle in the beginning of the second. Menelaus, an astro¬
nomer, wrote on trigonometry and spherical geometry.
This work has reached our times by a translation from
the Arabic. Dr Halley, holding in high esteem every
vestige of the ancient geometry, had prepared a new edi¬
tion of this geometer, corrected from a Hebrew manu¬
script. It did not appear, however,' until 1758, by the
care of Costard, the author of a history of astronomy.
Menelaus, as we learn from Pappus, cultivated the theory
of curve lines; a subject which may be regarded as belong¬
ing to the higher geometry among the ancients.
Ptolemy, if not an inventive geometer, must at ea?
have been perfectly acquainted with its theories, for he a
the merit of applying them to astronomy. His Almage
has handed down from antiquity a beautiful geome nc
theorem, the foundation of the Greek trigonometry,
this ; the rectangle contained in the diagonals of a Tua .
lateral inscribed in a circle, is equal to both the rec ng
contained by the opposite sides.
I
*
ry.
G E O M
Several mathematicians of no great note lived in the
ird and fourth centuries of the Christian era. Such were
;renus, who wrote two books on cones and cylinders;
ypsicles of Alexandria, the supposed author of two books
i regular solids, sometimes ascribed to Euclid ; and Per-
us Citticus, who wrote on certain lines called Spiriques,
•med from a solid generated by an arc of a circle revolv-
t about a fixed axis. Philo of Thyaneus, and Demetrius
( Alexandria, both wrote on curve lines.
We are now come to a period in which the sciences had
1 gun to decline; when, instead of original treatises, wri-
t s were content to compose commentaries and annota-
t ns on the works of their more illustrious predecessors.
] was in this way that Pappus and Theon of Alexandria,
v o lived towards the end of the fourth century, rendered
s vice to the mathematical sciences. The first, however,
rist not be classed with the ordinary scholiasts; for in his
I ithematical Collections he has shown that he was an ex-
I -t geometer. His object in composing this work was to
c lect into one body many scattered discoveries, and to
i istrate and supply deficiencies in the writings of the cele-
1 ited mathematicians who had preceded him. He has
(,ie this in regard to Apollonius, Archimedes, Euclid, and
' teodosius, by a number of lemmas and important propo-
s ons which they had assumed as known. His writings
1. ve made us acquainted with the various attempts made
1 the ancients to double the cube, and to divide an angle
i o three or more equal parts. We are indebted to him
1 almost all we know of these and other important mat-
t s in the ancient geometry ; and it is through his writings
t it the names of many geometers have come down to our
Ofs, which, but for him, would have been lost in the ob-
i irity of time. The preface to his seventh book is of in-
(imable value, inasmuch as it has preserved from oblivion
i ,ny of the analytic works of the ancients. His brief ana-
1 is of these works, for that is all we have, has given con-
t uity to the history of geometry ; and his indications have
s ved as vestiges of the steps by which the ancients pro-
c :ded in their discoveries. Guided by these brief notices,
t; ingenuity of the moderns has succeeded in restoring
i; writings of Apollonius and Euclid, which had disap-
] ired for ages. It is not improbable, that in this renovated
i m, the works of these geometers surpass in excellence
t i originals. The restorers have had the advantage of an
i proved state of the science, and the works of later geo-
ii ters, to assist them in their researches.
It is probable that at this time there is not an entire
(t)y of the eight books of Pappus in existence ; certainly
tire is none in Britain. In a catalogue of the manuscripts
< England and Ireland, published at Oxford in 1698, there
i mention made of two copies in the Savilian library.
tese have been more than two centuries in Oxford. One,
i irked No. 3, is in folio, and is well written on paper; it
• itains the Greek text of the third, fourth, fifth, sixth,
9 'enth, and eighth books, and in addition some works of
icodosius and Autolycus. There is no memorial to in-
< ate when it was written, or by whom. The other copy,
v :h a mark No. 9, is not so well written ; it has. been co-
f ‘d by various hands, on separate sheets of paper. This
1 >y, besides the books preserved in the former, contains
; o a part of the second book. Dr Wallis has spoken of
1 ee manuscripts of Pappus at Oxford, one in the Bodleian
» 1 two in the Savilian library. No traces of a third copy
*1 now be found in the Bodleian library. The late Dr
ail, in his life of Dr Robert Simson, has described a manu-
■ ipt now in the Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh. It con-
* ns five books of Pappus, viz. the third, fourth, fifth, sixth,
1 eighth ; but unfortunately the seventh, the most valu-
n I)0r^on °f the work, is wanting. This was purchased
1 aris by Dr James Moore in 1748.
Ihe British Museum possesses a manuscript copy of
E T R Y. 427
Pappus, which had been the property of the Saliante fami- History,
ly at Verona. None of the manuscripts of which we have
any details are of a very early date. There are some points
of resemblance in all that have been examined, which seem
to indicate a common origin. It is well known that early
manuscripts are few in number; sometimes only one is
known. This may have been the case in regard to the
text of Pappus, and will account for the agreement of all
the manuscripts in particular places. We owe the edition
which we possess of this ancient work to the labour of Com-
mandine, who translated and enriched it with notes, but
died when he was about to give it to the world. It after¬
wards appeared in 1588, under the patronage and by the
pecuniary aid of Francisco Maria, duke of Urban. That
part of the second book which has been preserved was pub¬
lished in the third volume of the works of Dr Wallis : it
treats of the ancient arithmetic.
We had formerly occasion to mention Hypatia, the
daughter of Iheon, as a commentator on Diophantus, in
our account of the progress of Algebra. She has a claim
to our notice also in the history of geometry, by her having
composed a commentary on the writings of Apollonius.
The philosopher Proclus, the chief of the Platonic school
at Athens, made it in some measure the seat of the mathe¬
matical sciences about the middle of the fifth century. In
imitation of the chief of his sect, he held the sciences in
great estimation. He was not, however, distinguished for
original discoveries; but his commentary on the first book
of Euclid, setting aside the fault of its prolixity, is valu¬
able, because of the information it contains on the history
and metaphysics of geometry at a remote period.
We pass over several geometers of this period, of whom
hardly any thing but their names is known. We mention,
however, Diodes as the inventor of a curve called the
cissoid, contrived for the solution of the celebrated pro¬
blem, to find two mean proportionals.
Geometrical science had by this time been long on the
decline. The Alexandrian school, however, still existed ;
and a repetition of such a period as that in which Apollo¬
nius and Euclid flourished might have been hoped for, had
it not been for the troubles which agitated the East. The
taking of Alexandria by the Saracens in the year 640 gave
a deathblow to the sciences, not only in that celebrated
city, but throughout the Greek empire. The library was
delivered over to destruction by the command of the igno¬
rant fanatic Omar; and this, the finest monument of human
genius, the accumulated store of knowledge that had been
collecting for ages, was employed during six months in
warming the four thousand baths of Alexandria. Such
was the end of the Alexandrian school, which had for near¬
ly ten centuries contributed to the advancement of the hu¬
man mind in knowledge.
About the eighth century we find Hero, called theyoung-
er, an engineer and mathematician. He wrote a treatise
on Geodcesia (so practical geometry was called), which had
no great merit; it is, however, remarkable for containing,
without demonstration, a rule for finding the area of a tri¬
angle when its three sides are known. There is no notice
of this important theorem in the writings of the ancients
which have come down to us. It was, however, probably
found by some geometer earlier than Hero. It appears
to have been afterwards lost, and rediscovered by Tar-
talea.
We have an unfavourable opinion of the modern Ara¬
bians, but there was a period when they had a very differ¬
ent character. When the sciences were neglected by the
Greeks, and existed only in manuscripts buried in the dust
of libraries, the Arabians brought them forth from obscu¬
rity, and gave them an honourable asylum. They were
the depositaries of knowledge during the ages of barbarism
and ignorance which overspread Europe; and we owe to our
428
GEOMETRY.
History.
intercourse with them the first glimpses of light which pe¬
netrated the obscurity of the eleventh, twelfth,. and thir¬
teenth centuries. The Arabians diligently cultivated the
science of astronomy ; and as a corresponding knowledge
of other branches of science was necessary to success, they
became geometers, opticians, and even algebraists. The
greater part of the Greek geometers, particularly those ne¬
cessary to the study of astronomy, as Euclid, Theodosius,
Hypsicles, Menelaus, were translated into the Arabic lan¬
guage in the time of Almamon, or soon after him. They
even began to cultivate the sublime geometry of the an¬
cients, for the four first books of the Conics of Apollonius
were translated by order of that prince. They added to
their literature the writings of Archimedes, and at least
three of the last books of the Conics of Apollonius ; and
all these works are to be found in libraries rich in oriental
manuscripts. It is from the last-mentioned work, correct¬
ed and augmented by the notes of Nassireddin, a Persian
geometer, that Dr Halley has enrydied our geometry with
the fifth, sixth, and seventh books of the ancient Greek
author; the remaining books, viz. the eighth, appear how¬
ever to have been entirely lost. The Arabian writers quote
the writings of several Greek geometers of which we know
nothing, such as a treatise on parallel lines, another on
triangles, and a third on the division of the circle. We
must allow to the Arabians the merit of having given to
our trigonometry its present form. They also simplified the
practice of its operations, by employing the sines of the arcs
instead of the chords of the double arcs employed by the
Greeks. This was even one of their earliest inventions, for
we find it in the writings of their astronomer Albatenius.
The Arabian historians have recorded the names of se¬
veral of their cultivators of geometry ; but these may be
passed over, ignorant as we are of their contributions to the
science. The optician Alhazen however deserves notice,
because of the knowledge of geometry shown in his writ¬
ings, and also on account of a geometrical problem appli¬
cable to optics which bears his name. The solution he gives
was probably derived from the Greek geometers. It must
be confessed the Arabians do not appear to have been an
inventive people; almost always commentators or com¬
pilers, they seldom rose higher than the labours which
such functions impose.
The Persians have also had their geometers. The most
celebrated was Nassir-Eddin Al-Tussi. The science is in¬
debted to him for some good works, particularly a learned
commentary on Euclid, which was written in Arabic, and
printed in 1590 in Italy. Another geometrical work is a
revision of the Conics of Apollonius, with a commentary.
Dr Halley found this useful in remodelling the fifth, sixth,
and seventh books of that precious treatise. The Persian
geometers have long known the principal Greek writers;
and they even profess to have some of their writings which
we have not known. It appears that their geometers had a
peculiar taste in treating the doctrines of abstract science,
for they have given every proposition of the elements a name
expressive of one of its uses, or of some fanciful analogy it
may have to things foreign to geometry. The forty-seventh
of the first book of Euclid, for example, they call figure
of the bride, and the forty-eighth the bride's sister; and,
with some reason, they call the mathematics the difficult
science. Mathematical knowledge among the Turks has
been nearly in the same state as among the Persians. The
libraries of Constantinople contain Arabic and some Turkish
translations of the Greek writers. Geometry is taught in
their schools, but it does not appear that they go beyond
the Elements of Euclid. There are hardly any traces of geo¬
metry amongst the Hebrews. We know that when Solo¬
mon’s temple was built, Hiram king of Tyre furnished ar¬
chitects and navigators. From this we may infer that the
Jews had no geometry at that period. It was not before
their second dispersion that they took an interest in the Hiji
sciences. However, when mixed with other nations, some U'
of their learned men cultivated geometry, but never pro-
ceeded beyond the elements. About the time of Almamon,
in imitation of the Arabians, they translated the writings of
some of the Greek mathematicians into their language, in
particular those of Euclid and Archimedes. They however
made no addition themselves to geometrical science.
The researches of Europeans concerning the mathema-
tical and astronomical science of India have discovered
among the Hindus some works on geometry of great anti¬
quity. We have already given some account of these in-
teresting writings in our sketch of the history of Algebra;
and we have there described the Lilavati, a work on arith-
metic and geometry by Bhascara Acharya, a Hindu ma¬
thematician, who lived about the year 1150 of the Chris¬
tian era. In another work, reputed more ancient, viz. the
Surya Siddhanta, we find a rational system of trigonome¬
try combined with fable and absurdity. There has been
great difference of opinion as to the time when this last
treatise, the most ancient on the Indian astronomy, was
written. The French astronomer Bailly believed it to have
been composed more than 3000 years before the Christian
era ; but more sober inquirers have judged it to be about
750 years old. The trigonometry it contains is probably
much older. The Hindu books on geometry are remark¬
able for not containing demonstrations. The writers knew
the celebrated proposition concerning the squares on the
sides of a right-angled triangle, the discovery of which
is ascribed to Pythagoras ; and they also knew the rule
for finding the area of a triangle from its sides, which was
not known to the early Greeks. It appears fron? the In¬
stitutes of Akbar, that the Indians supposed the diameter
of a circle to be to its circumference as 1250 to 3927;
which is the proportion of 1 to 3T416, and is more accu¬
rate than the determination of Archimedes, or indeed
than any known before the sixteenth century.
The Chinese have cultivated astronomy from a remote
antiquity, yet it does not appear that they have made any
progress in geometry. They knew the proposition of Py¬
thagoras, it would seem, earlier than it was known to the
Greeks, yet it remained sterile in their hands. They had
no spherical trigonometry before the thirteenth century,
and then it was not of native growth ; it was probably de¬
rived from the Arabians or Persians.
The Romans, unlike the Greeks, gave little attention
to the sciences. The mathematics in particular were dis¬
regarded at Rome; and geometry, scarcely known there,
did not extend beyond the art of measuring land and ot
fixing boundaries. The mathematics were, however, not
unknown to Cicero. The respect with which he speaks
of them, and the veneration he manifested for the me¬
mory of Archimedes in searching for his tomb, on which
he knew were inscribed a sphere and cylinder, indicate
that he had given some attention to the subject ot geo-
metry. , I
The Roman geographer Strabo must be numbered
amongst the geometers of his day: and Cicero mentions
another, Didymus, who was blind ; but he was a Greek
by birth. Vitruvius has given much information, in Ins
architecture, on matters connected with geometry.
We pass over those ages in which the sciences ba
nearly disappeared in Europe, and hail with satisfaction
their revival in the eighth century. Mathematical science
was at first dimly recognised, like the dawn of a new ay
after a gloomy night, in the writings of Boethius, nede,
his disciple Alcuin, and Gerbert, who travelled into Arabia,
the only country where a knowledge of the mathematica
sciences could be acquired. In this he was imitate )
the English monk Adelard, or Athelard, in the twe,
century, who went into Spain and Egypt; also by o
GEOMETRY.
, iglishmen, such as Daniel Morlay, Robert of Reading,
/ illiam Shell or William de Conchis, Clement Langton,
Adelard on his return translated Euclid, and he ap-
jars to have been the first who made this writer known
i the West. His work was never printed. Plato of Ti-
i li translated the Spherics of Theodosius into Latin about
20; but this translation was not printed before 1518.
] is worthy of remark, that almost all the restorers of the
s ences were ecclesiastics, who in the seclusion of the
(asters studied the works of the ancients which had been
pserved in the monasteries. This at least is one bene-
f the world has received from the leisure of the monks
c.that period, which all of them did not spend in idleness.
The sciences found many cultivators, and much encou-
r jement from sovereigns, in the thirteenth century ; Jor-
cius Nemorarius, who lived about 1230, was well versed
i geometry and arithmetic. John of Halifax, known also
t the name of Sacro-Bosco, his contemporary, was a ma-
t matician. Campanus of Navarre, the celebrated trans-
1; or and commentator of Euclid’s Elements, was of this
a;. Almost all the early editions of this work were made
f-m his version and his manuscript commentary. We
fire a treatise by him on the Quadrature of the Circle.
•Ijt he deviates from geometrical accuracy, by mistaking
t approximate ratio found by Archimedes for the true
a l exact ratio. The paralogism which he gives for a de-
nnstration may, however, be excused in the geometers
a his time. Ihey were few, and their writings must not
1 too nicely scanned. X he name of Roger Bacon is so
ii ntified with the progress of science, that we must reckon
1 1 among the geometers of his day. In support of this
c im we record his treatise on Perspective, a geometrical
t'ory.
I peonardus of Pisa, who in the fifteenth century brought
aebra into Italy, was also known as a cultivator of geome-
ti. He composed a treatise on the subject, which Com-
rmdine thought worthy of publication, and had prepared
ii 'a the press; but his death prevented its appearance.
n the beginning of this century, Cardinal Cusa acquir-
ei reputation in geometry, by a pretended quadrature of
tJ circle, and other writings. These, however, were only
ai ssue of paralogisms. It appears from the introduction
Mi tract of this wrriter, that Pope Nicolas V. who occu-
pd the pontifical throne from 1447 to 1455, was a "eo-
n ter, and had translated the works of Archimedes from
( Jek into Latin. The true restorers of mathematical
s^nce in the fifteenth century were Purbach and Regio-
H tanus. Purbach banished the use of sexagenary cal-
c ition from trigonometry, which he enriched with se-
- *nn'LPnr0p0sitions* He suPP°sed the radius divided
mi 000,000 parts, instead of the divisions used by the an-
Cnts; and in place of the chords of the double arcs, ex-
Plssed in sexagenary parts of the radius, he calculated the
si :s in 600,000ths of the radius. He was the inventor of
geometrical square, an instrument used in practical
gmetry; and he appears to have been the first who ap-
F i the plumb-line to mark the divisions of an instru-
1E * Regiomontanus, whose true name was John Mul-
A f\Called aIf. John of Mont-Royal), was born in 1436.
e age of fourteen he was captivated with the mathe-
p.!Ca, sci^uees, and put himsell under the guidance of
h I' x e PrecePtor and his pupil made a journey
tl , iU y \° ,Study Greek> in ortler that they might draw
Knowledge from the pure sources of antiquity. Pur-
Li jv" ^ <ire’ discipie followed out his purpose,
i Twaras translated the Spherics of Menelaus and
ohosms into Latin; he corrected from the Greek text
C m Cienti version of Archimedes made by Gerard of
Oin?a ’ 'e translated the Conics of Apollonius, and the
nf ip- ° ^erenusJ besides other wrorks on mixed mathe-
p •’ f commented on the books of Archimedes, w hich
ocius had not touched. He defended Euclid against
the imputations of Campanus, and he confuted the pre¬
tended quadrature of Cardinal Cusa. We pass over for
the present his improvements in trigonometry.
Lucas Paciolus, or Lucas de Burgo, the author of the
earliest printed book on algebra, contributed by the same
work to the establishment of geometry. It was first printed
in 1494, and was therefore one of the early printed books
on the science, but not the earliest, for the first edition of
Euclid was in 1482.
I he decline of the Greek empire, and the taking of Con¬
stantinople, which happened in 1453, scattered the learned
men of that country, many of whom took shelter in Italy,
and brought with them their language, and the precious
remains of ancient learning. The art of printing soon
spread abroad these treasures, and in the sixteenth cen¬
tury geometry was very generally cultivated. Amongst the
writers on the science in this century we may, in particu¬
lar, reckon Zamberti, John Baptiste Memmius, Comman-
dine, Gmdo Ubaldo, Manrolycus, and Tartalea. These and
others laboured usefully on the ancients, by translations
and commentaries. The Jesuit Clavius deserves particular
mention. Besides his labour on Euclid, we owe to him a
good work for the time on practical geometry in eight
We pass a multitude of names, and come to the French
geometer Vieta, who was deeply versed in the ancient as
well as in the modern geometry, and the restorer of the
tangencies, one of the lost w^orks of Apollonius. Adrian
Metius, a Dutch geometer, deserves to be mentioned for
his convenient and accurate approximate ratio (113 to
355) of the diameter to the circumference of a circle, gi ven
in a work on practical geometry. At this period the geo¬
meter Nonius, a professor at Coimbra, laboured with zeal
in spreading a knowledge of the science in Portugal.
The seventeenth century opened propitiously for the
progress of geometry. Lucas Valerius^ an Italian, took up
a subject which Archimedes had neglected, namely, the
centre of gravity of solids ; andMarinus Ghetaldus, another
Italian, made an attempt to restore the lost book of Apol¬
lonius, entitled Re Inclinationibus ; but he left the labour
incomplete. He also composed a work Re Resolutione et
Compositione Mathematica, which proves him to have im¬
bibed the true spirit of the ancient geometry. A Scottish
geometer, Alexander Anderson, lived at this time. He had
a decided taste for the ancient analysis, of which he gave an
essay in his Supple?nentum Apollonii Redivivi, in which he
supplied what Ghetaldus had left imperfect. The Ne¬
therlands could boast of some geometers who did credit to
their time.. Ludolph Van Ceulen has been celebrated for
his approximation to the ratio of the diameter of a circle
to its circumference (Algebra, art. 272), a prodigious
effort of labour, but requiring little genius. Willebrord
Snellius was a more distinguished geometer. He under¬
took the restoration of the lost book Re Sectione Retermi-
nata of Apollonius, and accomplished his task creditably.
He improved greatly the way in which Ceulen had approxi¬
mated to the ratio of the diameter to the circumference,
and verified the labour of that model of patience in calcu¬
lation. Albert Girard has acquired great reputation in
geometry by his supposed divination of the Porisms of
Euclid; for in his edition of Stevinus he positively avers
that he had restored the three books, which, however, never
appeared; and indeed it may be doubted whether he un¬
derstood the true nature of porisms. John Neper might
be reckoned amongst geometers, but he has still higher
claims to the notice of posterity for his invention of lo¬
garithms.
The science was sedulously cultivated in England at
Peri°d by Robert Record, John Dee, Leonard and
I homas Digges. and Henry Billingsley. Record was the
a'Rhor of the Pathway of Knowledge, the earliest book in
the English language on geometry. It was first printed in
430
GEOMETRY.
History. 1551, and is dedicated to Edward VI. Edward Wright,
inventor of what is called Mercators Chart, was an
English geometer whose knowledge of the science greatly
exceeded what was common in his time.
Germany had many geometers at this period, but none
of a high order. John Werner of Nuremberg cultivated
the ancient geometry, and excelled in a knowledge of its
analysis. Every writer on geometry at this period gave a
system of trigonometry nearly the same as we now have it
in its most elementary form. To George Joachim Rheti¬
cus mathematical science is particularly indebted for a tri¬
gonometrical table, more extensive than any that had been
given before him. It was printed in 1594, with this title,
Opus Palatinum de Triangulis ; but the author was then
dead. The work was published by Valentine Otho.
Pitiscus, another German geometer, extended and re¬
printed this work in 1613, with the title of Thesaurus Ma-
thematicus, sive canon sinuum ad radium 1,000,000,000,
&c. This is indeed a treasure, and one of the most re¬
markable monuments of human patience extant.
Want of space compels us to pass in silence many names
not less celebrated than some we have given, but less re¬
markable, because of their abundance in respect ot the
age to which they gave splendour. Indeed we may reckon
that every astronomer and algebraist was then a geometer.
Kepler opened an unexplored way into the field of geo¬
metry, by boldly introducing the notion of infinity into that
science. We may suppose that Archimedes must have
entertained in elfect the same idea in his speculations on
the sphere and cylinder, but was prevented from following
it to its full extent by the strict laws according to which
the early mathematicians had constructed their demon¬
strations. The views of Kepler were eagerly seized by
Roberval in France, and by Cavalieri in Italy. They were
the fertile germs which, under the culture of such men,
led, in the course of the seventeenth century, to a rich har¬
vest of discoveries.
We have now arrived at a period at which the discoveries
of the ancients formed but a small part of the whole body
of geometrical science, augmented asdt had been by the
moderns, and which was continually increasing. The new
views which wei'e opened soon produced the methods of in¬
divisibles of Cavalieri and Roberval, the theory of tangents
of Fermat, the arithmetic of infinites of Wallis, the geo¬
metry of curve lines of Descartes, and, finally, the method
of fluxions of Newton, and the differential calculus of Leib¬
nitz. The origin and progress of these have been fully
explained in our introductions to Algebra and hcuxioNs,
and require not to be here repeated. The ancient geometry,
however, still had great value. Huygens and Newton de¬
livered their sublime discoveries in its language, and repre¬
sented the relations of time, space, velocity, force, the ob¬
jects of their physical inquiries, by geometrical diagrams.
The rigorous mode of ancient demonstrations served like¬
wise as a model on which to form the processes of reason¬
ing by which the new truths in geometry and physics were
to be established.
Not to pass altogether in silence the names of geome¬
ters whose discoveries have made the seventeenth cen¬
tury ever memorable, we observe, that to Guildin, a Jesuit,
we owe the discovery of a property of the centre of gravity
applicable to the measurement of solids formed by revolu¬
tion ; and to Descartes, Fermat, Roberval, and Barrow, a
method of determining the tangents of curves. Galileo
first suggested the cycloid, the nature of which was af¬
terwards fully disclosed by the investigations of Roberval,
Fermat, Pascal, Huygens, Wren, and Wallis. James Gre¬
gory first suggested the logarithmic curve ; and John Ber¬
noulli and Leibriitz showed the true nature of the catenary,
which Galileo could not discover ; afterwards, David Gre¬
gory demonstrated its properties by the new geometry.
The ancient geometry came in for a share of that gene- H'
ral attention which was bestowed on the modern theories. ’Jyl
Newton, as has been already stated, held it in high esteem • ’
and David Gregory and Dr Halley employed their genius
and learning in restoring to their pristine excellence the
precious remains of Euclid and Apollonius.
Previously to the time of Newton, pure geometry and
algebra were the only subjects which mathematicians
had for the exercise of their genius; but his sublime dis¬
coveries presented a new and an immense field for in-
vestigation. The fact that the orbits of the planets are
ellipses, naturally connected the doctrines of astronomy
with the conic sections; and the two were wrought up
into the beautiful physico-mathematical theory of central
forces delivered in the Principia. When this came to
be fully understood, it served as a model of reasoning in
all speculations on physics, and the geometrical method
of Newton was adopted and imitated by his followers.
Thus, we have the Elements of Physical and Geometrical
Astronomy of David Gregory, and the Phoronomia of
Herman, and many other like treatises, composed in the
geometrical style. It was, however, soon discovered, and
first by foreign mathematicians, that the geometrical me¬
thod, which, when carried a certain length, is perspicu¬
ous and easy, is yet unsuitable to the more difficult spe¬
culations of mechanical philosophy, by reason of its cum¬
bersomeness. It was therefore abandoned by Leibnitz,the
Bernoullis, Euler, and their followers, and the greatly more
manageable modern methods of the fluxional or differential
calculus adopted in its stead. The mathematicians in Bri¬
tain, who had imbibed deeply and acquired a relish for the
spirit of the geometrical method, however, still adhered
wholly or in part to that method. Maclaurin, the exposi¬
tor of Newton’s calculus of fluxions, defended its princi¬
ples, and delivered many of his own fine speculations in the
pure and mixed mathematics, in the prolix style of the an¬
cient geometry. But he also gave a theory of the fluxional
calculus in the more concise language of the modern ana¬
lysis, which served as a practical example of the advan¬
tage which the latter has over the former as an instrument
of invention. Dr Robert Simson, the editor of Euclid,
greatly preferred the geometrical to the modern analysis;
and his disciple, Dr Mathew Stewart, the author of Ge¬
neral Theorems, Tracts relating to Physical Astronomy,
and Propositiones Geometricce more Veterum Demonstrate,
fully agreed with him in this sentiment. At a later period
another Scottish professor, the late Mr Playfair, withapro-
found knowledge of both the ancient and modern analysis,
and with no prejudice in favour of the former, yet gave an
elegant example of its beauty, in his paper on the origin
and investigation of porisms.
These distinguished Scottish mathematicians, by their
writings, contributed greatly to keep up the taste for geo¬
metry in Britain during the last century. It is proper
to acknowledge also, that much is due to Dr A. Robertson,
the late professor of astronomy at Oxford, to Dr Horsley,
bishop of Rochester, and others, for the estimation m
which the geometrical analysis is now held in Britain.
The nature and objects of the ancient geometry have
been fully understood for a century past, and the on y
question now is, how it ought to be studied. _ Ihere
have been a great variety of treatises within that time sent
into the world. We do not, however, suppose that t e
science has gained by this diversity of guides. 1 he sett e
public opinion seems to be in favour of some stan at
book; and Euclid’s Elements have been, by almost
sal consent, chosen as that stafidard in this country. ®
is another work of great excellence in the Frenc a ^
guage, Elements de Geometric, by the late Legen re,
mathematician of the highest celebrity. Mere we toC .
a book different from Euclid for purposes of instruc i i
Kepler, Nova Stereometria, &c   History.
Van Ceulen, De Circulo et Adscriptis 1619 w-y-O
Snellius, Cyclometricus 1621
Metius, Arith. libri ii. et Geom. libri vi  1628
Guildin, De Centro Gravitatis, &c  1635
Cavalieri, Geometria Indivisibilibus promota  1635
Exercitationes Geometricae sex  1647
y. i .vould be Legendre’s Geometry, of which there is an
Eglish translation. It may be useful to read more than
o, ; book on a subject which we wish to understand tho-
rughly, and those who hold this opinion can find no better
bi)k than that of the French geometer. We have kept
Mi constantly in view in composing this treatise.
[n tracing the progress of a science, it is always inte-
rtting to know by what steps it has advanced in the Descartes, Geometria    1637
ceer of improvement. These may be well ascertained Toricelli, De Sphmra et Soiidis'Snhm'r'aiibus,'16M
b(consulting the authors who have written on the science, Gregory St Vincent, Opus Geom. quadrat. Circuli. 1647
frln its infancy downwards. With this view we have Rudd, Practical Geometry 1650
g.en a catalogue of writers on algebra and fluxions, and Wallis, Arithmetica Infinitorum  1656
w now do the same in regard to geometry. The early  De Cycloide et Cissoide  1659
Miters are not so much mentioned for their excellence, as Pascal (A. Dettonville), Lettres (on the CycToid)’.’. 1658
frin a wish to give a faithful portraiture of the state and Ricci, Exer. Geom. de Maximis et Minimis 1666
p, gress of the science at different periods. The works J. Gregory, Vera Circ. et Hyp. Quadratura  1667
oigeometry in the last century are too numerous to be Geometry Pars Universalis   1668
alispecified. Many have fallen into obscurity. Almost Slusius, Mesolabum, &c    1668
aiare mere transcripts from Euclid ; indeed, generally Huygens, De Linearum Curvarum evolutione et’di-
GEOMETRY.
431
spaking, their excellence is in proportion to the fidelity
wih which they have copied the ancient.
Ancient Writers on Geometry.
EUid, Elements of Geometry flourished b. c. 272
’irst edition in Latin, that of Ratdolt 1482
’irst edition of Greek text, by Hervage, 1533
idit. in Greek, Latin, and French, by
Peyrard 1814
For other editions, see Euclid.)
 Porisms, restored by Dr Simson, Opera
qumdarn Reliqua 1776
Adlonius, Conics, and various works fl. b. c. 244
i or an account of his writings, see Apollonius.
A himedes on the Sphere and Cylinder, &c. born b. c. 287
irst edition of Greek text by Venatorius, 1544
>xford edition, Gr. and Lat., by Torelli, 1792
Idition in French, by Peyrard 1808
mensione (in Horol. Oscil.)  1673
 Opera (collected by S’Gravesande)  1751
Barrow, Lectiones Geometric®  1674
Viviani, Enodatio Problematum Gallicorum  1677
De Omerique, Analysis Geometrica  1698
Sharpe, Geometry Improved  1718
Clairaut, Elemens de Geometrie  1746
Math. Stewart, General Theorems  1746
 Propositiones Geometric®  1763
Montucla, Histoire des Recherches sur la quadra¬
ture du Cercle (in Histoire de Mathematiques)... 1754
T. Simpson, Elements of Geometry  1752
Emerson, Elements of Geometry  1763
Hutton, A Treatise on Mensuration  1770
Lawson on the Geometrical Analysis of the An¬
cients  1774
R. Simson, Opera qu®dam Reliqua    1776
. West, Elements of Mathematics  1784
Eltosthenes, Geometria cum Annot. 1672 fl. b. c. 194 Playfair, Origin and Investigation of Porisms {Edin.
TW flnmmorna*™. ™ ...fl. b. c. 117 Phil. Trans, vol. iii.)  1794,
Elements of Geometry  1795
Tl on, Commentator on Euclid.
Tliodosius, Sphericorum libri tres, printed at
•xford, 1707 fl. A. c. 75
Miielaus, Spherics, edited by Maurolycus fl. a. c. 100
Seams, De Sectione Cylindri et Coni fl. a. c. 200
lis treatise is in Oxford edition of Apollonius.
Ptpus, Mathematic® Collectiones, 1588. i660..fl. a. c. 380
Pklus, Commentator on Euclid fl. a. c. 450 Legendre, Elements de Geometrie (third edition)., 1800
aylor gave a translation in English, 1788. ^ im- J- ‘
V|erum Mathematicorum Athen®i, Bitonis,
pollodori, Heronis, Philonis, et aliorum, Opera,
r- et Lat 1693
Wallace, Geometrical Porisms (in Edin. Phil. Tr.
vol. iv.)....;  1796
La Croix, Elemens de Geometrie  1795
Mascheroni, Geometrie du Compas  1798
Problemes pour les Arpenteurs  1803
Writers in Modern Times.
Kramp, Elemens de Geometrie  1805
Leslie, Elements of Geometry, Geometrical Ana¬
lysis, &c.....  1809
L’Huillier, Elemens d’Analyse Geometrique, &c.... 1809
Diesterweg, Geometriche Aufgaben nach der Me-
. thode der Grechen  1825
L as de Burgo, Summa de Arithmetica, &c 1494 Vincent, Cours de Geometrie Elementaire  1827
Biiardinus, Geometria Speculativa 1495 Duncan, Elements of Plane and Solid Geometry.... 1833
iEille, L’Art et Science de Geometrie   1514  
N le Cusa, De Geometricis Transmutationibus 1514
Afert Durer, Institutionum Geometricarum lib. iv.... 1532 (general ISotions of Geometrical Magnitude.
Oi Ulus Fim us, Liber de Geometrica Practica../ 1544 Our notions of geometrical magnitudes are obtained by
R ' r* G Kathway Knowledge 1551 the contemplation of a body, or solid. We readily under-
':°, Opuscula qu®dam Geometrica 1554 stand that this is extended in three directions ; that is, it
ms, Arithmetic® lib. ii. Geometric® lib. xxvi 1580 has length, breadth, and thickness. The outside or boun-
(•kms, Geometri® Rotund® lib. iii 1583 dary of a solid, that which separates the particular space
mnus, 1 roblematum Geometricorum lib. v 1583 it occupies from space in general, is called a surface or
‘ »tius, Geom. Problema Tredecem Modis Dem....l586 superficies. A surface, then, is not conceived as having
y a, Opera Mathematica 1589 ' 1
ffj?®8 (Tho.), Pantometria, a geometrical treatise... 1591
■ ista Porta, Elementorum Curvilineorum lib. ii....l601
i ms, Geometria 1604 boundary, which has no thickness, nor breadth, but length
GlMa ^reometr^a Practica 1606 only, is a line.
Ai'tl. ^P°donius Redivivus....   1607 Again, there is something which terminates a line, in-
irson, oupplementum Apollonii Redivivi.1612 dicating where it begins and where it ends* or which may
any thickness; it has only length and breadth.
A surface has a boundary ; something which encloses it,
or separates any portion of it from the remainder. This
432
GE O M
Lines and separate it into distinct portions. This is a point, which
Figures has neither thickness, length, nor breadth. These three
upon a kinds of magnitude, viz. solids, surfaces, and lines, are the
Plane, objects of geometrical discussion.
There is no limit to the number of lines, and surfaces,
and solids, which may be considered in geometry. The
elements of the science, however, treat only of a few of
E TR Y.
these : Straight lines, circles, rectilineal plane figures, andLini'
their affections, constitute one part of geometry; another %
treats of the intersections of planes, of solids bounded by UP
planes, and of the three round bodies, viz. the cylinder, the fl
cone, and the sphere. This diversity of objects leads to the ^
division of the subject into two parts, one which treats of
figures on a plane, and another the geometry of solids.
PART L—OF LINES AND FIGURES UPON A PLANE.
SECT. I.—PRINCIPLES OF GEOMETRY.
Definitions.
I. Geometry is a science which treats of the properties
and relations of quantities having extension, and which
are called magnitudes. Extension is distinguished into
length, breadth, and thickness.
II. A Point is that which has position, but not magni¬
tude.
III. A Line is that which has only length. Hence the
extremities of a line are points, and the intersections of
one line with another are also points.
IV. A Straight or Right Line is the shortest way from
on point to another.
Fig. 1.
E
V. Every line which is neither straight nor composed
of straight lines is a Curve Line. Thus AB is a straight
line, ACDB is a line made up of straight lines, and AEB
is a curve line.
VI. A Superficies or Surface is that which has only
length and breadth. Hence the extremities of a super¬
ficies are lines, and the intersections of one superficies
with another are also lines.
VII. A Plane Superficies is that in which any two
points being taken, the straight line between them lies
wholly in that superficies.
VIII. Every superficies which is neither plane nor com¬
posed of plane superficies, is a Curve Superficies.
IX. A Solid is that which has length, breadth, and
thickness. Hence the. boundaries of a solid are super¬
ficies ; and the boundary which is common to two solids
which are contiguous, is a superficies.
X. A Plane Rectilineal Angle is the inclination of two
straight lines to one another, which meet together, but
are not in the same straight line. The point in which the
lines meet one another is called the Vertex of the angle.
Fig. 2.
When there is only one angle at a point, it may be ex¬
pressed by the letter placed at that point; thus the angle
contained by the lines EF and EG may be called the an¬
gle E. If, however, there be several angles, as at B, then
each is expressed by three letters, one of which is the let¬
ter that stands at the vertex of the angle, and the others
are the letters that stand somewhere upon the lines con¬
taining the angle, the letter at the vertex being placed
between the other two. Thus the angle contained by
the lines BA and BD is called the angle ABD or DBA.
Angles, in common with other quantities, admit of addi¬
tion, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Thus the
sum of the angles ABD and ABC is the angle DBG; the
difference of the angles DBG and ABD is the angle ABC.
Fig. 3. Fig. 4.
XL When a straight line standing on another straight
line makes the adjacent angles equal to one another, each
of them is called a Right Angle, and the straight line
which stands on the other is called a Perpendicidar to it.
Thus, if DC meet AB, and make the angles ACD, DCB
equal to one another, each of them is a right angle, and
DC is a perpendicular to AB.
XII. An Obtuse Angle is that which is greater than a
right angle, and an Acute Angle is that which is less than
a right angle. Thus ABC being supposed a right angle,
DBC is an obtuse angle, and EBC an acute angle.
XIII. Parallel Straight Lines are such as are in the
same plane, and which being produced ever so far both
ways, do not meet.
Fig. 5.
XIV. A Plane Figure is a plane terminated every¬
where by lines.
If the lines be straight, the space which they enclose
is called a Rectilineal figure, or a Polygon, and the lines
themselves constitute the Perimeter of the polygon.
Fig. 6.
XV. When a polygon has three sides (which is te
smallest number it can have), it is called a Triangle; w en
it has four, it is called a Quadrilateral; when it has
a Pentagon ; when six, a Hexagon, &c. _ ,
XVI. An Equilateral triangle is that which has
equal sides (fig. 7); an Isosceles triangle is that w i
has only two equal sides (fig. 8); and a Scalene tnanD
is that which has all its sides unequal (fig. 10)*
nd
Fig. 7.
G E O M
Fig. 8.
£VII. A Right-angled triangle is that which has a right
agle; the side opposite to the right angle is called the
l<pothenuse. Thus in the triangle ABC, having the
ade at B a right angle, the side AC is the hypothenuse.
Fig. 9.
XVIII. An Obtuse-angled triangle is that which has an
c ase angle (fig. 10) ; and an acute-angled triangle is that
vich has three acute angles (fig. 11).
Fig. 10.
vIX. Of quadrilateral figures, a square is that which
1 all its sides equal, and all its angles right angles (fig.
F. A Rectangle is that which has all its angles right
ades, but not all its sides equal (fig. 13). A Rhombus
i: hat which has all its sides equal, but its angles are not
ft angles (fig. 14). A Parallelogram, or Rhomboid, is
t t which has its opposite sides parallel (fig. 15). A
j 'ipezoid is that which has only two of its opposite sides
p allel (fig. 16). i l
Fig. 13.
Fig. 15.
Fig. 16.
E T R Y.
XX. A Diagonal is a straight line which joins the ver¬
tices of two angles, which are not adjacent to each other,
such as AC in fig. 42.
XXI. An Equilateral Polygon is that which has all its
sides equal; and an Equiangular Polygon is that which
has all its angles equal. If a polygon be both equilateral
and equiangular, it is called a Regular Polygon.
XXII. Two polygons are between themselves
when the sides of the one are equal to the sides of the
other, each to each, and in the same order; that is, when
in going about each of the figures in the same direction,
the first side of the one is equal to the first side of the
other; the second side of the one is equal to the second
side of the other; the third to the third, and so on. The
same is to be understood of two polygons which are equi¬
angular between themselves.
Explanation of Terms.
An Axiom is a proposition the truth of which is evi¬
dent at first sight.
A Theorem is a truth which becomes evident by a pro¬
cess of reasoning called Demonstration.
A Problem is a question proposed, which requires a so¬
lution.
& Lemma is a subsidiary truth employed in the demon¬
stration of a theorem, or the solution of a problem.
The common name, Proposition, is given indifferently
to theorems, problems, and lemmas. ^
A Corollary is a consequence which follows from one
or several propositions.
A Scholium is a remark upon one or more propositions
that have gone before, tending to show their connection,
their restriction, their extension, or the manner of their
application.
. A Hypothesis is a supposition made either in the enun¬
ciation of a proposition, or in the course of a demonstra¬
tion.
Explanation of Signs.
That the demonstrations may be more concise, we shall
make use of the following signs borrowed from algebra •
and in employing them we shall take for granted that the
reader is acquainted with at least the notation and first
principles of that branch of mathematics.
To express that two quantities are equal, the sign — is
put between them ; thus A = B signifies that the quanti¬
ty denoted by A is equal to the quantity denoted by B.
To express that A is less than B they are written thus
A B.
To express that A is greater than B they are written
thus, A B.
The sign + (read plus) written between the letters
which denote two quantities, indicates that the quantities
are to be added together; thus A + B means the sum of
the quantities A and B.
The sign — (read minus) written between two letters
means the excess of the one quantity above the other;
thus A — B means the excess of the quantity denoted by
A above the quantity denoted by B. The signs + and
sometimes occur in the same expression; thus
A + C D means that D is to be subtracted from the
sum of A and C; also A — D + C means the same thing.
Ihe sign X put between two quantities means their
product if they be considered as numbers ; but if they be
considered as lines, it signifies a rectangle having these
lines for its length and breadth; thus A X B means the
product of two numbers A and B; or else a rectangle
avmg A and B for the sides about one of its right angles.
We shall likewise indicate the product of two quantities,
m some cases, by writing the letters close together; thus
mA will be used to express the product of m and A, and
3 i
433
Lines and
Figures
upon a
Plane.
°L. X.
434
GEOMETRY.
Lines and so on with other expressions, agreeably to the common
Figures notation in algebra.
The expression A2 means the square of the quantity A,
and A3 means the cube of A; also PQ2 and PQ3 mean,
the one the square, and the other the cube, of a line
whose extremities are the points P and Q.
On the other hand, the sign indicates a root to be
upon a
Plane.
extracted; thus VA X B means the square root of the
product of A and B.
Axioms.
1. Two quantities, each of which is equal to a third,
are equal to one another.
2. The whole is greater than its part.
S. The whole is equal to the sum of all its parts.
4. Only one straight line can be drawn between two
points.
5. Two magnitudes, whether they be lines, surfaces, or
solids, are equal, when, being applied the one to the other,
they coincide with one another entirely, that is, when
they exactly fill the same space.
6. All right angles are equal to one another.
Note.—The references are to be understood thus: (7)
refers to the seventh proposition of the section in which
it occurs; (4, 2) means the fourth proposition of the se¬
cond section; (2 Cor. 28, 4) means the second corollary
to the twenty-eighth proposition of the fourth section.
then ACE being a straight line, the angle FCE is a right fc,1'
angle (1 Cor. 1); and because ACD is a straight line h'
the angle PCD is also a right angle, therefore the an^le “
FCE is equal to FCD, a part to the whole, which is fm. 1
possible ; therefore the straight lines which have the coni- ^
mon points A, B cannot separate when produced, there¬
fore they must form one and the same straight line.
Theorem III.—If two adjacent angles ACD, DCB make
together two right angles; the two exterior lines AC
CB, which form these angles, are in the same straight
line.
For if CB is not the line AC produced, let CE be that
line produced, then, ACE being a Fig. 20.
straight line, the angles ACD, DCE
are together ' equal to two right
angles (1) ; but, by hypothesis, the
angles ACD, DCB are together
equal to two right angles; there¬
fore ACD + DCB = ACD + DCE.
From these equals take away the
common angle ACD, and the re¬
maining angles DCB, DCE are equal, that is, a part
equal to the whole, which is impossible ; therefore CB is
the line AC produced.
Theorem IV.—If two straight lines AB, DE cut each
other; the vertical or opposite angles are equal.
Theorem I.—A straight line CD, which meets with ano¬
ther AB, makes with it two adjacent angles, which,
taken together, are equal to two right angles.
At the point C let CE be per¬
pendicular to AB. The angle
ACD is the sum of the angles
ACE, ECD; therefore ACD +
BCD is the sum of the three an¬
gles ACE, ECD, BCD. The
first of these is a right angle,
and the two others are together
B equal to a right angle; therefore
the sum of the two angles ACD, BCD, is equal to two
right angles.
Cor. 1. If one of the angles is a right angle, the other
Fig. 18.
is also a right angle.
Cor. 2. All the angles ACE,
ECD, DCF, FCB, at the same
point C, on the same side of the
line AB, are, taken together, equal
to two right angles. For their sum
is equal to the two angles ACD,
DCB.
For since DE is a straight line, the sum of the angles
ACD, ACE is equal to two right £1
angles (1); and since AB is a x
straight line, the sum of the an-
gles ACE, BCE is equal to two
right angles; therefore the sum
ACD + ACE is equal to the sum
ACE + BCE. From each of these
take away the same angle ACE,
and there remains the angle ACD
equal to its opposite angle BCE.
In like manner it may be demonstrated, that the angle
ACE is equal to its opposite angle BCD.
Cor. 1. From this it appears, that if two straight lines
cut one another, the angles they make at the point of their
intersection are together equal to four right angles.
Cor. 2. And hence all the angles made by any number
of lines meeting in one point are together equal to four
right angles.
Theorem V.—Two triangles are equal when they have
an angle, and the two sides containing it of the one,
equal to an angle, and the two sides containing it of the
other, each to each.
GEOMETRY.
435
md e two triangles shall coincide exactly, the one with the
es her; therefore they are equal (Ax. 5).
a Con. Hence it follows that the bases, or third sides BC,
-• p of the triangles are equal; and the remaining angles
C of the one are equal to the remaining angles E, F of
ie other, each to each, namely, those to which the equal
£les are opposite.
■ ;IE0REM VI.—Two triangles are equal, when they have
a side, and the two adjacent angles of the one equal to
i side, and the two adjacent angles of the other, each to
each. (See fig. 22.)
Let the side BC be equal to the side EF, the angle B to
t'! angle E, and the angle C to the angle F ; the triangle
/3C shall be equal to the triangle DEF. For if the
t ingle ABC be applied to the triangle DEF, so that the
eial sides BC, EF may coincide, then, because the angle
Is equal to E, the side BA shall coincide with ED, and
t refore the point A shall be somewhere in ED ; and be-
cise the angle C is equal to F, the side CA shall coincide
v ,h FD, and therefore the point A shall be somewhere in
I); now the point A being somewhere in the lines ED
ail FD, it can only be at D their intersection ; therefore
t: two triangles ABC, DEF must entirely coincide, and
1. equal to one another.
Cor. Hence it appears that the remaining angles A, D
c the triangles are equal; and the remaining sides AB, AC
tithe one are equal to the remaining sides DE, DF of the
oner, each to each, viz. those to which the equal angles
a opposite.
Cieorem VII.—Any two sides of a triangle are together
greater than the third. (Fig. 22.)
For the side BC, for example, being the shortest way
II ween the points B, C (Def. 4), it must be less than
1A + AC.
'j eorem VIII.—If from a point O, within a triangle
ABC, there be drawn straight lines OB, OC to the ex-
remities of BC, one of its sides ; the sum of these lines
shall be less than that of AB, AC, the two other sides.
Let BO be produced to meet CA
in D ; because the straight line OC
is less than OD + DC, to each of
these add BO, and BO+OC^l
BO + OD + DC; that is, BO +
OC^.BD + DC.
Again, since BD^iBA + AD,
♦teach of these add DC, and we have BD + DC^lBA +
A; but it has been shown that BO +OC^nBD + DC,
tich more then is BO +OC^.BA +AC.
f eorem IX.—If two sides AB, AC of a triangle ABC
)e equal to two sides DE, DF of another triangle DEI",
Cach to each, but the angle BAG contained by the
ormer greater than the angle EDF contained by the
atter; the third side BC of the first triangle shall be
greater than the third side EF of the second.
Fi<?. 24.
Suppose AG
drawn so that
the angle CAG
= D, take AG
= DE and join
CG; then the
triangle GAC is
equal to the tri¬
angle EDF (5),
upon a
Plane.
and therefore GC = EF. Now there may be three cases, Lines and
according as the point G falls without the triangle BAC, Figures
fig. 24, or on the side BC, fig. 25, or within the same
triangle, fig. 26.
Case I. Because GC^lGI + IC, and AB^AI + IB
(7), therefore GC + AB^lGI + AI + IC + IB, that is,
GC +AB^lAG + BC ; from each of these unequal quan¬
tities take away the equal quantities AB, AG, and there
remains GC^ BC, therefore EF^ BC.
Fig. 25.
D
Case II. If the point G fall upon the side BC, then it
is evident that GC, or its equal EF, is less than BC.
Case III. Lastly, if the
point G fall within the tri¬
angle BAC, then AG +
GC^lAB + BC(8),there¬
fore, taking away the equal
quantities AG, AB, there
remains GC^lBC or EF
^IBC.
Cor. Hence, converse¬
ly, if EF be less than BC,
the angle EDF is less
than BAC ; for the angle
EDF cannot be equal to BAC, because then (5), EF would
be equal to BC; neither can the angle EDF be greater
than BAC, for then (by the Theor.) EF would be greater
than BC.
Theorem X.—Two triangles are equal, when the three
sides of the one are equal to the three sides of the other,
each to each. (Fig. 22.)
Let the side AB = DE, AC = DF, and BC = EF; then
shall the angle A = D, B = E, C = F.
For if the angle A were greater than D ; since the sides
AB, AC are equal to DE, DF, each to each, it would fol¬
low (9), that BC would be greater than EF; and if the
angle A were less than the angle D, then BC would be
less than EF ; but BC is equal to EF, therefore the angle
A can neither be greater nor less than the angle D, there¬
fore it must be equal to it. In the same manner it may be
proved that the angle B rr E, and that the angle C rr F.
Scholium. It may be remarked, as in Theorem V. and
Theorem VI. that the equal angles are opposite to the
equal sides.
Theorem XL—In an isosceles triangle, the angles opposite
to the equal sides are equal to one another.
Let the side AB — AC, then shall the angle C zr B.
Suppose a straight line drawn from pjg. 27.
A the vertex of the triangle, to D the
middle of its base; the two triangles
ABD, ACD have the three sides of
the one equal to the three sides of the
other, each to each, namely, AD com¬
mon to both, AB — AC by hypothe¬
sis, and BD = DC by construction,
therefore (preced. Theor.) the angle B
is equal to the angle C. =g jj  c
Cor. Hence, every equilateral triangle is also equiangular.
436
Lines and
Figures
upon a
Plane.
GEOMETRY.
Fig. 28.
A
Scholium. From the equality of the triangles ABD,
ACD, it follows that the angle BAD = DAC, and that
the angle BDA = ADC ; therefore these two last are
i right angles. Hence it appears that a straight line drawn
from the vertex of an isosceles triangle to the middle of its
base is perpendicular to that base, and divides the vertical
angle into two equal parts.
In a triangle that is not isosceles, any one of its three
sides may be taken indifferently for a base ; and then its
vertex is that of the opposite angle. In an isosceles triangle,
the base is that side which is not equal to one of the others.
Theorem XII.—If two angles of a triangle be equal; the
opposite sides are equal, and the triangle is isosceles.
Let the angle ABC = ACB ; the side AC shall be equal
to the side AB. For if the sides are
not equal, let AB be the greater of the
two ; take BD = AC, and join CD ;
the angle DBC is by hypothesis equal
to ACB, and the two sides DB, BC
are equal to the two sides AC, BC,
each to each ; therefore the triangle
DBC is equal to the triangle ACB
(5); but a part cannot be equal to the
B c whole; therefore the sides AB, AC
cannot be unequal, that is, they are equal, and the triangle
is isosceles.
Theorem XIII.—Of the two sides of a triangle, that is
the greater which is opposite to the greater angle ; and
conversely, of the two angles of a triangle, that is the
greater which is opposite to the greater side.
First, let the angle C'^'B ; then shall the side AB oppo-
Fig. 29. site to C be greater than the side
AC opposite to B. Suppose CD
drawn, so that the angle BCD=B ;
in the triangle BDC, BD is equal
to DC (12); but AD + DCt^AC,
and AD + DC = AD + DB = AB,
therefore ABt^AC.
Next, let the side AB’^'AC; then
shall the angle C opposite to AB, be
greater than the angle B, opposite
to AC. For if C were less than B, then, by what has been
demonstrated, AB^lAC, which is contrary to the hypo¬
thesis of the proposition, therefore C is not less than B ;
and if C were equal to B, then it would follow that AC =r
AB (12), which is also contrary to the hypothesis ; there¬
fore C is greater than B.
Theorem XIV—From a point A without a straight line
DE, no more than one perpendicular can be drawn to
that line.
For suppose it possible to draw two, AB and AC; pro¬
duce one of them AB, so that BF=AB,
and join CF. The triangle CBF is
equal to the triangle ABC, for the
angle CBF is a right angle, as well as
CBA, and the side BF = BA ; there¬
fore the triangles are equal (5), and
hence the angle BCF = BCA ; but
the angle BCA is by hypothesis a
right angle ; therefore the angle BCF
is also a right angle; hence AC and
CF lie in a straight line (3), and consequently two straight
lines ACF, ABF may be drawn between two points A, F,
which is impossible (Axiom 4); therefore it is equally im¬
possible that two perpendiculars can be drawn from the
same point to the same straight line.
Theorem XV.—If from a point A, without a straight liner
DE, a perpendicular AB be drawn upon that line -i™
also different oblique lines AE, AC, AD, &c. to differ- up?
ent points of the same line. pi^*
First, The perpendicular AB shall be shorter than anv
one of the oblique lines.
Secondly, The two oblique lines AC, AE, which meet the
line DE on opposite sides of the perpendicular, and at
equal distances BC, BE from it, are equal to one another
Lastly, Of any two oblique lines AC, AD, or AE, AD
that which is more remote from the perpendicular is the
greater.
Produce the perpendicular AB, so that BF = BA and
join FC, FD.
1. The triangle BCF is equal to the triangle BCA; for
the right angle CBF = CBA, the side CB is common, and
the side BF = BA, therefore the third side CF = AC (5V
but AF AC + CF (7), that is, 2AB ^ 2AC; there¬
fore AB AC ; that is, the perpendicular is shorter than
any one of the oblique lines.
2. If BE BC, then, as AB is common to the two tri¬
angles ABE, ABC, and the right angle ABE z= ABC, the
triangles ABE, ABC shall be equal (5), and AEz: AC.
3. In the triangle DFA, the sum of the lines AD, DF
is greater than the sum of AC, CF (8), that is, 2AD^2AC;
therefore AD ^ AC, that is, the oblique line, which is
more remote from the perpendicular, is greater than that
which is nearer.
Cor. 1. The perpendicular measures the distance of any
point from a straight line.
Cor. 2. From the same point three equal straight lines
cannot be drawn to terminate in the same straight line; for
if they could be drawn, then two of them would be on the
same side of the perpendicular, and equal to each other,
which is impossible.
Theorem XVI.—If from C, the middle of a straight line
AB, a perpendicular CD be drawn to that line; first,
every point in the perpendicular is equally distant from
the extremities of the line AB ; secondly, every point
without the perpendicular is at unequal distances from
the same extremities A, B.
1. Let D be any point in CD; then, because the two
oblique lines DA, DB are equally
distant from the perpendicular, they
are equal to one another (15); there¬
fore every point in CD is equally
distant from the extremities of AB.
2. Let E be a point out of the
perpendicular; join EA, EB ; one of
these lines must cut the perpendicu- •A-
lar in F ; join BF, then AF =r BF, and AE r= BF + FE;
but BF + FE BE (7), therefore AE ^ BE, that is,
E any point out of the perpendicular is at unequal dis¬
tances from the extremities of AB.
Theorem XVII Two right-angled triangles are equal,
when the hypothenuse and a side of the one are equal
to the hypothenuse and a side of the other, each to each.
nd Let the hypothenuse AC = DF, and the side AB = DE;
js t > triangle ABC shall be equal to DEF. The proposi-
t n will evidently be true (10), if the remaining sides BC,
i, 1' are equal. Now, if it be possible to suppose that they
^ a: unequal, let BC be the greater, take BG = EF, and
ijn AG; then the triangles ABG, DEF, having the side
j 3 = DE, BG = EF, and the angle B = E, will be equal
t: one another (5), and will have the remaining side
pr = DF; but by hypothesis DF = AC ; therefore
U} — AC ; but AG cannot be equal to AC (15), therefore
itjs impossible that BC can be unequal to EF, and there-
fio the triangles ABC, DEF, are equal to one another.
.Tieorem XVIII—Two straight lines AC, ED, which
are perpendicular to a third straight
Fig. 33. line AE, are parallel to each other.
GEOMETRY.
437
Theorem XXI.—If a straight line EF meet two parallel Lines and
straight lines AB, CD; it makes the alternate aneles Figures
AEF, EFD equal.  
Let EH and GF be perpendicular to CD, then these
upon a
Plane.
Fig. 37.
O
For if they could meet at a point
O, then two perpendiculars OA, OE,
might be drawn from the same point
O, to the straight line AE, which is
impossible (14).
(in the next theorem, it is necessary to assume another
a om, in addition to those already laid down in the begin-
mgof this section.
Fig. 34.
Axiom 7.
If two points E, G in a straight
line AB are situated at unequal
distances EH, GF from another
straight line CD in the same
plane; these two lines, when in¬
definitely produced, on the side
of the least distance GH, will meet
each other.
T eorem XIX.—If two straight lines AB, CD be paral-
el; perpendiculars EF, GH to one of the lines, which
ire terminated by the other line, are equal, and are per-
icndicular to both the parallels.
■or if EF and GH, which are perpendicular to CD,
Fig. 38.
Fig. 35.
were unequal, the lines AB, CD
would meet each other (by the above
axiom), which is contrary to the sup¬
position that they are parallel. And
if EF, GH be not perpendicular to
AB, let EK be perpendicular to
EF, meeting GH in K; then, be-
( cause EK and FH are perpendicu-
k to EF, they are parallel (18); and therefore, by what
hi been just shown, the perpendiculars EF, KH must be
ei al; but by hypothesis EF = GH, therefore KH = GH,
wich is impossible ; therefore EF is perpendicular to AB ;
a I in the same way it may be shown that GH is perpen-
oimlartoAB.
'or. Hence it appears, that through the same point E,
n more than one parallel can be drawn to the same straight
h; CD.
Fig. 36.
t G
B
C H
Theorem XX.—Straight lines
AB, EF, which are parallel to
the same straight line CD, are
parallel to each other.
For let HKG be perpendicular
to CD, it will also be perpendicu¬
lar to both AB andEF(19) ; there¬
fore these last lines are parallel to
each other.
lines will be parallel (18), and also
at right angles to AB (19), and
therefore FH and GE are equal to
one another (19); therefore the
triangles FGE, FHE, having the
side EG = HE, and GE = FH,
and FE common to both, will be
equal; and hence the angle FEG
will be equal to EFH, that is, FEA.
will be equal to EFD. /
Cor. 1. Hence if a straight line /x.
KL intersect two parallel straight lines AB, CD ; it makes
the exterior angle KEB equal to the interior and opposite
angle EtD on the same side of the line. For the angle
AEF = KEB, and it has been shown that AEF = EFD;
therefore KEB — EFD.
Cor. 2. Hence also, if a straight line EF meet two pa¬
rallel straight lines AB, CD; it makes the two interior
angles BEF, EID on the same side together, equal to two
right angles. For the angle AEF has been shown to be
equal to EFD; therefore, adding the angle FEB to both,
AEF + FEB = EFD + FEB ; but AEF + FEB is equal
to two right angles, therefore the sum EFD + FEB is
also equal to two right angles.
Theorem XXII.—If a straight line EF, meeting two other
straight lines AB, CD, makes the alternate angles AEF,
EFD equal; those lines shall be parallel.
For if AE is not parallel to CD, suppose, if possible, that
some other line KE can be drawn
through E, parallel to CD ; then
the angle KEF must be equal to
EFD (21), that is (by hypothesis),
to AEF, which is impossible; there¬
fore, neither KE, nor any other
line drawn through E, except AB,
can be parallel to CD.
Cor. If a straight line EF inter¬
secting two other straight lines AB,
CD, makes the exterior angle GEB
equal to the interior and opposite
angle EFD on the same side; or the two interior angles
BEF, EFD on the same side equal to two right angles;
in either case the lines are parallel. For if the angle
GEB = EFD, then also AEF — EFD (4). And if BEF
+ EFD = two right angles, then, because BEF + AEF
r= two right angles (1), BEF + EFD = BEF + AEF,
and taking BEF from both, EFD — AEF, therefore (by
the theorem) in each case the lines are parallel.
Theorem XXIII.—If a side AC of a triangle ABC be
produced towards D; the exterior
angle BCD is equal to both the
interior and opposite angles B AC,
ABC. / e
Let CE be parallel to AB, then
the angle B = BCE (21), and the
angle A - ECD (1 Cor. 21), there- jr c n
fore B + A = BCE + ECD — BCD.
Cor. The exterior angle of a triangle is greater than
either of the interior opposite angles.
Theorem XXIV.—The three interior angles of a triangle
ABC taken together are equal to two right angles.
Fig. 39.
438
Lines and
Figures
upon a
Plane.
GEOMETRY.
Fig. 40.
Fig. 41.
For if AC be produced to D, then A + 15 — BCD,
(23) ; to each of these equal quan¬
tities add ACB, then shall A + B
+ ACB = BCD + BCA; but BCD
-f- BCA = two right angles (1),
therefore A + B + ACB — two
right angles.
CoR. 1. If two angles of one tri-
A j) angle be equal to two angles of ano¬
ther triangle, each to each ; the third angle of the one
shall be equal to the third angle of the other, and the tri¬
angles shall be equiangular.
Cor. 2. If two angles of a triangle, or their sum, be
given, the third angle may be found, by subtracting their
sum from two right angles.
Cor. 3. In a right-angled triangle, the sum of the two
acute angles is equal to a right angle.
Cor. 4. In an equilateral triangle, each of the angles is
equal to the third part of two right angles, or to two thirds
of one right angle.
Theorem XXV.—The sum of all the interior angles of a
polygon is equal to twice as many right angles, wanting
four, as the figure has sides.
Let ABCDE be a polygon ; from a point F within it
draw straight lines to all its
angles, then the polygon shall be
divided into as many triangles
as it has sides ; but the sum of
the angles of each triangle is
equal to two right angles (24) ;
therefore, the sum of all the
angles of the triangles is equal
to twice as many right angles
as there are triangles, that is, as
the figure has sides ; but the sum
of all the angles of the triangles is equal to the sum of all
the angles of the polygon, together w ith the sum of the angles
at the point F, which'last sum is equal to four light angles
(2 Cor. 4) ; therefore the sum of all the angles of the poly¬
gon, together with four right angles, is equal to twice as
many right angles as the figure has sides, and consequently
the sum of the angles of the polygon is equal to twice as
many right angles, wanting four, as the figure has sides.
Cor. The four interior angles of a quadrilateral are,
taken together, equal to four right angles.
Theorem XXVI.—The opposite sides of a parallelogram
are equal, and the opposite angles are also equal.
Draw the diagonal BD ; the two triangles ADB, DEC
have the side BD common to both,
and AB, DC being parallel, the
angle ABDrr BDC (21),also, AD,
BC being parallel, the angle ADB
— DBG; therefore the two tri¬
angles are equal (6), and the side
AB, opposite to the angle ADB,
is equal to DC, opposite to the
equal angle DBC. In like manner the third side AD is
equal to the third side BC, therefore the opposite sides of
a parallelogram are equal.
In the next place, because of the equality of the same
triangles, the angle A is equal to the angle C, and also
the angle ADC composed of the two angles ADB, BDC
is equal to the angle ABC composed of the angles CBD,
DBA; therefore the opposite angles of a parallelogram
are also equal.
Theorem XXVII.-
Fig. 42.
ral ABCD be equal, so that AB = DC, and AD = BC • ^
then, the equal sides are parallel, and the figure is a pa.
rallelogram. (Fig. 42.)
Fi 111
“Poii i
flane
Draw the diagonal BD. The two triangles ABD ^
CDB have the three sides of the one equal to the three
sides of the other, each to each, therefore the triangles
are equal (10); and the angle ADB, opposite to AB
is equal to DBC opposite to DC; therefore the side AD
is parallel to BC (22). For a similar reason AB is pa.
ral lei to DC ; therefore the quadrilateral ABCD is a pa-
rallelogram.
Theorem XXVIII.—If two opposite sides AB, DC of a
quadrilateral be equal and parallel; the two other sides
are in like manner equal and parallel ; and the figure is
a parallelogram. (Fig. 42.)
Draw the diagonal BD. Because AB is parallel to CD,
the alternate angles ABD, BDC are equal (21); now the
side AB = DC, and DB is common to the triangles ABD,
BDC, therefore these triangles are equal (5), and hence
the side AD rr BC, and the angle ADB = DBC, conse¬
quently AD is parallel to BC (22), therefore the figure
ABC!) is a parallelogram.
SECT. II.—OF THE CIRCLE.
Definitions.
I. A Circle is a plane figure contained by one line, which
is called the circumference, and is such that all straight
lines drawn from a* certain point within the figure to the
circumference are equal to one another.
And this point is called the centre of the circle.
Fig. 43.
-If the opposite sides of a quadrilate-
II. Every straight line CA, CE,
CD, &c. drawn from the centre to
the circumference, is called & Radius
or Semidiameter; and every straight
line, such as AB, which passes
through the centre, and is terminat¬
ed both ways by the circumference,
is called a Diameter.
Hence it follows that all the radii
of a circle are equal, and all the dia¬
meters are also equal, each being the
double of the radius.
HI. An Arch of a circle is any portion of its circumfer¬
ence, as FHG. ■
The chord or subtense of an arch is the straight line FG
which joins its extremities.
IV. A Segment of a circle is the figure contained by an
arch and its chord. If the figure be the half of the circle
it is called a Semicircle.
Note. Every chord corresponds to two arches, and con¬
sequently to two segments ; but in speaking of these, it is
always the smallest that is meant, unless the contrary be
expressed. ,
V. A Sector of a circle is the figure contained by an area
DE and the two radii CD, CE, drawn to the extremities
of the arch. If the radii be at right angles to each other,
it is called a Quadrant. .
VI. A straight line is said to be placed, or applied, w3
circle, when its extremities are in the circumference of t e
circle, as FG. . .
VII. A rectilineal figure is said to be inscribed in a ci
cle, when the vertices of all its angles are upon the circum
ference of the circle ; in this case, the circle is said to
circumscribed about the figure. ,
VIII. A straight line is said to touch a circle, or to e
id t( (Jent t0 a c^rc^e» w^en it meets the circumference in one
J p nt only ; such, for example, is BD, fig. 49. The point
*Vvvhich is common to the straight line and circle, is called
t! Point of Contact.
, X. A polygon is said to be described or circumscribed
ahut a circle, when all its sides are tangents to the circle ;
a, in this case, the circle is said to be inscribed in the
porgon.
TIeorem I.—Any diameter AB divides the circle, and its
circumference, into two equal parts. (Fig. 43.)
GEOMETRY.
439
'or if the figure AEB be applied to AFB, so that the
b;jj AB may be common to both, the curve line AEB
•«t fall exactly upon the curve line AFB; otherwise
tlte would be points in the one, or the other, unequally
diiant from the centre, which is contrary to the definition
of circle.
Fig. 44.
Theorem II.—Every chord is less
than the diameter.
Let the 1’adii CA, CD be drawn
from the centre to the extremities
of the chord AD ; then the straight
line AD is less than AC + CD,
that is, AD Z AB.
Teorem III.—A straight line cannot meet the circum¬
ference of a circle in more than two points.
dr if it could meet it in three, these three points w ould
brqually distant from the centre, and therefore three equal
slight lines might be drawn from the same point to the
saie straight line, which is impossible (2 Cor. 15, 1).
THeorem IV.—In the same circle, or in equal circles,
qual arches are subtended by equal chords ; and, con-
ersely, equal chords subtend equal arches.
f the radius AC be equal to the radius EO, and the
ai i AMD equal to the arch ENG; the chord AD shall
b'Oqual to the chord EG.
Fig. 45.
or the diameter AB being equal to the diameter EF,
I semicircle AMDB may be applied exactly upon the
stl’icircle ENGF, and then the curve line AMDB shall
c< cide entirely with the curve line ENGF ; but the arch
D being supposed equal to ENG, the point D must
P uPon therefore the chord AD is equal to the chord
• onversely, if the chord AD = EG, the arch AMD is
e< u to the arch ENG.
A n p ^'C ra<^” OG be drawn, the two triangles
have three sides of the one equal to the three
of the otter, each to each) viz> ACrrEO, CD=OG,
J * ^therefore, these triangles are equal (10, 1),
angle ACD = EOG. Now, if the semicir-
J nr • P^acec^ uPon EGF, because the angle ACD
■' G, it is evident that the radius CD will fall upon
Plane.
the radius OG, and the point D upon G; therefore the Lines and
arch AMD is equal to the arch ENG. Figures
upon a
Theorem V.—In the same circle, or in equal circles, the ,
greater arch is subtended by the greater chord; and, con¬
versely (if the arch be less than half the circumference),
the greater chord subtends the greater arch. (Fig. 45.)
For let the arch AH be greater than AD, and let the
chords AD, AH, and the radii CD, CH, be drawn. The
two sides AC, CH, of the triangle ACH, are equal to the
two sides AC, CD of the triangle ACD ; and the angle
ACH is greater than ACD ; therefore the third side AH
is greater than the third side AD (9, 1), therefore the chord
which subtends the greater arch is the greater. Converse¬
ly, if the chord AH be greater than AD, it may be infer¬
red (Cor. 9, 1) from the same triangles, that the angle ACH
is greater than ACD, and that thus the arch AH is-greater
than AD.
Note. Each of the arches is here supposed less than half
the circumference ; if they were greater, the contrary pro¬
perty would have place, the arch increasing as the chord
diminishes.
Iheorem VI.—The radius CG, perpendicular to a chord
AB, bisects the chord (or divides it into two equal parts) ;
it also bisects the arch AGB subtended by the chord.
Fig. 46.
Draw the radii CA, CB ; these
radii are two equal oblique lines in
respect of the perpendicular CD,
therefore they are equally distant
from the perpendicular (15, 1), that
is, AD — DB.
In the next place, because CG is
perpendicular to the middle of AB,
every point in CG is at equal dis¬
tances from A and B (16, 1), there¬
fore, if GA, GB be drawn, these
lines are equal, and as they are the chords of the arches
AG, BG, the arches are also equal (4).
Scholium. Since C the centre, D the middle of the
chord AB, and G the middle of the arch subtended by
that chord, are three points situated in the same straight
line perpendicular to that chord ; and that two points in a
straight line are sufficient to determine its position ; it fol¬
lows that a straight line which passes through any two of
these points must necessarily pass through the third, and
must be perpendicular to the chord. It also follows, that a
perpendicular to the middle of a chord passes through the
centre, and the middle of the arch subtended by that chord.
Theorem VII.—If three points A, B, C be taken in the
circumference of a circle; no other circumference which
does not coincide with the former can be made to pass
through the same three points.
Let the chords AB, BC be drawn, and let OD, OF be
drawn from the centre, perpendicu- ^
lar to, and consequently bisecting
these chords. The centre of every
circle passing through A and B, must
necessarily be somewhere in the per¬
pendicular DO (last theor.), and inj
like manner the centre of every cir¬
cle passing through B and C must '
be somewhere in the perpendicular ^
OF ; therefore the centre of a circle
passing through A, B, and C, must
be in the intersection of the perpendiculars DO, FO, and
consequently can only be at one and the same point O ;
440
GEOMETRY.
Lines and therefore, only one circle can be made to pass through the
Figures same three points A, B, C.
upon a £or> Qne circurnference of a circle cannot intersect ano-
t}ler in more than two points ; for if they could have three
Y*** common points, they would have the same centre, and con¬
sequently would coincide with each other.
Theorem VIII.—Twoequal chords are equally distant from
the centre ; and of unequal chords, the less is farther
from the centre.
Let the chord AB = DE ; suppose the chords bisected
by the perpendiculars CF, CG
from the centre, and draw the
radii CA, CD. The right an¬
gled triangles CAF, CDG have
equal hypothenuses CA, CD ;
the side AF ^ AB) of the
one is also equal to the side DG
(z= ^ DE) of the other, there¬
fore, their remaining sides CF,
CG (which are the distances of
the chords from the centre) are
equal (17, 1).
Next, let the chord AH be greater than DE; the arch
AKH shall be greater than DME ; upon the arch AKH
take ANB equal to DME, draw the chord AB, and sup¬
pose COF drawn from the centre perpendicular to AB,
and Cl perpendicular to AH. It is evident that CF •7^'
CO, and (15, 1) CO Cl; much more then is CF
Cl; but CF zr CG, because the chords AB, DE are equal;
therefore CG Cl; that is, of the unequal chords, the
less is farther from the centre.
Fig. 48.
Theorem IX.—The perpen¬
dicular BD, drawn at the
extremity of a radius CA,
is a tangent to the circle.
For any oblique line CE is
greater than the perpendicular
CA (15,1), therefore the point
E is without the circle ; there¬
fore the line BD has but one
point A common with the cir-
cumference, and consequently it is a tangent to the circle.
Scholium. Through the same point A, only one tan¬
gent, AD, can be drawn to the circle. For if it be pos¬
sible to draw another, let AG be that other tangent; draw
CF perpendicular to AG ; then CF shall be less than CA
(15, 1), therefore F must be within the circle ; and conse¬
quently AF when produced must necessarily meet the cir¬
cle in another point besides A; therefore it cannot be a
tangent.
Theorem X.—If BC, the distance of the centres of two
circles, be less than the sum of their radii, and also the
greater radius less than the sum of the distance of their
centres and the lesser radius, the two circles intersect
each other.
Fig. 50.
Fig. 51.
For, that the circles may intersect each other in a point n i
A, it is necessary that the triangle ABC be possible; there,
fore, not only must CB be less than CA + AB, but also ^
the greater radius AB must be less than AC + CB (7, U. fla
and it is evident, that as often as the triangle ABC canbe^’ ’
constructed, the circumferences described on the centres
B, C, shall intersect each other in two points A, D.
Theorem XI.—If the distance CB of the centres of two
circles be equal to the sum of the radii CA, BA; the
circles shall touch each
other externally.
Fig. 52.
It is evident that they
have a common point A;
but they cannot have more ;
for if they had two, then the
distance of the centres must
necessarily be less than the
sum of the radii.
Theorem XII.—If the distance CB of the centres of two
circles be equal to the difference of the radii; the two
circles shall touch each other internally.
In the first place, it is evident that Fig. 53.
the point A is common to them both ;
they cannot, however, have another ;
for that this may happen, it is neces¬
sary that the greater radius AB be
smaller than the sum of the radius a
AC and the distance CB of the
centre (10), which is not the case.
Cor. Therefore, if two circles
touch each other, either internally
or externally, their centres and the point of contact are in
the same straight line.
Theorem XIII.—In the same circle, or in equal circles,
equal angles ACB, DCE, at the centres, intercept upon
the circumference equal arches AB, DE. And, converse¬
ly, if the arches AB, DE be equal, the angles ACB,
DCE are equal.
Fig. 54.
them are equal, it is manifest that the point A will fall upon
D, and the point B upon E ; thus the arch AB will coin¬
cide with and be equal to the arch DE.
Next, if the arch AB be equal to DE; the angle ACB
is equal to DCE : for if the angles are not equal, let ACB
be the greater, and let ACI be taken equal to DCE; then,
by what has been already demonstrated, the arch AI =
but by hypothesis AB zz DE; therefore, AI = AB, which
is impossible ; therefore the angle ACB = DCE.
Theorem XIV.—The angle BCD at the centre of a circle
is double the angle BAD at the circumference, when
both stand on the same arch BD.
First, let the centre of the circle be within the angle
nei,
iil ; draw the diameter AE. The exterior angle BCE
s o he triangle BCA is equal to both the inward and oppo-
gi, angles BAC, CBA (23, 1) ; but the triangle BCA be-
ir. isosceles, the angle BAC — CBA ; therefore the angle
^ BE double of the angle BAC. For the same reason,
tl angle DCE is double of the angle DAE ; therefore the
wole angle BCD is double of the whole angle BAD.
GEOMETRY.
441
Fig. 55.
Fig. 56.
Suppose, in the next place, that the centre is without the
anle BAD ; then, drawing the diameter AE, it may be
di'nonstrated, as in the first case, that the angle ECD is
d< ble of the angle EAD, and that the angle ECB, a part
oi he first, is double the angle EAB, a part of the other ;
th-efore the remaining angle BCD is double the remain-
in angle BAD.
1 eorem XV.—All angles BAD, BFD in the same seg¬
ment BAFD of a circle are equal to one another.
Fig. 58.
A,  \ F
f the segment be greater than a semicircle, from the
c -re C draw CB and CD ; then the angles BAD and
B;D being (by last theorem) each equal to half BCD,
thi,’ must be equal to one another.
ut if the segment BAFD be less than a semicircle, let
Hbe the intersection of BF and AD ; then, the triangles
A H and FDH having the angle AHB of the one equal
to 'HD of the other (4, 1), and ABH = FDH (by case
1 vill have the remaining angle of the one equal to the
re aining angle of the other; that is, the angle BAH
= 1FD, or BAD — BFD.
Thorem XVI.—The opposite angles of any quadrilateral
spire ABCD described in a circle are together equal
two right angles.
'raw the diagonals AC, BD ; because the angle ABD
Fi 59 = ACD, and CBD = CAD (last
theor.), the sum ABD + CBD
= ACD + CAD ; or ABC =
ACD + CAD ; to each of these
equals add ADC, and ABC +
ADC = ACD + CAD + ADC;
but the last three angles being
the angles of the triangle ADC,
are taken together equal to two
right angles (24, 1), therefore
ABC + ADC = two right angles.
B A Rrri— t^ie same manner the angles
i BCD maybe shown to be together equal to two
nft angles,
f' DL. X.
Theorem XVII—In a circle, the angle BAD in a semi- Dines and
circle is a right angle, but the angle ABD in a segment Figures
greater than a semicircle is less than a right angle; and uPon a
the angle AED in a segment less than a semicircle is
greater than a right angle.
Let C be the centre, join CA, and produce BA to F.
Plane.
Fig. 60.
Because CB — CA, the angle
CAB = CBA (11, 1); and be¬
cause CD = CA, the angle CAD
= CDA, therefore, the whole
angle BAD — CBA + CDA;
but these two last angles are to¬
gether equal to DAF (23, 1),
therefore the angle BADr= DAF;
and hence each of them is a right
angle.
And because ABD + ADB is  
a right angle, therefore ABD, an angle in a segment greater
than a semicircle, is less than a right angle.
And because ABDE is a quadrilateral in a circle, the
opposite angles B and E are equal to two right angles (last
theor.), but B is less than a right angle ; therefore the
angle E, which is in a segment less than a semicircle, is
greater than a right angle.
Fig. 61.
JG
Theorem XVIII.—The angle BAC contained by AC, a
tangent, and AB, a chord drawn from the point of con¬
tact, is equal to any angle ADB
in the alternate segment of the
circle.
Draw the diameter AE, and join
DE. The angles EAC, EDA, be¬
ing right angles (last theor.), are
equal to one another ; and of these,
EAB, a part of the one, is equal
to EDB, a part of the other (15),
therefore the remainder, BAC, of
the former is equal to the remain¬
der, BDA, of the latter.
SECT. III.—OF PROPORTION.
In comparing two quantities of the same kind, in respect
of magnitude, we are led to consider how often the one
quantity contains either the whole or some part of the other
quantity. To resolve this question, we must find a com¬
mon measure of the quantities ; that is, a quantity that is
contained in each a certain number of times exactly.
A E G B
C|-
-|D
Let the quantities be two given straight lines AB, CD ;
their common measure (if they have one) may be found
by proceeding as follows :
Take the less line CD out of the greater AB, as often
as possible, and let BE be the remainder. Next take the
remainder BE out of the line CD, as often as it can be
had, and let DF be the second remainder.
Again, take the second remainder DF out of the first
BE, as often as it can be had, and let BG be the third re¬
mainder. Take the third remainder BG out of the second
DF as often as possible, and proceed in this way, until a
remainder be found, which is contained an exact number
of times in the preceding. This last remainder will be a
common measure of the two lines.
For example, let CD be contained twice in AB, with
the remainder BE ; and BE once in CD, with a remain-
3 K
GEOMETRY.
442
Lines and der DF; and DF once in BE, with a remainder BG, and
Figures iet gQ ^e contained twice exactly in DF; then
"P011 a DF = 2 BG
Fiane. EB = DF + BG = 3 BG
' CD = EB + DF = 5 BG
AB = 2 CD + EB =13 BG.
Thus it appears, that BG is contained thirteen times in
AB, and five times in CD ; therefore BG is a common
measure of the two lines. Hence also we see, that the
relation which AB bears to CD, in regard to magnitude,
consists in the former containing thirteen such parts as
the latter contains five.
In this example it has been supposed that a remainder
is at last found, which is contained an exact number of
times in the remainder immediately preceding. But this
will not always happen. If the given lines be the diagonal
of a square., and its side, and in innumerable other cases,
it may be demonstrated, that no one of the succeeding
remainders can be contained an exact number of times in
that before it: therefore such quantities cannot have a
common measure. Hence quantities are distinguished
into two kinds, viz. such as admit of a common measure,
and such as do not admit of a common measure. The for¬
mer are said to be commensurable, and the latter incommen¬
surable.
The doctrine of proportion, as delivered in the 5th book
of Euclid’s Elements, applies alike to commensurable and
incommensurable quantities ; the theory may, however,
be rendered considerably easier, by confining it to com¬
mensurable quantities. It is this limited view of the sub¬
ject that is here given. Experience proves that Euclid’s
fifth book is difficult to be understood by the generality of
readers; and this fact may serve as an excuse for deviat¬
ing, unwillingly, from the illustrious ancient.
Definitions.
I. When one quantity contains another a certain num¬
ber of times, without a remainder, the former is said to be
a multiple of the latter, and the latter a part of the for-:
mer.
II. When several quantities are multiples of as many
others, and each contains its part the same number of
times, the former are called equimultiples of the latter,
and the latter like parts of the former.
III. Between any two finite magnitudes of the same
kind there subsists a certain relation, in respect of quan¬
tity, which is called their ratio. The two magnitudes com¬
pared are called the terms of the ratio. The first the ante¬
cedent, and the last the consequent.
IV. If there be four quantities, and if the first contain
a part of the second (without a remainder) just as often
as the third contains a like part of the fourth, the ratio of
the first to the second is said to be equal to the ratio of
the third to the fourth; or the first is said to have to the
second the same ratio which the third 1ms to the fourth.
V. The terms of any number of equal ratios are called
proportionals.
Note. When four quantities A, B, C, D, are propor¬
tionals, it is usual to say, that A is to B, as C to D,
and to write them thus, A : B :: C : D; or thus, A :
B = C : D.
VI. Quantities are said to be continual proportionals
when the ratio of the first to the second, of the second to
the third, of the third to the fourth, and so on, are all
equal.
VII. When three quantities are continual proportionals,
the second is said to be a mean proportional between the
other two.
VIII. In proportionals, the antecedent terms are called
homologous to one another; as also the consequents to
one another.
IX. When there is any number of quantities of ther
same kind, the first is said to have to the last the ratio
compounded of the ratio which the first has to the second 'ini'
and of the ratio which the second has to the third, and of Rat
the ratio which the third has to the fourth, and so on to WVvl'
the last magnitude.
X. If three magnitudes are continual proportionals, the
ratio of the first to the third is said to be duplicate of the
ratio of the first to the second.
XI. If four magnitudes are continual proportionals, the
ratio of the first to the fourth is said to be triplicate of
the ratio of the first to the second, or of the ratio of the
second to the third, &c.
The following technical words are employed to signify
certain ways of changing either the order or magnitude
of proportionals, so as that they still continue propor¬
tionals.
XII. If four quantities are proportionals, they are said
to be proportionals bp inversion, when it is inferred that
the second is to the first, as the fourth to the third.
XIII. They are proportionals by alternation, when the
first is to the third, as the second to the fourth.
XIV. By composition, when the sum of the first and se¬
cond is to the second, as the sum of the third and fourth
to the fourth.
XV. By division, when the difference of the first and
second is to the second, as the difference of the third and
fourth to the fourth.
XVI. By conversion, when the first is to the difference
of the first and second, as the third to the difference of
the third and fourth. •;
XVII. By mixing, when the sum of the first and se¬
cond is to their difference, as the sum of the third and
fourth to their difference.
Axioms.
1. Equal quantities have the same ratio to the same
quantity, and the same quantity has the same ratio to
equal quantities.
2. Quantities having the same ratio to the same quan¬
tity, or to equal quantities, are equal among themselves;
and those to which the same quantity has the same ratio
are equal to one another.
3. Ratios equal to one and the same ratio are also equal
one to the other.
Theorem I.—Quantities have to one another the same
ratio which their equimultiples have.
Let A and B be two quantities, and supposing m to de¬
note any number, let »*Aand wB (that is, m times A and
m times B) be any equimultiples of these quantities; the
ratio of A to B is equal to the ratio of »iA to ?»B; or A: i
B = mh. ; mQ.
For, let A contain three such parts, each equal to X,as
B contains four, so that
A = X + X + X;B = X + X + X + X.
Then mA. = »iX + mX + mX,
mV> — mX + rnX + rnX + ^X,
because a whole taken any number of times, is equal to
the sum of its parts taken as often. Now, because Aeon-
tains the one fourth of B three times, and mA evident y
contains one fourth of v»B also three times ; A contains a
part of B exactly as often as mA contains a like part o
otB. Therefore (Def. 4), the ratio of A to B is equa o
the ratio of m A to f»B. ,
In the same manner, if A and B be supposed any ot er
multiples of X, it may be proved that A : B = tnX: w •
Cor. Like parts of magnitudes have to each other
same ratio as the whole ; for A and B are like parts o w
and ?»B.
id
GEOMETRY.
IfEOREM II.—If four quantities be proportionals, they
are proportionals also when taken inversely.
;,et A, B, C, D be four quantities, such, that A : B =
^ C D ; tf1611 B : A = D : C.
"or, suppose that C contains two such equal parts as
Contains three, then, because the ratio of A to B is
et al to the ratio of C to D, A will contain two such parts
contains three. (Def. 4.) Therefore B will contain
tK;e such parts as A contains two; and D will contain
tli :e such parts as C contains two. Thus B will contain
a art of A as often as D contains a like part of C;
tlKefore the ratio of B to A is equal to the ratio of D to
C (Def. 4.)
XboREM III.—If four quantities of the same kind be pro-
ortionals, they will also be proportionals when taken
iternately.
et A : B = C : D, then, if the quantities be all of the
sase kind, A : C zr B : D.
or, let C contain three such parts as D contains four;
th i (Def. 4) A will contain three such parts as B con-
ta sfour. Let each of the equal parts contained in A
an B be X, and let each of the equal parts contained in
C id D be Y; then
A = 3X B = 4X
C = 3Y D = 4Y.
nd because A and C contain X and Y the same num-
beof times, A and C are equimultiples of X and Y. (Def,
2. Also, because B and D contain X and Y the same
nu her of times, B and D are equimultiples of X and Yr.
Therefore A : C = X : Y 1 r> r
And 13 : D = X : Y f Pr0P-1
Hence A : C r= B : D (Axiom 3.)
dr. If the first of four proportionals be greater than
tli third, the second shall be greater than the fourth; and
if e first be equal to the third, the second shall be equal
to ic fourth ; and if the first be less than the third, the
sewnd shall be less than the fourth.
443
Tr orem IV—If four quantities be proportionals, they
shall also be proportionals by composition.
?t A : B zz: C : D; then, by composition, A + B :
B C + D : D.
:t C contain five such parts as D contains three, then
(El'. 4) A will contain five such parts as B contains three.
Le«ach of the equal parts contained in A and B be X,
an slet each of the equal parts contained in C and D be
Y. Then, because
A = 5X, B = 3X, C = 5Y, D = 3Y,
Gilding, A + B = 8X, and C + D = 8Y.
'Ow, B = 3X, and D = 3Y;
Tblefore A + B contains one third of B eight times, and
C • D contains one third of D also eight times, and, in
gei ral, A -}- B will contain a part of B as often as C + D
coi tins a like part of D; therefore (Def. 4) A + B : B‘
= + D : D.
Tburem V.—If four quantities be proportionals, they
will also be proportionals by division.
II A : B =z C : D, and let A be greater than B, and
L Later than D; then A — BrBzzC — D:D.
Tr’ making the same supposition as in last proposition,
80 at A = 5X, B = 3X, C = 5Y, D = 3Y,
y subtracting, A — B = 2X, and C — D — 2Y.
j. . Now, B - 3X, D = 3Y.
us it appears, that in this case A — B contains one
III of B twice, and that C — D contains one third of D
also twice; and, in general, that A — B will always con- Lines and
tain some part of B as often as C — D contains a like part Figures
of D ; therefore (Def. 4) A — B:B=C — D:D. uPon a
Plane.
Theorem VI.—If four quantities be proportionals, they V—
shall also be proportionals by conversion.
Let A:B= C:D; then A : A —B = C: C —D.
For, making the same supposition as in the two last pro¬
positions, because
A = 5X, B zr 3X, C = 5Y, D = 3Y,
therefore A — B z= 2X, C — D r= 2Y.
Hence it appears, that in this case A contains the half
of A — B five times, and that C contains the half of C —
D also five times; and, in general, that A will contain a
part of A — B as often as C contains a like part of C.— D;
therefore (Def. 4)A:A — B~C:C D.
Theorem VIL—If the first of four magnitudes has the
same ratio to the second which the third has to the
fourth, and if any equimultiples whatever be taken of
the first and third, and any whatever of the second and
fourth; the multiple of the first shall have the same
ratio to the multiple of the second that the multiple of
the third has to the multiple of the fourth.
Let A : B zz C : D, and supposing m and n to denote
any two numbers, let the antecedents A and C be taken
each m times, and let the consequents B and D be taken
each n times ; mA : «B zz mC : «D.
Suppose that C contains two such parts as D contains
three, then (Def. 4) A will contain two such parts as B
contains three. Let each of the equal parts contained in
A and B be X, and let each of the equal parts contained in
C and D be Y, so that Azz2X, Bzz3X, Czz2Y, DzzSY.
Then mA — 2?wX «B zz 3?»X
?nC zz 2mY nD zz 3nY.
From these expressions-, it appears that X and Y are
like parts of riQ and wD ; for each is contained in its mul¬
tiple three n times; also, that mA and are equimul¬
tiples of X and Y; for each contains its part two m times.
Therefore mA contains a part of nB, exactly as often as
contains a like part of nD; and hence (Def. 4) mA
: wB zz mC : nD.
Cor. If A : B zz C : D, then mA : B zz mC : D,
and A : «B zz C : wD.
Theorem VIII.—If there be any number of quantities, and
as many others, which, taken two and two in order, have
the same ratio; the first will have to the last of the
first quantities the same ratio which the first of the
others has to the last.
First, Let there be three quantities, A, B, C,
and other three, H, K, L, such that A : B zz
H : K, and B : C zz K : L; then A : C zz H : L.  
For, suppose that H contains two such parts as K con¬
tains three and L seven, then (Def. 4) A will contain two
such parts as B contains three, and C seven.
Let the equal parts contained in A, B, C be X, and let
the equal parts contained in H, K, L be Y, so that
A zz 2X, B zz 3X, C zz 7X,
H zz 2Y, K zz 3Y, L = 7Y.
In this case, A contains one seventh of C twice, and H
contains one seventh of L also twice; and, in general, A
will contain a part of C as often as H contains the same
part of L; therefore A : C zz H : L (Def. 4).
Next, let there be four quantities A, B, C, D, and other
four H, K, L, M, such that A: B zz H: K, ,
and B : C z= K : L, and C : D = L ; M; ft
then A : D zz H : M. H, K, L, M.
444
GEOMETRY.
Lines and For, since A, B, C are three quantities, and H, K, L
Figures other three quantities, which, taken two and two, have
upon a same ratio; by the foregoing case, A : C — H : L.
And because A: C = H : L, and C : D — L : M ; there¬
fore, by that same case, A : D = H : M. In the same
way, the demonstration may be extended to any number
of quantities.
Note. This proposition is usually cited by the words
ex eequali or ex cequo.
and by composition (4) A + B : B = C + D : D, tv.
therefore, ex ceq. A + B : A — ® =:: C + D: C -~D.
In like manner, if B be greater than A, it may be “P®
proved that A+B:B — A=C + D:D — C. I’l®
'•>
Theorem XII.—If any number of quantities be propor-
tionals; as one of the antecedents is to its consequent,
so is the sum of all the antecedents to the sum of all
the consequents.
Theorem IX If there be any number of quantities, and
as many others, which, taken two and two, in a cross or¬
der, have the same ratio; the first will have to the last
of the first quantities, the same ratio which the first of
the others has to the last.
First, let there be three quantities A, B, C,
and other three H, K, L, such that A: B := K: L,
and B : C = H : K; then A : C = H : L.
For, suppose K to contain two such equal parts as L
contains three, then A will contain two such parts as B
contains three. (Def. 4.) Let each of the equal parts
contained in A and B be X, and let each of the equal
parts contained in K and L be Y, so that
A = 2X, B = 3X, K = 2Y, L = 3Y.
Also, let Z be the same part of C that Y is of L, and
let V be the same part of H that X is of A; so that, in
this case,
C = 3Z, H = 2V.
Then, because B : C = H : K; that is, 3X : 3Z — 2V
: 2Y, and (by Prop. I.) 3X : 3Z X : Z, and 2V: 2Y =
V : Y; therefore X : Z = V : Y (Ax. 3). Hence (by
Prop. VII.) 2X : 3Z — 2V : 3Y; but 2X = A, 3Z = C,
2V = H, 3Y = L; therefore A : C = H : L.
Next, let there be four quantities, A, B, C, D, and
other four H, K, L, M, such that A : B :
L : M, and B : C = K : L; and C : D =
H : K ; then A : D = H : M. For since
A, B, C are three quantities, and K, L, M other three,
which, taken two and two in a cross order, have the same
ratio; by the first case, A : C = K : M; but C : D = H
: K; therefore, again, by the first case, A : D = H : M.
In the same manner, the demonstration may be extended
to any number of quantities.
Note. This proposition is usually cited by the words
ex cequali in proportione perturbata, or ex cequo inversely.
Theorem X.—If the first has to the second the same ratio
which the third has to the fourth, and the fifth to the
second the same ratio which the sixth has to the fourth ;
the first and fifth together shall have to the second the
same ratio which the third and sixth have to the fourth.
Let A : B = C : D,
and E : B = F : D;
then A + E:B = C + F:D.
Because E : B z= F : D, by inversion, B : E = D : F
(2); but, by hypothesis, A : B = C : D; therefore ex
cequali (Prop. VIII.), A : E C : F; and, by composi¬
tion, A + E : E = C + F : F. Again, by hypothesis,
E : B — F: D, therefore ex ceq. A + E:B=C + D:F.
Let A:B = C:DrrE:F; then A : B = A + C
+ E : B + D + F. For, suppose that A contains two
such parts, each = X, as B contains three, and that C con¬
tains two such parts, each — Y, as D contains three, and
that E contains two such parts, each z= Z, as F contains
three, and so on ; then
A = 2X B - 3X
C - 2Y 1) = 3Y
E = 2Z F = 3Z.
Hence, by addition,
A + C + E = 2X + 2Y + 2Z = 2 (X + Y + Z); B+
D + F = 3X + 3Y + 3Z = 3 (X + Y + Z).
Thus it appears that A contains one third of B twice,
and that A + C + E contains one third of B + D -f F
also twice; and, in general, that A will contain a part of
B just as often as A + C + E contains a like part of B
-j- D + F; therefore A:B = A + C + E:B +D+F.
In treating of proportion, we have supposed that the an¬
tecedent contains some part of the consequent a certain
number of times exactly, which part is therefore a com¬
mon measure of the antecedent and consequent. But
there are quantities which cannot have a common mea¬
sure, and which are therefore said to be incommensurable;
such, for example, are the sides of two squares one of
which has its surface double that of the other.
Although the ratio of two incommensurable quantities
cannot be expressed in numbers, yet we can always assign
a ratio in numbers which shall be as near to that ratio as
we please. For let A and B be any two quantities what¬
ever, and suppose that x is such a part of A that A=px;
then if q denote the number of times that x can be taken
from B, and d the remainder, we have B = g'x + and
qx = B — d; and because p : q = px : qx, therefore^:
<7 r= A : B — d. Now, as d is less than x, by taking ^suf¬
ficiently small, d may be less than any proposed quantity;
so that B — d may differ from B by less than any given
quantity; therefore two numbers jo and q may always be
assigned, such, that the ratio of to g' shall be the same
as the ratio of A to a quantity that differs less from B
than by any given quantity, however small that quantity
may be.
Hence we may conclude, that whatever has been deli¬
vered in this section relating to commensurable quanti¬
ties, may be considered as applying equally to such as are
incommensurable.
SECT. IV.—THE PROPORTIONS OF FIGURES.
Definitions.
A, B, C,
H, K, L.
A, B, C, D,
H, K, L, M.
Theorem XI.—If four quantities be proportionals, the sum
of the first two is to their difference as the sum of the
other two to their difference.
Let A : B = C : D ; then, if A be greater than B, A
+ B:A — B=C + D:C — D.
For, since A : B r: C : D,
by division (5) A — B:Br=C — D:D,
and inversion (2) B:A — B = D:C — D,
I. Equivalent Figures are such as have equal surfaces.
Two figures may be equivalent, although very dissiuu-
ar; thus a circle may be equivalent to a square, a trian-
;le to a rectangle, and so of other figures.
We shall give the denomination of egwa/figures to those
rhich, being applied the one upon the other, coincide en
irely: thus, two circles having the same radius are equa >
,nd two triangles having three sides of the one equa
hree sides of the other, each to each, are also equa •
*
1
GEOMETRY.
445
and
I If res
lih a
jri ie.
itJ
Ira'
IB
MI
lie
1b
I
IE
itii ''4
id
pi
teai
aij li
ten ‘
Hi 1
lijf
etjii
liia
Ho 1
•IB
d
1h
I n. Two figures are similar, when the angles of the one
re equal to the angles of the other, each to each; and
ie homologous sides proportionals. The homologous sides
re those which have the same position in the two figures ;
V which are adjacent to the equal angles. The angles
lemselves are called homologous angles.
Two equal figures are always similar, but similar figures
iay be very unequal.
III. In two different circles, similar
sectors, similar arches, similar segments,
are such as correspond to equal angles
at the centre. Thus the angle A be¬
ing equal to the angle O, the arch BC
is similar to the arch DE, and the sec¬
tor ABC to the sector ODE, &c.
IV. The Altitude of a parallelogram
0 is the perpendicular which measures
the distance between the opposite
sides or bases AB, CD.
V. The Altitude of a triangle is the
perpendicular AD drawn from the
vertical angle A upon the base BC.
/
r
Fig. 64. Fig. 65.
VI. The Altitude of a trapezoid is the perpendicular EF
rawn between its two parallel bases AB, CD.
VII. The Area and the surface of a figure are terms of
early the same signification. The term area, however, is
lore particularly used to denote the superficial quantity of
le figure in respect of its being measured, or compared
ith other surfaces.
heorem I.—Parallelograms which have*equal bases and
equal altitudes are equivalent.
Let AB be the common base of the parallelograms
iBCD, EBAF, which being supposed to have the same
Ititude, the sides DC, FE opposite to the bases will lie
i DE a line parallel to AB. Now, from the nature of a
arallelogram, AD zz BC, and AF — BE; for the same
3ason DC zr AB, and FE = AB; therefore DC zr FE,
nd taking away DC and FE from the same line DE, the
3mainders CE and DF are equal; hence the triangles
)AF, CBE have three sides of the one equal to three
ides of the other, each to each; and consequently are
qual (10,1). Now, if from the quadrilateral ABED the
dangle ADF be taken away, there will remain the paral-
dogram ABEF; and if from the same quadrilateral
DIED, the triangle CBE, equal to the former, be taken
way, there will remain the parallelogram ABCD ; there-
)re the two parallelograms ABCD, ABEF, which have
he same base and the same altitude, are equivalent.
Cor. Every parallelogram is equivalent to a rectangle
f the same base and altitude.
heorem II.—Every triangle ABC is the half of a paral¬
lelogram ABCD, having the same base and altitude.
For the triangles ABC, ACD are
equal (28, 1).
Cor. 1. Therefore a triangle
ABC is the half of a rectangle
BCEF of the same base and alti¬
tude.
Cor. 2. All triangles having
equal bases and equal altitudes are
equivalent.
Lines and
Figures
upon a
Plane.
Theorem III.—Two rectangles of the same altitude are
to each other as their bases.
Let ABCD, AEFD be two rect- Fig. 68.
angles, which have a common al- n f c
titude AD; the rectangle ABCD I I | i ;
shall have to the rectangle AEFD j : !
the same ratio that the base AB I ) ; I j
has to the base AE. \ j ;
Let the base AB have to the 11; I i
base AE the ratio of the number a e b
p (which we shall suppose 7) to the number q (which may
be 4), that is, let AB contain p (7), such equal parts as
AE contains q (4); then, if perpendiculars be drawn to
AB and AE at the points of division, the rectangles
ABCD and AELD will be divided, the former into jp and
the latter into q rectangles, which will be all equal (1) ; for
they have equal bases and the same altitude. Thus the
rectangle ABCD will also contain p such equal parts as
the rectangle AEFD contains q ; therefore the rectangle
ABCD is to AEFD as the number p to the number q
(Ax. 3, 3), that is, as the base AB to AE.
Theorem IV.—Any two rectangles are to each other as
the products of any numbers proportional to their sides.
Let the numbers m, n, p, q have
among themselves the same ratios
that the sides of the rectangles ABCD,
AEFG have to each other; that is,
let AB contain m such equal parts, E
whereof AD contains n; and AE con¬
tains p, and AG contains q, then shall
ABCD : AEFG zz mn : pq.
Let the rectangles be so placed that the sides AB, AE
may be in a straight line, then AD and AG will also lie
in a straight line (3, 1). Now (3)
ABCD : AEHD zz AB : AE = m : p,
but m p — nm : np (\, 3),
therefore ABCD : AEHD zz nm : np.
Again, AEHD : AEFG zz AD : AG — nxq\
but n \ q pn : pq;
therefore AEHD : AEFG zz pn : pq
and it was shown that
ABCD : AEHD zz nm : np or pn,
therefore (8, 3) ABCD : AEFG zz mn : pq.
Scholium.
Hence it appears, that the product of the base by the
altitude of a rectangle may be taken for its measure, ob¬
serving that by such product is meant that of the number
of linear units in the base by the number of linear units
in the altitude. This measure is however not absolute,
but relative; for it must be supposed, that in comparing
upon a
Plane.
446 GEOMETRY.
Lines and one rectangle with another, the sides of both are mea-
iigures sured by the same linear unit. For example, if the base
of a rectangle A be three units, and its altitude 10, the
, rectangle is represented by 3 X 10, or 30; this number
considered by itself has no meaning; but if we have a
second rectangle B, the base of which is twelve units and
the altitude seven, this second rectangle shall be repre¬
sented by the number 12 X 7, or 84; and hence it may
be concluded that the two rectangles are to each other
as 30 to 84; therefore, if in estimating any superficies the
rectangle A be taken for the measuring unit, the rectan¬
gle B shall have for its absolute measure §-$, that is, it
shall be §§ superficial units.
It is more common, as well as more simple, to take for
a superficial unit a square, the side of which is an unit in
length, and then the measure which we have regarded
only as relative becomes absolute: for example, the num¬
ber 30, which is the measure of the rectangle A, re¬
presents thirty superficial units, or thirty squares, each
having its side equal to an unit. To illustrate this, see
fig. 70.
trapezoid is equal to FE X AL, it is also equal to FPv r
/AB + CD\ 1
[—2—J- L
K
Theorem VIII.—If four straight lines AB, AC, AD, AE ^
be proportionals; the rectangle ABFE, contained bv
the two extremes, is equivalent to the rectangle ACGD
contained by the means. And conversely, if the reel-
angle contained by AB, AE, the extremes, be equiva'
lent to the rectangle contained by AC, AD, the means
the four lines are proportionals.
Theorem V.—The area of any parallelogram is equal to
the product of its base by its altitude. (Fig. 67.)
For the parallelogram ABCD is equivalent to the rect¬
angle FBCE, which has the same base BC, and the same
altitude AO (Cor. 1) ; but the measure of the rectangle
is BC X AO (Schol. 4), therefore the area of the paral¬
lelogram is BC X AO.
Cor. Parallelograms having the same base, or equal
bases, are to each other as their altitudes ; and parallelo¬
grams having the same altitude are to each other as their
bases; for in the former case put B for the common base,
and A and A' for the altitudes, then the areas of the
figures are B X A and B X A'; and it is manifest that
B X A : B X A' A : A'; and in the latter case, putting
A for the common altitude, and B and B' for the bases, it
is evident that B X A : B' X A = B : B'.
Theorem VI.—The area of a triangle is equal to the pro*
duct of its base by the half of its altitude. (Fig. 67.)
For the triangle ABC is half of the parallelogram ABCD,
which has the same base BC, and the same altitude AO
(2); but the area of the parallelogram is BC X AO (5),
therefore that of the triangle is ^BC X AO, or BC X
2 AO.
Cor. Two triangles of the same altitude are to each
other as their bases; and two triangles having the same
base are to each other as their altitudes.
Theorem VII.—The area of a trapezoid ABCD is equal
to the product of its altitude EF by half the sum of its
parallel sides AB, CD.
Let the rectangles be so placed as
to have the common angle A, and K
let BF, DG intersect each other in
H. Because the rectangles ABHD,
ACGD have the same altitude AD, o
ABHD ; ACGD=AB : AC (3) ;
and because the rectangles ABHD,
ABFE have the same altitude AB,
for the same reason,
ABHD : ABFE= AD: AE;
but by hypothesis AB : AC=AD : AE, therefore (Ax
3, 3) ABHD : ACGD = ABHD : ABFE ; therefore (Ax
2, 3) the rectangle ACGD z= ABFE.
Next suppose that the rectangle ACGD=ABFE- then
ABHD : ACGD=ABHD : ABFE (Ax.l, 3); but ABHD-
ACGD z= AB : AC (3), and ABHD : ABFEzrAD: AE;
therefore AB : AC = AD : AE.
Cor. If three straight lines be proportionals, the rect¬
angle contained by the extremes is equal to the square of
the mean ; and if the rectangle contained by the extremes
be equal to the square of the mean, the three straight
lines are proportionals.
Theorem IX.—If four straight lines be proportionals, and
also other four; the rectangles contained by the cor¬
responding terms shall be proportionals; that is, if
AB : BC=CD : DE, and BF : BG=DH : DI, then shall
rectangle AF: rect. BM=rect. CH : rect. DQ.
Fig. 73.
M
Fig. 71.
E
Through the point I, the
middle of BC, draw KL paral¬
lel to the opposite side AD,
and produce DC to meet KL.
In the triangles IBL, ICK, IB
is equal to IC by construction,
and the angle CIK=BIL, and
  the angle ICK = IBL (21, 1) ;
V 1* B therefore these triangles are
equal; and hence the trapezoid ABCD is equivalent to
the parallelogram ALKD, and has for its measure
AL X EF. But AL ~ DK, and because the triangle IBL
is equal to the triangle KCI, the side BL — CK ; there¬
fore AB + CD rr AL + DK=2AL; hence AL is half the
sum of the parallel sides AB, CD; and as the area of the
For in BG and DI produced, if necessary, take BF=BF,
and DH = DH, and let FP be parallel to BC, and HN
to DE ; then (3),
rect. AF : rect. BP = AB : BC,
and rect. CH: rect. DN = CD : DE;
but AB : BC — CD : DE (by hypothesis), therefore,
rect. AF : rect. BP = rect. CH : rect. DN;
now (3) rect. BP : rect. BM = BE: BG, and rect. DN:
rect. DQ = DH : DI; but BF: BG = DH : DI (by hy-
poth.) therefore,
rect. BP: rect. BM = rect. DN: rect. DQ;
but it has been shown that
rect. AF: rect. BP = rect. CH: rect. DN,
therefore (8, 3),
rect. AF: rect. BM =r rect. CH: rect. DQ.
Cor. Flence the squares of four proportional straight
lines are themselves proportionals.
Theorem X.—If a straight line AC be divided into any
two parts at B, the square made upon the whole line
and
i-es
AC shall be equal to the squares made upon the two
parts AB, BC, together with twice the rectangle con¬
tained by these two parts; which may be expressed
thus,
AC2= AB2+BC2 + 2ABXBC.
GEOMETRY.
Fig. 74.
H
Suppose the square ACDE to
be constructed ; take AF = AB,
draw FG parallel to AC, and BH
parallel to CD.
The square ACDE is made up
of four parts; the first ABIF is
the square upon AB, because
AF = AB ; the second IGDH is
the square upon BC, for AC =
_ AE, and AB — AF ; therefore
L rrr. —AB= AE — AF, that is,
El = EF; but BC = IG, and EF = DG (26, 1) ; there-
fite IGDH is the square upon BC; and the remaining
t i> parts are the two rectangles BCGI, FEHI, which
hi e each for their measure AB X BC ; therefore the
snare upon AC is equal to the squares upon AB and
E, and twice the rectangle AB X BC.
1 f.orem XI. Tf a straight line AC be the difference of
wo straight lines AB, BC, the square made upon AC
hall be equal to the excess of the two squares upon
ill and BC above twice the rectangle contained by
fB and BC; that is, J
AC2 = AB2+BC2 — 2AB X BC.
a
Fig. 75. Construct the square ABIF,
take AE = AC, and draw CG
parallel to BI, and HK paral¬
lel to AB; and complete the
square EFLK. The two rect¬
angles CBIG, GLKD have each
AB X BC for their measure;
and if these be taken from
the whole figure ABILKEA,
that is, from AB2 + BC2, there
w remain the square ACDE, that is, the square upon
A
Jl
1 :0R®M XII—The rectangle contained by the sum and
ie difference of two straight lines is equal to the dif-
rence of the squares upon those lines ; that is,
(AB + BC) X (AB — BC) = AB2 — BC2.
an =
9 . B K
* Construct upon AB and AC
 ? the squares ABIF, ACDE; pro¬
duce AB, so that BK = BC,
and complete the rectangle
AKLE. The base AK of the
rectangle is the sum of the two
lines AB, BC ; and its altitude
AE is the difference of the
^ ^ same lines; therefore the rect-
AKLE = (AB + BC) (AB — BC) ; but the same
re« ingle is composed of two parts ABHE + BHLK, of
h BHLK is equal to the rectangle EDGF, for BH =
and BK=FE; therefore AKLE:= ABHE + EDGF;
ou these two parts constitute the excess of the square
r above the square DHIG, the former of which is
1 quare upon AB, and the latter the square upon BC ;
“Kpfore (AB + BC) X (AB — BC) = AB2 — BC2.
TifiDREM XIII.—-The square upon the hypothenuse of a
' i t*angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares
■ °n the two other sides.
Let ABC be a right-
angled triangle ; having
formed the squares upon
its three sides, draw a per¬
pendicular AD from the
right angle upon the hy¬
pothenuse, and produce it
to E, and draw the diago¬
nals AF, CH. The angle
ABF is evidently the sum
of ABC and a right an¬
gle, and the angle HBC
is also the sum of ABC
and a right angle ; there¬
fore the angle ABF— —j,- ^
HBC. Now AB — BH, for they are sides of the same
square, and BC = BF for the same reason ; therefore the
triangles ABF, HBC have two sides, and the included
angle of the one equal to two sides* and the included
angle of the other, each to each, therefore the triangles
are equal (5, 1); but the triangle ABF is the half of the
rectangle BDEF (which for brevity's sake we shall call
BE), because it has the same base BF, and the same alti¬
tude BD (2); and the triangle HBC is in like manner
half of the square AH; for the angles BAG, BAL being
both right angles, CA and AL constitute a straight line
parallel to BH (3, 1) ; and thus the triangle HBC and the
square AH have the same base HB, and the same altitude
AB ; from which it follows that the triangle is half of the
square (2). It has now been proved that the triangle
ABF is equal to the triangle HBC ; and that the rect¬
angle BE is double of the former, and the square AH
double of the latter ; therefore the rectangle BE is equal
to the square AH. It may be demonstrated in like man¬
ner that the rectangle CDEG, or CE, is equal to the
square AI; but the rectangles BE, CE make up the square
BCGF; therefore the square BCGF upon the hypothe¬
nuse is equal to the squares ALHB, AKIC upon the
other two sides.
Theorem XIV—In a triangle ABC, if the angle C be
acute; the square of the opposite side AB is less than
the squares of the sides which contain the angle C ; and
if AD a perpendicular be drawn to BC from the oppo¬
site angle, the difference shall be equal to twice the
rectangle BC X CD; that is,
AB2 = AC2 + CB2 — 2BC X CD.
First, suppose AD to fall within the triangle, then
BD = BC—CD, and consequently (11) BD2 = BC2-{-
CD2 — 2BC X CD; to each of these equals add AD2;
then, observing that BD2-|-DA2= BA2, and CD2 + D4!
= CA2,
„ AB8 = BC2 + CA2 — 2BC X CD.
Next, suppose AD to fall without the triangle, so that
BD = CD — BC, and therefore BD2 — CD2 + BC2 —
2BC X CD (11), to each of these add AD2 as before, and
we get
AB8 - BC2+CA2 — 2BC X CD.
Theorem XV.—In a triangle ABC, if the angle C be ob-
448
Lines and
Figures
upon a
Plane.
tuse; the square of the opposite side AB is greater
Fig. 79. ti1311 ^e sum of the squares of the
sides which contain the angle C ;
and if AD a perpendicular be drawn
to BC from the opposite angle;
the difference shall be equal to
twice the rectangle BC X CD;
that is,
AB2 = AC2+ BC2 + 2BC X CD.
For BD = BC + CD, and therefore (10), BD2 = BC2
+ CD2 + SBC X CD ; to each of these equals add AD2,
then, observing that AD2 + DB2 zz AB2, and AD2 +
DC2 ~ AC2
AB2 = BC2 + CA2 + SBC X CD.
Scholium. It is only when a triangle has one of its
angles a right angle, that the sum of the squares of two
of its sides can be equal to the square of the third side;
for if the angle contained by those sides be acute, the
sum of their squares is greater than the square of the op¬
posite side, and if the angle be obtuse, that sum is less
than the square of the opposite side.
GEOMETRY.
For if DE is not parallel to BC, suppose some other r
line DO to be parallel to BC ; then, AB: BD = AC-f'O p”
i * 1 4.U A TA . TAT) _ a V X1
Fig. 80.
Theorem XVI.—If a straight line
AE be drawn from the vertex
of any triangle ABC to the mid¬
dle of its base BC ; the sum of
the squares of the sides is equal
to twice the square of half the
base, and twice the square of the
line drawn from the vertex to
the middle of the base ; that is,
AB2 + AC2 = SBE2 + 2AE2.
Draw AD perpendicular to BC, then
AB2 = BE2 + EA2 — SBE X ED (14),
and AC2 = CE2 + EA2 + SCE X ED (15);
therefore, by adding equals to equals, and observing that
BE =r CE, and therefore BE2 = CE2, and SBE X ED
= SCE X ED,
AB2 + AC2 = SBE2 + 2AE2.
Theorem XVII.—A straight line DE drawn parallel to
one of the sides of a triangle ABC, divides the other
two sides AB, AC proportionally, so that AD : DB
= AE: EC.
Fig. 81.
Join BE and CD. The triangles BDE, CDE, having
the same base DE, and the
same altitude, are equiva¬
lent (S), and the triangles
ADE, BDE, having the same
altitude, are to one another
as their bases (6), that is,
ADE : BDE = AD : DB;
the triangles ADE, CDE,
having also the same alti-
_ tude, are to one another as
c their bases ; that is, ADE :
CDE = AE : EC, but the triangle BDE has been proved
equal to CDE ; therefore, because of the common ratio in
the two proportions, we have (Ax. 3, 3)
AD : DB = AE : EC.
Cor. Hence, by composition, AB:AD = AC : AE; and
AB : BD = AC : CE.
       Co p* ^
(17), and sincerby hypothesis AD : DB = AE : EC, and “Sn
consequently, by composition, AB: BD = AC:CE, there- pla»e.
fore, AC : CO = AC : CE ; therefore, CO = CE (2 Ax. S'
3), which is impossible; therefore DO is not parallel to
BC.
Cor. If it be supposed that BA : AD z= CA : AE; still
DE will be parallel to BC ; for by division BD: AD = CE
: AE, this proportion being the same as in the theorem,
the conclusion must be the same.
Theorem XIX.—A straight line AD, which bisects the
angle BAC of a triangle, divides the base BC into two
segments proportional to the adjacent sides BA, AC •
that is, BD : DC = BA : AC.
Through the point C draw CE parallel to AD, so as to
meet BA produced. In the g2
triangle BCE, the line AD
is parallel to one of its sides
CE, therefore BD : DC
z= BA : AE ; now the tri¬
angle CAE is isosceles, for,
because of the parallels AD,
CE, the angle ACEzzDAC,
and the angle AECzzBAD,
(21, 1); but by hypothesis
DAC — BAD, therefore
ACE = AEC; and consequently, AE = AC (12,1), there¬
fore, substituting AC instead of AE in the above proper-
tion, it becomes BD : DC = BA : AC.
Theorem XX.—If two triangles be equiangular, their ho¬
mologous sides are proportional, and the triangles are
similar.
Let ABC, CDE be two equiangular triangles, which
have the angle BAC = CDE, pj™ gg
ABCzzDCE, and ACBzzDEC; F
the homologous sides, or the
sides adjacent to the equal
angles, shall be proportional;
that is, BC : CE = AB : CD
= AC : DE.
Place the homologous sides
BC, CE in the same direction,
and produce the sides BA, ED, B
till they meet in F. Because BCE is a straight line, and
the angle BCA is equal to CED, the lines CA, EF are
parallel (22, 1); and in like manner, because the angle
ABC = DCE, the lines BF, CD are parallel; therefore
the figure ACDF is a parallelogram, and hence AF = CD,
and CA = DF (26, 1). In the triangle BFE the line AC
is parallel to the side FE, therefore BC: CE = BA: AF;
or since AF zz CD, BC : CE zz BA : CD. Again, in the
same triangle, because CD is parallel to the side BF, BC
: CE zz FD : DE, or, since FD zz AC, BC : CE z: AC :
DE ; having now shown that BC : CE zz BA:CD, and
that BC : CE zz AC : DE, it follows that BA: CD = AC
: DE ; therefore the equiangular triangles BAC, CD"
have their homologous sides proportional, and hence (De •
2) the triangles are similar.
Scholium. It is manifest that the homologous sides
are opposite to the equal angles.
Theorem XVIII—Conversely, if two of the sides AB, Theorem XXL—If two triangles have their homo og
AC of a triangle be divided proportionally by the sides proportional, they are equiangular and sum ar.
straight line DE, so that AD : DB zz AE : EC ; then „ .v _
shall the line DE be parallel to the remaining side Suppose that BC : EF zz AB : DE zz AC : Dr,
BC. shall A zz D, B = E, C zz F. At the point E make me
4
*
GEOMETRY.
449
ad a;,pIe FEG= B, and at the point F make EFG = C; then
Fig. 84.
the third angle G shall
be equal to the third
angle A, and the two
triangles ABC, GEF
shall be equiangular;
therefore, by the last
theorem, BC : EF =
AB:GE; but by hy¬
pothesis BC : EF—AB
: DE ; therefore GE —
D' (Ax. 2, 3). In like manner, because by the same the-
oiai BC : EF = CA : FG; and by hypothesis BC : EF =
_c: : FD; therefore FG = FD ; but it was shown that
E[=ED, therefore, the triangles GEF, DEF, having the
sii!S of the one equal to those of the other, each to each,
arequal; but, by construction, the triangle GEF is equi-
anular to ABC, therefore also the triangles DEF, ABC
an equiangular and similar.
TIeorem XXII.—Two triangles which have an angle of
iie one equal to an angle of the other, and the sides
bout these angles proportional, are similar.
,et the angle A = D, and let AB : DE = AC : DF,
Fig. 85. the triangle ABC is similar
to DEF. Take AG = DE,
and draw GH parallel to BC,
then the angle AGH = ABC
(21, 1), therefore the triangle
AG II is equiangular to ABC,
and consequently (20) AB :
AG AC : AH ; but by
hypothesis AB : DE z= AC :
DF, and by construction AG
=:DE, therefore AH = DF; the two triangles AGH,
BIF are therefore equal (5, 1), but the triangle AGH is
si liar to ABC, therefore DEF is similar to ABC.
TIeorem XXIII.—In a right-angled triangle, if a perpen-
Fig. 86. dicular AD be drawn from the
right angle upon the hypothe-
nuse, then,
1. The triangles ABD, CAD on
each side of the perpendicular
are similar to the whole tri¬
angle BAG, and to one an¬
other.
.ach side AB or AC is a mean proportional between
* ie hypothenuse BC, and the adjacent segment BD or
•l.'l he perpendicular AD is a mean proportional between
ie two segments BD, DC.
The triangles BAD, BAC have the common angle
B besides, the right angle BAC is equal to the right
le BDA, therefore the third angle BAD of the one is
e< al to the third angle BCA of the other; therefore,
thf:e triangles are equiangular and similar; and in the
manner it may be shown that the triangle DAC is
et angular and similar to BAC ; therefore the three tri-
*r es are equiangular and similar to each other.
Because the triangle BAD is similar to the triangle
^ their homologous sides are proportional. Now the
BD of the lesser triangle is homologous to the side
ol the greater, because they are opposite to the equal
Wies BAD, BCA; in like manner BA, considered as a
SH of the lesser triangle, is homologous to the side BC
ie greater, each being opposite to a right angle; there-
> BD : BA = BA : BC. In the same manner it may
e 10wn that CD : CA = CA : CB, therefore each side
>i. x.
is a mean proportional between the hypothenuse and the Lines and
segment adjacent to that side. Figures
3. By comparing the homologous sides of the two simi- uPon a
lar triangles ABD, ACD, it appears that BD : DA z= DA
: DC ; therefore the perpendicular is a mean proportional
between the segments of the hypothenuse.
Theorem XXIV.—Two triangles which have an angle of
the one equal to an angle of the
other, are to each other as the
rectangles of the sides which con¬
tain the equal angles ; that is, the
triangle ABC is to the triangle
ADE as the rectangle AB X AC
to the rectangle AD X AE.
Join BE; because the triangles
ABE, ADE, have a common vertex
E, they have the same altitude, there¬
fore ABE : ADE AB : AD (Cor.
to 6); but AB: AD — AB X AE: AD X AE (3), there¬
fore,
ABE : ADE = AB X AE : AD X AE.
In the same manner, it may be demonstrated that
ABC : ABE = AB X AC: AB X AE ;
therefore (8, 3) ABC : ADE = AB X AC : AD X AE.
Cor. Therefore the two triangles are equivalent, if the
rectangle AB X AC = AD X AE, or (8), if AB : AD
= AE : AC, in which case the sides about the equal
angles are said to be reciprocally proportional.
Scholium. What has been proved of triangles is also
true of parallelograms, they being the doubles of such tri¬
angles.
Theorem XXV.—Two similar triangles are to each other
as the squares of their homologous sides. (See fig. 85.)
Let the angle A rz D, the angle B E, and therefore
the angle C z= F,
then (20) AB : DE = AC : DF ;
now AB : DE = AB : DE,
for the two ratios are identical, therefore (9),
AB2 : DE2 = AB X AC : DE X DF ;
but ABC : DEF = AB X AC : DE X DF (24),
therefore ABC : DEF = AB2: DE2 (Ax. 3, 3),
therefore the two similar triangles ABC, DEF are to each
other as the squares of the homologous sides AB, DE, or
as the squares of any of the other homologous sides.
Theorem XXVI.—Similar polygons are composed of the
same number of triangles which are similar and similar¬
ly situated.
Fig. 87.
A
In the polygon ABCDE, draw from one of the angles A
the diagonals AC, AD to all the other angles. In the po¬
lygon FGHIK, draw in like manner from the angle F,
homologous to A, the diagonals FH, FI to the other angles.
Fig. 88.
c
Because the polygons are similar, the angle ABC is equal
to its homologous angle FGH (Def. 2), also the sides AB,
BC are proportional to FG, GH ; so that AB : FG = BC
: GH, therefore the triangles ABC, FGH are similar (22) j
3 L
450
GEOMETRY.
Lines and therefore the angle BCA = GHF, and these being taken
Figures from the equal angles BCD, GHI, the remainders ACD,
upon a FHI are equal; but the triangles ABC, FGH being simi-
Piane. ]ar) : FH — BC : GH, besides, because of the simila-
rJty 0f ^0 polygons, BC : GH = CD : HI; therefore AC :
FH = CD : HI; now it has been already shown that the
angle ACD = FHI, therefore the triangles ACD, FHI
are similar (22). It may be demonstrated in the same
manner that the remaining triangles are similar, whatever
be the number of sides of the polygon ; therefore two simi¬
lar polygons are composed of the same number of triangles
similar to each other, and similarly situated.
Theorem XXVII.—The perimeters of similar polygons
are as the homologous sides; and the polygons them¬
selves are as the squares of the homologous sides. (See
fig. 88.)
For, since by the nature of similar figures AB : FG =
BC : GH = CD : HI, &c. therefore (12, 3) AB + BC
+ CD, &c. the perimeter of the first figure, is to FG
+ GH + HI, &c. the perimeter of the second, as the side
AB to its homologous side FG.
Again, because the triangles ABC, FGH are similar,
ABC: FGHz= AC2 : FH2 (25), in like manner ACD : FHI
r= AC2 : FH2 ; therefore,
ABC : FGH = ACD : FHI.
By the same manner of reasoning,
ACD : FHI = ADE : FIK,
and so on if there be more triangles ; hence, from this se¬
ries of equal ratios, it follows (12, 3) that ABC + ACD
+ ADE, or the polygon ABCDE. is to FGH + FHI
+ FIK, or the polygon FGHIK, as one of the antecedents
ABC, is to its consequent FGH, or as AB2 to FG2; there¬
fore similar polygons are to each other as the squares of
their homologous sides.
Cor. 1. If three similar figures have their homologous
sides equal to the three sides of a right-angled triangle, the
figure having the greatest side shall be equal to the two
others ; for these three figures are proportional to the
squares of their homologous sides, and the square of the
hypothenuse is equal to the squares of the other two
sides.
CoR. 2. Similar polygons have to each other the dupli¬
cate ratio of their homologous sides. For let L be a third
proportional to the homologous sides AB, FG, then (Def.
10, 3) AB has to L the duplicate ratio of AB to FG; but
AB : L — AB2: AB X L (3), or since AB X L =: FG2,
(Cor. to 8) AB : L = AB2 : FG2 = ABCDE : FGHIK;
therefore the figure ABCDE has to the figure FGHIK,
the duplicate ratio of AB to FG.
Theorem XXVIII—The segments of two chords AB,
CD, which cut each other within a circle, are recipro¬
cally proportional, that is, AO : DO r= CO : OB.
Fig. 89. Join AC and BD ; and because
the triangles AOC, BOD have the
angles at O equal (4, 1), and the
angle A = D and the angle C=
B (15, 2), the triangles are simi¬
lar ; therefore the homologous
sides are proportional (20), that
is, AO : DO = CO : BO.
Cor. Hence AO X BO zz CO
X DO (8), that is, the rectangle
contained by the segments of the
one chord is equal to the rectangle contained by the seg¬
ments of the other.
Theorem XXIX.—If from a point O without a circle two
straight lines be drawn, terminating in the concave arch
BC; the whole lines shall be reciprocally proportional'%ii
to the parts of them without the circle, that is, OB: 0C “Pwa
- OD : OA.
Join AC, BD ; then the triangles
OAC, OBD have the common angle
O, also the angle B zr C (15, 2),
therefore the triangles are similar,
and the homologous sides are pro¬
portional, that is, OB : OC z= OD :
OA.
Cor. Therefore (8) OA X OB
zz: OC X OD, that is, the rectan¬
gles contained by the whole lines,
and the parts of them without the
circle, are equal to one another.
Theorem XXX.—If from a point O without a circle a
straight line O A be drawn touching the circle, and also
a straight line OC cutting it; the tangent shall be a mean
proportional between the whole line which cuts the cir¬
cle, and the part of it without the circle; that is, OC:
OA = OA : OD.
Fig. 91.
For if AC, AD be joined, the
triangles OAD, OCA, have the
angle at O common to both, also
the angle ACD or ACO equal
to DAO (18, 2), therefore the
triangles are similar (20), and
consequently CO : OA zz OA ;
OD.
Cor. Therefore (Cor. to 8) CO
X ODzzOA2, that is, the square
of the tangent is equal to the
rectangle contained by the whole
line which cuts the circle, and
the part of it without the circle.
Theorem XXXI.—In the same circle, or in equal circles,
any angles ACB, DEF are to each other as the arches
AB, DF of the circles intercepted between the lines
which contain the angles.
Suppose the arch AB to have to the arch DF the ratio
of the number p to the number q ; then the arch AB be¬
ing supposed divided into equal parts Kg, gh, AB, the
number of which is p, the arch DF shall contain q equal
parts D/e, kl, Im, mn, wF, each of which is equal to any
one of the equal parts into which AB is divided. Draw
straight lines from the centres of the circles to the points
Fig. 92.
of division ; these lines will divide ACB into p angles a
DEF into q angles, which are all equal (13, 2); there
the angle ACB has to the angle DEF the ratio o
number/* to the number q, which ratio is the same as
of the arch AB to the arch DF. j
Cor. Hence it appears that angles may be me
and compared with each other by means °^arc ieS ,reg.
cles described on the vertices of the angles as ce ^
observing, however, that the radii of the circles na
equal.
GEOMETRY.
SECT. V.—PROBLEMS.
\
ioblem I.—To bisect a given straight line AB; that is,
to divide it into two equal parts.
Fig. 93. From the points A and B as
centres, with any radius greater
than the half of AB, describe
arches, cutting each other in D
and D on each side of the line
AB. Draw a straight line through
the points D, D, cutting AB in
C ; the line AB is bisected in C.
For the points D, D, being
equally distant from the extre¬
mities of the line AB, are each
in a straight line perpendicular
to the middle of AB (16, 1),
t ;refore the line DCD is that perpendicular, and conse-
qsntly C is the middle of AB.
1 oblem II.—To draw a perpendicular to a given straight
line BC, from a given point A in that line.
Fig. 94. Take the points B and C at
equal distances from A; and on
B and C as centres, with any
radius greater than BA, de¬
scribe arches, cutting each
other in D ; draw a straight
line from A through D, which
will be the perpendicular re¬
quired. For the point D, be¬
ing at equal distances from
b a the extremities of the line BC,
must be in a perpendicular to
ht middle of BC (16, 1), therefore AD is the perpendi-
oar required.
li'OBLEM III.—To draw a perpendicular to a ,given line
BD, from a given point A without that line.
)n A as a centre, with a radius sufficiently great, de¬
scribe an arch, cutting the given
line in two points B, D; and on B
and D as centres, with a radius
greater than the half of BD, de¬
scribe two arches, cutting each
other in F; draw a straight line
through the points A and F, meet¬
ing BD in C; the line AC is the
perpendicular required.
For the two points A and F are
each at equal distances from B and
D ; therefore a line passing through
Fig. 95.
X*
-Xnd F is perpendicular to the middle of BD (16, 1).
h )blem IV—At a given point A, in a given line AB, to
make an angle equal to a given angle K.
Fig. 96.
-- « v-ciilic, wun any raums, aescrme an arcn to
^ the lines containing the angle K in L and I; and on
A as a centre, with the same radius, describe an indefinite
arch BO; on B as a centre, with a radius equal to the
chord LI, describe an arch, cutting the arch BO in D;
draw AD, and the angle DAB shall be equal to K.
For the arches BD, LI having equal radii and equal
chords, the arches themselves are equal (4, 2), therefore
the angles A and K are also equal (13, 2).
Problem V.—To bisect a given arch AB, or a given an¬
gle C.
First, to bisect the arch AB, on A and B as centres,
Fig. 97.
with one and the same radius, de¬
scribe arches to intersect in D;
join CD, cutting the arch in E,
and the arch AE shall be equal
to EB.
For, since the points C and D
are at equal distances from A, and
also from B, the line which joins
them is perpendicular to the mid¬
dle of the chord AB (16,1), there¬
fore the arch AB is bisected at E
(6, 2).
Secondly, to bisect the angle C ;
on C as a centre, with any dis¬
tance, describe an arch, meeting the lines containing the
angle in A and B; then find the point D as before, and
the line CD will manifestly bisect the angle C as required.
Scholium. By the same construction we may bisect
each of the arches AE, EB; and again we may bisect
each of the halves of these arches, and so on; thus, by suc¬
cessive subdivisions, an arch may be divided into four,
eight, sixteen parts, &c.
Problem VI—Through a given point A, to draw a
straight line parallel to a given straight line BC.
Fig. 98.
kl
On A as a centre, with a
radius sufficiently large, de¬
scribe the indefinite arch
EO ; on E for a centre, with
the same radius, describe the
arch AF; in EO take ED
equal to Ah', draw a line o
from A through D, and AD will be parallel to BC.
For if AE be joined, the angle EAD is equal to AEB
13, 2), and they are alternate angles, therefore AD is pa¬
rallel to BC (22, 1).
Problem VII.—To construct a triangle, the sides of
which may be equal to
three given lines A, B, C.
Take a straight line DE,
equal to one of the given
lines A; on D as a centre,
with a radius equal to ano¬
ther of the lines B, describe
an arch; on E as a centre,
with a radius equal to the
remaining line C, describe B 
another arch, cutting the for- c 
mer in F ; join DF and EF, and DEF will be the triangle
required, as is sufficiently evident.
Scholium. It is necessary that the sum of any two of
the lines be greater than the third line (7, 1).
Problem VIII.—To construct a parallelogram, the adja¬
cent sides of which may be equal to two given lines A,
B, and the angle they contain equal to a given angle C.
451
Lines and
Figures
upon a
Flane.
452
Lines and
Figures
upon a
Plane.
GEOMETRY.
Draw the straight line DE = A; make
GDE = C, and
Fig. 100.
the angle
take DG
= B ; describe two arches,
one on G as a centre, with a
radius GF — DE, and the
other on E, with a radius EF
= DG; then DEFG shall be
the parallelogram required.
For by construction the
opposite sides are equal;
therefore the figure is a pa¬
rallelogram (27, 1), and it is
so constructed, that the ad¬
jacent sides and the angle they contain have the magni¬
tudes given in the problem.
Cor. If the given angle be a right angle, the figure
will be a rectangle; and if the adjacent sides be also
equal, the figure will be a square.
Problem IX .To find the centre of a given circle, or of
Fig. 101.
a circle of which an arch
is given.
Problem XI.—To inscribe a circle in a given triangle Line,
ABC- & d*
Take any three points A,
B, D, in the circumference
of the circle, or in the given
arch, and having drawn the
straight lines AB, BD, bi¬
sect them by the perpendi¬
culars EG, FH ; the point C
where the perpendiculars in-
tersect each other is the cen¬
tre of the circle, as is evident from Theorem VI. Sect. II.
Scholium. By the very same construction, a circle
may be found that shall pass through three given points
A, B, C; or that shall be described about a given tri¬
angle ADC.
Problem X.—To draw a tangent :o a given circle through
a given point A.
Fisr. 103.
Fig. 102.
upon a
Bisect A and B any two angles of the triangle by the ^
Fig. 104.
straight lines AO,
BO, which meet each
other in O ; from O
draw OD, OE, OF,
perpendiculars to its
sides; these lines shall
be equal to one an¬
other.
For in the triangles
ODB, OEB, theangle
ODB = OEB, and
the angle OBD OBE ; therefore, the remaining angles
BOD, BOE, are equal; and as the side OB is common
to both triangles, they are equal to one another (6,1),
therefore the side OD — OE ; in the same manner it may
be demonstrated, that OD — OF; therefore the lines 0D,
OE, OF, are equal to one another; and consequently a
circle described on O as a centre, with OD as a radius,
will pass through E and F; and as the sides of the tri¬
angle are tangents to the circle (9, 2), it will be inscribed
in the triangle.
Problem XII.—Upon a given straight line AB, to de¬
scribe a segment of a circle that may contain an angle
equal to a given angle C.
Fig. 105.
If the given point A be in the circumference (fig. 102),
draw the radius AC; and through A, draw AD perpen¬
dicular to AC, and AD will be a tangent to the circle
(9, 2). But if the given point A be without the circle
(fig. 103), draw AC to the centre, and bisect AC in O,
and on O as a centre, with OA or OC as a radius, de¬
scribe a circle which will cut the given circle in twt) points
D and D'; join AD and AD', and each of the lines AD,
AD' will be a tangent to the circle.
For, draw the radii CD, CD', then each of the angles
ADC, AD'C is a right angle (17, 2) ; therefore AD and
AD' are both tangents to the circle (9, 2).
Cor. The two tangents AD, AD' are equal to one an¬
other (17, 1).
Produce AB towards
D, and at the point B
make the angle DBE
equal to the given an¬
gle C ; draw BO per¬
pendicular to BE, and
GO perpendicular to
the middle of AB,
meeting BO in O ; on
O as a centre, with OB
as a radius, describe
a circle, which will pass through A, and AMB shall be the
segment required.
For since FE is perpendicular to BO, FE is a tangent
to the circle; therefore the angle EBD (which is equal to
C by construction) is equal to any angle AMB in the al¬
ternate segment (18, 2).
Problem XIII.—To divide a straight line AB into any
proposed number of equal parts; or into parts having to
each other the same ratios that given lines have. .
First, let it be proposed to di- Fig. 106.
vide the line AB (fig. 106) into
five equal parts. Through the
extremity A draw an indefinite
line AG, take AC of any magni¬
tude, and take CD, DE, EF, and
FXj, each equal to AC, that is,
take AG equal to five times AC ;
join GB, and draw Cl parallel to
GB, the line AI shall be one
fifth part of AB, and AI being
taken five times in AB, the line
AB shall be divided into five
equal parts. ,
For since Cl is parallel to GB, the sides AG ^ncl f,
are cut proportionally in C and I; but AC is the
part of AG; therefore AI is the fifth part °f AB.
Next, let it be proposed to divide AB (fig*/O )
parts, having to each other the ratios that the lines r,
,.i
GEOMETRY.
453
Fig. 107.
R have. Through A draw
AG, and in AG take AC
= P, CD = Q, DE r= R ;
join EB, and draw Cl and
DK parallel to EB; the line
AB shall be divided as re¬
quired.
For, because of the paral¬
lels Cl, DK, EB; the parts
AI, IK, KB have to each
other the same ratios that
t, parts AC, CD, DE have (17, 4), which parts are by
obstruction equal to the given lines P, Q, R.
I oblem XIV.—To find a fourth proportional to three
given lines A, B, C.
Fig. 108.
Draw two straight lines DE, DF, containing any angle ;
t DE take DA = A, and DB = B, and on DF take DC
: C; join AC and draw BX parallel to AC; then DX
s ill be the fourth proportional required.
For because BX is parallel to AC, DA : DB = DC :
K (17, 4), that is, A : B C : DX; therefore DX is a
f irth proportional to A, B, and C.
Cor. The same construction serves to find a third
j iportional to two lines A and B; for it is the same as
fourth proportional to the lines A, B, and B.
1 oblem XV.—To find a mean proportional between two
straight lines A, B.
Fig. 109. Upon any straight line DF
take DE = A, and EF = B;
and on DF as a diameter de¬
scribe a semicircle DGF; draw
EG perpendicular to DF.meet-
ing the circle in G; the line
EG shall be the mean propor-
" tional required.
For, if DG, FG be joined,
   the angle DGF is a right an¬
gle (17, 2), therefore, in the
i ht-angled triangle DGF, GE is a mean proportional be-
t een DE and EF (23, 4).
! oblem XVI To divide a given straight line AB into
two parts, so that the greater may be a mean propor¬
tional between the whole line and the other part.
Fig. 110.
a centre, with CB as a radius, describe a circle; join AC, Lines and
meeting the circle in D; make AF = AD, and AB shall Figures
be divided at F in the manner required.
For since AB is perpendicular to the radius, it is a tan¬
gent to the circle (9, 2) ; and if AC be produced to meet
the circle in E, AB : AF = AE : AB (30, 4), and by di¬
vision AB — Ah': AF = AE — AB ; AB; but AB —
AF = BF; and since DE — 2BC — AB, therefore AE
— AB = AD = AF, therefore BF : AF = AF : AB.
Scholium. When a line is divided in this manner, it
is said to be divided in extreme and mean ratio.
Problem XVII—To make a square equivalent to a given
parallelogram, or to a given triangle.
Fig. 111.
First, let ABCD be a given parallelogram, the base of
which is AB, and altitude DE; find XY a mean propor¬
tional between AB and DE (by Problem 15), and XY shall
be the side of the square required.
For since by construction AB : XY = XY: DE, there-
Fig. 112.
fore XY2 — AB X DE (8, 4) -
parallelogram ABCD (5, 4).
Next, let ABC be a given tri¬
angle (fig. 113), BC its base, and
AD its altitude; find XY a mean
proportional between half the base
and the altitude, and XY shall be
the side of the square required.
For since -^BC : XY zz XY :
AD; therefore (8, 4) XY2 r= ^BC
X AD = triangle ABC (6, 4).
Problem XVIII.—Upon a given line EF, to construct a
rectangle EFGX equivalent to a given rectangle ABCD.
Find a fourth proportional Fig. 113.
to the three lines EF, AB, and
AD (by Problem 14); draw
EX perpendicular to EF,
and equal to that fourth pro¬
portional, and complete the
rectangle EFGX, which will
have the magnitude required.
For since EF : AB = AD
: EX, therefore (8, 4) EF X
EX = AB X AD; that is,
the rectangle EFGX is equal to the rectangle ABCD.
Problem XIX.—To make a triangle equivalent to a given
polygon ABCDE.
First, draw the diagonal
CE, so as to cut off the tri¬
angle CDE; draw DG paral¬
lel to CE, to meet AE pro¬
duced in G ; join CG, and
the given polygon ABCDE
shall be equivalent to ano¬
ther polygon ABCG, which
has one side fewer.
At B, one of the extremities of the line, draw BC per- For since DG is parallel s
fndicular to AB, and equal to the half of AB; on C as to CE, the triangle CGL is
Fig. 114.
454
GEOMETRY.
Plane.
Lines and equivalent to the triangle CDE (2 Cor. 2, 4) ; to each add
Figures the polygon ABCE, and the polygon ABCDE shall be
upon a equivalent to the polygon ABCG.
In like manner, if the diagonal CA be drawn, also BF
parallel to CA, meeting EA produced, and CF be joined,
the triangle CFA is equivalent to the triangle CBA, and
thus the polygon ABCDE is transformed to the triangle
CFG.
In this way a triangle may be found equivalent to any
other polygon ; for by transforming the figure into another
equivalent figure that has one side fewer, and repeating
the operation, a figure will at last be found which has only
three sides.
Scholium. As a square may be found equivalent to a
triangle, by combining the problem with Prob. XVII. a
square may be found equivalent to any rectilineal figure
whatever.
Problem XX.—Upon a given line FG to construct a po¬
lygon similar to a given polygon ABCDE. (Fig. 88.)
Draw the diagonals AC, AD; at the point F make the
angle GFH =r BAC, and at the point G make the angle
FGH = ABC; thus a triangle FGH will be constructed
similar to ABC. Again, on FH construct in like manner
a triangle FIH, similar to ADC and similarly situated ;
and on FI construct a triangle FKI similar to AED, and
similarly situated; and these triangles FGH, FHI, FIK
shall form a polygon FGHIK similar to ABCDE (26, 4).
Problem XXL—To inscribe a square in a given circle.
Fig. 115
the angles of the figure ABCD is in a semicircle, it is a
right angle (17, 2), therefore the figure is a square.
Problem XXII.—To inscribe a regular hexagon, and also
an equilateral triangle, in a given circle.
From any point A in the circumference, apply AB and
BC each equal to AO the radius ; draw the three diame¬
ters AD, BE, CF, and join their adjacent extremities by
the lines AB, BC, &c. and the figure ABCDEF thus
formed is the hexagon required.
Fig. 116.
equal to the angles AOF, FOE, EOD, the six angles at
the centre are all equal; therefore the chords AB, BC,
CD, DE, EF, FA are all equal; thus the figure is equila¬
teral. It is also equiangular, for the angles FAB, ABC,
&c. are in equal segments, each having for its base the
chords of two sixths of the circumference ; therefore Apt
angles A, B, &c. are equal (15, 2). jjNn
If straight lines be drawn joining A, C, E, the vertices :
of the alternate angles of the hexagon, there will be ^
formed an equilateral triangle inscribed in a circle, as is ^
sufficiently evident.
Scholium. As the same manner of reasoning will apply
alike to any equilateral polygon; it may be inferred that
every equilateral polygon inscribed in a circle is also equi.
angular.
A,,.
Draw two diameters AC,
BD, so as to intersect each
other at right angles; join
the extremities of the dia¬
meters A, B, C, D, and the
figure ABCD shall be a
square inscribed in the circle.
For the angles AOB, BOC,
&c. being all equal, the
chords AB, BC, CD, DA
are equal; and as each of
Problem XXIII.—To inscribe a regular pentagon and
decagon in a given circle.
Draw any radius AO, and di-
vide it into two parts AF, FO,
such, that AO:OF=OF:AF
(16) ; from A place AG in the
circumference equal to OF; join
OG, and draw the chord AHB
perpendicular to OG, the chord
AB shall be a side of the pen¬
tagon required.
Join GF, and because AO:
OF OF: AF, and that AG=
OF, therefore AO : AG = AG: AF; now the angle A is
common to the two triangles OAG, GAF, and it has
been shown that the sides about that angle in the two
triangles are proportionals ; therefore (22, 4), the trian¬
gles are similar, and the triangle AOG being isosceles,
the triangle AGF is also isosceles, so that AG = GF;
but AG = FO (by construction), therefore, GF = FO,
and the angle FOG = FGO, and FOG+FGO = 2F0G;
but AFG = FOG + FGO (23, 1), and AFG = FAG,
therefore FAG = 2FOG; hence in the isosceles triangle
AOG, each of the angles at the base is double the verti¬
cal angle AOG, therefore the sum of all the angles is
equal to five times the vertical angle AOG; but the sum
of all the angles is equal to two right angles (24,1), there¬
fore the angle AOG is one fifth of two right angles, and
consequently AOB zr 2AOG =r two fifths of two right
angles, equal one fifth of four right angles, therefore the
arch AB is one fifth of the whole circumference. If we
now suppose straight lines BC, CD, DE, to be applied in
the circle each equal to AB, the chord of one fifth of the
circumference, and AE to be joined, the figure thus formed
will be an equilateral pentagon, and it is also equiangular
(Schol. 22). It is evident that AG is the side of a deca¬
gon inscribed in the circle.
Problem XXIV.—Having given ABCD, &c. a regular
polygon inscribed in a circle ; to describe a regular po¬
lygon of the same number of sides about the circle.
For the triangles AOB,
BOC being by construction
equilateral, each of the an¬
gles AOB, BOC is one third
of two right angles (4, Cor.
24, 1); and since AOB-f-
BOC + COD = two right
angles, therefore COD =r
one third of two right an¬
gles ; therefore the three
angles AOB, BOC, COD
are equal, and as these are
Draw GH a tangent to the circle at T the middle of
the arch AB; do the same
Fig. 118.
at the middle of each of the
other arches BC, CD, &c.;
these tangents shall form a
regular polygon GHIK, &c.
described about the circle.
Join OG, OH, &c. also
OT and ON. In the tri¬
angles OTH, ONH, the side
OT = ON, and OH is com-
mrm to both, and 01H,
ONH, are right angles,
therefore the triangles are equal (17, 1) and the angle
TOH — NOH; now B is the middle of the arch IX
therefore OH passes through B ; and in the same man¬
ner it appears that I is in the line OC produced, &c. hovv
$nd ti:ause OT bisects the arch AB, it is perpendicular to
s f: chord AB (6, 2); therefore GH is parallel to AB
( 2, and 18, 1), and HI to BC, therefore the angle
^ filO = ABO, and IHO = CBO, and hence GHI=:ABC ;
^ a;! in like manner it appears that HIK = BCD, &c.;
tl.refore the angles of the circumscribed polygon are
e;ia] to those of the inscribed polygon. And because
oithe parallels, GH : AB OH : OB, and HI : BC —
Cl: OB, therefore GH : AB = HI: BC ; But AB zz BC ;
threfore GH = HI. For the same reason HI — IK,
&(, therefore the polygon is regular, and similar to the
ircribed polygon.
GEOMETRY.
455
ECT. VI.—OF THE QUADRATURE OF THE
CIRCLE.
Fig. 119.
Axiom.
If ABC be an arch of a circle,
and AD, CD be two tangents at
its extremities, intersecting each
other in D ; the sum of the tan¬
gents AD, DC is greater than
the arch ABC.
Con. Hence the perimeter of
any polygon described about a
ci le, is greater than the circumference of the circle.
P ip. I. Theorem.—Equilateral polygons, ABCDEF,
rHIKLM, of the same number of sides inscribed in
rcles are similar, and are to one another as the squares
f the radii of the circles.
Fig. 120.
s each of the polygons is by hypothesis equilateral, it
wi also be equiangular (Schol. 22, 5). Let us suppose,
fo example, that the polygons are hexagons ; then, as the
su. of the angles is the same in both, viz. eight right
antes (25, 1), the angle A will be one sixth part of eight
npt angles, and the angle G will be the same ; therefore
Al: G; in like manner B z= H, C = I, &c., and as the
ng es are equilateral, AB : GH = BC : HI = CD : IK,
&< ■ therefore (2, Def. 4) the figures are similar. Draw
A t BO, GP, HP to the centres of the circles ; then, be¬
came the angle AOB is the same part of four right angles
thi the arch AB is of the whole circumference, and the
afl-e GPH the same part of four right angles that GH
is I the whole circumference (13, 2), the angles AOB,
I are each the same part of four right angles ; there¬
to they are equal; the isosceles triangles AOB, GPH
ar therefore similar (22, 4), and consequently AB : GH
- O : GP; therefore (9 and 27, 4) polygon ABCDEF :
Po gon GHIKLM = AO2: GP2.
P l’* IE Theorem.—A circle being given, two similar
)lygons may be found, the one inscribed in tbe circle,
id the other described about it, which shall differ
om each other by a space less than any given space.
et AG be the side of a square equal to the given
upon a
Plane.
space; and let ABG be such an arch of the given circle, Lines and
that AG is its chord. Bisect the fourth part of the cir- Figures
cumference (5, 5), then bisect one of its halves, and pro¬
ceed in this manner till, by repeated bisections, there
will at length be found an arch AB less than AG. As
the arch thus found will be contained in the circumfe-
Fig. 121.
rence a certain number of times exactly, its chord AB is
the side of a regular figure inscribed in the circle ; apply
lines in the circle, each equal to AB, thus forming the re¬
gular figure ABC, &c., and describe a regular figure DEF,
&c. of the same number of sides about the circle. Then
the excess of the circumscribed figure above the inscribed
figure shall be less than the square upon AG. For draw
lines from D and E to O the centre, these lines will pass
through A and B (24, 5); also, a line drawn from O, to
H the point of contact of the line DE, will bisect AB,
and be perpendicular to it; and AB will be parallel to
DE. Draw the diameter AL, and join BL, which will be
parallel to HO (18, 4). Put P for the circumscribed
polygon, and p for the inscribed polygon ; then, because
the triangles ODH, OAK are evidently like parts of P
and p, V :p = ODH : OAK (1, 3); but the triangles
ODH, OAK being similar, ODH : OAK — OH2 : OK2
(25, 4) ; and on account of the similar triangles OAK,
LAB, OA2, or OH2 : OK2 = LA2 : LB2 (20, and 9, 4) ;
therefore V \ p z=. LA2 : LB2, and by division and inver¬
sion, P : P—p — LA2 : LA2 — LB2, orAB2; but LA2,
that is, the square described about the circle, is greater
than the equilateral polygon of eight sides described about
the circle, because it contains that polygon, and for the
same reason the polygon of eight sides is greater than the
polygon of sixteen sides, and so on ; therefore LA2 y P,
and as it has been proved that P : P — p — LA2 : AB2,
of which proportion the first term P is less than the third
LA2; therefore (2, 3) the second P — p is less than the
fourth AB2; but AB2 A. AG2, therefore P—p Z. AG2.
Cor. ]. Because the polygons P and p differ from one
another more than either of them differs from the circle,
the difference between each of them, and the circle, is less
than the given space, viz. the square of AG. And there¬
fore, however small any space may be, a polygon may be
inscribed in the circle, and another described about it,
each of which shall differ from the circle by less than the
given space.
Cor. 2. A space which is greater than any polygon that
can be inscribed in a circle, but which is less than any
polygon that can be described about it, is equal to the
circle itself.
Prop. III. Theorem.—The area of any circle is equal to
a rectangle contained by the radius, and a straight line
equal to half the circumference. (Fig. 121.)
Let ABC, &c. be any equilateral polygon inscribed in
the circle, and DEF, &c. a similar polygon described
about it; draw lines from the extremities of AB and DE,
a side of each polygon, to O the centre; and let OKH be
perpendicular to these sides. Put P for the perimeter of
456
GEOMETRY.
Lines and the polygon DEF, &c. and p for the perimeter of the poly-
Figures g0n ABC, &c. and n for the number of the sides of each.
upon a
Plane.
Then, because n X
iDE =
IP, n X JDE X OH =
| P X OH, but n X ^DE X OH = n X triangle DOE
— polygon DEF, &c.; therefore, ^ P X OH = polygon
DEF, &c.; and in like manner it appears that X OK
— polygon ABC, &c. Now let Q denote the circumfer¬
ence of the circle, then, because > ±p, and OH >
OK, therefore X OH > ^0 X OK, that is, X OH
is greater than the inscribed polygon. Again, because
IQ < ^P (Axiom), therefore ^Q X OH ^P X OH,
that is, iQ X OH is less than the circumscribed polygon.
Thus it appears that -|Q X OH is greater than any poly¬
gon inscribed in the circle, but less than any polygon de¬
scribed about it; therefore, ^Q X OH is equal to the
circle (2 Cor. to 2).
Prop. IV. Theorem.—The areas of circles are to one
another as the squares of their radii. (Fig. 120, 122).
Let ABCDEF and GHIKLM be equilateral polygons
of the same number of sides inscribed in the circles, and
OA, PG their radii; and let Q be such a space, that AO2
: GP2 z= circle ABE : Q ; then, because AO2: GP2 = poly¬
gon ABCDEF : polygon GHIKLM, and AO2:GP2z= cir¬
cle ABE : Q, therefore polygon ABCDEF : polygon
GHIKLM — circle ABE : Q ; but circle ABE poly-
Fig. 122. gon ABCDEF, therefore Q poly¬
gon GHIKLM : that is, Q is greater
than any polygon inscribed in the cir¬
cle GHL. In the same manner it is
demonstrated that Q is less than any
polygon described about the circle
GHL; therefore Q is equal to the
circle GHL (2). And because AO2
: GP2 = circle ABE : Q, therefore
AO2 : GP2 = circle ABE : circle GHL.
Cor. 1. The circumferences of circles are to one an¬
other as their radii. Put M for the circumference of the
circle ABE and N for the circumference of GKL; then,
circle ABE : circle GHL = AO2 : GP2; but ^M X AO
= circle ABE, also -^N X GP zr circle GHL (3), there¬
fore ^M X AO : X GP = A02:GP2, and by alterna¬
tion £M X AO : AO2 — X GP : GP2, therefore (3, 4),
£M : AO z= |N ; GP; and again, by alternation, ^M :
}N = AO : GP, therefore M : N = AO : GP.
Cor. 2. A circle described with the hypothenuse of a
right-angled triangle as a radius, is equal to two circles
described with the other two sides as radii. Let the sides
of the triangle be a, b and the hypothenuse h, and let the
circles described with these lines as radii be A, B, and H.
Because A : H zr a2 : A2
and B : H =: 62 : 7«2,
therefore A + B : H = a2 + 7>2 : (10, 3);
but a2 + 62 zz 42 (13, 4), therefore A + B z= H.
is a side, and b for the area of the similar circumsrrihmi
Fig. 123. polygon; then A and
are by hypothesis known, C
and it is required to findo pl®e.
and b. '«»Vv
I. The triangles ACD
ACM, which have a com¬
mon vertex A, are to one
another as their bases CD
CM ; besides, these tri¬
angles are to one another
as the polygons, of which
they form like parts, there¬
fore A : a — CD : CM.
The triangles CAM, CME, which have a common vertex
M, are to each other as their bases CA, CE; they are
also to one another as the polygons a and B, of which
they are like parts ; therefore, a : B z= CA : CE ; but be¬
cause of the parallels DA, ME, CD : CM z: CA: CE;
therefore, A : a z= a : B ; therefore the polygon «, which
is one of the two required, is a mean proportional between
the two known polygons A and B, so that a — VK X B.
II. The triangles CPM, CPE, having the same altitude
CM, are to one another as PM to PE. But as CP bisects
the angle MCE, PM : PE zz CM : CE (19, 4) z: CD:
C A zz A : a ; therefore CPM : CPE zz A : a ; and conse¬
quently CPM + CPE, or CME : CPM zz A + a: A, and
CME : 2CPM zz A + « : 2A ; but CME and 2CPM, or
CMPA, are to one another as the polygons B and b, of
which they are like parts ; therefore A + « : 2A z: B:i.
Now the polygon a has been already found, therefore by
this last proportion the polygon b is determined; that is,
. 2A X B
6 —i •
Prop. VI. Problem.—To find nearly the ratio of the
circumference of a circle to its diameter.
Let the radius of the circle zz 1, then the sides of the
inscribed square being the hypothenuse of a right-angled
triangle of which the radii are the sides (see fig. 115), the
area of the inscribed square will be 2 (13, 4), and the cir¬
cumscribed square, being the square of the diameter, will
be 4. Now, retaining the notation of last problem, if
we make A =.2, and B zz: 4, the formulae a zzyCAXB,
9 A w T>
b zz ——; give us a zz 2*8284271, &c. the area of the
A +a °
inscribed octagon, and b zz 3*31337085, &c. the area of
the circumscribed octagon. By substituting these num¬
bers in the formula, instead of A and B, we shall obtain
the areas of the inscribed and circumscribing polygons ot
16 sides; and thence we may find those of 32 sides, and
so on, as in the following table :
Prop. V. Problem.—Having given the area of a regu¬
lar polygon inscribed in a circle, and also the area of a
similar polygon described about it; to find the areas of
regular inscribed and circumscribed polygons, each of
double the number of sides.
Let AB be the side of the given inscribed polygon, and
El* parallel to AB that of the similar circumscribed poly¬
gon, and C the centre of the circle ; if the chord AM, and
the tangents AP, BQ be drawn, the chord AM shall be the
side of the inscribed polygon of double the number of
sides; and PQ or 2PM that of the similar circumscribed
polygon. Put A for the area of the polygon, of which
AB is a side, and B for the area of the circumscribed
polygon; also a for the area of the polygon of which AM
No. of Sides.
4
8
16
32
64
128
256
512
1024
2048
4096
8192
16384
32768
Ins. Polygons.
2*0000000
2*8284271
3*0614674
3*1214451
3*1365485
3*1403311
3*1412772
3*1415138
3*1415729
3*1415877
3*1415914
3*1415923
3*1415925
3*1415926
Circ. Polygons.
4*0000000
3*3137085
3*1825979
3*1517249
3*1441184
3*1422236
3*1417504
3*1416321
3*1416025
3*1415951
3*1415133
3*1415928
3*1415927
3*1415926
Hence it appears that the area of a regular polygon 01
32768 sides inscribed in the circle, and of a similar poy-
GE OM
de
itb
be
rad
•adi
If;
ilia
159
;;rf
■bi
;he
gondescribed about it, diffei* so little from each other that
thoiumbers which express them are the same as far as
th((eighth decimal place. And as the circle is greater
thn the one polygon, and less than the other, its area
willbe nearly 3’1415926. But the area is the product of
thoadius and the half of the circumference ; therefore
theiadius being unity, half the circumference is 3*1415926
ne{ y; and the radius is to half the circumference, or
theidiameter is to the circumference, nearly as 1 to
3*1115926.
ilholium. In this way the ratio of the diameter to
tbetircumference may be found to any degree of accu-
raci hut neither by this, nor any other method yet known,
canfhe ratio be exactly determined.
E T R Y. 457
Archimedes, by means of inscribed and circumscribed Geometry
polygons of 96 sides, found that the diameter is to the °f Solids,
circumference as 7 to 22 nearly, which ratio is nearer to
the truth than can be expressed by any smaller numbers;
and Metius found it to be more nearly as 113 to 355.
Both of these expressions are convenient on account of
the smallness of the numbers, but later mathematicians
have carried the approximation to a much greater de¬
gree of accuracy. Thus, it has been found that the
diameter being 1, the circumference is greater than
3*1415926535897932, but less than the same number hav¬
ing its last figure increased by unity ; and some have even
had the patience to carry the approximation as far as the
150th place of decimals.
PART II.—GEOMETRY OF SOLIDS.
CT g;cT. I.—OF PLANES AND SOLID ANGLES.
Definitions.
Ai
ne,
lit
irt
A
otb
ell
.Pi
:bI
It
id
lb;
Mj
:!iei
is a
Ifi
eae
A
'm
(It
is;
] A straight line is perpendicular, or at right angles, to
a pne, when it is perpendicular to every straight line
wfith it meets in that plane. The plane is also perpen-
diciar to the line.
11 A line is parallel to a plane when they cannot meet
eaci other, although both be produced. The plane is also
parilel to the line.
1!. Parallel planes are such as cannot meet each other,
thogh produced.
II. It will be demonstrated (Theor. 3) that the com-
moisection of two planes is a straight line; this being
praised, the inclination of two planes is the angle con-
taiiid by two straight lines drawn perpendicular to the
lauwhich is their common section, from any point in it,
theme perpendicular being drawn in the one plane, and
thenther in the other plane.
Iiiis angle may be either acute or obtuse.
^ If it be a right angle, the two planes are perpendicu¬
lar each other.
^1. A solid angle is that which is made by the meet¬
ing f more than two plane angles, which are not in the
sam plane, in one point. Thus the solid angle V is
fonr;d by the plane angles AVB, BVC, CVD, DVA.
(Fit 133.)
Thsuiem I.—One part of a straight line cannot be in a
plane and another part above it.
frt Hr from the definition of a plane (Sect. 1, Part 1), it
nife is rmifest, that if a straight line coincide with a plane in
oin twcnoints, it must be wholly in the plane.
Ian
Tfcjf
sli
acii (■
>Rem II—Two straight lines which cut each other in
•lane determine its position; that is, the plane can
ncide with these lines only in one position.
Fig. 124
Let the straight lines AB, AG
cut each, other in A; conceive a
plane to pass through AB, and
to be turned about that line,
till it pass through the point
C; and this it can manifestly
do only in one position; then,
as the points A and C are in
the plane, the whole line AC
must be in the plane; there¬
fore there is only one position
in which the plane can coincide with the same two lines
AB, AC.
Cor. Therefore a triangle ABC, or three points A, B,
C, not in a straight line, determine the position of a
plane.
Theorem III.—If two planes AB,
other; their intersection is
a straight line.
CD intersect each
Fig. 125.
Let E and F be two points
in the line of common section,
and let a straight line EF be
drawn between them; then
the line EF must be in the
plane AB (Def. 1), and the
same line must also be in the
plane CD; therefore it must
be the common section of them
both.
Theorem IV.—If a straight line AP be perpendicular to
two sti*aight lines PB, PC
at P, the point of their in¬
tersection ; it will also be
perpendicular to the plane
MN, in which these lines
are.
Draw any other line PQ, in
the plane MN, and from Q,,
any point in that line, draw
QD parallel to PB; make
DC = DP ; join CQ, meet¬
ing PB in B ; and join AB, AQ, AC. Because DQ. is
parallel to PB, and PD = DC; therefore BQ — QC, and
BC is bisected in Q. Hence in the triangle BAC,
AB2 + AC2 = 2AQ2 + 2BQ2 (16, 4),
and in the like manner, in the triangle PBC,
PB2 + PC2 = 2PQ2 + 2CQ2;
therefore, taking equal quantities from equal quantities,
that is, subtracting the two last quantities, which are put
equal to each other, from the two first, and observing, that
as APB, APC are by hypothesis right-angled triangles,
AB2 — BP2 = AP2, and AC2 — CP2 = AP2, we have
AP2 + AP2 = 2AQ2 — 2PQ2,
and therefore AP2 — AQ2 — PQ2, or AP2 + PQ2 = AQ2;
therefore the triangle APQis right-angled at P (Schol. 15,
4, Part 1), and consequently AP is perpendicular to the
plane MN (Def. 1).
3 M
Fig. 126.
458
geometry.
Geometry Cor. 1. The perpendicular AP is shorter than any ob-
of Solids. iiqUe iine therefore it measures the distance ot the
point A from the plane.
Cor. 2. From the same point P in a plane no more than
one perpendicular can be drawn. For it it be possible that
there can be two perpendiculars, conceive a plane to pass
through them, and to intersect the plane MN in the straight
line PCi; then these perpendiculars will be in the same
plane, and both perpendicular to the same line PQ, at the
same point P in that line, which is impossible.
It is also impossible that from a point without a plane
two perpendiculars can be drawn to the plane ; for if the
straight lines AP, AQ, could be two such perpendiculars,
then the triangle APQ would have two right angles, which
is impossible.
Fig. 129.
Theorem VII.—The intersections Gee
EF, GH of two parallel planes ofS ^
MN, PQ with a third plane ^ ^
FG, are parallel.
For if the lines EF, GH, situ¬
ated in the same plane, are not
parallel, they must meet if pro-
duced ; therefore the planes MN,
PQ, in which they are, must also
meet, which is contrary to the
hypothesis of their being parallel.
Theorem VIII.—Any straight line AB, perpendicular to
MN one of two parallel planes MN, PQ, is also per¬
pendicular to PQ the other plane. (Fig. 128.)
Theorem V.—If a straight line AP be perpendicular to a
' plane MN, every straight line DE parallel to AP is per¬
pendicular to the same plane.
Let a plane pass through the parallel lines AP, DE, and
intersect the plane MN in
the line PD ; through D draw
BC at right angles to PD ;
take DC = DB, and join PB,
PC, AB, AC, AD. Because
DB = DC, therefore PB
- PC (Cor. 5, 1, Part I.) ;
and because AP is perpen¬
dicular to the plane MN, so
that APB, APC are right
angles, AB = AC, therefore
ABC is an isosceles triangle ;
and since its base BC is bisected at D, BC is perpendicu¬
lar to AD (Schol. 11, 1, P. I.) 5 but by construction BC is
perpendicular to PD ; therefore (4) BC or BD is perpendi¬
cular to the plane passing through the lines AD and PD, or
AP and DE ; hence BD is perpendicular to DE, but PD
is also perpendicular to DE (19, 1, P. I.), therefore DE is
perpendicular to the two lines DP, DB ; and therefore it
is perpendicular to the plane MN passing through them.
Cor. 1. Conversely, if the straight lines AP, DE be
perpendicular to the same plane MN, they are parallel;
for if not, through D draw a parallel to AP; this parallel
will be perpendicular to the plane MN (by the theorem),
therefore, from the same point D two perpendiculars may
be drawn to a plane, which is impossible (4).
Cor. 2. Two straight lines A and B which are parallel
to a third line C, though not in the same plane, are pa¬
rallel to each other. For suppose a plane to be perpen¬
dicular to the line C, the lines A and B parallel to this
perpendicular are perpendicular to the same plane; there¬
fore, by the preceding corollary, they are parallel between
themselves.
Theorem VI.—Two planes MN, PQ, perpendicular to
the same straight line AB, are parallel to each other.
For, if they can meet each other, let O be a point com¬
mon to both, and join OA, OB ;
then the line AB, which is per¬
pendicular to the plane MN,
must be perpendicular to AO,
a line drawn in the plane MN
from the point in wdiich AB
meets that plane. For the
same reason AB is perpendi¬
cular to BO; therefore OA,
OB are two perpendiculars
drawn from the same point O,
to the same straight line AB, which is impossible.
Fig. 128.
Fig. 127.
From B draw any straight line BC in the plane PQ,
and let a plane pass through the lines AB, BC, and meet
the plane MN in the line AD, then AD will be parallel
to BC (7) ; and since AB is perpendicular to the plane
MN, it must be perpendicular to the line AD, therefore
it is also perpendicular to BC (19, J, P. I.); hence (Def. 1)
the line AB is perpendicular to the plane PQ.
Theorem IX.—Parallel straight lines EG, FH, compre¬
hended between two parallel planes MN, PQ, are equal.
(Fig. 129.)
Let a plane pass through the lines EG, FH, and meet
the parallel planes in EF and GH ; then EF and GH are
parallel (7) as well as EG and FH; therefore EGHF is
a parallelogram, and EG = HF.
Cor. Hence two parallel planes are everywhere at the
same distance from each other. For if EG and FH be
perpendicular to the two planes, they are parallel (1 Cor.
5); therefore they are equal.
Theorem X.—If two straight lines CA, EA, meeting one
another, be parallel to two other lines DB, FB, that meet
one another’, though not in the same plane with the first
two ; the first two and the other two shall contain equal
angles, and the plane passing through the first two shall
be parallel to the plane passing through the other two.
Fig. 130.
Take AC = BD, AE = BF, and join CE, DF, AB, CD,
EF. Because AC is equal and pa¬
rallel to BD, the figure ABDC is
a parallelogram ; therefore CD is
equal and parallel to AB. For a
similar reason EF is equal and pa¬
rallel to AB; therefore also CE
is equal and parallel to DF (Cor. 5,
and 28, 1, P. I.) ; therefore the tri¬
angles CAE, DBF are equal (10,
1, P. L), hence the angle CAE
- DBF.
In the next place, the plan6
ACE is parallel to the plane BDE j
for suppose that the plane Par‘“ (-
to BDF, passing through the point A, meets the lines ,
EF in any other points than C and E (for example in '
and H), then (9) the three lines AB, GD, FH are equa >
but the three lines AB, CD, EF have been shown o i
equal; therefore CD = GD, and FH = EF, which is ab¬
surd, therefore the plane ACE is parallel to BDr.
Theorem XI.—If three straight lines AB, CD, EF, not
situated in the same plane, are equal and paralle >
triangles ACE, BDF formed by joining the extremiue
of these lines are equal, and their planes para
(See fig. 130.)
GEOMETRY. 459
meti For since AB is equal and parallel to CD, the figure and the parallel planes PD, RS, they are parallel (7); and in Geometry
i^ids^BDC is a parallelogram ; therefore the side AC is equal like manner it appears, that AC, GF are parallel; there- Solids-
'V-'ind parallel to BD. In like manner it may be shown fore AE : EB (= AG: GD) = CF : FD.
that the sides AE, BF are equal and parallel; also CE,
DF; therefore the triangles CAE, BDF aie equal. It Theorem XVI.—If a solid angle be contained by three
ntiay be demonstrated, as in last proposition, t tat their plane angles ; the sum of any two of these is greater than
planes are parallel. the third.
Theorem XII.—If a straight line AP be perpendicular
to a plane MN; any plane APB, passing through AP,
shall be perpendicular to the plane MN.
Let BC be the intersection of the planes AB, MN;
Fm. 133.
Fig. 131.
if in the plane MN the line
DE be drawn perpendicular
to BP, the line AP, being
perpendicular to the plane
MN, shall be perpendicular
to each of the straight lines
BC, DE; therefore the angle
APD is a right angle ; now
PA and PD are drawn in
the planes AB, MN perpen¬
dicular to their common section, therefore (5 Def.) the
planes AB, MN are perpendicular to each other.
Scholium. When three straight lines, such as AP,
BP, DP, are perpendicular to each other, each is perpen¬
dicular to the plane of the two other lines.
Theorem XIII.—If the plane AB be perpendicular to the
plane MN, and if in the plane AB a straight line PA
be drawn perpendicular to BP, the common intersection
of the planes; then shall PA be perpendicular to the
plane MN. (Fig. 131.)
It is evidently only necessary to demonstrate the theo¬
rem, when the plane angle
which is compared with the
sum of the other two is great¬
er than either of them; for,
if it were equal to or less than
one of them, the theorem
would be manifest; there¬
fore let S be a solid angle
formed by three plane angles
ASB, ASC, BSC, of which
ASB is the greatest. In the
plane ASB make the angle
BSD = BSC ; draw any
straight line ADB, and having taken SC = SD, join AC,
BC ; the triangles BSC, BSD, having two sides, and the
included angle of the one equal to two sides, and the in¬
cluded angle of the other, each to each, are equal (5,1, P. I.),
therefore BD BC ; now AB AC + BC, therefore,
taking BD from the first of these unequal quantities, and
BC from the second, we get AD AC ; and as the tri¬
angles ASD, ASC have SD zr SC, and SA common to
both, and AD AC, therefore (9, 1, P. I.) the angle
ASD^il ASC ; and, adding DSB to the one, and CSB to
the other, ASB ASC + BSC.
For, if in the plane MN, a line PD be drawn perpendi¬
cular to PB, the angle APD shall be a right angle, be¬
cause the planes are perpendicular to each other; there¬
fore the line AP is perpendicular to the two lines PB, PD,
and therefore it is perpendicular to their plane MN.
Cor. If the plane AB be perpendicular to the plane MN,
and from any point P, in their common intersection, a per¬
pendicular be drawn to the plane MN ; this perpendicular
shall be in the plane AB ; for if it is not, a perpendicular AP
may be drawn in the plane AB to the common intersection
BP, which will be at the same time perpendicular to the
plane MN ; therefore, at the same point P, there may be
two perpendiculars to a plane NM, which is impossible (4).
Theorem XIV.—If two planes AB, AD be perpendicular
to a third ; their common intersection AP is perpendi¬
cular to the third plane. (Fig. 131.)
For, if through the point P a perpendicular be drawn to
the plane MN, this perpendicular shall be in the plane AB,
and also in the plane AD (Cor. 12) ; therefore it is at their
common intersection AP.
1 heorjim XV.—If two straight lines be cut by parallel
planes ; they shall be cut in the
same ratio.
Let the line AB meet the
planes MN, PQ, RS, in A, E,
B ; and let CD meet them in C,
F, D, then shall AE : EB =r CF
: FD. For draw AD meeting
the plane PD in G, and join AC,
EG, GF, BD; the lines EG,
BD being the common sections
S of the plane of the triangle ABD
Fig. 132.
Theorem XVII.—The sum of all the plane angles which
form any solid angle is less than four right angles.
Let the solid angle V be cut by any plane ABCDE ;
from a point O taken in this plane, draw to all its angles
the lines OA, OB, OC, OD, OE. The sum of all the an¬
gles of the triangles AVB, BVC,
&c. formed about the vertex V is
equivalent to the sum of the angles
of a like number of triangles AOB,
BOC, &c. formed about the point
O. Now at B the angle ABC,
which is the sum of OBA and
OBC, is less than the sum of the
angles VBA, VBC (16) ; in like
manner at C, OCB + OCD ^
VCB + VCD, and so on with all
the angles of the polygon ABCDE.
Hence, in the triangles of which
the common vertex is O, the sum of the angles at their
bases is less than the sum of the angles at the bases of the
triangles which have their vertex at V ; therefore the sum
of the angles about the point O is greater than the sum of
the angles about the point V. But the sum of the angles
about O is equal to four right angles, therefore the sum of
the plane angles which form the solid angle about the ver¬
tex V is less than four right angles.
Scholium. This demonstration supposes that the solid
angle is convex, or that it lies all on one side of the plane
of any one of its faces. If it were otherwise, the sum of
the solid angles would be unlimited.
Theorem XVIII.—If each of two solid angles be contain¬
ed by three plane angles equal to one another, each to
each ; the planes in vrhich the equal angles are, have
the same inclination to one another.
460
GEOMETRY.
Geometry Let the angle ASB = DTE, the angle ASC = DTP, is called a parallelepiped. A parallelepiped is rectangular, G* „
of Solids. and the angle BSC = ETF ; the two planes ASB, ASC when all its faces are rectangles. rfjf
shall have to each other the same inclination as the two V. A Cube is a rectangular parallelepiped contained by
planes DTE, DTP.
Fig. 135.
Take A any point in SA, and in the two planes ASB,
ASC draw AB and AC perpendiculars to AS, then (Def.
4) the angle BAC is the inclination of these planes ; again,
take TD — SA, and in the planes TDE, TDF draw DE
and DP perpendiculars to TD, and the angle EDP shall
be the inclination of these other planes; join BC, EF.
The triangles ASB, DTE have the side AS=DT, the an¬
gle SAB — TDE and ASB = DTE, therefore the trian¬
gles are equal, and thus AB z= DE, and SB = TE. In
like manner it appears that the triangles ASC, DTP are
equal, and therefore that AC = DP, and SC = TP. Now
the triangles BSC, ETF, having BS = TE, SC = TP,
and the angle BSC = ETF, are also equal, and therefore
BC = EF ; but it has been shown that AB DE, and
that AC — DP ; therefore the triangles BAC, EDF are
equal, and consequently the angle BAC rr EDF ; that is,
the inclination of the planes ASB and ASC is equal to the
inclination of the planes DTE and DTP. In the same
manner it may be proved that the other planes have the
same inclination to one another.
Scholium. If the three plane angles which contain the
solid angles are equal, each to each ; and if the angles are
also disposed in the same order in the two solid angles, then
these angles when applied to one another will coincide and
be equal. But if thq plane angles be disposed in a contrary
order, the solid angles will not coincide, although the the¬
orem is equally true in both cases. In this last case, the
solid angles are called Symmetrical angles, and they must
be accounted equal, because they are equal in every thing
that determines their magnitude.
SECT. II.—OF SOLIDS BOUNDED BY PLANES.
Definitions.
I. A Solid is that which has length, breadth, and thick¬
ness.
II. A Prism is a solid contained by plane figures, of
which two that are opposite are equal, similar, and parallel;
and the others are parallelograms.
To construct this solid, let ABCDE be any polygon, fig.
136 ; if in a plane parallel to ABC there be drawn straight
lines FG, GH, HI, &c. equal and parallel to the sides AB,
BC, CD, &c. so as to form a polygon FGHIK equal to
ABCDE, and straight lines AF, BG, CH, &c. be drawn,
joining the vertices of the homologous angles in the two
planes ; the planes or faces ABGF, BCHG, &c. thus form¬
ed will be parallelograms ; and the solid ABCDEFGHIK
contained by these parallelograms and the two polygons is
the prism itself.
III. The equal and parallel polygons ABCDE, FGHIK
are called the Bases of the prism; and the distance be¬
tween the bases is its Altitude.
IV. When the base of a prism is a parallelogram, and
consequently the figure has all its faces parallelograms ; it
six equal squares.
VI. A Pyramid is a solid contained by several planes,
which meet in the same point V, and terminate in a poly¬
gonal plane ABCDE. Fig. 134.
VII. The polygon ABCDE is called the Base of the
pyramid ; the point V is its Vertex ; and a perpendicular
let fall from the vertex upon the base is called its Altitude.
VIII. Two solids are similar when they are contained
by the same number of similar planes, similarly situated,
and having like inclinations to one another.
Theorem I.—Two prisms are equal when the three planes
which contain a solid angle of the one are equal to the
three planes which contain a solid angle of the other,
each to each, and are similarly situated.
Fig. 136.
Let the base ABCDE be
equal to the base abode, the
parallelogram ABGF equal
to the parallelogramafe/f and
the parallelogram BCHG
equal to the parallelogram
bchg; the prism ABCI shall
be equal to the prism abci.
For let the base ABCDE
be applied to its equal the
base abode, so that they may
coincide with each other;
then, because the three plane angles which form the solid
angle B are equal to the three plane angles which form the
angle b, each to each, viz. ABC = abc, ABG = abg, and
GBC = gbc, and because these angles are similarly situated,
the solid angles B and b are equal (15, 1), therefore the
side BG shall fall upon the side bg; and because the paral¬
lelograms ABGF, abgf are equal, the side FG shall fall
upon its equal fg ; in like manner it may be shown that
GH falls upon gh, therefore the upper base FGHIK coin¬
cides entirely with its equal fghik, and the two solids coin¬
cide with each other, or occupy the same space, therefore
the prisms are equal.
Cor. Two right prisms which have equal bases and
equal altitudes are equal to one another. If the equal
angles of the lower bases follow each other in the same
order, then the three planes which contain each solid angle
of the one prism will be respectively equal to the three
planes which contain a solid angle of the other prism, and
will be similarly situated; and when the one solid angle
is applied to the other, these planes will coincide, and
the prisms will exactly coincide. If the equal angles ot
the lower base follow each other in a contrary order, then,
by inverting one of the prisms, so that its upper may be¬
come its lower base, the angles of the two bases will follow
each other in the same order; so that in either case the
prisms coincide and are equal.
Theorem II In any parallelepiped, the opposite planes
are equal and parallel.
Fig. 137.
From the nature of the
solid (4 Def.), the bases
ABCD, EFGH are equal
parallelograms, and their
sides are parallel; there¬
fore the planes AC, E
are parallel; and because
AD is equal and parallo
to BC, and AE is equal
and parallel to BF, t e
GEOMETRY.
4W
nMe DAE = CBF, and the plane DAE is parallel to the
Sf-'inne CBF (10, 1); therefore also the parallelogram
is equal to the parallelogram CBFG. It may in
ike manner be demonstrated that the opposite parallelo-
Tams ABFE, DCGH are equal and parallel.
’ ^0Ri Any two opposite faces of a parallelepiped may be
aken for its bases.
Theorem HI.—In every prism ABCDE-FGHIK, the
sections NOPQ.R, STVXY, made by parallel planes,
are equal polygons.
Fig. 138. Because the parallel planes NOPQR,
STVXY are cut by a third plane NOST ;
the sections NO, ST are parallel; and
these lines are included between the pa¬
rallels NS, OT, which are sides of the
prism; therefore NO is equal to ST.
For a like reason the sides OP, PQ, OR,
&c. of the section NOPQ.R are respec¬
tively equal to the sides TV, VX, XY,
&c. of the section STVXY. And be¬
sides, these equal sides being also paral¬
lel, the angles NOP, OPQ, &c. of the
first section are respectively equal to the
angles STV, TVX, &c. of the second
section. Therefore the two sections
NOPQ,R, STVXY are equal polygons.
Cor. Every section of an upright prism, by a plane pa¬
rallel to the base, is equal to that base.
Theorem IV.—If a parallelepiped AG be cut by a plane
passing through BD, FH, the diagonals of two of the op¬
posite planes ; it will be cut into two equivalent prisms
ABDHEF, GHFBCD equal to one another.
Through B and F, the extremities of one of the sides,
Fig. 139. draw the planes Baofc, Fe%, perpen¬
dicular to BF, to meet the three
other sides of the solid in a, d, c,
and in e, h, g-. These sections
are equal (3), because the planes
are perpendicular to FB, and
therefore parallel. They are also
parallelograms (7, 1), because «B,
dc, the opposite sides of the same
section, are the intersections of two
parallel planes ABFE, DCGH by
the same plane. For a like reason,
the figure BaeF is a parallelogram,
as also the other lateral facesBFGC,
rdhg, adhe of the solid ¥>adc-Yehg-. Therefore this solid
is a prism (Def. 2), and it is a right prism, because BF is
perpendicular to the plane of the base.
From the constitution of the figure, the right prism BA
isdivided into two right triangular prisms oBrf-eFA, eBrf-yFA,
and it is now to be proved that the oblique triangular prism
ABCD-EFGH is equal to the right triangular prism
aBrf-eF/t. Since these two prisms have a common part
ABD-e/A, it is only necessary to prove that the remainders,
viz. the solids BaADcf, FeFHA are equivalent to each other.
Because BAEF, BaeF are parallelograms, therefore
AE = BF = ae ; hence Aa = Ee. In like manner it may
be proved that Def = HA. Conceive now that FeA, the
base of the solid FeA, is placed on Had, the base of the
solid BaADef; then, the point e falling on a, and h on d ;
the lines eE, AH will coincide with their equals aA, efD, be¬
cause they are perpendicular to the same plane. There¬
fore, the two solids will coincide entirely, the one with the
other; and hence it follows that the oblique prism BAD-
bEH is equivalent to the right prism Had-Yeh.
In the same manner it may be demonstrated that the Geometry
oblique prism BCD-F'GH is equal to the right prism of Solids.
Hcd-Ygh. But the two prisms are equal (Cor. to 1), 's—
since they have the same altitude, BF and their bases are
equal, they being halves of the same parallelogram ; there¬
fore the two triangular prisms BAD-FEH, BCD-FGH,
which are equivalent to them, are also equivalent to each
other.
Cor. Every triangular prism ABD-EFH is half a pa¬
rallelepiped AG, having the same solid angle A with the
same edges AB, AD, AE.
Scholium. Although the triangular prisms, into which
the oblique parallelepiped is divided, are contained by
equal planes, and have their solid angles equal, yet they cannot
be made to coincide. The reason is, the plane angles
about the corresponding solid angles are not placed in the
same order. These solid angles are therefore symmetri¬
cal, and cannot be brought to coincide (18, 1). Two
prisms, or twro solids of any kind so constituted, are called
symmetrical solids. An exact notion of their relation to
each other may be acquired, by considering that any ob¬
ject, and its image reflected from a plane mirror, are sym¬
metrical figures. They resemble each other exactly ; but
every part is placed in a reverse order ; thus, the reflected
image of a right hand is a left hand.
In symmetrical solids every circumstance on which the
magnitude of each depends is the very same in both ; hence
it might be assumed, as an axiom in the geometry of so¬
lids, that they are equivalent.
Theorem V.—If two parallelepipeds AG, AL have a
common base ABCD, and have their upper bases
EFGH, IKLM in the same plane, and between the
same parallels EK, HL; the two parallelepipeds are
equivalent to each other.
There may be three cases, according as El is greater
or smaller than EF, or equal to it; but the demonstration
is the same for them all. In the first place we shall prove
that the triangular prism AEI-DHM is equal to the tri¬
angular prism BFK-CGL.
Fig. 140.
Since AE is parallel
to BF, and HE to GF,
the angle AEI = BFK,
HEI = GFK, and HEA
= GFB. Of these six
angles, the three first
form the solid angle E,
and the three others
form the solid angle F;
" B. therefore, since the
plane angles are equal each to each, and similarly situated,
the solid angles E and F are equal. Now, if the prism
AEI-DHM be applied to the prism BFK-CGL, so that
their bases AEI, BFK, which are equal, may coincide with
each other; then, because the solid angle E is equal to
the solid angle F, the side EH shall fall upon FG, and
this is all that is necessary to prove that the two prisms
coincide entirely; for the base AEI and the edge EH de¬
termine the prism AEM, and the base BFK and the edge
FG determine the prism BFL (1); therefore the prisms
are equal. Now, if from the solid AEL, the prism AEM
be taken aw7ay, there will remain the parallelepiped AIL;
and if from the same solid AEL, the prism BFL be taken
away, there will remain the parallelepiped AEG ; there¬
fore the parallelepipeds AIL, AEG are equivalent to each
other.
Theorem YI.—Two parallelepipeds upon the same base,
and having the same altitude, are equivalent to one
another.
1
462
Geometry
of Solids.
GEOMETRY.
Fig. 141.
lids, which will also be parallelepipeds having equal bases Ge(
(3) and equal altitudes, therefore they will be equal among of it'
themselves ; and in like manner the parallelepiped AL will 'w'
be divided into n equal solids ; and as each of the solids
in AG is equal to each of the solids in AL, the parallel¬
epiped AG will contain m such equal parts as the paral-
lelopiped AL contains n ; therefore the parallelepiped AG
will be to the parallelepiped AL as the number m to the
number n, that is, as AE the altitude of the former to AI
the altitude of the latter.
Theorem IX.—Two rectangular parallelepipeds AG, AK,
which have the same altitude AE, are to each other as
their bases ABCD, AMNO.
Let ABCD be the common base of the two parallele¬
pipeds AG, AL, which, because they have the same alti¬
tude, will have their upper bases in the same plane.
because EF and AB are equal and parallel, as also IK and
AB, EF is equal and parallel to IK (Cor. 2, 5, 1); ^01^a
similar reason GF is equal and parallel to LK. Let the
sides EF, HG, as also the sides LK, IM, be produced, so
as to form by their intersections the parallelogram NOrU,;
it is manifest that this parallelogram is equal to each of the
bases EFGH, IKLM. .- Now, if we suppose a third paral-
lelopiped, which, with the same lower base ABCD, has
for its upper base NOPQ, this third parallelopiped will be
equivalent to the parallelopiped AG (4) ; for the same rea¬
son the third parallelopiped will be equivalent to the paral¬
lelopiped AL • therefore the two parallelepipeds AG, AL,
which have the same base and the same altitude, are equi¬
valent to one another.
Theorem VII.—Any parallelopiped may be changed into
a rectangular parallelopiped having the same altitude,
and an equivalent base. (Fig. 141 and 142.)
Fig. 142.
3VI Q L P
j)
a
K
At the points A, B, C, D (fig. 141)
let Al, BK, CL, DM, be drawn perpen¬
dicular to the plane ABCD, and ter¬
minating in the plane of the upper base;
then, IK, KL, LM, MI, being joined,
a parallelopiped AL will thus be form¬
ed, which will manifestly have its lateral
faces AK, BL, CM, DI rectangles; and
if the base AC be a rectangle, the solid
AL will be a rectangular parallelopiped
A IB equivalent to the parallelopiped AG.
But if ABCD be not a rectangle (fig. 142), draw AO and
BN perpendicular to CD, and OQ and NP perpendicular
to DC, meeting ML in Q and P; the solid ABNOIKPQ
will manifestly be a rectangular parallelopiped, which will
be equal to the parallelopiped AL; for they have the
same base ABKI, and the same altitude, viz. AO ; there¬
fore the rectangular parallelopiped AP is equivalent to the
parallelopiped AG (fig. 141), and they have the same al¬
titude, and the base ABNO of the former is equivalent
to the base ABCD of the latter.
Theorem VIII.—Two rectangular parallelepipeds AG,
AL, which have the same base ABCD, are to each other
as their altitudes AE, AL
Fig.
H
143.
M
Id
K
Fig. 144.
71
Suppose that the altitudes AE, AI
are to each other as the numbers m and
n, so that AE contains m such equal
parts pq, &c. as AI contains n. Let AE
and AI be divided into m and n equal
parts respectively, and let planes pass
through the points of division parallel
to the base ABCD; thus the parallel¬
opiped AG will be divided into m so-
Let the two solids be
placed, the one by the
side of the other, as re
presented in the figure,
and let the plane ONKL
be produced, so as to
meet the plane DCGH
in PQ, thus forming a
third parallelopiped AQ,
which may be compared
with each of the parallel-
opipedsAG,AK.Thetwo
solids AG, AQ, having
the same base ADHE,
are to each other as their altitudes AB, AO (8); and, in
like manner, the two solids AQ, AK having the same base
AOLE, are to each other as their altitudes AD, AM;
that is,
solid AG : sol. AQ = AB : AO,
sol. AQ : sol. AK = AD ; AM;
but AB : AO = base AC : base AP (3, 4, Part 1.)
and AD : AM = base AP : base AN,
therefore
sol. AG : sol. AQ = base AC : base AP,
sol. AQ : sol. AK = base AP : base AN,
therefore, ex cequo,
sol. AG : sol. AK = base AC : base AN.
Theorem X.—Two rectangular parallelepipeds are to
each other as the products of numbers proportional to
their bases and altitudes, or as the products of the num¬
bers which express their three dimensions. (Fq?- D )
Let AG be a parallelopiped, the three dimensions of
which are expressed by the lines AB, AD, AE, and
another parallelopiped the dimensions of which are ex¬
pressed by the lines AO, AM, AX. Let the two so i s
AG, AZ be so placed, that their surfaces may have a
common angle BAE; produce such of the planes as are
necessary, so as to form a third parallelopiped AK., avi g
the same altitude as the parallelopiped AG. By the ia
proposition, __
sol. AG : sol. AK = base AC : base AN,
and by the last theorem but one,
sol. AK : sol. AZ = AE : AX;
but, considering the bases AC, AN as measured y niJ!n.
bers, as also the altitudes AE, AX, by 1 of Sect.
base AC : base AN = AE X base AC: AE X bas^N’
and AE : AX = AE X base AN : AX X base A ,
therefore, . „ y a\t
sol. AG : sol. AK = AE X base AC : AE X base AN
sol. AK : sol. AZ = AE X base AN : AX X base A. >
therefore, ex cequo, > u AN-
sol. AG : sol. AZ = AE X base AC : AX X b«Ab,
which proportion, by substituting for the bases A i
4
GEOMETRY.
463
, fhpir numerical values AB X AD and AO X AM, becomes
S sob AG : sol. AZ = AB X AD X AE : AO X AM X AX.
r , Scholium. Hence it appears that the product of the
base of a rectangular parallelepiped by its altitude, or the
oroduct of its three dimensions, may be taken as its nu¬
merical measure; and it is upon this principle that all
ather solids are estimated. When two parallelepipeds
are compared by means of their bases and altitudes, their
bases must be considered as measured by the same su¬
perficial unit, and their altitudes by the same linear unit;
thus, if P and Q denote two parallelepipeds, and the base
of P contain three such equal spaces as that of Q con¬
tains four; and the altitude of P contains two such equal
lines as that of Q contains five, then P : Q = 3 X 2 :
4 X 5 = 6 : 20.
If all the dimensions of each solid be used in comparing
them, then, the same linear unit must be employed in es¬
timating all the dimensions of both solids; thus, if the
length, breadth, and height of the solid P be 4, 3, and 6
linear units, respectively; and those of Q, 7, 2, and 5, of
the same units; then P:Q = 4X3X6:7 X2X5
= 72:70.
As lines are compared by considering how often each
contains some other line taken as a measuring unit, and
surfaces, by considering how often each contains a square
whose side is that unit; so solids may be compared, by
considering how often each contains a cube, the side or
edge of which is the same linear unit. Accordingly, the
dimensions of the parallelepipeds P and Q being as above,
the proportion P : Q 72 : 70 may be considered as in¬
dicating that P contains 72 such equal cubes as Q con¬
tains 70.
The magnitude of a solid, its bulk, or its extension, con¬
stitutes its so&V&Ty, or its content; thus, we say, that the
solidity or the content of a rectangular parallelepiped is
equal to the product of its base by its altitude, or to the
product of its three dimensions.
Theorem XI.—The solidity of any parallelepiped, or in
general of any prism, is equal to the product of its base
by its altitude.
Pig. 145.
homologous sides; the Geometry
prism P is to the prism p of Solids,
as a cube on the line BC
to a cube on be.
From A and a, homo¬
logous angles of the two
prisms, draw AH, ah per¬
pendicular to their bases
BCD, bed. Join BH ;
take Ba = ba, and in the
plane BHA draw ah perpendicular to BH ; then ah shall
be perpendicular to the plane CBD (13, 1), and equal
to ah, the altitude of the other prism; for if the solid
angles B and b were applied the one to the other, the
planes which contain them, and consequently the perpen¬
diculars ah, ah would coincide (Schol. 18, 1).
Now, because of the similar triangles ABH, abh, and
the similar figures AC, ac,
AH : ah = AB : ab z= BC : be ;
and because of the similar bases,
base BCD : base bed = BC2 : be1 (25, 4, Part I.)
From these two proportions, by considering all the quan¬
tities, as expressed by numbers (by 11,3, Part I.),
AH X base BCD : ah X base BCD = BC3 : be X BC2,
ah X base BCD : ah X base bed = be X BC2 : be3,
therefore, ex cequo,
AH X base BCD : ah X base bed — BC3 : be3.
But AH X base BCD expresses the content of the
prism P; and ah X base bed expresses that of the other
prism p ; therefore
prism P : prism BC3 : 5c3.
Cor. Similar prisms are to one another in the tripli¬
cate ratio of their homologous sides. Let S and s denote
the homologous sides of two similar prisms P and p. It
is manifest that
S3, S2s, Ss2, s3,
are four continual proportionals; therefore (Def. 11, Sect.
III. Part I.), the ratio of S3, the first, to s3, the last, is the
triplicate of the ratio of S3, the first, to S2s, the second;
now, by the proposition, P : = S3 : s3, and the ratio of
S3 to S2s is the same as the ratio of S to s; therefore, the
ratio of P to p is triplicate of the ratio of S to s.
1. Any parallelepiped is equivalent to a rectangular pa¬
rallelepiped of the same altitude, and an equivalent base Prop. XIII. Theor.—If a triangular pyramid A-BCD
(7); and it has been shown that the solidity of such a be cut by a plane parallel to its base, the section FGH
parallelepiped is equal to the product of its base by its is similar to the base.
altitude.
2. Every triangular prism is the half of a parallelepiped For because the parallel planes BCD, FGH are cut by
a third plane ABC, the
sections FG, BC are pa¬
rallel (7, 1). In like
manner it appears that
FH is parallel to BD;
therefore the angle HFG
is equal to the angle
DBC (10, 1.) And be¬
cause the triangle ABC
is similar to the triangle
product of the sum of all their bases by the common alti- AFG, and the triangle ABD is similar to the triangle
tude,or it is equal to the product of the base of the prism, AFH, we have
"Inch is the sum of them all, by its altitude. BC : BA = FG : FA, and BA : BD = FA : FH.
Con. Two prisms having the same altitude are to each Therefore, ex cequali, BC : BD = FG : FH ; now the angle
other as their bases; and two prisms having the same DBC has been shown to be equal to the angle HFG;
ease are to each other as their altitudes. therefore the triangles DBC, HFG are equiangular (20,
Aofe. The cube of a line AB is expressed thus; 4, Part I.)
•tb X AB X AB, but more commonly by AB3.
T Prop. XIV. Theor.—If two triangular pyramids A-BCD,
theorem XII.—Similar prisms are to one another as the a-bed, which have equivalent bases and equal altitudes,
cubes of their homologous sides. be cut by planes that are parallel to the bases, and at
_ I equal distances from them; the sections FGH,will
Fet P and p be two prisms, of which BC, be are the be equal. (Fig. 146.)
of the same altitude, but having its base double that of
the prism (3); therefore the solidity of the prism is half
that of the parallelopiped, or it is half the product of the
base of the parallelopiped by its altitude, that is, it is
equal to the product of the base of the prism by its altitude.
3. Any other prism may be divided into as many tri¬
angular prisms as there can be triangles in the polygon
which forms its base; but the solidity of each prism is
equal to the product of its base by their common altitude;
therefore the solidity of the whole prism is equal to the
Fig. 14b.
H
464
GEOMETRY.
Geometry Draw AKE, ake perpendicular to the bases BCD, bed. Prop. XVI. I heor.—Pyramids that have equal bases and
ot Solids, meeting the cutting planes in K and hm, then, because of altitudes are equal to one another. ?
the parallel planes, we have AE : AK AB : AF, and ae:
ah — ab : af (15, 1) ; but, by hypothesis, AE = ae, and
AK— ak ; therefore, AB : AF — ab'.af. Again, because
of similar triangles, AB : AF BC : FG, and ab: af =
be : fg ; therefore BC : FG — bc:fg; and hence BC2 :
FG2 — be2 :fg~ (23, 4, Part I.) ; but because of the similar
triangles BDC, FHG, BC2: FG2=:trian. BDC : trian. FHG,
and in like manner be2 :fg2 — trian. bed: trian.(25, 4,
Part I.), therefore
trian. BCD : trian. FGH = trian. bed: trian.
Now, trian. BCD = trian. bed (by hypothesis), therefore
the triangle FHG is equal to the triangley/^.
Theorem XV.—A series of prisms of the same altitude
may be circumscribed about any pyramid ABCD, such,
that the sum of the prisms shall exceed the pyramid by
a solid less than any given solid Z.
Let Z denote a prism standing on the same base with
Fig. 147.
the pyramid, viz. the tri¬
angle BCD, and having
for its altitude the perpen¬
dicular drawn from a cer¬
tain point E in the line AC
upon the plane BCD. It
is evident that CE multi¬
plied by a certain number
m will be greater than AC ;
divide CA into as many
equal parts as there are
units in m, and let these be
CF, FG, GH, HA, each of
which will be less than CE.
Through each of the points
F, G, H, let planes be made
to pass parallel to the plane BCD, making with the sides
of the pyramid the sections FPQ, GRS, HTU, which will
be all similar to one another, and to the base BCD (13).
From the point B draw in the plane of the triangle ABC
the straight line BK parallel to CF, meeting FP produced
in K. In like manner, from D draw DL parallel to CF,
meeting FQ, in L; join KL, and it is plain that the solid
KBCDLF is a prism. By the same construction let the
prisms PM, RO, TV be described. Also let the straight
line IP, which is in the plane of the triangle ABC, be pro¬
duced till it meet BC in A ; and let the line MQ be pro¬
duced till it meet DC in g. Join hg, then hCg QFP is a
prism; and is equal to the prism PM (Cor. 11). In the
same manner is described the prism mS equal to the prism
RO, and the prism qXJ equal to the prism TV. The sum,
therefore, of all the inscribed prisms /iQ, wS, and q\] is
equal to the sum of the prisms PM, RO, and TV, that is,
to the sum of all the circumscribed prisms except the prism
BL; wherefore, BL is the excess of the prisms circum¬
scribed about the pyramid above the prisms inscribed with¬
in it. But the prism BL is less than the prism which has
the triangle BCD for its base, and for its altitude the per¬
pendicular from E upon the plane BCD, which prism is,
by hypothesis, equal to the given solid Z ; therefore the ex¬
cess of the circumscribed above the inscribed prisms is less
than the solid Z. But the excess of the circumscribed
prisms above the inscribed is greater than their excess
above the pyramid ABCD, because ABCD is greater than
the sum of the inscribed prisms; much more therefore is
the excess of the circumscribed prisms above the pyra¬
mid less than the solid Z. A series of prisms of the same
altitude has therefore been circumscribed about the py¬
ramid ABCD exceeding it by a solid less than the given
solid Z.
:qual LU unc iuiumer. 0jv
Let A-BCD, a-bed be two pyramids that have equal
Fig. 148.
bases BCD, bed, and equal altitudes; viz. the perpendi¬
culars drawn from the vertices A and a upon the planes
BCD, bed, the pyramid A-BCD is equal to the pyramid
a-bed.
For if they are not equal, let Z represent the solid
which is equal to the excess of one of them, a-bed, above
the other A-BCD ; and let a series of prisms CE, FG,
HK, LM, of the same altitude be circumscribed about
the pyramid A-BCD, so as to exceed it by a solid less
than Z, which is always possible (15); also let a series
of prisms, ce,fg, hk, Im, equal in number to the other, and
of the same altitude, be circumscribed about the pyramid
a-bed. And because the pyramids have equal altitudes,
and the number of prisms described about each is the
same, the altitudes of the prisms will be all equal, and the
bases of the corresponding prisms in the two pyramids, as
EF, ef will be sections of the pyramids at equal distances
from their bases, therefore they are equal (14), and the
prisms themselves are equal (1), and the sum of all the
prisms described about the one pyramid is equal to the
sum of all the prisms described about the other pyramid.
To abridge, put P and jo to denote the pyramids A-BCD,
and a-bed respectively, and Q and q to express the sums of
the prisms described about them. Then, because by hy¬
pothesis h—p—P, and by construction Z^Q —P»
therefore p — Pt^Q — P, hence p must be greater than
Q ; but Q is equal to q, therefore p must be greater than
q, that is, the pyramid p is greater than q, the sum of the
prisms described about it, which is impossible; therefore
the pyramids P, p are not unequal, that is, they are equal.
Theorem XVII.—Every prism having a triangular base
may be divided into three pyramids that have triangular
bases, and that are equal to one another.
Let ABC, DEF be the opposite bases of a triangular
149.
three pyramids ADEC, ABEC, DFEC are equal to one
prism. Join AE, EC, CD; and be¬
cause ABED is a parallelogram, ol
which AE is the diameter, the triangle
ADE is equal to the triangle ABE;
therefore the pyramid of which the
base is the triangle ADE and vertex
the point C, is equal to the pyramid o
which the base is the triangle ABE,
and vertex the point C. But the pyrn-
u a mid of which the base is the triang e
ABE and vertex the point C, that is, the pyramid ABLE,
is equal to the pyramid DEFC (16), for they have equal
bases, viz. the triangles ABC, DFE, and the samealtitu e>
viz. the altitude of the prism ABCDEF. Therefore,
GEOMETRY.
465
nother; but these pyramkls make up the whole prism
!EBCDEF; therefore, the prism ABCDEF is divided into
- -^aree equal pyramids. ,
Cor. 1- From this it is manifest that every pyramid is
ic third part of a prism which has the same base and the
ime altitude with it; for if the base of the prism be any
ther figure than a triangle, it may be divided into prisms
aving triangular bases.
Cor. 2- Pyramids having equal altitudes are to one an¬
ther as their bases; because the prisms upon the same
ases, and of the same altitude, are to one another as their
ases.
ect iii._OF cylinders, cones, and the
SPHERE.
Let ABCD be a cylinder and EF a parallelepiped hav-Geometry
ing equivalent bases, viz. the circle AGB and the parallelo- °f Solids,
gram EH, and having also equal altitudes; the cylinder
ABCD is equal to the parallelepiped EF. If not, let them
be unequal; and first let the cylinder be less than the pa¬
rallelepiped EF ; and from the parallelepiped EF let there
be cut off a part EQ by a plane PQ, parallel to NF, equal
to the cylinder ABCD. In the circle AGB inscribe the
polygon AGKBLM that shall differ from the circle by a
space less than the parallelogram PH (1 Cor. 2, 6, P. I.), and
cut off from the parallelogram EH a part OR equal to the
polygon AGKBLM, then it is manifest that the parallelo¬
gram OR is greater than the parallelogram OP, therefore
the point R will fall between P and N. On the polygon
AGKBLM let an upright prism be constituted of the same
Fig. 151.
Definitions.
I. A Cylinder is a solid figure described by the revolu-
on of a right-angled parallelogram about one of its sides,
hich remains fixed.
The Axis of the cylinder is the fixed straight line about
hich the parallelogram revolves.
The Bases of the cylinder are the circles described by
he two revolving opposite sides of the parallelogram.
II. A Cone is a solid figure described by the revolution
f a right-angled triangle about one of the sides contain-
ig the right angle, which side remains fixed.
The Axis of the cone is the fixed line about which the
riangle revolves.
The Base of the cone is the circle described by that side
ontaining the right angle which revolves.
III. A Sphere is a solid figure described by the revolu-
ion of a semicircle about a diameter.
The Axis of a sphere is the fixed line about which the
emicircle revolves.
The Centre of a sphere is the same with that of the se-
licircle.
The Diameter of a sphere is any straight line which
asses through the centre, and is terminated both ways by
he superficies of the sphere.
IV. Similar cones and cylinders are those which have
heir axes and diameters of their bases proportional.
Theorem I. If from any point E in the circumference of
the base of a cylinder ABCD, a perpendicular EF be
drawn to the plane of the base AEB ; the straight line
EF is wholly in the cylindric superficies.
Let GH be the axis, and AGHD the rectangle, which
by its revolution describes the cylin¬
der. Because HG is perpendicular
to AG in every position of the revolv¬
ing rectangle, it is perpendicular to
the plane of the circle described by
AG ; and because AD, the line which
describes the cylindric superficies, is
parallel to GH, it is also perpendicu¬
lar to the plane of that circle (5, 1).
Now when by the revolution of the
rectangle AGHD the point A coin¬
cides with the point E, the line EF
fill coincide with AD, and thus will be wholly in the cy-
■ndric superficies ; for otherwise two perpendiculars might
,c drawn to the same plane, from the same point, which is
^possible (2 Cor. 4, 1).
Theorem II.—A cylinder and a parallelepiped having
equivalent bases, and the same altitude, are equal to one
another.
vol. x.
Fig. 150.
altitude with the cylinder, which will therefore be less than
the cylinder, because it is within it (I); and if through
the point R a plane RS parallel to NF be made to pass, it
will cut off the parallelepiped ES equal to the prism AGBC,
because its base is equal to that of the prism, and its alti¬
tude is the same. But the prism AGBC is less than the
cylinder ABCD, and the cylinder ABCD is equal to the
parallelepiped EQ, by hypothesis ; therefore, ES is less than
EQ, and it is also greater, which is impossible. The cy¬
linder ABCD therefore is not less than the parallelopiped
EF ; and in the same manner it may be shown not to be
greater than EF, therefore they are equal.
Theorem HI If a cone and cylinder have the same base
and the same altitude ; the cone is the third part of the
cylinder.
Fig. 152.
Let the cone ABCD and the cylinder BFKG have the
same base, viz. the circle BCD, and the same altitude, viz.
the perpendicular from the point A upon the plane BCD ;
the cone ABCD is the third part of the cylinder BFKG.
If not, let the cone ABCD be the third part of another cy¬
linder LMNO having the same altitude with the cylinder
BFKG ; but let the bases BCD, LIM be unequal, and first
let BCD be greater than LIM. Then, because the circle
BCD is greater than the circle LIM, a polygon may be in¬
scribed in BCD that shall differ from it less than LIM does
(1 Cor. 2, 6, P. I.), and which therefore will be greater than
3 N
466
GEOMETRY.
Geometry LIM. Let this be the polygon BECFD, and upon BECFD
of Solids. iet there be constituted the pyramid ABECFD, and the
prism BCFKHG. Because the polygon BECFD is greater
than the circle LIM, the prism BCFKHG is greater than
the cylinder LMNO, for they have the same altitude, but
the prism has the greater base. But the pyramid ABECFD
is the third part of the prism BCFHG (17, 1) ; therefore
it is greater than the third part of the cylinder LMNO.
Now the cone ABECFD is by hypothesis the third part
of the cylinder LMNO ; therefore, the pyramid ABECFD
is greater than the cone ABCD, and it is also less, because
it is inscribed to the cone, which is impossible. Therefore
the cone ABCD is not less than the third part of the cy¬
linder BFKG. And in the same manner, by circumscrib¬
ing a polygon about the circle BCD, it may be shown,
that the cone ABCD is not greater than the third part of
the cylinder BFKG ; therefore, it is equal to the third part
of the cylinder.
Theorem IV.—Let ABDC be a plane figure, bounded by
a straight line CD, a line of any kind AB, which is ter¬
minated by perpendiculars at the extremities of CD, and
by these perpendiculars AC, BC. Let AB Z> a be a
solid generated by the revolution of this figure about
CD as an axis ; a series of cylinders may be described
about the solid, and another series may be inscribed in
it, having ail the same altitude, and such that the sum
of the circumscribed cylinders shall exceed the sum of
the inscribed cylinders by less than any given solid S.
Let S denote a solid which is a cylinder, having B6 for the
diameter of its base, and DP for its height. Suppose the
fixed axis CD to be divided into a number of equal parts
DK, KG, GE, EC, each less than DP. In the plane of the
figure ABDC, draw perpen¬
diculars EF, GH, KL to
meet the line AB in F, H,
L. Construct the inscrib¬
ed rectangles AE, FG, HK,
LD, also the circumscribed
rectangles CF, EH, GL, KB.
By the rotation of the plane
figure about the axis CD,
these rectangles will evi¬
dently generate a series of
cylinders inscribed in the solid, and another series describ¬
ed about it. Let the circumscribed cylinders, reckoned
from the bottom of the solid to the top, be denoted by V,
X, Y, Z, and the inscribed cylinder by v, x, y, z, then the
sums of the circumscribed and inscribed cylinder will be
V + X + Y + Z,
and v -f a; + V + *•
Now by the nature of the figure, each circumscribed cylin¬
der is equal to the inscribed cylinder next below it; there¬
fore X v, Y — x, and Z — y, and hence the excess of
the sum of all the circumscribed above the inscribed cylin¬
ders will be the same as the excess of the greatest circum¬
scribed above the least inscribed cylinder ; that is, it will
be equal to V — z, and consequently will be less than V ;
but the lowest circumscribed cylinder V is less than the
solid S, because it has the same base (viz. the circle hav¬
ing for its diameter B b), and a less altitude KD, by con¬
struction ; therefore the excess of the series of circumscrib¬
ed above the series of inscribed cylinders is less than the
given solid S.
Cor. The difference between the solid AB ba and either
of the two series of cylinders will be less than the greatest
circumscribed cylinder: For the solid AB ba is greater
than the one series of cylinders and less than the other;
therefore it will differ from either series by a quantity less
than the difference between the two.
Theorem V.—If a cone and hemisphere have equal basesG
and altitudes, and if a series of cylinders be described of!
about the cone, and another series be inscribed in the
hemisphere, and the cylinders have all the same altitude •
the sum of the two series will be equal to a cylinder
having the same base and altitude as the hemispbere
Let AFB be a semicircle, and CFDA, CFEB, squares
described on the radius CF, and let CE be the diagonal of
one of the squares BF : Let CF be divided into any num-
ber of equal parts CG, GK, KM, MF; and let 'perpendi¬
culars be drawn through the points of division, meetino'
Fig- the diagonal CE, £
the points 0, P, Q;
the quadrantal arc
BF in the points H,
L, N ; and the side
of the square in the
points R, S, T; con¬
struct the rectangles
CO, GP, KQ, ME,
which will circum¬
scribe the triangle CFE ; construct also the rectangles CH,
GL, KN, which wall be inscribed in the quadrant CFB.
Suppose now the plane of the square to revolve about its
side CF as an axis ; the triangle CFE will then generate
a cone, which will have DE for the diameter of its base,
and C for its vertex ; the quadrant CFB will generate a
hemisphere, having for its base a circle of which AB is a
diameter ; and the square CBEF will generate a cylinder,
having the same base and altitude as the hemisphere: also,
the rectangles described about the triangle CFE will mani¬
festly generate a series of cylinders circumscribing the cone;
the rectangles inscribed in the quadrant will generate a
series of cylinders inscribed in the hemisphere; and the
rectangles CR, GS, KT, ME will generate a series of cy¬
linders which will compose a cylinder having the same base
and altitude as the hemisphere.
The triangles CFE, CGO are manifestly similar, and
CF zr FE ; therefore CG zr GO. In like manner, it may
be proved that CK zz KP and that CM zz MQ.
Join CH, and because CGH is a right-angled triangle,
a circle described with CH as a radius will be equal to two
circles described with CG and GH as radii (2 Cor. 4, 6,
Part L), but CG zz GO, and CH zz GR ; therefore a circle
described with GR as a radius will be equal to two circles
described with GO and GH as radii; hence again it fol¬
lows, that the cylinder generated by the rectangle CR will
be equal to both the cylinders generated by the rectangles
CO and CH, for they have all the same altitude, and the
base of the first is equal to the sum of the bases of the
other two. It may be demonstrated in the same manner
that the cylinder generated by the rectangle GS is equal
to the sum of the cylinders generated by the rectangles u
and GL, and the same of all the rest; therefore the sum
of the cylinders generated by the rectangles CR, GS, K >
ME is equal to the two series of cylinders, one generatec y
the rectangles CO, GP, KQ, ME, and the other generated
by the rectangles CH, GL, KN ; that is, a cylinder having
the same base and altitude as the hemisphere, is equal to t ie
sum of the two series of cylinders, one described about e
cone, and the other described in the hemisphere.
Theorem VI.—Every sphere is two thirds of the ciicuin
scribing cylinder. (Fig. 154.)
Let a figure be constructed exactly as is last proposition,
and to abridge, let C denote the cone, c the series o cy
ders described about it, H the hemisphere, h the cy m
described in it, and K the cylinder having the same ^
and altitude as the hemisphere, or cone. Moreover, p
r
GEO
iree. or the difference between the cone and its circumscribed
^..ylinders, and d! for the difference between the hemisphere
tnd its inscribed cylinders ; then we have
C + c? == c, and H = h d,
md adding equals to equals,
C + H + = e + A + r£'.
jut c + ^ = K (5) ; therefore, C + H + d 1= K + <?,
nd C d" H "i" ^ — d' ~ K, also C + H — K -f- c?' — d.
lence it appears that the difference between C + H and
' is equal to the difference between d and d. Now d is
;ss than the cylinder generated by the rotation of the rect-
ngle ME (Cor. to Prop. 4), and d is less than the cylinder
enerated by the rectangle CR, which is equal to ME ;
lerefore the difference between d and d must be less than
GEO
the same rectangle ; hence the difference between C + H
and K is less than the cylinder generated by the revolution
of the rectangle ME, or is less than a cylinder having the
same base as the cone, and the line FM for its altitude.
From this we may infer, that C + H is exactly equal to
K ; for if there can be any difference, let it be a cylinder
having the same base as the cone, and its altitude equal to
FV ; then FM must be greater then FV ; but the number
of parts into which FC is divided may be so great that FM
may be less than FY; therefore C + H cannot be unequal
to K ; and since C + H — K, and C — (3), therefore
H = f K ; that is, the hemisphere is two thirds of its cir¬
cumscribing cylinder ; and taking the doubles of these, the
whole sphere is two thirds of its circumscribing cylinder.
Euclid.
Book I.
Prop. 4.
5.
6.
8.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
24.
25.
26.
27.1
28./
29.
30.
32.
33.
34.
35. /
36. J
37.1
38. J
).
1.
H
5-J
Geometry.
Part I.
Tiieor. Sect
5.
11.
12. 1.
10. 1.
1. 1.
3. 1.
4.
23.
24. 1.
13. 1.
9. 1.
6. 1.
22. 1.
21. 1.
20. 1.
23. )
24. \ 1.
25. )
28. 1.
26. 1.
1. 4.
2 Cor. to
2. 4.
Euclid.
Book I.
Geometry.
Pr. 41.
47.
48. |
Book II.
Pr. 4.
5. I
6. /
7.
12.
13.
Book III.
Pr. 2.
3.
10.1
:}
11
12
14.
16.
20.
21.
22.
26
27
i}
Part I.
Theor. Sect.
Euclid.
2. 4.
13. 4.
Scholium
15. 4.
Theor. Sect
10. 4.
12. 4.
11. 4.
15. 4.
14. 4.
Theor. Sect
3. 2.
6. 2.
Cor. to
7. 2.
12.
11.
8.
2.
8.
9.
14.
15.
16. 2.
13. 2.
Book III.
Pr. 28. /
29./
31.
32.
35.
36. |
Book V.
Pr. 4.
12.
15.
16.
17.
18.
22.
23.
24.
Book YI.
Pr. 1.1
Geometry.
Part I.
Theor. Sect.
Euclid.
4. 2.
17. 2.
18. 2.
28. 4.
29. 4.
30. 4.
Theor. Sect.
7.
12.
1.
3.
5.
4.
8.
9.
10.
Book VI.
Pr. 2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
8.
14,
15,
16,
17.
19.
20.1
Geometry.
Part I.
Theor. Sect.
Theor. Sect.
Cor. to
5. 4.
Cor. to
6. 4.
31
33.
{
Book XI.
Pr. 1.
2.
3.
4.
6.{
8.
17. 4.
18. 4.
19. 4.
20. 4.
21. 4.
22. 4.
23. 4.
Cor.
24. 4.
8. 4.
25. 4.
26. 4.
27. 4.
1 Cor. to
27. 4.
31. 4.
Euclid.
Book XI.
Geometry.
Part II.
Theor. Sect.
Part. II.
Theor. Sect,
1. 1.
2. 1.
3. 1.
4. 1.
1 Cor. to
5. 1.
5. 1.
M
10.
13.{
.14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
A.
24.
25.
28.
29.
30
31
32.
33.
:}
Book XII.
Pr. 1.
2.
7.
10.
2 Cor. to
5. 1.
10. 1.
2 Cor. to
4. 1.
6. 1.
10. 1.
7. 1.
15. 1.
12. 1.
14. 1.
16. 1.
17. 1.
18. 1.
12. 2.
9. 2.
4. 2.
5. 2.
6. 2.
9. 2.
12. 2.
Part II.
Theor. Sect.
1. 6. of Part I.
4.6. of Part I.
16. 2. of Part II
3. 3.
II.
III. and IV. kings of Great Britain.
GEORGE I
ee Britain.
George, or Knights of St George, has been the deno-
iination of several military orders, of which that of the
rart_er is one of the most illustrious.
lung George’s Islands are two islands in the South Seas,
ing in west longitude 144. 56. and south latitude 14. 28.
ee Polynesia.
George, St, or George of Cappadocia, a name by which
'oral orders, both military and religious, are denominat-
1 • It took its rise from a saint or hero famous thrcugh-
ut all the East, called by the Greeks HtyaXau-apryj, or the
"eat Martyr. 7 5 5
Gn some medals of the emperors John and Manuel
°mnem may be seen the figure of St George armed, hold-
(R*)
ing a sword or javelin in one hand, and in the other a buck¬
ler, with this inscription, an O, containing therein A, and
P
PE—ITOC, making O APICES PEOPPI02, or the Holy
O
George. He is generally represented on horseback, being
supposed to have frequently engaged in combat in that
manner. He is highly venerated throughout Armenia,
Muscovy, and all the countries which adhere to the Greek
ritual ; from the Greek his worship has long ago been re¬
ceived into that of the Latin church ; and England and
Portugal have both chosen him as their patron saint.
Great difficulties have been raised about this saint or
hero, whose very existence has been called in question.
Dr Heylin, who wrote most largely concerning him, con-
467
George.
Table showing the Theorem of the foregoing Treatise, that corresponds to each of the principal Propositions in
the first Six and in the Eleventh and Twelfth Books of Euclid’s Elements.
468
GEO
GEO
George, eluded by giving him up entirely, and supposing him only
a symbolical device; whilst Dr Pettingal turned him into
a mere Basilidian symbol of victory. But Mr Pegg, in a
paper in the Archceoloc/ici, attempted to restore the hero;
and, finally, Mr Gibbon sunk him into an Arian bishop in
the reigns of Constantins and Julian.
George the Cappadocian was so surnamed, according to
some, from his parents or education, and was born at Epi-
phania, in Cilicia, in a fuller’s shop. From this obscure
and servile origin he raised himself by the talents of a pa¬
rasite ; and the patrons whom he had assiduously flattered
procured for their worthless dependent a lucrative com¬
mission or contract to supply the army with bacon. His
employment was mean, and he rendered it infamous. He
accumulated wealth by the basest arts of fraud and cor¬
ruption ; but his malversations were so notorious that he
was at length compelled to escape from the pursuit of
justice. After this disgrace, in which he appears to have
saved his fortune at the expense of his character, he em¬
braced, with real or affected zeal, the profession of Arian-
ism. From the love or the ostentation of learning, he
collected a valuable library of history, rhetoric, philoso¬
phy, and theology ; and the choice of the prevailing fac¬
tion promoted George of Cappadocia to the throne of Atha¬
nasius. His conduct in this station is represented by his¬
torians as polluted by cruelty and avarice, and his death is
considered as a just punishment for the enormities of his
life, amongst which Mr Gibbon seems to rank his enmity
to the gods.
The immediate occasion of his death, however, as nar¬
rated by ecclesiastical writers, does not appear calculated
to add any stain to his memory. There was in the city
of Alexandria a place in which the heathen priests had
been accustomed to offer human sacrifices. This place,
as being of no use, Constantius gave to the church of Alex¬
andria, and George the bishop issued orders that it should
be cleared in order to build a Christian church on the spot.
In doing this they discovered an immense subterranean
cavern, in which the heathen mysteries had been perform¬
ed, and where there were many human skulls. These, and
other things which they found in the place, the Christians
brought out and exposed to public ridicule. Provoked at
this exhibition, the heathens suddenly took arms, and rush¬
ing upon the Christians, killed many of them with swords,
clubs, and stones ; some also they strangled, and several
they crucified. The Christians, therefore, proceeded no
farther in clearing the temple ; but the heathens, pursuing
their advantage, seized the bishop whilst he was in the
church, and threw him into prison. The next day they
dispatched him; and then fastening the body to a camel,
they dragged it about the streets all day, and in the even¬
ing burned the corpse and the camel together. This fate,
according to Sozomen, the bishop owed in part to his haugh¬
tiness whilst in favour with Constantius; and some think
that the friends of Athanasius were concerned in this mur¬
der ; but the former ascribes it chiefly to the inveteracy
of the heathens, whose superstitions he had been active in
abolishing.
This George, the Arian bishop of Alexandria, was a
man of letters, and had a valuable library, which Julian
ordained to be seized for his own use. In his orders con¬
cerning the collection, he says that many of the books
were on philosophical and rhetorical subjects, though many
of them related to the doctrine of the impious Galileans,
as he affected to call the Christians. “ These books,”
says he, “ I could wish to have utterly destroyed ; but lest
books of value should be destroyed along with them, let
those also be carefully sought for.”
But Mr Gibbon gives a different version of the affair of
George’s murder, which he relates with different circum¬
stances. “ The Pagans,” says he, “ excited his devout
avarice; and the rich temples of Alexandria were eitherk,^
pillaged or insulted by the haughty prelate, who exclaim- 8
ed, in a loud and threatening tone, ‘ How long will these
sepulchres be permitted to stand?’ Under the reign of'(i
Constantius, he was expelled by the fury, or rather by the '
justice, of the people; and it was not without a violent ^
struggle that the civil and military powers of the state
could restore his authority, and gratify his revenge. The
messenger who proclaimed at Alexandria the accession of
Julian, announced the downfall of the archbishop. George,
with two of his obsequious ministers, Count Diodorus, and
Darcontius, master of the mint, was ignominiously drag-
ged in chains to the public prison. At the end of twenty-
four days, the prison was forced open by the rage of a su¬
perstitious multitude, impatient of the tedious forms of
judicial proceedings. The enemies of gods and men ex¬
pired under their cruel insults; the lifeless bodies of the
archbishop and his associates were carried in triumph
through the streets on the back of a camel; and the in¬
activity of the Athanasian party was esteemed a shining i
example of evangelical patience. The remains of these
guilty wretches were thrown into the sea; and the popu¬
lar leaders of the tumult declared their resolution to dis¬
appoint the devotion of the Christians, and to intercept
the future honours of these martyrs, who had been pun¬
ished, like their predecessors, by the enemies of their re¬
ligion. The fears of the Pagans were just, and their pre¬
cautions ineffectual. The meritorious death of the arch¬
bishop obliterated the memory of his life. The rival of
Athanasius was dear and sacred to the Arians, and the
seeming conversion of these sectaries introduced his wor¬
ship into the bosom of the Catholic church. The odious
stranger, disguising every circumstance of time and place,
assumed the mask of a martyr, a saint, and a Christian
hero; and the infamous George of Cappadocia has been
transformed into the renowned St George of England, the
patron of arms, of chivalry, and of the Garter.”
Knights of St George. See Garter. There have
been various other orders under this denomination, most
of which are now extinct, particularly one founded by the
Emperor Frederick III. in the year 1470, to guard the
frontiers of Bohemia and Hungary against the Turks; and
another, called St George of Alfama, founded by the kings
of Aragon ; and another in Austria and Carinthia.
Religious of St George. Of these there were differ¬
ent orders and congregations, particularly canons regular
of St George in Alga, at Venice, established by authori¬
ty of Pope Boniface IX. in the year 1404. The founda¬
tion of this order was laid by Bartolomeo Colonna, who
preached in 1396 at Padua, and some other villages in the
state of Venice. Pope Pius V. in 1570, gave these ca¬
nons precedence over all other religious orders.
St George, a fort and town of Asia, in the peninsula
on this side the Ganges, and on the coast of Coromandel,
belonging to the British. It is otherwise called Madras,
and by the natives Chilipatam. See Madras.
St George’s, the largest of the Bermuda or Summer
Islands. Long. 65. 10. W. Lat. 32. 30. N.
Cross of St George, a red cross in a held argent, form¬
ing part of the British standard.
George, Lake, a lake in the state of New York, North
America. It lies to the south of Lake Champlain, am
communicates with it. Lake George is a romantic and
beautiful sheet of water, about thirty-seven miles in length,
and from one to four or five miles in breadth. It is remark¬
able for the transparency of its waters, which contain an
abundance of excellent fish. The lake is in general very
deep, and interspersed with numerous islands, one o
which, Diamond Island, formerly possessed a fort.
George’s Channel, a dangerous passage in the has ■
ern Seas, between the great Nicobar Island and the others.
*
GEO
GEO
y
?!
!
J
The danger in this passage arises from the rapidity with
awn which the tide runs, which is at the rate of about five
1 miles an hour, and from rocks, so that it is not safe for
,:»rgii any vessel to enter it.
GEORGETOWN, the chief town of Prince of Wales’
Island, which is well built, having spacious streets run¬
ning at right angles. It is bounded on the north and east
by the sea, and on the west by a high road.
Georgetown, a post-town and port of entry in Wash¬
ington county, district of Columbia, in North America.
It is situated on the north-eastern bank of the Potomac,
about two hundred miles from its mouth, and three from
Washington, the capital. It possesses several public
buildings, institutions, places of public worship, schools,
and the like, and is a place of considerable trade. In
consequence of the difficulties of navigation occasioned by
a bar about three miles below the town, a considerable
part of the produce is sent to Alexandria for exportation.
Georgetown College is a Catholic institution, under the
direction of the incorporated Catholic clergy of Maryland.
The population of this town in 1830 amounted to 8441.
Georgetown, a post-town, port of entry, and capital of
Georgetown district, in South Carolina. It is situated on
the west side of Winyaw Bay, about sixty miles north-
north-east of Charleston. It enjoys some trade, and pos¬
sesses the usual public buildings, together with a popula¬
tion of about 2000.
GEORGIA, or Grusia. This extensive tract of coun¬
try, which is situated between the Black and the Caspian
Seas, now forms a province of Russia by the encroachments
of that power on the side of Persia. It is diversified by
great inequalities of surface ; but contains many fertile and
beautiful valleys, which are finely contrasted with the moun¬
tainous character of the regions of Caucasus. The hills
are clothed with the finest woods, consisting of oak, ash,
chestnut, beech, and elm. Some vines grow perfectly wild,
producing the finest grapes; and the wines produced have
always, according to the report of Sir R. K. Porter, been
esteemed for softness, lightness, and delicacy of taste. The
valleys are extremely fertile, producing cotton, as w’ell as
the finest European fruit trees, and abundance of hemp,
flax, rice, millet, barley, and wheat. The country is copi¬
ously watered by the rivers which flow from the mountains,
and produce great variety of delicious fish. Pheasants, wild
fowl of every kind, antelopes, deer, sheep, with all sorts
of domestic cattle, are found in the valleys. In the moun¬
tains are found mines of gold, silver, and other minerals.
I he habits of the people are such as might be expected in
their low state of civilization. A struggle for independence
was long maintained by the Georgians against the inroads
of Persia. But it was at last reduced into a province of that
vast monarchy, and it was afterwards the arena of the Persian
and Russian wars, by which the country was ravaged ; and
the people, far from being naturally industrious, appeared to
despise every pursuit which required labour. They neglect¬
ed agriculture, and were often engaged in intestine wars, or
m forays on their neighbours for the sake of plunder; and were
j requently exposed, in consequence, to severe retaliation from
the Lesghees, a barbarous tribe, subsisting, like most of the
mountain tribes of Asia, by pillage. But about the year 1800
II was reduced into a province of the Russian empire ; and,
under the iron rule of that despotic power, order has been
re-established, the traveller has been protected from rob-
ery> commerce and agriculture begin to be followed,
'i ‘l favourable revolution appears to have taken place in
!e habits and manners of the people. Sir R. K. Porter,
"ho has given an interesting account of these newly-con-
ijncrcd provinces, mentions that the different European
governors have generally endeavoured to conciliate the
f’vop e and the nobles, and that the country being now
e actually guarded from the destructive inroads of plun¬
dering banditti or foreign enemies, the nobles begin to feel
the importance of the station they hold in the country;
whilst they have been still further countenanced by the dis¬
tribution of medals and orders of distinction amongst the
leading men, with titles also and commissions of military
rank in the Russian armies. The Georgians are tall and
well formed. The Georgian noble is distinguished by a
sombre cast of visage, which, though stern, is of a fine con¬
tour, and harmonizes well with the minuteness of his figure,
and the style of his dress, which consists of an under gar¬
ment of fine pink cloth worn as a shirt, but leaving the neck
entirely bare ; a vest of cloth with sleeves sitting easy on
the arm; a tunic descending over this to the knees, open¬
ing before, and bound round with a white sash, to which is
attached the sword; trousers to the knees; whilst a sort of
stocking, and a close-laced half boot, complete this pic¬
turesque costume. Ihe Georgian women equal the men
in grace, and are famed all over the East. Their dress is
cumbersome and overloaded with ornament, and the face
painted so as entirely to injure its expression. Under its
gallant prince Heraclius, Georgia rose to the dignity of a
separate kingdom. This country originally included nearly
the whole northern declivity of the Caucasus, extending
from the Black Sea to the Caspian. It is now divided into
the four provinces of Cartuel, Kaket or Kacheti, Kisik
called sometimes Tomchet, and Georgian Armenia. The
inhabitants consist chiefly of Christians of the Greek com¬
munion ; to which are added Jews, Tartars, Armenians,
and Russians. The chief rivers are the Kur and the Ar-
axes, which fall into the Caspian. The chief, and indeed
the only place of any consequence, is Tiflis, which, under
the protecting policy of Russia, has rapidly grown up into
a considerable mart of eastern commerce, and is on the
increase. The inhabitants are not estimated at more than
320,000.
Georgia, one of the United States of North Ame¬
rica, is situated between 30. 19. and 35. north latitude,
and 3. 52. and 8. 47. west longitude. It is bounded on
the north by Tennessee and North Carolina, on the north¬
east by South Carolina, on the south-east by the Atlan¬
tic, on the south by Florida, and on the west by Alabama.
In length it extends 300 miles, having an average breadth
of about 200 miles, and containing about 58,000 square
miles. For nearly 100 miles along the sea-shore there
is a broad maritime belt of level country. Along the
coast there are a number of islands ; whilst the numerous
rivers, creeks, and inlets of the sea overflow the swamps
or marshes with which they are bordered at almost every
return of the tide. These swamps, however, constitute
the rice plantations. Beyond the sea-marshes commen¬
ces an extensive belt of pine barrens, extending from
sixty to ninety miles from the sea, and closely resembling
those of South Carolina. Beyond this belt the country
becomes diversified with hills and mountains, and posses¬
ses a strong rich soil, called technically mulatto soil. This
region is bounded on the west by a chain of hills called
the Blue Ridge, which here swells into elevations about
1500 feet in height. An extensive track of table-land now
succeeds, possessing a black soil of great fertility, in which
pines and evergreens are more rare, their place being
supplied by black walnut and other forest trees, which
indicate a rich soil.
The principal rivers are, the Savannah, Ogeechee, Ala-
tamaha, Satilla, Oakmulgee, Oconee, St Mary’s Flint,
Chatahoochee, Tallapoosa, and Coosa. Tides flow up the
Savannah for twenty-five miles, and the largest vessels
can approach within three miles of the city of Savannah,
eighteen miles from the ocean. The Ogeechee river pur¬
sues a south-east course through the state for 200 miles.
A canal from the Savannah to the Ogeechee has been
finished, and it is in contemplation to extend it to the AJa-
469
470
GEO
G E P
Georgia.
tamaha, which will make in all seventy-two miles. The
latter river is a broad and deep stream, having numeious
branches.
Amongst the mineral productions of Georgia may be
mentioned copper and iron ores, the latter being found in
great abundance. The gold region extends in a broad
belt through this state ; and it is conjectured that gold
would be found much more abundantly in the high lands of
Georgia and Alabama than in the eastern section of the
gold region.
In front of the broad belt of salt marsh which skirts the
sea-shore, there is a chain of islands of great value for
their capability of yielding sea-island cotton, and as re¬
treats, during the sickly months, for the low country plant¬
ers. The soil of these islands is rich, and covered with
pine, hickory, and live oak, in their natural state. The
names of the principal of these are, Tybee, Assaw, Ossa-
baw, St Catherine’s, Cumberland, Jekyl, Sapelo, and St
Symon’s.
The climate is similar to that of South Carolina ; indeed
in a variety of its features Georgia resembles that state.
The low countries have their sickly season, and the plant¬
ers are compelled to fly in summer to retreats amongst the
high pine woods. The districts central to the rice swamps
are invariably insalubrious. In some portions of Georgia
the temperature approaches the tropical more than it
does in any part of South Carolina, and these districts are
accordingly better adapted to the cultivation of the sugar¬
cane, the olive, and sweet orange. The hilly and western
parts of the state are as healthy as any part of America.
Winter may be said to commence in the middle of De¬
cember, and to end in the middle of February.
The staple production of the country is cotton, of which
both the black-seeded and sea-island kinds are reared.
The product next in importance is rice, with which grain
the swamps are sowed. Indigo and tobacco are also cul¬
tivated to some extent, but sugar and wine are only pro¬
duced in small quantities. The cultivation of silk has been
successfully attempted, and the quality is said to be ex¬
cellent. The forests aflbrd an abundant supply of fine
timber, consisting chiefly of oak, pine, hickory, mulberry,
and cedar. Melons grow in high perfection, and figs are
also common. Oranges, limes, citrons, pears, peaches, and
a few other fruits of mild climates, are likewise cultivated.
The exports, consisting chiefly of cotton, rice, deer skins,
timber, &c. amounted in 1828 to 4,981,376 dollars. Ihe
tonnage was at that period 13,959 tons.
Savannah is the commercial capital of Georgia. It is
situated on the western bank of the river of the same name,
at about eighteen miles from its estuary. It stands upon
a low sandy plain, and contains twelve public buildings
and eight churches. There are ten public squares plant¬
ed with trees, amongst which the beautiful China trees
are conspicuous. Savannah is a place of considerable
trade, and occasionally exports annually 120,000 bales of
cotton, besides large amounts of rice and tobacco. The
exports of rice were, in 1826, 11,455 tierces, and of tobac¬
co 170 hogsheads. The town is defended by two forts,
and the entrance to the river is indicated by a lighthouse
on Tybee Island. The population was, in 1830, 7473.
Augusta is a handsome town, situated on the western bank
of the Savannah, about 127 miles above Savannah. It is
well laid out, and chiefly built of brick. Being midway
between the upper and lower country, it constitutes a
central emporium of business; no town of the same size
enjoys more. There is a communication by means of
steam-boats between it and Savannah. The population in
1830 amounted to 6696. Milledgeville is situated on the
western bank of the Oconee, 300 miles, by the curves of
the river, from the ocean. Its situation is elevated and
pleasant, and it is central to a fertile and populous coun-
try. It contains several public buildings, two or three r
churches, and about 3000 inhabitants. Athens, which ”
also lies on the west bank of the Oconee, is the seat of the Gq
university of Georgia. The names of the other principal ^ J
towns or villages are, Waynesborough, Louisville, George¬
town, Warrenton, Dublin, Laudersville, Sparta, Eatonton
Greensburgh, Madison, Jefferson, Clarksborough, Wat-
kinsville, Marion, Darien, Hinton, Monticello, Sunbury
and St Mary’s.
The legislature of Georgia, which is called the general
assembly, consists of a senate and a house of representa¬
tives. It meets on the first Monday of November. The
members are chosen by the counties, each county send¬
ing one senator, and from one to four representatives, ac¬
cording to the amount of its population. In various parts
of the state a number of negroes are employed by govern-
ment in working on roads, rivers, &c. The university at
Athens is a well-built edifice, furnished with a respectable
library, and an assortment of philosophical apparatus. The
funds amount to 136,000 dollars. According to a Gazetteer
of Georgia, there are about eighty incorporated academies
in this state, sixty-four of which have been brought into
operation. The average number of pupils in each is forty-
seven, making in all 3008. In the northern and southern
sections of the state there are probably five common schools
in each county, forty counties, thirty pupils each, 6000;
in the middle section say seven common schools in each
county, twenty-five counties, 5250; total number of pupils
in the academies and common schools, 14,258. The state
possesses academy and poor-school funds to a consider¬
able amount. In 1792 an act was passed by which every
county was allowed to purchase the value of L.1000 of
confiscated property ; in each county 1000 acres of land
were granted for the support of schools, and also a fund
of 250,000 dollars to be vested in stocks for the same pur¬
pose. The prevailing religious denominations of Georgia
are the baptists and methodists.
The first settlement of this state was made at Savan¬
nah by General Oglethorpe in the year 1733. The na¬
tive Indians of this state having been more disposed to
adopt the arts and modes of civilized life than in others,
the white inhabitants have gradually acquired a superi¬
ority over the lands. The greater portions of two consi¬
derable .tribes, the Cherokees and Creeks, reside within
the chartered limits of Georgia. Those of the former
tribe in particular have made very considerable advance¬
ment in civilization. They possess good houses, live in
villages, pursue agriculture, and have 1277 slaves. Ihey
have amongst them carpenters and blacksmiths, and the
women spin and weave, and make butter and cheese. The
number of these Indians is about 15,000, and they have
increased within the last six years. Their form of govern¬
ment is similar to that of the country in which they live.
Numerous missionary establishments have been fixed
amongst them, in the schools of which, according to the
Gazetteer formerly referred to, 500 children are learning
the English language. Georgia is divided into seventy-
eight counties, and the population in 1830 amounted to
516,504, of which number between the third and the halt
are slaves. f
GEORGIC, a poetical composition upon the subject or
husbandry, containing rules clothed in a pleasing dress,
and embellished with all the beauties and elegancies o
poetry. The word is formed from the Latin georgunis,
which is merely the Greek yswgy/xoj, from y)j, terra, ear ,
and igyuZoijjiu, opero, I work or labour, from tvyw, opus,
GEPID/E, Gepides, or Gepidi, in Ancient Geography,
according to Procopius, were a Gothic people, or a branc
of that race, some of whom, in the migration o
Goths, settled in an island at the mouth of the Vis >
4
*
G E R G E R 471
, which they called Gepidos, after their own name, which
I signifies lazy or slothful; whilst others established them-
' jrar;l selves in Dacia, and called their settlement there Gepidia.
'Y''< GERA, a city, the capital of the principality of Reuss.
It stands in a beautiful valley on the river Elster, and has
several public buildings, 850 houses, with 9050 inhabitants.
It is a place of considerable manufacturing industry in li¬
nen, woollen, and cotton goods, and in brewing and distil¬
ling. Long. 12. 58. 41. E. Eat. 50. 23. 32. N.
GERARD, Alexander, eldest son of the reverend
Gilbert Gerard, minister of Chapel-Garioch, in the coun¬
ty of Aberdeen, was born at that place on the 22d of Feb¬
ruary 1728. He received the rudiments of his education at
the parish school of Foveran, where he made rapid pro¬
gress; but his father having died when he was only ten
years of age, his mother soon afterwards removed with her
family to Aberdeen, and young Gerard was sent to the
grammar-school of that city, where he attended for two
years. At the end of this period, being deemed fit for the
university, he was entered as a student in Marischal Col¬
lege, where he also distinguished himself by assiduity and
proficiency in his studies ; and, after passing through the
usual academical course of four years, comprehending the
study of Latin, Greek, mathematics, and philosophy, he
was admitted to the degree of master of arts. He then
commenced the study of theology, which he prosecuted in
the universities of Aberdeen and Edinburgh ; and in 1748,
when he had little more than completed his twentieth year,
he became a licensed preacher in the church of Scbtland.
In 1750 he was chosen assistant to Mr David Fordyce,
professor of philosophy in Marischal College ; and two years
ifterwards, upon the death of Mr Fordyce, who had been
Irowned on the coast of Holland, Gerard was appointed
;o succeed him. At this period it was the practice in Ma-
dschal College, as it continued to be in King’s College,
’or the same professor to carry forward a class of students,
luring three successive years, through all the branches of
philosophy which were then taught in the college, namely,
ogic, ontology, pneumatics, morals, politics, and natural
philosophy; and, in point of fact, Mr Gerard conducted
pne class through this extensive course, the mathematics
urd the Greek being taught by separate professors. But
ibout the year 1754 this system, which differed but little
rom that of tutors in the English universities, wTas abandon-
:d, and, in Marischal College, each professor was restrict¬
'd to one department of science. In vindication of the
>ew plan of academical study, Gerard wrote an able pamph-
et> "hich was printed by appointment of the college, and
tppears to have satisfied every one as to the propriety of
he change which had been introduced. The department
issigned to Gerard, in consequence of this distribution,
vas that of moral philosophy and logic, the duties of w hich
ie discharged with unwrearied assiduity and distinguished
access. He also became a member of a literary society
it Aberdeen, consisting of Doctors Blackwell, Gregory,
‘Cid, Campbell, Beattie, andother persons less known to the
lor ( as authors, which met regularly every fortnight dur-
| ng the winter, when the members communicated their
entiments with the utmost freedom, and received mutual
Improvement from the interchange of ideas in their literary
iscussions. From the stimulus thus given may be said to
iave originated Reid’s Inquiry into the Human Mind, Gre-
orp § Comparative I iew, Gerard’s Essay on Genius, Beat-
le %hmy on Truth, and Campbell’s Philosophy of Rhetoric.
a S eptember 1759, Gerard was ordained a minister of the
n,UrC °} Scotland; the following year he was appointed pro-
-ss°r o divinity in Marischal College, and minister of the
1 c) nars church in Aberdeen ; and, about the same time,
doctor in divinity. He continued to perform
u ies attached to these offices till the year 1771, when
Signed his professorship in Marischal College, as well
as his church living, and pvas removed to the theological Gerarde
chair in King’s College, which he held till the period of his li
death, in the beginning of 1795. This event happened on Gergong.
his birthday, the 22d of February, when, having suffered
much from a schirrous tumor, he expired without a groan,
in the sixty-seventh year of his age. Dr Gerard’s attain¬
ments were solid rather than brilliant; the effect of close and
almost incessant study aided by a sound judgment, rather
than the inspirations of strong and original genius. In all
the relations of life he was alike estimable and exemplary.
As a clergyman, his conduct was marked by prudence,
propriety, and diligence in the discharge of his ministerial
duties ; as a professor, his principal aim was to avoid im¬
posing on his pupils any favourite system of opinions, and,
instead of encouraging dogmatism, the parent of intoler¬
ance, to impress them with a sense of the importance of
the ministerial office, to teach them the proper manner of
discharging its various duties, and to enable them, by a
knowledge of the Scriptures, and an acquaintance with the
principles of sound biblical criticism, to form a just and im¬
partial judgment respecting controverted subjects. Pos¬
sessing large stores of theological learning, he was not
more judicious in selecting his topics than successful in his
manner of treating them ; and he had the merit of intro¬
ducing a new, and, in many respects, better plan of theolo¬
gical education than that which had been previously fol¬
lowed. As a writer, he does not rank very high. He is
clear, sensible, judicious, and well informed ; almost never
striking, forcible, eloquent, or original. His Essay on Genius
is more valuable for its facts than its opinions, and seldom
evinces that nice, delicate, and refined discrimination with¬
out which it is impossible for any writer, whatever his
talents or judgment may otherwise be, to distinguish and
render perceptible to others the various shades and grada¬
tions of genius. In domestic life Dr Gerard was amiable
and exemplary ; steady and disinterested in his friendships;
hospitable, benevolent, and unassuming in the intercourse
of society ; uniting with the sobriety of the Christian pas¬
tor the good breeding of the gentleman, and the cheerful¬
ness, affability, and ease of the agreeable companion. Dr
Gerard’s works are, 1. An Essay on Taste, to which the
gold medal was, in 1756, adjudged by the Philosophical
Society of Edinburgh ; 2. Dissertations on the Genius and
Evidences of Christianity, 1766 ; 3. An Essay on Genius,
1774; 4. Two volumes of Sermons, 1780, 1782; 5. A
part of his theological course, entitled The Pastoral Care,
published in 1799, by his son Dr Gilbert Gerard, who suc¬
ceeded him as professor of divinity in King’s College.
GERARDE, John, a surgeon in London, and the great¬
est botanist of his time, was many years chief gardener to
Lord Burghley, who was himself a great lover of plants,
and had the best collection of any nobleman in the king¬
dom, amongst which were a great number of exotics intro¬
duced by Gerarde. In 1597 the latter published his Her¬
bal, which was printed at the expense of J. Norton, who
procured from Frankfort the same blocks in wood which
were used in the herbal of Tabernaemontanus. In 1663,
Thomas Johnson, an apothecary, published an improved
edition of Gerarde’s book, which met with such approba¬
tion in the university of Oxford that they conferred upon
him the degree of doctor of physic. The descriptions in
the Herbal are plain and familiar ; and both these authors
have laboured more to make their readers understand the
characters of the plants than to inform them that they them¬
selves understood Greek and Latin. The Herbal of Ge¬
rarde is now considered only as a literary curiosity. The
figures in general express very accurately the characters of
the plants which they are intended to represent.
GERGONG, or Gherghong, a city of Assam, and
formerly the principal town of that country, situated on the
Dekhow river, one of the numerous tributary streams of the
472
G E R
Germain- Brahmapootra. It occupied formerly a very large space,
en-Laye, every house being surrounded by a garden, and the rajah s
palace being encompassed by a stockade of bamboos and
r Ji . a wet ditch ; so that the city covered a space of nearly ten
cus miles. The city, palaces, and fort are now a heap of
ruins. Tong. 94. 40. E. Lat. 26. 5o. N.
GERMAIN-EN-LAYE, St, a city of France, in the
department of the Seine and Oise, and arrondissement of
Versailles, twelve miles from Paris. It is built on a slope
rising from the river Seine. In the environs are some
fine woods surrounding a park, in which is the royal pa¬
lace, the birthplace of Louis XIV., and where our King
James II. held his court after his loss of the British crown.
The city contains about 12,000 inhabitants, some of
whom are employed in tanneries and hosiery, and many
in cultivating garden vegetables for the supply of the me¬
tropolis. Long. 2. 7. 35. E. Lat. 48. 50. 37. N.
GERMAINS, St, a borough and market-town of Corn¬
wall, in the hundred of East Cornwall, 227 miles trom
London. It was atone time, from 981 to 1049, the see of
a bishop, and the ancient cathedral is still used as the
parish church : the ruins of the episcopal palace may also
be traced near the town. Two members are returned to
parliament, chosen by the inhabitants vyithin the borough,
which is of very contracted limits. There is a market
on Friday, but it is thinly attended. The population
amounted in 1801 to 2030, in 1811 to 2139, in 1821 to
2404, and in 1831 to 2586.
GERMAN, in matters of genealogy, signifies whole,
entire, or own. Germani, quasi eadem stirpe geniti. Hence
brother-german denotes a brother both by the father s and
mother’s side, in contradistinction to uterine brothers, who
are so only by the mother’s side $ or brothers consanguinean,
who are so by the father’s side alone. Cousins-german are
those in the first or nearest degree, being the children of
brothers or sisters. Amongst the Romans we find no in¬
stance of marriage between cousins-german before the time
of the Emperor Claudius, when they were very frequent.
Theodosius prohibited such marriages under very severe
penalties, including even fine and proscription.
GERMANIA. See Germany.
GERMANIC US, the son of Drusus and Antonia the
younger, born 16 b. c. and died 19 a. d., who seems to have
inherited all the virtues of his father, and to ha\ e been dis¬
tinguished, in a profligate and selfish age, for strictly ho¬
nourable conduct, and a kind regard to the feelings of others.
He was a particular favourite of Augustus, who caused
him to be adopted (4 a. d.) into the family of his uncle
Tiberius, and gave him the command of eight legions on
the banks of the Rhine (7 a. d.). Here he remained till
the death of Augustus (14 a. d.), regulating the affairs of
Gaul, and keeping in check the restless and warlike Ger¬
mans beyond the Rhine. He was engaged in collecting
the revenue in Gaul when the news of the emperor s de¬
mise reached him, and he does not appear to have hesitat¬
ed a moment as to the course which his duty called on him
to pursue. Though urged by his personal friends, and not
ignorant of the strong party which the popular conduct of
his family had secured to him, he refused to contest the
crown with his uncle Tiberius. On the contrary, he hur¬
ried to the armies in Germany to employ his influence in
inducing them to submit to the authority of Tiberius, and
upon his arrival found that the armies of both the Upper
and Lower Rhine had refused to take the oath of allegiance,
and wished to proclaim himself emperor. It required all
his firmness and prudence to extricate himself from the
G E R
difficulties in which he found himself involved, and he only Ge-
succeeded in quelling the sedition by forging an imperial
rescript, granting them all that they demanded. The ap- Ge
pearance of deputies from the senate caused the sedition ^
again to break out; but he contrived to induce the less vio-W
lent part of the soldiers to seize the ringleaders and put
them to death. (Tacit. Ann. i. 31-35.) He then led his
troops against the Marsi and Catti, to give them an oppor¬
tunity of atoning for their conduct, and laid waste the coun¬
try inhabited by these tribes. The next year Arminius,
who possessed great influence with his countrymen, in¬
duced them to revolt. The Cherusci, one of the most pow¬
erful nations of Germany, and all the surrounding tribes,
prepared to make an incursion into the Roman territory;
but Germanicus, becoming acquainted with their inten¬
tions, anticipated them in their movements, and boldly pe¬
netrated into their country. Defeating the Bructeri near
the spot where Verus and his legions had fallen, he pur¬
sued Arminius ; but the battle which he fought was doubt¬
ful. Next year he determined to save his army from the
risks and fatigues of a march through a thickly-wooded
and difficult country, by building a fleet and conducting it
along the coast. He was successful in this proceeding, and
landed his army at the mouth of the river Amisia, Em.
He defeated the united forces of the Germans in two bat¬
tles ; but as he was returning to the Rhine he was over¬
taken by a tempest, and many of his vessels were lost.
Tiberius, suspicious of his intentions, and jealous of his po¬
pularity, took this opportunity of withdrawing him from the
scene of his glory. On his return to Rome he enjoyed the
honour of a triumph for all the victories he had gained over
the Germans. (Tacit. Ann. i. 51—71; ii. 6-26.)
Germanicus w as too formidable a subject and too virtuous
a character not to excite unmingled fear in the mind of the
suspicious Tiberius ; and as the tyrant did not dare to cut
him off in presence of the Roman people, he sent him into
honourable banishment, by giving him the command of
the province of Asia. Thither the emperor had also sent
Piso, who was devoted to his interests, and the uncompro¬
mising enemy of Germanicus, a person, in short, who would
stop at nothing to rid himself of his opponent. At Anti¬
och Germanicus was taken ill, and died after a short illness,
the innocent victim of Piso and his master Tiberius. He
was deeply regretted by the Roman people, who regarded
him as likely to bring back the halcyon days of the Augus¬
tan age. It will readily be imagined that he was a patron
of literature and the sciences ; and he was himself an au¬
thor, having translated the Phenomena of Aratus, and writ¬
ten epigrams, several of which have been preserved.
have been published in a work entitled Carmina tanaim
Ceesarece, Coburg, 1715. His life has been written y
Beaufort, Leyden, 1741. . T
GERMANO, St, a city of the province Terra di na
voro, in the kingdom of Naples. It stands at the loot oi
the mountain on which the magnificent convent ot Monte
Cassino is built. It contains 4839 inhabitants, it
markable as the spot where the battle was foug it,in ’
in which Nugent scattered and destroyed the an y
MGERMANTOWN, a post-town of North America, in
the state of Pennsylvania, and county of Philade P 1 •
is pleasantly situated about seven miles north0
phia, the capital. Most of the houses are bui m .
tinuous line of street, which is about two miles i e
This place possesses considerable manufactures, a r
pulation of about 5000.
473
man
GERMANY.
This name was given by the Romans to a country inha-
bited by various small tribes, under different names, and
' ^ probably of different origins, but who were so nearly si¬
milar in manners, language, and religion, as to lead those
further advanced in civilization to confound them all un¬
der one common denomination. Under that denomina¬
tion was comprehended not only the country now called
Germany, but Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Livo¬
nia, and Prussia. The name is said to be derived from
two words, Ghar man or Wehr-man, meaning war-man or
warrior, which is also the signification of two other words,
Ale man, of the same import. They were by themselves
called Teutones, from one of their national divinities, Teut,
or, as is sometimes said, Thuiskon, who seems to have been
the general object of veneration, and from whom the name
is derived which is now assumed by all the people who call
their country Teutchland or Deutchland.
The Rhine on the west, and the Vistula on the east,
were considered, at the most remote periods, as the boun¬
daries of Germany ; whilst on the north it extended along
the ocean and the Baltic Sea, and on the south was termi¬
nated by the river Danube. But such boundaries were by
no means definite ; for many German tribes inhabited the
southern banks of the Rhine as far as the Scheldt. Be¬
tween the Rhine and the Moselle were the Ubii; and higher
up, but beyond the latter river, were the Treviri, and then
the Triboci, the Neimetes, and the Vangiones. The Me-
diomatrici were planted along the Moselle, near the site of
the present city of Metz ; and above them, on the Rhine, in
the present Swiss canton of Basil, were the Raurici or Rau-
raci. The ancient nations of Vindelicia were settled be¬
tween the sources of the Rhine and of the Danube. No-
ricum was inhabited by several tribes between the rivers
Drave and Danube, and comprehended the provinces now
known by the names of Austria, Styria, Carinthia, Tyrol,
and Bavaria. Beyond the Danube, to the westward of the
Marcomannj, the country was occupied by the Hermunduri,
and extended to the north along the Hercynian Mountains
to the river Sala. A nation beyond the Hercynian Moun¬
tains, known then as the Boiohemum, and in modern times
as Bohemia, were in contact with the Quadii, whose terri¬
tory, now called Moravia, touched, on its southern part, the
Danube. These two tribes, with the Marcomanni, and
some smaller clans, were comprehended under the general
name of Suevi, a people who at a subsequent period forced
their way into Spain, and established themselves in that
peninsula as a warlike and independent nation. The Suevi
were a powerful nation, who extended themselves along
the Hercynian Forest, through which they penetrated, and
occupied a tract of land extending from the Vistula to the
Elbe. Among their possessions were the divisions which
subsequently obtained the names of Saxony, Brandenburg,
Eusatia, and Silesia. One subdivision of them, called the
Semnones, grew sufficiently powerful to seize some of the
richest provinces of Gaul; whilst another, the vEstii, pos¬
sessed the borders of the Baltic Sea, whence they drew
rouch amber, of which they made use in traffic with the
surrounding tribes. These last, according to Tacitus, were
'Jorshippers of the mother of the gods, and relied on her
l0!1 protection. They are said to have been more indus-
riious than the rest of the Germans in the cultivation of
le'r lands, and at a very early period produced corn. Their
amber was reported to have been obtained by diving in
. rivers and the sea. This substance was then highly
estimated; and at a subsequent period, in the reign of
ero, a Roman knight is stated to have purchased for that •
vol. x.
emperor, of the iEstii, at one time thirteen thousand Germany,
pounds weight, amongst which was a single piece weighing
thirteen pounds. At a still later period, a letter is found in
Cassiodorus, in which Theodoric, king of the Goths, gives
thanks to the Aistii for a present of amber, and in return
assures them of his friendship and protection.
In the interior of Germany, the Cimbri and the Saxons
were possessed of the country north of the Elbe ; whilst on
the south side of that stream the Chauci were the masters of
the district through which the Weser flows, and were in con¬
tact with the two smaller tribes of the Cherusci and Chamavi.
The Frisii were distinguished as the Upper and the Lower,
and were separated from the Chauci by the river Ems, and
from each other by a branch of the Rhine ; whilst beyond
the Yssel were some migratory tribes, the Bruckteri and
the Marsi. The Uspetes were established on the river
Luppia, now the Lippe; and beyond that stream were the
Usipetes, who were celebrated for changing their residence,
and were thence to be found in other districts. The Teucteri
were settled on the Rhine, in the country of the Menopii;
and next to them the Jubones, near the modern Juliers.
The Catti or Cotti inhabited parts of Hesse and Thurin¬
gia, extending from the Hartz Mountains to the Rhine and
the Weser. Their southern neighbours were the Sedusi,
bordering on Suabia, where they came in contact with the
Marcomanni, who have been already mentioned.
Such are the best accounts which can be collected from
Caesar, Tacitus, and Ptolemy, respecting the localities of
the various tribes who inhabited Germany before the period
of the intercourse between them and the Romans. It has
been justly remarked, that whilst modern nations are fixed
and permanent societies, connected amongst themselves by
laws and government, and bound to their native soil by arts
and agriculture, the German tribes were only voluntary and
fluctuating associations of soldiers, almost of savages ; and
the same territory often changed its inhabitants in the
course of conquest or of emigration. A victorious state
often communicated its own name to a vanquished people.
Sometimes crowds of volunteers flocked from all parts to
the standard of a victorious leader ; his camp became their
country, and some event soon gave a new but general name
to the mixed community. Thus the distinctions of fero¬
cious invaders were perpetually varied by themselves, and
naturally confounded the astonished subjects of the Ro¬
man empire.
It is probable that the accounts of the numbers of the
German people, as transmitted by early writers, are gross¬
ly exaggerated. In great and civilized states, millions of
subjects pursue their peaceful avocations in silence and ob¬
scurity ; but in a state of rude republicanism, or of civil
commotions, almost every member of the community is
called into active exertion ; and thus, with their irregular
divisions, their restless motions, their profusion of kings
and warriors, and numerous contests, they present to our
minds an appearance of numbers very far beyond the reali¬
ty, which is still further strengthened by the most splendid
appellations being frequently and repeatedly applied to in¬
considerable objects. When the Romans first became ac¬
quainted with Germany, about the year 640 from the build¬
ing of their capital, or more than 100 years before the com¬
mencement of the Christian era, the natives had advanced
but a few steps from the savage state. Even in the subse¬
quent age, as Tacitus affirms, they were so ignorant of the use
of letters as to be unable to transmit from one generation to
another any annals of their country, or any knowledge of
the agreeable or useful arts of life. In an extent very far
3 o
ll
GERMANY.
474
Germany, surpassing modern Germany, Ptolemy speaks of ninety
towns or cities ; whilst Tacitus asserts, as a well-known fact,
that in his time they had no cities, and that they affected
to despise the buildings constructed by Roman industry, as
places of confinement rather than of security. Their dwel¬
lings were not even contiguous, nor formed into villages,
but each of these barbarians fixed his independent dwelling
on anv spot which a plain, a wood, or a stream of good
water," invited him to settle on ; and in constructing his hut,
neither stone, brick, nor tiles were employed. Built of tim¬
ber, they were very low, and covered with straw, having a
hole to allow of the emission of the smoke.
The clothing was of the simplest kind, notwithstanding
the inclemency of the climate in a territory covered with
woods, and not ameliorated by cultivation. In the more
northern parts scanty garments of furs were used ; and in
the south some coarse linen, spun and woven by the females.
Their food consisted chiefly of wild animals, or of the flesh
of their large herds of cows and of horses, which were near¬
ly in the state of their original wildness. A small quantity
of corn was the only produce of the soil; the use of gardens,
orchards, and artificial meadows, was unknown ; nor could
any great improvement in agriculture have existed, where
a new division of the land took place annually, and a great
part lay waste and without any tillage. The Germans seem
to have learned the process of brewing or of distillation, as
they made intoxicating liquors from wheat and barley, in
the use or abuse of which they indulged to the greatest
excess in social meetings and public assemblies. Drink¬
ing and gambling were their highest gratifications. They
gloried in passing whole days and nights at the table; and
the blood of guests, often of friends and relations, stained
their drunken assemblies. The desperate gamester often
staked his person and his liberty on the cast of a dice, and
then patiently submitted to the decision, and was sold into
slavery by his more fortunate competitor.
Notwithstanding the grossness of manners amongst the
German tribes, the females were held in high estimation ;
and whilst the men were brave, the women were chaste.
Polygamy was not in use excepting amongst the prince's ;
and amongst them only for the sake of multiplying their
alliances. Divorces were prohibited by manners rather
than by laws. Adulteries were punished as rare and inex¬
piable crimes ; nor was seduction justified by example and
fashion. The unpolished wives of the Germans partook of
few of those gratifications which tend to inflame the pas¬
sions, and their fidelity was in some measure secured by the
exposure to which they were subject in the open huts, and
by poverty, solitude, and the painful cares of domestic oc¬
cupation. Besides these restraints, the Germans treated
their women with esteem and confidence, consulted them
on every occasion of importance, and fondly believed that
in 'their breasts resided a sanctity and wisdom more than
human. Some of these interpreters of fate, such as Velle-
da in the Batavian war, governed, in the name of the dei¬
ty, the fiercest nations of Germany. The rest of the sex
were respected as the free and equal companions of sol¬
diers, associated even by the ceremony of marriage to a
life of toil, of danger, and of glory. In their great inva¬
sions, the camp of the barbarians was filled with a multi¬
tude of women, who remained firm and undaunted amidst
the sound of arms, the various forms of destruction, and
the honourable wounds of their sons and husbands. Faint¬
ing armies of Germans have more than once been driven
back upon the enemy by the generous despair of the wo¬
men, who dreaded death much less than servitude. If the
day was irrecoverably lost, they well knew how to deliver
themselves and their children, with their own hands, from
an insulting victor. Heroines of such a description may
claim admiration, but they can scarcely inspire the passion
of love. They who attempt to imitate the sterner virtues
of man must lose the attractive softness of their own sex, c
which is their principal charm. Conscious pride taught the C!
German matrons to suppress every tender emotion which
stood in competition with honour; and the first honour of
the sex has ever been that of chastity.
The Germans were a warlike people, notwithstanding
which their government was a species of democracy, al¬
though a few of the tribes on the shores of the Baltic ac¬
knowledged the authority of kings ; but such kings owed
their power as frequently to their valour or their eloquence
as to their descent; and with all of them the power was tem¬
pered by the prevalence of popular assemblies. The assem¬
bly of the warriors of the tribe was convened at stated sea¬
sons, or on sudden emergencies. When a youth had at¬
tained the age of manhood, he was introduced into the ge¬
neral council of his countrymen, solemnly invested with
a shield and a spear, and adopted as an equal and worthy
member of the commonwealth. In such assemblies, the
trial of public offences, the election of magistrates, and the
great affairs of peace or war, were determined by indepen¬
dent votes. Sometimes these important questions were
previously considered and prepared in a committee or se¬
lect council of the principal chieftains. The magistrates
might deliberate and persuade, but the people only could
resolve and execute; and hence the resolutions were for
the most part hasty and violent. They too often turned
away with indignant contempt from the remonstrances of
justice and policy, and signified by a hollow murmur then-
dislike of such timid councils. But when a popular orator
proposed to vindicate the meanest citizen from either fo¬
reign or domestic injury, or called upon his countrymen to
follow some enterprise of danger and of glory, the applause
of the assembly was displayed by a loud clashing of shields
and spears ; for the Germans always assembled in arms, and
it was to be dreaded lest an irregular multitude, inflamed
by faction and strong liquors, should use their arms to
enforce as well as to declare their furious resolutions.
A general of the tribe was elected on occasions of danger;
and if the danger was pressing and extensive, several tribes
concurred in the choice of the same general. The bravest
warrior was named to lead his countrymen into the field by Ms
example rather than by his commands ; but this power, how¬
ever limited, was still invidious. It expired with the war,
and in time of peace the German tribes acknowledged not
any supreme chief. Princes were, however, appointed in
the general assembly, to administer justice, or rather to
compose differences, in their respective districts. In the
choice of these magistrates, as much regard was shown to
birth as to merit. To each was assigned by the public a
guard and a council of a hundred persons ; and the first of
the princes appears to have enjoyed a pre-eminence of rank
and honour which sometimes tempted the Romans to com¬
pliment them with the regal title.
The comparative view of the powers of the magistrates,
in two remarkable instances, is alone sufficient to represent
the whole system of German manners. The disposal o
the landed property within their district was absolute y
vested in their hands, and they distributed it every year
according to a new division. At the same time they were
not authorized to punish with death, to imprison, or even
to strike, a private citizen. t
The Germans respected only those duties which they
imposed on themselves. The most obscure soldier resist¬
ed with disdain the authority of the magistrates. “ e
noblest youths,” says Tacitus, “ blushed not to be num¬
bered amongst the faithful companions of some renowne
chief, to whom they devoted their arms and service,
noble emulation prevailed among the companions to ob >
the first place in the esteem of their chief, among the c
to acquire the greatest number of valiant companions,
glory of such heroes diffused itself beyond the narrow
4
*
G E R M A N Y.
j mits of their own tribe. Presents and embassies solicited
”,their friendship, and the fame of their arms often ensured
victory to the party they espoused. In the hour of dan¬
ger it was shameful for the chief to be surpassed in valour
by his companions, and shameful for the companions not to
equal the valour of their chief. To survive his fall in
battle was indelible infamy. The chiefs combated for vic¬
tory, the companions for the chief. The noblest warriors,
whenever their native country was sunk in the laziness of
peace, maintained their numerous bands in some distant
scene of action, to exercise their restless spirit, and to ac¬
quire renown by voluntary dangers. Gifts worthy of sol¬
diers, the warlike steed, the bloody and ever-victorious lance,
were the rewards which the companions claimed from the
liberality of their chief. The rude plenty of his hospitable
board was the only pay which he could bestow, or they would
accept. War, rapine, and the freewill offerings of his
friends, supplied the materials of this munificence.” This
institution, however it might accidentally weaken the seve¬
ral republics, invigorated the general character of the Ger¬
mans, and even ripened amon.gst them all the virtues of
which barbarians are susceptible ; the faith, valour, and
hospitality so conspicuous long afterwards in the ages of
chivalry.
The religion of the Germans was as gross as that of
other nations in the same low stage of civilization. They
adored the sun and the moon, the fire and the earth, to¬
gether with those imaginary deities who were supposed to
preside over the most important occupations of human life.
They were persuaded that, by some ridiculous arts of di¬
vination, they could discover the will of the superior beings,
and that human sacrifices were the most precious and ac¬
ceptable offering to their altars. They seem to have adopt¬
ed no images as visible objects of worship, nor to have con¬
structed any edifices for the celebration of religious rites.
Their only temples were dark and ancient groves, conse¬
crated by the reverence of successive generations. Their
secret gloom, the imagined residence of an invisible power,
by presenting no distinct object of fear or worship, im¬
pressed the mind with a still deeper sense of religious hor¬
ror ; and the priests, rude and illiterate as they were, had
been taught by experience the use of every artifice which
could preserve and fortify impressions so well suited to
promote their own interest. ^
The German priests had assumed a jurisdiction even in
temporal concerns which the magistrate could not venture
to exercise; and the haughty warrior submitted to the
lash of correction, when it was inflicted, not by any hu¬
man power, but by the immediate order of the god of war.
Thus the defects of civil policy were sometimes supplied
by the interposition of ecclesiastical authority. The lat¬
ter was constantly exerted to maintain silence and de¬
cency in the popular assemblies, and was sometimes ex¬
tended to a more enlarged concern for the national wel¬
fare. A solemn procession was occasionally celebrated in
"hat are now the countries of Mecklenburg and Pome¬
rania. The unknown symbol of the earth, covered with a
I thick veil, was placed on a carriage drawn by cows; and
in this manner the goddess, whose common residence was
In ^le island of Ilugen, visited several adjacent tribes of
ier worshippers. During her progress the sound of war
"as hushed, quarrels were suspended, arms laid aside, and
| ie restless Germans had an opportunity of tasting the
essings of peace and of harmony. The truce of God, so
0 ten and so ineffectually proclaimed by the clergy of the
seventh century, was an obvious imitation or continua¬
tion of this ancient custom.
. ^le influence of religion was far more powerful to
ni ame than to moderate the fierce passions of the Ger-
ians. The consecrated standards, long preserved in the
groves of superstition, were placed in the front of the
battle; and tbe hostile army was devoted with dire exe-G
crations to the gods of war and of thunder. With the
Germans cowardice was the most unpardonable of sins.
A brave man was the worthy favourite of the martial dei¬
ties. He who had lost his shield was banished alike from
the civil and the religious assemblies of his countrymen.
Some of the northern tribes seem to have embraced the
doctrine of transmigration ; others imagined a gross para¬
dise of immortal drunkenness. A.11 agreed that a life
spent in arms, and a glorious death in battle, were the
best preparations for a happy futurity, either in this or
another world.
That singular order of men, the bards, have attracted
to them the attention of all who have attempted to inves¬
tigate the antiquities of the Celts, the Scandinavians, and
the Germans. It is not easy, however, to calculate the
enthusiasm of arms and glory which they kindled in the
breasts of their audience. It was in the hour of battle,
or in the feast of victory, that the bards celebrated the
glory of the heroes of ancient days, the ancestors of those
warlike chieftains who listened with transport to their
artless but animated strains. The view of arms and of
danger heightened the effect of the military song; and
the passions which it tended to excite, the desire of fame,
and the contempt of death, were the habitual sentiments
of a German mind.
Such is the description of the manners, characters, and
propensities of the ancient Germans, as delineated by Ta¬
citus, and by which, in spite of their climate, their want of
learning and the arts, and the absence of fixed laws, they
were formed into a people of military heroes, and enabled
to carry on formidable hostilities, during more than two
centuries, with the mighty power of the Romans.
The early history of the Germans, like that of all na¬
tions who had no written records, is involved in much ob¬
scurity. The first knowledge of their transactions was
that of the invasion of the country by the Gauls, com¬
manded by Segovesus, king of the Celtae; whilst his bro¬
ther Bellovesus marched with another army into Italy ;
both of which divisions are said to have been directed by
the flight of birds. Segovesus crossed the Rhine, and
gained a settlement near the Hercynian Forest. The Ger¬
mans, however, soon acted on the offensive, and expelled
the Gauls, and, by the assistance of the Belgae, one of their
most warlike tribes, gained possession of some territory to
the west of the Rhine, where they were enabled to fix and
maintain themselves so firmly as never to be driven out,
and whence they extended themselves to the sea-coasts
of Britain, and even drove its inhabitants into the inte¬
rior. The Germans and the Gauls, thus brought into
contact with each other, continued to hold vacillating in¬
tercourse, sometimes at war, at other times in alliance in
opposition to the power of the conquering and disciplined
Romans. The Germans, under the name of Cimbri, then
invaded the territory of Rome, and spread such terror,
that Marius, by a deviation from the law, was appointed
consul to command an army against them. After various
marches during some years, in 102 before Christ, Ma¬
rius, with an army of 52,000 men, attacked the barbarians
on the banks of the Rhone, and, though they are said to
have mustered 300,000 foot and 15,000 horse, completely
defeated them, with a loss of 150,000 killed and 60,000
prisoners. Many, preferring death to slavery, underwent
military execution; and a few were scattered over Gaul,
or crossed the Danube, and so escaped to their own coun¬
try.
After Julius Caesar had completed the subjugation of
Gaul, and extended his conquest to the Rhine, he first
became acquainted with the German name. Ariovistus,
the leader of a tribe that dwelt to the south of the Da¬
nube, attempted to fix his establishment in Gaul, but was
476 GERMANY.
Germany, defeated by Caesar, and, with the loss of 80,000 men, was contempt which reliance upon the* mirfib^rg and discip-Germ
driven across the Rhine, though two tribes of his followers line of his troops nad inspired. Arminius redoubled his '*»■>
remained on the west side of that river; and the fugitives assiduities to remove suspicion, if any existed, of his fide-
who returned augmented the numbers of the (jerman lity to the Roman cause, and succeeded, by pointing the
tribe of the Marcomanni. Caesar built a bridge over the attention of \ arus to some irruptions which, at the insti-
Rhine, and twice passed that river at the head of his gation of the confederacy, had broken out on the banks of
army, not with the view of permanent conquest, but to the Weser. These small but concerted disturbances were
secure his province of Gaul against the attacks of the intended to inveigle the Roman commander to advance
barbarians ; and he also took many of the Germans into into the interior of the country; and the leaders of the
his pay, first in the war with the Gauls, ahd afterwards German troops in the pay of Rome, who were involved in
in the civil contest with Pompey. The civil wars, which the confederacy with Arminius, by the display of unbound-
occupied first Caesar and Pompey, and afterwards Mark ed zeal and obedience, agreed in urging the Roman com-
Antony and Brutus and Cassius, left the Germans op- mander not to wait for further displays of resistance, but
portunities to attempt incursions. The confederation of to advance with his three legions and the auxiliaries, and
the Segambri passed the Rhine, and having repelled the to extinguish the rebellion in its focal point. In vain did
attack of Agrippa, settled themselves on the western side Segestes repeat his warnings. Nothing could shake the
of that river ; but a few years afterwards they were de- confidence of Varus in Arminius, and the confederates and
feated by Lollius the legate of Augustus, when, 14 years the Romans plunged deeper and deeper into the heart of
before Christ, Drusus, the son-in-law of the emperor, con- the country, where the snares had been laid for their de-
structed several fortresses along that river, to prevent the struction. Near the souices of the river Lippe, in the
incursions of the Germans. He proceeded with success, country of the Bructeri, after a long and wearisome march
and penetrated as far as the Elbe. He died in the year through woods and morasses, the Romans saw themselves
8 before Christ, and was succeeded by Tiberius, who dur- enclosed on every side in a hollow surrounded by hills
ing his command not only sustained the power which whose summits were all occupied by the natives. At this
Drusus had acquired, but extended it towards the north ; moment intelligence arrived that Arminius with the rear
and, by intrigues among the natives, as much as by his division, consisting of stipendaries, which he commanded,
force, induced many of the tribes to solicit peace, and had declaied against the Romans, and had been the mov-
excited others to enter into the military service of Rome, log spring of the whole operations, \arus saw clearly
The body-guard of Augustus was composed of German destruction before him; for though discipline and courage
volunteers, amongst whom was the distinguished noble might prolong the contest, it could inspire no hopes of a
whose name has descended to posterity, being sometimes successful issue.
called Hermanus, and at others Arminius, who received Three days of suffeiing and ineffectual hostilities com-
the privileges of a Roman citizen and the dignity of a pelled the Romans to submit. Varus chose death rather
Roman knight. He was the son of Sigmer, a prince of than disgrace. Three Roman eagles were taken; and a
the Cherusci, and had been educated in Rome, and early limit was thus set to the advances of the Romans towards
appointed an officer in the army of Augustus, but is said the north, which they were never afterwards enabled to
never to have lost the relish for the customs of his ances- pass. The Germans disgraced their victory by useless
tors, nor his zeal for the independence of his country; cruelties. Some of the men of letters and artists who
and during the course of his instruction in arts and in were taken had their hands cut off, and others were blind-
arms he warmly cherished the hope of adapting these in- ed. The site of this memorable event cannot be clearly
structions to the purpose of freeing his country from the ascertained by any records, but it is generally placed by
Roman yoke. He felt a confidence that all the discipline the antiquarians of Germany near the sources of the rivers
Of the Roman armies would be unable in a fair field to re- Lippe and Ems, not far from where now stands the small
sist the raw bravery of his unpolished countrymen. city of Detmold. The event occurred in the ninth year
The best legions of Rome were intrusted to the com- of our era.
mand of Quintilius Varus, with the superintendence of When Arminius had thus restored the ancient freedom
the territories on the right bank of the Rhine, which had to his country, he destroyed the fortresses which the Ko-
been added by Drusus to the Roman dominion. He was mans had constructed on the Rhine, the Elbe, and the
confident in the power of his military superiority, and Weser, and exerted himself to rouse the military spirit of
thought, in addition to that, to secure obedience by chan- the Germans, and taught them to rely on that spirit rather
„ing the customs and principles of the Germans, and thus than on the strongest fortifications. A civil vvar soon
converting them into useful subjects. For this purpose he broke out amongst the natives themselves, and the party
took with him a great number of civil officers, lawyers, opposed to Arminius was headed by Segestes. Ihat
and men of letters, to introduce the new order of things, prince applied to the Romans for assistance, and was aid-
These measures roused the jealousy of a people enamour- ed by their general Germamcus, when he was surround¬
ed of their freedom, and disseminated the seeds of insur- ed by the troops of Arminius. His deliverance was et-
rection amongst all the tribes situated between the Rhine fected with but little loss on either side ; but t e wi e o
and the Elbe. Arminius availed himself of this spirit to Arminius was taken prisoner by Segestes, and on being
form alliances in opposition to Varus, amongst all the mili- carried before the Roman general, maintaine ^ sPirl ai?
tary leaders of the districts. It happened most opportune- dignity which is highly applauded by iacitus. le treac
ly for the purpose of Arminius, that, in the year-9 a. d., ery of Segestes animated the exertions of Arminius,
a general revolt broke out on the Roman frontiers of Dal- he was offered assistance by his uncle Inguioniar, a ea
matia and Pannonia. It is doubtful if this was connected of a tribe, and celebrated as a warrior. Arnumus
with the plans of Arminius, but it helped to strengthen tempted also to gain to his party his brother r avIUS\ .
the confederacy w'hich had been entered into by those like himself had been educated in Italy, but w loreso
tribes which were in possession of the country bounded ly maintained his fidelity to the Roman power. rm
by the Rhine, the Saale, and the Elbe. This confederacy desired a meeting with Flavius, and they saw and conve -
was not broken up by the treason of one of the chiefs, Se- ed with each other across the river Weser. ie-epffec.
gestes, the leader of the Catti, who communicated to the tulations and the inducements of Arminius were in
Roman commander the plan and the detail of the intend- tual; the brothers became exasperated against eac o
td insurrection, which was received by Varus with the and would have proceeded to feats of arms if they ia
GERMANY.
',Ln? been separated by the stream, and at length been borne
'y—.away from the scene by their respective partisans.
Germanicus the Roman commander once more attack¬
ed the army of Arminius, and gained a splendid but use¬
less victory on the plain of Idistavius, on the banks of the
Weser; but having excited the suspicious jealousy of the
Emperor Tiberius, the necessary succours were withheld,
and Arminius was soon enabled again to make head against
the Romans, and caused them to suspend their attempts
on the freedom of Germany. This temporary tranquillity,
however, gave rise to an intestine war.
Marobodus, a leader of the Marcomanni, but who had
been educated in the court of Augustus, was enabled by
his address and his power to unite many tribes of the
Suevi in a confederacy with his own nation, which collec¬
tively assumed the name of the Marcomanni. At the
head of this powerful league he attacked and conquered
the nation of the Bob', seated in the south of Bohemia
and a part of Franconia, and founded a formidable state,
which extended over the Hermundurins, the Quadi, the
Longobards, and the Semnones, and could bring into the
field 70,000 warriors. Augustus had given orders to Ti¬
berius to suppress with twelve legions the power of Maro¬
bodus, but a general insurrection of the Dalmatian tribes
compelled him to conclude a peace which secured to him
no benefit. The subsequent disasters of the Romans in
Western Germany suspended all attacks on the Marco¬
manni, who continued to excite insurrections in the south
of Germany.
Two great powers were thus formed, the Marcomanni
and the Cherusci, the one under Marobodus and the
other under Arminius. Between these, dissensions speedi¬
ly arose. On one side the Longobards and the Semnones,
wearied by the oppressions of Marobodus, deserted his
party and united with the Cherusci; and on the other side
Inguiomer, the uncle of Arminius, from jealousy of his
nephew, was induced to pass from his party to that of the
Marcomanni. After a war between these two confedera¬
tions, which was carried on with all that systematic regu¬
larity which the two commanders had learned in the Ro¬
man legions, the Cherusci remained conquerors. Tiberi¬
us, instead of giving that aid to Marobodus which he eager¬
ly asked, left him exposed during two years to the attacks
of Catualda the Goth, who compelled him to abandon his
territory and seek refuge amongst the Romans ; and Catu-
akla was soon exposed to the same fate by the hostilities
of the Hermundurins, who had obtained the lead among
the confederates which were headed by Arminius.
ihe death of Arminius occurred in the year 21 a. d.,
at the age of thirty-seven years, during the twelve last of
which he had gloriously and happily conducted the af¬
fairs of his country with the applause of his followers, to
"bom, after his death, he continued an object of the high¬
est veneration. He was indeed suspected of designs to
introduce royalty and to assume the kingly dignity, but
a is now impossible to confirm or refute the charge which
ias been brought against his memory.
After the death of their leader, the Cherusci, owing to
internal disputes, gradually lost the rank they had held,
and at length allowed the Romans to nominate a king of
tieir country, who assumed the name of Italicus, and was
.le ast; branch of the family of Arminius. Under him
‘ey quarrelled with their allies the Longobards, and soon
sunk down into an insignificant tribe, inhabiting the dis-
i ict to the south of the Hartz Mountains. About the same
une, in the west of Germany, the Catti raised themselves
0 a state of some consideration, and, whilst the Romans
"ere occupied in suppressing an insurrection of the Frisii,
seized the fortresses constructed on the Rhine. They were
assai ed by Galba, and induced to cede the territory includ-
etween the Lahn, the Maine, and the Rhine, to the
477
Romans, who parcelled it out among the most meritorious Germany,
of their warriors. In the year 58 the Catti and the Her-
munduri contended for the salt springs on the river Saale
in Franconia. The numerous followers of Marobodus and
of Catualda had established themselves about the same
time on the Danube, between the rivers Gran and Morava,
and there, under Vannius, whom they had received as a
king from the Romans, founded a new kingdom, which
was soon felt to be oppressive to the people. Although
Vannius had found allies in the Sarmatian Jaziges, yet he
could not resist the confederacy formed against him by
the Hermunduri, Lygerii, and the Western Quadi, but fled
from his kingdom and took refuge with the Romans, when
he was succeeded by his nephew Sido, who had performed
some important services for the Emperor Vespasian. In
the west the Batavians, by an obstinate struggle, shook the
Roman power, which was only retained by extraordinary
exertions. About this period began the war which final¬
ly terminated in the downfall of Rome. The Suevi were
attacked by the Lygerii, and applied for aid to Domitian,
who sent them a hundred horse soldiers, the smallness of
which number was deemed an affront, and induced them
to form a confederacy with the Jaziges, which threatened
Dacia and Pannonia. Domitian was defeated, but Trajan
proved more successful; but afterwards war broke out more
fiercely under Antoninus Philosophus. The barbarians
disquieted the empire on two sides without cessation. On
one side small but numerous hordes of the Goths arrived
in Dacia to establish themselves by force of arms; but
these were removed by having a still better country point¬
ed out to them in a southern direction. But the more
terrific hostilities were those carried on by the Marco¬
manni, who had combined with the Hermunduri and the
Quadi. Marcus Aurelius contended with them during
his whole life; and Commodus purchased a peace with
them in 180 a. d. At the same time the Catti laid waste
Rhaetia and Gaul, and the Cherusci drove the Longobards
back on the Elbe, and advanced themselves under the
name of Franks. About the year 220 a. b. new tribes of
Germans assailed the falling empire. The Visigoths, the
Gepides, and Herulians, attacked the Romans in Dacia;
whilst about the same time a new race called the Ale-
manni, a mixed tribe, of Sclavonic origin, made their ap¬
pearance in Southern Germany, in opposition to whom
was constructed the celebrated Vallum Romanorum, the
traces of which are still visible from Jaxthausen to Ohrin-
gen. The power of Rome gradually sunk, partly from the
constant and increasing hostilities of the Germans and
other barbarous tribes, and partly from internal dissensions.
As that empire was weakened, the Franks advanced to
Spain, and under Probus conquered also the Batavian pe¬
ninsula. Thus the Franks and Alemanns remained the
most powerful of the German nation. The former of these
lost the Batavian territory to the Saxons, and the latter
were humbled before the Romans in the last victory ob¬
tained by that mighty people. At the beginning of the
fifth century the barbarians assailed the empire on every
side. The Vandals, Suevi, and Alani became masters of
Gaul and Spain. They were followed by the successful
Burgundians and the Western Goths ; to the Burgundians
succeeded the Franks, to the Western Goths succeeded the
Eastern Goths, and to them the Lombards. Then began
that stream of emigration which poured from the north to
the south, and, as a conquering power, became the foun¬
ders of the subsequent European kingdoms. A new change
was given to the face of Europe by those vast emigrations
of people, mostly Germans, though some came from coun¬
tries farther eastward than Germany, which gradually over¬
spread and subdued the west, introduced new forms of so¬
ciety, and framed languages, which, with but little varia¬
tion, have continued till the present time. The new states.
478
GERMANY.
Germany, formed out of what had previously been portions of the
Roman empire, though often at war with each other, and
differing in smaller matters, chiefly arising from difference
of soil and climate, were united in one similar system of
policy and domestic government, and had those common
habits strengthened by the providential introduction of
the Christian religion, to which, though varying in some
points of faith, they all in process of time professed adhe¬
rence. We have here space only for a slight sketch of
the history of those emigrations the beneficial effects of
which we now enjoy, and to which, during a period of
more than a thousand years, Europe has been indebted
for the great advancement in the arts and the policy of
civilization which has raised it above the other portions
of the habitable globe.
These emigrations, which thus revolutionized Europe,
began from the Frozen Ocean, extended themselves to
the Atlantic Sea, and stretched over a portion of Northern
Africa. They continued from the year 375, when the
Huns first broke into Europe, till 568, when the Lom¬
bards had completed their conquest of the Roman empire.
The causes of these excursions of whole tribes were vari¬
ous, arising in some cases from excessive population, in
others from the pressure of more remote tribes, and in
all from the charms of the beautiful and well-cultivated
provinces which the Romans had gradually added to their
dominions. At a more early period single tribes in small
parties had changed their domicils, and thereby prepar¬
ed the way for the greater emigrations. The constant
conquests of the too extended empire began in the
middle of the third century to make it totter under its
own weight. Some powerful emperors, indeed, especi¬
ally Constantine and Theodosius, suspended its fall; but
others, under the pressure of circumstances, and from
short-sighted policy, had taken parties of the barbarians
into their pay, and, as a reward for their military services,
had granted them lands to establish themselves on, on
the frontiers of the empire. In this way settlements were
granted to the Franks in Belgian Gaul, and to the Alani,
the Vandals, and the Goths, in Dacia, Pannonia, and
Thrace.
Many individuals of skill and courage were appointed
to offices of high power and trust, and two of them, Ruf¬
fin and Stilicho, to the command of armies. The conse¬
quence of this was, that as they improved in education,
they became fully acquainted with the weakness of the
Roman government, and accustomed themselves to con¬
sider it as a prey, on which in due time they might seize.
The first movement towards the emigrations was given
from the farthest part of Northern Asia, where a wild and
warlike tribe, probably of Mongul or Kalmuck origin,
were settled on the confines of China. These, expelled
from their own settlements about the end of the first cen¬
tury, extended themselves towards the west, and drove the
Alani, a tribe from Caucasus, out of Asiatic Sarmatia, and
also dislodged the Western Goths, who were settled in an¬
cient Dacia, and in the district between the Dniester, the
Danube, and the Vistula. A portion of the Alani, after
long wanderings, arrived on the Danube in what is now
Hungary; connected themselves there with the Vandals,
an original north German colony, who had been planted
there about one hundred years, and, together, pressed
forward into Germany, where they further strengthened
themselves by a union with the Suevi, another German
tribe which had been settled on the Upper Danube. These
three populations, thus united, pressed forward to the
Rhine, passed that river into Gaul, captured Mayence,
Strasburg, and other flourishing cities, and devastated the
whole country.
After these united people had in a few years spread
desolation over a great part of Gaul, they pressed on to¬
wards the Pyrenees, and entered Spain. They subduedGeni
nearly the whole of that country about the year 411, di-
vided it by lot amongst themselves, and left a very small
portion of it only in the possession of the Roman garri-
sons. They however retained their former discipline and
courage, and formed an alliance with some of the Western
Goths who had penetrated into Spain, and attacked the
conquerors. The Alani, who had founded a kingdom in
Lusitania, now Portugal, were completely overcome in
418; and the remnant of them, after their defeat, received
protection from the Vandals; and hence from that time
their name is no more to be found. They carried on the
war with the Romans, and thereby gained the ascendency
over them, when, in 427, they formed the resolution to
pass over into Africa. The kingdom founded there by
Genseric, after maintaining itself a hundred and five years,
was at last subdued by Belisarius, the general of the Greek
emperor Justinian. The Suevi, who after the departure
of the Vandals remained in Spain, extended and maintain¬
ed their power till they were defeated and scattered by
the Western Goths in 584. The Huns, with whom these
movements had originated, established themselves in 377
in Pannonia, whence, conducted by their king Attila, they
made a wasting campaign in Gaul; but that leader having
met with a signal defeat in 451, turned towards Italy, and
could scarcely be induced to spare Rome itself and to
quit Italy. After his death in 453 the kingdom of the
Huns disappeared, its inhabitants having been scattered
and lost among the tribes of the Goths and Gepides.
The most dangerous enemies of the Romans were the
Goths, to whom reference has before been made. They
were a tribe of Germans originally established in East
Prussia, on the shores of the Baltic, but had extended
themselves through Poland, to the Black Sea, and had
spread themselves over the Roman provinces on the Da¬
nube. In the third century, Rome found it necessary, or
at least convenient, to allow of their establishment in Dacia.
This powerful nation, the first amongst the Germans who
embraced the Christian religion, was divided into two
branches. The Eastern Goths were established on the
river Don and the Black Sea, and the Western Goths be¬
tween the Dniester, the Danube, and the Vistula. As
they were assailed by the advancing Huns, and compelled
to abandon their settlements about the year 375, the Ro¬
mans conceded to them other settlements in the interior
of their empire. The Western Goths, under their king
Alaric, attacked the Romans in Italy in 403, several times
assailed Rome itself, and conquered and plundered it in
410. His successor Ataulfled his followers into Gaul in
411, and from thence into Spain, where was erected the
largest Gothic kingdom, which from 624 comprehended the
whole of the Peninsula, with a part of France and some
portions of Africa, and was only terminated in 711, by the
victory of the invading Moors at the battle of Xeres.
The Eastern Goths had been settled by the Romans in
the country of Mcesia, now known by the names of Bul¬
garia and of Servia. Odoacer, the chief of two German
tribes, the Heruli and the Rugieri, who had served under
the Roman standards, became the master of Rome and ot
all Italy. But he was subdued by Theodoric king of the
Western Goths, who thus succeeded to supreme power in
Italy in the year 493.
Though Theodoric was one of the greatest characters
of his age, the kingdom he founded proved but of shor
duration. The Emperor Justinian, after his successes in
Africa, attacked the power of the Goths, and by his gene
rals, first Belisarius and afterwards Narses, once more, m
554, restored Italy to the dominion of the Greek empire.
The Gothic sovereigns then disappeared, and in a ^
years no trace of them remained except their name, w 1C
has been applied to a peculiar style of architecture.
I *
GERMANY.
uny. A few years after the fall of the Gothic kingdom, the
reater part of Italy fell under the power of the Longo-
irds or Lombards. According to some accounts, they
ere a tribe from Scandinavia, but according to others, a
ranch of the great German family of the Suevi, who in
irlier times had inhabited those parts on the Elbe which
•e now known as Luneburg, and who had, after various
xcursions, been settled in Pannonia about 527. They
Ivanced from thence, in 568, towards Italy, and under
ieir king Alboin made a conquest of nearly the whole
minsula; a feat which was easily effected, owing to its
isolate and depopulated condition. The chief opposition
iey encountered was from the city of Pavia, which, af-
:r a siege of three years, was captured in 572, and made
le capital of the kingdom. Lombardy flourished during
vo centuries, till it fell under the power of the Emperor
harlemagne in the year 774.1
The history of Germany between the years 560 and
70 is wholly destitute of the materials necessary to
ame a consecutive narrative. The only writer of the
eriod was Gregory bishop of Tours, and his attention was
holly engrossed by the events of the Frank kingdom
hich had sprung up in Gaul, and had begun to decline,
ie manners, laws, and customs of which he has faithfully
presented. The only part of his voluminous work which
dates to Germany, is an account of an alliance formed be-
veen the Bavarians and Longobards, which offended the
ranks, and proved the cause of hostile movements, which,
owever, were speedily and pacifically terminated in 589.
rom the death of Dagobert in 632, the dominions of the
rankish kings of the Merovingian race were gradually
iminished. One portion after another fell into the hands
f great lay or ecclesiastical feudatories; but these cir-
umstances seem to have had little effect on the German
ibes. They scarcely interfered in the Frankish contests ;
ad though not without internal controversies and conten-
ons, these were of local and temporary importance only,
nd seldom produced extensive or calamitous convulsions,
reparations for defence against the Franks were carried
n; some fortresses were constructed, and military disci-
line was maintained. But the most distinguished feature
f the century, was the spread of the Christian faith. A
lint from Ireland, with his assistants, laboured amongst
ie German tribes with great diligence and success.. The
ross of Christ had been planted among them, and publicly
cknowledged as their standard; but the remains of hea-
lenism, with its superstitions, were cherished by the
reat mass of the rude people, and the sacred rites of
ie Druids were performed in their hallowed groves.
St Columba indeed found almost everywhere Christian
nests, but their knowledge was slight, many of their ce-
:monies were idolatrous, their faith was wavering, and,
hat to the Irish saint was most annoying, their depen-
ence on the see of Rome slightly if at all acknowledged.
Ihe success of the Irish missionaries is much lauded
y the monkish writers of the ages that followed their
tertions; and whatever effect they may have produced
pon the manners and morals of the Germans, it must be
I-knowledged that they were successful in bringing that
'ople into that close connection with the great head of
>e Christian church, which became, in a succession of
-nturies, under the guidance of Providence, one of the
'cans °f their advancement in civilization.
uring the same period was laid the foundation of
'ose small sovereign states which successively grew up
1 ermany under ecclesiastical and lay chiefs, who bore
10 llt es archbishops, bishops, abbots, princes, dukes,
counts, margraves, landgraves, and barons. These, in
process of time, had the indirect choice of the emperor,
who assumed the title of Chief of the Holy Roman Em¬
pire, and was elected to that dignity by princes called
electors, who were independent, though nominally the
household officers of the reigning emperor. The emperor
Charlemagne was the real founder of the holy Roman em¬
pire, although that name was not given to it until a later
period. He was of the race of the Frankish kings, the
son of Pepin and the grandson of Charles Martel, and,
jointly with his brother Carloman, ascended the throne of
Gaul in 768. He was one of those extraordinary charac¬
ters calculated to change the face of the civilized world.
The history of his actions, during a long and glorious reign
of forty-seven years, would relate his transactions in
France, Spain, Italy, and Germany, but must here be re¬
stricted to those which relate to the last of those coun¬
tries. (See article France.) The death of Carloman in
771 gave him the sole command of France, and his autho¬
rity extended over Italy and a portion of Germany. He
wished to obtain more power in that direction, and re¬
solved to attack the Saxons, and made religion one of the
pretexts for his attempt. The Saxons were a pagan peo¬
ple settled in Holstein and Westphalia, between the Weser
and the Elbe, and, like all people in a barbarous state,
thought themselves warranted by this independence in
making incursions on their neighbours. They were fre¬
quently defeated, and made treaties of peace, which they
soon broke, and thus continued until they were complete¬
ly subdued in 803, when Charlemagne settled some of
them in Flanders, and others in Switzerland, whilst the
country was occupied by a Vandal tribe from Mecklen¬
burg.
This long resistance of so weak a power was owing to
the enlistments of the troops of Charlemagne being but
for one year, and to the other wars in which he was en¬
gaged with the Lombards, the Danes, and the Saracens, as
well as with some of the feudatories in his patrimonial
dominions. He had long nourished the desire to become
emperor of the West, and had negotiated a treaty of mar¬
riage with Irene, empress of Constantinople, which would
have led to a general union of all Christendom under one
head, but which was frustrated by the death of that prin¬
cess. He was, however, in the year 800, crowned in Rome,
by Pope Leo III. and acknowledged as emperor of the
West in all the extensive dominions he had obtained. He
reigned as emperor fourteen years, and died in 814, at
Aachen or Aix-la-Chapelle in Germany, which had been
early selected as his favourite residence.
The German empire may be dated from the treaty of
Verdun in 843, by which the Frankish kingdom was di¬
vided. Lorraine was added to it in 924. Otto the Great
brought the kingdom of Italy in 961, and the imperial do¬
minions in that country in 962, into close connection with
the empire of Germany, which then for the first time re¬
ceived the appellation of the Holy Roman Empire. But
the Italian states were rather feudatories than subjects of
that empire, and this slight bond was in a few years dis¬
solved. Bohemia was a part of the empire under Otto,
and continued to be so considered until a later period.
For a short time the kings of Denmark owned allegiance
on account of Jutland, and the king of Poland on account
of Silesia, a state of things which continued till 1355.
Hungary was also a part of the empire from 1045 till the
reign of Henry IV. Prussia likewise, the possession of
the Teutonic order, stood in the same relation to the em¬
pire from 1230 to 1525, and Livonia from 1205 to 1556.
i rJL^U(len 1 Geschichte des DeuUchen Volkes, 2 und 3 theil; also Sartorius De occupatione et divislone agrorum Romanorum per barba-.
i bermamccc itirpit, <Jc. 1812. * r
480
GERMAN Y.
Germany.
The Emperor Conrad IL, in 1033, united a part of
the kingdom of Lower Burgundy with the empire, which
thus comprehended Franche-Comte, Dauphine, the Ly-
onnois, West Switzerland, Provence, and Savoy. These
portions were, however, one after another separated from
it; and in 1648, when Switzerland and the United Ne¬
therlands were declared independent, none of them re¬
mained to the empire but Savoy, Mompelgard, and the
bishopric of Basil. The principles which regulated the
intercourse of the emperor with the several princes, and
of those princes with each other, were grounded, not, as
in other states, on charters granted by the chief, but on
resolutions adopted at various times amongst the several
states in general assemblies. The most memorable of these
resolutions were, ls£, that of internal peace in 1495; 2<%,
the Golden Bull, so called from having a seal of gold ap¬
pended to it. This was agreed to under the Emperor
Charles IV. in 1356, and confirmed at two subsequent diets
or assemblies, which Were held at Nuremburg and Metz.
The chief object of it was to secure to the several states
the right of independent voting in the election of an em¬
peror. Mly, The treaty of Passau in 1552, or rather that
concluded in consequence of it at Augsburg in 1555.
This treaty established religious peace, and conferred on
the several sovereigns who had embraced the Lutheran
religion the free exercise of it in their dominions; and to
the subjects the right to change their religion, and to
leave the dominions without permission from the princes.
The treaty of Westphalia, concluded in 1648, which
extended freedom of religion to those who had embraced
the reformed or Calvinistic religion, as well as to the Lu¬
therans.
Germany was divided, in 1500, under the Emperor
Maximilian I. into six circles, viz. Franconia, Bavaria,
Suabia, Upper Rhine, Westphalia, and Saxony. These
were increased in 1512 to ten, by adding to them the cir¬
cles of Austria and Burgundy, and forming two circles
out of that of Saxony, and two out of that of the Rhine.
But Lausatia, Silesia, Bohemia, Moravia, and other coun¬
tries, though encompassed by the empire, were never¬
theless not included in it. Each of these circles had at
its head an ecclesiastical and a lay prince, who assembled
the states of the circle, communicated between the em¬
peror and them, and called their attention to the civil or
military affairs of the body. Besides these, each circle had
a military chief, generally denominated the field-marshal,
who commanded the forces, and had the care of providing
subsistence, arms, and other stores. In the assembly of
the states a majority decided every question ; but the de¬
cision required to be conformable to the general laws of
the empire.
After the reformation of religion at the treaty of West¬
phalia, the circles were divided into Catholic, Protestant,
and mixed. The circles of Austria, Bavaria, and Bur¬
gundy belonged to the first; to the second appertained
Saxony; and to the third the remainder.
The imperial dignity was retained by the family of
Charlemagne till the year 888. After that time it was
elective, although for a long period there was a general
adherence to the family which had been once chosen.
At the commencement, the emperor was elected by the
whole of the princes, whether lay or ecclesiastical; but
during an interregnum, which lasted from 1197 to 1272,
the highest or arch-princes, called kurfursten, assumed the
exclusive right ot electing, and by a subsequent union
amongst themselves, at the election of Charles IV. in
1356, secured the power they claimed. Frankfort was
the place of election to which the Archbishop of Mentz
summoned the princes or their ambassadors who were
allowed to vote; but none of them was to be attended by
more than two hundred followers, of whom only fifty were
permitted to be armed. All strangers, even sovereign, r 1
and the ambassadors of foreign potentates, were comraa6n it!'
ed to leave the city on the day of election. After tl' ^
choice had been concluded, the person chosen, or his ^
presentative for him, required to take the prescribed oath"
to maintain the golden bull and the several capitulation
He was then led into St Bartholomew’s Church, and/
dared emperor. At an early period the pope’ was re-
quested to crown the emperor ; but in 1338 it was ordered
by Louis the Bavarian, that the dignity and power should
be assumed without the ceremony of papal assent or con¬
secration. The coronation was fixed by Charlemagne to
be performed at Aix-la-Chapelle; but it was afterwards
enacted at Frankfort, whence the standards and jewels
used on the occasion were removed, part to Nurembun:
and part to Aix-la-Chapelle.
It became usual, during the lifetime of an emperor, to
choose a successor to the imperial dignity; and the person
so chosen was designated king of the Romans. This in-
stitution first arose in 1220, when Henry VII., a son of the
Emperor Frederick IL, was elected. He was bound to take
oaths similar to those enjoined upon the emperor; but dur¬
ing his lifetime he was forbidden to mingle in the public
business of the empire. In case of the death, of the minority,
or of a protracted absence of the emperor, the golden bull
had provided that the Prince of Saxony should exercise vi¬
cariate power in Saxony and Westphalia, and the Prince of
Alsace similar power in Franconia, Suabia, and the Rhe¬
nish circles. They could call assemblies, collect and con¬
trol the finances, and administer justice ; but they had no
power to grant imperial dignities or feudal estates. In
neither of the circles of Austria or Bavaria was any provi¬
sion made for the exercise of this vicariate power.
The states of the empire, or general assembly, consisted
of the clergy and laity, who held their property direct from
the empire. The first comprehended the archbishops, bi¬
shops, prelates, abbots, abbesses, and the masters of the Teu¬
tonic and St John’s orders; the second included arch-princes,
dukes-princes, landgraves, margraves, burgraves, graffs or
counts, and the free imperial cities. After the peace of
Westphalia, the states were divided into the Catholic and
the Protestant portions, who on many subjects deliberated
and resolved separately. Whilst the inferior princes exer¬
cised the executive and legal authority within their own
states, those greater affairs which related to the empire in
general, and to the respective connection of one sovereignty
with another, were brought under the notice of the gene¬
ral assembly, in which the emperor presided either perso¬
nally or by his commissary, who was always a prince of the
empire, and who was attended by an assessor. The assem¬
bly was divided into three benches or colleges, in which
every thing was decided by a majority of voices; but at a
subsequent sitting they were united, and then the majority
of the three benches determined the final resolution. Many
subjects were intrusted to the examination of imperial de¬
putations or committees. The power of making war or
concluding peace belonged to the assembly, but was some¬
times intrusted solely to the emperor, though only in press¬
ing emergencies. The emperor had originally the power
of nominating to the ecclesiastical dignities; but the popes
gradually so intruded their authority, as to reduce the mo¬
narch’s power to almost a shadow. After the peace of
Westphalia, the empire was divided between the three re¬
ligions. In the Catholic states, the pope and the bishops
had usurped the judicial power, and administered it accord¬
ing to the canon law. In the Protestant parts, all the ju¬
ridical power of the church was abolished, and the affairs of
religion were left to the management of consistories chosen
from among the subjects, in most cases on the nomination
of the princes.
, The power of coining money appertained originally to
V
n.V'
- i --      r1 VV1U1
t^m. The degrees in the universities were conferred in
1; name of the emperor ; and, through a prince named by
In, called the Pfabzgrave, the doctors, licentiates, advo-
(;es, solicitors, notaries, and other legal officers, were ad-
i tted to practise their professions in the courts of law.
r          v***-v,^ X^wixxaii II1U11U1 vv us
e .mated at 128,000 florins, or about L. 12,000 sterling.
7is tax was paid either at Augsburg, Frankfort, Nurem-
b g, or at Leipsic, and the collectors of it were called
li nning-meister.
GERMANY. 48l
e emperor, but was gradually obtained by several of thp I*,,, u .1 . , , ^ , ,
liefs of the respective states; but the fineness and the narte is iv nomV?aJed Ca^inal Fesch, the uncle of Bona-Germany,
eight of the coin were directed by the authority of the bdt tlS successor; and on the 12th of
iperor and the general assembly. The tolls on certain S ntLr^ kmgS f ^ Wu?emberg’ aab six¬
ers and roads, the regulation of the great fairs of Frank- Francis If Kr? fo™ally anno™ced to the Emperor
•t, Brunswick, and Leipsic, and the conveyance of letters the othpr nr’ sePara^on fl!om the empire, and invited
i post, as well as providing post-horses, were the reg-alia nernr Fmn -nCeS m a n^W adiance- Em-
, the emperor; and the latter were granted hereditarily to his withdiW ^ °! A,1Sast lssue(1 a declaration of
13 prince of taxes, whose successors, even to the present tl e b p nfTg m °f the rpire’ abandoninS
(y, hawe some power and some profit connected with Emperor of AuE" °f and asSuminS that of
In the room of this dissolved constitution, of nearly a
t musand years continuance, the several states which had
been accomplices in its destruction, with some others
added to them, formed what was called the Confederation
The finances of Germany, viewed as one empire were adhpsinn nf ^ebruary 1808? had received the
tier the direction of the general assembly. The contri- its head under*5 th°e titm Pynces’ and Pla^ed Bonaparte at
Lions were called Roman months, each of which amount- w„rJ A . , ' . Protector. Two years alter-
, to a force of 20,000 infantry and 4000 cavairVtTnd^ ^
taber of these months winch were granted to the etn- Elbe, to Franee, and ribbed of their dominions Several of
, or was adapted to the occasion that required them, the smaller princes, whom he had contmc ed to defend
esc wo e divided among the several states, and called With these Augmentations he continued hfs ae7rtsio,t
t ,r contingents. They were, however, in process of till the dispersion of I,is army in Russ“ gS 88 °“S
tie, frequently converted mto payments in money, at sti- As the Avents which produced the ddiveranee of Per
fated rates. _In later times each Roman month was many from the yoke of France belong to the history of
that country as much as to this, our notices of it here
must be brief. After the destruction of that vast army
which penetrated into Russia, almpst all the states of the
>(of the individual princes were under greater or ^‘aglftZ^^^
restraint ,n he exercise of power, from the rights of the French conscription, and? wklA wonderful Slerir
r state assemblies; and when there was a collision be- Bonaparte, at its head, was enabled to penetrate into Sax¬
ton them, an appeal was made to the imperial tribunals. ony, to threaten Prussia, and cxhibit a force which he
those courts the princes were answerable for the debts supposed would overawe Austria. The bateles of Lutzen
tlf incurred, and by them their dominions were on some and Dresden, in 1813, produced an armistice durinn lhe
onions put in a state of sequestration; hut in other of continuance of which ArgotiationsfoArcAbAtAenRus!
1 !>™aI«ht.es bore were no assemblies of the states, siaand Prussia on one side, and France on the oThe? were
,, ™lsc'!u'-ruJy css limitation of powers, though in them carried on under the mediation of the Emperor of Austria
SST ai^tH1? fe aut,10rit5' °f the Bllt as be concluded! Sria was fXZ
b-gd t0 fu fil 118 enSaSements. to join the allies against France. During these periods a
his sketch of the ancient const.tut.on of the German spirit had risen in "Germany which animated ah dasses of
its inhabitants, so that those powers which still clung to
the interests of France could place no reliance on the
l>( lent stateR nf  ’   Vs T suPPort of their subjects. Bonaparte, overpowered by
!„ a]itv whirh ifq '.m V ,ab uuuiposed, a feeling of na- numbers, with an army of raw troops from his own do¬
ll- Uherude and nnr* p A a who are dP,fended minions, and with troops of doubtful fidelity from the do¬
st fion ™ ^ r tribes °f German origin. Tins con- minions of his allies., was surrounded, and, after being com-
* and rend^dTb^ hutthttlefOther unity, and less pelled to retreat from Dresden, fought the important
dels the^eakes^of^hem alf63^ kpnt E^0pean ^ battle. of the armies of Russia, Austria,
siP'rino- the nfiirv “ ‘ 1 V i m’ however’from Prussia, and Sweden. The issue of that battle was not
pl I and hal lodTenf tn “"quered and aa eppressed peo- considered as doubtful even from, its commencement; but,
n hTch thev hivp C degree of intellectual culture, during the contest, the Saxon division of the army march-
ncither Nation PerhanXd “c tXCeeded by ed fr°m their station in tbe French line, and took up their
in ,ch SmT™ f-P dlstribatlon of the territory pos.tion with the Prussians. The result of the battle was
m ls 0f advnnF gn?eS ^ °n^ °f tbe m°St effectual a hurried retreat from Leipsic to the frontier of France,
gi, whiiffilllP^ a?d fCUnng,that reformation of reli- which was then the river Rhine. On the retreat to the
Wrings to the wTnS l1 ^ 0116 °f the greatest Rbine’ the shattered remains of the French army were
1 he8ffi or7of rPrn Uman raCeA • • ? interrupted by the forces of Bavaria. A battle was fought
c« ected lith tlvu f G Y mfm,odern times 18 so much at Hanau, about twelve miles from Frankfort, which,
i,': ke wars of the W ^ p °f EuroPe’ esPecially dar- though gained by the French, tended only to hasten their
n Of ^1 S e Present/Ttury> that a nar- flight, and led to the loss of much that remained of their
in| -i] / \e a rePet]tl0n of what is to be found stores, arms, and ammunition.
P^'illy BuiTAm - !nd tnattS of EuROPt F.ran?e’ aEdt's- By the end of the year 1813, the French were totally
.A TA1„nA and to them the reader is referred. expelled from every part of Germany, and the occupation
of laris by the allies, early in 1814, led to general tran¬
quillity. 1 he Congress of Vienna soon afterwards met, and
were raisod tn i 7~i~ T T" A’.““'"“L. never was a body of plenipotentiaries plunged into such
L to that of l tb?i rank,of kings, and the Prince of a labyrinth of difficulties. The great extent of country
*i*s (28th Mav 1snrwrnde7 f Vere1,1gn* PS^0n after- whlch had been delivered, and was without any govern-
•f' ired to tlie^i8 m °r °/ the empire ment; the number °f claims urged either from previous
a. x assembled diet, that, though contrary to possession, or from active service in effecting the deliver-
3 p
. t t   ——v.wxxoi,xpxxt,iuxt ui tut: vjurnmii
CMm is interesting, from the length of time which itlast-
oi ind from having, during ten centuries, with all its com-
P«Sity and impediments, preserved, among the many inde-
    ^ vx*v.ixx pile icauci IS lUlUFIUU.
caj PT v ^ resblirS m December 1805 first gave oc-
, V™ dlssolution of the ancient constitution of Ger-
■ry _ xXXXXV/IV^XXP tl t Li tlt/11 tli VJi Ci “
that treaty the Dukes of Bavaria and Wurtem-
T*Q 1C? /-v i- „ 1 i . ,  
432
GERMANY.
Germany, ance; were such as to perplex with difficulties which ap-
peared to be nearly insuperable, and, in whatever way they
were terminated, must necessarily have left great dissatis¬
faction. They were, however, so settled as to leave Ger¬
many in the state described in the preceding pages; and
whether they could have been adjusted with more regard
to the principles of equity is not for us to decide.
The return of Bonaparte from Elba produced most gi¬
gantic efforts upon the part of all those smaller sovereigns
who had been reinstated in their dominions by his down¬
fall. The number of troops actually mustered and pre¬
pared to march when the battle of Waterloo took place
and suspended them, amounted to more than 1,200,000
men. They were not indeed all armed, but many more
men could have been raised if arms for them could have
been procured. These efforts, added to the costly exer¬
tions made in the war of the deliverance, have encumber¬
ed with debts almost every state, as is noticed in the de¬
tailed account of them. These debts, however, have not
been solely created by the events in question. The ephe¬
meral kingdom of Westphalia, formed for Jerome Bona¬
parte, extended over Hanover, Brunswick, and Cassel, as
well as the circle from which it was denominated. Dur¬
ing his government, all the different portions of his king¬
dom had incurred vast debts in executing his projects.
These debts were owing to individuals or corporate bodies
within the dominions attached by the congress to their new
sovereigns ; and the princes, for the sake of the people, wet e
compelled to assume the debts, and provide means for their
liquidation, and the payment in the mean time of the in¬
terest. Thus the ungrateful task of providing for the
expenditure attending the subjection of their states, as
well as for their liberation, became one of the first duties
on their resumption of power. This odious consequence
of former circumstances has been industriously improved
by the enemies of tranquillity, and has created considerable
discontent.
These feelings of discontent were chiefly confined to
writers in periodical papers of the smaller kind, and to as¬
sociations amongst the young men in those universities in
which the discipline was the most relaxed. The demon¬
strations of this dissatisfied state of the public mind were
few, and scarcely noticed except in narrow circles. The
murder of Kotzebue by Sandt, and a similar attempt on
the life of Ibell, the minister of Nassau, were tokens of
great excitement amongst a few fanatics; but the judicial
inquiries which followed these transactions seemed to
the governments to prove that the mischievous views of
insurrection or assassination were confined to a very nar¬
row circle. There was no interruption to the full exer¬
cise of the powers of the law, nor any necessity for in¬
creasing the military establishments. The Revolution in
Paris in 1830 produced, however, considerable excite¬
ment in several parts of Germany, particularly in Hano¬
ver and in Saxony, and also in Brunswick, though in the
latter country it was more owing to the personal charac¬
ter and conduct of the sovereign, which led to his deposi¬
tion and to the investing of the power in the hands of his
brother. In Hanover, the suspension of the university of
Gottingen, and the mild but firm measures of the govern¬
ment, soon led to tranquillity; and in Saxony, though some
mischief was effected, it was but of short duration, and
the kingdom soon returned to that tranquil state which
is habitual to the greater part of its inhabitants. The
establishment of the present German confederation, con¬
sisting of ambassadors from all the states, in number pro¬
portioned to their extent and population, has concentrated
the power of the whole body of the princes, and appears
calculated to give stability to ancient and respected insti-Gei
tutions. These representatives were seventy in number
iw reduced to sixtv-nine.1 as annears hv Rio tota ’
but are now reduced to sixty-nine,1 as appears by the table
which follows; and in some cases they act by a committee
of seventeen. In the general body, two thirds are re¬
quired to make a law; in the smaller body a bare majo¬
rity is sufficient, but in both assemblies Austria and
Prussia have a great preponderance. Austria is the pre¬
sident in both these bodies, and has the casting vote when
an equality of opinions is experienced. It is not our
design to condemn or applaud the constitution; but it is
powerful to suppress insurrection, and to propagate gene¬
ral regulations, and is said to have been found highly be¬
neficial in the arrangement of differences between the
governments of the several states of which it is com¬
posed.
Within the limits of Germany are portions of kingdoms,
parts of the territory of which are not within the sphere of
the confederation ; thus Austria, Prussia, the Netherlands,
and Denmark, have parts only of Germany within their do¬
minions, and therefore will here receive such notice as is
merely necessary to give a view of the whole of Germany.
Austria and Denmark have already been noticed in this
work, and the kingdoms of the Netherlands and of Prus¬
sia will occur in their alphabetical order.
The four kingdoms of Bavaria, Hanover, Saxony, and
Wurtemberg, are too important to be wholly included in a
general article. Bavaria has been already treated of se¬
parately, and the other three will be noticed in their pro¬
per places.
According to its present boundaries, Germany extends
from 45° to 54° 20' north latitude, and from 5° 43' to
20° 5(Y east longitude from London. It is bounded on the
north by the German Ocean, by Denmark, and the Baltic
Sea ; on the east by West Prussia, Poland, Cracow, Gal-
licia, and Illyria; on the south by the Adriatic Sea, Italy,
and the Helvetic provinces ; on the east by France and
the kingdom of the Netherlands. Its whole extent, in¬
cluding rivers and lakes, is 248,832 English square miles.
The southern part of Germany is either covered or pe¬
netrated with steep mountains, one part of which extends
from the Alps, and the other from the Carpathian range.
These mountains gradually lose themselves in advancing
northward ; and from the last of them, the Hartz, upon the
confines of Hanover, begins that vast plain which extends
over the north of Germany, through Prussia and Poland)
and a considerable part of Russia. This plain was proba¬
bly covered by the water long after the more southern
parts had emerged from the ocean, the evidences ofwnc
are apparent in the turf moors of the sandy districts, w ere
expensive embankments and dikes are necessary to pre
serve the land from inundation. , ,
The soil is generally productive. The plains in the nor i
have indeed much arid sandy land ; but nature has prou
ed along the borders of the rivers some rich an U1
soils, where the most abundant harvests are gathered,
south has also on its mountains much barren or slightly p>
cluctive land ; but the beautiful valleys and small Pmns
twreen the hills rival in fertility the best alluvial lan
the banks of the northern rivers. In general the soi
the north is heavy, and in the south light; the
adapted for corn, and the latter for vines. 4 he
in the middle, between the mountains and the sandy P ’
In Bohemia, Silesia, Franconia, Saxony, and on tie ’
the proportion of good soil is much greater t an
north or the south. .w
Some of the loftiest mountains of Germany a
springing from the great mass of the Alps, anc c ivi
This diminution of the number has been caused by the duchy of Saxe-Gotha having been divided between two other
GERMANY.
483
he Rhaetian and the Noric; and several of the peaks of
"aI1'-hese reach the line of perpetual snow. The eastern branch
)f the Noric chain runs through the Austrian dominions,
md loses one part of that chain in Silesia, whilst another
■titers Hungary. The other branch runs through Bavaria
in(j Wurtemberg, to the west of the Black Forest, and is
•onnected with the Odenwald, the Fichte!gebirge, and the
nountains of Thuringia. It stretches to the Hartz, and
he mountains through which the Weser forces its passage,
oon after which it is lost. Several other chains branch
rom these greater ones; and some of their peaks attain a
:onsiderable elevation. The principal mountains, and their
leight above the level of the sea, are as follows; but in
heir progress to the north their gradual declension in
icight is remarkable :—
Feet.
The Ortel, in the Rhaetian Alps 14,4*16
The Grossglockner, in the same 11,982
The Vichbachhorn, in the Noric Alps 10,826
The Terklon, in the Carnic Alps 9,744
The Hochvogel, in the Alguer Alps 9,000
The Grosenberg, in the Styrian Alps 8,380
The Eisenhuth, in the Julian Alps   ...7,680
The Schneeberg (near Vienna), in the Noric Alps...6,858
The Olscher, in the Noric Alps 6,062
The Traunstein, in the same 5,365
The Schneekuppe, in the Reisenberg 4,950
The Feldberg, in the Schwartzenwald 4,610
The Rachel, in the Bohemian Forest 4,282
The Speiglitzer, in the Macher Mountains 4,280
The Fichtelberg, in the Erzgebirge 3,731
The Dammersfeld, in the same 3,640
The Schneeberg, in the Fichtelgebirge 3,621
The Brocken, in the Hartz 3,489
The Hohe-Eule, in the Glatzgerbirge 3,326
The Beerberg, in Thuringia 2,985
The Inselberg, in the same 2,791
The Feldberg, in the Taunus 2,605
The Meissner, in the Warrageberge 2,180
The Miiggelsberg (the highest in Brandenburg) 340
The Rekuhl (the highest in Pomerania) 280
The mountains are generally covered with forests; to
the southward, where they are the most lofty, with pines ;
and to the northward, with various deciduous trees. If at
the present day the terra sylvis horrida of Tacitus cannot
be found in Germany, it is still the most abundantly wood¬
ed territory in Europe.
Germany has seven large rivers which pass through it to
the sea; and in their passage receive the various smaller
streams which issue from the mountains, and spread ferti¬
lity over this well-watered country. The Danube rises in
the dukedom of Baden, becomes navigable for small craft
at Ulm, receives the large rivers Lech, Iser, Inn, Ens, and
March, and, after a course of 430 miles, exclusively of its
curvatures, waters Flungary in its way to the Black Sea.
Ihe Rhine, rising in Switzerland, and navigable from its
entrance into Germany, has a course, exclusive of its wind- .
ings, of 460 miles, before it enters the kingdom of the
Netherlands. In its progress it receives the navigable
rivers Neckar, Lahn, and Moselle, the Saar, the Roer, and
the Lippe.
Ihe Weser rises in middle Gei’many, from two springs
which form the Fulda and the Werra, and at their junc¬
tion takes the name which it carries to the ocean, and
under which name it runs, without noticing its bendings,
I m*les. It becomes navigable at Minden for boats,
and at Vegefach, near Bremen, for ships. The Elbe, like
e Weser, from its rise to its junction with the ocean, is
" 10"y a German river. It becomes navigable near its
souice, runs a course of 520 miles, and is the most con-
suerable channel of commerce with foreign countries,
through the ports of Hamburg and Altona. It receives Germany,
the navigable rivers Moldau, Eger, Saale, Havel, Spree, ^
Ilmenau, and Steckinitz, besides fifty smaller streams.
The Oder becomes navigable for boats at Ratisbon, and
running, in the Prussian part of Germany, a course of 380
miles, empties itself into the Baltic Sea in Pomerania. It re¬
ceives the rivers Bober, Neisse, and Warthe, besides many
smaller streams. The Eloch is the only German river which
runs to the Adriatic Sea. It passes through the Tyrol,
and only becomes navigable after it has entered Italy. The
Ems is a river of short course, rising in Prussia, and pass¬
ing through the province of East Friesland, now belonging
to Hanover, whence it becomes navigable, and soon enters
the sea near the city of Emden in two branches.
The forming a junction between these great rivers, by
means of canals, is an object of vast importance, and some
progress towards effecting it has been made. The Hol¬
stein Canal unites the German Ocean with the Baltic Sea
from the river Eider. The Plauen Canal unites the Havel
with the Elbe, or rather facilitates and shortens the pass¬
age. The Finnow Canal forms a communication between
the Havel and the Oder. The Frederick William’s Canal
unites the Spree and the Oder. The Pappenburg Canal
is designed to unite the Ems with the Elbe. Lastly, the
Vienna Canal is now completed, and forms a communica¬
tion between the Danube and the Adriatic Sea.
The whole of Germany being in the temperate zone,
though, from the variations of elevation and the difference
of latitude, it differs in climate, is generally very healthy.
The most mild and beautiful are the middle provinces, be¬
tween the 48th and 51st degree. In the south, under the
influence of the Alps, the air is raw and cold; whilst in the
plains and open valleys the climate of the finest parts of
Italy is enjoyed. The northern provinces are colder, damp¬
er, and more ungenial, and near the stagnant lakes un¬
wholesome. The weather undergoes extreme variations,
and the frost is frequently seen at a late period of the year.
The inhabitants there too feel the effect of heavy fogs, and
sometimes of tremendous storms. No volcanoes are now
in existence; and though the remains of them are to be
seen in many places, they are not supposed to have been
in activity since the antediluvian ages. Earthquakes are
scarcely felt, and have never been injuriously experi¬
enced ; and the country is free from the rpusquitos, which
so much annoy the inhabitants of Italy. Vines, maise,
and rice, grow as far north as latitude 51 ; but beyond
that they do not arrive at full perfection. The olive and
the silk-worm are only raised on that small portion of
Germany to the south of the 46th degree.
The original German horses are of a very inferior race,
and the specimens of them, where they have not been im¬
proved by the intermixture of other breeds, generally bad ;
but from this must be excepted those of Mecklenburg,
East Friesland, Holstein, and Luneburg, which, for draft
or for heavy dragoons, are admirable races, and have been
propagated over all Europe. Horses for pleasure, or for
, mounting light cavalry, must be brought from other coun¬
tries ; but the jennets, a light small breed, are good and
quiet. Asses are not common even in the southern part
of the country. Mules are to be seen in Hanover, near
the Hartz Forest, and in the Tyrolese portion of Germany
they are the common beasts of burden.
The cows are of various breeds; but the handsomest
are those from East Friesland, Oldenburg, Holstein, and
the other provinces on the borders of the German Ocean,
though generally known under the name of East Friesland-
ers. The Hungarian breed prevails in many parts, but is
esteemed more for the ease with which the animals are
fattened than for the purposes of the dairy. A third sort of
cows is the Swiss breed, which does not come wholly from
the Alpine regions, but is furnished by Wurtemberg, and
484
GERMANY.
Germany, a part of Bavaria. The breed of Germany, originating
from the mixture of these races, is well adapted for the
dairy; but, either from want of appropriate qualities in
the animals, or from the imperfect manner of fattening
them, the oxen, when killed, are seldom more than 500
pounds weight, and the average of them considerably light¬
er. Some attempts are now making to improve the breed,
by the introduction of the Tyrolese bull ; perhaps the
most perfect animal of the cow kind for meat and for draft,
and which, when crossed with the best milkers, produces
the most complete cattle. The common practice in Ger¬
many, of killing the calves from ten to sixteen days old,
produces very bad veal; but some of the beef, especially
near the banks of the Elbe, is excellent.
The proper German sheep are a mixture of the original
coarse-woolled race, crossed by a breed from Ardennes.
In a part of Illyria they have the sheep of Padua. The
fine-woolled sheep of Spain have, however, been intro¬
duced by many of the princes, and have been vastly ex¬
tended, especially in Saxony, Silesia, and Brandenburg,
and will probably, at no distant period, be the principal,
if not the sole race. The badness of their flesh is of less
consequence in Germany than in England; because, in
the former country, it is not worth more than the annual
clipping of the wool, which can be sent to richer coun¬
tries, where they can afford to pay high prices for it; but
the flesh must be consumed at home, and therefore sells
for little.
Goats are common in all the states, but are only to be
seen in large flocks in the more mountainous parts. Swine
are the most important kind of live stock in Bavaria,
Westphalia, Hanover, Mecklenburg, and Pomerania.
They are of three different breeds; the long white, bent
in the back; the short white, or yellow, with the same
kind of back; and the black, or yellow, of a short make;
but these different breeds are becoming much mingled
together.
The forests of Germany abound with untamed animals,
which afford sport to its princes and nobles, and furnish
a considerable quantit}' of aliment to the higher and mid¬
dle classes of the people, as the noble sportsmen gene¬
rally sell their prey, and are obliged to dispose of it cheap.
Wild deer of various kinds, and wild swine, are very nu¬
merous in many parts of the country. With them, foxes
are found in some districts in prodigious numbers ; but the
hunting of these animals is less an object with sportsmen
in Germany than with us, as the lynxes are very nume¬
rous, especially in the mountains in the south, and the
chase of them is found to be the most exciting of all rural
sports. At a hunting on the estate of one nobleman in
Bohemia, during three days of 1818, more than 12,000
head of game were killed; and in Saxony between 2000
and 3000 hares were shot in one day, and sold for about
one shilling each. There are bears in the southern parts,
in Illyria, in the Steyermark, and the Tyrol, of the small
black kind, more dangerous to the bee-hives, and the
smaller animals, than to man. Wolves are few now, and
only found in the Trans-Rhenish provinces. In some of
the mountains the beaver is found, though but rarely,
and some other animals, principally valuable for their fur.
The most annoying animal is the field-mouse, of a species
called the hamster, which is found in thousands in Sax¬
ony, and does incredible injury to the productions of the
soil. In the months between the 9th May and the 9th
September 1817, the corporation of the city of Gotha paid
rewards for killing 89,565 of these mischievous animals.
Domesticated birds are very plentiful, but especially
ducks and geese. The latter form an important portion
of the food on many of the farming establishments, espe¬
cially in Pomerania, Bohemia, and the Steyermark, where
most houses in the country cure from fifty to a hundred
for their winter consumption. Wild birds are more ruj. g
merous in Germany than in any other part of Eurone ^
Wild geese, bustards, grouse, blackcocks, woodcocks, wild
ducks, widgeons, teal, and snipes, are most abundant. Be¬
sides these, the smaller kinds of birds, as larks, thrushes
and sparrows, and the singing birds, especially bullfinches
and canary birds, are plentiful. The latter are chiefly
taken in the Hartz Forest, and are circulated throughout
all Europe.
The three seas which border on Germany abound with
fish. Besides the kinds which are caught in the ocean
the Baltic Sea and the Adriatic furnish their peculiar
species. Amongst those of the former are the dersh and
tlie klipfish (anarchicos) ; and of the latter the tunny, the
Sardinia, and many others. The greater part of the fish
consumed in Germany is, however, the produce of the
rivers and lakes, which supply in great abundance eels
lampreys, trout, salmon, sturgeon, perch, pike, salmon-
trout, barbel, carp, craw-fish, and many others. With
these various kinds the markets in the cities are most
profusely supplied.
The rearing of bees in the north, and especially in Lau-
satia, is productive of much honey and wax, which form
important articles, both for domestic use and for foreign
trade.
The great production of Germany, as of every other
European country, is grain of various kinds. Wheat, rye,
maize, rice, barley, oats, beans, peas, and buckwheat,
are the most important of these. In the south, more
wheat than rye is grown ; but in the north, the propor¬
tion of rye to wheat is eight to one. In the north, most
oats are cultivated ; in the south, more barley. Maize
and rice are peculiar to the south; buckwheat and peas
are alike in every part.
The productions arising from garden culture are very
great. Potatoes are sometimes cultivated with the spade,
sometimes with the plough; but the increase of their
growth has been very rapid of late years, and probably
furnishes as much human aliment as grain. The cabbages
of all the Brassica tribe receive much attention, and are
raised in great quantities. Turnips are cultivated with
little care, merely as food for man, and are not extensively
used for feeding cattle. The superior kinds of fruit are
best in the middle and southern provinces; but in the
north the apples, plums, and pears, are good and most
abundant. The Pearmain apple, which has spread
throughout all the countries of Europe from Germany, is
found in the highest perfection in Stettin, Bostock, and
the Tyrol. Chestnuts and almonds are almost exclusively
grown in the southern parts, towards Illyria and the Ty¬
rol ; and in the same vicinity the melons and other fruits,
which in our climate and the north of Germany require
artificial heat, are raised in the open air.
Vines were originally planted in Germany by the Ro¬
mans. They are now cultivated successfully on the banks
of the Rhine, the Maine, the Moselle, the Danube, the
Mur, the Etsch, and the Save, where they produce wine
as highly esteemed as any in Europe. The most valued
of all the wines is that produced on the banks ol the
Rhine, known in England by the name of Old Hock, from
the vineyards of Hockheim, where the best kind is made.
The principal sorts, from the places of their growth, are de¬
nominated Johannisberg, Rudesheim, Hockheim, Marko-
brunn, and Lieb-frauenmilch. The next in value are the
wines of the Maine, called Leisten wine, Stein wine, and
Steyer wine. The wines from the Danube are next in
estimation, and to them succeed those from the Tyrol an
the banks of the Moselle. The other wines near the lake o
Constance, and in Bohemia, are much inferior; and those
produced near to Naumberg, Jena, and Meissen in Saxony,
and to Zullichau in Silesia, are of very indifferent flavom,
I
GERMANY.
.any. specially after a moist summer, and scarcely merit the
ame of wine, though, from their great abundance, they
ecome very useful to the inhabitants.
Neither the quantity nor the quality of the oil produced
•om olives in Germany is material; it is confined to a
nail district of the south. Great quantities of rape and
nseed oil are expressed; and for the more common pur-
oses, the oil of herrings, seals, and other aquatic animals,
very abundant.
But the staple production of Germany is flax, which
grown in almost every village, and is spun into yarn,
he best is produced in Silesia, in Westphalia, in Hano-
:r, in Brunswick, and in Bohemia; but even these kinds
i not attain a length or fineness of fibre equal to the flax
' Flanders. Hemp is raised in Baden, Wurtemberg,
Westphalia, Hesse-Darmstadt, and Luneburg, but scarce-
produces sufficient for the consumption of the country,
obacco has been long cultivated in Baden, on the Rhine,
id near Magdeburg, and during the existence of the
•ench continental system had been very much extended;
jt the return of peace checked its progress, and the cul-
.ation of it is again confined to those parts here men-
oned, where, from long habit, it has become almost in-
genous. Various roots were cultivated for the pro-
iction of sugar during the continuance of that system,
it they now scarcely deserve notice, as they are nearly
andoned. Woad, saffron, annise-seed, cummin-seed,
ips, rhubarb, camomile flowers, and Iceland-moss, are
five and considerable productions. The forests of Ger-
iny, besides their abundant supply of fuel to the inha¬
lants, furnish much wood, both for building houses and
,ips; and it ever the water communication should be
jch extended, so as to bring the largest trees with fa-
ity to the shores of the ocean, they will become a most
luable source of wealth.
No part of Europe yields a greater variety or abundance
mineral productions, and in no part of the world are the
nes worked with so much skill or so much economy,
ecious stones are discovered in many parts ; rock-crys-
, amethysts, topazes, are found in Bavaria; calcedony,
ate, petchstein, and porcelain-jasper, in Bohemia; ba¬
tes in many parts; marbles, gypsum, and alabaster, in
ihemia; alum near Tbplitz ; rock-salt and Glauber salts in
lions parts; and abundance of the earths calculated for
iking earthenware, from the coarsest description to the
est porcelain. Fossil coal is found in many districts,
d much of it is consumed ; but the cheapness of wood,
d the prejudices of the people against the use of it in
nr houses, has operated to prevent the mines from
! mg completely explored or worked to anything ap-
| >aching the extent of which they are capable. Gold
i procured, though in very small quantities, by washing,
1 Saltzburg, in Bohemia, in the Ilammelsberg, and in Si-
ia. Silver and cinnabar are raised from the mines of
Ji Erzgebirge in Saxony. Iron, copper, tin, lead, ca-
llne> bismuth, cobalt, nickel, titanium, arsenic, and al-
!i st every other mineral, is more or less raised from the
l! ms. I he abundance of mineral substances everywhere
■ ttered, and which it would be difficult to enumerate,
m promoted the study of mineralogy, and given birth
1 me school of Freyburg, whence, under the direction
( erner, the mineralogical knowledge of the earth has
;n widely extended.
“>e annual supply from the mines of Germany is as
ows- J
485
 1,456 ounces.
™lver 984,000 do.
!r0PPer 39,000 hundreds.
^ead 191,200 do.
TAm 7,800 do.
lron 2,400,000 do.
Quicksilver   6,180 hundreds. Germany.
Cinnabar 7,800 do. w-v-O
Cobalt 16,500 do.
Calamine  82,800 do.
Arsenic 10,600 do.
Antimony 2,400 do.
Rock-salt 5,150,000 do.
Fossil coals 20,000,000 do.
The population of Germany has been vastly increased
within the period which has passed since the conclusion of
the revolutionary year. By the several censuses furnished
by the respective states to the congress of Vienna, it ap-
peared that the whole number of the inhabitants was
30,355,069, which in sixteen years has increased
36,491,019, as is thus seen.
to
States.
(Inhabitants.
Austria 
Prussia 
Bavaria 
Saxony 
Hanover 
Wurtemberg 
Baden 
Hesse-Cassel 
Hesse-Darmstadt 
Holstein 
Luxemburg   
Saxe-Weimar 
Saxe-Coburg Gotha 
Saxe-Altenburg 
Saxe-Meiningen Hil-
burghausen 
Brunswick 
Mecklenburg Schwerin
Mecklenburg Strelitz
Oldenburg 
Nassau 
Anhalt-Dessau 
Anhalt Bernburg  
Anhalt-Kothen 
Schwartzenburg-Son-
derhausen 
Schwartzenburg-Rudol-
stadt 
Hohenzollern-Hechin-
gen   
Hohenzollern-Sigmarin-
gen   
Leichtenstein 
Reus, elder branch...
Reus, younger branch...
Lippe-Detmold 
Schaunburg-Lippe....
Waldeck 
Hesse-Homburg 
Frankfort 
Lubeck 
Bremen 
Hamburg 
11,645,000
10.010,755
4,037,017
1,497,568
1,549,000
1,562,033
1,201,300
649,800
720,000
410,385
305,120
232,704
156,639
114,048
129,588
250,100
450,200
84,130
251,500
355,815
60,000
40,000
36,000
51,767
60,000
15.500
39,000
5,550
25,000
58.500
77.500
25.500
56,000
23,000
55,000
47,000
49,000
154,000
Square
English
Miles.
36,491,019
78,912
70,549
30,997
7,200
14,720
7,524
5,803
4,352
4,112
3,691
2,347
1,408
1,024
491
875
1,514
4,755
768
2,752
2,164
363
340
331
384
448
117
426
53
153
453
436
213
459
138
113
122
72
134
Votes in
the Assem¬
bly or Diet
4
4
4
4
4
4
3
3
3
3
3
1
1
1
1
2
2
1
1
2
1
1
1
251,418
69
The inhabitants are of two original races; the ancient
Germans and the Sclavonians. The former are divided
into High and Low Germans, speaking a language some¬
what different, but possessing great similarity in habits,cha¬
racters, and dispositions. The Low German, or, as it is
486
GERMANY.
Germany, called, Platt Deutsche, prevails among all the people in
—^ Lower Saxony, Westphalia, Holstein, Mecklenburg, Bran¬
denburg, and Pomerania; but as the service in the
churches, and the instruction in the schools, is in Pligh
German, all even of the peasantry understand that lan¬
guage, though they prefer their own dialect. In the south¬
ern parts, where only High German is spoken, the pea¬
santry use a patois which is scarcely more intelligible to
those unaccustomed to it than the Platt Deutsche. Hie
descendants of the Sclavonians reside all to the eastw ard
of the Elbe. They retain their original language, with a
great mixture of German words ; and they are far behind
their neighbours in cultivation, but are an industrious and
patient people. I hey form nearly one sixth ol the inhabi¬
tants. In the south are some few of Italian origin ; and
colonies of French, originally Protestant refugees, are
established in many places, where they retain a connec¬
tion with each other, founded upon privileges granted at
the time of their emigration. But all these scarcely
amount to more than 250,000. The Jews are 248,749
souls; of whom 83,077 are in Austria, 57,353 in Prussia,
22,000 in Bavaria, 8319 in Wurtemberg, 8000 in Hano¬
ver, 8300 in Hesse-Darmstadt, 15,079 in Hesse-Cassel,
14,378 in Holstein, 16,000 in the free cities, and the re¬
mainder are scattered over the other states.
By the terms of the confederation, the three Christian
sects, Catholics, Lutherans, and Reformed, are on an equal
footing in all the states of the union, and the religious
profession of the princes has very little influence upon that
of the subjects. The Catholics are the great majority in
Austria, Bavaria, Baden, and Luxembourg, and form a
numerous body in Prussia, Wurtemberg, Hesse-Darmstadt,
Hesse-Cassel, and Hanover, amounting in all to 21,000,000
individuals. The Protestants of the two confessions have
approached each other so nearly as to form almost but
one church, and in many parts they are amalgamated to¬
gether. Their whole number is about 14,000,000. The
smaller Christian sects, Menonites, Hussites, Moravians,
and a few of the Greek church, are not together more in
number than the Jews, who, as before stated, do not ex¬
ceed 250,000.
The knowledge of the German people probably exceeds
that of every other. They have men of eminence in every
department of literature, and can enumerate those who
have made discoveries or improvements in every branch
of science. It is not, however, so much from the merits
of their eminent men, great and useful as they have been,
as from the general diffusion of knowledge, that the cha¬
racter of the nation must be estimated. Its literature is
not the work of its princes and nobles, but arises from
the general taste for reading and accumulating know¬
ledge which so extensively prevails, and which descends
lower in the scale of society than in almost any other coun¬
try of the civilized world. Although for two hundred
years literature has prevailed much in Germany, it was only
about the middle of the last century that, by the poets and
critics, the language became polished, without diminishing
its force, and was purified from many of those vulgarisms
which had disgusted the English, French, and Italian lite¬
rati. The learned men had more sedulously studied the
ancient languages of Greece and Rome than the im¬
provement of their own; but, in the middle of the last
century, a race of authors appeared, with whom arose the
commencement of the golden age of literature. Gotsched,
Lessing, Adelung, and Campe, were amongst the first who
imparted to their countrymen the knowledge of the
powers and of the beauty of their native tongue. Poetry
soon lent its aid, and furthered what the prose writers had
begun; it broke forth suddenly as from a dark cloud, and
threw a radiance on almost every subject which, in any
age or country, the muse has ever attempted. With
Hie Germans nave ueen evei p—
diligence and patience in examination which are o
°. .. • 1 i.- i a authors. ^ullc
Li 11 1 G 11 G f V* W A* KJ v     
requisites in geographical and statistical alltllors
in any country has exceeded Busching, and ma y
authors are now following his steps with equa su ^
The Germans claim the honour of having been
Haller, Gellert, and Hagedorn, began that chain of poe-Ger,
tical writers which has continued to be extended to'the Ur'
present day. The poetical epistles of Michaelis, Ebert,
Gotter, and Jacobi, will ever be read with delight. In
descriptive poetry Von Kleist, I hummel, and Wolfgang,
have been distinguished; but especially Goethe, whose
name is known in every corner of Europe. In satire,
Rabener, Musmus, Lichtenberg, and Falk, excelled; in
elegy, Holtz, Burger, Weisse, Schmidt, and Herder; in
fables, Gellert, Lessing, Willamow, and Pfeffel; in poe¬
tic tales, Wieland, Blumauer, Rost, and Nicolay. The
name of Klopstock will ever be reverenced by those who
venerate heroic or religious poetry. The lyric poems of
Schiller, of the two Schlegels, of Bos, and Ramler, are
beautiful specimens of the powers of the German language.
Amongst the most eminent of the poets of Germany the
name of Goethe cannot be passed over without some men¬
tion being made beyond the bare announcement. He has
been, during a long life recently closed, the wonder and
the delight of all who can understand his language. His
works embrace every species of poetry, and are all marked
with originality, force, pathos, and nature. He appeared
with wonderful applause as a writer, first in 1773, and
continued to interest, amuse, and instruct his country
during more than fifty years, retaining to the last his
powers of critical reflection and of accurate and spirited
composition. The theatrical productions have kept pace
with the other species of poetical composition. In tragedy,
Schiller, Goethe, Lessing, Collen, and Grillparzer, have
distinguished themselves; whilst Ifland, Kotzebue, Brand,
Grossman, Schroeder, and a host of other writers, have
appeared in comedy.
German writers of prose have been neither fewer nor
less able, though their names have not been so far ex¬
tended in other countries as those of the poets and thea¬
trical authors. In religious compositions, Mosheim, Sack,
Jerusalem, Spalding, Zollikofer, and Teller, are destined
to futurity, after having delighted and edified the exist¬
ing generation. In epistolary writing, few in any lan¬
guage have exceeded Gellert, Winkelman, Abt, and Garve,
whilst Mendelsohn has been unrivalled in his dialogues.
The race of novel and romance writers has been too nu¬
merous to be recited; and the latter have displayed a
power over the human passions and feelings which has
scarcely bqen equalled by the writers of other nations.
In didactic writings, those of Scheibart, Lessing, V inkel-
man, Iselin, Sonnenfels, Moser, Zimmerman, Eberhard,
Botticher, and Forster, have displayed great talent; and
on subjects of education, Basedow, Campe, Trapp, oalz-
man, and Pestalozzi, have discovered vast powers of mind
directed to one of the most important subjects.
In classical literature the Germans have thoroughly
imbibed the spirit of the ages when Greece and Koine
were at the highest pinnacle of literary glory. 1 be names
of Ernesti, Heyne, Gesner, Camerarius, Fabn, Wytten-
bach, Wolf, and Scheller, are familiar to the Latin scho¬
lars of every country; as are those of Michaehs, H o
ger, Von der Hardt, Eichorn, Griesbach, and Faulus,
the Greek student; but perhaps, of all the cla*sical,st
lars of Europe, none have equalled the stupendous e
ing of the elder Schweighaeuser, whose edition of We
tus, with his lexicon, and his extracts from L0b'bias’
naeus, Arrian, Simplicius, Epictetus, °tliers’] verv
dered him an object of admiration to the learned ot j
country. , f tiiat
The Germans have been ever distinguished
GERMANY.
487
v ,ivers of the Grecian mathematics, and the glory of hav-
^ )tr ascertained, by their countryman Copernicus, the true
vstem of astronomy. Kepler is considered as the father
f dioptrics, Tscllernhausen the inventor of burning
lasses, Leibnitz the discoverer of the differential calculus,
nd Lieberkuhn the greatest improver of the solar micro-
•ope. Euler was distinguished by his powers of analysis;
nd Kepler, Mayer, Herschel, Bode, Von Zach, and 01-
ers> by their skill in astronomy. Metaphysics engaged
ie close attention of Wolf, Leibnitz, Kant, and their
diolars, Fichte, Schelling, and Platner.
Although in natural history Germany has produced nei-
icr a Linnaeus nor a Buffon, yet Blumenbach, Zimmer-
ian, Pallas, and Fabricius in zoology; Haller, Gleiditscb,
lofman, and Sprengel in botany; and W7erner in mine-
jlogy, would not be unfit associates of those great names.
In natural philosophy the Germans claim for Guerike the
iscovery of the air-pump ; for Fahrenheit the thermo-
leter; and for Hausen the invention, and for Marun the
erfecting, of electrical machines ; and they are proud to
eckon amongst their chemists the names of Stahl, Hof-
mn, Margrof, Born, Klaproth, and Humboldt. In medi-
ine, besides Paracelsus and Stahl, they boast with great
bason of Hofman, Tissot, Haller, Unzer, and Huefland,
ith many others of great though inferior name.
In jurisprudence the Germans long took the lead in
lurope; and in theology Luther and Melancthon have,
y the translation of the sacred books, and by their wri-
ings, produced a mighty change through all the most en-
ghtened nations of Europe.
It is, however, somewhat singular, that in a country of
o much learning and such research, in which antiquities
ave been sedulously studied, where the numismatic eol¬
ations are so numerous, and where ancient documents
re so carefully preserved, scarcely any historian has ap-
eared who deserves a higher name than that of a chro-
icler.
The fine arts have been cultivated, especially music,
-ith much success. No nation has produced more cele-
rated composers than Glueh, Handel, Haydn, Bach, and,
hove all, perhaps, Mozart. Statuary has been practised
tore by Italians in this country than by natives. Painters
ave risen to no very great excellence, with the exception
f Albert Durer, Kranach, and Holbein ; but to those of
more recent date must be added Mengs, and, in our
wn time, Angelica Kaufman, Hackert, and one or two
thers.
The circulation of books, produced from the pens of ten
housand writers, is facilitated by the two fairs of Leipsic,
o which the publishers from all parts of Germany resort
nth the new works they have printed at their own resi¬
lences. This general rendezvous becomes the focus of
iterary information. The publications are made known,
heir respective merits are discussed, and the different
looksellers exchange with each other the productions of
heir respective provinces, which are thus spread over the
extensive country in which the language is used with
'real regularity, and at a very trifling expense in ad-
I 'ertising.
One evil is much complained of, namely, the want of pro-
ection for literary property; which arises from the great
lumber of sovereigns in whose dominions the same lan¬
guage is spoken. The best productions of the north are
requently pirated in the south. The king of Saxony has
ndeed prohibited the circulation of pirated editions at
beipsic during the fairs; but that is found insufficient to
protect authors whose productions combine excellence
' ith popularity. The average number of works published
1 tate years at Leipsic has been about six thousand,
'mounting to about ten thousand volumes, which pro-
lably is more than all the other presses of Europe deli¬
ver. The press in Germany is nearly free ; for though in Germany,
some states there is a previous censorship, yet it is con-
ducted on liberal principles, and is seldom exercised ex¬
cept on small political works which display more heat than
light, or on the class of periodical publications of less than
twelve sheets.
No other part of Europe enjoys advantages for educa¬
tion equal to Germany, especially the northern parts of
it. The parochial schools are so universal, that none but
the wilfully ignorant, or those of imperfect faculties, can
be strangers to reading, writing, and the first rules of
arithmetic. The schools for classical instruction, denomi¬
nated Gymnasiums, Pedagogiums, and Lyceums, are found
in almost every large town, and dispense learning at a
very cheap rate. The universities are sufficiently nume¬
rous and sufficiently endowed to provide instruction in the
higher branches of knowledge upon terms nearly if not
altogether gratuitous.
The number of students in 1831, communibus annis, at
each of the universities, is as under;—
Universities.
When
Founded.
Relisnon.
Number of
Professors.
Number of
Students
Heidelburg..
Prague 
Vienna 
Wiirtzburg..
Leipsic 
Landshut...
Rostock 
Freyberg....
Tubingen...
Marburg....
Jena 
Giessen 
Kiel 
Halle 
Breslau 
Gottingen...
Erlangen...
Berlin 
Bonn 
1346
1348
1361
1403
1409
1410, 1810
1419
1456
1477
1527
1557
1607
1667
1694
1702
1734
1743
1808
1818
Protestant.
Catholic...
Catholic...
Catholic...
Protestant.
Catholic...
Protestant.
Catholic...
Mixed 
Protestant.
Protestant.
Protestant.
Protestant.
Protestant.
Mixed 
Protestant.
Protestant.
Protestant.
Mixed 
45
41
79
36
41
48
34
32
44
42
39
37
29
51
51
80
29
58
1018
1449
1954
521
1360
720
110
627
887
427
593
241
130
1214
1254
854
413
1937
988
Besides these universities, there are in almost all the ca¬
pitals of every state institutions for instructing pupils in
the various learning of the medical, clerical, legal, and
military professions, and of agriculture, mining, ancLThe
management of forest lands. There are also abundance
of learned societies spread over the whole of Germany,
many of which have, in the course of years, been enabled
to assemble such large collections of natural and artificial
curiosities as afford valuable assistance to those engaged
in the pursuit of knowledge.
The public libraries collected in the different cities far
exceed any thing that has been known in other countries.
These valuable collections are managed with the greatest
liberality ; all of them are open for inspection and perusal
at all proper seasons ; and from most of them the readers
may be supplied at their own residences. They thus be¬
come active and efficient fountains of knowledge. It
wrould be tiresome to give a list which should comprehend
all those the number of volumes in which exceed 10,000;
but we shall present one of those whose volumes are not
less than 50,000: viz. Vienna, 550,000 volumes, includ¬
ing manuscripts and local and temporary works; Munich,
400,000 volumes in the royal central library; Gottingen,
280,000 volumes, including some thousand valuable ma¬
nuscripts; Dresden, 250,000 printed volumes, and 104,000
manuscripts and smaller works; Wolfenbuttel, 190,000
printed volumes, 44,000 manuscripts, and 6000 Bibles;
488
GERMANY.
Germany. Stutgardt, 170,000 volumes, besides 12,000 Bibles of all
''-'-v-w' languages and editions; Berlin, 300,000 volumes, in seven
public libraries; Weimar, 110,000 volumes, and 20,000
smaller works; Prague, 110,000 volumes; frank fort,
100,000 volumes, in several public libraries; Hamburg
and Breslau have 100,000 each in their public libraries;
Mentz, 90,000; Darmstadt, 85,000; Cassel, 70,000 ; Gratz,
70,000; Gotha, 60,000; Marburg, 55,000; Jena, 50,000.
The number of books in all Germany, in such libraries
and other institutions as are open to the public, has been
estimated at 5,000,000 volumes.
The collections of pictures and of antiquities correspond
in extent and in excellence to the public libraries. The
gallery of Dresden, now that the pictures which w ere plun¬
dered by France have been sent back from the Louvre
to the places whence they had been taken, is the first in
Europe. The collections at Berlin, Brunswick, Cassel,
and Augsburg, are also very fine; and many private as¬
semblages of pictures, particularly those of the Princes
Liechtenstein, Kaunitz, Esterhazy, and Count Schbnbrun,
are of the very first class. The antique cabinets of Dres¬
den, Munich, and Cassel, are filled with curiosities from
remote ages and distant nations ; and the cabinets of natu¬
ral history at Vienna, Berlin, Dresden, Cassel, Manheim,
Jena, Munich, and Gotha, are most richly filled.
The greater part of the land in Germany is held by
those ancient feudal tenures which formerly prevailed in
every part of Europe. The possessors of the soil, of whom
in every state the sovereign is by far the greatest, have
under them a species of customary tenants called subjects
(Unterthaner), who have the cultivation of common fields
divided into small portions, without the intervention of
fences. As soon as the corn is removed from the field,
the lord has the right of pasture ; and owing to these cir¬
cumstances it is impossible to deviate from an ancient
practice, by which the different portions of the common
land must be devoted to particular kinds of crops at spe¬
cific periods. The rotation almost universally prescribed,
and known by the name of drey feld landwirthshaft, con¬
sists of a fallow, succeeded by two crops of grain. The
fallow, however, generally bears a crop, which is usually
either flax, peas, or, very commonly of late, potatoes; in
consequence of a crop on the fallow, the land is seldom
properly cleaned of weeds. To this fallow crop general¬
ly succeeds winter corn, either wheat or rye ; but, in the
north, the proportion of the latter to the former is as four
to one, and in many parts, especially in Pomerania, ten to
one. In the southern states, the two kinds of grain are
nearly equally cultivated. To the winter corn succeeds
barley or oats, as the land is better adapted for the one or
the other, or as may have been settled betw een the an¬
cestors of the present lords and their tenants in remote pe¬
riods. By this mode of cultivation, the earth yields but
a small increase. The tenants can keep but little live
stock, and therefore make but little manure. The live
stock they do keep is generally fed throughout the winter
with straw, and the addition recently of potatoes, with a
small portion of corn; and what dung they do produce is
consequently of a very weak quality. These tenants are
commonly holders of small portions of land, which, in many
instances, is necessarily divided at their decease among all
their children ; and thus the evil of the cottage system of
small farms is clearly experienced. The villages are crowd¬
ed with little proprietors, who have not either the conven¬
tional or the pecuniary power to improve the soil, who live
in a state inferior to labourers, and who, from the small¬
ness of their farms, can only obtain subsistence by living
on the cheapest diet, which of late, as in Ireland, is prin¬
cipally potatoes. Upon this system, the number of hus¬
bandmen increases with considerable rapidity; they form
soldiers, and wrhen called out by the military conscriptions
of their princes, are placed in a better situation than when G
living on their farms. J[&|
In this condition of the community, the only land which T
can be well cultivated is the small portion of demesne
which is in the hands of the lords, who, from their stock
of cattle, could make manure to dress and improve the
soil. These demesne lands are, however, though culti¬
vated for the lords, ploughed by the tenants, who are
bound by their tenures to do certain stipulated work for
their superiors. The consequence of this is, that the work
is badly performed, and at such seasons as best suits the
tenant’s own labour. The demesnes, too, feel the want
of capital; for the lords have little besides their estates
and the cattle upon them, and these being too generally
left to the care of managers, wdio are less thrifty than as
proprietors they would be, suffer considerably from that
circumstance.
The foregoing sketch is a description of the practice on
the far greater portion of the land in Germany; and, in
consequence of it, the soil, though superior in original fe- j
cundity to the greater part of England, is gradually dete¬
riorating, and does not at present yield more than five
eighths of what we raise upon the same quantity of land.
From the poorer classes eating nothing but rye or pota¬
toes, and from having three fourths of its population em¬
ployed in agriculture, Germany is enabled to export corn
in most years ; but when an unpropitious season occurs the
distress is dreadful, and is increased by the smallness of
the different states, and the power being restricted of cir¬
culating grain freely from one to another ; an evil which
was severely felt and lamentably deplored in the calami¬
tous year 1817.
The land of Germany produces but little beyond the
absolute and indispensable wants of its inhabitants, except
in wine, flax, and wool. The culture of the vine is much
less attended to than in France ; and wine is the produc¬
tion of but a very small portion when compared with
the whole extent of the country, whereas in France almost
every part yields it. The quantity made in Germany is
not calculated at more than about one sixth of what France
supplies ; the whole is computed to be nearly two million
pipes of one hundred gallons each ; but a very small part
of this finds its way to foreign countries.
The flax frequently forming,-as before stated, the fal¬
low crop, is important from the employment it affords, dur¬
ing the long and cold nights of their severe winter, to the
female members of the peasants’ families, and from the
trade it creates in the export of its productions in the
form of yarn or of linen cloth.
Wool is generally the property of the lord, and its an¬
nual clip is frequently the principal revenue derived from
extensive possessions. This has induced many to pay
great attention to the improvement of the wool, and much
of it, especially from Saxony, is superior to any that the
Merino flocks of Spain afford. It is within the few years
which have elapsed since the expulsion of the French, that
the great extension of the breed of fine-woolled sheep has
taken place. The implements of husbandry are in a very
imperfect state, and as much so from want of information
as from want of capital in Germany. 'I he ploughs are
generally small, light, and without a due curvature in tie
mould-board. The harrows are frequently of wood, lhat
useful implement the roller is rarely seen; the wagg011^
and carts are badly constructed, and the harness of a
consists either of ropes or twisted straw.
There are exceptions to these observations on the agn
culture of Germany, but they are too few to merit any
particular notice. ,
Germany is generally a manufacturing country, an c
supply itself with by far the greater part of all the cm
modities which it needs. The manufacturers of that cou
i
*
GERMANY.
489
t,vry are not placed in different districts, but in the same
Jowns; and in almost every town of a moderate popula-
ion woollen, linen, cotton, silk, and iron wares are made,
'hus their establishments are mostly upon a small scale,
nd they cannot avail themselves of those minute divisions
f labour which are essential to the perfecting and to the
heapness of the goods. Linens are the most valuable
rticle, and are made, from the coarse ones of Westphalia,
hich are used for negro clothing, to the finest shirting
nd table linen of Silesia and Saxony, and of all the inter-
lediate qualities. Woollens of all kinds are made, and are
ifficient for the consumption, so that those of England
id France are scarcely needed ; nor do the Germans al-
iw that any foreign fine linen cloth is equal, either in
uality or price, to those manufactured in Saxony, Silesia,
nd the newly acquired Prussian provinces on the Rhine,
om wool of native growth. The cassimeres and Vigo-
ia cloths, in that last-mentioned district in the towns of
,upen, Machren, and Aachen, are preferred to any which
re brought from other countries. The fabrics of cotton
ad much increased during the continental system of ex-
lusion, and had arrived at a considerable degree of per-
,:ction ; but the return of tranquillity has checked the pro-
ress of all, and annihilated many. The most consider-
ble districts for these kinds of goods are the kingdom of
axony, the Prussian provinces of Juliers, Berg, and
leves, and on the banks of the Ens, in the Austrian do-
linions. The silk manufactures have never been con-
derable; some goods of the kind are made in many of
he cities, but the principal establishments are in Vienna,
t Roveredo in the Tyrol, at Creveldt, at Cologne, and at
lerlin. Leather, iron, steel, and the wares prepared from
lem, are made at home. Porcelain and common earthen-
are are well made, and the two great royal manufacto-
ies of the first at Berlin and Dresden equal any from
evre, from Worcester, or Etruria. The glassware of Bo-
emia, though of a very bad quality, is universally diffus-
d, not only throughout Germany, but in most other parts
f the world. Paper is a considerable article amongst the
lerman manufactories. That for printing is coarse, and
f a bad colour, and the writing paper is very imperfect-
y made. There are 506 mills, which deliver annually
bout 60,000 bales, but none of it goes to other countries,
'hemical preparations are made upon an extensive scale,
nd comprehend alum, vitriol, smalts, white lead, Prus-
ian blue, sal ammoniac, and verdigris. Salt and sugar
re refined for home consumption. Tobacco, snuff, wax,
ndoils from plants, are also supplied from domestic manu-
ictories. The quantity of beer furnished by the breweries
i every town in the north is very great, and the distille-
ies of ardent spirits from grain form a most extensive ma-
ufactory; vinegar is mostly prepared from grapes in those
istricts where they do not ripen sufficiently to be made
ito wine. The minuter articles, such as musical, mathe-
latical, surgical, and optical instruments, with watches
nd clocks, are well and cheaply made. Wooden toys
nd plaited straw are important objects of employment to
>any of the inhabitants. Most of the fabrics of Germany
re fettered by the laws of the guilds, or corporations, to
hich the masters are obliged to belong; and this acts as
» impediment to their arriving at a high degree of per-
sction.
Hie commerce of Germany, conducted by means of
upping, centres principally in the Prussian ports, or in
he free cities, and may be best treated of under each of
hem. The commerce with France, Italy, Turkey, Po¬
ind, and Russia, is by no means great. The articles pro-
uced on the borders of each are too similar to cause a
necessity for an interchange; and the heavier articles,
hich are produced at a distance from the respective boun-
unes, will, jn few instances, bear the expense of land
vol. x.
carriage. The trade which is purely internal, or amongst Germany,
the different states, is much less than might be expected, -y-w'
and much less than it would be if there existed less of a
monopolizing spirit among the cities, and less of jealousy
among the several sovereigns. The greater part of the
internal trade consists in the sale of wines, and of foreign
colonial produce, which the capitalists in the cities collect
and sell in smaller quantities to the shops in the provin¬
cial towns.
As the other independent states of Germany are sepa¬
rately described in this work, and Baden only referred to
Germany, in the alphabetical order, the following is a
more especial notice of it.
It is a grand duchy, is bounded on the north-east by
Bavaria, on the east by Wurtemberg and Hohenzollern,
on the south-east by the lake of Constance, on the south
by Switzerland, and on the west and north-west by France.
It extends over 6008 square miles, and has been recently
divided into four circles, thus:
Circles.
Extent in
Square
Miles.
Population.
Capitals.
The Lake 
Upper Rhine..
Middle Rhine.
Lower Rhine...
1184
1507
1958
1359
169,749
318,540
397,805
301,846
Constance.
Freyburg.
Rastadt.
Manheim.
6008
1,187,940
The face of the country is peculiarly striking. On the
western side a most fertile stripe of land is bounded by the
river Rhine, from which rises that mass of mountains on
the east known as the Black Forest, one of the peaks of
which is of the height of 4600 feet. In the valleys the
husbandry is good and productive, and the crops of hemp,
madder, tobacco, poppies, beans, and potatoes, are most
luxuriant. Even in the mountainous parts, rye, wheat, and
oats are extensively cultivated, but much of the surface
is covered with woods. A considerable extent of pasture
land supplies the duchy with good butter, meal, and some
cheese. The vineyards are extensive, occupying one
tenth of the country, and producing various kinds of ex¬
cellent wine ; and the gardens and orchards supply abun¬
dance of fruits of the best description, and especially al¬
monds, chestnuts, and walnuts, at very cheap rates. Though
not more than half the land is cultivated, the supply of
every agricultural product is more than sufficient for the
inhabitants.
The mining concerns are numerous but not large, and
yield commonly 5000 ounces of silver, 400 quintals of
copper, 2000 of lead, 320 of cobalt, and iron to the extent
of 1000 tons. The mineral springs are numerous, but
those of the greatest celebrity in the duchy of Baden are
almost exclusively resorted to by visitors for health or
pleasure.
Baden is a manufacturing country for many articles,
the value of which arises almost wholly from the labour
employed in their preparation. In some years 110,000
wooden clocks and 50,000 dozen of wooden spoons are
made. These are only a part of the numerous smaller
kinds of ware which the ingenuity of the inhabitants pre¬
pares. Besides these, there are manufactures of linen and
woollen goods produced, but of the coarser sorts.
The reigning house has risen to its present dignity and
consideration since the peace of Luneville in 1801, when its
territory extended only over 1554 square miles, inhabited
by 210,000 people. By the treaty then made, the dominions
were nearly doubled, and further augmented by the treaty of
490
G E R
G E R
Germen Presburg in 1803 ; and by some smaller additions at sub-
11 sequent periods, it has attained its present extent. A
Geronte^. constitution has been given by the prince, by which an
upper and a lower house of legislators is established. The
revenues amount to about L.1,000,000 annually ; and the
expenditure, including a sinking fund for the discharge
of the public debt, is about equal to it. Since the gene¬
ral peace, the debt has been gradually diminished, from
L.2,000,000 to its present amount, which in 1832 was
L. 1,300,000. The regular army consists of 8000 infan¬
try, 1500 cavalry, and 850 artillerjr. The contingent to
the German confederation is fixed at 10,000 men. The
three religions are equally established, but the prince ad¬
heres to the Lutheran church. The Catholics are the
most numerous body, being about 800,000. The Luthe
rans and Calvinists have united since 1821, and amount
to 365,000; and there are nearly 20,000 Jews. There are
two universities, that of Heidelburg for the Protestants
the oldest in Germany, and that at Freyburg for the Ca¬
tholics. The principal cities and their population are as
follows:
Manheim 22,000 Pforzheim 6,400
Carlsruhe 20,000 Lahr 6,000
Freyburg 15,000. Constance 5(700
Heidelburg 12,500 Rastadt 5(7oo
Bruchsal  7,000
GERMEN, the seed-bud, defined by Linnaeus to be the
base of the pistillum, which contains the rudiments of the
seed, and, in progress of vegetation, swells and becomes the
seed-vessel. In assimilating the vegetable and animal
kingdoms, Linnaeus denominates the seed-bud the ovarium
or uterus of plants ; and affirms that it exists chiefly at
the time of the dispersion of the male dust by the an-
therae, since, after its impregnation, it becomes a seed-ves¬
sel. Germen, by Pliny and the ancient botanists, is used
to signify a bud containing the rudiments of the leaves.
GERMINATION, amongst botanists, comprehends the
precise time which the seeds take to rise after they have
been committed to the soil. The different species of seeds
are longer or shorter in rising according to the degree of
heat which is proper to each. Millet, wheat, and several
of the grasses, rise in one day; biite, spinach, beans,
mustard, kidney beans, turnips, and rocket, in three days ;
lettuce and dill, in four; cucumber, gourd, melon, and
cress, in five ; radish and beet, in six ; barley, in seven ;
orach, in eight; purslain, in nine; cabbage, in ten; hys¬
sop, in thirty; parsley, in forty or fifty days; peach, al¬
mond, walnut, chestnut, peony, horned poppy, hypecoum,
and ranunculus falcatus, in one year; rose bush, cornel
tree, hawthorn, medlar, and hazel nut, in two. The seeds
of some species of orchis, and of some liliaceous plants,
never rise at all. Of seeds, some require to be sown al¬
most as soon as they are ripe, otherwise they will not
sprout or germinate ; and of this kind are the seeds of
coffee and fraxinella. Others, particularly those of the
pea-bloom flowers, preserve their germinating faculty for
a series of years.
GERONA, a city of Spain, in the province of Catalonia.
It is situated on the river Ter, at its confluence with the
Oha, and is a strongly fortified city, of great celebrity in
the military history of Catalonia, by the sieges it has sus¬
tained at various periods. None of the resistances it has
made, or indeed of those made by any other city, surpass¬
es the obstinate defence which it sustained against the
armies of France during the late war. It is the see of a
bishop, and has a magnificent cathedral, with many other
substantial public buildings. The diocese of Gerona was
one of the best cultivated and most flourishing districts
of Spain. The portion of it on the sea coast abounds in
wheat, wines, and vinegar; the sides of the mountains are
covered with vineyards and olive gardens, and the tops
yield the best oaks and other useful trees. The ravages
of war have been very severely felt; but the fertility of
the soil, and the industry of the inhabitants, will, it is
hoped, speedily repair the injuries it has endured. Its
inhabitants amount to 14,000. It is in north latitude 42.
0. 2.
GERONTES, in Antiquity, a kind of judges, or magi¬
strates, in ancient Sparta, answering to what the Areopa-
gites were at Athens. Hie word is Greek, ysgwv, and sig¬
nifies an old man, whence also the words yerontk\ some¬
thing belonging to an old man ; and Geronicon, a famous
book amongst the modern Greeks, containing the lives of
the ancient monks. The senate of Gerontes was called
Gerusia, that is, an assembly or council of old men. The
Gerontes were originally instituted by Lycurgus; and
their number, according to some, was twenty-eight, but
according to others, thirty-two. They governed in con¬
junction with the king, whose authority they were in¬
tended to balance, and also to watch over the interests of
the people. Polybius defines their office in few words,
when he says, per ipsos, et cum ipsis, omnia admmstrari.
None were to be admitted into this office under sixty
years of age, and they held it for life. The Gerontes
were succeeded by the Ephori.
GERS, a department in the south-west of France,
formed out of Condomois, Armagnac, and Comminges,
portions of ancient Gascony. It is bounded on the north
by the department of the Landes and of Lot-Garonne, on
the east by Tarn-Garonne and Upper Garonne, on the
south by Upper Garonne, Upper Pyrenees, and Lower
Pyrenees, and on the west by the Landes.
The extent is 2717 square miles, or, according to the
Royal Almanack, 623,719 hectares. It is divided into
five arrondissements, twenty-nine cantons, and 685 com¬
munes, which are inhabited by 312,160 persons. The
whole surface of the department is covered with hills,
between which are some pleasant valleys, but no plains;
but none of those hills exceed 1200 feet in height, and
they are a kind of spurs or projections from the mass of
the Pyrenees. The soil is generally clayey, but inter-
mixed^ith stripes of calcareous and sandy land. The
melting of the snows on the Pyrenees in the months of
May and June causes great injury to the land, before it
passes by the beds of the various rivers and rivulets which
empty themselves into the Adour. The inhabitants are
a lively, cheerful race, simple in their dress, food, and
houses, and speak the Gascon language, which is a mix¬
ture of Latin, Italian, and Spanish, rich in diphthongs and
vowels. Garlic and onions are abundantly cultivated, and
form an important portion of the aliment of the inhabi¬
tants. Agriculture is in a backward state, and barely pro¬
duces sufficient corn for the scanty consumption of those
who use it. The meadow's are about a tenth part of the
land, but, from neglect, furnish only a scanty provision for
the cattle, which are by no means distinguished for their
good qualities. The number of cattle was in 1801 as fol¬
lows :—11,710 horses, 3020 mules, 171,506 cows, oxen,
and calves, 517,380 sheep, and 37,500 pigs. The sheep
yield only coarse wool. Fruit is cultivated negligentty’
and the produce of the vineyards is barely sufficient for
the department, and is of bad quality. Brandy is made,
and is almost the only article exported; some of it ls
highly prized. The forests have been wasted, and now
scarcely yield sufficient fuel for the inhabitants. There
is little manufacturing industry, and no trade with other
G E S
foxh listricts, excepting the export of some brandy, and of a
I ew cows, calves, sheep, and lambs.
Bier. GERTOKH, a town of Thibet, and a mart for the ex-
^■;liange of the productions of Nepaul with those of the
•ountry. The imports consist of grain, oil, sugar, cottons,
:hintzes, iron, brass, lead, dates, almonds, peaches, &c.;
,nd from Gertokh are exported for the Cashmerian mar-
et, shawl wool, to Nepaul and Hindustan gold dust, sil-
er, musk, scented leather, shawls, China ware, tea, salt,
.nrax. &C.
GERVAISE, or Gervase, of Tilbury, an historian of
he thirteenth century, was a native of Tilbury in Essex,
nd nephew of Henry II. The exact date of his birth has
,ot been ascertained. Having visited part of Europe, he
rrived, about the year 1208, at the court of Otho IV.
mperor of Germany, who, being descended by his mother
rom an illustrious family in England, received Gervase with
he greatest distinction, made him one of his orators, then
lominated him chancellor, and, lastly, appointed him mar-
hal of the kingdom of Arles. Gervase died about the
ear 1218. His productions are, 1. Otia Imperialia, libri
res, a work which is also known under the titles Mappa
ive Descriptio Mundi, and De Mirabilibus Orbis ; 2. Illus-
rationes Galfridi Monemuthensis, libri iv.; 3. Historia Ter¬
se Sanctae; 4. De Origine Burgundiorum; 5. Facetiarum
iber, dedicated to Henry II. of England ; 6. Tricolumnium
Vnglia;; and, 7. Metrica Descriptio Balneorum Puteo-
anorum. The compilation of the Exchequer book, en-
itled Liber Niger Sacca?'ii, was ascribed to Gervase; but
dadox, who published a correct edition of this Black Book,
ttributes it to Richard Nelson, bishop of London. There
re two manuscript copies of this work; one in the Ex-
hequer, presented, according to Strype, by Archbishop
’arker; and another in Caius College, Cambridge, which
3 supposed to have been the original, whence the arch-
lishop’s copy was transcribed. Bale and Pitts differ con-
iderably in their accounts of Gervase’s works, the greater
lartof which still remain in manuscript, and are but little
nown.
GERUND, in Grammar, a verbal noun of the neuter
:ender, partaking of the nature of a participle, but declin-
ble only in the singular number, through all the cases
xcept the vocative. The word is formed from the Latin
wundivus, and that from the verb gerere, to bear. The
wund expresses not only the time, but also the manner of
tn action; as, he fell in running post. It differs from the
larticiple in this, that it expresses the time, which the
>articiple does not; and from the tense properly so call¬
'd, in expressing the manner, which the tense does not.
iee Grammar.
GESA, a city of the grand duchy of Saxe Weimar,
n Germany, in the principality of Eisenach. It is situated
m the river Listen, and contains 304 houses, with 1890
nhabitants. It is the capital of a bailiwick of the same
mme, formerly a part of Fulda, containing 6410 inhabit-
ints.
GESNER, Conrad, a celebrated naturalist, surnamed
be Pliny of Germany, and, for his time, a prodigy of ap-
ibcation, knowledge, and sagacity, was born at Zurich on
be 26th March 1516. He was the son of Vasa Gesner,
nrrier, an(l Barbara Frick, persons who, besides being poor,
iad several other children, so that he would not have been
ib e to continue his studies had it not been for the assistance
1 ''s paternal uncle John Frick, a minister, who formed his
aste for letters, and gave him his first notions in botany.
uncle having died, and his father having been
■ Jed in 1531, at the battle of Zug, where the celebrated
e ormer Zwinglius also perished, young Gesner found him-
0 °bliged to seek his fortune in a foreign country. He
itcordingly went to Strasburg, where, by means of a sa-
ary> he for some time seconded the labours of Capiton ;
G E S 491
then, having obtained some assistance from the canons of Gesner
Zurich, he repaired to Bourges, and there commenced the
study of medicine. At the age of eighteen, having occa¬
sion to visit Paris, he indulged without rule and without
restraint his passion for all kinds of study, being assisted
in his poverty by John Steiger, a young Bernese of patri¬
cian family, with whom he was connected by the ties of
friendship. From Paris he returned a second time to
Strasburg, whence, in 1536, he was recalled to Zurich to
occupy in the college of that place the petty employment
of regent. But the magistrates having soon perceived that
he was formed for less obscure and more important la¬
bours, made him, in 1537, a new grant, to enable him to
continue his medical studies at Bftle ; and it was in this
latter city that he began to labour for the public by super¬
intending an edition of the Greek Dictionary of Favori-
nus. I he following year, the senate of Berne having
founded an academy at Lausanne, Gesner was appointed
to that institution, and taught Greek there for three years.
He then passed a year at Montpellier, where he became
intimately connected with the celebrated physician Lau¬
rent Joubert, and the great naturalist Rondelet. At length,
in 1541, he was received as doctor in medicine at Bale,
where he completed some extracts from the Greek and
Arabian authors on botany and medicine, which were pub¬
lished the same year at Zurich and the succeeding one at
Lyons. Soon afterwards, he published a Catalogue of
Plants in four languages, in which he gave proofs of very
extensive knowledge in botany, and indicated several vege¬
tables which were then new. Some journeys in the Alps
of Switzerland and Savoy enabled him to discover other
plants which were also new, and led him, in 1542, to write
a little book on milk, accompanied by a letter on the beau¬
ty of the mountain scenery. The same year he translated
from the Greek a Treatise on Syllogisms, and other philo¬
sophical works, which were followed in 1543 by the Maxims
of Stobseus, and in 1544 by the Allegories of Heraclides
of Pontus, the Discourse of Dion Chyrsostom on Homer,
and a purified edition of Martial. In 1545, he made a
journey to Venice and to Augsburg, where he formed an
acquaintance with several men of merit, and had an op¬
portunity of consulting many rare works and valuable ma¬
nuscripts. It was then that he began to bring out his fa¬
mous Bibliotheque Universelle, the first great bibliographi¬
cal work which the moderns had produced. The titles of
all the works then known in Hebrew, in Greek, and in La¬
tin, whether extant or lost, and often a summary of their
contents, with a judgment of their merits, and some spe¬
cimens of their style, formed the substance of this collec¬
tion. The first volume, published at Zurich in 1545, is
classed in the alphabetical order of the names of the au¬
thors ; the second, which is arranged in the order of the
materials, and divided into nineteen books, appeared at
the same place in 1548, under the title of Pandects ; the
twenty-first book, devoted to theology, was published the
following year; but the twentieth, which was to treat of
works on medicine, has not been printed, because the au¬
thor did not conceive it so complete as it ought to be, or
as the subject required. The Library of Gesner has been
abridged by Lycosthenes, and completed by Simler and by
Fries, Zurich, 1583, in folio. During the same time, he
occupied himself with editions or translations of different
small Greek treatises; in particular, he published a cor¬
rected edition of Hermolaus Barbaro, a critical Preface on
the works of Galen, another on the History of Plants by
Tragus, a Treatise on the Mineral Waters of Switzerland
and Germany, and a Description of Mount Pilat near Lu¬
cerne. But, amidst these diversified labours, he lost no
opportunity ot collecting and arranging materials for a
great work on Natural History, of which he had conceived
the plan from his earliest youth. Numerous friends whom
492 G E S G E S
Gesner. his merit had procured him in almost all Europe, sent him serving of remark, that the passages in the ancient au- g
figures and notices of the productions of their various cli- thors which escaped Gesner have scarcely at all been ta-^ r'
mates, and sometimes the natural objects themselves, which ken into consideration by the moderns. By his accuracy,
he caused to be painted and engraved. As often as he had his clearness, bis good faith, and even in some instances
leisure, he also travelled in Switzerland and in Germany, the refinement of his views, Gesner merited this confi.
He had long desired to visit the coasts of the North Sea, dence; and although he may not have established genera
but the religious war which broke out in 1551 constrain- nor natural classification, yet, in various places, he inch¬
ed him to return home without having accomplished the • cates with tolerable distinctness the true relations of beings,
object of his wishes. Gesner has written on the three Another important service rendered by Gesner to zoology
kingdoms of nature, but his History of Animals is the consists in his edition of a complete translation of the works
most considerable of his works on natural history, and that of /Elian, which he published in 1556, immediately after
which will ensure him the most durable reputation. It is his volume on fishes. His new notes on the text, which had
divided into five books, which are commonly bound in long occupied his attention, appeared for the first time in
three volumes folio. The first book, printed originally at the edition published by A. Gronovius, London, 1744, two
Zurich in 1551, treats of viviparous quadrupeds ; the se- vols. in folio, as those on the Historice Diversce did in the
cond, printed in 1554, of oviparous quadrupeds; the third, edition of Leyden, 1731, in 4to. Although he has been
printed in 1555, of birds ; the fourth, printed in 1556, of less fortunate in the publication of his labours on botany,
fishes and other aquatic animals ; and the fifth, a posthu- he has perhaps rendered himself even more celebrated in
mous publication, which appeared at Zurich in the year that science by the fecundity of the views which he has in-
1587, of serpents. There was to have been a sixth book on troduced into it; for not only was he from his infancy ad-
insects, but it is doubtful whether Gesner had commenced dieted to the collection of plants, and accustomed to rear
preparing it, and all that remains consists of some inedit- them, but he soon learned to delineate them, and, in fact,
ed figures of butterflies. Besides these first editions of painted more than fifteen hundred, the figures of which
the different parts of the History of Animals, there ap- he intended for a general history of vegetables. This ex-
peared several others, some of which, considerably ampli- ercise led him to direct his attention to the numerous de¬
fied, were printed during the author’s lifetime, or after his tails of the flower and the fruit; and he thus succeeded
death, in Latin, German, and French, and also various in discovering the art of distinguishing and classing plants
abridgments under the titles of leones Animalium, leones by the organs of fructification, an art which has truly cre-
Avium, Nomenclator Aquatiliunu &c. In this great work, ated botanical science. In the text he expresses clearly
the author arranges animals in the alphabetical order of the necessity of attending to characters of this kind inbo-
their Latin names, and gives details respecting each, di- tany. It is to be observed, however, that his Enchiri-
vided into eight heads, viz. its denominations in the dif- dion Histories Plantarum, printed at Paris in 1541, is not
ferent languages, ancient and modern ; its description, in- deserving of much attention ; it is a youthful performance
ternal as well as external, and the countries it inhabits; of Gesner, and is merely a compilation. His real botani-
the duration of its life and of its growth, with the epoch of cal works, after having passed in manuscript into different
its fecundation and birth, and the number produced at a libraries, were, about the middle of the last century, ac-
birth ; the maladies to which it is subject; its peculiar ha- quired by Trew, a botanist of Nuremberg, and published
bits and instincts ; its utility; the aliments on which it sub- by Schmiedel, physician to the margrave of Anspach,
sists; the remedies which it supplies; and, lastly, the Nuremberg, 1754 and 1770. rheyconsistofCommen-
images which it furnishes to poetry and eloquence, as well taries on the fifth book of Valerius Cordus, Fragments
as the epithets which have been applied to it. In a word, of a History of Plants, commenced according to the plan
every thing which the ancient authors, or those of the mid- of Gesner, by Wolf, his pupil, and a great number of fi-
die age, have written relative to these details, is intro- gures which he had designed, with the relative notes and
duced under one or other of the heads which we have enu- descriptions. The little treatise of Gesner on the figures
merated ; and Gesner also adds, with as much critical sa- of fossils, stones, and gems, Zurich, 1565, in 8vo, attracted
gacity as could be employed in an age when the authority attention to the subject of petrifactions and crystals; and
of the ancients was still greatly respected and nature very we find from his letters, that he had made experiments
little known, a vast number of new details derived from on several minerals, and was not ignorant of the electrical
his own observations, or communicated by his numerous qualities of certain precious stones. Lastly, in his Mi-
correspondents. He states many exact facts, which are thridates de differejitiis Linguarum, Gesner, not confining
still deserving of attention, particularly respecting the ani- himself to the comparison of different languages, threw
mals of Switzerland ; each species is represented by a out several very ingenious ideas respecting language gene-
figure in wood; and those which the author had caused rally, which have since been more fully developed. His
to be copied from nature are very exactly given; but he own acquisitions as a linguist were in fact very consider-
was also obliged to borrow some of them from his pre- able. He possessed a knowledge of the three learned lan-
decessors, and these are not always remarkable for the guages, had some tincture of Arabic, understood French,
same degree of accuracy. The history of fishes, however, Italian, and Flemish, and had laboured much to improve
is not given altogether on the same plan as that of the the German language. So many useful works having se-
others; for here Gesner copies, on each species, the ar- cured to Gesner merited consideration, the magistrateso
tides of his two friends and contemporaries, Belon and Zurich, in the year 1555, created him public professor o
Rondelet, to which he has merely made some additions, natural history. The Emperor Ferdinand I., who lovet
As the abridgments appeared after the large treatises, they the sciences, and to whom Gesner had dedicated nis His-
contain several remarkswhich are not to be found in the lat- tory of Fishes, invited him to Augsburg in 1559, and in
ter; and it is necessary to consult both in order to obtain a 1564 granted him a coat of arms emblematic of his pur-
complete idea of what was then known on the subject. The suits, and at the same time sent him some fragments o
History of Animals by Gesner may therefore be considered bezoar, a substance which was then regarded as exceed-
as the basis of all modern zoology. Copied almost literally ingly precious. But he did not long enjoy these marks
by Aldrovand, and abridged by Johnston, it has served as of esteem. A pestilential malady, which had commence
the foundation of works much more recent; and more at Bale in the spring of 1564, and extended itself to au-
than one celebrated author has borrowed from it, with- rich, where it re-appeared the following year with grea
out acknowledgment, nearly all his erudition; for it is de- fury, at length smote Gesner. During these two years
G E S
G E S 493
nfr.
e had bestowed great care on the persons who were af-
i-w.^cted with this disease, and had even written a disserta-
ion on the best method of treating it; but a bubo having
howed itself under his right armpit, although it occa-
ioned him but little pain, he considered himself as doom-
d to fall a victim to the prevailing malady; and, accord-
1g]y) having caused himself to be carried into his cabinet,
hat he might put his works in order, he died there, while
bus occupied, on the 13th of December 1565, aged only
)rty-nine years and some months. He bequeathed his
brary and his manuscripts to Gaspar Wolf, his pupil,
diom he charged to publish all that could be extracted
om his papers calculated to advance any branch of the
atural sciences. '(Eloges de M. de Thou ; Memoires de
liceron; Biographic Universelle). (a.)
Gesner, Solomon, author of the death of Abel, and
lany other works in the German language, was born at
urich in the year 1730. In his early age he showed few
gns of superior abilities ; and his progress in the rudi-
lents of education was so slow, that his master gave him
p as incapable of any greater attainments than writing
ad the four elementary rules of arithmetic. He was
len placed under the care of a clergyman in the neigh-
aurhood, a relation of his father’s, who showed himself
etter acquainted with the art of discovering the natural
iclinations of his pupils. This gentleman often carried
oung Gesner with him into the fields, where he made him
aserve the beauties of nature; and finding that he took
real pleasure in such lessons, and seemed to listen to
lem with peculiar attention, he occasionally repeated
)me of the most striking passages of the ancient authors,
ho have written on these subjects in the most agreeable
iid pleasing manner. By this ingenious artifice, the mind
f young Gesner began to open, and its powers to expand ;
nd it is perhaps owing to this circumstance that he be-
ame so fond of the language of Virgil and of Theocritus,
idien he arrived at a proper age to think of following
ame pursuit or business, Gesner made choice of that of
ookseller, which was the profession of his father, and in
ame measure of his family. Of five houses at Zurich en-
aged in the printing and bookselling business, two were
ccupied by Gesners ; one belonged to two brothers of
aatname; and the other, that in which our poet had a
hare, was known by the denomination of Orel, Gesner,
nd Company. It was known also by the extent of its
orrespondence, and by the choice and elegance of the
’orks which it gave to the public.
Though Gesner was a bookseller, he did not, however,
amp his genius by submitting to the drudgery of busi-
ess. He indulged himself freely in pursuing his favour-
e object, and his partners never envied him that time
hich he devoted to meditation and study. In 1752, he
lade a tour through Germany, not so much for the pur-
ose of extending his commerce, as to see and become ac-
uainted with those authors who had done honour to their
ountry. The following circumstance, which occurred du-
mg this tour, deserves to be mentioned, as it is striking-
f characteristic of the timidity which often accompanies
iue genius. When Gesner was at Berlin, he was admit-
ed into a literary society, of which Gleim and Lessing
'ere members. Each of the authors who composed it
■sed to read in turn some pieces of their own composi-
>on, and Gesner felt desirous of submitting to these able
"tics a small work, which was his first attempt; but he
■as far from resembling those poets whom Horace and
ther satirists have ridiculed, and who stun every one they
neet by reciting their verses. As each of the members
. done reading, Gesner was observed to move his hand
"tb a kind of tremor towards his pocket, and to draw it
ack again without bringing out the manuscript which he
ag'it to have produced. Having net as yet published
any thing, none of the company could guess the cause of Gesner.
a motion which his modesty prevented him from explain- --v'w
ing. The work which he had not the courage to show
was his small poem entitled Night, which he published
on his return to Zurich in 1753. It was considered as an
original, of which no model is to be found among the mo¬
derns ; but in the opinion of the author, it was only a
piece of imaginary painting, or, to use an expression of
Ins own, in one of his letters to Huber, who has translated
his works, “ a caricature composed in the moments of
folly or intoxication.” In this little poem he has intro¬
duced a short episode on the origin of the glow-worm,
containing a poetical explanation of this natural phos¬
phorus, which has all the beauty of Ovid’s Metamorpho¬
ses, without their prolixity. The success of this essay
emboldened the too timid muse of our young bookseller,
and he published a pastoral romance called Daphnis, in
three cantos. The applause which was deservedly bestow¬
ed upon this performance induced the author to publish,
some time after, his Idylls and other rural poems, in imita¬
tion of those of Theocritus. Pastoral poetry, which at this
time was little known in Germany except by translations
from foreign poets, began to find many partisans, and to
be preferred to every other kind. Desirous, therefore, of
tracing out a new path for himself, our poet thought that
he could not do a more acceptable service to his country¬
men than by painting the felicity and innocence of rural
life, and the tender emotions of love and gratitude. The
only author worthy of notice who had preceded Gesner in
this career was Rost of Leipsic, whose pastoral poems
appeared for the first time in 1744. This writer polished
the language of the German shepherds; and he had address
enough to unite spirit and simplicity in a kind of writing
which is insipid without the one, and which becomes un¬
natural and disgusting if it want the other. He some¬
times throws a delicate veil over those images which are
deficient in decency, but it is to be regretted that it is of¬
ten much too light. Such was the antagonist against whom
Gesner had to contend. Our poet, however, pursued a
different course. Instead of placing, like Rost, his scenes
in modern times, he goes back, with Theocritus, to that
happy age which we are fond of review ing when our pas¬
sions are calm, and when, freed from those anxious cares
which hurry us beyond ourselves, we contemplate amidst
tranquillity the beauty and fertility of nature. The cha¬
racters of Gesner’s Idylls, therefore, are taken from those
societies which exist no longer except in the remem¬
brance, or rather the imagination. His shepherds are fa¬
thers, children, and husbands, who blush not at these titles
so dear to nature, and to whom generosity, beneficence,
and respect for the Deity, are sentiments no less familiar
than love. These Idylls were the principal and favourite
object of his pursuit, and that part of his works which
acquired him the greatest reputation, especially amongst
his countrymen. His Death of Abel, which is well known,
wras published for the first time in the year 1758. It is writ¬
ten, like the rest of his pieces, in poetical prose, and was so
much sought after, that it went through no less than three
editions in the space of a year, without speaking of the
spurious ones which appeared in Holland, at Berlin, and
in France. The French edition was followed by several
others. One came out in Italian; another in the Dutch
language ; another in the Danish ; and, lastly, two in Eng¬
lish, one of them in prose and the other in verse. Amongst
the pieces which Gesner published after the Death of Abel
was his First Navigator, a poem in three cantos, which
many people in Germany consider as his masterpiece. He
made an attempt also in the pastoral drama, but not with
the same success as in other kinds of rural poetry. He
produced likewise, in the same style, Evander and Al-
cimne, in three acts; and Erastus, a small piece of one
494
GET
GetEe.
Gesture act, which was represented with some applause in several
societies, both at Leipsic and Vienna.
But though poetry was Gesner’s darling pursuit, and
though he enriched the literature of his country with
works which will render his name immortal, he did not
confine himself to one manner of imitating nature; he in
turns took up the pencil and the pen, and his active genius
equally directed both. In his infancy he had received a
few lessons in drawing, and he had afterwards pursued
this study, but without any intention of becoming an artist.
At the age of thirty he felt that violent desire which may
be considered as the voice of genius; and this was in some
measure excited by the sight of a beautiful collection
formed by Heidegger, whose daughter he had married.
To please his father-in-law, he studied this treasure, com¬
posed principally of the best pieces of the Flemish school;
and to this new taste he had almost sacrificed every other.
Gesner at first ventured only to delineate some decora¬
tions for the frontispieces of curious books printed in his
office; but by degrees he acquired the courage to make
other attempts. In 1765, he published ten landscapes
etched and engraved by himself, and dedicated them to
his friend Watlet. Gesner owed him this mark of respect
for the care which he had taken to ornament with beauti¬
ful vignettes Huber’s translation of his Idylls. Twelve
other pieces appeared in 1769; and after these attempts,
Gesner executed ornaments for many works which came
from his presses, amongst which were his own works, a
German translation of Swift, and several other produc¬
tions.
Were we to judge from Gesner’s enthusiasm for his fa¬
vourite pursuits, and from the time and attention which
he bestowed upon them, we should be apt to conclude
that he had found but little leisure for discharging his duty
as a citizen. The contrary, however, was the case; for
he passed almost the half of his life in the first employ¬
ment of the state. In 1765 he was called to the grand
council, and in 1767 to the lesser. In 1768 he was ap¬
pointed bailiff of Elibach, in 1776 head of the four guards,
and in 1781 superintendent of waters, which office was in
1787 continued to him for six years. In all these sta¬
tions Gesner discharged his duty with the most scrupu¬
lous fidelity, and died of a paralytical disorder, lamented
by his countrymen and by those who had the pleasure of
his acquaintance, on the 2d of March 1788, at the age of
fifty-six.
GESTURE, a motion of the body, intended to signify
some idea or passion of the mind. It consists principally
in the action of the hands and face, and may be defined,
a suitable conformity of the motions of the countenance,
and of several parts of the body, in speaking, to the sub¬
ject-matter of the discourse.
GETfE, .the same people who were known to the Ro¬
mans under the name of Dacians. They were originally
a Thracian tribe, occupying the country between Mount
Haemus, the lofty ridge of the Balkan, and the lower part
of the river Danube, and distinguished from the rest of
their countrymen neither in language nor in manners.
Here Herodotus seems to have known them probably
from personal observation (iv. 93), and Thucydides speaks
of them as occupying the same position (ii. 96). It was
not till Philip of Macedon and his successors proceeded to
extend their conquests over the Thracian tribes, that we
hear of the Gets changing their abode. When Alexander
(about 333 b. c.) made an expedition into their country,
he found them on the north side of the Danube, but we
have no means of ascertaining whether they still retained
their possessions to the south. His successor Lysimachus
was not equally successful in his war with the Gets. Hav¬
ing been taken prisoner by their king, he was asked to ob¬
serve the poverty of the nation, and at the same time ad-
G E T
vised not to make war upon a people whose wants were G
so few and so easily supplied. He was afterwards allow- ^
ed to depart in safety. (Diod. Sic. Fragm. xxi.; Mem-
non, ap. Phot. cod. 214, c. 6.) In the reign of Perseus
last king of Macedon (170 b. c.), we find the eastern bank
of the Danube in possession of the Bastarns, a Teutonic
people, who must have expelled the Gets, and gave occa¬
sion to the appellation of Deserta Getdrum, by which it
was first known to the Romans. The Gets seem to have
travelled westwards, and settled in Transylvania, spread¬
ing themselves over Hungary. Here their power increas¬
ed so much under one of their kings, Bcepbistas, that it
became formidable even to the Romans; they pillaged
Thrace, and reduced the country of the Boii to a desert.
At this time they were in possession of part of the coun¬
try to the south of the Danube, a part of Servia and Bul¬
garia, where we find them attacked by the Romans (Jus¬
tin. xxv. 1.; Flor. iii. 4). At last Augustus determined to
subdue them, and he found the attempt less difficult than
he had expected, for Bceribistas was dead, and his kingdom
divided into several parts. The Roman generals compell¬
ed the Getse partly to submit, and partly to withdraw to
the north of the Danube. Mcesia was erected into a pro¬
vince, the banks of the river were studded with fortresses,
and the kingdom of the Gette to the south was put an end
to for ever. (Strab. vii. 304, 305.) During the whole of
the first century of the Christian era, the Getae continued
to make incursions from their mountains into the Roman
territory, but it was not till the reign of Domitian that
they became truly formidable. They were then under
the command of Decebalus, who directed their proceed¬
ings with so much prudence and vigour, that the emperor
found himself obliged to conclude with them a disgraceful
treaty. The succession of Trajan to the empire, and his
well-known experience and wusdom, induced Decebalus
to low'er his tone; but it was too late, for Trajan was de¬
termined to relieve the Romans from all danger in this
quarter. Trajan crossed the Danube with a formidable
army; and Decebalus, after several unsuccessful battles,
found himself obliged either to submit or to put an end
to his life. The latter alternative he chose as the more
honourable, and his subjects submitted to the conqueror.
His kingdom was erected into the province of Dacia, the
only one which ever existed to the north of the Danube;
and as the land was nearly without inhabitants, Trajan
transferred to it many from other parts of the empire, and
the province became Roman not only in manners, but
even in language (Dion. Cass. Ixviii. 14; Eutrop. viii. 2,6).
The Romans were not allowed to remain quietly in pos¬
session of this country, but they continued to maintain
their footing until the reign of Aurelian (a. d. 271), who,
convinced of the impossibility of resisting the encroach¬
ments of the Goths without some better protected frontier
than Dacia presented, determined to withdraw the Roman
inhabitants to the south side of the Danube. The greater
number followed his advice, and were placed in the coun¬
try between Upper and Lower Mcesia, in the present dis¬
trict of Servia and Bulgaria, which was then called Dacia
Ripensis (Eutrop. ix. 15; Vopisc. in Aurel. c. 39). The
name of Dacian or Getan was no longer heard of; but a
considerable number of the people still remained, preserv¬
ing their ancient customs and the Latin language. I here
seems indeed to be little doubt that the present inhabit¬
ants of Wallachia are descendants from this people, as it is
difficult otherwise to account for their language so closely
resembling the ancient Latin. (See a discussion on this
subject in Thunmann’s Untersuchungen fiber die Ges-
chichte der ostlich Europ. Volker, Leips. 1774.)
GETHIN, Lady Grace, an English lady of uncommon
talents, was the daughter of Sir George Norton of Abbots
Leigh, in Somersetshire, and born in the year 1676. bhe
»
G H A
G H A
495
e. Hi all the advantages of a liberal education, and became
pi t: wife of Sir Richard Getbin, of Gethin Grott in Ireland.
'Y <.e was mistress of great accomplishments, natural and
r ajuired, but did not live long enough to display them to
i W t. world, having, unfortunately, died in the twenty-first
1 vtr of her age. She was buried in Westminster Abbey,
l( y ere a beautiful monument with an inscription is erect-
^ e over her remains ; and for perpetuating her memory,
jit l p,vision was made that a sermon should be preached in
fol \istminster Abbey yearly, on Ash Wednesday. She
Hi v,te, and left behind her, in loose papers, a work, which
# s n after her death was methodized, and published under
| t • title of Reliquiae Gethiniance ; or, some Remains of
Hi. (ace, Lady Gethin. This was a collection of choice dis-
jicirses, pleasant apophthegms, and witty sentences, writ-
3 I ti by her, for the most part, by way of essay, and at
1 jure hours. London, 1700, 4to.
GrETHSEMANE, in Ancient Geography, a village in
it I ti Mount of Olives, whither Jesus Christ sometimes re-
Hi ted in the night-time. It was in a garden belonging to
% t s village that he suffered the agony in which he sweated
' ops of blood; and here also he was arrested by Judas,
S e jji the rest who were conducted by that traitor.
' GHASSA, the capital of a district in Bootan, and the
H. £ tion of a provincial governor. It is surrounded with
$ };h mountains covered with snow throughout the year,
j the base of which is a spring of water of so high a tem-
s j rature as scarcely to admit of bathing.
GHAUTS. The term of Ghaut signifies originally a
3 ss through the mountains, or the place where boats
id. But it has been applied to designate the mountain-
s chains which run in a direction nearly north and south
* rough southern India. These are divided into the East-
i and Western Ghauts. The eastern ridge commences
the south, to the north of the Cavery, in about latitude
.20. north, and extends, with little interruption, and
arly in a straight line, to the banks of the Kistnah, in la-
ude 16. north. The height of this ridge has never been
curately ascertained throughout its whole extent. It
estimated, however, to rise at its highest part, which is
if P posite Madras, to the height of 3000 feet; and Banga-
iitS ‘e, which is within the chain, was found by barometri-
1 observation to be 2900 feet above the level of the sea.
r Buchanan, who had an excellent opportunity of ob-
rving the strata of these mountains, where the rock was
t away to form the road, describes their component
rts to be granite, consisting of white felspar and quartz,
th dark green mica, in a small proportion to the other
o ingredients. The rocks appear to be stratified ; but
: [ e strata are broken and confused. In some places they
ii* e almost horizontal, and in others vertical, with all in-
-1 nnediate degrees of inclination. The country above
it|j e Ghauts, about Naiekan Eray, rises into swells like the
ad in many parts of England, and is overlooked by high
irren peaks, which close the view to the eastward. The
'untry is but poorly cultivated, and is far from populous.
r Buchanan judged that not above one half of the coun-
|y had been ploughed; and about a tenth part of the
hole rises into hills too steep for the plough. The soil
the gently swelling ground is very poor, and covered
ith coppice, having a few large trees intermixed. The
'ppice land serves for pasture ; and the bushes supply the
itives with fuel. Reservoirs are constructed like those
< dow the Ghauts; and the watered fields are productive
rice. The want of water, however, is the great draw-
ick on agriculture throughout all the eastern parts of the
Pper Carnatic. The mountains produce iron ore, which
"ashed down by the torrents, and, being found in the
form of black sand, is smelted by the natives. Each Ghauts,
forge pays a certain tribute in iron, for permission to carry
on the work. These mountains abound in rude and mag¬
nificent scenery, and there is a number of passes through
them, the principal of which are those leading to Seringa-
patam and Poonah. Many of these roads have been form¬
ed with great labour across the mountains; but they are
soon ploughed into inequalities by the mountain torrents,
and are thus as rough as before. Among the lofty peaks of
these mountains large tracts of barren land are to be found ;
the country is naked, and is not even clothed with forests.
The hills next the Vellore road by Sautghur are covered
with large stones, among which grow many small trees
and shrubs, w'ith occasionally a tamarind tree of great age
and size. The pass here has been greatly improved, be¬
ing widened and levelled since the conquest by the Bri¬
tish ; and is now practicable for artillery.
Ghauts, Western. This great chain of mountains runs
along the peninsula of Hindustan, from Cape Comorin to
the Tuptee or Surat river, at the distance of not more
than sixty or seventy, and in some places not above forty
miles from the western shore of the Indian peninsula,
namely, the coasts of Malabar, Canara, &c.; and they are
frequently visible from the sea, to which at one point they
approach within six miles. By this peculiar configuration
of the country all the great rivers of the peninsula of In¬
dia run down the eastern slope of these mountains into
the Bay of Bengal, there not being sufficient space for the
collection of any great body of water on the western de¬
clivity, which is of greater elevation, and more abrupt in
its ascent. The range is generally computed to rise to
between 3000 and 4000 feet above the level of the sea.
These mountains do not terminate in a point or promon¬
tory, but bend eastward in a wavy line parallel to the
river, and are afterwards lost among the hills in the neigh¬
bourhood of Boorhanpoor. These hills extend about 800
miles in length, with the exception of a break in the ridge
about sixteen miles wide, where the river Paniany takes
its course from the Coimbetore country to the sea; and
here it is well known that ships which navigate the Malabar
coast during the north-east monsoons commonly experi¬
ence a stronger gale in the neighbourhood of Paniany than
elsewhere; a circumstance which Major Rennell ascribes
to this opening in the Ghaut Mountains.1 The altitude of
this mountain chain is sufficient to intercept the great body
of the clouds which are alternately impelled across the con¬
tinent of India by the south-west and north-east monsoons;
and accordingly these winds occasion a rainy season on one
side of the mountains only, so that while the periodical rains
are deluging the country on one side, the weather is serene
and dry on the other. But it is only a particular tract of
country that is sheltered from rain by the ridge of the
Ghauts; for the clouds do pass over, but at too great a
height and too much attenuated to be condensed into rain.
At a greater distance, however, they collect into masses,
and occasion a rainy season in the countries farther to lee¬
ward. Thus, at Nagpoor, in the very centre of India, the
seasons differ but little from their usual course in Bengal
and on the western side of India. They have a rainy
season occasioned by the south-west monsoon, though it
is not so violent as in Bengal. At the mouth of the God-
avery, and in the neighbourhood, the south-west monsoon
occasions a rainy season, when the Godavery is swol¬
len and overflows; and this country is about the same
distance to leeward of the Ghauts as Nagpoor. Major
Rennell suggests that the clouds which occasion the
rainy season at the mouth of the Godavery may come
from Cape Comorin, though from the prevalence of west-
Rennell, Memoir of a Map of Hindustan, p. L9G.
496
G H E
G H I
Ghent erly winds this appears doubtful. But it is certain that
U . the clouds which bring rain at Nagpoor must pass over
Ghenah. ^ Ghauts. Madras lies in the sheltered tract, though
at least 300 miles to leeward of the Ghauts. The coun¬
try near the mouth of the Godavery is about 200 miles
more. It would be curious, if we had facts for such a
speculation, to trace the limits between wet and dry, and
thus to ascertain the influence which this elevated and
extensive mountain chain exercises on the climate of the
Indian peninsula; but without fuller and more minute in¬
formation we can scarcely enter into such an inquiry.
The Western Ghauts, about the fifteenth degree of
north latitude, although they are steep and stony, are by
no means rugged or broken with rocks. On the contrary,
in the country near Cutaki the stones are buried in a rich
mould, and in many places are not visible until they are
dug up. Thus, instead of the naked, sun-burnt, rocky
peaks, so common in the eastern chain, these mountains
are clothed with stately forests. Dr Buchanan mentions
that he had nowhere seen finer trees, nor any bamboos
that could be compared to those he saw there. These
bamboos compose a large part of the forest; they grow
in detached clumps, with open spaces between, and equal
in height to the most stately palms, which are also found
in great abundance. There is no underwood nor creep¬
ers to interrupt the traveller who may choose to wander in
any direction through these woods. But there are nume¬
rous tigers, which, joined to the unhealthiness of the cli¬
mate, renders any long stay there uncomfortable. About
midway up the mountain the teak becomes common ; but
it is very inferior in size to other trees. Roads have
been formed through these mountains with great labour,
out of a bed of loose rock. These roads are ploughed
up by torrents during the rainy season, which wash away
their softer parts, and leave single rocks of four or five
feet diameter standing in the centre. The difficulty for¬
merly experienced in penetrating these mountain passes
was very great. In 1791, when the Bombay army was
advancing to the Mysore through the Poodicherrim pass,
it required two days to draw up twenty light field-pieces
two miles, and three weeks to bring up the other artillery
to the top of the Ghauts.
GHENT, a city, the capital of the province of East
Flanders. It stands on the river Scheldt, where it receives
the waters of the Lys, the Lieve, and the More, and is
connected with several navigable canals, which form twen¬
ty-six islands, over which there are many bridges. It con¬
tains about 10,000 houses, and 30,000 inhabitants. It is
a sumptuously built ancient city, with many public build¬
ings, some venerable for their antiquity, and others for
their architecture. It was before 1830 a place of most
extensive manufactures, which had grown up in the pre¬
ceding fifteen years with a degree of rapidity which has
no parallel on the Continent. The commerce and the
benevolent institutions were, up to the same period, in a
most meritorious state, and yet improving. It is to be
hoped that peace may restore the city to its former state
of prosperity. Long. 3. 38. 30. E. Lat. 51. 3. 21. N.
GHEP, or Gheep, a district of Hindustan, in the pro¬
vince of Lahore, situated principally between the thirty-
second and thirty-third degrees of north latitude. It is
bounded on the north-west by Sohaan, and on the south¬
east by Jhylum rivers. It produces a considerable quan¬
tity of fossil salt, great part of which is exported to the
more eastern and southern provinces of Hindustan. Part
of it belongs to the Sikks, and the remainder to the Af¬
ghans. The principal towns are Pirhala, Muckealah, and
Varsha.
GHERIAH, a fortress of Hindustan, in the south of
India, situated on a rocky promontory in the province of
Concan, about one mile long, and a quarter of a mile
broad. It is joined to the main land by a narrow neck of f
land; and lies about a mile from the entrance of a capacious 1 ^ !
harbour, formed by the mouth of a river which descends (m *
from the Western Ghauts. It was taken possession of bv ^ v
the Mahrattas in the seventeenth century; and in 1707^
Conajee Angria had established an independent sove'
reignty here, and possessed a numerous piratical fleet
The depredations of these pirates drew on them the ven^
geance of the British ; and in 1756 Angria’s fleet was de¬
stroyed by Admiral Watson and Colonel Clive. The first
which was taken was found to contain 206 pieces of ord¬
nance, and an immense quantity of ammunition and naval
stores, besides L.120,000 in specie or valuables.
GHEROUD, a town of Hindustan, in the province of
Khandesh, belonging to the Mahrattas. Long. 79. 49 £
Lat. 21. 58. N.
GHIDDILO W, a town of Bengal, in the district of Conch
Beyhar, situated on the northern bank of the Durlah river
which divides that district from Rungpore. Long. 89.
38. E. Lat. 26. N.
GHIDDORE, a town of Bengal, district of Monghir,
situated on the road leading from Calcutta to Patna,
through Birbhoom. The fort which it formerly possessed
is now in a state of ruin. Long. 86. 18. E. Lat. 24. 50. N.
GH1LAN, or Gheelan, a province of Persia, which
runs along the south-western shore of the Caspian Sea.
It is bounded on the south and south-east by Irak and Ma-
zunderan, on the north by Shirvan, and on the west by
Azerbijan. It is hemmed in on the south and west by
the Elburz range of mountains, which, at the distance of
about fifty miles, runs along the shore of the Caspian Sea,
and rises to a great height, like a steep wall. The breadth
of the low country, from the sea to the foot of the hills,
varies exceedingly; the mountains advancing sometimes to
the water’s edge, and in other places retiring to a distance
of thirty or forty miles. The boundary of the province,
along with that of the contiguous province of Azerbijan,
runs along the elevated crests of the mountains in a very
irregular and indefinite line ; in some places contracting
its whole breadth to thirty, in others enlarging it to seven¬
ty miles. The whole coast of Ghilan is lined with a belt
of impenetrable forest; and behind this barrier are deep
back-waters and extensive morasses. On the south, the pass¬
es through the mountains are of extreme steepness, difficul¬
ty, and length; so that the province is strongly defended by
nature against an invading enemy. The plains extending
from the Caspian Sea to the mountains are well watered,
verdant, and beautiful; the soil is fertile, and yields abun¬
dantly rice, wheat, hemp, hops, and many kinds of fruit,
such as lemons, oranges, peaches, and pomegranates.
Grapes are in the greatest plenty; and the vines which
grow wild in the mountains, support themselves, as in
Georgia, on the trunks and branches of trees. From want
of attention to their culture, they are not however of the
best quality, and, like other fruits in Ghilan, are esteemed
unwholesome. But of all the productions in this province,
that of silk is the most celebrated. The cultivation of
this commodity, which employs the industry of the coun¬
try, and enriches the natives, constitutes the principal
trade of Ghilan, and is annually exported in great quan¬
tities from Resht and Lankeroon to Astrakhan. The only
river of any consequence is the Kizilozien, which descends
from the Elburz Mountains with the rapidity of a. torrent,
and flows with a meandering course through Ghilan to
the Caspian Sea. There are few places in Ghilan deserv¬
ing the appellation of towns. Resht, containing about
80,000 inhabitants, and Lahajan, stand almost alone. hn'
zellee is but a poor shipping village, dependent on Resnt,
and Lankeroon, an open roadstead at the mouth of a river,
is upon Lahajan. Fornen, Massouleh, Kiskar, and Terego-
raum, are large villages, in which there are tolerable bazar*»
G H I
(1 there may be many other villages as populous, though
t so well established marts for trade. On the other hand,
irkets are periodically held at places which, except at
|ese particular times, are almost destitute of inhabitants,
'iroughout the whole of Ghilan, and the neighbouring
.winces of Astrabad and Mazunderan, the population
uy be divided into two classes; the first inhabiting the
,ins, and living stationary in towns or villages, where
l >y cultivate rice, wheat, cotton, sugar, silk, and are of
[jceable and industrious habits; the second class, in-
1 siting the skirts of the hills, and the valleys amongst
t!m, as well as the villages nearest their base, but who
r ire during the heat of summer to elevated regions, thus
rjrating with their flocks in quest of pasture, according
t the change of seasons. In the northern parts of Ghilan
r. the Talish, a fierce tribe of mountaineers, who unite
i .ny of the better qualities of highlanders with the bar-
1'ity of savages. They are continually marauding among
nmselves, and plundering their immediate neighbours;
i :1 neither property nor life are safe in their hands. They
f ! brave, and devoted to their chiefs; and they are also
j;ive, and patient of fatigue; but they are treacherous,
ijjrciless, and rapacious towards all the world besides,
'hey are for the most part spare, raw-boned men, of ro-
1 st though not tall frames. Their dress consists of a
bse pair of trousers; the only vest they wear is fitted
t ht to the body; and the head is covered by a sheep-
i n cap of red or black wool. About the waist they wear
iileathern girdle, from which depends the formidable
l lilanee knife, broad and two-edged, its blade varying
! m one to two feet in length, and from two to three
i lies in breadth, exceedingly sharp, and ending in a point,
a;I very deadly in brawls and private quarrels. Over
t' ir shoulder they carry their toffing or matchlock, in the
i of which they are exceedingly expert. The revenue
ylded by this province amounts to about 210,000 to-
nuns, or L.l 15,000 sterling, a year. This revenue arises
fm a tax on the export of silk goods and silk, a tax on
i jorts, and a land-tax. We have no accurate account
cdie population. The cattle are not of a very large size,
lecows resemble the lesser breeds of that animal in In-
d; the sheep are also small; and no large horses are
bd in these provinces; but there are excellent ponies,
vich answer all purposes much better, as they are strong
ad stout, and carry enormous loads through the worst
r ds in winter, although after long showers they sink to
t girths at every step. Ghilan was ceded by the king
o Persia to Russia in 1724; it was taken possession of by
Mierine II. in 1780, and restored to Aga Mahommed
Ian in 1797. The southern parts are subject to Persia;
b towards the north, the extensive district of Talish is
h d by Mustapha Khan, a rebellious and independent
c if, who, finding the power of Persia too great for him,
ii ted the Russians to his assistance, promising at the
s ie time to yield them obedience as sovereigns. In the
y r 1812, he, along with a Russian garrison consisting of
1 men, were driven by the Persians out of Lankeroon,
"i ch was garrisoned by 1500 irregular Ghilanee troops,
b ides two battalions of Persian infantry, and a company
o irtillery. It was attacked on 13th June with 2000 in-
b ry, 1000 Cossacks, and three vessels of war, and was
c ied by assault, with a loss of 1200 men. Mustapha
Mn continued till his death in possession of Russian Ta-
I .acknowledging a nominal obedience to the authorities
hat empire, who never demanded more; and he has
b a succeeded by seven sons, who have shared between
h ai the whole country. (Kinneir’s Geographical Me-
II r °f the Persian Empire ; Fraser’s Travels and Adven¬
ts 's in the Persian Provinces, &c.)
'I1IZNI, a district of Afghanistan, situated between
“ thirty-third and thirty-fourth degrees of north latitude,
OL. X.
G H O
and between the sixty-eighth and sixty-ninth of east longi¬
tude. It is a table land, interspersed with a few hills, and
possesses a very cold climate. The inhabitants, who are of
the Ghiljie tribe, are all shepherds, who raise a number of
sheep and lambs. The district is but thinly peopled. The
principal towns are Ghizni, Kurrabaugh, and Gurdaiz.
Ghizni, a celebrated city of Afghanistan, the chief town
of the above district, and forming the capital of a powerful
empire, reaching from the Tigris to the Ganges, and from
the Jaxartes to the Persian Gulf. It is now reduced to
about 1500 houses, besides suburbs without the walls. Its
situation is on a height, at the foot of which flows a pretty
large stream. It is surrounded by stone walls, and contains
three bazars of no great breadth, with high houses on each
side, and a covered chaursoo or exchange, besides several
dark and narrow streets. Ghizni was splendidly adorned
by the Ghiznavi princes, especially by Sultan Mahmoud.
But most of these splendid buildings have been long levelled
with the dust; and only some few remains of the ancient
grandeur of the city are to be seen in the neighbourhood,
particularly two lofty minarets, which stand at some dis¬
tance from each other, and are of different heights, the
least upwards of a hundred feet high. The tomb of Sul¬
tan Mahmoud is also standing, about three miles from the
city. It is covered with a cupola, and is a spacious rather
than a magnificent building. The doors, which are large,
are of sandal wood, and said to have been brought by the
sultan, as a trophy, from the famous temple of Somnaut
in Guzerat, which he sacked in his last expedition to India.
The tombstone is of white marble, on which are sculptured
Arabic verses from the Koran; and at its head lies the
Elain but mighty wooden mace, with a head of metal so
eavy that few men can now use it. There are likewise
some thrones or chairs, inlaid with mother of pearl, in the
tomb, which are said to have belonged to Mahmoud. There
are other ruins of less note, among which may be men¬
tioned the tombs of Behtole the wise, and that of Hakeem
Sunanee, a poet. But there are no remains of the magni¬
ficent palaces of the Gaznavide kings, or of the mosques,
baths, and caravanserais which once adorned the capital of
the East. Of all the antiquities of Ghizni, the most useful
is an embankment across a stream, which was built by
Mahmoud, and which still supplies water to the fields and
gardens round the town. This city was in the year 960
taken possession of by Abistagy, a rebel governor of Kho-
rassan, who threw off his allegiance to the Samonavian dy¬
nasty of Persia, and founded a new kingdom. He was
succeeded by his son-in-law Subactageen, who ascended
the throne in 975, and extended his dominions to theibanks
of the Indus. Mahmoud, who succeeded, invaded India
several times, and raised the glory of the Ghiznean em¬
pire to its highest pitch ; and he first obtained from the
khalif the title of Sultan. He died in the year 1030, and
was buried in a magnificent tomb. The kingdom conti¬
nued to flourish till the year 1116, when a Persian army in¬
vaded the country, and took the capital. It was again taken
about the year 1150, by Alaaddeen, the prince of Ghore.
Irritated by an insult offered to his family by the inha¬
bitants of Ghizni, he gave up the towm to be pillaged by
his soldiers, who for seven days massacred the inhabitants,
and destroyed all the public buildings, sparing only the
tombs. From this period may be dated the decline of the
city. The royal family fled to Lahore, where, languishing
through two weak reigns, the dynasty terminated in the
person of Khosroo II. and in the year 1189. The travel¬
ling distance from Delhi by Cabul is 917 miles; from Ca-
bul eighty-two miles. Long. 68. 22. E. Lat. 33. 36. N.
(Elphinstone’s Account of Cabul; Rennell’s Memoir of a
Map of Hindustan ; Foster, &c.
GFIOR AGHAUT, a district of Bengal, containing about
a hundred and fifty square miles, but formerly much more
3 R
497
Ghora-
ghaut.
498
Ghora-
ghaut
‘ .IJ
Giagh.
G I A
extensive, as it not only embraced great part of the district
of Dinagepore, but also extended across the Brahmaputra
river, and included the small district of Carrybary; it is
pleasantly situated on the western bank of the Currutya
river, and formerly carried on a considerable trade with
Bootan for Tangan horses, musk, &c. Long. 89. 25. E.
Lat. 25. 13. N.
Ghoraghaut, a fortress of Hindustan, in the province of
Gurjerat. It is the capital of the above district, situated on
the borders of the extensive salt morass of the Run, which
affords good pasturage for horses, and divides Gurjerat from
Cutch. It serves as a barrier fortress to the Run ; a strong
garrison being always kept in it by the Jam of Noanagur.
GHORE, or Ghour, a considerable district of Afghan¬
istan, situated between the thirty-fifth and thirty-seventh
degrees of north latitude, and the sixty-seventh and sixty-
ninth degrees of east longitude. This was formerly one
of the Persian governments; but in the twelfth century
its chiefs became independent, overturned the Ghiznian
empire, and carried their arms as far as Benares. One of
their slaves named Cuttub founded, about the year 1206,
the Mahommedan kingdom of Delhi. This country was
overrun in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries by the
armies of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, and it is now in
possession of the Usbec Tartars. The Ghory tribe, being
of pastoral habits, have emigrated to the vicinity of Pesh-
awer, and are now subdivided into three tribes. Its chief
towns are Chore and Firoy Koh. Ghore is the name of the
capital, and was once the residence of a long line of so¬
vereigns. It was taken by the king of Kharezm, and was
subsequently sacked by the armies of Genghis and Tamer¬
lane, from which it has never recovered, and is now scarce¬
ly known. Long. 67. 48. E. Lat. 35. 45. N.
GHOSEGONG, a small town in the Garrow country,
on the western frontier of Bengal, and situated on the west
side of the Natee river. It consists of a considerable num¬
ber of thatched houses belonging to the Garrow tribe, some
of them a hundred and fifty feet long and thirty wide.
The soil in the vicinity is good, and produces rice, mustard
seed, and hemp. The pasture is also good, and the ghee
produce is of an excellent quality,
GHOORBUND, a district of Afghanistan, situated to the
south of the Hindu Coosh range of mountains, about fifty-
six miles to the north-north-west of Cabul. It is a fertile
valley, which yields abundance of wheat; but the favourite
food of the natives is dried mulberries. It produces also
lapis lazuli. The inhabitants are of Persian descent, being
of the Sheea sect, while all the other Afghans are Soonees.
GONFODE, or Ghunfude, a sea-port of Arabia, in
the province of Hedsjaz, in Arabia. All vessels carrying
coffee to Jidda are compelled to anchor here, and to pay
a duty. It is 145 miles south of Mecca.
GHURKA. See Aurungabad.
GHYSEABAD, a town of Hindustan, in the Mahratta
territories, in the province of Malwah, 50 miles south from
Cliatterpoor. Long. 79. 56. E. Lat. 24. 8. N.
GHOST, an apparition, or spirit of a person deceased,
rendered visible to the eye of sense. See Apparitions.
GIAGH, in Chronology, a cycle of twelve years, in use
amongst the Turks and Cathayans or Chinese. Each year
of a giagh bears the name of some animal; the first that
of a mouse, the second that of a bullock, the third that of
a lynx or leopard, the fourth that of a hare, the fifth that
of a crocodile, the sixth that of a serpent, the seventh that
of a horse, the eighth that of a sheep, the ninth that of a
monkey, the tenth that of a hen, the eleventh that of a
dog, and the twelfth that of a hog. The day is also divid¬
ed into twelve parts, called giaghs, and distinguished by
the name of some animals. Each giagh contains two of
our hours, and is divided into eight kehs, each equal to a
quarter of an hour with us.
G I A
GIANNONE, in Latin Jannonius, Peter, a celebrated Gi
Neapolitan writer and historian, was born at Ischitella a W
small town in the province of Capitanata. Having acquired
the elements of a liberal education under the paternal roof
he was sent by his father, at the age of eighteen, to Naples'
there to complete his studies, and particularly to study ju'
risprudence. Being placed under the immediate tuition of
Dominico Aulisio, who not only excelled in the qualifications
necessary for training young men to the bar, but was also
profoundly conversant with Greek and Roman literature
history, philosophy, and indeed all the learning of his time'
Giannone made so rapid progress in his studies, both in pin-
losophy and jurisprudence, and evinced so great penetra¬
tion of mind, that he was admitted into the society or club
which met at the house of Gaetano Argento, one of the
most distinguished advocates of Naples, who combined the
cultivation of letters with the practice of his profession.
This circumstance appears to have materially influenced,
if not in fact determined, the character of his subsequent
pursuits. He applied himself with great ardour to the study
of jurisprudence on philosophical principles, and soon gave
proofs of his capacity for investigating and illustrating the
sources of that science by several learned dissertations Be
Originibus Juris. His inquiries, however, having disclosed
to him much respecting the origin and mutations of laws,
and the vicissitudes of nations, which had escaped the pe¬
netration of ordinary jurisconsults, he conceived the design,
with the approbation of Argento, of writing a civil history
of the kingdom of Naples, comprehending an account of
the origin and progress of its laws and government, and an
exposition of the causes which led to the gradual abolition
of ancient customs and institutions. But this work, inter¬
rupted from time to time by the affairs of the bar, was not
completed until after the lapse of twenty years, and only-
appeared in 1723, under the title of Istoria Civile del Regno
di Napoli, in four volumes 4to. Giannone took as his guide
Angelo de Costanzo, whose history of Naples, which was
then accounted the best, he almost entirely transfused into
his work; but his distinguishing merit consists in the valua¬
ble expositions he has given relative to the ecclesiastical and
civil constitution, and to the laws and customs of the king¬
dom. Although the style is neither correct nor elegant,
the philosophical spirit, the erudition, and the profound re¬
search, which this history exhibits, secured it a high repu¬
tation. But the author perhaps affects too much passion
against the court of Rome, the proceedings of which, how¬
ever censurable in themselves, should have been treated
by a writer like Giannone, not with the impassioned bitter¬
ness of a controversialist, but with the dignified and judi¬
cial calmness of a philosophical historian. The consequen¬
ces of this asperity were such as might have been expected.
The freedom with which he treated ecclesiastics generally,
and the boldness with which he discussed several topics relat¬
ing to the origin of the papal power, raised a storm against
him, which neither the authority of the viceroy, Cardinal
Althann, nor the credit of the municipality of Naples, of
which he had been elected advocate, could allay, or even
mitigate. “ I know not, indeed,” said Argento, when speak¬
ing to him on this subject, “ wdiether i should congratu¬
late you or condole with you; for I very much fear lest
the crown of laurel w hich now encircles your brows should
become a crown of thorns.” Having been several times in¬
sulted by the populace, and at length excommunicated by
the archiepiscopal court, Giannone, seeing his work placed
in the index expurgatorius, left Naples on the 29th of Apni
1723, and went to seek an asylum at Vienna. The Em¬
peror Charles VI. regarded him at first with an unfavour¬
able eye ; but the protection of such men as Prince Eugene,
the Chancellor Zinzendorf, the celebrated Count de Bonne-
val, and the Chevalier Garelli, first physician to the em¬
peror, procured him a pension of a hundred florins on t e
G L A
ii -cretaryship of Sicily. Although relieved from his ex-
immunication by Cardinal Pignatelli, archbishop of Na-
[eg he did not restrain himself from composing several
ttle satires against his sentence, and particularly against
ie prohibition of his book ; but by the advice of his friends
2 only circulated these in manuscript. It is in his smaller
orks that his resentment against the court of Rome knew
o bounds. During his stay at Vienna, where he enjoyed
ie favour of the great and of men of letters, he laboured
a work entitled II Triregno, ossia del regno del Cielo,
°lla Terra, e del Papa, which occupied him nearly twelve
ears, and to which he only put the last touches at Gene-
a. This work, in which man is successively represented
i the state of nature, under the law of grace, and under
ie temporal dominion of the popes, comprehends ten
pochs, the first three of which extend to the ninth Gen¬
try ; but the remainder has not been completed. Don
U larlos having ascended the throne of Naples and of Sicily
i 1734, Giannone lost his pension and all his hopes. Be-
)g constrained to quit Vienna, he retired to Venice,
here he was received with every mark of distinction, by
ersons of quality and men of letters, particularly by the
ienator Angiolo Pisani, who gave him a lodging in one of
is houses. He refused the appointment of counsellor of
he republic, and the chair of Roman law in the univer¬
ity of Padua, ingenuously confessing that he was not in a
ondition to explain the laws in the Latin language, ac-
ording to the usage of the schools. But the repose which
e hoped to enjoy at Venice was not of long duration.
)enounced as unfavourable to the pretensions of the re-
iublic over the Adriatic, he endeavoured to avert the storm
iy publishing a Lettera intorno al dominio del mare Adri-
<tico ed ai trattati seguiti in Venezia tra Papa Alessandro
rII. e Hmperador Federigo Barbarossa / but as the state
nquisitors had taken umbrage at the prolonged visits paid
iv himto the ambassadors of France and Spain, his remo-
al was decided on, and, in the night of the 23d September
735, sbirri seized and conducted him in a small boat or
larque to the frontiers of the territory of Ferrara. The ap-
irehension of still greater misfortunes now induced him to
hange his name to that of Antonio Rinaldo, under which
ic sojourned at Modena, Milan, and Turin, and arrived
vith his son at Geneva, on the 5th of December. Flis re-
mtation, which had preceded him in different cities, pro-
ured him in the last-mentioned place the most satisfactory
'eception on the part of Dr Turretin, the minister Vernet,
ind the bookseller Bousquet, who furnished him with the
neans oS living at his ease. In 1736 he was preparing to
irint a volume of supplement to his history, when, having
)een conducted by a perfidious friend to pass Easter in a
catholic village belonging to the king of Sardinia, he was
irrested by order of that sovereign, and his manuscripts
seized and conveyed to Rome. He was himself conducted
to the castle of Miolan, and thence to the fort of Ceva,
where, in his calmer moments, he employed himself in trans¬
lating various works into Italian, in writing on politics, and
in preparing memoirs of his life. The discussion which
arose between the courts of Rome and Turin on the nomi¬
nation to consistorial benefices in the states of the king of
Sardinia, and which was terminated by the concordat of
1738, furnished Giannone with an occasion of writing, in
favour of the rights of the sovereign, a memoir, which he
sent to the king. His Sardinian majesty appeared to receive
it with pleasure; but, strange to add, he caused the author
to be more closely confined than before, and ordered him
to be transferred to the citadel of Turin, where he passed
twelve consecutive years in trouble and agitation. It was
w this fortress that, giving ear to the persuasions of Father
1 rever of the Oratory, Giannone retracted, on the 4th April
*'38, the maxims which had been condemned in his his-
tory. But this submission did not procure him his liberty ;
G I A 499
for he died in prison on the 7th of March 1758, aged se- Giant,
venty-two years. In 1760 his posthumous works were pub-
lished at Lausanne, in one volume 4to, under the title of
Opere Postume in difesa della sua Storia civile del regno di
Napoli, con la di lui professione di fede. The history of
Giannone was translated into French by Louis Bochat of
Lausanne ; and among the re-impressions of the work may
be distinguished that which appeared with illustrations by
the Abbe Cestari. It has been highly commended by Gib¬
bon in his Extraits de mon Journal (Miscellaneous Works,
vol. v. p. 413, 8vo ed.) “ The candour, penetration, and
freedom of this excellent lawyer,” says he, “ will ever en¬
sure to this work the esteem of all wise men. But,” he
adds, “ churchmen are not always of the number.” In the
number of the refutations which have appeared, it is only
necessary to mention the Rijiessioni morali e teologiche so-
pra VIstoria civile del regno di Napoli, by Eusebio Filopa-
tro (Father San-Felice, a jesuit), in two volumes 4to, an
extract of which may be seen in the Memoires de Trevoux
for January 1730. (Fabroni, Vital Italorum, vol. xiii. v.
Petrus Jannonius.) (a.)
GIANT, a person of extraordinary bulk and stature. The
romances of all ages have furnished us with so many ex¬
travagant accounts of giants of incredible bulk and strength,
that the existence of such people is now generally disbe¬
lieved. It is commonly thought that the stature of man
has been the same in all ages; and some have even pre¬
tended to demonstrate mathematically the impossibility of
the existence of giants. Of these our countryman Mac-
laurin has been the most explicit. “ In general,” says he,
“ it will easily appear, that the elforts tending to destroy
the cohesion of beams arising from their own gravity only,
increase in the quadruplicate ratio of their lengths ; but
that the opposite elforts, tending to preserve their cohesion,
increase only in the triplicate proportion of the same lengths.
From this it follows, that the greater beams must be in
greater danger of breaking than the lesser similar ones;
and that though a lesser beam may be firm and secure, yet
a greater similar one may be made so long, that it will ne¬
cessarily break by its own weight. Hence Galileo justly
concludes, that what appears very firm and succeeds very
well in models, may be very weak and infirm, or even fall
to pieces by its own weight, when it comes to be executed
in large dimensions according to the model. From the
same principle he argues, that there are necessary limits in
the operations of nature and art, which they cannot surpass
in magnitude. Were trees of a very enormous size, their
branches would fall by their own weight. Large animals
have not strength in proportion to their size ; and if there
were any land animals much larger than those we know,
they could hardly move, and would be perpetually subject
to the most dangerous accidents. As to the animals of the
sea, indeed, the case is difierent; for the gravity of the
water in a great measure sustains those animals, and in fact
these are known sometimes to be vastly larger than the
greatest land animals. Nor does it avail against this doc¬
trine to tell us, that bones have sometimes been found
which were supposed to have belonged to giants of im¬
mense size, such as the skeletons mentioned by Strabo and
Pliny, the former of which was sixty cubits high, and the
latter forty-six ; for naturalists have concluded on just
grounds, that in some cases these bones had belonged to
elephants ; and that the larger ones were bones of whales,
which had been brought to the places where they were
found by the revolutions of nature that have happened in
past times; though it must be owned that there appears
no reason why there may not have been men who have
exceeded by some feet in height the tallest we have seen.”
It will be easily seen, that arguments of this kind can
never be held as conclusive, because, along with an increase
of stature in any animal, we must always suppose a proper-
500
G I A
G I A
cJiant. tional increase in the cohesion of the parts of its body.
Large works sometimes fail when constructed on the plan
of models, because the cohesion of the materials of which
the model is made, and of the large work, are the same;
but a difference in this respect will produce a very remark¬
able difference in the result. Thus, suppose a model is
made of fir-wood, the model may be strong and firm enough;
but a large work made also of fir, when executed according
to the plan of the model, may be so weak that it will fall to
pieces by its own weight. If, however, we make use of
iron for the large work instead of fir, the whole will be
sufficiently strong, even though made exactly according to
the plan of the model. The same thing may be said re¬
garding large and small animals. If we could find an ani¬
mal whose bones exceeded in hardness and strength the
bones of other animals as much as iron exceeds fir, such an
animal might be of a monstrous size, and yet be exceedingly
strong. In like manner, if we suppose the flesh and bones
of a giant to be greatly superior in strength and hardness
to the flesh and bones of other men, the great size of his
body will be no objection at all to his strength. The whole
of the matter therefore concerning the existence of giants
must rest upon the credibility of the accounts we have re¬
ceived from those who pretend to have seen them, and not
on any arguments drawn a priori. In a memoir read be¬
fore the Academy of Sciences at Rouen, M. Lecat gives the
following account of giants who are said to have existed in
different ages.
“ Profane historians have given seven feet of height to
Hercules, their first hero; and in our days we have seen
men eight feet high. The giant who was shown in Rouen
in 1735 measured eight feet some inches. The Emperor
Maximin was of that size ; Shenkins and Platerus, physi¬
cians of the last century, saw several persons of that sta¬
ture ; and Goropius saw a girl who was ten feet high. The
body of Orestes, according to the Greeks, was eleven feet
and a half; the giant Galbara, brought from Arabia to
Rome under Claudius Caesar, was near ten feet; and the
bones of Secondilla and Pusio, keepers of the gardens of
Sallust, were but six inches shorter. Funnam, a Scots¬
man, who lived in the time of Eugene II. king of Scotland,
measured eleven feet and a half; and Jacob Lemaire, in
his voyage to the Straits of Magellan, reports, that on the
17th of December 1615, they found at Port Desire seve¬
ral graves covered with stones; and having the curiosity
to remove the stones, they discovered human skeletons of
ten and eleven feet in length. The Chevalier Scory, in
his voyage to the Peak of Teneriffe, says, that they found
in one of the sepulchral caverns of that mountain the
head of a Gaucho which had eighty teeth, and that the
body was not less than fifteen feet in length. The giant
Ferragus, slain by Orlando, nephew of Charlemagne, was
eighteen feet in height. Rioland, a celebrated anato¬
mist, who wrote in 1614, says, that, some years before,
there was to be seen in the suburbs of St Germain the
tomb of the giant Isoret, who was twenty feet in height.
In Rouen, in 1509, whilst digging in the ditches near the
Dominicans, they found a stone tomb containing a skele¬
ton whose skull held a bushel of corn, and whose shin-bone
reached up to the girdle of the tallest man there, being
about four feet in length, and consequently the body must
have been seventeen or eighteen feet in height. Upon
the tomb was a plate of copper, on which was engraved,
‘ In this tomb lies the noble and puissant lord the Cheva¬
lier Ricon de Vallemont, and his bones.’ Platerus, a fa¬
mous physician, declares that he saw at Lucerne the true
human bones of a subject which must have been at least
nineteen feet high. Valence in Dauphine boasts of pos¬
sessing the bones of the giant Bucart, tyrant of the Viva-
rais, who was slain with an arrow by the Count de Cabil-
lon, his vassal. The Dominicans had a part of the shin¬
bone, with the articulation of the knee, and his figure G-
painted in fresco, with an inscription, showing that thisCaui
giant was twenty-two feet and a half in height, and that ^ !
his bones were found in 1705, near the banks of the Mor-
deri, a little river at the foot of the mountain of Crussol
upon which, according to tradition, the giant had his resi¬
dence.
“ On the 11th January 1613, some masons digging near
the ruins of a castle in Dauphine, in a field which, by
tradition, had long been called the giant's field, at the
depth of eighteen feet discovered a brick tomb thirty feet
long, twelve feet wide, and eight feet high ; on which was
a gray stone, with the words Theutobochus Rex cut there¬
on. When the tomb was opened, they found a human
skeleton entire, twenty-five and a half feet long, ten feet
wide across the shoulders, and five feet deep from the
breast-bone to the back. The teeth were each about the
size of an ox’s foot, and the shin-bone measured four feet.
Near Mazarino, in Sicily, in 1516, was found the skeleton
of a giant thirty feet high ; his head was the size of a hogs¬
head, and each of his teeth weighed five ounces. Near
Palermo, in the valley of Mazara, in Sicily, a skeleton of
a giant thirty feet long was found, in the year 1548; and
another of thirty-three feet high, in 1550. Many curious
persons have preserved several of these gigantic bones.
“ The Athenians found near their city two famous ske¬
letons, one of thirty-four and the other of thirty-six feet
in height. At Totu, in Bohemia, there was found in 758
a skeleton, the head of which could scarcely be encom¬
passed by the arms of two men together; whilst the legs,
which they still keep in the castle of that city, were
twenty-six feet long. The skull of the giant found in Ma¬
cedonia in September 1691 contained two hundred and
ten pounds of corn. The celebrated Sir Hans Sloane,
who treated this matter very learnedly, does not doubt
these facts, but thinks the bones were those of elephants,
whales, or other enormous animals. Elephants’ bones
may be shown as those of giants; but they can never im¬
pose upon anatomists. Whales, which, by their immense
bulk, are more proper to be substituted for the largest
giants, have neither arms nor legs; and the head of that
animal has not the least resemblance to that of a man. If
it be true, therefore, that a great number of the gigantic
bones which we have mentioned have been seen by ana¬
tomists, and by them have been reputed real human
bones, the existence of giants is proved.”
With regard to the credibility of all or any of these ac¬
counts, it is difficult to determine any thing. If, in any
castle of Bohemia, the bones of a man’s leg twenty-six feet
in length are preserved, we should have indeed a decisive
proof of the existence of a giant, in comparison of whom
most others would be but pigmies. Nor could these bones
be supposed to belong to an elephant; for an elephant it¬
self would be but a dwarf in comparison of such an enor¬
mous monster.
Giant’s Causeway, a vast collection of basaltic pillars
in the county of Antrim, on the northern coast of Ireland.
The principal or grand causeway consists of a most regular
arrangement of many hundred thousand columns of a
black kind of.rock, very hard, almost all of them of a
pentagonal figure, but so closely and compactly situated on
their sides, though perfectly distinct from top to bottom, that
scarcely any thing can be introduced between them. Ihe
columns are of an unequal height and breadth; some o
the highest, visible above the surface of the strand, am
at the foot of the impending angular precipice, may be
about twenty feet, and they do not exceed this height, at
least none of the principal arrangement. How deep tliev
are fixed in the strand was never yet discovered. 1 118
grand arrangement extends nearly^ two hundred yards, v
sible at low water, but how far beyond is uncertain; fr°n1
I
G I A
at’s s declining appearance, however, at low water, it is proba-
t it does not extend under water to a distance any thing
W-qual to what is seen above. The breadth of the principal
iiuseway, which runs out in one continued range of co-
rnins, is in general from twenty to thirty feet; at one
lace or two it may for a few yards be nearly forty. In
iis account are not included the broken and scattered
ieces of the same kind of construction which are detach-
d from the sides of the grand causeway, as they do not
ppear to have ever been contiguous to the principal ar-
ingement, though they have frequently been taken into
l[ ie width; and this has been the cause of the wild and
issimilar representations of this causeway, which differ-
nt accounts have exhibited. The highest part of the
auseway is the narrowest, at the very foot of the impend-
ig cliff from which the whole projects, where, for four or
ve yards, it is not above ten or fifteen feet wide. The
olumns of this narrow part incline from a perpendicular
little to the westward, and form a slope on their tops,
y the very unequal height of the columns on the two
ides, by which an ascent is made at the foot of the cliff,
rom the head of one column to the next above, gradatim,
o the top of the great causeway, which, at the distance of
alf a dozen yards from the cliff, obtains a perpendicular
losition, and, lowering in its general height, widens to
bout twenty or between twenty and thirty feet, and for
hundred yards nearly is always above water. The tops
f the columns for this length being nearly of an equal
(eight, they form a grand and singular parade, that may
ie easily walked on, but rather inclining to the water’s
dge. From high-water mark, as it is perpetually washed
iy the beating surges on every return of the tide, the plat-
brm lowers considerably, and becomes more and more
ineven, so as not to be walked on but with the greatest
are. At the distance of about a hundred and fifty yards
fom the cliff it turns a little to the eastward for twenty
ir thirty yards, and then sinks into the sea. The figure
f these columns is almost without exception pentagonal,
r composed of five sides; there are but very few of any
ther figure introduced ; some, indeed, there are of three,
our, and six sides, but the generality of them are five-
ided; and the spectator must look very nicely to find
ny of a different construction. Yet, what is very extra-
irdinary, and particularly curious, there are not two
olumns in ten thousand to be found, which either have
heir sides equal among themselves, or whose figures are
like. Nor is the composition of these columns or pillars
ess deserving the attention of the curious spectator.
They are not of one solid stone in an upright position,
tut composed of several short lengths, curiously joined,
tot with flat surfaces, but articulated into each other like
tall and socket, or like the joints in the vertebrae of some
if the larger kinds of fish, the one end at the joint having
t cavity, into which the convex end of the opposite is ex-
ictly fitted. This is not visible except by disjoining two
it the lengths. The depth of the concavity or convexity
s generally about three or four inches. And, what is still
i nore remarkable of the joint, the convexity and the cor¬
esponding concavity is not conform to the external an¬
gular figure of the column, but exactly round, and as large
is the size or diameter of the column will admit; and con-
equently, as the angles of these columns are in general
'xtremely unequal, the circular edges of the joint are sel-
lom coincident with more than two or three sides of the
>entagon, and from the edge of the circular part of the
oint to the exterior sides and angles they are quite plain,
t is still further remarkable, that the articulations or those
oints are frequently inverted; in some the concavity is
upwards, and in others the reverse. This occasions the
’’ariety and mixture of concavities and convexities on the
■ops of the columns, which is observable throughout the
G I A 501
platform of this causeway, yet without any discoverable Giant’s
design or regularity with respect to the number of either. Causeway.
The length also of these particular stones, from joint to
joint, is various; in general, they are from eighteen to
twenty-four inches in length; and, for the most part,
longer towards the bottom of the columns than nearer the
top, and the articulation of the joints something deeper.
The size or diameter of the columns is likewise as dif¬
ferent as their length and figure; but in general they
are from fifteen to twenty inches in diameter. There
are really no traces of uniformity or design discoverable
throughout the whole combination, excepting in the form
of the joint, which is invariably by an articulation of the
convex into the concave of the piece next above or below
it; nor are there any traces of a finishing in any part,
either in height, length, or breadth, of this curious cause¬
way. If there is here and there a smooth top to any of
the columns above water, there are others just by, of equal
height, which are more or less convex or concave, and
show them to have been joined to pieces that have been
washed, or by other means taken off. And undoubtedly
those parts which are always above water have, from time
to time, been made as even as might be; whilst the re¬
maining surfaces of the joints must naturally have been
worn smoother by the constant friction of weather and
walking, than where the sea, at every tide, is beating
upon the causeway, and continually removing some of
the upper stones, and exposing fresh joints. Further, as
these columns preserve their diameters from top to bot¬
tom, in all the exterior ones which have two or three sides
exposed to view, the same thing may with reason be infer¬
red of the interior columns, whose tops only are visible.
Yet, what is equally curious and extraordinary in this phe¬
nomenon, it appears that, notwithstanding the universal
dissimilitude of the columns, both as to their figure and
diameter, and though perfectly distinct from top to bot¬
tom, the whole arrangement is so closely combined at all
points that hardly a knife can be introduced between them,
either on the sides or angles.
The cfiffs at a great distance from the causeway, especi¬
ally in the bay to the eastward, exhibit in many places the
same kind of columns, figured and jointed in all respects
like those of the grand causeway. Some of them are seen
near to the top of the cliff, which in general, in those bays
to the east and west of the causeway, is about three hun¬
dred feet in height; others again are observed about midway,
and at different elevations from the strand. A very consi¬
derable exposure of them is seen in the very bottom of the
bay to the eastward, about a hundred roods from the cause¬
way, where the earth has evidently fallen away from them
upon the strand, and exhibits a most curious arrangement
of many of these pentagonal columns in a perpendicular
position, supporting in appearance a cliff of different strata
of earth, clay, rock, &c. to the height of about a hundred
and thirty feet or more above. Some of these columns are
between thirty and forty feet high, from the top of the slop¬
ing bank below them; and, being longest in the middle
of the arrangement, and shortening on either hand, they
have obtained the appellation of organs, from a rude like¬
ness in this particular to the exterior or frontal tubes of
that instrument; and as there are few broken pieces on
the strand near it, it is probable that the outside range of
columns which now appears is really the original exterior
line, to the seaward, of this collection. But how far they
extend internally into the bowels of the incumbent cliff is
unknown. The very substance, indeed, of that part of the
cliff which projects to a point, between the two bays on the
east and west of the causeway, seems composed of this kind
of materials; for, besides the many pieces which are seen
on the sides of the cliff that circulate to the bottom of the
bays, particularly the eastern side, there is, at the very point
502
G 1 B
G I B
Gibbon.
Giaritchas of the cliff, and just above the narrowest and highest part of 1734, and again for that of Southampton in 1741. In par.
Isles the causeway, a long collection of them seen, whose heads or liament he joined the party which, after a long and fierce
tops, just appearing without the sloping bank, plainly show contest, finally succeeded in driving Sir Robert Walpole
them to be in an oblique position, and about half way be- from power ; and his son has not concealed that, in the pur-
tween the perpendicular and horizontal lines. 1 he heads of suit of an unpopular minister, he gratified a private revenge
these, likewise, are of mixed surfaces, convex and concave, against the supposed oppressor of his family in the South
and the columns evidently appear to have been removed Sea persecution. This retaliation, however, was entirely
from their original upright to their present inclining or ob- misdirected ; for Mr Coxe has clearly proved that, so far
lique position, by the sinking or falling of the cliff. from stimulating or exasperating the fury of that time, Wal-
GIARITCHAS Isles, a cluster of five small islands, pole endeavoured to stem the torrent of parliamentary ven-
about six miles south-south-west from Makiam. They
are of moderate height, and contain many bare rocks inter¬
mixed with trees.
GIAVENO, a city of Italy, in the kingdom of Sardinia
geance, and to turn the sentiments of the house into the
safe channel of moderation.
Edward Gibbon, the future historian of the Roman em¬
pire in its decline and fall, was born at Putney, in Surrey,
on the 27th April, old style, in the year 1737. His mother,
Judith Porten,was the youngest daughter of James Porten, a
merchant of London ; and he was the eldest of five brothers
and a sister, all of whom died in infancy. During his ear¬
ly years his constitution was so feeble, and his life so pre¬
carious, that, in the baptism of his brothers, his father suc¬
cessively repeated the Christian name of Edward; and to
preserve and rear so frail a being, the most tender assidui¬
ty was scarcely sufficient. From this anxious and painful
duty his mother’s attention was diverted by frequent preg¬
nancy, an exclusive passion for her husband, and the dissi¬
pation of the world; but the maternal office was supplied
by his maiden aunt, Mrs Catharine Porten, who nursed
him with the greatest tenderness, and, during the intervals
of convalescence, procured him such instruction as his
and province of Susa. It stands on a hill, at whose base
the river Sangone flows. It has the remains of an ancient
wall, and contains a college. The inhabitants amount to
8300, who are employed in silk manufactures and in tan¬
neries, and make some very good wine.
GIBBET, a machine in manner of a gallows, on which
notorious criminals, after execution, are hung in irons or
chains, as spectacles in terrorem. The word in French,
gibet, properly denotes what we call gallows ; and it is sup¬
posed to come originally from the Arabic gibel, a mount,
or elevation of ground, by reason that gibbets are usually
placed on hills or eminences.
GIBBON, Edward, the celebrated author of the De¬
cline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and generally con¬
sidered as forming, with Hume and Robertson, the trium¬
virate of great English historians, was descended of an an- years and infirm health admitted. After some previous in¬
dent but not very distinguished family of the same name in struction at home, or in a day-school at Putney, he was, at
the county of Kent. His grandfather, a merchant and ci- the age of seven, placed under the care of Mr John Kirk-
tizen of London, was, under the Tory administration of the by (author of Automathes, a philosophical romance), who,
last four years of Q,ueen Anne (1710-1714), appointed one for about eighteen months, acted as his domestic tutor,
of the commissioners of customs, and sat at the same board In his ninth year (January 1746), during a lucid interval
with Matthew Prior ; but the mercantile man seems to of comparative health, he was sent to a school at Kingston-
have been better qualified for his station than the poet, at upon-Thames, which was then kept by Dr Wooddeson and
least in the opinion of Lord Bolingbroke, who was heard to his assistants ; but his studies were still frequently inter-
declare that he had never conversed with a person who un- rupted by sickness ; and though, by the common methods
derstood more clearly than Mr Gibbon the commerce and of discipline, he purchased some knowledge of Latin syn-
finances of England. In the year 1716, he was elected one tax, he does not speak with much satisfaction of his proti-
of the directors of the South Sea Company ; and, before ciency, and, after a real or nominal residence of nearly two
his acceptance of this fatal office, he had acquired an inde- years, he was finally recalled by his mother s death in 1717.
pendent fortune of sixty thousand pounds. But this for- After this event, he spent about two years in the rustic soh-
tune was overwhelmed in the shipwreck of the year 1720, tudeof Buriton, to which his father had retired; and there,
when the company failed, and the accumulations of thirty principally under the eye of his affectionate aunt, heacquir-
years were swallowed up in a single day. Of the use or ed that invincible love of reading which, he declares, he
abuse of the South Sea scheme this is not the place to say would not exchange for the treasures of India. In 17D,
any thing ; and the question as to the guilt or innocence of he was sent to W estminster school, then conducted by r
Mr Gibbon may also be passed over without remark or dis- John Nicoll, where, within the space of two more yean;,
cussion. In the first proceedings against the South Sea he reached the third form; but his application was so ie
directors, however, he was one of the few who were taken quently interrupted by sickness, or rendered useless by t
into custody ; and, in the final sentence, the measure of his bility, that, by medical advice, he was removed to ha ,
fine was determined by the total estimate of his means, whence, after an ineffectual trial of the virtues of its mine-
which he delivered upon oath to the House of Commons, ral waters, he was transported to \Y inchester, to the ouse
But a sum of ten thousand pounds was afterwards allowed of a physician. Lrom the latter place he returned umm
him for his maintenance ; and on this foundation, with the proved in health to Bath, and at length moved wit i'5
skill and credit of which parliament had not been able to father to Buriton and Putney, where he so far recovere ,
deprive him, he erected the edifice of a new fortune, the that a short and unsuccessful trial was made to renew
greater part of which he prudently secured in the purchase attendance at Westminster school. But his infarrm as
of landed property. He died in his house at Putney, in could not be reconciled with the hours and discipline a
December 1736, and, by his last will, enriched his two public seminary; and as he was not provided w ith a
daughters, Catharine and Hester, at the expense of his mestic tutor, who might have watched the favourab e mo^
only son, Edward, the father of the historian, who had ments, and imperceptibly advanced him in learning) ^
married without his consent. This son, who was born in was obliged to be content with such occasional teac iers a
1707, received the benefit of a liberal education. At West- the different places of his residence could supply,
minster, and afterwards at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, As he approached his sixteenth year, however, bis su
he passed through a regular course of academical discip- ings entirely ceased. Nature, to use his own words,
line. He then proceeded on his travels, but without taking played in his favour her mysterious energies; his cons i
a degree ; and, on his return to England, he was chosen tion became fortified and fixed; and his disorder, ins ^
member of parliament for the borough of Petersfield in of gaining strength with his years, and reducing ban
gibbon.
503
fe to the condition of an illiterate cripple, most wonder-
,jlly vanished. Encouraged by his unexpected recovery,
is father placed him at Esher, in Surrey, in the house of
ie Reverend Philip Francis, the translator of Horace, who,
was expected, would at least inspire him with a taste for
ie Latin poets. But this hope was altogether frustrated,
[r Francis preferred the pleasures of London to the in¬
ruction of his pupils; and, amidst the perplexity which
iis discovery occasioned, young Gibbon was, without fur-
ler preparation, hurried by his father to Oxford, where, on
ie 3d of April 1752, he was matriculated as a gentleman-
OTinoner of Magdalen College.
“ I arrived at Oxford,” says Gibbon, “ with a stock of
•udition that might have puzzled a doctor, and a degree
f ignorance of which a school-boy might have been asham-
1.” During the preceding three years, although sickness
revented him from following a regular course of instruc-
on, his fondness for books had increased, and he was per-
utted to indulge without restraint his love of desultory
;ading. But his indiscriminate appetite subsided by de-
rees into the historical line, and he perused with avidity
ich books of history as accident threw in his way, grati-
t/ing a curiosity of which he could not trace the source,
nd supplying wants of which he felt the craving without
eing able to account for his predilections. The assiduous
erusal of the Universal History, as the octavo volumes
iccessively appeared, and of a treatise by Hearne, the
)udor Historicus, introduced him to as many of the Greek
nd Roman historians as were accessible to an English
jader. He also devoured Littlebury’s Herodotus, Spel-
lan’s Xenophon, Gordon’s Tacitus, and “ a ragged Pro-
npius” which happened to fall in his way ; whilst “ many
rude lumps” of Speed, Rapin, Mezeray, Davila, Machia-
el, Fra Paolo, Bower, and others, were swallowed, if not
igested by him; and in the descriptions of India and
!hina, Mexico and Peru, he found an inexhaustible source
f gratification. The continuation of Echard’s Roman
listory gave him some insight into the reigns of the suc-
essors of Constantine; and in Howel’s History of the
Vorld he found the Byzantine period exhibited on a lar-
er scale. Mahommed and his Saracens soon fixed his
ttention; and Simon Ockley, an original in every sense,
aving opened his eyes to the true character pf both, he was
.>d from one book to another, until he had ranged round
he whole circle of oriental history. The same insatia-
le ardour urged him to guess at the French of D’Her-
elot, and to endeavour to construe the barbarous Latin
f Pococke’s Abulfaragius. The maps of Cellarius and
Veils imprinted on his memory the details of ancient geo-
raphy; from Stranchius he imbibed the elements of chro-
ology; the Tables of Helvicus and Anderson, together
ith the Annals of Usher and Prideaux, distinguished the
onnection of events; the systems of Scaliger and Peta-
ius, of Marsham and Newton, which he could seldom
tudy in the originals, formed the subject of frequent me-
itation ; and his sleep was sometimes disturbed by vain
ttempts to reconcile the Septuagint with the Hebrew
I omputation.
In this strange and eccentric course of desultory read-
igj young Gibbon, whilst ranging at pleasure through
uch books as fell in his way, seems to have been uncon-
ciously and instinctively led to that great branch of lite-
iture in which he was destined subsequently to attain
be highest eminence. But the habits thus formed, what-
ver influence they may have exerted on his future life,
ere by no means favourable to the success of his acade-
ucal pursuits. He was, by his own admission, exceed-
!gly deficient in classical learning; and, in fact, he ap-
ears to have been sent to Oxford without either the pre-
nation or the mental training necessary to enable him to
“ap the advantages of academical instruction. This may
probably account for the harshness with which he speaks Gibbon,
of the system pursued in the English universities, though
it will neither explain nor obviate critical censures, many
of which subsequent reform and improvement show to have
been but too well founded. He appears to have spent at
Magdalen College fourteen months, which he describes as
the most idle and unprofitable in his life; but why, even
with his habits of irregular application, they were so idle
and unprofitable, he has nowhere informed us. Of the in¬
difference of one of his tutors, and the almost total ne¬
glect of the other, he appears, indeed, to have had good
cause of complaint; but as he admits that he was disposed
to gaiety and late hours, the pupil must in justice share
the blame with his masters, and cease .to complain that
he was not taught what he perhaps affected to despise.
His objections to the system pursued, however, and his
strictures on the silence of the Oxford professors, which
is imperfectly supplied by the tutors of the several col¬
leges, and by which the youth are deprived of public-
instruction, with all the advantages resulting from this
species of institution, remain in full force, and are altoge¬
ther unaffected by the personal circumstances to which
we have just alluded.
When Gibbon first left Magdalen College, during the
long recess between the Trinity and Michaelmas terms,
his taste for reading, as he informs us, began whimsically
enough to revive, and, “ unprovided with original learn¬
ing, unformed in the habits of thinking, and unskilled in
the arts of composition, he resolved to write a book.” The
title of this first essay, The Age of Sesostris, was perhaps
suggested by Voltaire’s Age of Louis XIV.; and, what is
deserving of remark, its object was not to narrate the ex¬
ploits of the conqueror of Asia, but to investigate the pro¬
bable date of his life and reign. On his return to Oxford,
however, he abandoned this project, and the sheets he
had written were afterwards committed to the flames.
By the negligence of his second tutor he was now left
entirely to himself, and, from want of experience, ad¬
vice, and occupation, he was betrayed into culpable im¬
proprieties of conduct, ill-chosen company, late hours,
and inconsiderate expense. In his peculiar frame of
mind, indeed, there appears to have been originally inter¬
woven no inconsiderable share of juvenile arrogance and
presumption. Whilst his debts were growing, his studies
neglected, and his frequent absences from his college
visible and scandalous, the blind activity of idleness urged
him into the perilous mazes of controversy, and, at the
age of sixteen, he contrived to bewilder himself amidst
the errors of the church of Rome.
The bold criticism of Middleton’s Free Inquiry appears
to have given the first shock to his Protestantism ; and
whilst he hovered as it were on the very verge of infide¬
lity, the perusal of Bossuet’s Exposition of the Catholic
Doctrine, and his History of the Protestant Variations,
seem to have recalled him from the region of doubt, and
led him to seek repose in the bosom of an infallible church.
These works, says he, “ achieved my conversion, and I
surely fell by a noble hand.” In this fall, however, Par¬
sons the Jesuit appears to have had a considerable share;
for, in another part of his Memoirs, he imputes his conver¬
sion principally to that vigorous writer, who, in his opinion,
had urged all the best arguments in favour of the Roman
Catholic religion. But be this as it may, he had no soon¬
er settled his new religion than he resolved to profess him.
self a Catholic ; and, accordingly, on the 8th of June 1753,
he solemnly abjured the errors of heresy before a Catholic
priest in London, and immediately announced the event
to his father in an elaborate controversial epistle, approved
by his spiritual director. His father, though neither a
bigot nor a philosopher, was astonished at his apostacy
from the religion of his country; and having, in the first
504
GIBBON.
Gibbon.
sally of passion, divulged a secret which prudence might
have suppressed, thus shut the gates of Magdalen College
against the return of his son. At an advanced age, when
he had learned to treat all religions with equal indiffer¬
ence, Gibbon, reviewing this event of his life, speaks of it
with an indulgent tenderness, which will perhaps be ac¬
knowledged as more natural than just; he avows himself
proud of an honest sacrifice of interest to conscience ; and
he declares that he can never blush if his tender mind
was entangled in the sophistry which had seduced the
manly understandings of Chillingworth and Bayle. The
resemblance, however, is closer in the transition which
they afterwards made from superstition to scepticism;
from that state of mind which believes against reason, to
its opposite extreme, which attacks the foundations of rea¬
son itself, and seeks to inculcate a belief that there is no
belief. “ To my present feelings,” says Gibbon, “ it seems
incredible that I should ever believe that I believed in
transubstantiation.”
Finding it necessary to form a new plan of education,
and also to devise a method which, if possible, might effect
the cure of his spiritual malady, his father, after much
consideration, determined to fix him, during some years,
at Lausanne, in Switzerland; and there he was accord¬
ingly established, with a very moderate allowance, under
the care of M. Pavilliard, a Calvinist minister of that
place. In as far as regards the instructor and guide thus
selected, a more fortunate choice could scarcely have been
made. From the testimony of his pupil, and the still more
conclusive evidence of his own correspondence with the
elder Mr Gibbon, M. Pavilliard appears to have been a
man of singular good sense, temper, and knowledge of the
human mind ; and in the method of instruction which he
adopted for the double purpose of advancing the intellec¬
tual improvement and correcting the religious aberration
of his pupil, he evinced a refinement and delicacy of judg¬
ment which it is much more easy to admire than to imi¬
tate: At first, however, M. Pavilliard had a twofold ob¬
stacle to contend with; he could not speak English, and
as Mr Gibbon did not understand French, some time 'ne¬
cessarily elapsed before he could even attempt to carry
into effect the instructions he had received. But when,
by mutual industry, this difficulty had been in part re¬
moved, M. Pavilliard lost no time in endeavouring, by
considerate and judicious kindness, to secure the attach¬
ment of his pupil; and having accomplished this object,
he then directed his studies according to a regular plan,
and placed within his own reach such means of informa¬
tion as seemed best calculated to remove the errors into
which he had fallen. “ My obligations to the lessons of
M. Pavilliard,” says the historian in his Memoirs, “ grati¬
tude will not suffer me to forget; he was endowed with a
clear head and a warm heart; his innate benevolence had
assuaged the spirit of his church ; he was rational because
he was moderate; in the course of his studies he had ac¬
quired a just, though superficial knowledge of most branch¬
es of literature ; and he laboured with assiduous patience
to know the character, gain the affection, and open the
mind of his English pupil. As soon as we began to un¬
derstand each other, he gently led me, from a blind and
undistinguishing love of reading, into the path of instruc¬
tion. I consented with pleasure that a portion of the 0
morning hours should be consecrated to a plan of modern w
history and geography, and to the critical perusal of the
French and Latin classics ; and at each step I felt myself
invigorated by the habits of application and method. His
prudence repressed and dissembled some youthful sallies-
and as soon as I was confirmed jn habits of industry and
temperance, he gave the reins into my own hands.” On
the more delicate subject of religion, M. Pavilliard follow-
ed the same winning and judicious method, with equal
success ; and at length, on Christmas day 1754, Mr Gib¬
bon, after a full conviction, received the sacrament in the
church of Lausanne. “ It was here,” says he, “ that I
suspended my religious inquiries, acquiescing with impli-
cit belief in the tenets and mysteries which are adopted
by the general consent of Catholics and Protestants.”1
At Lausanne Gibbon laid the foundation of all his fu-
ture improvement; and although it is no doubt true, as
he has himself observed, that every man who rises above
the common level has received two educations, one from
his teachers and another from himself, yet it is at least
equally so that the success of the second is in a great
measure dependent on the proper direction given to the
first. Under his judicious tutor he was reclaimed from his
excursive and desultory habits of reading, and initiated
in a regular and methodical course of study, without in
the least abating his thirst of general knowledge, or hin¬
dering him from gratifying his curiosity, after the hours
appropriated to the pursuits in which he had been led to
engage. His reading had now a fixed object, the attain¬
ment of which made him sensible of the value of his ac¬
quisitions, and reconciled him to that system of regular
application by which all his powers were invigorated. By
acquiring a knowledge of the Greek, Latin, and French
languages, new stores of learning were opened, and new
models of taste presented to him. Poetry, history, philoso¬
phy, criticism, and antiquities, in their turn occupied his
attention ; and the honest zeal of the tutor was admirably
seconded by an unwearied industry and insatiable avidity
of knowledge on the part of the pupil, which bespoke a
mind capable of extraordinary attainments, and deserving
of the highest honours in literature. For the pursuit of
science, however, he evinced neither the same aptitude
nor the same inclination. His father had been desirous,
and even pressing, that he should devote some time to the
study of the mathematics; nor did he refuse to comply
with a wish so reasonable. But, after attending during
two winters the prelections of a teacher, who explained
the elements of algebra and geometry as far as the conic
sections of the Marquis de 1’Hopital, he relinquished for
ever the pursuit of the mathematics, in which he appears
to have made but little proficiency, and consoled him¬
self with the reflection, in which few will probably be in¬
clined to coincide, that he desisted “ before his mind had
become hardened by the habit of rigid demonstration, so
destructive of the finer feelings of moral evidence, which
must determine the actions and opinions of our lives.
It is not very wonderful, perhaps, that a mind natural!}
disposed to doubt should shrink from certain and demon¬
strable truth, which excludes the play of sceptical inge¬
nuity ; or that the rigour of exact science should revolt one
of
1 As Mr Gibbon was himself alone instrumental in his conversion to popery, so he seems inclined to take to himself a large
ul the merit of his reconversion to protestantism. “ Mr Pavilliard,” says he, “ was not unmindful that his first task, his n,0®t.im!10
tant duty, was to reclaim me from the errors of popery. The intermixture of sects has rendered the Swiss clergy acute and ejirn^
on the topics of controversy ; and I have some of his letters in which he celebrates the dexterity of his attack, and my 8rf ^ ^
cessions, after a firm and well-managed defence. I was willing, and I am now willing, to allow him a handsome share of the on
of my conversion ; yet I must observe that it was principally effected by my private reflections ; and I still remember my so i )
transport at the discovery of a philosophical argument against transubstantiation.” With reference to the claim here put mrwar .
Mr Gibbon, Lord Sheffield observes : “ M. Pavilliard has described to me the astonishment with which he gazed on Mr Gibbon s
ing before him ; a thin little figure, with a large head, disputing and urging, with the greatest ability, all the best argumen s
had ever been used in favour of popery.” Bossuet and Parsons had supplied him with his arms.
G I B
wn i^ho had so long been accustomed to expatiate in the more
/-w'.ttractive regions of taste and literature; but, on the other
and, it does seem a little surprising that Gibbon, like
ohnson, should have thought himself entitled to under-
alue a science which he had failed to acquire, and that
is memory did not suggest to him many eminent exam-
les in disproof of his assertion that the mind becomes har-
ened by the habit of rigid demonstration. It is always
asy, however, to find a plausible excuse for neglecting that
-hich we want either the power or the inclination to pursue.
Whilst at Lausanne, Gibbon to his classical attainments
dded the study of Grotius and Puffendorff, of Locke and
lontesquieu; and he also mentions the Provincial Let-
ers of Pascal, the Life of Julian by La Bleterie, and the
!ivil History of Naples by Giannone, as having remotely
ontributed to form die historian of the Homan empire,
rom the Provincial Letters he tells us that he learned
3 manage the weapon of grave and temperate irony, even
n subjects of ecclesiastical solemnity ; a weapon, we may
smark, which, however useful to a polemic, is unlawful in
he hand of an historian, and which, when resorted to by
ic latter, justly subjects him to the suspicion of having
xhausted both his courage and his argument. Truth as
ell as error may be discredited by a sneer, which it is pro-
erbially impossible to refute ; sarcasm may provoke ridi-
ule and excite contempt, but it can never conduce to the
urposes of that sound practical philosophy which seeks
;s examples in history. It is more to the honour of our
idefatigable student that, about this time, he established
correspondence with several distinguished literary cha¬
pters, to whom he looked for instruction and direction ;
ith Crevier, the successor of Rollin, and the editor of
-ivy; with Breitenger of Zurich, the editor of a Sepdi-
^int Bible; with Professor Matthew Gesner of Gottin-
en, and M. Allamand, minister at Bex ;—and that by the
cuteness of his remarks, the extent of his knowledge,
ad his zeal in the cause of literature, he attracted their
[ articular attention, and proved himself not unworthy of
icir confidence.
He had also the satisfaction of seeing Voltaire, who,
fter forfeiting by his own misconduct the friendship of
• le king of Prussia, had retired, at the age of sixty,
ith a plentiful fortune, to this free and beautiful coun-
y, and resided two winters at Monrepos, a country-
ouse close to a suburb of Lausanne. “ The most extra-
rdinary man of the age” received the young Englishman
ith civility, but without any peculiar notice or distinc-
on. Virgilium vidi tantum, says Gibbon. But the in-
ense with which the autocrat of literature was then ap-
roached, and the boyish enthusiasm of the unfledged au-
lor, which made him look upon admission to the private
icatricals of Monrepos as the highest distinction, could
carcely be without influence on the formation of his cha-
icter and opinions. According to his own expression,
e then rated Voltaire above his real magnitude ; but he
as probably unconscious that both his tone of mind and
is manner of expression, in which he was ever endea-
ouring to point his stately and inflexible English with
ie light and graceful irony of the Frenchman, were per-
etually betraying his early adoration of the patriarch;
nilst, on the other hand, Voltaire little suspected that,
i the awkward and oddly-formed English boy (whose
lemory had retained, and whose indiscretion made pub-
c, one of his fugitive poems not yet intended for the
u gar ear), he was silently forming, not a disciple, but a
' low-labourer, whose fame would at length cast his own
■storical reputation into the shade. The immediate effect
" Gibbon’s attendance at the private theatre of Mon-
Pos Was an increased predilection for the French stage,
1 a corresponding decline in his veneration for Shak-
Jeare. A taste formed to delight in the smooth-shaven,
vol. x. b
BON.
artificial lawn of a French play, can never retain any re¬
lish for the wild, irregular, masculine beauties of our great
dramatist, heaped together as they are with all the profu¬
sion, magnificence, and simplicity of nature herself.
Gibbon was now familiar in some, and acquainted in
many families of Lausanne, and his evenings were gene¬
rally devoted to conversation and cards, either in private
parties, or in what are called assemblies ; in short, he en¬
joyed his full share of the amusements of society. During
this alternation of study and pleasure, he became ena¬
moured of Mademoiselle Susan Curchod, daughter of the
minister of Crassy, in the mountains which separate the
Pays de Vaud from the county of Burgundy; a young lady
whose personal attractions were, he assures us, embellish¬
ed by the virtues and talents of the mind. His addresses
were favoured by Mademoiselle Curchod and her parents,
and both at Crassy and at Lausanne he indulged his dream
of felicity; but his father, on being consulted, expressed the
utmost repugnance to “ this strange alliance,” and his son,
thinking more of his prospects than of his passion, yield¬
ed, as he says, to his fate. “ I sighed as a lover,” he adds ;
“ I obeyed as a son. His wound, which could scarcely
have been deep, was insensibly healed by time, absence,
and the habits of a new life ; and his cure was accelerated
by learning that the lady herself was not inconsolable for
the loss of so prudent a lover. But the minister of Crassy
soon afterwards died, and as his stipend died with him,
his daughter retired to Geneva, where, by teaching young
ladies, she earned a hard subsistence for her mother and
herself. In her lowest distress, however, she maintained
a spotless reputation, and having attracted the notice of a
rich banker of Paris, a citizen of Geneva, she became the
wife of M. Neckar, afterwards prime minister of France.
In 1758, Mr Gibbon took leave of Lausanne, and re¬
turned to England, after an absence of nearly five years.
His father received him as a man and a friend, and ap¬
peared to rejoice in the success of the plan of education
which had effected the reconversion and improvement of
his son. One disagreeable circumstance, however, await¬
ed the young student on his return to his native country
and paternal home. In the room of her who had given
him birth he found a stepmother, whom he regarded as
an intruder, and to whom he was introduced with the
most unfavourable prejudice. But this initial dislike, by
no means unnatural on his part, was soon overcome by
the amiable manners and obliging conduct of the new
Mrs Gibbon, who gave him a polite welcome, and did all
in her power to study and gratify his wishes. At home
he was allowed to consult his own taste in the choice of
place, company, and amusements; and his excursions were
bounded only by the limits of the island and the measure
of his income. He assiduously frequented the theatre at
a very propitious era of the stage, and indulged somewhat
freely in the pleasures of a town life; but the better ha¬
bits which he had formed at Lausanne, prevailing over
these occasional excesses, induced him to seek more ele¬
gant and rational society, though, in the first instance, not
with the success which might have been expected. He
had now reached his twenty-first year without having made
choice of a profession, or engaged in any regular employ¬
ment. His stepmother recommended the study of the
law, and some faint efforts were made to procure for him
the situation of secretary to a foreign embassy; but the
former scheme he declined, and the latter did not succeed.
Of the first two years which he spent in England,
he passed about nine months in London, and the re¬
mainder in the country. But as his father’s taste had al¬
ways preferred the highest and the lowest company, for
which, it seems, he was equally qualified, he was by this
time forgotten by the great with whom he had associated;
and, as he had no fixed residence in London, his son failed
3 s
506
GIBBON.
Gibbon.
to gain admission into those circles of society in which
he ardently desired to move. He acquired an intimacy,
however, in the house of David Mallet, and by his means
was introduced to Lady Harvey’s parties ; nor was he at all
displeased by her preference and affectation of the man¬
ners, language, and literature of France. But his pro¬
gress in the English world was in general left to his own
efforts, and those efforts, he says, were languid and slow.
The wrant of society, however, does not appear to have
given him much uneasiness ; he depended chiefly on him¬
self for his happiness ; and, unlike many of his countrymen,
he knew not the tediousness of an idle life, or the misery of
having hours which he could not occupy. At Buriton he
enjoyed many opportunities of adding to his stock of
learning; books became more and more the source of all
his pleasures; and the leisure he could borrow from his
systematic plan of study wras employed in perusing the
works of the best English authors since the revolution.
His father had endeavoured in vain to inspire him with a
taste for agriculture, and to induce him to acquire a know¬
ledge of rural affairs; but his own more rational object
was to restore the purity of his diction which had been
corrupted by the long and constant use of a foreign idiom.
By the advice of Mallet he was directed to the writings
of Swift and Addison, which he has on the whole judi¬
ciously discriminated. “ Wit and simplicity,” says he,
“ are their common attributes; but the style of Swift is
supported by manly original vigour; that of Addison is
adorned by the female graces of elegance and mildness.”
But the first productions of Robertson and Hume, the
histories of Scotland and of the Stuarts, engaged his at¬
tention still more deeply. The perfect composition, the
nervous language, and the well-turned periods of the one,
inflamed him with the ambitious hope that he might one
day tread in his footsteps; whilst the calm philosophy
and the careless inimitable beauties of the other often
forced him to close the volume with a mixed sensation of
delight and despair. Charmed, however, as he was with
Swift and Addison, with Robertson and Hume, and well
as he knew how to appreciate the peculiar excellencies- of
their respective styles, he lost sight of every model when
he became a writer of history, and formed a style of his
own, which, though in its essential spirit it is at least in
part French, is justly entitled to be considered as original.
In 1761, Gibbon, yielding to the authority of a parent,
published his Essai sur VEtude de la Litterature, which
appeared in a small volume duodecimo. As his object,
at this time, was to get an appointment as secretary of
legation to some English ambassador or plenipotentiary,
his father believed that the proof of some literary talents
might introduce him to public notice, and second the re¬
commendation of his friends ; and, with these views, the
essay in question was published. Part of this production
had been written at Lausanne, and the remainder com¬
pleted in London, where the whole was revised by Dr
Maty, author of the Journal Britannique, who approved
the design, and applauded the execution. The object of
the essay was to prove, in opposition to D’Alembert and
other writers in the Encyclopedic, that all the faculties of
the mind may be exercised and displayed in the study of
ancient literature, and that the new philosophy for which
the Encyclopedistes contended was not more adverse to the
cultivation of taste than inconsistent with the principles
of enlightened reason. But he introduces a variety of
topics not immediately bearing on his design, and shows
that, in the belles-lettres and in criticism, he had expa¬
tiated through a range much more ample than could have
been expected from his years. The work, indeed, is re¬
markable, both for the ideas which it contains, and for the
purity with which it is written in French, a language then
more familiar to Gibbon than his own. This book, how¬
ever, made less sensation in England than in France P k
where it was most favourably received, and, by anticipalC!
tion, ensured the author, particularlyamongst men of let- '
ters, the most distinguished reception. In England it
was received with cold indifference, little read, and speed¬
ily forgotten ; but had the knowledge of the French lan¬
guage been then as common in the literary world as it is
now, so extraordinary a production from the pen of a
young man would have met with a different reception,
and raised high expectations of future eminence. For
the neglect of his countrymen, however, the author was
in some measure indemnified by the copious extracts, the
warm commendations, and the flattering predictions, of the
journals of France and Holland, countries where the work
was estimated at its real value. In his Memoirs he dis¬
cusses its merits and defects with singular impartiality;
but, in fixing the respective measures of praise and blame,
the former predominates, and with justice.
The uncongenial profession of a militia captain, which
was embraced by Gibbon about the time when this essay
appeared, neither diverted his mind from his historical
pursuits, nor relaxed his unwearied industry. It is true,
that for twm years and a half he endured a “ wandering life
of military servitude” in the south battalion of the Hamp¬
shire militia; but though the roll of the drum disturbed
him in the midst of an inquiry into ancient weights, mea¬
sures, and coins, even these days of more than usual bo¬
dily activity and mental distraction were turned to account.
In his marchings and countermarchings from Winches¬
ter to Blandford, and from Blandford to Southampton, he
studied the Memoires Militaires of M. Guischardt;—the
discipline and movements of a modern battalion gave him
a clearer notion of the phalanx and the legionand,
amidst his peaceful evolutions, the captain of the Hamp¬
shire grenadiers laid in that store of military knowledge
which afterwards enabled him successfully to elucidate the
campaigns of Julian, of Belisarius, and of Narses. At the
peace of 1763 his regiment was disbanded, and he resum¬
ed his studies, the regularity of which had suffered un¬
avoidable interruption during the period of his service in
the militia. In forming a new plan, he hesitated for a
time between the mathematics and the Greek language,
both of which he had neglected since his return from
Lausanne ; but having at length given the preference to
Greek, he applied himself to Homer, and pursued his
reading with unflinching vigour. Whatever he read or
studied, however, appears to have had reference, directly
or indirectly, to historical composition. From the early
age of fifteen, when he projected writing the Age of Se-
sostris, this seems to have been the grand aim of all his
studies; and, in fact, he aspired to the character of an
historian long before he was able to fix upon a subject.
Nor was the time unfavourable to his ambition, or calcu¬
lated to abate his ardour. On the contrary, a generous
emulation was excited by witnessing the triumphs of
Robertson and Hume ; and it is not improbable that,
whilst he secretly aspired to complete the triumvirate of
British historians, he thought that a subject only was
wanting to enable him to realise the object of his ambition.
During his life of military servitude, as he calls it, he
had resolved on several subjects for historical composition,
which, from their diversity and dissimilarity, prove that ie
had then no particular purpose to serve, no preconceive
theory to support, no actual prejudice or belief to over¬
throw. Amongst these he has enumerated, 1. the expe¬
dition of Charles VIII. of France into Italy; 2. the cru¬
sade of Richard Cceur de Lion ; 3. the barons’ wars agams
John and Henry III.; 4. the history of Edward the lilaj*
Prince ; 5. the lives, with comparisons, of Henry V. an
Emperor Titus; 6. the life of Sir Philip Sidney; and, last¬
ly, that of “ Scotland’s Montroseall of which he s
♦
«
GIBBON.
B. jssively chose and rejected. He then fixed on Sir Wal-
Raleigh as his hero ; but, after dwelling with fondness
n his eventful story, varied by the characters of the sol-
ierand sailor, the courtier and historian, he abandoned his
esign. “ What new lights,” he asks, “ could I reflect on
subject which has exercised the accurate industry of
irch, the lively and curious acuteness of Walpole, the
-itical spirit of Hurd, the vigorous sense of Robertson,
id the impartial philosophy of Hume ?” The History of
ie Liberty of the Swiss, and the History of the Repub-
c of Florence under the House of Medicis, were each in
irn meditated and discarded.
But whilst his brain was teeming with projects, which
ime like shadows and so departed, all his designs were
ispended by a visit to the Continent, which, according
i the law of custom, if not of reason, his father thought
scessary to complete his education. Having obtained
om Lady Harvey, Horace Walpole, Mallet, and the
•uke of Nivernois,1 letters of recommendation to various
arsons of distinction in France, he left his father’s resi-
ance in Hampshire, and reached Paris on the 28th of
inuary 1763, only thirty-six days after the disbanding of
ie militia. Two years were loosely defined as the term
' his absence; and he ivas left at liberty to spend his
me in such places and in such a manner as might be
ost agreeable to his own taste and judgment. In France
le fame of his Essai sur VEtude de la Litterature had pre¬
yed him, and his vanity was gratified by being consider-
1 as an Englishman of fortune who merely wrote for his
nusement. When Gibbon reached Paris, Montesquieu
id Fontenelle were no more ; Voltaire had retired to his
tate near Geneva; Rousseau had been driven from his
;rmitage of Montmorency ; and he neglected to seek the
quaintance of Buffon. But he mixed in familiar society
ith D’Alembert, Diderot, the Count de Caylus, the Abbe
: la Bleterie, Barthelemy, Raynal, Arnaud, Condamine,
uclos, Bougainville, Caperonnier, De Guignes, Suard,
id others; and four days in the week he had a place
ithout invitation at the hospitable tables of Mesdames
eoffrin and Du Boccage,2 of Helvetius, and Baron d’Hol-
ich. After passing fourteen weeks at Paris, enjoying the
ciety and amusements of that capital, he, in the month of
ay 1763, revisited his old friends at Lausanne, where
507
he remained’nearly a year. During this sojourn on me Gibbon,
banks of the Leman Lake, he formed an acquaintance, '‘-•-v-'*-'
destined to ripen into lasting friendship, with Mr Hol-
royd, afterwards Lord Sheffield, who at a subsequent pe¬
riod became as it were the guardian of his posthumous
fame, and whom he characterises as “ a friend whose ac¬
tivity in the ardour of youth was always prompted by a
benevolent heart and a strong understanding.” In 1764
he set out for Italy, after having carefully studied the
geography and ancient history of the seat of the Roman
empire, with the view of rendering his visit profitable and
satisfactory to his own mind. His description of his jour¬
ney is clear and precise; and as he possessed a temper
not veryr susceptible of enthusiasm, he scorns to affect rap¬
tures which he did not feel. But the sight of Rome appear¬
ed to have conquered his apathy, and as he approached
and entered the eternal city, his mind was agitated with
emotions which he declares it impossible either to forget
or expi ess. Pleie the conception of the work which was
destined to fix and perpetuate his fame first rose in h.is
mind. “ It was at Rome,” says he, “ on the 15th of Oc¬
tober 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capi¬
tol, while the bare-footed fryars were singing vespers in
the Temple of Jupiter [now the church of Zocolants or
Fianciscan friars j that the idea of writing the decline and
fall of the city first started to my mind.”3 But this ap¬
pears to have been merely the effect of the emotion pro¬
duced by local associations; for the original plan was con¬
fined to the decay of the city rather than of the empire.
Rome and Italy having satiated his curiosity, he returned
to England, and arrived at his father’s residence in the
month of June 1765.
The five years and a half which intervened between
his return from his travels and the death of his father in
1770, seem to have formed the portion of his life which
he passed with the least enjoyment, and remembered with
the least satisfaction. By the resignation of his father,
and the death of Sir Thomas Worsley, he was successive¬
ly promoted to the rank of major and lieutenant-colonel
commandant of his regiment of militia; but he was each
year more disgusted with “ the inn, the wine, the company,
and the tiresome repetition of annual attendance and daily
exercise.” He had other and more rational grounds of
In acknowledging the politeness of the Duke of Nivernois, Gibbon notices a circumstance which serves in some degree to unfold
s own character, and also to exhibit that superiority of pretension, from which, in fact, he never departed. “ The Duke,” says he
received me civilly, but, perhaps through Maty’s fault, treated me more as a man of letters than as a man of fashion.” Congreve
ray were weak enough to be offended on account of a similar mistake; but that Gibbon, whose sole ambition was to rise to lite-
iy eminence, should have for a moment preferred the equivocal character of a man of fashion to that of a man of letters, is as unac-
table as w is surprising that, at an advanced period of life, he should have deliberately recorded such an incident. If he had been
yam an ot fashion, the reader would in vain have sought for his biography in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
- Gibbon was also introduced to Madame du Deffand, on whom he appears to have made, upon the whole, a favourable impression,
u ms elaborate efforts to be agreeable, and to assume the perfect tone of French society and manners, did not escape that clever
\T r-KkUS W,0man’ Wh°m Voltaire 30 Justlv calle(1 I'aveugle clairvoyante. In one of her letters to Walpole, she writes thus: “ As
11. oibbon, he is a very sensible man, who has a great deal of conversation, an infinity of knowledge, you will perhaps add, an in-
i o c everness (d'esprit)—I am not quite decided on that point. He sets too much value on our talents for society (nos agrimentsV
00 lnuc 1 (lesire of acquiring them ; it is constantly on the tip of my tongue to say to him, ‘ Don’t put yourself to so much
>uble; you deserve the honour of being a Frenchman.’ ”
, a mam°lrv ot’tlie bfe of Gibbon, prefixed to Guizot’s French edition of the Decline and Fall, and written by M. Suard, the
oterl .°r ° p <ubertS-0n’ \° wllom the historian w as intimately known, we meet with the following observations on the passage above
tint1 1 f-w® •lt Wl11 not 1)6 to trace, in the impressions from which the conception of the work arose, one of the causes
•ter l-ttf i- Cllbbon seems to have declared against Christianity ; the design of which neither appears conformable to his cha-
rticul Ule 1 lslj, t0 Party-spirit, nor consistent with that moderation of thought and sentiment which led him in all things,
bb "ff. as general, to view the advantages as well as the injurious consequences. But, struck with a first impression,
>ted f " Wr tbe h^tory of the fall of the empire, saw in Christianity only an institution which had placed vespers, bare-
.. J!ars’ and processions, in the room of the magnificent ceremonies of the worship of Jupiter and the triumphs of the Capi-
t be wn ex’Planatlon’ however, seems to us entirely fallacious. In many of his habits Gibbon was at least half a Frenchman ;
niiy ,raS not ,t le crcature of such impressions as that which M. Suard has here attributed to him. He drew his aversion to Chris-
rinJ inn™r eepe'.u°UrCe' Pa8anism was the old established religion ; Christianity, viewed in its origin and early history, was a
tins licrllr-n’ • °ne Was sanctioned b.v time and confirmed by habit; the other had nothing but its truth to recommend it.
1 him to r Ulb • vtewed the two religions, as he has himself unequivocally declared in one of his letters; his principles naturally
vards tb([ prescriptive rights of paganism, which he regarded as the established system ; and they also indisposed him
*d attach ir*’ sou"bt to effect and ultimately accomplished its subversion. The conservative character of his political
rsterv 1611 iUm t0 the *ormer? but he hated the latter both as a politician and as an unbeliever. This seems to be the whole
508
Gibbon.
GIBBON.
uneasiness on account of his situation. He belonged to
no profession which he could cultivate; he had adopted
no plan, by which, like some of his acquaintance, he might
rise to consequence. Without aim or pursuit, he lament¬
ed that he had not engaged in the study of the law, em¬
barked in trade, tempted the chances of civil office 01^ In¬
dia adventure, or at least courted “ the fat slumbers of the
church.” But a mind like his was not formed to remain
inactive, and the dissatisfaction which he now experienced
in considering his actual position, probably arose fiom an
impatience to acquire fame, and the elongation of the only
prospect which had presented itself to his view. He still
contemplated, at an awful distance, a history oi the decline
and fall of Rome ; but, as an immediate object of pursuit,
he resumed the study of the revolutions of Switzerland,
which he had formerly abandoned, and, after much read¬
ing, executed, in French, the first book of a history of
Swiss liberty. This specimen of his work was read, in
the winter of 1767, to a literary society of foreigners in
London ; and as the author was unknown, he listened
without observation, though with painful sensations, to the
free strictures and unfavourable sentence of his judges;
but their condemnation, he assures us, was ratified by his
cooler thoughts. The attempt, however, was generously
commended by Mr Hume, to whom the manuscript had
been submitted, and who endeavoured only to dissuade
the author from composing in French, and thus, as Ho¬
race says of the Romans who wrote in Greek, carrying
faggots into the wood. The design was, however, aban¬
doned, in deference to the opinion of the foreign critics,
and the manuscript subsequently passed into the hands
of Lord Sheffield.
After this failure, Gibbon, in 1767, united with M. Dey-
verdun, a native of Lausanne, then in England, and a per¬
son of taste and critical discernment, to whom he was
much attached, in publishing a literary journal, under the
title of Memoires Litttraires de la Grande Bretagne, in
imitation of Dr Maty’s Journal Britannique, which was
esteemed and regretted. But the attempt met with little
encouragement, and only two volumes of the Memoires
appeared. Gibbon acknowledges having reviewed, in the
first volume, Lord Lyttleton’s History of Henry IL, a
work of sense and learning, but not illuminated by a sin¬
gle ray of genius. The materials of a third volume were
nearly completed, when Deyverdun having accepted the
situation of travelling companion to Sii* Richard Worsley,
to which his coadjutor had recommended him, this ap¬
pointment put an end to the Memoires Litteraires.
Gibbon’s next performance was of a bolder description,
being nothing less than an attack on Warburton, who., in a
singular chapter of the Divine Legation of Moses Demon¬
strated, had maintained that the descent of iEneas and the
Sybil to the infernal regions was not a false, but a mimic
scene, representing the initiation of iEneas, in the charac¬
ter of a lawgiver, into the Eleusinian mysteries. This hy¬
pothesis, which the bishop had endeavoured to support by
an elaborate but strained interpretation, Gibbon assailed
and completely overthrew in his Critical Observations on
the Sixth Book of the iEneid, published in 1770. In this
production he proved that the ancient lawgivers did not
invent the mysteries, and that Aeneas was never invested
with the office of lawgiver;—that there is not any argu¬
ment or circumstance which melts a fable into allegory,
or removes the scene from the Lake Avernus to the Tem¬
ple of Ceres ;—that such a wild supposition is equally in. Giy
jurious to the poet and the man ;—that if Virgil was not ^
initiated, he could not, and if he were, he would not, re¬
veal the secrets of the initiation ;—and that the anathema
of Horace ( Vetabo qui Cereris sacrum vulgarit, &c.) at
once attests his own ignorance, and the innocence of his
friend. All this, which seems quite conclusive against
Warburton’s allegorical interpretation, might, however,
have been argued in temperate and respectful language;
but the clear, elegant, and decisive criticism of Gibbon^
which early received the approbation of Heyne, and has
since been generally acknowledged to be unanswerable, was
deformed by an acrimony of style which might be excused,
but could scarcely be justified, by the pride and presump,
tion with which the bishop pronounced his infallible de¬
crees, and the merciless severity with which he lashed his
antagonists in his polemical writings.1 A calmer tone
would have been better suited to the subject; and the ar¬
gument gained nothing in force by the circumstance, that
the author aimed his strokes against the person and the
hypothesis of Bishop Warburton. At the same time “ the
dictator and tyrant of the world of literature” maintained
a discreet silence ; he had previously shrunk from the
encounter (which he had himself provoked) with Dr
Lowth; and Gibbon appears to have been, in like man¬
ner, considered as an antagonist with whom it might be
hazardous openly to do battle.
In the fifteen years which elapsed between the publica¬
tion of his Essai sur VEtude de la Litterature, and that of
the first volume of the Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire, this criticism on Warburton, and some articles
in the journal above mentioned, were the only productions
of his pen which Gibbon gave to the world. But after
the death of his father in 1770, an event which left him
the entire disposal of his time and choice of his pursuits,
he applied himself seriously to the composition of the first
volume of his history. For several years he had revolved
the subject in his mind, and read a great deal with a view
to the undertaking, including the classics as low as Taci¬
tus, Pliny the younger, and Juvenal; the Augustan his¬
tory, and the original records both Greek and Latin, from
Dion Cassius to Ammianus Marcellinus; the Annals and
Antiquities of Muratori, which he compared with Sigo-
nius and Maffei, Baronius and Pagi; the Theodosian Code,
with the commentary of James Godefroy; besides all that
related to the propagation of the gospel and the triumph
of the church, the narratives and apologies of the Chris¬
tians themselves, and the Jewish and heathen testi¬
monies, as these have been collected and illustrated by
Lardner. Observing the maxim, Multum legere potius
quam midta, he reviewed again and again the Irenci
and English, as well as the Latin and Italian classics ; his
Greek studies, though less assiduous, maintained and ex¬
tended his knowledge of that incomparable language; and
a third perusal of Blackstone’s Commentaries, with a co
pious and critical abstract, formed an introduction to t e
know-ledge of English jurisprudence. At the commence¬
ment of his undertaking all was dark and doubttul—evejj
the title of the work, the true era of the decline and ta^
of the empire, the limits of the introduction, the ivl
sion of the chapters, and the order of the narrative; and,
amidst the uncertainty in which he found himselt invo
ed, he was often tempted to cast away the labour ot seve
years. But, happily, in spite of every discouragemen ,
1 Hayley, a poet and a scholar, not only pronounces a favourable judgment on the critical observations, u evei . an(i
iustify an acrimony of style, which the author himself afterwards regretted as unmanly and indefensible. I eyne, m e5.
at the same time more candid, gently blamed the contemptuous treatment ot a man who, with all his fanh-b j)rParr,
teem of every scholar. “ Paullo acrius quam velis .pentrinxit." We may add, that the editor ot the ar ur om Wwb couki
considers the allegorical interpretation “ as completely refuted in a most clear, elegant, and decisive woik o cri ^
not derive authority from the greatest name, but to which the greatest name might with propriety have been al x
gibbon.
bon jersevered in his task, which his return as member of par-
.lament for the borough of Leskeard, in 1775, did not seri-
iusly interrupt; and, on the 17th of February 1776, he
rave to the world the first volume of that work which has
ilaced its author in the foremost rank of modern histo-
ians. Its success was almost unprecedented. The first im-
iression was exhausted in a few days; a second and even
third edition were scarcely adequate to the demand;
he book was on every table, almost on every toilette;
nd, to use his own words, the historian was crowned by
he taste or fashion of the day. But, if the voice of
iublic favour be music to the ear of an author, Gibbon
nust have derived more substantial satisfaction from the
pprobation of such judges as Robertson and Hume.
The candour of Dr Robertson,” says he, “ embraced his
isciple. A letter from Mr Hume overpaid the labour of
en years.” The latter, however, with his usual sagacity,
ntieipated the objections which he foresaw would be
aged against the fifteenth and sixteenth chapters.
When I heard of your undertaking, vrhich was some
ime ago,” says he, “ I own I was a little curious to see
lowyou would extricate yourself from the subject of your
wo last chapters. I think you have observed a very
wudent temperament; but it was impossible to treat the
abject so as not to give grounds of suspicion against you,
nd you may expect that a clamour will arise. This, if
ny thing, will retard your success with the public; for,
n every other respect, your work is calculated to be po-
iular. But, among many other marks of decline, the pre-
alence of superstition in England prognosticates the fall
f philosophy and decay of taste ; and though nobody be
nore capable than you to revive them, you will probably
nd a struggle in your first advances.”
Gibbon’s own reflections on this subject appear to us to
ie either hypocritical or ironical. He affects not to have
ielieved that the majority of English readers were so fondly
ttached even to the name and shadow of Christianity; and
ie professes that if he had foreseen that the pious, the timid,
nd the prudent, would feel, or affect to feel, with such
xquisite sensibility, he might perhaps have softened the
wo invidious chapters, which were calculated, he admits,
o create many enemies, and to conciliate few friends,
lut as the shaft was shot and the alarm sounded, he con-
oled himself with the reflection, that if the voice of the
Rests was clamorous and bitter, their hands were disarm-
d from the power of persecution. The sincerity of this
pology is more than doubtful; nor is it possible to believe
hat Gibbon completely misjudged the state of the public
eeling on the subject of Christianity, which Hume ap-
ears, from the above extract, to have so accurately ap-
reciated. But, however this may be, the effect of Gib-
on’s hostility towards Christianity, upon the character of
is history, has, for the first time, been fairly and justly
stimated by the French critics. What they complain of
> not so much his insidious description of the human
leans by which it was propagated, as his false estimate
f its influence upon the social and even political condition
j f mankind. In this country, the matter has chiefly been
onsidered in a polemical spirit; abroad, it has been view-
d in a light at once more enlarged, more philosophical,
nd, we may add, more wisely Christian. Here, amidst
'e indignation of the better part of the community at
le publication of the first volume of the Decline and Fall,
ui more distinguished theological writers stood aloof,
nd the onset was made by a few rash and feeble volun-
^ers, who, ill armed and worse disciplined, rushed against
e bosses of the historian’s buckler. With a single
dischaige of his formidable artillery of learning and sar¬
casm, Gibbon laid prostrate the whole disorderly squa¬
dron ; and Davis, Chelsurn, Travis, and the rest, sunk back
into their original insignificance. When the first of these
ventured to attack, not the faith, but the fidelity of the
historian, the latter published his Vindication, which, “ ex¬
pressive of less anger than contempt, amused for a mo-
ment the busy and idle metropolis,” and annihilated Davis.
Their plan of attack, indeed, was as misjudging as their
mode of conducting it was unskilful. With a little learn¬
ing sci aped together for the occasion, they ventured to
impeach the accuracy and to condemn the false quota¬
tions of a scholar, whose mind was thoroughly saturated
with every kind of knowledge which could bear upon his
subject; and they could only make up in vituperation and
intemperance for their manifest deficiency in all the qua¬
lifications requisite in defenders of Christianity. Watson,
bishop of Llandaft, was the only one of the number who
had the good taste to maintain towards his adversary the
dignified courtesy which belonged to his literary charac¬
ter; and the judgment to confine his Apology to one
point, namely, the inadequacy of Gibbon’s secondary
causes to account for the diffusion of Christianity. But
it may even be questioned whether Watson himself has
not unconsciously been seduced, by the consummate skill
of his antagonist, to advance beyond the position which is
really impregnable, and to carry on the contest upon ground
far less advantageous. I he art of Gibbon consists in con¬
founding the origin and apostolic propagation of the new
religion with its later progress. No argument for the di¬
vine authority of Christianity has been urged with greater
force, or developed with higher eloquence, than that which
is deduced from its primary development and rapid ex¬
tension throughout the greater part of the Roman empire.
But this argument, unanswerable when confined within just
limits, becomes feeble, or disputable, or evanescent, as we
recede from the time and place where the new religion
was born and first manifested to the world. By Gibbon,
however, the main question, namely, the divine origin of
Christianity, was dexterously eluded or speciously con¬
ceded. His plan enabled him to commence his account,
in most parts, below the apostolic times; and it was only
by the strength of the dark colouring which he worked,
with infinite art and skill, out of the failings and follies of
the succeeding ages, that a shadow of doubt or suspicion
was thrown back upon the primitive period of Christiani¬
ty. “ The theologian,” says he, “ may indulge the pleas¬
ing task of describing religion as she descended from
heaven, arrayed in her native purity; a more melancholy
duty is imposed on the historian : he must discover the
inevitable mixture of error and corruption which she con¬
tracted in a long residence upon earth among a weak and
degenerate race of beings.” This passage betrays the
■whole secret of his art. Divest it of the latent sarcasm
which pervades the whole disquisition, and it might com¬
mence a Christian history, written in the genuine spirit of
Christian candour. But as the historian, with seemin<>
respect, yet dexterously confounding the true limits of
the question, contrives to insinuate that the supposed ori¬
gin of our religion is a mere Utopian dream of the theolo¬
gian, and to suggest rather than affirm that the days of
Christian purity were a kind of poetic golden age; so the
theologian, by adventuring too far into the domain of the
historian, may find himself obliged to contest points where
he lms little chance of victory, to deny facts established by
unimpeachable evidence, and to retire, if not with the shame
of defeat, at least with doubtful and imperfect success.1
509
Gibbon.
f'hls. assailants with unmeasured contempt; and, in truth, he had every reason to do so. Davis, Chelsum, and
msnea betore him ? hut “ a victory over such antagonists was a sufficient humiliation.” If the strength of his adversaries
GIBBON.
Nearly two years elapsed between the publication of
the first and the commencement of the second volume of
the history. During this interval Gibbon studied a course
of anatomy, demonstrated by Dr Hunter; dived deeply
into what he calls the mud of the Arian controversy ;
studied the transactions of the age ot Constantine ; and
spent some months of pleasure at Paris, dhe prosecution
of his task was also checked by employment of a different
description, for which his talents were considered as pecu¬
liarly adapted. At the request of Lord Chancellor Thur-
low, and Lord Weymouth, then secretary of state, he was
induced to prepare an answer to a manifesto which the
French court had issued against Great Britain, prepara¬
tory to a declaration of war. This Mr Gibbon accom¬
plished with great ability, and vindicated the justice of
the British arms, in a Memoire Justificatif, composed in
French, which, having been first approved of by the cabi¬
net ministers, was then delivered as a state paper to the
courts of Europe. For this service he was appointed one
of the lords commissioners of trade and plantations; a place,
the duties of which were by no means arduous, wdiilst it
enlarged his private income by a clear addition of between
L.700 and L.800 a year. His acceptance of this appoint¬
ment provoked some of the leaders of opposition, and he
was accused of deserting a party in which he declares he
had never enlisted. On this subject, however, there is an
awkward reminiscence preserved in the handwriting of Mr
Fox. That statesman, in an autograph note on his copy
of Gibbon’s history, says, that, at the time of the declara¬
tion of war against Spain, in the year 1779, the author of
this work declared publicly, at Brookes’, that there would
be no hope for England, except by cutting oft six heads
in the cabinet council, and exposing them, as an example,
in open parliament; yet, before fifteen days had elapsed,
he accepted a place under the same administration. The
inconsistency which this statement involves, Lord Shef¬
field has attempted to palliate, if not to obviate, by ob¬
serving, that, though his friend may have carelessly used
strong expressions respecting some or perhaps all parties,
yet he never meant that such expressions should be taken
literally. But the world were not obliged to understand
that, on political subjects, Mr Gibbon spoke in parables.
At the general election in 1780 he lost his seat for Les-
keard, which had suddenly been converted into an oppo¬
sition borough ; and in the interval of his senatorial life
which followed, he published the second and third volumes
of his history. They appeared in April 1781, and excited
as much attention as, though far less controversy than, his Gibt
first volume. They were written with equal elegance but
more caution, and exhibited prools of juster and more
profound thinking. His affection for his work did not per-
mit him to estimate truly the reception with which these
volumes were honoured; and, in his Memoirs, he speaks of
a coldness, and even prejudice, which appear to have been
altogether imaginary. It is certain, indeed, that their
merit was fully appreciated, both at home and abroad;
but two volumes are not so speedily sold as one, and the pro¬
mise of a continuation, whilst it gratified his admirers, ne¬
cessarily suspended that final judgment upon which the
fame of the work was ultimately to depend.
Soon after the meeting of the new parliament, he was
chosen, upon a vacancy, to represent the borough of Lym-
ington in Hampshire. But the administration to which he
had attached himself was now on the decline ; the minis¬
ter who refused to bend was broken by the tempest which
had arisen against the supporters of the American war,
and with his fall the board of trade was abolished, by which
means our author was stripped of a convenient salary,
which he had enjoyed about three years. Amidst the
conflict of parties which followed the dissolution of Lord
North’s administration, Gibbon, from a principle of grati¬
tude, adhered to the coalition, and his vote was counted
in the day of battle (it was all he could supply), but he
was forgotten in the division of the spoil. The board of
trade could not be restored ; a seat at the board of cus¬
toms or excise was promised on the first vacancy, but the
chance was distant and doubtful; the tumult of London,
and the attendance on parliament, were grown irksome to
him ; and, without some additional income, he could not
prudently maintain the style of expense to which he had
for some time been accustomed. In these circumstances,
and having always cherished a secret wish that the school
of his youth might become the retreat of his declining
age, he once more turned his thoughts to his beloved
Lausanne. But before proceeding with the remainder of
the narrative, we shall stop for a moment to review the
historian’s political career.
Gibbon entered the House of Commons in 1764<, and
he witnessed a great epoch in the history of the British
parliament. Never had a more brilliant constellation of
talent and genius risen in the political horizon ; never had
higher interests commanded attention and inspired elo¬
quence. The insurrection of the colonies, the violent and
arbitrary laws which had oppressed and driven them to
had, however, been in proportion to their numbers, he would certainly have been overwhelmed. The following is a list of d'6 prin¬
cipal writings called forth by his bold yet insidious attack on Christianity:—!. Remarks on the two last Chapters of Mr Gibbon»
History. 2. An Apology for Christianity, by R. Watson, B. D., Professor of Divinity in the University of Cambridge, 1776, in
12mo. 3. The History of the Establishment of Christianity, by William Salisbury, B. D., 1776, in 8vo. 4. Reply to the Iteason-
ings of Mr Gibbon in his History, by S. Loftus, Dublin, 1778, in 8vo. 5. Letters on the Prevalence of Christianity, by hast Ap-
thorpe, M. A., 1778, in 8vo. 6. An Examination of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Chapters of Mr Gibbon’s History, by H. Jv
Davis, B. A., Oxford, 1778, in 8vo. 7- Remarks on the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by a Gentleman.
8. Remarks on the two last Chapters of Mr Gibbon’s History, by James Chelsum, D. D., Oxford, 1778* in 8vo. This last was ase
cond edition of the anonymous Remarks mentioned in the first article, and contains additional strictures by Dr Randolph, pro es
of divinity at Oxford. Mr Gibbon now published his answer, which appeared under the title of a Vindication of some Passages in me
Fifteenth and Sixteenth Chapters of the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by the author, 1779. m 8™. inis
was immediately followed by, 1. A Short Appeal to the Public, by the gentleman who is particularly addressed in the pos scr'P .
the Vindication, 1779-1780, in 8vo. 2. A Reply to Mr Gibbon’s Vindication, by H. £. Davis, Oxford, 1780, in 8vo. ^ A nepj
to Mr Gibbon’s Vindication, by James Chelsum, D. D., 1785, in 8vo. The most considerable of the works directed against wen
tory generally were, 1. Thoughts on the nature of the Grand Apostacv, with reflections and observations on the I'lfteent1 I
of Mr Gibbon’s History, by H. Taylor, 1781-1782, in 8vo. 2. Gibbon’s Account of Christianity considered, by Joseph Aiui ,
A. M., 1781, in 8vo. 3. Letters to Edward Gibbon, Esq. in defence of the authenticity of the 7th verse of the filth chap Lr
First Epistle of St John, by George Travis, A. M., 1784, in 4to. 4. An Inquiry into the Secondary Causes which Mr Gib on
signed for the rapid growth of Christianity, by Sir David Dalrymple, Lord Hailes, 1786, in 4to. Dr Priestley, in his His ory .
Corruptions of Christianity, also threw down his gauntlet to Mr Gibbon, who, however, declined the challenge in a letter, ex ^
his opponent to enlighten the world by his philosophical discoveries, and to remember that the merit of his predecessor
reduced to a single passage, indicating the smaller circulation of the blood through the lungs. Of all his antagonists, Dr Vy a so ^
only one of whom Gibbon speaks with respect, and, indeed, almost the only one who deserved it. “ Let me frankly own, say ^ ^
concluding an account of his chief opponents, “ that I was startled at the first discharge of ecclesiastical ordnance; but as ^ ^
found that this empty noise was mischievous only' in the intention, my fear was converted into indignation ; and every lee g
dignation or curiosity has long since subsided into pure and placid indifference.”
GIBBON.
511
.Spair, the war with America, the misfortunes and re-
' rsesof that ill-fated contest, the dismemberment which
reatened the empire, together with the justice, policy,
id necessity of concluding a peace ; such were the sub-
lCts then debated in parliament, with an ardour, abi-
1 y, and eloquence, not surpassed, perhaps never equalled,
any other period of our history. But amidst all the
, citement and animation of such a scene, Gibbon re-
lined mute, and threw his silent vote into the scale of
wer in support of the pretensions of the crown against
,e opinion of the great body of the nation, and the just
dims of the Americans. He thought, or professed to
ink, the cause of the government, in this instance, the
use of England, and declared himself more and more
,nvinced that the administration had the right as well as
e power on their side. With a temperament constitu-
mally cold, and principles essentially conservative, he
d none of the generous sympathies inspired by an ardent
/e of liberty ; in the resistance of the Americans he saw
j thing but a rising against authority, to be put down by
i ce of arms ; and, though possessing a mind accustom-
t to develope political results, and to estimate the remote
f nsequences of changes in the social relations of man-
id, he showed himself as insensible as the humblest
Lord North’s adherents to the real character of the
•uggle in which Britain was then engaged, and seems as
Hie to have anticipated the advantages which would ac-
i je to mankind from the generous rivalry of two great
itions sprung from a common stock, or to have foreseen
at the separation of the colonies from the mother country
is, sooner or later, inevitable, and that, even if then
. erted, it might take place during some political crisis
egnantwith still greater danger to the power of Britain,
s sagacity, in short, was speculative, not practical; and
i iwant of political courage commensurate with a certain
nd, undistinguishing dread of change, which forms the
ist prominent characteristic of the sect of politicians to
lich, from congeniality of sentiment, he had attached
nself. For Lord North individually he seems to have
Ijerished the most sincere personal regard ; and, though
itory will scarcely ratify Gibbon’s estimate of his cha¬
fer, yet the fine tribute paid to the fallen minister in
e preface to the fourth (quarto) volume of the Decline
d Fall does honour to the historian’s memory.
With regard to Gibbon’s parliamentary silence, it is
'hly probable that it proceeded from the cause which
i has himself explained. “ After a fleeting illusive hope,”
; W he, “ prudence condemned me to acquiesce in the
mble^station of a mute. I was not armed by nature
d education with the intrepid energy of mind and voice,
Vincentem strepitus, et natum rebus agendis.
midity was fortified by pride; and even the success of
1 r pen discouraged the trial of my voice.” Another
use besides physical inability, and the embarrassment
I a high literary reputation, seems also to have concurred
repressing his ambition of oratorical fame. “ Upon the
ole, ’ he writes to Mr Holroyd, “ though I still believe
hall try, I doubt whether nature, not that in some in-
oces 1 am ungrateful, has given me the talents of an
dor, and I feel that I came into parliament much too
e to exert them.” At the period to which this refers,
bbon was eight and thirty ; but at every brilliant epoch
British oratory, the leading speakers have almost in-
iably commenced their career long before the age of
forty; and where there are exceptions to this rule, these Gibbon,
will generally be found amongst those who have been bred
to the kindred profession of the bar. Besides, in the con¬
firmed habit of close, accurate, and laboured composition,
there is something which disqualifies for free, prompt, and
effective public speaking, in which readiness and fluency
are far more indispensable requisites than precision and
correctness.1
Having resolved to withdraw from public life, and fixed
upon Lausanne as the place of his retreat, Gibbon entered
into an arrangement with his old friend M. Deyverdun,
who was now settled there ; and having disposed of all his
effects, excepting his library, he bade adieu to England
in September 1783, and arrived at Lausanne nearly twen¬
ty years after his second departure. His reception was
cordial, and the comparative advantages of his situation
fully answered his expectations. His personal freedom,
which had been somewhat impaired by the House of
Commons and the board of trade, was now restored, and
he was delivered from the chain of duty and dependence,
as well as from the hopes and fears of political adventure.
His English economjq which had been that of a solitary
bachelor, who might afford occasional dinners, was ex¬
changed for a more social mode of life, in which he en¬
joyed at every meal, at every hour, the pleasant conver¬
sation of the friend of his youth, whilst his table was
daily provided for the reception of one or two extraordi¬
nary guests. In London he was lost in the crowd; at
Lausanne he ranked with the first families, and his style
of prudent expense enabled him to maintain a fair ba¬
lance of reciprocal civilities. Instead of a small house be¬
tween a street and a stable-yard, he now occupied a spa¬
cious and convenient mansion, with a garden of four acres
laid out by the taste of M. Deyverdun, a rich scenery of
meadows and vineyards descending to the Leman Lake,
and the distant prospect beyond the lake crowned by the
stupendous mountains of Savoy. In this catalogue of ad¬
vantages, however, which we have abridged from the
Memoirs, there is a perceptible intermixture of caprice
and weakness; for surely a man of Gibbon’s intellectual
resources might easily have discovered situations in Eng¬
land adapted to every purpose of economy and retirement,
yet calculated to afford at intervals the enjoyment of good
society. But, not to mention that Gibbon in his habits
was at least half a foreigner, it appears that, either from
pride or modesty, he was averse to the society of his lite¬
rary contemporaries, in which he does not seem to have
been qualified to shine, and preferred, in his hours of re¬
laxation, that style of company in which the conversation
flows in an easy natural channel, and where the object is
mutually to please, not to talk for effect. In society he
sought to repose and recreate his mind, after the fatigue
of research and the labour of composition, not to stimulate
and excite it by what is called brilliant conversation ; and,
as enjoyment was his object, he naturally disliked and
avoided company where the aim was rather display than
social amusement.
Gibbon remained about a year at Lausanne before he re¬
sumed the composition of history; but having done so,
he proceeded steadily with his laborious task, which he at
length completed on the 27th of June 1787. The fourth
volume was terminated by an abstract of the gontrover-
sies respecting the Incarnation; in the fifth and sixth
volumes the revolutions of the empire and the world are
most rapid, various, and instructive, and the Greek and
! Extraordinary periods of public excitement,” says a very able writer, “ like the French Revolution, may suddenly, as it were,
, re,:1® powers of older men; but it may be remembered, that Mirabeau was by no means an unpractised speaker; and how
I ny
ill
of the leading orators of that period, displaying in the midst of flashy and histrionic declamation so much of vigorous and pow-
eioquence, had been avocats —[Quarterly Review, vol. 1. p. 28C-)
512 GIBBON.
Gibbon. Roman histories are checked by the hostile narratives of This, however, is not doing justice to the historian. On Gib
'V'*—' the barbarians of the East and West. The conclusion of most subjects, his mind was alive to the noblest senti-'J!
his great, and, we may add, immortal work, the histo- ments, and calmly yet firmly arrayed on the side of hu-
rian has commemorated in language strongly expressive manity, justice, and the best interests of mankind; on two,
of the emotions with which his mind was filled in contem- the virtue of women and the magnanimity of Christians’
plating the completion of that edifice which he had at he was incurably prejudiced. Porson, his bitterest and
length reared to perpetuate his fame. “I have presumed,” most malignant critic, admits that in his history, “his re-
says he, “ to mark the moment of conception ; I shall now flections are just and profound : he pleads eloquently for
commemorate the hour of my final deliverance. It was the rights of mankind and the duty of toleration; nor does
on the day, or rather the night, of the 27th of June 1787, his humanity ever slumber unless when women are ravish-
between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the ed and Christians persecuted.”
last page, in a summer-house in my garden. After laying In the preface to his fourth volume, Gibbon, whilst he
down my pen, I took several turns in a berceau, or covered gloried in the name of Englishman, announced his ap-
walk of acacias, which commands a prospect of the coun- preaching return to the banks of the Leman Lake; nor did
try, the lake, and the mountains. The air was temperate, his year’s residence in England, on this occasion, induce
the sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon was reflect- him to alter his resolution, or even to entertain a wish of
ed from the waters, and all nature was silent. I will not settling in his native country. A few weeks after the
dissemble the first emotions of joy on recovery of my publication of his history, he accordingly set out for Swit-
freedom, and, perhaps, the establishment of my fame, zerland, and, on the 30th of July 1788, arrived at Lau-
But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy sanne, where, after a full repast on Homer and Aristo-
was spread over my mind, by the idea that I had taken phanes, he involved himself in the philosophic maze of
an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and the writings of Plato. But the cheering prospect of hap-
that whatsoever might be the future date of my history, the piness which had again wooed him to his favourite retreat
life of the historian must be short and precarious.”1 was soon obscured by the illness and death of his friendDey-
With the manuscript of the three last volumes he set out verdun; whilst the great political movement which had now
from Lausanne, after a quiet residence of four years, and begun to agitate France extended itself to Switzerland,
at the end of a fortnight arrived at the house of his friend and, throwing men’s minds into a ferment of hope and
Lord Sheffield, where he remained during his stay in Eng- fear, of anticipated improvement and foreboding apprehen-
land. The arrangements with the bookseller and printer sion, served to interrupt the tranquillity which had long
were soon settled ; but after the whole had passed through reigned in that peaceful country. A swarm of emigrants
the press, the day of publication was delayed that it might of both sexes, attracted by similarity of manners and Ian-
coincide with the fifty-first anniversary of his birthday guages, as well as by the vicinity, flocked to Lausanne,
(8th May 1788), when the double festival was celebrated by and bringing with them a spirit of political discussion in-
a literary dinner at the house of the publisher, Mr Cadeli, flamed by passion and by prejudice, provoked hostility to
where the historian “ seemed to blush,” whilst they read their opinions, even whilst their misfortunes called forth
some complimentary stanzas written by Mr Hayley for sympathy. The language of disappointment on the one
the occasion. The sale of these volumes was rapid, and hand begot that of presumption on the other; domestic
the work being generally read, was of course variously harmony was embittered by an infusion of party spirit;
judged. The style was exposed to much academical cri- the ladies and gentlemen in Switzerland, as elsewhere,
ticism ; a religious clamour was revived upon nearly-the became suddenly transformed into politicians; and whilst
same grounds as before ; and the reproach of indecency was the partisans of the old absolute monarchy denounced the
loudly echoed by the more rigid censors of morals. This advocates of constitutional freedom as rebels against their
last charge he professes he could never understand, and king and traitors to their country, the zealous missionaries
assigns several reasons why it appeared to him unaccount- of the new political faith scattered the seeds of discontent
able. First, an equal freedom in the former part, espe- in those cities and villages, which, for more than two een-
cially in the first volume, had passed without notice, or at turies and a half, no commotion had agitated. Of the
least without censure : secondly, he considered himself as manner in which the historian at this period employed his
justified in painting the manners of the times, and regard- time we have little account. He appears to have amused
ed the vices of Theodora as forming an essential feature in himself by writing the Memoirs of his Life, which it was
the reign and character of Justinian : thirdly, he adds, that reserved for his friend Lord Sheffield to give to the world;
his English text is chaste, and that all the licentious pas- and also to have projected a series of biographical por-
sages in the notes are left in the obscurity of a learned traits of eminent Englishmen from the time of Henry
language. But in offering such a vindication, or rather such VIIL, a design in the execution of which little or no pro-
an apology, the historian seems to have forgotten that it is gress seems to have been made. Flis habits of industry
no excuse of an offence against morals or decorum that, for had by this time become impaired, and his studies, instead
a time, it may have escaped observation or censure; that of being prosecuted as formerly with reference to a grea
sensuality may be censured without being lasciviously de- object, were now so far restricted as merely to cons i
scribed; that it is not philosophically just to exhibit inch- tute the amusement of his morning hours,
vidual vices, in strong relief, as forming a general picture He remained in Switzerland as long as he considere i
of the manners of a particular country; and that licenti- prudent to do so, and only quitted that country when t e
ous passages are but thinly veiled by being “ left in the execution of Louis XVI. and the declaration of war w ic
obscurity” of languages which are taught at every school, almost immediately followed on the part of Great Britain,
In the opinion of a distinguished French critic, M. Ville- rendered it no longer a safe asylum for an Englishman w o,
main, Gibbon was dead to all lofty and generous emotions, it was well known, entertained strong anti-revolutionary
1 “ I will add two facts,” says he, “ which have seldom occurred in the composition of six, or at least five quartos. 1- My ^
rough manuscript, without any intermediate copy, has been sent to the press. 2. Not a sheet has been seen by any human eye, ^
cepting those of the author and printer ; the faults and the merits are exclusively my own.” This must be taken with a s ig ^
duction, inasmuch as it appears from a previous part of his Memoirs, that he three times composed the first chapter of the ^
lume, and twice the second and third, before he was satisfied with them ; and also, that although “ he was soon disgusted wi
modest practice of reading the manuscript to his friends,” this had nevertheless been, to a certain extent, done by him.
4
GIB
f botI. ,pinions. Mr Gibbon left Lausanne in May 1793, arrived
June at Lord Sheffield’s bouse in Downing Street, and
oon afterwards settled, for the summer, with that noble-
•)an at Sheffield Place. In October he went to Bath to
ay a visit of kindness to his father’s widow, and then pro-
eeded to Althorp, the seat of Earl Spencer, from which he
^turned to London. His health was visibly declining, and
e now for the first time disclosed, by a letter to his friend
,ord Sheffield, the immediate cause, which he had hither-
) concealed from every human being, except a confiden-
al servant. This complaint was originally a hernia, which
ad at length produced hydrocele, and required imme-
iate surgical treatment. Tapping afforded temporary
lief; but as the original complaint was of about thirty
ears standing, it had completely undermined his consti-
ition, which could not for any length of time support
ie discharge ; and he died, on the 16th of January 1794,
i|, reserving his senses and composure to the last. Absurd
jports as to the manner of his death were circulated at
ie time, and implicitly believed by many credulous per¬
ms. But all these stories have been refuted by the au-
loritative relation of his friend and biographer, who has
ated the real circumstances attending his demise with
jual clearness and simplicity. Mr Gibbon did not at
ly time show the least sign of alarm or apprehension of
eath; and, in fact, it does not appear that he ever thought
imself in danger, or conceived his departure from this
jrthly scene to be so near at hand.
The personal character of Mr Gibbon, which was upon
ie whole highly estimable, may be correctly appreciated
om the Memoirs which he left behind him. In these his
‘ntiments are disclosed without the reserve which he em-
oyed in his more laboured compositions, and his mental
ilings are detailed with an ingenuous candour which com-
: lands our respect and confidence. He frankly confesses
ic vanity of the author and the pride of the gentleman ;
le vanity of one of the most successful authors of modern
mes, and the pride of a gentleman of amiable manners
id high accomplishments. It must, however, be admit-
d that his anxiety for fame sometimes obscured the lus-
e ol his social qualities, separated him too widely from
s literary contemporaries, and occasionally led him to
leak of his opponents with a contemptuous arrogance at
iriance with the general tone of his bland and moderate
laracter. His conversation, though not enlivened by wit,
)r adorned with those lighter graces in which the French
i greatly excel all other nations, is yet said to have been
eh in various information, communicated in a calm and
,rreeable, though somewhat peculiar manner; but in
impany he seldom brought forward his vast treasures of
lowledge, and was more ambitious to be thought a man
the world than a mere scholar or author. “ As to his
anners in society,” says M. Suard, who knew him well,
without doubt the agreeableness (amabilite) of Gibbon
as neither that yielding and retiring complaisance, nor
at modesty which is forgetful of self; but his vanity
’mour-propre) never showed itself in an offensive manner,
j nxious to succeed and to please, he wished to command
tention, and obtained it without difficulty by a conver-
tion animated, sprightly, and full of matter. All that
as dictatorial (tranchant) in his tone betrayed not so
ut'li desire of domineering over others, which is
''ays otlensive, as confidence in himself; and that con-
t'nce was justified both by his powers and by his suc-
ss. Notwithstanding this, his conversation never car-
one away (nentruinait jamais)-, its fault was a kind
anangement which never permitted him to say any
uiig unless well.” In this elaborate and artificial struc-
ire | “'s conversation, we are irresistibly reminded of
ic c laracteristic qualities and defects of his style, in
llc ), according to Forson, the thread of his verbosity is
vol. x.
BON.
sometimes finer than the staple of his argument, and where,
in endeavouring to avoid vulgar terms, he occasionally dig¬
nifies trifles, and clothes common thoughts in a dress which
would be rich enough for the noblest ideas.
But although Gibbon has disclosed much of his charac¬
ter in his Memoirs, there are some points left unexplained,
concerning which it would be very desirable to be better
informed. He has told us much of the progress of opi¬
nions in his mind ; of his conversion to popery, which, con¬
sidering at what age it occurred, he has treated with dis¬
proportionate gravity; and of his reconversion to protest-
antism, which he has related with more brevity and ob¬
scurity. But at the latter of these points he stops short;
we leave him a good Protestant in the hands of M. Pa-
vilhard, and, alter a considerable interval, we find him
transformed into an implacable enemy of Christianity,
without the pretence of a quarrel, or any previous decla¬
ration of hostilities. By what process was this singular tran¬
sition effected 'j by what train of reading or interchange
of sentiments did he contract this causeless inveteracy ?
Person has charged him with often making, where he can¬
not find, an occasion to insult our religion, 4< which,” says
that incomparable Hellenist, “ he hates so cordially that
he might seem to revenge some personal injury.” The
accusation is no doubt a little too sweeping; yet whence
arose the undeniable antipathy on which it is ground¬
ed ? On this subject we are left entirely to conjecture;
but, without venturing to affirm any thing, it may not un¬
reasonably be attributed to his intimacy with the French
writers, particularly Helvetius, and to his correspon¬
dence with Flume, to whom he looked up with the reve¬
rence of a disciple; connections which probably led him
to think that the farther he departed from the Christian
faith, the nearer he approached to the perfection of the
philosophical character.
As an historian, the universal acknowledgment of the
literary world has placed him in the highest rank; and if
Ins taste had equalled his knowledge, if in his narrative
the grace of simplicity had concealed the artifice of ela¬
boration, he would, even in that rank, have stood without
a rival. But in all the diversified charms of interesting
and pathetic relation he is as much inferior to Robertson, as
he excels that writer in extent and variety of knowledge,
in deep and penetrating sagacity, in comprehensive con¬
centration, and, above all, in the unrivalled mastery which
he exercised over his vast stores of learning ;—and if, in
these respects, he is likewise superior to Hume, which can
scarcely be disputed, he at the same time falls far short
of what he has himself characterised as the careless ini¬
mitable beauties of that elegant and philosophical histo¬
rian. Yet, with every deduction that can reasonably be
made, enough will remain to support the high reputation
of his great work, and to entitle its author to the respect
and admiration of every succeeding age. If his laborious
system of compilation, the depth and accuracy of his re¬
search, partook of the patient plodding erudition of the
north, both the merits and defects of his manner of com¬
position were essentially French ; and it is not difficult to
discern the influence of Voltaire and his school on the
philosophical views no less than the sarcastic periods of
the historian. Yet it is not in France alone, but like¬
wise among the profound inquiring scholars of Germany,
that Gibbon maintains his ground. His chapter contain¬
ing a condensed abstract of the Roman law was translated
by Hugo, in order that it might serve as a text-book for
his own prelections on that system of jurisprudence; and
the recent editors of the later historians of Rome, parti¬
cularly ot Ammianus Marcellinus, and of the Byzantine
Collection, defer to his interpretations, sometimes of the
text, always of the meaning of their authors ; whilst, even
where their own researches have thrown further light on
3 x
513
Gibbon.
514
GIBBON.
Gibbon.
the periods comprehended in his work, their language is
uniformly that of acknowledgment of his general accu¬
racy, and of respect for his elevated genius. In a word,
Gibbon anticipated that happy union, which we can
scarcely hope to see more perfectly consummated, of the
indefatigable erudition of the Germans, with the lucid ar¬
rangement of the French, and their lively manner of de¬
veloping their views and relating facts ; condensing and
perfecting the whole with the masculine boldness and so¬
lidity of English judgment. In Gibbon indeed there were
wanting a more free and natural style, a purer moral taste,
and a philosophy superior to the narrow prejudices of a
sect; but, with these exceptions, there is every thing to
be admired in him as an historian. An erudition vast,
solid, and varied ; a criticism equally exact and ingenious ;
an interest of narration, if not always equal, at least suffi¬
ciently sustained to prevent languor ; views sometimes
profound, often comprehensive, almost always just; re¬
flections original, striking, and piquant; and the art of
connecting the facts of the history with enlarged ideas, of
which the writer himself did not perhaps perceive all the
consequences, but which excite reflection in the mind ot
the reader; such are the obvious merits of Gibbon as an
historian, such the qualities which ensure the permanence
of his fame. His defects, though much less apparent, and
in some measure concealed from common observation by
the extreme artifice of his composition, may nevertheless
be brought out with equal distinctness. The first and the
greatest of these is that want of elevation of sentiment,
which is the more apt to impose on our reason, that the
historian never thinks himself so reasonable as when he
regards virtue and vice with equal indifference. 1 he ima¬
gination of Gibbon was active, and his temperament cold;
he was easily induced to admire that which astonished;
he invariably misjudged sentiments and emotions which
he had never experienced. After labouring to depreciate
the heroic courage of the Christian martyrs, he takes plea¬
sure in celebrating the ferocious exploits of limur and
his Tartars; material grandeur, so to speak, strikes him
more forcibly than moral greatness ; the transports of su¬
blime virtue affect not his soul, whilst the outbreakings of
barbarous force seduce his imagination and mislead his
judgment. Having no fixed principles in morals, politics,
and&public economy, or in regard to the constitution of
society and the history of civilization, he betrays an un¬
certainty in his opinions which is sometimes embarrassing ;
his work does not tend towards one great end ; its march
is not steady and uniform ; in a word, it is the production
of an enlightened man, endowed with that philosophical Gibb
spirit which examines, decomposes, and describes with''-v
ability all the details of the events of history, rather than
the work of a great philosopher, who, from an immense'
accumulation of facts, deduces those high conceptions and
those truths of a superior order which apply to all histories
and to all ages.1
Gibbon spoke and wrote French with correctness and
elegance; but the style of his English compositions, par-
ticularly of his history, has been alternately admired and
censured. Porson, who was by no means inclined to
spare him, has the candour to admit that his style is em-
phatic and expressive, and that his sentences are harmo¬
nious. But this seems to us inadequate eulogy. For, how¬
ever overloaded, and at times measured almost to mono¬
tony, the style of Gibbon deserves the higher praise of
animation, which keeps the attention continually awake,—
of descriptive richness, which brings both manners and
local scenery in living freshness before the imagination,—
and of energy, which deeply impresses his more senten¬
tious truths upon the memory. “ Gibbon may be overla¬
boured, but he is rarely diffuse, and never dull; he may
overstrain the attention, but he never permits us to sleep;
he may want simplicity, but he never wants force.” Con¬
ciseness, vivacity, and often brilliancy, are his most strik¬
ing characteristics ; and if he has neither the careless, easy
transparency of Hume, nor the sustained majesty of Ro¬
bertson, he is more animated than the one, and more pic¬
turesque than the other.2
In the year 1796, Lord Sheffield published, in two
volumes quarto, Gibbon’s Miscellaneous Works, including
those Memoirs of his own Life and Writings to which we
have so often referred. This publication likewise con¬
tains a large collection of letters, either written by or ad¬
dressed to the historian ; abstracts of the books he had
read, with reflections thereon; extracts from a journal ofhis
studies; a collection of remarks and detached pieces on
various subjects ; outlines of his History of the World;
his Essai sur VEtude de la Litterature, republished; Cri¬
tical Observations on the design of the sixth book of the
iEneid; a Dissertation on the subject of LHomme an
Masque de Fer ; Memoire Justificatif pour servir de Ri-
ponse d l'Expose de la Cour de France; his Vindication
ofhis History; Antiquities of the House of Brunswick;
and an address to the public on the subject of a complete
edition of our ancient historians. But of all these miscel¬
lanies, his journal, abstracts, and remarks are the most
curious and instructive in a literary point of view. They
■ The French Revolution chewed, in » strong light, Mr
ed had the effect of leading him into a new exa8S . ,|le‘ enlpire. “ The primitive church of which I have spoken
assent to Mr Burke's creed on the Revolution of France. X ^““7“'SsttougM Tiling a dialogue of the dead, iaw ■*
Cl“ckn,0?raesmS! and VoSTshouM mutually acknowledge the da,eer of eponog on old „lrer,tMon ,o ,he wOomfl ofOo 1W «« >
“VSetwng beautiful and discriminating observations on the taste and style of Gibbon
humous works, by Sir James Maekmtosh, wffic o^ngma^y appeare^^in^ ^ celebKfted historian .laboured to form his taste and ^
wonder that Swilt and Addison were among , , , , f i •„ ivnit-ition the history of literature does not exhib *
of tLse pure and tot ^ ^ in the vig„„r ot his
G I B
(: Ur ontain much valuable criticism; exhibit a plan of indus-
v such as few men ever pursued with equal constancy;
dtar low an amount of labour approaching to what we read
7 t]ie indefatigable scholars of the sixteenth and seven-
enth centuries; and serve to teach scholars of all ages
iat no station of permanent eminence can ever be reached
ithout persevering exertion, and that, apart from Intel*
’ctual application, knowledge becomes useless, wit ridi-
ulous, and genius itself contemptible.
(Gibbon’s Miscellaneous Works, vol. i.; Memoirs, &c.;
hstoire de la Decadence et de la Chute de VEmpire Ro-
ain, traduite de 1'Anglais d’Edouard Gibbon, by M.
juizot, preceded by a Notice of the Life and Character
f Gibbon by M. Suard, and accompanied with critical
ad historical notes, for the most part relating to the his-
iry of the propagation of Christianity, Paris, 1828 ; Cha-
>aubriand, Etudes on Discours sur la Chute de VEmpire
lomain, Paris, 1830; Quarterly Review, vol. 1. p. 273
t seqq. Chalmers, art. Gibbon ; Biographic Universelle,
rt. Gibbon.) (A-)
GIBBOUS, a term in Medicine, denoting any protube-
ince or convexity of the body, such as hunched or hump-
acked.
Gibbous, in Astronomy, a term used in reference to the
nlightened parts of the moon, while she is moving from the
rst quarter to the full, and from the full to the last quar-
_>r; for all that time the dark part appears horned or fai¬
led, and the illuminated part hunched out, convex, or
ibbous.
GIBELINES, or Ghibelines, a famous faction in Italy,
pposed to another called the Guelphs. Those two fac-
ons ravaged and laid waste Italy for a long series of years ;
o that the history of that country, for the space of two cen-
tiries, is little more than a detail of their mutual violence and
laughter. The Gibelines stood for the emperor against
lie pope; but concerning their origin and the reason of
heir names we have only a very obscure account. Ac-
ording to the generality of authors, they rose about the
ear 1240, upon the Emperor Frederick II. being excom-
aunicated by Pope Gregory IX. Other writers maintain,
hat the two factions arose ten years before, though still
aider the same pope and emperor. But the most probable
pinion is that of Maimbourg, who says that these factions
irose in consequence of a quarrel between two ancient and
llustrious houses on the confines of Germany ; that of the
lenries of Gibeling, and that of the Guelphs of Adorf.
GIBEON, a city seated on an eminence about forty fur-
ongs northward from Jerusalem. The Gibeonites were
lescended from the Hivites, the old inhabitants of that
:ountry, and possessed four cities, of which Gibeon was the
:apital.
GIBLETS, the offals or entrails of a goose, including
he heart, liver, feet, gizzard, &c. The word is supposed
o be formed from the French gobeau, a mouthful. Gib-
ets form a considerable article in cookery.
GIBRALTAR, a famous promontory, or rather penin-
iula, of Spain, situated in north latitude 36. 6., and west lon-
ptude 5. 17. To the ancients it was known by the name of
Calpe, and was also called one of the Pillars of Hercules ;
>y the Arabians it is called Gebel Tarek, that is, the
Mount of Tarek, from the name of the Saracen general who
conquered Spain in the beginning of the eighth century.
I he whole is one immense rock. “ Its form,” says Major
fmrie, “ is oblong; its summit a sharp craggy ridge; its
hrection is nearly from north to south; and its greatest
length, in that direction, falls very little short of three
wiles. Its breadth varies with the indentations of the
jhore, but it nowhere exceeds three quarters of a mile.
Ihe line of its ridge is undulated, and the two extremes
ire somewhat higher than its centre. The summit of the
Sugar Loaf, which is the point of its greatest elevation to-
G I B
515
wards the south, is 1439 feet; the Rock Mortar, which is Gibraltar,
the highest point to the north, is 1350 ;• and the Signal
House, which is nearly the central point between these two,
is 1276 feet above the level of the sea. The western side of
the mountain is a series of rugged slopes, interspersed with
abrupt precipices. Its northern extremity is perfectly per¬
pendicular, except towards the north-west, where what are
called the Lines intervene, and a narrow passage of flat
ground that leads to the isthmus, and is entirely covered
with fortification. The eastern side of the mountain mostly
consists of a range of precipices ; but a bank of sand, rising
from the Mediterranean in a rapid acclivity, covers a third
of its perpendicular height. Its southern extremity falls, in
a rapid slope, from the summit of the Sugar Loaf, into a
rocky flat of considerable extent, called Windmill Hill.
“ The principal mass of the mountain rock consists of a
gray dense (or what is generally called primary) marble ; the
different beds of which are to be examined in a face of 1350
feet of perpendicular height, w hich it presents to Spain in
a conical form. These beds, or strata, are of various thick¬
ness, from twenty to upwards of forty feet, dipping in a
direction from east to west, nearly at an angle of thirty-
five degrees. In some parts of the solid mass of this rock
are found testaceous bodies entirely transmuted into the
constituent matter of the rock, and their interior hollows
filled up with calcareous spar; but these -do not often occur
in its composition, and its beds are not separated by any in¬
termediate strata.” {Transactions of the Royal Society of
Edinburgh, vol. iv.)
The town lies along the bay upon the west side of the
mountain, on a declivity; by which, generally speaking, the
rains pass through it, and keep it clean. The old town
was considerably larger than the new. Many of the streets
are narrow^ and irregular, and the buildings are of different
materials; some of natural stone, extracted from the quar¬
ries, others of a factitious or artificial stone, and a few of
brick. The people are supplied with fresh provisions,
chiefly from the coast of Barbary, as well as fruit, roots,
and vegetables of all sorts. Besides what is properly call¬
ed the town, there are several spacious and commodious
public edifices erected, such as barracks for the soldiers,
with apartments for their officers, magazines of different
kinds, storehouses for provisions, &c. The population of
the town, exclusive of the garrison, is above 12,000, being
partly British, and partly Spaniards, Italians, Jews, and even
Moors, who are all attracted by mercantile enterprise. This
town may be said to have two ports; the first lying to the
north, which is proper only for small vessels; the other
very commodious for large vessels, which has a fine stone
quay. The bay is very beautiful and capacious, being in
breadth about five miles, and in length eight or nine, with
several small rivers running into it. It is very advanta¬
geous to the place. There is no ground to be found in
the middle of it at one hundred fathoms depth, so that a
squadron may lie there in great safety ; the breezes from it
are very refreshing ; and it contributes likewise to the sub¬
sistence of the inhabitants by supplying them with abun¬
dance of fish.
This important fortress seems to have been first parti¬
cularly noticed as a place of consequence in the year 712.
At that time the general of the Caliph Alwalid landed w ith
an army of 12,000 men on the isthmus between Mount
Calpe and the continent; and, that he might secure an in¬
tercourse with Africa, he ordered a castle to be built upon
the face of the hill. Part of this building still remains;
and, from an inscription discovered above the principal
gate, it appears to have been finished in 725. It continued
in the possession of the Saracens till the beginning of the
fourteenth century, when it was recovered by Ferdinand
king of Castille. In 1333, however, it was obliged to sur¬
render to the son of the Emperor of Fez, who came to the
516 GIB
Gibson, assistance of the Moorish king of Granada. An attempt
was made upon it in 1349, by Alonzo king of Castille ; but
when the fortress had been reduced to the last extremity,
a pestilential fever broke out in the Spanish camp, which
carried off the king himself, with great part of his army ;
after which the enterprise was abandoned.
The fortress continued in the possession of the Saracen
descendants of the prince of Fez until the year 1410, when
it was taken possession of by Joseph III. king of Granada.
A design of attacking it was formed by Henry de Guzman
in 1435; but the enterprise having miscarried through his
imprudence, he was defeated and slain. However, it was
at length taken after a gallant defence, by his son John de
Guzman, in 1462; and since that time it has remained in
the hands of the Christians. In 1540 it was surprised and
pillaged by Piali Hamet, one of Barbarossa’s corsairs; but
the pirates having fallen in with some Sicilian galleys, were
by them defeated, and all either killed or taken.
In the reign of Charles V. the fortifications of Gibraltar
were modernized and greatly strengthened. It yielded,
however, to a British force sent against it under Sir George
Rooke in 1704, and has ever since remained subject to
Britain. Since the English became masters of it, its for¬
tifications have been so much improved as to render it im¬
pregnable. The memorable siege commenced by the Spa¬
niards in the course of the American war was signalized by
the glorious defence of General Elliot, and by the total de¬
struction, in 1782, of an apparatus of floating batteries,
mounting above 200 pieces of cannon, from which both
France and Spain had anticipated the most splendid success.
The possession of Gibraltar is esteemed of great conse¬
quence to Britain. It not only gives us the command of
the Straits, and their navigation, but affords refreshment
and accommodation to our fleets in time of war, and to our
merchantmen at all times ; wdiich, to a maritime power, is
a great advantage. It is otherwise highly favourable to our
trade in the Mediterranean and Levant. It saves us the
expense of squadrons or convoys, upon any disputes or dis¬
turbances that may happen among the neighbouring powers,
and which would otherwise be necessary for the protection
of our navigation.
GIBSON, Richard, an English painter, commonly
called the Dwarf, was originally page to a lady at Mort-
lake, who, observing that his genius led him to painting,
had the generosity to get him instructed in the rudiments
of that art. Having devoted himself to Sir Peter Lely’s
manner, he copied his pictures to admiration, especially his
portraits; and his paintings in water colours were also
esteemed. He was in great favour with Charles I. who
made him page of the back stairs; and he had the ho¬
nour to instruct in drawing Queen Mary and Queen Anne
when they were princesses. He married one Mrs Anne
Shepherd, who was also a dwarf, on which occasion King
Charles I. honoured their marriage with his presence, and
gave away the bride. Mr Waller wrote a poem on this
occasion, entitled The Marriage of the Dwarfs; in which
are these lines:
Design or chance makes others wive.
But nature did this match contrive;
Eve might as well have Adam fled,
As she deny’d her little bed
To him for whom heav’n seem’d to frame
And measure out this only dame.
Mr Fenton, in his notes on this poem, observes that he had
seen this couple painted by Sir Peter Lely; and that they
were of an equal stature, each being three feet ten inches
high. They had nine children, five of whom arrived at
maturity, and were well proportioned, being of the usual
standard of mankind. But what nature denied this couple
in stature, she gave them in length of days; for Mr Gib¬
son died in the seventy-fifth year of his age, and his wife
G I E
having survived him almost twenty years, died in 1709 r
aged eighty-nine.
Gibson, Dr Edmund, bishop of London, was born in Gie
Westmoreland in 1699. He applied himself early and ^
vigorously to learning, and displayed his knowledge in
several writings and translations, which recommended him
to the patronage of Archbishop Tennyson. He was an-
pointed domestic chaplain to his grace ; and soon after
wards became rector of Lambeth, and archdeacon of Surrey
Becoming thus a member of the convocation, he engaged
in a controversy, which was carried on with great warmth
by the members of both houses, and defended his patron's
rights, as president, in eleven pamphlets; he then formed
and completed his more comprehensive scheme of the le¬
gal duties and rights of the English clergy, which was at
length published under the title of Codex Juris Ecclesm-
tici Anglicani, in folio. Archbishop Tennyson bavin" died
in 1715, and Dr Wake bishop of Lincoln having become
archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Gibson succeeded the lat¬
ter in the see of Lincoln, and in 1720 was promoted to the
bishopric of London. He now not only governed his dio¬
cese with the most exact regularity, but by his great care
promoted the spiritual affairs of the church of England
colonies in the West Indies. He was extremely jealous
of the privileges belonging to the church; and therefore,
though he approved of the toleration of the Protestant
Dissenters, he continually guarded against all the attempts
made to procure a repeal of the corporation and test acts;
but his opposition to those licentious assemblies called
masquerades gave great umbrage at court, and effectually
excluded him from all further favours. He spent the
latter part of his life in writing and printing pastoral let¬
ters, visitation-charges, occasional sermons, and tracts
against the prevailing immoralities of the age. His pasto¬
ral letters are justly esteemed as the most masterly pro¬
ductions against infidelity and enthusiasm. His most cele¬
brated work, the Codex, has been already mentioned. His
other publications are, 1. An edition of Drummond’s Vo-
lemo-Middinia, and James V. of Scotland's Cantilena Rus-
tica, with notes ; 2. the Chronicon Saxonicum, with a La¬
tin translation, and notes ; 3. Reliquice Spelmannianee, the
posthumous works of Sir Henry Spelman, relating to the
laws and antiquities of England; 4. An edition of Quintilian
De Arte Oratoria, with notes; 5. An English translation
of Camden’s Britannia, with additions, two volumes folio;
and, 6. A number of small pieces, which have been col¬
lected together and printed in three volumes folio. His
intense application to study impaired his health; notwith¬
standing which, he attained the age of seventy-nine. He
expired in September 1748, after an episcopate of nearly
thirty-three years.
GIDEON, the son of Joash, of the tribe of Manasseh.
He dwelt in the city of Ophrah; and had a very extra¬
ordinary7 call to deliver the Israelites from the oppression
of the Midianites, to which they had become subject after
the death of Barak and Deborah. Having effected their
deliverance by supernatural aid, he was chosen judge of
Israel in the year of the world 2759, and died in 2768.
GIESSEN, a city of the grand duchy of Hesse, in Ger¬
many7, in the province of Upper Hesse. It stands on the
river Lahn, at its junction with the Wieseck, and is the seat
of the several boards of government, of justice, and of the
ecclesiastical superintendent. The university, founded in
1607, is flourishing, and has twenty-three professors and
between two and three hundred students. It has connected
with it two public libraries, a botanical garden, and various
museums. It contains 720 houses and 7000 inhabitants)
including the university. Long. 9. 38. E. Lat. 50. 36. ^ •
It is the capital of a bailiwick of the same name, compre¬
hending two cities, one market-town, and thirty-five vi
lages, with 3219 houses and 20,450 inhabitants.
GIF
j GIFFORD, William, a distinguished critic, satirist,
1C1 dramatic annotator, was born at Ashburton, in Devon-
ire, in April 1757. Although his immediate ancestors
W issessed considerable property in their native county, and
m ^re there accounted gentlemen, yet a series of indiscre-
ms had deprived them of the greater part of their sub-
ince ; and when the subject of this memoir was born, his
ther only possessed two small estates. The elder Gifford,
lose roving propensities had driven him to sea, and also
i him “ to wander in some vagabond society,” as his son
forms us, established himself after his marriage, as a
umber and glazier, at South Molton. But his habits were
isettled and desultory; he went again to sea, and once
ore returned without having acquired any wisdom from
s misfortunes; and he died at last, “ of a decayed and
ined constitution, before he was forty.” When this event
tppened, his son William had not completed his thirteenth
:ar. He had been sent to school to read, write, and ci-
icr; but, according to his own account of himself, he
Pi ere made “ a most wretched progress.” In less than
1 /elve months after the death of his father, his mother fol-
P1 | wed her husband to the grave, and after various vicissi-
I w | des young Gifford was sent on board of a coasting ves-
1, by the person under whose guardianship he had been
W| aced. This individual, who was his godfather, and into
hose hands the effects of Gifford’s parents had fallen, re-
si .lied him from his nautical pursuits, principally, it would
si ) ipear, on account of the outcry which the people of Ash-
irton raised against him for the manner in which he had
® i eated his young charge. Gifford was now sent to school,
here he made great progress, especially in arithmetic ; but
i fc|: am this he was in a short time withdrawn, and apprenticed
I top a shoemaker. He was now in his fifteenth year, and he
™ as articled to serve until he was twenty-one. But he
pjfl oroughly hated his new profession, and whenever leisure
i Forded him opportunities, he prosecuted his favourite
S'I udy of mathematics. Few facilities for study fell to his
| to I t, but his ingenuity supplied the deficiency; and the
® ! cans which he adopted of improving himself, as well as
I" | e irrepressible perseverance which he displayed, affords
) ii 3 striking instance of the force of genius in compensating
| a i id overcoming the disadvantages of untoward circum-
| S i ances. He also began to write verses, though not at this
ft I ariod for amusement, but only when he wanted money
>r his mathematical pursuits. But his devotedness to his
9 t udies seems to have rendered him indifferent to the con-
5 i ferns of his master, whose indignation was accordingly
d msed. He requested young Gifford to give up his books
id papers; and this being refused, he proceeded to the
''pi arret of the delinquent, which he thoroughly sacked. Be¬
il I ig now deprived of his sole means of improvement, almost
F enjoyment, Gifford began to display a degree of sullen-
|il ess, reserve, and discontent, which made him an object of
islike to his fellow-workmen. However, in this humble
"id obscure condition, poor beyond the common lot, he
ttracted the notice of Mr Cookesley, a surgeon of the
iwn in which he resided. This excellent individual deep-
I' interested himself in behalf of Gifford, and set on foot a
ibscription to purchase his freedom from the latter part of
is indentures, and to pay for his education ; a scheme
Inch completely succeeded. Thus, by an act of genero-
ty, which it is pleasing to record, was the humble shoe-
laker rescued from his abject state, and placed in circum-
lances which enabled him to gain the highest literary ho-
ours, and to sit in judgment upon the most gifted men of
is time.
After having passed two years at school, he was pronoun-
ed fit for the university ; and by the active benevolence of
h- Cookesley he was enabled to proceed to Oxford, where
e obtained the situation of Bible reader in Exeter College.
Whilst at this place, he undertook a translation of Juvenal,
GIF 517
poetry having now become his delight. A subscription Gifford,
for publishing it was set on foot; but during the progress ^
of this undertaking his benefactor died; a circumstance
which ultimately, and perhaps fortunately, prevented him
from publishing a translation of the great Roman satirist,
at least for a time. By an accidental occurrence, how¬
ever, he became known to Lord Grosvenor, who invited
him to his house. He accordingly quitted Oxford, and
took up his residence with that nobleman, under whose
hospitable roof he prosecuted the translation of Juvenal,
until called upon to accompany the son of his patron to the
Continent. With this young nobleman he spent, in two
successive tours, many years, “ of which,” he says in his
autobiography, “ the remembrance will always be dear.”
Although Mr Gifford was principally engaged upon his
translation of Juvenal, its publication was preceded by se¬
veral other productions, by which at the time he obtained
great popularity. The first was the Bavaid, a paraphrase
on the first satire of Persius. This production appeared in
1794, and was levelled at a class of poetasters who de¬
luged the daily prints of the time with their weak and ef¬
feminate lucubrations, w hich were likewise deformed by the
most fulsome adulation of each other. The satire had the
effect of completely extinguishing this tuneless tribe. Mr
Gifford’s next production, which appeared the following-
year, was entitled the Mceviad ; an imitation of Horace, and
directed against the corruptions of the drama. This work
was only partially successful, for the malady which it was in¬
tended to cure had its seat in public manners rather than
in the affectation of individuals. In both of these works
Mr Gifford displays the most caustic severity and persona¬
lity ; and it has been questioned whether the harmless ge¬
neration of ephemeral songsters and dramatists deserved
the abuse with which they were assailed. In 1800 he pub¬
lished his Epistle to Peter Pindar, an attack which brought
him little else but disquietude; the laughter of the one
satirist being quite as formidable as the gall of the other.
About this period Mr Gifford became connected with a set
of men of wit and genius, at the head of whom was Mr
Canning, who resolved upon establishing a weekly paper for
the purpose of exposing to ridicule the political agitators of
the time. This print was called the Anti-Jacobin, and Mr
Gifford became its editor. The ministerial connection thus
formed was of some use to him, as by it he obtained the
paymastership of the band of gentlemen pensioners ; and at
a subsequent period he was made a double commissioner
of the lottery. In 1802 appeared his English version of
Juvenal, a work which may be said to have engrossed the
greater part of his life. It was ushered into the world with
every possible advantage, headed by a dedication to Earl
Grosvenor, and with the translator’s autobiography prefixed
to it. The translation is able and spirited, although it is
occasionally diffuse and unharmonious, and not unfrequently
coarse in its diction. In 1805 Mr Gifford published an edi¬
tion of the Plays of Massinger in four volumes; and in 1816
the Works of Ben Johnson, in nine volumes. In his an¬
notations upon both these dramatic poets he displays great
acuteness and industry; but in exposing the blunders of
previous commentators, he shows not a little of his charac¬
teristic acerbity. In 1821 he published a version of Per¬
sius ; and since his death his editions of the dramatic works
of Ford and Shirley have been given to the world, accom¬
panied with able and acute notes.
It was, however, as editor of the Quarterly Review that
Mr Gifford became most generally known. The success
of the Edinburgh Review, in advocating liberal principles
in politics, suggested to the opposite party the idea of a
counterpoise in the shape of the journal above named,
which was accordingly carried into effect in 1809, and Mr
Gifford entrusted with its management. The scheme com¬
pletely succeeded; and it is allowed by all parties, that as
GIF
editor of this distinguished journal, Mr Gilford displayed
uncommon skill and ability. No man possessed a finer tact
in discerning the weak and bad points of an author, when
his object was to turn him into ridicule; none could hold
them up to laughter with more felicitous acrimony. From
the time of his taking the charge of the Quarterly Review
until his death, few circumstances of any moment occurred
in the life of Mr Gifford, except the publication of the
works already mentioned. He continued the editorship
until about two years before his death, which took place on
the 31st of December 1826.
From the prominent position which Mr Gifford occupied
in the literary world, his character has been the subject
of severe animadversion by one party, and of exaggerated
eulogy by another. Of his great talents there can be no
doubt. His sagacity and quickness of apprehension were
striking, and the rapidity with which he acquired know¬
ledge is proved by his having prepared himself for the
university after being only two years at school. His wit
was distinguished for caustic severity rather than for bril¬
liancy, and he dealt more in invective than in polished
repartee. As a poet he cannot be said to rank very high ;
but that he had a keen perception of the beauties of the
noblest inspirations of the muse, and could point them
out with great felicity, provided political feelings did not
intervene to pervert his judgment, is proved by his many
admirable criticisms, and by the confidence which Lord
Byron and others reposed in his opinions. In private
life Mr Gifford was modest and unassuming ; and amongst
the numerous parties, poetical, political, or religious, who
occasionally suffered by his castigations, none of them
ever ventured to recriminate by attacking the moral cha¬
racter of the editor of the Quarterly Review. The me¬
moir of himself, which he prefixed to his version of Ju¬
venal, is one of the most remarkable pieces of autobio¬
graphy extant. It is written with ability and manly feel¬
ing, as well as with unaffected modesty and apparent can¬
dour. (r. R. R.)
GIFT, in the law of England, is a conveyance which
passes either lands or goods, and is of a larger extent than
a grant, being applied to things moveable and immove¬
able ; yet as to things immoveable, when taken strictly,
it is applicable only to lands and tenements given in tail.
But gift and grant are too often confounded.
New Year’s Gifts, presents made on new year’s day,
as a token of the giver’s good will, as well as by way of
presage of a happy year. This practice is very ancient,
the origin of it among the Romans being referred to Tati-
us king of the Sabines, who reigned at Rome conjointly
with Romulus, and who, having considered as a good omen
a present of some sprigs' of vervain gathered in a wood
consecrated to Strenia, the goddess of strength, which he
received on the first day of the new year, authorized this
custom afterwards, and gave to these presents the name
of Strence. But however this may be, the Romans on that
day celebrated a festival in honour of Janus ; paid their re¬
spects at the same time to Juno; and avoided passing it
in idleness, lest they should become indolent during the
rest of the year. They sent presents to one another of figs,
dates, honey, and other articles, to show their friends that
they wished them a happy and agreeable life. Clients,
that is to say, those who were under the protection of the
great, carried presents of this kind to their patrons, adding
to them a small piece of silver. Under Augustus, the
senate, the knights, and the people, presented such gifts
to the emperor, and in his absence deposited them in the
Capitol. Of the succeeding princes, some adopted this
custom, and others abolished it; but it always continued
amongst the people. The early Christians condemned it,
because it appeared to be a relic of paganism, and a species
of superstition; but when it began to have no other object
G I L
than that of being a mark of veneration and esteem thp
church ceased to disapprove of it. ’ %
GIGG, Giga, or Jig, in Music and Dancing, a gay, Git
brisk, sprightly composition, yet in full measure, as well '•v
as the allemand, which is more serious. Menage con¬
ceives the word to spring from the Italian gieg, a musi-
cal instrument mentioned by Dante. Others suppose it
to be derived from the Teutonic giga, or ghiighe, a fiddle
This is a favourite air in most nations of Europe; its cha¬
racteristic is duple time, and it consists of two strains, with,
out any determinate number of bars.
GIGLEWICK, a township of the west riding of the
county of York, in the wapentake of Staincliffand Ewer-
cross. It stands at the base of a rock 300 feet in height,
on the summit of which is the parish church, to which the
ascent is by steps cut in the limestone. Within the parish
are some valuable stone quarries. The population amount¬
ed in 1801 to 2201, in 1811 to 2428, in 1821 to 2817 and
in 1831 to 3017.
GUON, a city of Spain, in the province of Asturias. It
is built at the foot of a hill, on the sea shore, and has a port,
which is by far the best in the province, and in which the
greater portion of its foreign commerce centres. The
harbour is well defended by a castle on the hill nearthecity,
and by batteries constructed on the mole. The entrance is
very narrow and difficult, and the difficulty gradually in¬
creases, from the sea receding in such a manner as to
alarm the merchants with the apprehension that their har¬
bour will in a few years become wholly dry land. The
city is very beautiful, the streets are wide and straight, and
cross each other at right angles; and most of the houses
are of recent construction, and well built-. An institution
for the promotion of scientific knowledge was formed here
in 1794, and the pupils are instructed in mathematics,
and the application of geometry to mechanics, naviga¬
tion, and the other arts; and mineralogical and geological
lectures are delivered. Its longitude is 5. 13. 39. west
from London, and its latitude 43. 35. 10. north. This
town contains 3200 inhabitants, who are employed in mak¬
ing earthenware, buttons, and cider.
GILBERT, or Gilberd, William, a physician, born at
Colchester in the year 1540, was the eldest son of the re¬
corder of that borough. Having spent some time in both
universities, he went abroad ; and on his return settled in
London, where he practised with considerable reputation.
He became a member of the College of Physicians, and
physician in ordinary to Queen Elizabeth, who, we are
told, gave him a pension to encourage him in his studies.
From his epitaph it appears that he was also physician to
King James I. He died in the year 1603, aged sixty-
three, and was buried in Trinity Church, Colchester,
where a handsome monument was erected to his memory.
His books, globes, instruments, and fossils, he bequeathed
to the College of Physicians, and his picture to the school
gallery at Oxford. He wrote, 1. De Magnete, magne-
ticisque Corporibus, et de magno magnete Tellure, Thy-
siologia nova, London, 1600, folio; 2.De Mundo nostro sub¬
lunar! Philosophia nova, Amsterdam, 1651, 4to. He was
also the inventor of two mathematical instruments for find¬
ing the latitude at sea without the help of sun, moon, or
stars. A description of these instruments was afterwards
published by Thomas Blondeville, in his Theoriques of the
Planets.
Gilbert, Sir Humphrey, a brave officer and skilful na¬
vigator, was born about the year 1539, in Devonshire, and
descended of an ancient family. Though a second son,
he inherited a considerable fortune from his father. 1 e
was educated at Eton, and afterwards at Oxford, where
Jie did not probably continue long. It was intended t a
he should finish his studies in the Temple ; but being in'
troduced at court by his aunt Mrs Catharine Ashley, then
I' GIL
GIL
519
,ine3
ist-
! the queen’s service, he was diverted from the study of
iv and commenced soldier. Having distinguished him-
If in several military expeditions, particularly in that
-ainst Newhaven in 1563, he was sent over to Ireland to
'gist in suppressing a rebellion; and there, for his signal
rvices, he was made commander-in-chief and governor
' Munster, and knighted by the lord deputy, Sir Henry
dney, upon the first day of the year 1570. He returned
on afterwards to England, where he married a rich heir-
s. Nevertheless, in 1572, he sailed with a squadron of
ne ships to reinforce Colonel Morgan, who at that time
editated the recovery of Flushing. On his return to
ngland he appears to have resumed his cosmographical
udies, to which he was naturally inclined; for, in the
;ar 1576, he published his treatise on the north-west
is«age to the East Indies ; and as Martin Frobisher sail-
1 in the same year, he probably did so in consequence
’ this treatise. In 1578 he obtained from the queen a
jry ample patent, empowering him to discover and pos-
igs in North America any lands then unsettled. He sail-
1 to Newfoundland, but soon returned to England with-
it success ; nevertheless, in 1583, he embarked a second
me with five ships, the largest of which put back on ac-
mnt of a contagious distemper on board. Gilbert land-
1 on Newfoundland on the 3d of August, and on the 5th
iok possession of the harbour of St John’s. By virtue
f his patent he granted leases to several people ; but
jough none of them remained there at that time, they
;ttled afterwards in consequence of these leases, so that
e deserves to be remembered as the real founder of our
ist American empire. On the 20th of August he again
at to sea on board a small sloop, which on the 29th foun-
ered in a hard gale of wind ; and thus perished Sir Hum-
hrey Gilbert, a man of quick parts, a brave soldier, a good
mthematician, a skilful navigator, and an enterprising
enius. We learn also that he was remarkable for his
loquence, and much admired for his patriotic speeches
oth in the English and Irish parliaments. He wrote A
liscourse to prove a Passage by the north-west to Ca-
laia and the East Indies, 1576, which is preserved in
lakluyt’s Collection of Voyages (vol. iii. p. 11). The
tyle is superior to that of most of the writers of the age,
nd shows the author to have been a man of considerable
eading.
GILBERTINES, a religious order so called from St Gil-
ert of Sempringham, in the county of Lincoln, who found-
d the same about the year 1148. The monks of this order
bserved the rule of St Augustin, and were accounted ca-
ons; the nuns observed that o’f St Benedict. The founder
f this order erected a double monastery, or rather two dif-
-I’ent ones, contiguous to each other, the one for men, the
ther for women, but separated by a very high wall. St Gil-
ert himself founded thirteen monasteries of this order, viz.
aur for men alone, and nine for men and women together,
ddch had in them seven hundred brethren and fifteen hun-
Ired sisters. At the dissolution there were about twenty-
ive houses of this order in England and Wales.
GILCHRIST, Dr Ebenezer, an eminent Scotch phy-
I ician, was born at Dumfries in 1707. He began the study
'1 medicine at Edinburgh, which he afterwards prosecuted
•t London and Paris. He obtained the degree of doctor
'1 medicine from the university of Rheims; and in the
ear 1732 he returned to the place of his nativity, where
ie afterwards constantly resided, and continued the prac-
ice of medicine till his death. It may with justice be said,
hat few physicians of the past century exercised their
'rofession in a manner more respectable or more successful
jut. Dr Gilchrist; and few have contributed so largely to
he improvement of the healing art. Having engaged in
jusiness at an early period of life, his attention was wholly
levoted to observation. Endowed by nature with a judg¬
ment acute and solid, and a genius active and inventive, Gildas
he soon distinguished himself by departing, in various im- ||
portant particulars, from established but unsuccessful modes Gilding,
of practice. Several of the improvements which he intro-
duced have procured him great and deserved reputation
both at home and abroad. His practice, in ordinary cases,
was allowed to be judicious, and placed him high in the
confidence and esteem of the inhabitants of that part of the
country where he lived. But his usefulness was not con¬
fined to his own neighbourhood. Upon many occasions he
was consulted by letter from the most distant parts of the
country. In different collections are to be found several
of his performances, which prove that he had something
new and useful to offer upon every subject to which he ap¬
plied himself. But those writings which do him the great¬
est honour are two dissertations on nervous fevers, in the
medical essays and observations published by a society in
Edinburgh; and a treatise on the use of sea voyages in
medicine, which first made its appearance in the year 1757,
and was afterwards reprinted in 1771. Dr Gilchrist died
in 1774.
GILD, or Guild. See Guild.
GILDAS, the oldest British historian, and surnamed
the Wise, was born in Wales in the year 511. It is un¬
certain where he was educated ; but it appears from his
own writings that he was a monk. Some writers say that
he went over to Ireland ; and others, that he visited France
and Italy. They agree however in asserting, that after his
return to England he became a celebrated and most assi¬
duous preacher of Christianity. Dupin says he founded a
monastery at Yenetia in Britain. Gildas is the only Bri¬
tish author of the sixth century whose works are printed ;
they are therefore valuable on account of their antiquity,
and as containing the only information we have concerning
the times of which he wrote. The only work, however,
attributed to him with certainty is his Epistola de excidio
Britannice, et Castigatio ordinis ecclesiastici, London, 1525,
in 8vo, Bale, 1541, in 12mo, and by Gale in his Rerum An-
glicarum Scriptores veteres, 1684,1687, in folio. In this pro¬
duction he laments the miseries and almost total ruin of his
countrymen, and severely reproves the corruption and profli¬
gacy of his age. The first part contains a vague account of
events from the Roman invasion to his own times, and on
this account is valuable, notwithstanding the inelegance
and obscurity of the style. Gildas is also the supposed
author of Canons and Regulations of Discipline for the use
of Ireland, collected by Dom Luc d’Achery in the ninth
volume of his Specilegia. The time and place of his death
have not been ascertained.
GILDING, the art of spreading or covering over a thing
with gold, either in leaf or in liquid. The art of gilding
was not unknown amongst the ancients, though it never
arrived among them at the perfection to which the mo¬
derns have carried it. Pliny assures us that the first gild¬
ing seen at Rome was after the destruction of Carthage,
under the censorship of Lucius Mummius, when they be¬
gan to gild the ceilings of their temples and palaces ; the
Capitol being the first place on which this enrichment was
bestowed. But he adds, that luxury advanced on them so
rapidly, that in a little time you might see all, even private
and poor persons, gild the walls, vaults, and other parts of
their dwellings.
We need not doubt that they had the same method as our¬
selves, of beating gold, and reducing it into leaves; though
it should seem that they did not carry it to the same ex¬
tent, if it be true which Pliny relates, that they only made
750 leaves of four fingers square out of an ounce. Indeed
he adds that they could make more ; that the thickest were
called bractece Prcenestince, by reason of a statue of the god¬
dess Fortune at Praeneste gilt with such leaves; and that
the thinner sort was called bractece questorice.
520
G I L D T N G.
Gilding.
The modern gilders also make use of gold leaves of dif¬
ferent thickness; but there are some so fine that a thousand
do not weigh above four or five drachms. The thickest
are used for gilding on iron and other metals, and the
thinnest on wood. But we have another advantage over
the ancients in the manner of using or applying the gold.
The secret of painting in oil, discovered of late ages, fur¬
nishes us with means of gilding works capable of enduring
all the injuries of time and weather, which to the ancients
was impracticable. They had no way to lay the gold on
bodies which would not endure the fire, but with the albu¬
men of eggs or size, neither of which will endure the water;
so that they could only gild such places as were sheltered
from moisture.
The Greeks called the composition on which they ap¬
plied their gilding on wood leucophceum or leucophorum ;
which is described as a sort of glutinous compound earth,
serving in all probability to make the gold stick and bear
polishing. But antiquaries and naturalists are not agreed
as to the particulars of this earth, its colour, and ingredi¬
ents.
The lustre and beauty of gold have occasioned several
inquiries and discoveries concerning the different methods
of applying it to different substances. Hence the art of
gilding is very extensive, and contains many particular
operations and various management.
A colour of gold is given by painting and by varnishes,
without employing gold ; but this is a false kind of gilding.
Thus a very fine golden colour is given to brass and to sil¬
ver, by applying to these metals a gold-coloured varnish,
which, being transparent, shows all the brilliancy of the
metals underneath. Many ornaments of brass were var¬
nished in this manner, which is called gold laquering, to
distinguish them from those which are really gilt. Silver
leaves thus varnished are put upon leather, which is then
called gilt leather. (See Laquer.)
There are two methods of gilding on wood, which are
severally termed size and oil gilding. The leaves of seve¬
ral metals are used for this purpose, viz. gold, silver, mo¬
saic gold, Egyptian gold, Peruvian gold, and Dutch metal.
Gold and silver alone are used when the work is to be bur¬
nished ; the others only for the coarser sorts of oil-gilding,
and that rarely, owing to their liability to blacken with the
atmosphere, from being merely a composition of the baser
metals.
The practical operations are nearly the same with re¬
spect to all the different metals; but as various sizes are
required to prepare the work, we shall describe the manner
of procuring them before we describe how they are em¬
ployed : ls£, Strong size; 2d, clear size; 3c?, burnish gold
size, and oil gold size.
Is#, Strong size is prepared from the parings of animal
hides: the best, and that in most common use, is known at
the tan-works by the name of bate shavings. To one pound
of these shavings add a gallon of water, and boil them to¬
gether for two or three hours, so that when cold they may
become a very stiff jelly. After it has been strained it is
fit for use. 2d, To prepare clear size, take of vellum two
ounces, add one pint of water, and boil them for one hour, or
until, when cold, they become a stiffish jelly, about half the
strength of the above. 3c?, To make gold size for burnish¬
ing, reduce one pound of fine pipe-clay to powder, take
one quarter of an ounce of black lead, and half an ounce
of French bole, and grind the two together on a painter’s
stone with water ; mix in the clay, and add more water, un¬
til it attains the consistency of a thick paste ; put in a quar¬
ter of an ounce of olive oil; grind the whole, and it is then
ready for use.
The tools to be used are the tip, the cushion, and knife.
The tip is a broad thin brush, made of the long hairs of the
squirrel’s tail glued between two cards. The cushion is a
board covered with calf leather, the rough side un
fold of cotton between. ^ a
Warm the strong size, and mix with it the finest washed
whitening until it is of the consistency of very thick cream-
lay it on the work to be gilded with a sash tool; allow it t’
dry, and repeat the coats five or six times, allowing it to
dry each time. If plain or moulded, take pumice-stone and
smooth the work; allow it to dry, and smooth again with
fine sand-paper; then take a portion of the gold size (X0
3), and mix it with a part of the clear size (No. 2), in a
warm state, until it has been reduced to the consistency of
cream; give the work four coats of this, allowing it to
dry each time ; rub it down with flour-emery paper, and
coat again the parts to be burnished : the mat or flat part
must be coated with the clear size (No. 2) reduced with
equal part of water. Take the gold leaf and spread it on
the cushion, cut it with the knife to the size required, take
the tip, grease it slightly, to make the gold lift; and having
drawn a wetted hair pencil over the part meant to be co¬
vered, lift the leaf with the tip and lay it on, repeating this
until the whole is covered: allow this to stand for five or six
hours, and rub carefully over the parts to be burnished
with the burnisher. The burnisher is a piece of smooth
pebble fixed into a handle. Any faults in the mat part
should be mended with leaf, and coated over with clear
size, and then the work is finished.
Oil-gilding.—Oil gold size is made by grinding Oxford
ochre with drying oil, adding, when used, a little fat oil
(fat oil is procured by spreading a thin film of linseed oil
on water, or shaking it in a bottle w ith oxygen gas).
Work which is not to be exposed to damp or moisture
should be prepared in the same manner as for burnishing,
and in the place of burnish gold size it should get two
coats of strong size (No. 1) a little reduced with water;
and when dry-coated with the oil gold size, and allowed to
stand till the breath lies on it, then lay the leaf as former¬
ly described, pressing it down with cotton wool; dust it
off with a brush, coat it with clear size, and the work is
finished.
Gilt]
W
Out-door wrork is prepared entirely with oil-paint in
place of size, and when dry it is coated with the oil gold
size, and gilded in the same manner as described above;
but no size is applied on the surface of the gold.
It will readily be perceived that burnish and mat gilding
is a more laborious process than gilding in oil, consequently
more expensive at the first. It has, however, the advan¬
tage over the oil, for inside work, of keeping longer clean,
owing to the smoothness of its surface; for the best exe¬
cuted work in oil has a roughness which allows the smoke
and dust more readily to adhere. On the other hand,
when the work is to be exposed to the weather, oil gilding
has a power of resisting its action scarcely to be conceived.
The method of applying gold upon metals is entirely
different, and it is done in various ways. One of these
is by previously forming the gold into a paste or amal¬
gam w-ith mercury. In order to obtain a small amalgam
of gold and mercury, the gold must first be reduced into
thin plates or grains, which are heated red hot, and thrown
into mercury previously heated, till it begins to smoke.
Upon stirring the mercury with an iron rod, the gold totally
disappears. The proportion of mercury to gold is gene¬
rally as six or eight to one. With this amalgam the sur¬
face of the metal to be gilded is to be covered; then a suffi¬
cient heat is to be applied to evaporate the mercury; and,
lastly, the gold is to be burnished with a bloodstone.
This method of gilding by amalgamation is chiefly used
for gilding copper, or an alloy of copper, w ith a small por¬
tion of zinc, which more readily receives the amalgam;
and it is also preferable for its colour, which more resem¬
bles that of gold than the colour of copper. When the
metal to be gilt is wrought or chased, it ought to be prB'
GILDING.
ling, iously covered with quicksilver before the amalgam is ap-
'•lied, that this may be easier spread ; but when the surface
f the metal is plain, the amalgam may be applied directly
3 it. It is to be observed that the use of the blood-stone
i now generally abandoned, and a steel burnisher substi-
uted for it. The steel burnisher is case-hardened and then
olished; the clearer the polish is, the brighter will the
ietal be burnished. The quicksilver or amalgam is made
» adhere to the metal by means of a little aquafortis, which
; rubbed on the metallic surface at the same time, and by
•Inch this surface is cleansed from any rust or tarnish that
light prevent the union or adhesion of the metals. But
ie use of the nitrous acid in this operation is not, as isgene-
illy supposed, confined merely to the cleansing the surface
f the metal to be gilt, from any rust or tarnish which it may
ave acquired, but also greatly facilitates the application
f the amalgam to the surface of that metal. In the first
lace it dissolves part of the mercury of the amalgam ; and
hen this solution is applied to the copper, the latter me-
il, having a stronger affinity for nitrous acid than the mer-
nry has, precipitates the mercury upon its surface, in the
une manner as a polished piece of iron precipitates cop¬
er upon its surface from a solution of blue vitriol. When
le metal to be gilt is thus covered over with a thin pre-
ipitated coating of mercury, it readily receives the amal-
am. In this solution and precipitation of mercury, the
rincipal use of the nitrous acid in the process of gilding
ipears to consist. The amalgam being equally spread
ver the surface of the metal to be gilt, by means of a brush,
ic mercury is then to be evaporated by a heat just suffi-
ent for that purpose ; for if it be too great, part of the
fid may also be expelled, and part of it will run together,
id leave some of the surface of the metal bare. Whilst
ie mercury is evaporating, the piece should be from time
i time taken from the fire, that it may be examined, that
it* amalgam may be spread more equally by means of a
msh, that any defective parts of it may be again covered,
id that the heat may not be too suddenly applied to it;
id when the mercury has evaporated, which is known by
le surface having entirely become of a dull yellow colour,
ie metal must then undergo other operations, by which
>e fine gold colour is given to it. First, the gilded piece
metal is rubbed with a scratch brush, composed of brass
ire, until its surface be made smooth ; then it is covered
/er with a composition called gilding wax, and again ex-
ised to the fire until the wax be burnt off. This wax is
imposed of bees-wax, mixed with some of the following
distances, viz. red ochre, verdigris, copper scales, alum,
triol, borax; but, according to Dr Lewis, the saline sub-
ances alone are sufficient, without any wax. By this
icration the colour of the gilding is heightened ; and the
feet seems to be produced by a perfect dissipation of
ime mercury remaining after the former operation. This
ssipation is well effected by this equable application of
at. I he gilt surface is then covered over with a saline
imposition, consisting of nitre, alum, or other vitriolic
1 ground together, and mixed up into a paste with wa-
r or urine. The piece of metal thus covered is exposed
a certain degree of heat, and then quenched in water,
y this method its colour is further improved, and brought
urer to that of gold. This effect seems to be produced
' the acid of nitre (which is disengaged by the vitriolic
u ffio alum, or other vitriolic salt, during the expo¬
re to heat) acting upon any particles of copper which
aY happen to lie on the gilded surface. Lastly, some art-
E t k ^VG an lustre to their gilt
|!| ay dipping it in a liquor prepared by boiling some
<iw materials, as sulphur, orpiment, or turmeric. The
1) advantage of this operation is, that a part of the yel-
v' n'atter, as the sulphur or turmeric, remains in some of
e ufilows of the carved work, in which the gilding is apt
to be more imperfect, and to which it gives a rich and so¬
lid appearance.
Iron cannot be gilt by amalgamation, unless, as it is said,
it be previously coated over with copper by dipping it in a
solution of blue vitriol. At Sheffield and Birmingham the
metal is generally first covered with copper, and then gild¬
ed. 1 his species of gilding, however, does not present any
tiling like a good colour, and, besides, it is by no means dur¬
able. Iron may also receive a gold coating from a saturat¬
ed solution of gold in nitro-muriatic acid, or in aqua-regia,
mixed with alcohol or spirit of wine, the iron having a
greater affinity for the acid, from which it necessarily pre¬
cipitates the gold. Whether any of these two methods
be applicable to use, is uncertain; but the method com¬
monly employed of fixing gold upon iron is that above
mentioned, of burnishing gold leaf upon this metal when
heated so as to become blue; and the operation will be
more perfect if the surface has been previously scratched
or graved.
Another method is mentioned by authors, of gilding upon
metals, and also upon earthen ware, and upon glass; name¬
ly, to fuse gold with regulus of antimony, to pulverize the
mass, which is sufficiently brittle to admit that operation, to
spread this powder upon the piece to be gilt, and to expose
it to such a fire that the regulus may be evaporated, whilst
the gold remains fixed. The inconveniences of this me¬
thod, according to Dr Lewis, are, that the powder does not
adhere to the piece, and cannot be equally spread; that
part of the gold is dissipated along with the regulus ; that
glass is fusible with the heat necessary for the evaporation
of regulus of antimony ; and that copper is liable to be cor¬
roded by the regulus, and to have its surface rendered un¬
even.
On the subject of gilding by amalgamation Dr Lewis
makes the following observations. “ There are two principal
inconveniences in this business ; one, that the workmen are
exposed to the fumes of the mercury, and generally, sooner
or later, have their health greatly impaired by them; the
other, the loss of the mercury; for though part of it is said
to be detained in cavities made in the chimney for that
purpose, yet the greatest part of it is lost. From some
trials I have made, it appeared that both these inconve¬
niences, particularly the first and most considerable one,
might in good measure be avoided, by means of a furnace
of a due construction. If the communication of a furnace
with its chimney, instead of being over the fire, is made
under the grate, the ash-pit door, or other apertures be¬
neath the grate, closed, and the mouth of the furnace left
open, the current of air, which otherwise would have en¬
tered beneath, enters now at the top, and passing down
through the grate to the chimney, carries with it completely
both the vapour of the fuel and the fumes of such matters
as are placed upon it: the back part of the furnace should
#be raised a little higher above the fire than the fore part,
and an iron plate laid over it, that the air may enter only
at the front, where the workman stands, who will be thus
effectually secured from the fumes, and from being incom¬
moded with the heat, and at the same time have full liberty
of introducing, inspecting, and removing the work. If such
a furnace is made of strong forged (not milled) iron plate,
it will be sufficiently durable : the upper end of the chim¬
ney may reach above a foot and a half higher than the le¬
vel of the fire : over this is to be placed a larger tube, leav¬
ing an interval of an inch or more all round between it
and the chimney, and reaching to the height of ten or
twelve feet, the higher the better. The external air, pass¬
ing up between the chimney and the outer pipe, prevents
the latter from being much heated, so that the mercurial
fumes will condense against its sides into running quick¬
silver, which, falling down to the bottom, is there catched
in a hollow rim, formed by turning inwards a portion of
3 u
521
Gilding.
522
Gilding.
G I L
the lower part, and conveyed, by a pipe at one side, into a
proper receiver.1
“ Mr Hellot communicates, in the Memoirs of the French
Academy for the year 1745, a method ot making raised
figures of gold on works of gold or silver, found among the
papers of M. Dufay, and of which M. Dufay himself had
seen several trials. Fine gold in powder, such as results
from the parting of gold and silver by aquafortis, is directed
to be laid in a heap on a levigating stone, a cavity made in
the middle of the heap, and half its weight of pure mercury
put into the cavity ; some of the fetid spirit obtained from
garlic root by distillation in a retort, is then to be added,
and the whole immediately mingled and ground with a mul-
ler till the mixture is reduced into an uniform gray powder.
The powder is to be ground with lemon juice to the con¬
sistence of paint, and applied on the piece previously well
cleaned and rubbed over with the same acid juice ; the
figures drawn with it may be raised to any degree by re¬
peating the application. The piece is exposed to a gentle
fire till the mercury is evaporated so as to leave the gold
yellow, which is then to be pressed down, and rubbed with
the finger and a little sand, which makes it appear solid and
brilliant; after this it may be cut and embellished. The
author observes that, being of a spongy texture, it is more
advisable to cut it with a chisel than to raise it with a
graver ; that it has an imperfection of being always pale;
and that it would be a desirable thing to find means of
giving it colour, as by this method ornaments might be
made of exquisite beauty, and with great facility. As the
paleness appears to proceed from a part of the mercury re¬
tained by the gold, 1 apprehend it might be remedied by
the prudent application of a little warm aquafortis, which,
dissolving the mercury from the exterior part, would give
at least a superficial high colour: if the piece is silver, it
must be defended from the aquafortis by covering it with
wax. Instruments and ornaments of gold, stained by mer¬
cury where the gold is connected with substances incapable
of bearing fire, may be restored to their colour by the same
means.
“ The foregoing process is given entirely on the autho¬
rity of the French writer. I have had no experience ot
it myself, but have seen very elegant figures of gold raised
upon silver, on the same principle, by a different proce¬
dure. Some cinnabar was ground, not with the distilled
spirit, but with the expressed juice of garlic, a fluid re¬
markably tenacious. This mixture was spread all over the
polished silver ; and when the first layer had become dry,
a second, and after this a third, was applied. Over these
were spread as many layers of another mixture, composed
chiefly of asphaltum and linseed oil boiled down to a due
consistence. The whole being dried with a gentle heat
on a kind of wire grate, the figures were traced and cut
down to the silver, so as to make its surface rough; the
incisions were filled with an amalgam of gold, raised to
different heights in different parts according to the na¬
ture of the design ; after which a gentle fire, at the same
time that it evaporated the mercury, destroyed the tena¬
city of the gummy juice, so that the coating, which served
to confine the amalgam, and as a guide in the application
of it, was now easily got off. The gold was then pressed
down and embellished as in the former method; and had
this advantage, that the surface of the silver under it
having been made rough, it adhered more firmly, so as
G I L
not to be in danger of coming off, as M. Dufay says the g
gold applied in this way sometimes did. The artist, how-
ever, found the process so troublesome, that though he (
purchased the receipt for a considerable sum, he has laid ^ -
the practice aside.”2
Finally, some metals, particularly silver, may be gilt
in a different manner. Let gold be dissolved in aqua,
regia. In this solution pieces of linen are to he dipt, and
burnt to black ashes. These ashes being rubbed on the
surface of the silver by means of a wet linen rag, apply
the particles of gold which they contain, and which by
this method adhere very well. The remaining part of the
ashes is to be washed off; and the surface of the silver,
which in this state does not seem to be gilt, is to be bur¬
nished with a blood-stone, till it acquire a fine colour of
gold. This method of gilding is very easy, and consumes
a very small quantity of gold. Most gilt ornaments upon
fans, snuff-boxes, and other toys of much show and little
value, are nothing but silver gilt in this manner.
Gold may also be applied to glass, porcelain, and other
vitrified matters. As the surface of these matters is very
smooth, and consequently is capable of a very perfect
contact with gold leaf, it adheres to them with some
force, although they are not of a metallic nature. This
gilding is so much the more perfect, that the gold is
more exactly applied to the surface of the glass. The
pieces are then to be exposed to a certain degree of heat,
and burnished slightly to give them lustre.
A more substantial gilding is fixed upon glass, enamel,
and porcelain, by applying to these substances powder of
gold mixed with a solution of gum-arabic, or with some
essential oil and a small quantity of borax; after which
a sufficient heat is to be applied to soften the glass and
the gold, which is then to be burnished. With this mixture
any figures whatever may be drawn. The powders for
this purpose may be made, first, by grinding gold leaf and
honey, which is afterwards to be washed away with wa¬
ter ; secondly, by distilling to dryness a solution of gold
in aqua-regia; thirdly, by evaporating the mercury from
an amalgam of gold, taking care to stir well the mass near
the end of the process; fourthly, by precipitating gold
from its solution in aqua-regia, by applying to it a solu¬
tion of green vitriol in water, or some copper, and per¬
haps some other metallic substances.
GILEAD, the son of Machir, and grandson of Manas-
seh, had his inheritance allotted him in the mountains of
Gilead, whence he took his name. The mountains of bi¬
lead were part of the ridge which runs from Mount Le¬
banon southward, on the east of the Floly Land; and they
gave their name to the whole country which lies on the
east of the sea of Galilee, and includes the mountainous
region called in the New Testament Trachonitis.
GILIBANTA, a small island in the Eastern Seas,
near the coast of Cumbava, situated in long. 119. 36. E.
lat. 8. 22. S. ....
GILL, John, D. D., a Protestant dissenting minister
of the Baptist denomination, was the son of Edward and
Elizabeth Gill, and was born at Kettering in Northamp¬
tonshire, on the 23d November 1697. At a very early
period of life his father, who was a deacon of the Baptist
church at Kettering, discovered in him an uncommon ca¬
pacity for learning; and his ability for literary pursuits
afterwards appeared by the rapid progress he had made
* Dr Lewis’s improvements, however, have been found too complicated, and simpler contrivances have been had recourse o. ^
following is the method lately introduced, and now in use. A sponge saturated with vinegar is fastened uni?e™eatynethe furaes
nostrils, and a vessel filled with cold water is placed at the vent of the furnace. This vessel attracts the principal portion or v
of mercury, and the remainder is attracted by the sponge. But still this is not able to attract all the smoke, and the gi
manufactories generally die at an early age- , , , . r. of amuse-
s The process of M. Dufay is a very ancient one, and totally abandoned, or else only had recourse to tor the purpose v
ment, or to observe chemical action.
GIL
GIL
523
a whatever became the object of his study. He was sent
^ /ji a grammar-school in the neighbourhood, where he soon
urpassed those hoys who were much his seniors in age
nd also as pupils. He continued till he arrived at his
Icventh year at this school, where he read most of the
atin classics, and likewise made considerable proficiency
»■ i the Greek language.
He left the grammar-school, however, early in life.
!■ 'his was occasioned by the imperious conduct of his mas-
tW er who insisted that the children of dissenting parents
i| i10u]d, with other scholars who belonged to the establish-
lE dgnt, attend him to church on week days during the per¬
il ■ Kmance of divine service. The dissenters considered
% his requisition as a stretch of power to which hisengage-
11L lents with them gave him no claim; and as it was virtu-
(E ]ly making conformity a test by which his pupils were
li■ (, expect the benefits of tuition, they resented his con-
uct, and the children of those parents who were in af-
Sl uent circumstances were removed to seminaries where
ilgf he same advantages might be obtained without being
91 object to the impositions of clerical bigotry. But as the
1 i arents of Mr Gill had it not in their power to confer upon
W im the same privilege, the same steps could not be taken
It o facilitate his advancement in learning. In order to pave
v he way, however, for the completion of his studies, efforts
f f vere made by several ministers, of different denomina-
!<■ ions, to get him upon one or other of the funds in Lon-
on. For this purpose specimens of his progress in the
diK ifferent branches of literature were transmitted to the
metropolis; but in answer to these applications it was ob-
fm 2Cted that he was too young, and that should he conti-
“k ue, as it might be expected he would, to make such ra¬
il ■ id advances in his studies, hq wmuld pass through the
®p ommon course before he would be capable of taking care
iff f himself, or of being employed in any public service.
8| 5ut these formidable objections were of no weight with
«| ur young scholar, whose love of learning was unconquer-
i! ble. Insuperable difficulties, it is true, obstructed the
ife ay in which literary eminence is usually acquired; but
life, hese difficulties could neither repress his ardent desire of
lip nowledge, nor damp the zeal and application with which
li| e had devoted himself to his studies. For though his
tip ime was daily allotted to the business of his father, yet
IxB e had so far improved the hours of leisure as to be able,
it efore he arrived at his nineteenth year, to read all the
Sp Ireekand Latin authors that fell in his way. He studied
W pgic, rhetoric, moral and natural philosophy; and learn-
«I d the Hebrew language so as to read it with ease, with-
*1” ut any other assistance than Buxtorf’s grammar and lexi-
on.
Neither the pursuit of learning, however, nor the other
ecessary avocations incumbent on Mr Gill, could eradi¬
ate those religious impressions which he had received in
arly life. On the 1st of November 1716, he made apub-
c profession of his faith before the Baptist church at
ottering, and was baptized the same day by Mr Thomas
Vallis. Of this church Mr Gill had not been long a mem-
er before he was called to the work of the ministry ; soon
her which, he removed to Higham-Ferrers, with a view
a pursue his studies under the direction of Mr Davis;
ut his stay at the latter place was interrupted by an
witation from London in 1719, to preach to the Baptist
hurch in Horslydown, over which he was the same year,
eing die twenty-second of his age, ordained pastor ; and
Ins office he held upwards of fifty-one years.
Mr Gill had not been long in London, before rabbinical
earning, of which he had before acquired considerable
nowledge, became an object of pursuit. To faciliate his
rogress through the intricacies of this labyrinth, he con-
I'acted an acquaintance with one of the most learned of
lie Jewish rabbin. He read the Targums, the Talmud,
the Rabbot, their ancient commentaries, the book Zohar,
and whatever else of this kind he was able to procure.
Of the oriental languages he made himself a complete
master; in short, there was no branch of knowledge that
could either enlarge or enrich biblical learning, which,
however difficult, was not attempted and attained by him ;
and it may be truly asserted, that in this line he had but
few equals, and that the annals of literature do not exhi¬
bit many by whom he was excelled.
In 1748, Mr Gill published a commentary on the New
Testament, in three volumes folio. The immense reading
and learning discoverable in this arduous work attracted
the attention of the Marischal College and University of
Aberdeen, and procured for him the degree of Doctor in
Divinity. Fie died at Camberwell, on the 14th of October
1771, in the seventy-fourth year of his age.
His works are, A Commentary on the Old and New
Testament, in nine volumes folio; A Body of Divinity, in
three volumes quarto; The Cause of God and Truth, four
volumes octavo ; A Treatise concerning the Prophecies of
the Old Testament respecting the Messiah; A Disserta¬
tion on the antiquity of the Hebrew Language, Letters,
Vowel Points, and Accents; and Sermons on the Canticles,
folio; besides a great number of sermons and controversial
pieces.
Gill, a measure of capacity, containing a quarter of an
English pint.
Gilling¬
ham
II
Gilpin.
GILLINGHAM, a parish of Dorsetshire, in the hun¬
dred of lledlane, 105 miles from London, and five miles
from Shaftesbury. It lies on the river Stour, and is the
largest parish in the county, being forty miles in circum¬
ference. It is a fertile district, producing large quantities
of excellent butter. A palace of one of the Saxon kings
was erected here, which, by the remains that can be
traced, appears to have been of stupendous magnitude
and strength. A battle was fought here in 1016, when
Edmund Ironside totally defeated a large army of Danish
invaders. The population in 1801 amounted to 1873, in
1811 to 1992, in 1821 to 2246, and in 1831 to 2520.
Gillingham, a parish of the county of Kent, in the
hundred of Chatham and Gillingham, thirty-two miles
from London. It is situated on a hill near to, and com¬
manding a view of, the river Medway, and containing
within its limits a part of the town of Chatham, and of
Brompton. A large portion of it is covered with those
fortifications which form the defences of the important
naval arsenal of Chatham. The barracks for the marines
consist of a handsome pile of buildings, and are deemed
peculiarly healthy for the troops quartered in them. The
population amounted in 1801 to 4135, in 1811 to 5135, in
1821 to 6209, and in 1831 to 6734.
GILLY SINDE, a river of Hindustan, in the province
of Malwah, which has its source in the Vindhya Moun¬
tains, and afterwards flowing in a northerly direction,
falls into the Sepra river, which afterwards joins the
Chumbul.
GILOLO, one of the Molucca islands, in the Eastern
Seas, which is of a large size and very irregular form, con¬
sisting of a long mainland, extending in length north and
south 220 miles, and composed of four large peninsulas,
separated from one another by deep bays. It extends
from the latitude of 3. 10. south, to 0.50. north. The island
is generally very fertile, and abounds with bullocks, buf¬
faloes, goats, deer, and wild hogs ; but there are few sheep.
The sago and fruit-trees flourish here in great abundance ;
the former yielding to the inhabitants their chief subsist¬
ence. This island also produces nutmegs and cloves ; but,
by the narrow and malignant policy of the Dutch, the trees
which produced these spices were rooted up in all places
near the sea-coast, or to which there was a ready access by
sea. All foreign trade was also discouraged, in order to
524
G I L
G I L
Gilpin, prevent the smuggling of spices; and the natives were
— > even prohibited, under severe penalties, from manufac¬
turing cloth. These violent edicts, however, the inhabi¬
tants contrived to evade, by secretly sending to the other
islands for supplies of material. Ossa bay, on the east
coast of the island, is an extremely narrow and deep inlet,
penetrating about halfway through the island. The town
of Ossa, situated on the south side of the bay, in longi¬
tude 128. 22. east, and latitude 0. 45. north, affords every
convenience for ships touching at the island, either for
water, provisions, timber, spars, or other articles. There
are several other towns in the island, viz. Maba, Patany,
and Weda; but being seldom visited by Europeans, they
are little known. This island was formerly under the con¬
trol of the Dutch; but is at present independent of that
or ajiy other European nation, and under the government
of several independent rajahs or chiefs. A considerable
trade is carried on in their own vessels with Amboyna
and the neighbouring islands, whence they import cutlery,
cloth, China-ware, gold-lace, iron in bars, opium, piece-
goods, and steel. The articles imported are nutmegs,
cloves, mace, biche-de-mer, bird-nests, tortoise shells, &c.
GILPIN, Bernard, rector of Houghton, distinguished
by his extraordinarj' piety and hospitality, was descended
from an ancient and honourable family in Westmoreland,
and born in 1517. As he was bred in the Catholic reli¬
gion, so he for some time defended it against the reform¬
ers, and at Oxford held a disputation with Hooper, after¬
wards bishop of Worcester, and a martyr for the Protes¬
tant faith; but he was staggered in another disputation
with Peter Martyr, and began seriously to examine the
contested points by the best authorities. Accordingly,
being presented to the vicarage of Norton, in the diocese
of Durham, he soon resigned it, and went abroad to con¬
sult eminent professors on both sides; and after three
years absence returned, a little before the death of Queen
Mary, satisfied with the general doctrines of the Reforma¬
tion. He was kindly received by his uncle Dr Tonstall,
bishop of Durham, who soon afterwards gave him the arch¬
deaconry of Durham, to which the rectory of Effingtbn
was annexed. When repairing to his parish, though the
persecution was then at its height, he boldly preached
against the vices, errors, and corruptions of the times, es¬
pecially among the clergy, on which a charge, consisting of
thirteen articles, was drawn up against him, and present¬
ed in form to the bishop. But Dr Tonstall found a me¬
thod of dismissing the cause in such a manner as to pro¬
tect his nephew without endangering himself, and soon
afterwards presented him to the rich living of Houghton-
le-Spring. He was a second time accused to the bishop,
and again protected; w hen his enemies, enraged at this
second defeat, laid their complaint before Dr Bonner, bi¬
shop of London, who immediately gave orders to appre¬
hend him. Upon this Mr Gilpin prepared for martyr¬
dom ; and having ordered his house-steward to provide
him a long garment, that he might make a decent appear¬
ance at the stake, he set out for London. Luckily, how¬
ever, he broke his leg on the journey, which protracted
his arrival until the news of the queen’s death freed him
from all further apprehension. Being immediately set at
liberty, he returned to Houghton, where he was received
by his parishioners with the most sincere joy.
Upon the deprivation of the Roman Catholic bishops,
he was offered the see of Carlisle, which he declined ; and
confining his attention to his rector}', he discharged all
the duties of his function in the most exemplary manner.
To the greatest humanity and courtesy, he added an un¬
wearied application to the instruction of those under his
care. He was not satisfied with the advice he gave in pub¬
lic, but used to instruct in private, and brought his parish¬
ioners to come to him with their doubts and difficulties.
He had a most engaging manner towards those whom he n
thought well disposed ; nay, his very reproof was so con- CJ
ducted that it seldom gave offence; the becoming gen-
tleness with which it w'as urged made it always appear as
the effect of friendship. Tims, with unceasing assiduity,
he employed himself in admonishing the vicious and en¬
gaging the well-intentioned ; and by these means he in a
few years effected a greater change in his neighbourhood
than could well have been imagined.
But his hopes were not so much in the existing gene¬
ration as in the succeeding one. It was an easier task
he found, to prevent vice than to correct it; to form the
young to virtue, than to amend the bad habits of the old.
He employed much of his time, therefore, in endeavour¬
ing to improve the minds of the younger part of his pa¬
rish, suffering none to grow up in ignorance of their
duty, but pressing it as the wisest part to unite religion
with labour, and, amidst the cares of this life, to have a
constant eye upon the next. He attended to every thing
which might be of service to his parishioners. He was
assiduous in preventing lawsuits among them. His hall is
said to have been often thronged with people, who came
to him about their differences. He was not indeed much
acquainted with law, but he could decide equitably, and
that satisfied them; nor could his sovereign’s commission
have given him greater weight or authority than his own
character secured him.
His hospitable manner of living was the admiration of
the whole country. He spent in his family every fortnight
forty bushels of corn, twenty bushels of malt, and a whole
ox ; besides a proportional quantity of other kinds of pro¬
vision. Strangers and travellers found a cheerful recep¬
tion. All were welcome who came ; and even their beasts
had so much care taken of them, that it was humorously
said, if a horse were turned loose in any part of the coun¬
try, it would immediately make its way to the rector of
Houghton.
Every Sunday, from Michaelmas till Easter, was a sort
of public day with him. During this season he expected
to see all his parishioners and their families. For their
reception, he had three tables well covered; the first be¬
ing intended for gentlemen, the second for husbandmen
and farmers, and the third for day-labourers. This piece
of hospitality he never omitted, even when losses, or a
scarcity of provision, made its continuance rather difficult
to him. He thought it his duty, and that was a decisive
motive. Even when he was absent from home, no altera¬
tion was made in his expanses; the poor were fed as usual,
and his neighbours entertained.
But notwithstanding all his painful industry, and the
large scope he had for it in so extensive a parish, Mr Gil¬
pin thought the sphere of his benevolence too confined.
It grieved him extremely to see everywhere, in the pa¬
rishes around him, so great a degree of ignorance and su¬
perstition, occasioned by the shameful neglect of the pas¬
toral cure among the clergy of those parts. The bad conse¬
quences resulting from this induced him to supply, as far
as he could, what was wanting in others. For this pur¬
pose, he used every year regularly to visit the most ne¬
glected parishes in Northumberland, Yorkshire, Cheshire,
Westmoreland, and Cumberland ; and that his own parish
might not in the mean time suffer, he was at the expense
of a constant assistant. In each place he staid two or
three days; and his method was, to call the people abou
him, and lay before them, in as plain a way as possi e,
the danger of leading wicked or even careless lives; ex
plaining to them the nature of true religion, instructing
them in the duties they owed to God, their neighbour,
and themselves, and showing them how greatly a mora
and religious conduct would contribute to their presen a
well as future happiness.
GIL
G I O 525
Mr Gilpin’s generous and hospitable manner of living
-ias been already noticed. The value of his rectory was
bout L.400 a year; an income, indeed, at that time very
onsiderable, but yet in appearance very disproportionate
o the generous things he performed with it; indeed he
ould not have done these, unless his frugality had been
qual to his generosity. His friends, therefore, could not
ut wonder to find him, amidst his many great and conti-
ual expenses, entertain the design of building and endow-
a grammar-school; a design, however, which his exact
conomysoon enabled him to accomplish, though the ex¬
pense of it amounted to upwards of L.500. His school
/as no sooner opened than it began to flourish; and so
real a number of young people flocked to it, that in a
ttle time the town was not able to accommodate them,
le put himself, therefore, to the inconvenience of fitting
p, for that purpose, a part of his own house, where he
eldom had fewer than twenty or thirty children. Some
f these were the sons of persons of distinction, whom he
oarded at easy rates; but the greater part were poor
hildren, whom he educated, clothed, and maintained at
is own charge. He was at the expense likewise of board-
ig in the town many other poor children. He used to
ring several every year from the different parts where
e preached, particularly from Readsdale and Tinedale;
laces which he was at great pains in civilizing, and in
Doting out that barbarism which every year prevailed
;ss and less amongst them.
As to his school, he not only placed in it able masters,
hom he procured from Oxford, but he himself likewise
onstantly inspected it; and, that encouragement might
uicken the application of his boys, he always took par-
cular notice of the most promising. He would call them
is own scholars, and would send for them often to his
partment, and there instruct them himself. One method
sed by him to fill his school was a little singular. Wben-
vrer he met a poor boy upon the road, he would make
ial of his capacity by a few questions, and if he found
such as pleased him, he would provide for his educa-
on. And besides those whom he sent from his own
diool to the universities, and there wholly maintained,
e likewise gave to others, who were in circumstances to
o something for themselves, what further assistance they
■quired. By these means he induced many parents to
How their children a liberal education, who would not
therwise have done so. Nor did Mr Gilpin think it suf-
cient to afford the means only of an academical educa-
on to these young people; he endeavoured also to ren-
er it as beneficial to them as he could. He still con-
dered himself as their proper guardian; and he seem-
1 to think himself bound to the public for their being
iade useful members of society, as far as it lay in his
ower to make them so. With this view he carried on
punctual correspondence with their tutors ; and made
ie youths themselves frequently write to him, and give
im an account of their studies. So solicitous indeed
as he about them, knowing the many temptations to
hich their age and situation naturally exposed them,
iat once every other year he generally made a journey
' the universities to inspect their behaviour. Nor was
us uncommon care unrewarded; for many of his Selm¬
a's became ornaments to the church, and men of exem-
ary piety.
Whenever he heard of any in distress, whether of his
vn parish or of any other, he was sure to relieve them. In
s walks abroad, he would frequently bring home with him
>or people, and send them away clothed as well as fed.
e took great pains to inform himself of the circumstances
his neighhours, that the modesty of the sufferer might
>t prevent his being relieved. But the money best laid out
as, in his opinion, that which encouraged industry. It was
one of his greatest pleasures to make up the losses of his
laborious neighbours, and prevent their sinking under them.
If a poor man had lost a beast, he would send him another
in its room ; or if any farmer had had a bad year, he would
make him an abatement in his tythes. Thus, as far as he
was able, he took the misfortunes of his parish upon him¬
self; and, like a true shepherd, he exposed himself for his
flock. But of all kinds of industrious poor, he was most
forward to assist those who had large families ; persons in
this situation never failed to experience his bounty when
they wanted to settle their children in the world.
This benevolent and excellent divine, who merited and
obtained the glorious titles of Father of the Poor, and the
Apostle of the North, died in 1583, in the sixty-sixth year
of his age.
GINGEE, a district in the Carnatic, situated between
the tw elfth and thirteenth degrees of north latitude. It is
bounded on the east by the sea, along which is the travel¬
ling road from Madras to Pondicherry. The English had
factories here in the middle of the seventeenth century. It
is now comprehended in the southern division of the Arcot
collectorship.
Gingee, a town of the Carnatic, and capital of the above
district, and a celebrated fortress, which stands on a stu¬
pendous rock, and is impregnable by all the ordinary mqdes
of attack. It is said to have been built or improved on an
old foundation of the Chola kings, by the son of Vijeya
Runga Naik, the governor of Tanjore, in 1442. It was
successively strengthened by the Mahommedan kings of Be-
japore, who possessed it from 1669 to 1677, and by the Mah-
rattas, who held it in the year 1698. At this period it was
besieged and taken by Zulficar Khan, the imperial general,
who appointed Rajpoot governors. They affected inde¬
pendence, and assumed the rank of rajahs. In 1750 it was
taken by surprise during a night attack by the French un¬
der M. de Bussy; but it surrendered to the British after
the capture of Pondicherry in 1761. Like all the other
hill forts in India, it is reckoned very unhealthy; and the
French are said to have lost about twelve hundred of their
number during the ten years they held possession of it;
on which account it is garrisoned during the peace by a
small number of native troops. Long. 79. 34. E. Lat. 12.
15. N.
GINGER AH, a fortified island on the western coast of
India, at the mouth of a river, on the bank of which is si¬
tuated the town of Dimda Rajepore. This place is cele¬
brated in history, first as being one of the stations of the
fleet commanded by the Siddees or Abyssinians, who were
first in the service of the kings of Bijapoor, and deserted
with their ships in the year 1661 to Aurungzebe; and, se¬
cond, it was exposed to a long siege by the Mahratta chief
Sevagee.
GIOIA, Fla.vio, a pilot or ship-captain, was born at
Pasitano, a village situated near Amalfi, about the end of
the thirteenth century. During a long period this navi¬
gator was generally regarded as the inventor of the ma¬
riner’s compass ; and so precise wrere the ideas of some
writers on the subject, that they fixed the year 1302 or
1303 as the date of the invention. But every one now
knowrs that the claims of Gioia have been disputed; that,
according to some, he did not invent, but only improved,
the compass ; whilst, in the opinion of others, he had no¬
thing wdiatever to do either with the invention or improve¬
ment of an instrument which, in a certain sense, may be
said to have changed the face of the world. To render
him justice, however, it is necessary to recall the most
remarkable opinions which have been expressed on the
subject, and, in particular, to indicate the facts by which
these opinions are sought to be supported.
Polydore Virgil places the invention of the compass
amongst those the authors of which are unknown. Om-
526
Gioia.
^
GIOIA.
nino in aperto non est,1 says he: and however superficial
this writer may be, his testimony is of great weight
against Gioia, as he was born in Italy only two hundred
years after the celebrated navigator of Amalfi. Several
learned men have attributed the invention of the compass
to the Phoenicians, to the Tyrians, and to King Solomon
respectively. Court de Gebelin is one of those who at¬
tribute it to the Phoenicians. Others, misled by an ill-
interpreted passage of Plautus, have supposed that the
Greeks and Romans were acquainted with the compass.
In this number is Abundantius Collina, who, in a memoir
entitled De Acus Nauticce Inventore? has promulgated
such a notion. But these opinions have been completely
refuted by Turnebus, Bochart, and Dutens ; by Trom-
belli, De Acus Nauticce Inventore ;3 by Grimaldi, Sopra
il primo Inventore della Bussola ;4 by Montucla in his
Histoire dcs Mathematiques; and more recently by Azuni,
in a Dissertation on the Origin of the Compass, printed
twice in Italian, and then in French, Paris, 1807, in 8vo.
In fact, the ancients knew not the directive virtue of the
magnet. The silence of all the authors of antiquity, w7ho
have spoken of the loadstone, particularly of Lucretius,
Pliny, Claudian, and Plutarch, forms a negative proof of
their ignorance of this quality which seems quite insuper¬
able. Gerbert of Auvergne, born about the commence¬
ment of the tenth century, and afterwards pope under the
name of Silvester II., being desirous, when he was bishop
of Magdeburg, to construct a horizontal solar dial, found
the north point by the help of an instrument with which
he observed the pole star ; in Magdeburg horologium fecit,
Mud recte constituens, considerata per fistidam quamdam
stella Nautarum duce:' Father Costadau, Collina, and
others, have thought that, in the instrument here men¬
tioned, they recognized the compass. But Montucla has
refuted this erroneous opinion, and shown that the instru¬
ment of Gerbert was merely a tube {fistula), which he di¬
rected towards the pole star in order to determine the me¬
ridian line. Evidence more convincing, however, attests
that the navigators of the Mediterranean were acquaint¬
ed with the magnetic needle, and knew how to make use
of it more than a century before the time of Gioia.
Albert, surnamed the Great, in his treatise De Minera-
libus,G mentions a passage of a work, erroneously attribut¬
ed to Aristotle, which he renders in these terms : Angu-
lus magnetis quidam est, cujus virtus apprehendendi fer-
rum est, ad zoron, hoc est, septentrionalem ; et hoc utuntur
nautce : angulus vero alius magnetis Mi oppositus trah.it ad
aphron, id est, polum meridionalem. Whether this remark¬
able passage be found in Aristotle or not is of little im¬
portance with reference to the period when Albert lived
f he was born in 1193, and died in 1280) ; indeed it is ne¬
cessary to go farther back than his time, for the citation
must have been made from some work still more ancient;
and even if the treatise De Mineralibus were not the w ork
of Albert, this would not diminish the importance of the
passage which the author, whoever he may be, has there¬
in inserted, and which not only shows that the directive
power of the magnet was then known, but that this power g
was applied by mariners for the purposes of navigation
Besides, the same text is cited by Vincent of Beauvais in ^
the first part of his Bibliotheca Mundi ;7 and this part, en¬
titled Speculum Naturale, must have been completed in
the year 1250, as appears from book xxvii. chapter 102.
Brunetto Latini, in his Tresor, composed first in French
(Paris, 1260), and then translated by himself into Italian
also speaks of the compass in language not td be mistaken.®
There is another text which has also become famous in
this discussion ; we mean that of the Bible-Guyot, from
verse 622 to verse 658, in which we find the compass
clearly indicated under the names of maniere or mariniere,
manette or marinette, according to the various readings of
the different manuscripts. This text may be seen entire
in the Fabliaux and Contes, published by Barbazan and
Meon.9 The satire, called the Bible-Guyot, is generally
attributed to Guyot, a French monk of Provins, who must
have flourished about the end of the twelfth century, since
he appeared at the court of the Emperor Frederick I. in
1181. But supposing this rhythmical piece were, as some
have thought, the work of Hugues de Bercy, a contem.
porary of Saint Louis, this difference would only bring
down the date by fifty, or at the most sixty years. Last¬
ly, a passage equally clear in the wrork of the Cardinal de
Vitry, fixes the date beyond all doubt. James of Vitry,
a native of Argenteuil, and bishop of Ptolemai's in Syria,
went to Palestine during the fourth crusade, that is, about
the year 1204; on his return from this voyage, he discharg¬
ed the functions of legate of Pope Innocent III. in the ar¬
my which, in 1210, the Count de Montfort led against the
Albigenses ; and having again set out for the Holy Land,
he returned thence under Honorius III. a considerable
time before the death of this pope, and died in the year
1244. But if, as is commonly supposed, he wrote his de¬
scription of Palestine, which forms the first book of his his¬
tory, and is entitled Historia Orientalis, during his second
sojourn in the East, this would fix its composition between
the years 1215 and 1220; and, besides, he speaks of a
fact which he had observed since the year 1204. Now,
in his 91st chapter, he thus expresses himself: Acusferrea,
postquam adamantem contigerit, ad stellam septentrionalem,
quce vel utaxis firmamenti, aliis vergentibus, non movetur,
semper convertitur; unde valde necessarius est navigantibus
in mari. [The iron needle, after contact with the load¬
stone, constantly turns to the north-star, which, as the
axis of the firmament, remains immovable, whilst the
other stars revolve; and hence it is essentially necessary
to those navigating on the ocean.] The sense of these
words presents no difficulty or obscurity. The question is
not one relating to a new discovery, but to a usage already
established, to an instrument regarded as absolutely ne¬
cessary to mariners, to a species of knowledge which had
in fact become general and common.
As Albert the Great, Guyon, and the Cardinal de Vitry,
were all Frenchmen, and as Brunetto Latini composed his
work during his stay in France, whilst James of Vitry must
3 Bonon. Instit. Comment- tome ii. part 3.
* Recueil de l'Acad, de Cortone, tome iii-
1 Polydor. Virg. De Invent. Her. lib. iii. c. 18.
2 Bonon. Instit. Comment, tome ii. part 3.
s Dithmar. Chronic, apud Leibnitz, Scriptores Her. Brunsw. tome i. p. 399.
6 Lib. ii. tract. 3, cap. C. 7 Eib. li- cap. 19- ,iia(.un des
8 His words are, “ Pour ce nagent le mariniers a 1’enseigne de ces deux etoiles que 1’on appelle rramontaines......e c
deux faces [de 1’aimant] alse la pointe de 1’aiguille a celle tramontaine a que cette face gist.” {Tresor, lib. i. cap. 11 J
9 Tome ii. p. 327- It commences with these verses :
De notre pere 1’apostoile
Volsisse qu’il semblast i’estoile
Qui ne se muet...
and it terminates with the following :
Molt est 1’estoile, et belle et clere,
Tiex devroit estre notre pere.
«
G I (
. aVe crossed the Mediterranean in French vessels, the Be-
edictine authors of the Literary History of France have
lence concluded that the compass is a French invention ;
ad, in support of this conclusion, they have referred to the
sage (undoubtedly French) adopted by all nations of tra-
i ng upon the card of the compass a fleur-de-lis to indi-
ite the north. This opinion has been adopted by M.
.zuni, and maintained by all the means which extensive
-udition could supply, in the dissertation to which we have
ready referred. But other writers have claimed for the
.rabians the honour of this invention. Amongst these may
e mentioned Tiraboschi, in his Storia della Letteratura
I [aliaiia; Andres, in his Origine e Progressi d'ogni Let-
ratura; Bergeron, in his Abrege de VHistoire des Sarra-
ns; and Riccioli, in his Geographia et Hydrographia re-
<rmata. All the writers who have maintained this opinion,
jwever, rest solely upon vague assertions, and are unable
i produce any positive proofs. On the other hand, Char-
n is persuaded that the Arabians received the compass
om Europe; whilst Renaudot has gone so far as to main-
in that there exists not any Arabian writing in which
ention is made either of the compass, or even of the di-
dive virtue of the magnet.1 Nor has any authority been
•oduced against the latter opinion, except the work of
ailak Kaptchaki, entitled, in Arabic, Treasure of Merchants
the knowledge of Stones ;2 and the passage of this writer,
iginally discovered by M. Silvestre de Sacy, confirms the
jinion of Renaudot rather than destroys it, since the au-
or, who wrote in the year 681 of the hegira, relates a fact
'which he had been witness in the year 640 [1242 of our
a], and since these dates are posterior to the times of
uyot de Provins and Cardinal de Vitry. Ebn-Iounis, an
rabian astronomer, in his Grand Hakemite Table, a work
imposed in the year 1007 of our era, and published in
rench by M. Coussin,3 also furnishes a negative proof of
e most conclusive kind that the Arabians of his time were
lacquainted with the compass ; for neither among the in-
ruments of which he makes mention, nor among the ob-
rvations which he records, does he ever speak of or allude
such a thing in any way. But there always remains
“tween these two epochs, that is, between the year 1007
id the year 1290, the passage attributed to Aristotle,
Inch must necessarily have been derived from some Ara-
an author.
1 he authors who have written 'on China have attacked
e claims of Gioia with most success. Father le Compte,
ailla, Father Gaubil in his Histoire de VAstronomic Chi-
>ise, and Barrow in his JVew Voyage to China, declare
emselves convinced that the Chinese made use of the
•mpass long before our era. Hager, in a dissertation pub-
hed in Italian, under the title of Memoria sulla Dussola
wntale, has developed this opinion, and endeavoured to
ove not only that the compass is an invention of the
|iinese, but that this people transmitted it to us by means
their communications with the Arabians. On this hy-
1 '^ie®ls> d appears wonderful that the compass, said to have
:j!n 1,1 use in the Indian Sea one or tw7o thousand years
I ore Christ, should not have been known either to the
-'yptian navigators under the Ptolemies, or to the Greeks
Constantinople in the middle ages. Chardin had left the
lestion in doubt. But M. de Guignes goes farther, and
untains that the sources whence Father Gaubil derived
5 information are modern romances; and he censures
at 1Istorian for having supposed that he had detected
e lllentlon of a compass in texts which are recognised as
I'1--4 Nevertheless, it cannot now be doubted that
1 unese were acquainted with the compass, if not at
• 'inr'"1? IieIatio>!* des Indes, p. 288, 291.
' wtheque Royalc des Manuscrits, No. 970, in folio.
4 Liv. xi.
> I A.
the early epochs of which Father Gaubil speaks, at least
long before the Europeans; and great weight has been
given to this opinion by the judgment which Barrow, Mac¬
artney, and other recent travellers, have formed on the
subject.
But be this as it may, the w7riters who have attributed
the invention to Gioia are innumerable. Amongst others,
Grimaldi, a learned Neapolitan, has collected in favour of
his countryman, in the dissertation which we have already
cited, a number of positive authorities, and has supported
them with very imposing names. Nor can it be dissem¬
bled that, during a long period, the opinion of all Europe
supported the claim of Gioia, and that there must have
been some important fact or circumstance to produce an
assent so general in his favour. What, then, is the precise
title which the mariner of Amalfi possesses to public gra¬
titude ? Father Fournier appears to have resolved this
problem in his Hydrographic ;5 and Montucla, adopting the
opinion of Fournier, has developed it with a clearness cal¬
culated to satisfy every mind. The compass used in the
Mediterranean during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
consisted only of a magnetic needle, which was made to
float in a vase or bason by means of two straws or a bit of
cork, which supported it on the surface of the water. Such
is the description which the author of the Bible-Guyot has
given of the instrument; and hence the names of calamite
or of grenouille (frog), under which it is designated in some
authors. The compass known to the Arabians, in the thir¬
teenth century, according to Bailak Kaptchaki, was no
other than that here described. “ It is easy to perceive,”
says Montucla, “ how inconvenient this was, and how often
the agitation of the sea would render it useless But the
Amalfitans imagined the convenient suspension which we
now employ, by placing a magnetised needle on a pivot
which permits it to turn to all sides with facility. It is not
known that at first they w7ent farther than this. After¬
wards it was attached to a card divided into thirty-two
points {rumbs de vent), and named Rose des Vents ; and then
the box containing it was suspended in such a manner that,
whatever motion the vessel might experience, it would al¬
ways remain horizontal. The English claim, jure an in¬
juria, this addition to the compass, but on what ground I
know not, having seen no proof in support of such a pre¬
tension.” If the import of the verse of Antonius Pa-
normitanus, which is considered as one of the strongest
proofs in favour of the claim of Gioia, be examined with
attention, it Avill perhaps be observed that allusion is made,
not to an invention, but a great and important improve¬
ment. The verse in question is as follows:
Prima dedit nautis usum magnetis Amalphis.
The poet does not appear to affirm that the town of Amalfi
had given to mariners the knowledge of the magnetic
needle, but only that it had given, or rather facilitated, the
usage thereof.
Such, then, appears to have been the merit of Gioia,
namely, having rendered truly useful an instrument of
which, though previously known in an unimproved state,
little or no use could then be made. The timidity of pilots,
in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when they were
already in possession of the calamite or grenouille, and the
boldness which they displayed when provided with the
compass of Amalfi, evidently attest the importance of the
service rendered to modern navigation by Gioia. To im¬
prove in this manner is really to invent. It is possible
that the French may have added the Rose des Vents, or
card, to the suspended needle of Gioia, which would ac-
3 Notices des Manuscrits de la Bibliotheque Royale, tome vii.
4 Mtmoires de la Academic des Inscriptions, tome xlvi. p. 549, 551.
chap. i.
D
Gioi
528 G I R G I R
Giraldi. count for the Jieur-de-lis being employed to indicate the one of the most learned men modern Italy has produced) q
-y-’—'' north, as already mentioned. It is also possible that the was born at Ferrara in the year 1479. He was at Rome
English may have conceived the idea of including the when it was plundered by the Emperor Charles V.; and&ro
needle, its pivot, and the card, in a box or boxel, whence having thus lost all he had, and being at the same time w
probably the names of bussola and boussole. The Germans, tormented by the gout, he struggled through life with ill
moreover, claim the names ot the winds, East, South, North, fortune and ill health. He nevertheless wrote a number of
West, and even the name of the compass. But these par- works, which were collected and published at Basil, 1580,
ticularities are of little importance. What appears to be in two vols. folio, and at Leyden in 1696. Authors of the
established is, that the discovery of the directive virtue of first rank have bestowed the highest eulogies on Giraldus,
the magnet was made anterior to Gioia; that, before his particularly Cassaubon and Thuanus.
time, navigators both in the Mediterranean and the Indian GIR All, a fortress of Hindustan, in the province of Mal-
Seas’employed the magnetic needle ; but that, by a very wah, belonging to the Mahrattas. Long. 79.18. E. Lat.24.
important improvement, in the suspension of the needle, 23. N. ^
Gioia is entitled to be considered as the real inventor in GIRDERS, in Architecture, the largest pieces of timber
Europe of the compass such as we now possess it. No in a floor. Their ends are usually fastened into the sum-
history of the life of this navigator is known. Some wri- mers or brest-summers ; and the joists are framed at one
ters call him Giri; but the name of Gioia is that most ge- end to the girders.
nerally adopted. Musanzio, in his Tables Chronologiques, GIRDLE, a belt or band of leather or other matter, tied
complains that Vossius and other learned men call him about the reins, to keep that part more firm and tight.
Giri, and describe him as a native of Melfi, “ instead,” says It was anciently the custom for bankrupts and other in-
he, “ of Gioia of Amalfi, who invented the compass in the solvent debtors to put off and surrender their girdle in open
year 1303.”1 (Biographic Univcrselle.) (a.) court. The reason of this was, that our ancestors used to
GIORGIONE, or Giorgio Barbarelli, an eminent carry all their necessary utensils, as purse, keys, and the
painter, was born at Castelfranco, near Trevigi, in 1478. like, fastened to the girdle; and hence the girdle became
He learned the rudiments of his profession from Giovanni a symbol of the state, or condition of the individual. His-
Bellini at Venice, and is said to have derived his first no- tory relates that the widow of Philip I. duke of Burgundy,
tions of the force of well-adapted lights and shadows, by renounced her right of succession, by putting off her girdle
carefully studying the works of Leonardo da Vinci. Gior- upon the duke’s tomb.
gione w as one of the first of the Venetian school w'ho The Romans always wore a girdle to tuck up the tunica
broke through the timid and constrained style to which when they had occasion to do any thing; and this custom
the art was confined at the time of Bellini, and introduced was so general, that such as went without girdles, and al-
a freedom of outline, a boldness of handling, and a new lowed their vestments to hang loose, were reputed idle and
and animated manner of colouring, unknown before him. dissolute persons.
De Piles remarks, “ that it is a matter of wonder to con- Maidens or Virgin's Girdle. It was a custom amongst
sider how, all of a sudden, he soared from the low and dry the Greeks and Romans for the husband to untie his brides
manner of Bellini’s colouring, to the supreme height to girdle. Festus relates, that it was made of sheeps wool,
which he raised that lovely part of painting, by joining ex- and that the husband untied it in bed ; he adds, that it was
treme force with extreme sweetness.” Yet, as Pilkington tied in the Herculanean knot, and that the husband un¬
observes, when we reflect that nature and Da Vinci were loosed it, as a happy presage of his having as many cbil-
his models, and that he had a genius happily qualified to dren as Hercules, who at his death left no less than seventy
study them judiciously, we may more easily account for behind him.
that excellence bv which he was distinguished. His pic- The poets attribute to Venus a particular kind of girdle
tures were much admired by Titian, who copied his style, called cestus, to which they annexed the faculty of inspiring
and improved upon his effects of chiaro-oscuro. His un- the passion of love. , _
timely death prevented his acquiring so extensive a cele- GIRGENTI, a province or intendancy in the island ot
brity as Titian did; but, as Phillips observes, “ in the race Sicily, comprehending, besides the Vale ot Mazzara on
of rivalship between these extraordinary artists, it seems the continent, the islands ot Pantalaria and of Lampedosa
probable, had Giorgione’s life been prolonged, he might in the Mediterranean Sea. It is divided into the three
have surpassed Titian in splendour and vivacity, both of districts of Girgenti, Bivona, and Sciacca, and contains
colour and of execution.” Several of Giorgione’s grand 288,877 inhabitants. I he capital, which bears the same
compositions in fresco have perished, and those which re- name, is a city near the sea, on an elevated spot, but water
main are so materially injured that little of their original ed by the river whose name it has taken. It contains a
beauty is discernible. His easel pictures were few, and cathedral and several other churches, 2844 houses, an
now, on account of their scarcity as well as merit, are ex- 14,882 inhabitants. Ihe haven, which is about four im es
ceedingly valuable. from the city, is neither deep nor capacious; but being tne
In the department of portrait painting Giorgione may be only one on the southern coast of Sicily, it is a considera e
ranked with the greatest masters. His figures are justly resort for vessels, who repair to it to procure cargoes o ^ e.a ’
esteemed for their grace, dignity, expression, and truth of barley, almonds, pistachio nuts, soda, and sulphur, w ic
character. His carnations have more the appearance of commodities are abundantly produced in the 'acinl b
real flesh than of being a fine imitation of it. The land- There are in the neighbourhood many remains o rerj™
scapes of this artist are also admirable. Of his oil pictures antiquity, illustrative of the ancient state of this city, w i
the principal are, Christ bearing his Cross, in the church is said to have once contained 300,000 souls. Long,
of St Roch at Venice; at Trevigi, St Mark appeasing the 43. E. Lat. 37. 23. N. . j t of
Tempest; in the Monte di Pieta, a Dead Christ; and at Mi- GIRONS, St, an arrondissement in the departmen
lan, the Finding of Moses. Giorgione died of the plague, Arriege, in France, having an extent of 603 square mi
in the prime of life, in 1511. (z. z.) It is divided into six cantons and eighty-two comma ^
GIRALD, Barry, or Giraldus Cambrensis. See Barry, and contains 79,084 inhabitants, ^hc chief place !S a ^
GIRALDI, Lilio Gregorio, an ingenious critic, and of the same name, in a valley watered by the Salat.
‘ Table xxxviii. p. 219.
mde
ibo-
G I S
re some manufactories of woollen goods, and also some
anneries. The population amounts to 2504. Long. 1.
. E. Lat. 42. 58. N.
GIRONDE, a department in the south-west of France,
''reated out of the ancient principality of Guienne. It is
tounded on the north and north-east by the department of
he Lower Charente, on the east by those of Dordogne and
f Lot-Garonne, on the south by the Landes, and on the
zest by the ocean. It comprehends 4406 square miles,
r, according to the Royal Almanac, 1,082,520 hectares,
[he civil divisions are six arrondissements, forty-eight
antons, and 580 communes, containing a population of
54,225 persons. The whole department is a fine level
.lain, excepting that on the eastern side there are some
entle elevations. That division consists of a soil composed
f broken tuffstein, fertile sand, and calcareous matter,
nd is well cultivated and highly productive ; on the west-
rn side, and especially towards the south of the depart¬
ment, the land is either a morass or barren sands, where,
mr leagues together, no human habitation is visible, and
othing to be seen but a few wandering sheep, some cork-
rees, and numerous fir-trees. The latter seem to flourish,
nd to yield large quantities of turpentine, pitch, and tar.
None of the departments of France is better watered
han the Gironde; most of the streams, which are nume-
ous, discharge their water into that river which gives its
ame to this division of the country. Several of these
ivers are navigable, and by their means fuel is conveyed
•om the woods, which cover one tenth of the surface, to
me several cities whose consumption requires it. The
hief object of cultivation is the vine ; the wine is chiefly
^d, known by the names of Medoc, Haut-Brion, St Emil-
an, Latour, Lafitte, and Chateaux-Margaux, but by the
eneric names of Bordeaux or claret. The most valued
kite wines are known as Carbonnieux, Serons, Graves,
arsac, Prignac, Sauterne, Baume, and Sainte-Croix-du-
lont. The management of the grapes, as well as of the
ine, is well understood; and the produce of the vineyards,
csides wine, is very considerable in brandy, liqueurs,
lirits of wine, and vinegar.
fhe corn of the department is insufficient for the con-
imption ; and large quantities, chiefly of rye, are brought
■om other districts for the maintenance of the poor,
here are few horses bred or kept, and the plough is for
ie most part worked by oxen, which, as well as the cows,
re of an indifferent race. The sheep are not numerous,
nd commonly afford meat and wool of an inferior quality,
esides grapes, the other fruits are abundant, especially
liestnuts, almonds, and figs. The other products of the
)il are cork, stone coal, turf, hemp, and flax. There are
o mines except those of iron, which yield but little. Table
dt is made on the coast, sufficient for the consumption in
ie millets of St Vivian, which produce 1200 tons annually,
he manufacturing industry is extensive as to the num-
L'r of articles fabricated, but confined chiefly to the city
Bordeaux, the capital. The principal goods are linens
id cottons, snuff, glass, china and earthen ware, dyestuffs,
ather, ironmongery, cordage, and sailcloth. The com-
erce exclusively from Bordeaux is extensive, as well
1 the french colonies as to other parts of the world, to
‘loh native commodities are exported, and the produc-
ons of such countries returned.
GIROU1, a town of Hindustan, in the province of Alla-
mad, and district Etawah. Long. 78. 44. E. Lat. 27.
GISBOROUGH, a market-town of the north riding
t ie county of York, in the wapentake of East Langbo-
!US '• “ is situated at the mouth of the river Tees,
,. e j1 bay is formed, having good anchorage for ships,
place worked some mines of alum ; but the discovery
0 iers of greater richness has caused them to be given
vol. x.
G L A
up. A priory once stood here, richly endowed, but there
are no other remains of it except the superb arch of the
east window. The narrow vale in which the town stands
is highly fertile. The market is held on Saturday, and is
well supplied. It is 248 miles from London. The popu¬
lation amounted in 1801 to 1719, in 1811 to 1834, in
1821 to 2180, and in 1831 to 2210.
GI ETITH, a Hebrew word occurring frequently in the
Psalms, and generally translated wine-presses. The con¬
jectures ot interpreters are various concerning this word.
Some think it signifies a sort of musical instrument; others,
that the psalms with this title were sung after the vintage ;
and others, again, that the hymns of this kind were in¬
vented in the city of Gath. Calmet is rather of opinion
that it was applied to the class of young women or song¬
stresses of Gath by whom they were sung. Dr Ham¬
mond thinks that the psalms with this title were all set
to the same tune, and made on Goliath the Gittite.
GIURGEWO, acity of the Turkish province of Nicopoli.
It stands on the northern bank of the Danube, and in the
principality ofWallachia, but the garrison is Turkish. It
has a strong fortress, and the city itself is fortified. The
inhabitants amount to 7000, Greeks, Armenians, and Wal-
lachians, with very few Turks, excepting the military, who
chiefly reside within the fortress of Turn, which com¬
mands the city. Lat. 43. 52. 45. N.
GLACIERS, a name given to extensive fields of ice
amongst the Alps. Mr Coxe observes of these mountains
in general, that they are composed of many parallel chains,
the highest of which occupy the centre, and the others
gradually diminish in proportion as they recede from
thence. The central chain appears covered with pointed
rocks, all parts of which, that are not absolutely perpen¬
dicular, lie hid under perpetual snow and ice even in sum¬
mer. On each side of this ridge are fertile and cultivat¬
ed valleys, interspersed with numerous villages, and wa¬
tered by numerous streams. The elevated peaks of the
central chain are covered with snow ; but their declivities,
excepting those which are extremely steep, have all a co¬
vering of ice as well as snow; the intermediate parts be¬
ing filled with vast fields of ice, terminating in the culti¬
vated valleys above mentioned. The same phenomena,
though on a smaller scale, occur in those chains which
are at a distance from the principal one. In those which
are most remote, no ice, and scarcely any snow, is observ¬
ed, unless upon some of the most elevated summits; and
the mountains diminishing in height and ruggedness, ap¬
pear covered with verdure, until at last they terminate in
small hills and plains.
Thus the glaciers may be divided into two sorts; one
occupying the deep valleys situated in the bosom of the
Alps, and distinguished by the name of ice valleys; the
other being those which clothe the declivities and sides
of the mountains. These two kinds of glaciers are distin¬
guished by Mr Coxe into the upper and lower glaciers.
The lower glaciers are by far the most considerable,
some of them extending several leagues in length. They
do not communicate with each other, as has been gene¬
rally supposed, few of them being parallel to the central
chain ; but, stretching mostly in a transverse direction,
they are bordered at the higher extremity by inaccessible
rocks, and at the lower extend into the cultivated valleys.
The thickness of the ice varies in different parts. In the
Glacier des Bois, which extends more than fifteen miles
in length, and upwards of three in breadth, Saussure found
it generally from eighty to a hundred feet; but he was
credibly informed, that in some places it was not less than
six hundred feet, and even more. These vast masses of
ice usually rest on an inclined plane ; where, being push¬
ed forward by their own weight, and but weakly support¬
ed by the rugged rocks beneath them, they are intersecfc-
3 x
529
Gittith
I!
Glaciers.
530
G L A
G L A
Glacis
II
Gladiators.
ed by large crevices, and have an appearance of walls,
pyramids, and the like, according to the position of the
eye in viewing them. In those parts, however, where
they lie upon even ground, or have only a gentle inclina¬
tion, the surface of the ice is nearly uniform, the crevices
being few and narrow, and the glacier being crossed by
travellers on foot without any difficulty. The surface of
the ice is rough and granulated, so that people may walk
upon it, excepting at such places as have a steep descent.
It is opaque, full of small bubbles about the size of a pea,
very porous, and greatly resembles a mixture of snow and
water congealed. A vast quantity of stones and earth
falls down from the mountains upon the glaciers, and is
by them thrown off on each side according to the descent
of the ice. The place upon which these rest is harder and
more elevated than the rest of the ice, and is very difficult
to walk upon ; the earth is likewise laid upon them in such
regular heaps, that it appears to have been done by art.
This collection of earths and stones is termed by the na¬
tives the moraine.
The upper glaciers may be subdivided into those which
cover the summits, and those which extend along the sides
of the Alps. Those upon the very summits, however, though
they have the appearance of ice, are not so in reality, but
consist entirely of snow hardened by the extreme cold.
Saussure found that which covered the top of Mont
Blanc to be penetrable, though with difficulty, by a stick ;
but below this hard crust was a soft snow without coher¬
ence. The sides are covered with a mixture of ice and
snow, produced by the power of the summer sun in dis¬
solving the snow, which afterwards congeals into hard ice.
Several conjectures have been hazarded concerning the
formation of these extraordinary bodies of ice. Coxe
agrees with Gruner in opinion, that they are produced by
the continual dissolution of the snow in summer, and its
congelation by the succeeding frosts. Hence, on the
summits of the mountains, where the sun has very little
power, the glacier is soft, and contains no ice ; but as we
descend the mountains the consistence becomes firmer,
because there is a considerable mixture of snow water,
the congelation of which augments the hardness ; and in
the valleys, the glacier is hardest of all, because the por¬
tion of water is there much superior to that of the snow.
Hence it seems plain that the glaciers derive their origin
from the melting of the snow on the upper parts of the
mountains, and the congelation of the water as it advances ;
and to this cause Saussure adds the quantity of snow which
often rolls down into the valleys, and congeals along with
the water just mentioned.
GLACIS, in building, an easy gradual slope or declivity.
Glacis, in Fortification, that mass of earth which serves
as a parapet to the covered way, sloping easily towards
the champaign or field.
GLADBACH, a town of Prussia, in the government of
Cleves, and the capital of a circle of the same name. It
is a place which has grown up in a few years to great ma¬
nufacturing prosperity. It makes large quantities of linen
and cotton goods, and many silks ; and though within the
towm the inhabitants do not exceed 2000, yet the villages
in contact with it, and forming the suburbs, contain more
than 5500 persons.
GLADIATORS, in Antiquity, persons who foughtchief-
ly in the arena of the amphitheatre at Rome, for the en¬
tertainment of the people. The gladiators wrere generally
slaves, and fought from necessity ; though sometimes free¬
men took to the same profession, like our prize-fighters,
for a livelihood. The Romans borrowed this cruel diver¬
sion from the Asiatics; and some suppose that there was
policy in the practice, the frequent combats of gladiators
tending to accustom the people to despise danger and
death.
The origin of these combats seems obvious. From thee,!
earliest times it had been the custom to sacrifice captives wl
or prisoners of war, to the manes of the great men who
had died in battle. Thus Achilles, in the Iliad (lib. xxiii.),
sacrificed twelve young Trojans to the manes of Patro-
clus; and in Virgil (lib. xi. ver. 81), iEneas sent cap.
tives to Evander to be sacrificed at the funeral of his son
Pallas. But in process of time they came also to sacrifice
slaves at the funerals of all persons of condition ; and this
was even esteemed a necessary part of the ceremony;
but as it would have appeared barbarous to massacre them
like beasts, they were appointed to fight with each other,
and to endeavour to save their own lives by killing their
adversary. This seemed somewhat less inhuman, because
there was a possibility of avoiding death, by an exertion
of skill and courage. The profession of gladiator thus be¬
came an art; and hence arose masters of the art, men
learned in fighting and exercise. These masters, whom
the Latins called lanistce, bought slaves to be trained up
to this cruel trade, and afterwards sold them to such as
had occasion to present the people with so horrible a show.
The exhibitions were at first performed near the sepul¬
chre of the deceased, or around the funeral pile; but
they were afterwards removed to the circus and amphi¬
theatres, and became ordinary amusements. The first
show of gladiators, called munus gladiatorium, was, accord¬
ing to Valerius Maximus, exhibited at Rome by Marcus
and Decius Brutus, upon the death of their father, in the
year of the city 490. On this occasion there were pro¬
bably only three pairs of gladiators. In 537 the three
sons of M. iEmilius Lepidus the augur, who had been
thrice consul, entertained the people with the cruel plea¬
sure of seeing twenty-two gladiators fight in the forum. In
547, the first Africanus diverted his army at New Carthage
(Carthagena), with a show of gladiators, which he exhibited
in honour of his father and uncle, who had begun the re¬
duction of Spain. In process of time the Romans became
so fond of these bloody entertainments, that not only the
heir of any great and rich citizen lately deceased, but all
the principal magistrates, presented the people with shows
of this nature, to procure tbeir favour. The aediles, pra¬
ters, consuls, and, above all, the candidates for offices,
made their court to the people by entertaining them fre¬
quently with these fights ; and even the priests were some¬
times exhibitors of these barbarous shows; for we meet
with the ludi pontificates in Suetonius (August, cap. 44),
and with the ludi sacerdotales, in Pliny (Epist. lib. vii.).
As for the emperors, it was so much their interest to in¬
gratiate themselves with the populace, that they obliged
them with combats of gladiators upon almost all occasions;
and as these multiplied, the number of combatants like¬
wise increased. Accordingly, Julius Caesar, in his aedde-
ship, diverted the people with the exhibition of three hun¬
dred and twenty couples. Titus exhibited a show of gla¬
diators, wild beasts, and representations of sea-fights,
which lasted a hundred days; and Trajan continued a
solemnity of this nature for a hundred and twenty-three
days, during which time he brought out a thousand pairs
of gladiators. Before this time, and under the republic,
the number of gladiators was so great, that when the con¬
spiracy of Catiline broke out, the senate ordered t. em
be dispersed into the garrisons and secured, lest they
should join the disaffected party. .
These sports at length became so common, and tne
consequences in a variety of respects proved so dangerous,
that Cicero caused a law to be enacted that no person s o
exhibit a show of gladiators within two y.eart, ^ ^Lve
appeared as a candidate for any office. Julius Caesar g
orders that only a certain number of men of this Pr0 es, ,
should be in Rome at a time; Augustus decree
only two shows of gladiators should be presented in ay »
G L A
#i!itprs-ncl never above sixty couples of combatants in a show ;
» nd Tiberius provided by an order of senate, that no per-
({■ ,n should have the privilege of gratifying the people
(V ,jth Such a solemnity unless he was worth 500,000 ses-
1(1 irceSi The same exhibitions were also regulated by Ner-
d|| 1< The Emperor Claudius restrained them to certain
i-H -Casions; but he soon afterwards annulled what he had
»creed; private persons began to exhibit them as usual,
nl 1(j some carried the brutal satisfaction so far as to have
;! 4. ,em at their ordinary feasts.
The master of the gladiators made them all swear that
i i iey would fight to death ; and, if they failed, they were
:i to death by fire, swords, clubs, whips, or the like. It
I as a crime for the wretches to complain when they were
4 ounded, or to ask for death or seek to avoid it when
«! ! vercome; but it was usual for the emperor or the people
U | > grant them life when they exhibited no signs of fear,
•ta# at waited the fatal stroke with courage and intrepidity.
11 ugustus even decreed that life should always be granted
;!»iem.
From slaves and freemen the inhuman sport at length
f' l wead to people of rank and condition ; so that Augustus
11 I as obliged to issue an edict providing that none of the
id matorian order should become gladiators ; and soon after-
« 1, ards he imposed the same constraint on the knights.
i Nevertheless Nero is related to have brought upwards of
!«4 mr hundred senators and six hundred Roman knights
fi pon the arena; though Lipsius supposes both these num-
it«* 3rs to be falsified, and not without reason reduces them
jui (forty senators and sixty knights. But Domitian refined
i!«| 1 the practice of Nero, and exhibited combats of women
1 p 1 the night time.
Constantine the Great is said to have first prohibited
! ic combats of gladiators in the East; at least he forbade
pii lose who were condemned to death for their crimes
A eing employed in these exhibitions; and there is st;ll
is <tant an order to the prcefectus prcetorii, dated at Bery¬
ls is in Phoenicia the 1st of October 325.
The Emperor Honorius forbade them at Rome on occa-
on of the death of Telemachus, who coming from the East
P1 1 Rome at the time of one of these spectacles, went down
[ fl!l| ,to the arena, and used all his endeavours to prevent the
ladiators from continuing the sport; upon which the spec-
' 41 i itors of the carnage, fired.with indignation, stoned him to
! ii| eath. It must be observed, however, that the practice
as not entirely abolished in the West before the time of
' heodoric king of the Ostrogoths. Honorius, on the oc-
a ision first mentioned, had prohibited them ; but the pro-
ibition does not seem to have been enforced. Theo-
oric, in the year 500, finally abolished them.
Some time before the day of combat, the person who
p i resented the people with these shows gave notice of his
li itention by programmes or bills, containing the names
f the gladiators, and the marks by which they were to
j w e distinguished; for each had his peculiar badge, which
j|’ ! as commonly a peacock’s feather, as appears from the
f ; 3holiast of Juvenal on the 158th verse of the third satire,
a ; ind also from Turnebus (Advers. lib. ii. cap 8). They
Iso gave notice how long the shows would last, and how
n ’ 'any couples of gladiators were to exhibit; and it even
ij! ppears, from the seventh satire of the second book of Ho-
lul ice, that they sometimes made representations of these
dngs in painting, as is practised among us by those who
aye any thing to exhibit at fairs.
Ihe day being come, they began the entertainment by
ringing two kinds of weapons; the first being staves or
ooden foils, called rudes, and the second effective wea-
ons> as swords, poniards, and the like. The first were
hi ailed arma lusoria, or exercitoria ; the second decretoria,
1 s being given by decree or sentence by the praetor, or by
"m at whose expense the spectacle was exhibited. They
G L A 531
began to fence or skirmish with the first, which usually Glamor-
formed the prelude to the battle; and from these, when ganshire.
well warmed, they advanced to the second at the sound of
the trumpets, with which they fought naked. Then they
were said vertere arma. The terms of striking were pe-
tere et repetere; of avoiding a blow, exire: and when one
of the combatants received a remarkable wound, his ad¬
versary or the people cried out, Habet, or hoc habet. The
first part of the engagement was called ventilare, prcelu-
dere; and the second, dimicare ad cerium, or versis armis
pugnare ; and some authors think, with much probability,
that it is to these two kinds of combat that St Paul alludes
in the passage (1 Cor. ix. 26, 27) where he says, “ I fight
not as one that beateth the air; but I keep my body, and
bring it into subjection.”
If the vanquished surrendered his arms, it was not in
the victor’s power to grant him life ; it was the people
during the time of the republic, and the prince or people
during the time of the empire, who were alone empowered
to grant this boon. The reward of the conqueror was a
branch of palm tree, and a sum of money, probably col¬
lected amongst the spectators; sometimes they gave him
his conge, or dismissed him by putting one of the wooden
foils or rudes in his hand; and sometimes they even grant¬
ed him his freedom, putting the pilaeus on his head. The
sign or indication by which the spectators showed that
they granted the favour, was premere pollicem, which M.
Dacier takes to be a clenching of the figures of both hands
between one another, and so holding the two thumbs up¬
right, close together; and, when they desired to have the
combat finished and the vanquished slain, verterunt polli¬
cem, they bent back the thumb, as we learn from Juvenal.
(Sat. iii. ver. 36.) The gladiators challenged or defied
each other by showing the little finger; and, by extend¬
ing this, or some other, during the combat, they owned
themselves vanquished, and begged mercy from the people.
Victi ostensam digiti veniam a populo postulabant, says the
old scholiast on Perseus.
GLAMORGANSHIRE, a county of South Wales,
stretching, in a circular line, along the northern shore of
the Bristol Channel, from east to west about forty-two
miles, and extending to the mountains in some parts to
the distance of twenty-two or twenty-three miles. It is
bounded on the north by Caermarthen and Brecknock,
on the east by Monmouthshire, and on the south and west
by the Bristol Channel. Its whole area is 822 miles, or
526,080 statute acres, in which are included the water¬
courses, roads, and sites of buildings, which occupy a
large surface.
The county may be divided into two' districts of a very
opposite character, according to the nature of the soil,
rather than into those ten hundreds by which its parts are
politically denominated. About one half the county, on
the sea-shore, is rich and fertile land, and produces excel¬
lent crops of wheat, oats, beans, and barley. The soil is
generally of moderate consistence, and of a loamy nature,
some parts being mixed with clay, others with sand, and
almost all resting on a calcareous substratum. It is easily
ploughed, very friable, and, when laid down in grass, yields
excellent herbage, by which many cattle are fattened, and
much good butter is made. The manure principally used
is lime, which is rendered very cheap from the vicinity of
coals to the limestone district.
The inland part of the county rises gradually from hills
to mountains, and in that district the agriculture is in a
very backward state. The soil between these hills and
mountains is composed generally of a black peat, but
sometimes of a brown gravelly earth. Lime applied to the
former is beneficial for a few years, but its good effect then
ceases; and having but little cattle to make manure, and
that manure being neglected to be preserved with due
m
532 G L A G L A
Glamor- care, the agricultural produce of the district is insufficient
ganshire. for (-he subsistence of the inhabitants. On some of the
mountain farms the land is sowed with corn as long as it
will yield any increase without fallow or manure, and when
so far exhausted it is left without cultivation for many
years. Much of the unenclosed mountain tract is devoted
wholly to feeding sheep, and the occupiers of land around
them having rights of common without stint, so overstock
them, that the animals seldom attain their full growth; but
when removed to better pasture, and fattened, their mut¬
ton is excellent. The farms are mostly of very small value,
varying in rent from L.5 to L.200 annually; the average of
the whole is not L.50, though in many instances the rent
has been tripled, and even quadrupled, within the last
twenty years. The ploughing is generally executed by
oxen, and their ploughs being of clumsy construction,
sometimes six or eight are used to perform the work, and
yet perform it ill; in some cases two, in others four, are
harnessed to plough with two horses before them. The
most commendable part of the rural economy of the county
is the construction of the houses, barns, and other farming
erections. These are solidly and substantially built, and
being uniformly white-washed on the outside, have a clean
and neat appearance.
The agriculture of this county, valuable as it is in the
more southern part, is the least productive source of its
riches. The greater part of it abounds with minerals,
which, owing to the great extension of good roads, of na¬
vigable canals and railways, within the last few years,
have become a most important source of wealth. The
northern and middle parts of the county comprehend a
portion of that great mineral tract which begins at Ponty-
pool in Monmouthshire, and terminates at St Bride’s Bay in
Pembrokeshire. The exterior stratum or boundary consists
of a bed of limestone, within which are contained all the
strata of the other minerals in the following position. On
the north side of a line drawn from east to west through
the middle of the district, all the strata rise gradually to
the north, and on the south side of the same line they rise
to the south till they come to the surface, except at the
east end, where they rise to the eastward. In the centre
of this tract, the iron and coal mines in the vicinity of
Myrthr-Tydvil are both the richest and most abundant.
The whole of the coal is at the depth of 440 feet beneath
the surface of the ground, which is composed of argilla¬
ceous strata, with occasional veins of hard rock. The coal
is about fifty-two feet deep, the thickness of the veins
varying from twelve inches to nine feet in thickness.
The ironstone lies under the stone at a depth of about
108 feet, and is separated by argillaceous earth and stone
into eighteen different veins, each about four feet ten
inches in thickness. When this ore is smelted, it yields
iron to the amount of three tenths of the weight of the ore.
Coal is found in vast quantities both in the north and
south divisions of the county, but of different natures.
That in the south is of the bituminous kind, or coaking coal,
like the coals of Newcastle. That of the north (when
large, called stone-coal and small culm) is difficult to kin¬
dle, burns slowly, but emits an intense heat with little or
no smoke, and without being distended. This latter is
principally used by the maltsters and lime-burners.
Although the abundance and excellence of the coal and
iron have caused the erection of blast-furnaces in many
parts of the county, yet the largest and most numerous
are those near the recently-built town of Myrthr-Tydvil,
which, within a few years, has grown up from an obscure
village to be the most populous village in the whole prin¬
cipality of Wales, and contained, in 1811, 11,000, and in
1831, 22,000 inhabitants.
There are seventeen blast-furnaces near this place,
each of which can make from 100 to 180 tons of iron
weekly. The most extensive of the works, that of Cyfar- qi i ,■
tha, belonging to Messrs Crawshay and Company, produce gais
annually upwards of 20,000 tons of pig-iron, and somewhat ^
more bar-iron. The fires of the furnaces are blown by a 1 v
steam-engine of fifty horse power, and an overshot wheel
of fifty feet in diameter, which requires twenty-five tons
of water each minute to keep it at work. The number of
men employed at Messrs Crawshay’s work is from 1500
to 2000, making, with their families, more than three thou¬
sand persons, whose yearly wages amount to more than
L. 140,000.
The next considerable manufactory is that commonly
called tin plates. The cheapness of iron and coal causes
the tin of Cornwall to be sent here, and spread over those
iron plates, which are afterwards dispersed all over the
world.
In like manner, the copper ore from Cornwall, from
North Wales, and from Ireland, is attracted to Glamor¬
ganshire by the cheapness of coal; and it is smelted in
works upon a most extensive scale, in the vicinity of Aber-
avon, Neath, and Swansea, whence it is forwarded by wa¬
ter-carriage to the places where it receives its final ap¬
propriations to the several purposes for which it is wanted.
There are some extensive manufactories of earthen ware,
which are increasing in their operations ; and small con¬
cerns adapted for making soap, salt, and woollen cloths.
The most considerable exported production from this
county is coals from the ports of Swansea and Neath. At
the former of these ports, the facility of loading vessels is
so great, that ships of three hundred tons burden enter
with one tide, are loaded and enabled to sail sometimes
the next, but usually the next tide but one. The quan¬
tity annually exported amounts to about 450,000 tons, and
more might be shipped, but for some superior privileges
in the city of Bristol, which favour the coal-mines of
Monmouthshire and Gloucestershire.
The rivers of Glamorganshire are, ls£, The Taf or Tave,
over which is the celebrated bridge of one arch, supposed
to be the largest in the world, being one hundred and
forty feet in the span, planned and executed by an un¬
taught country mason, a native of the county; 2d, the
Elay, a stream of short course, near Llantrissent; 3d,
the Ogmore, crossing the county, and entering the sea
near Bridgend; 4tth, the Nedd or Neath, passing from
Brecknockshire, through most romantic valleys, by Neath,
to the sea at Britton Ferry; and, 5th, the Tawy, which
discharges itself into Swansea Bay.
As these rivers are scarcely navigable, and the two
which are so, but lor a short distance, canals have been
constructed for the conveyance of the heavy productions
of the county, and have produced a wonderful effect both
on its wealth and population. These are the Cardiff Canal,
which affords water-carriage from Myrthr-Tydvil to Pe-
narth Bay ; the Neath Canal, which traverses the county
from south to north ; and the Swansea Canal, which runs
to the north till it reaches Brecknockshire. The number
of railroads communicating between the iron-works and
coal-mines and the canals are too numerous to admit ol
being enumerated, and have proved very beneficial under¬
takings both to the constructors and to the public.
The peasantry of this county generally use the Welsh
language, and either cannot or will not speak English.
In the towns, however, the latter is very commonly spoken,
and in the churches the service is occasionally conducted
in it. There is, however, a portion of the county, to the
south of the mountains round Oxwich Bay, where the
Welsh language is quite unknown, whilst, on the opposite
side of the same mountains, the inhabitants are unac¬
quainted with English.
Glamorganshire returns to the House of Commons two
members for the county, and one for the newly created
our
ill.
:
(
G L A
t
>rough of Myrthr-Tydvil, and also one for the old united
(roughs of Cardiff, Cowbridge, and Llantrissent. The
(pulation returns of the four decennial censuses give the
habitants in 1801, 71,525; in 1811, 85,067; in 1821,
il,737; and in 1831, 126.200.
The county town is Cardiff, and it is the chief place
r shipping the iron of Myrthr-Tydvil. Its pier is now
jcessible for ships of two hundred tons, but some im-
ovements are in progress which will enlarge the harbour,
| d adapt it for the reception of vessels of a greater draught
t water than can now reach it. The chief towns, and
leir population, are as follow ;—Myrthr-Tydvil, 22,083 ;
iyansea, 13,256; Cardiff. 6187 ; Neath, 4034; Llansamlet,
3 87; and Llantrissent, 2789. Landaff, though a city and
e seat of a bishop, has only 1299 inhabitants.
As the picturesque beauty of many parts of the county
very great, it has ever been the favourite resort of many
nilies of respectability. That it was so in ancient times,
e number of ruins of ancient castles clearly evince ; and
iv parts of the island, excepting the immediate vicinity
the metropolis, have so many gentlemen’s seats within
iem. The principal of these are, Gnoll Castle, the seat
i the Mackworths, now Mr Grant; Cardiff Castle, Mar-
i is of Bute; Dunraven, Thomas Wyndham, Esq.;
mlline Castle, Lord Vernon; Margram, Mr Talbot ;
tassmont, Sir John Morris; Southall, John Lucas, Esq.;
(illyhir, Sir Gabriel Powell; Penllergaer, John Llewelyn,
;q.; Penrice Castle, R. M. Talbot, Esq.; Woodlands,
l ;neral Ward ; and Penderi, Thomas Morgan, Est^.; with
tiny others.
(See Rees’s South Wales; Malkin’s Scenery of South
rales ; Parliamentary Returns.}
GLAMOUR, or Glamer, an old term of popular su-
rstition in Scotland, denoting a kind of magical mist,
lieved to be raised by sorcerers, and which deluded the
ectators with visions of things that had no real exist-
ice, altered the appearance of those which really did
■ ist, and produced other effects equally wonderful. The
stern nations have a similar superstition, as we learn
an the Arabian Nights Entertainments, and other works
oriental fiction.
GLANVILL, or Glanvil, Joseph, was born at Ply-
)uth in 1636. He received his education in the uni-
rsity of Oxford, and, in 1666, obtained the cure of
jbey-church at Bath; in 1678, he became prebend of
e church of Worcester, and died at Bath on the 16th of
wember 1680, in the forty-fourth year of his age. This
iter, the first who, in England, presented philosophical
bpticism under a systematic form, deserves more marked
• cention than has hitherto been accorded to him ; nor can
; observe without surprise that Brucker has not given
11 any place in his Critical History of Philosophy. ’There
J two kinds of scepticism, essentially distinct; one which,
professing absolute doubt, tends to condemn human
ison to a mortal lethargy; and another which, produ-
ig only a relative doubt, serves rather to excite reason,
a wise distrust of itself, to more severe and rigid exa-
nation. The first is only an arm of destruction; the
pond isan instrument of censure and probation. It was
is latter kind of scepticism to which Glanvil wished to
l/e systematic preparation, by tracing out an interme-
ite path between that dogmatism which blindly affirms
ery thing, and Pyrrhonism, which denies every thing
a manner equally blind. Two parties then existed in
igland; one of which abused the name of philosophy,
order to accredit atheism, and the other abused the
me of religion, in order to justify superstition. Glan-
deplored this double aberration; he felt that philoso-
y itself required a reform, and he laboured to prepare
her than to produce it himself. It is in this light, and
mi this point of view, that his writings should be stu-
G L A
died and judged. Of these, the two principal, both in
English, are, first, The Vanity of Dogmatising, or Confi¬
dence in Opinions, manifested in a Discourse of the short¬
ness and uncertainty of our knowledge of its principles,
with Reflections on Peripateticism, and an Apology for
Philosophy, 1661, in 8vo; and, secondly, Scepsis Scientifica,
or confessed Ignorance the way to Science, an essay on
the vanity of dogmatising, and confident opinion, London,
1665, in 4to. The latter of these works procured him
the honour of being admitted a member of the Royal
Society of London. Montaigne and Charron appear to
have served as his guides, and he has borrowed much from
both ; he reviewed the principal objects of human know¬
ledge, and endeavoured to show, in regard to each of these,
the weakness and impotence of reason. The peripatetic
doctrine, and the system of Descartes, which lie appears
to have especially had it in view' to combat, themselves
furnished him with arms; and in the rapid advancement
of physical science at this period, he also endeavours to
discover grounds for rendering more sensible our ignorance
in the study of nature. Hobbes is the frequent object of
his criticism. In general he seeks to prevent the abuse of
rational speculations ; and it is only in the observations to
which they have led that he seeks for considerations fitted
to inspire the distrust which he inculcates. His views
respecting the sources of human error are presented with
much perspicuity and method, often with striking no¬
velty. The manner in which he treats the great ques¬
tion of causation is the more remarkable, because it ap¬
pears to have opened the way to Hume in an investiga¬
tion which has produced one of the greatest revolutions
which philosophy has experienced in our time. Accord¬
ing to him, we know only that things occur, and succeed
one another, not how they are produced; we see their
relation of coincidence, but not the tie which connects
them; and hence the relation of the effect to the cause
is, as far as we are concerned, a fact, and not a veritable
law. Glanvil compares dogmatism to a narrow prison, in
which the human mind is confined, and beyond the walls
of which it cannot extend its view. The offspring of igno¬
rance and of pride, dogmatism is, according to him, the
father of errors ; and scepticism is called in to apply a
remedy, not by employing negations as arbitrary, but by
weighing with impartiality the proofs. Doctrine like this
was, however, liable to be mistaken or misrepresented ; and
we need not wonder, therefore, that, at the period when
Glanvil wrote, he was considered by the greater number
of readers as an absolute sceptic, and treated as such.
The partisans of the prevailing systems regarded with
more aversion the men who provoked discussion, than they
did those persons who rejected their doctrines without ex¬
amination. Hence Glanvil was very warmly attacked ; but
he justified himself in his answer to one of his opponents,
which is subjoined to his Scepsis Scientifica; and he also
undertook the defence of philosophy, conceiving that this
belonged of right to those who desired to bring her back
to her proper and legitimate sphere. It is singular enough,
however, though by no means without example, that this
writer, who had not only shown, but even exaggerated, the
infirmity of human reason, paid himself a strange tribute
to its weakness ; for, after having combated scientific dog¬
matism, he not only yielded to vulgar superstitions, but ac¬
tually endeavoured to accredit them in his Philosophical
Considerations concerning the existence of Sorcerers and
Sorcery, published in 1666, in 4to. The story of the pre¬
tended drum, which was said to have been heard every
night in the house of an inhabitant of Wiltshire (Mr Mum-
pesson), a story which made much noise in the year 1663,
and which is supposed to have furnished Addison with the
idea of his comedy of the Drum, appears to have given oc¬
casion to this work. It might have been imagined that
534
G L A
G L A
Glarus such a tale would have been treated with derision by
II Glanvil, and that the philosopher could have had no other
0bject than to turn into ridicule the credulity of his coun-
1 try. For such a supposition, however, there seems to be
little or no room, and, in point of fact, this production gave
rise to a controversy, which only terminated with the life
of Glanvil. At his death he left a piece entitled Saddu-
cismus Triumphans, which was printed in 1681, 8vo, re¬
printed with some additions in 1682, and translated into
German in 1701. He had there collected twenty-six re¬
lations or stories of the same description as that of the
Drum, in order to establish, by a series of facts, the opi¬
nion which he had expressed in his Philosophical Consi¬
derations. Glanvil supported a much more honourable
cause when he undertook the defence of the Royal So¬
ciety of London, under the title of Plus idtra, or the Pro¬
gress and Advancement of Science since the time of Aris¬
totle, 1658, in 12mo. His object was to refute a foolish
ecclesiastic who had alleged that Aristotle possessed indi¬
vidually more knowledge than could be found in the Royal
Society, or even in all the men of the seventeenth cen¬
tury. By this production he drew upon himself a violent
antagonist in the person of one Stubbe, a physician at War¬
wick ; but, after an animated dispute, the doctor, by some
mischance, lost his life, and his generous antagonist, in a
funeral sermon which he preached on the occasion, pro¬
nounced an eulogium on his memory. Beside^ the works
already noticed, Glanvil wrote, 1. Lux Orientalis, 1662;
2. Philosophia Pia, or Discourse on the Religious Charac¬
ter, and the Tendency of Experimental Philosophy; 3. Es¬
says on several important subjects in Philosophy and Re¬
ligion, 1676, in 4to; 4. An Essay concerning Preach¬
ing; and 5. Sermons. After his death in 1681, there
were published sermons and other posthumous works in
one volume 4to. The style of Glanvil is clear, easy, and
animated; and to the student of the philosophy of the
human mind his works are full of instruction. (a.)
GLARUS, one of the Swiss cantons, is bounded on the
north and on the east by St Gall, on the south by the can¬
ton of Gray Bunden, and on the west by those of Uri and
Schwytz. It extends over 467 square miles, and contains
26,570 inhabitants. The canton consists of two valleys b
between the snow-covered mountains Todi, 11,037, and Glaa
Kistenberg, 10,690, feet in height, towards the south;and
towards the north the mountains of less elevation' viz
the Garn, the Hausstoch, the Martinsloch, the Plattenburv'
and the Schilt, which vary from 6300 to 8800 feet in height
Although the valleys are narrow, they are moderately
fertile; but the chief supply for subsistence is derived from
the pasture on the mountains, on which, during the sum-
mer season, more than 10,000 cows and 5000 sheep are
fed. Though the small portion of arable land is well cul¬
tivated, it does not produce sufficient corn for the consump¬
tion of the inhabitants; butthe deficiencyis made up partly
by potatoes and fruit, and partly by the exchange of Schab-
zuger cheese and wood, for what is wanted. A part of the
inhabitants find employment in manufactures of woollen
and cotton, of hosiery and caps, and in what was formerly
of greater consumption than at present, namely, making
slates for writing, which are sent by the Rhine to Holland.
The government is a pure democracy, in which all the
inhabitants wTho possess property have an equal share of
political power, and equally assist in defending their coun¬
try. The executive magistrate is the landamman. The
religion is partly Protestant reformed, and partly Catholic.
Those of the former sect are the majority, and choose all
the magistracy for five years, and the latter for three years.
When the Catholics are chosen to offices, they are select¬
ed by the Protestants; and when the Protestants’ turn
comes, the individuals are nominated by the Catholics.
The two sects have their separate tribunals in civil and
criminal matters. This canton contributes to the general
confederacy 1615 francs yearly, and provides a contingent
of 482 men for the common defence of the states.
Glarus, a town, the capital of the Swiss canton of that
name, is situated under the mountain Garnish, which is
nearly 9000 feet in height. It contains about 3000 in¬
habitants, who are employed in various manufactures.
The general assembly of the cantons is held in a meadow
near the towm. Long. 8. 57. 50. E. Lat. 47. 2. 43. N.
GLASGOW,
A great commercial and manufacturing city of Lanark¬
shire, in Scotland, situated on the northern bank of the
river Clyde. According to the determination of Dr Wil¬
son, formerly professor of astronomy in the university of
Glasgow, the latitude and longitude of the Macfarlane
Observatory, in the College Garden of Glasgow, are, 55°
5F 32,, north, and 4° 17' 54" west. Glasgow is therefore
nearly eight miles farther south than Edinburgh, and 1° 1'
farther west. The difference between the clocks in Edin¬
burgh and Glasgow is 4/ 27"-4.
See of Glasgow.—There is no authentic record of the
origin of Glasgow. Its name in the Gaelic language is in¬
terpreted by some as signifying a grey smith, whilst others
think it means a dark glen, in allusion to the ravine near
the cathedral, where a primary settlement appears to have
been made. Although Glasgow was an early seat of the
church, historians do not agree as to the time when the see
was founded. That it was next to St Andrews in point of
antiquity is beyond all doubt. With regard to its founder,
Kennet, in his Parochial Antiquities, says, it was instituted
by Kentigern or St Mungo, in the year 560. Dr Kelyn,
speaking of the see of St Asaph in Wales, observes that
“ the see was founded by St Kentigern, a Scot, in 583,”
and that “ St Kentigern was then Bishop of Glasgow.”
From these authorities it may be inferred that St Mungo
founded the see of Glasgow, and became the first bishop ;
and that when a cathedral of sufficient grandeur was finish¬
ed, it would be dedicated to St Mungo. Baldrade, St Mun¬
go’s disciple, who founded a religious house at Inchinnan,
is said to have succeeded him in the bishopric. There is
no record of the town or of the see for more than five
hundred years after this period. This great blank cannot
be accounted for with any degree of certainty. Amongst
other conjectures, there is one, that the church had been
destroyed by the ravages of the Danes, who murdered or
drove off the religious persons who had settled in Glasgow.
In the year 1115, David prince of Cumberland refounded
the see; and having in the year 1124 succeeded his brother
Alexander I. on the throne of Scotland, he promoted his
chaplain, John Achaius, to the bishopric in 1129. In 1133
the cathedral was solemnly consecrated in presence ot the
king, who endowed it with the lands of Partick. In lEh
Pope Alexander III. issued a bull commanding the faith¬
ful to visit the cathedral of Glasgow. In 1176 Bishop Jo-
celine enlarged the cathedral, and rebuilt a part of it in a
style more magnificent than formerly. In 1300 Edwar
I. of England, assuming authority in Scotland, appointe
Anthony Beik to the see of Glasgow; and at the same
period Earl Percy took possession of the episcopal pa ace.
This had no sooner taken place than Sir William Wallace,
with his friend James Cleland, and a few chosen follower|)
indignant at the usurpers, gave them battle in the B'g
GLASGOW.
535
,;j| t.eet, when Lord Percy was killed, and the English rout-
!|i,i,p e in the year 1426 Bishop Cameron established the
'pi c nmissary court, and increased the number of preben-
PI dies of the cathedral to thirty-two. In 1450 Bishop Turn-
FBbi'l obtained a charter from James II. erecting the town
#1 a I patrimony of the bishopric into a regality. In 1488,
IjM t t is, in Bishop Blackadder’s time, the see of Glasgow
ps made archiepiscopal. This bishop, along with the Earl
Io Bothwell, negotiated a marriage between King James
I, of Scotland, and the Lady Margaret, eldest daughter
rljo-GngHenry VII. of England, which they brought about,
91 tf tithe mutual satisfaction of both kingdoms. This union
!l | ];1 the foundation of the title of the Scottish kings to the
&!|Ijglish throne, to which in right of proximity of blood
It'I {,)g James VI. of Scotland succeeded upon the demise
o^ueen Elizabeth.
The revenues which had been granted from time to time
?i Ji support of the splendour of the see of Glasgow were
Irtrl v y considerable. The archbishops were lords of the lord-
ii'i i s ps of the royalty and baronies of Glasgow ; besides, there
] «r vre eighteen baronies of land wliiqji belonged to them
"“l v bin the sheriffdoms of Lanark, Dumbarton, Ayr, Ren-
'(l I fitv, Peebles, Selkirk, Roxburgh, Dumfries, and the Stew-
;i#| ary of Annandale, including 240 parishes. There was
j |ts» | a i a large estate in Cumberland within their jurisdiction,
' t ich was named of old the spiritual dukedom. When the
i#§ s was made archiepiscopal, jurisdiction was given over
: St ■ tn bishops of Galloway, Argyle, and the Isles. At the
is I 1 formation in 1560 Archbishop Beaton retired to France,
^1 ting with him all the relics, documents, and plate which
IpHp tained to the see and the archbishopric. Since the re¬
lation of the see there have been twenty-six Roman Ca-
t ilic bishops; the first, John Achaius, elected in 1129,
ji| al the last, George Carmichael, in 1483 : and four Ro-
» • r n Catholic archbishops; the first, Robert Blackadder,
i 1488, and the last, James Beaton, in 1551, From the
[formation till the Revolution the church in Glasgow
\s governed by fourteen Protestant archbishops; the
f t, James Boyd, elected in 1572, and the last, John Pa-
p,r t son, in 1687.
1 !# Corporation of Glasgow.—Glasgow was governed by a
it! ] >vost and bailies as early as the year 1268. In 1605
f: constitution of the burgh was settled in three distinct
1 lies, viz. the town council, the merchants’, and the trades’
1 uses. The town council consisted of certain persons from
a i t:: ranks of the merchants and trades. In 1801 some al-
i ation was made in the constitution; and from that pe-
i d till 1832 the corporation consisted of a provost, five
1 lies, twelve councillors from the merchants and eleven
I m the trades, a master of work, and a treasurer; the
1 irbal and water bailie were chosen from the council, who
< cted themselves. One third went out of the council
< 3ry year, and could not return for three years. The
i -rchants’ house sent a list of three persons to the coun-
<, from which they elected one to be dean of guild ; and
1 the same manner the trades’ house, when one of the
1 ’ee was elected convener.
In 1832, after the passing of the burgh reform bill, the
'I vn council was chosen by the parliamentary constituency,
' isisting of upwards of 7000 persons who paid an yearly
it of L.10 and upwards. The city is divided into five
ids, each ward electing six councillors. The dean of
ihl and convener are elected by their respective houses,
hgn added to the councillors, they elect a provost, five
'lies, a treasurer, and master of work ; one third of the
uncillors go out of office every year, but may be imme-
itely re-elected. The revenue of the city varies from
15,000 to L.16,000.
Deviously to the passing of the reform bill the burghs
Glasgow, Renfrew, Dumbarton, and Rutherglen elected
e lndividual to represent them in parliament; but since
that bill has been in operation, the above-mentioned con- Glasgow,
stituency for Glasgow returns two members to parliament.
Progressive Population.—There is no enumeration of
the inhabitants of Glasgow that can be relied on before
the year 1610 ; but there are grounds for supposing that
about the time of the Reformation, in 1560, the population
amounted to 4500. In 1610 when the episcopal form of
government was resumed in the church, Archbishop Spot*
tiswood directed the population to be ascertained, upon
which it was found to amount to 7644. In 1660, at the re¬
storation of Charles II., it amounted to 14,678. In 1688,
at the Revolution, the population had decreased to 11,948.
This diminution has been accounted for by the civil war,
during which a number of the inhabitants were driven into
exile. In 1708, immediately after the union with England,
it amounted to 12,766. In 1712 the convention of royal
burghs directed a census of the population to be taken, when
it amounted to 13,832. In 1740 the magistrates ascertain¬
ed it to be 17,034. In 1755 the population was 23,546;
this was ascertained for the Reverend Dr Webster, then
preparing his scheme for the Widows’ Fund of the Church
of Scotland. In 1763 Mr John Woodburn, the city sur¬
veyor, found it to be 28,300. In 1780 it had increased to
42,832 ; but in this enumeration all the suburbs were for
the'first time included. In 1785, soon after the American
war, the population amounted to 45,889. In 1791 the po¬
pulation having been ascertained for Sir John Sinclair’s
national statistical work, amounted to 66,578, including
4633, a part of the suburbs which bad been omitted in the
return. Previously to 1801 the general results only were
preserved, but in that year government for the first time
caused a census to be taken, and the population was found
to be 77,385, viz. males 35,007, females 42,378. In this
enumeration a part of the population of the suburbs was
not included; but if it had been added, the amount would
have been 83,769. In 1811 there was another govern¬
ment enumeration, according to which the population
amounted to 100,749, viz. males 45,275, females 55,474.
In 1819 Dr Cleland drew up the first classified enumera¬
tion of the inhabitants of Glasgow, according to which the
population amounted to 147,197, viz. males 68,994, females
78,203. In 1821 there was another government enume¬
ration, when the population amounted to 147,043, viz.
males 68,119, females 78,924. In 1831, at the last go¬
vernment census, the population was 202,426, viz. males
93,724, females 108,702. The population of Glasgow and
its suburbs may now, after three years increase, be taken
at about 220,000.
Glasgow Bills of Mortality.— As the Glasgow bills of
mortality, from which the probability of human life in
large towns, and other important results, may be deduced,
have met with unprecedented celebrity, we think it right
to give a detailed account of the manner in which these
bills have been prepared. Bills of mortality are understood
to contain a list of births, marriages, and deaths, taken from
parochial registers at stated periods, in connection with the
population. The parochial register of births in Glasgow
being so defective that no reliance could be placed on it,
Dr Cleland, to whom the country is indebted for the Glas¬
gow bills, obtained the necessary information in the follow¬
ing manner.
On the 6th of December 1829, he addressed a letter
to each of the seventy-five clergymen and lay pastors in
the city and suburbs who baptize children, requesting to
be favoured with returns of the numbers they might baptize
from the 14th of December 1829 to the 15th of December
1830, both days inclusive, being the year previous to the
last government census. The letter was accompanied by
a book, in which the sexes, and the particular parishes in
which the parents resided, were to be inserted. He also
requested the various societies of Baptists, the Society of
536
GLASGOW.
Glasgow.
Friends, and Jews and others, who do not dispense the or¬
dinance of baptism to infants, to favour him with the above
particulars relative to children born to members of their
societies ; and at maturity he had the satisfaction of receiv¬
ing returns from the whole; as also an account of the chil¬
dren of parents who, whilst disapproving of infant baptism,
did not belong to any religious society. It appeared, that
in the city and suburbs there were 6397 children baptized,
or born to Baptists, &c. and of that number there were
only 3225 inserted in the parochial registers, leaving unre¬
gistered 3172.
Although in Scotland there is no marriage act, as in
England, restricting the solemnization of marriages to cler¬
gymen of the established church, this ordinance can only
be regularly celebrated by persons duly called to the pas¬
toral office, and not until a certificate of the proclamation
of banns has been produced. Persons irregularly married
are deprived of the privileges of the church till they appear
before the kirk-session, acknowledge their fault, and be re-
poned or restored. From this circumstance, in connection
with the solicitude of the female and her friends to have
the marriage registered, the marriage-register of Glasgow
and its suburbs may be held as correct for all statistical
purposes.
The deaths are ascertained by the number of burials.
The burying-grounds in the city and suburbs are placed
under the management of fourteen wardens. These officers,
who attend every funeral, enter in a memorandum book,
at the grave, the name, age, and designation of the person
buried, along with the amount of fee received, and the name
of the undertaker. Having taken these and other particu¬
lars, the wardens afterwards enter the whole in a book, clas¬
sified conformably to a printed schedule drawn up by Dr
Cleland. At the end of the year they furnish him with an
abstract from their books ; and it is from a combination of
these abstracts that he ascertains the number of deaths at
the various ages. The abstract includes still-born children,
and the deaths of Jews and members of the Society of
Friends who have separate burying-places.
Dr Cleland having been appointed to take the sole charge
of conducting the enumeration and classification of the in¬
habitants of the city of Glasgow and suburbs for the govern¬
ment census of 1831, he employed twelve parochial beadles,
nineteen mercantile clerks, and one superintendent of police,
to take the lists. Before the books were prepared, however,
an advertisement was inserted in the Glasgow newspa¬
pers, requesting the inhabitants to favour him with their
suggestions as to classification ; and before the list-takers
commenced their operations, bills were posted upon the
public places and dwelling-houses of the city, informing
the inhabitants of the nature of the inquiries, and that they
had no reference to taxes, and, moreover, that non-com¬
pliance, or giving a false return, subjected them to a fine.
When the books were returned to him, the public, through
the medium of the press, were requested to call at an office
appointed for the purpose, and to correct any omission or
error which might have been made in their returns. The
list-takers having made oath before the lord provost, that
the name of every householder in the district assigned to
them, his or her age, profession, religion, country, &c.
had been faithfully entered in a book, and a similar de¬
scription of his or her family taken down, he proceeded to
classification, and formed tables and abstracts for each pa¬
rish, containing numerous details not required for the go¬
vernment digest.
Glasgow Bill of Mortality for 1830.
A General List of Births, Baptisms. Marriages, and Bu¬
rials, within the ten Parishes of the Royalty, and the
Suburban Parishes of Barony and Gorbals
The children were baptized as follows, viz.
By clergymen of the Church of Scotland 3123
By ditto of the Secession Church  
By ditto of the Relief Church  
By ditto of the Roman Catholic Church 915
By ditto of the Scotch Episcopal Church, Indepen¬
dents, Methodists, and other denominations, in¬
cluding births among Baptists, Society of Friends,
Jews, &c 1021
Total 6397
Marriages engrossed in the registers of the city, Ba¬
rony, and Gorbals :—In the city, 857; Barony, 691; Gor¬
bals, 371; total, 1919.
Burials engrossed in the Registers of the City, Barony, and
Gorbals Burying Grounds.
January....
February...
March 
April 
May 
June 
July 
August 
September.
October....
November..
December.,
Total.
Of whom have died-
Still-born 
Under one year...
1 and under 2...
2
5
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
75
80
85
90
95
104.
5.
10.
20.
30.
40.
50.
60.
70.
75.
80.
85.
90.
95.
100.
Males.
273
226
218
208
185
200
194
232
240
236
234
255
2701
Total.
246
463
316
263
134
144
189
169
184
177
168
109
55
48
24
9
3
0
2701
Females.
268
223
207
184
175
178
182
206
229
184
189
259
2484
225
414
307
237
119
132
145
144
164
175
171
102
58
48
26
10
6
1
2484
Total.
541
449
425
392
360
378
376
438
469
420
423
514
5185
471
877
623
500
253
276
334
313
348
352
339
211
113
96
50
19
9
1
5185
GLASGOW.
53/
Detail of Burials in the City.—In the High Church ditto, 192; in Shettleston ditto, 54<; in Anderston ditto,
ards, 1728; in the Crypt of the Cathedral, 3; in Black- 125; in Cheapside Street ditto, 123; in Woodside Street
-ars, St David’s, and North-west burying grounds, 204; ditto, 268: in the Crypt of the Reverend Dr Mitchell’s
the Crypt of St David’s Church, 12 ; in the Episco- Church, Wellington Street, 31. Total burials in Ba-
1 Chapel burying ground, 4. Total burials within the rony parish, 1831. In Gorbals Parish In Gorbals
ty, 1951. In Barony Parish—In the Calton bury- burying ground, 1403. Total burials in city and suburbs,
irground, 809; in Bridgetown ditto, 229; in Tollcross 5185.
Glasgow.
Ages of Persons in Glasgow, and in the Suburban Parishes of Barony and Gorbals, in 1830.
lales...
emales
i'otal...
Under
Five.
15422
14855
30277
Five to
Ten.
13127
12580
25707
Ten to
Fifteen.
10491
10720
Fifteen to
Twenty.
8489
12256
21211 ; 20745
Twenty
to Thirty.
15177
23008
38185
Thirty to
Forty.
12179
14240
26419
Forty to
Fifty.
8685
9329
18014
Fifty to
Sixty.
5549
6099
11648
Sixty to
Seventy.
3228
3692
6920
Seventy to Eighty to
Eighty. Ninety.
1090
1502
2592
260
385
645
Ninety
to a Hun
dred.
26
32
58
A Hun- j
dred and ! Total.
upwards.
93724
108702
5 202426
Before exhibiting results, it may be right to mention,
at about twenty years ago the causes of death were an-
mnced yearly in a periodical, along with the gross number
burials; but as no confidence could be placed in such
itements, Dr Cleland has, since that period, declined to
‘tblish a list of diseases ; but being aware, that if a correct
t could be obtained at the census of 1831, when the po¬
llution, births, marriages, and deaths, were ascertained,
would be very beneficial in a medical point of view, he
dressed letters to upwards of 130 medical gentlemen in
e city and suburbs, requesting that they would favour
m with a return of the diseases of which their patients
ed during the period in which he had requested the clergy-
en to give him a note of baptisms. As he only succeed-
[ with a small portion of the members of faculty, bow¬
er, the attempt became fruitless ; and in all probability
i iy future attempt will be unsuccessful, till a compulsory
t of the legislature regarding parochial registers be ob-
ined. Dr Cleland having been intrusted with drawing
) and classifying the government population returns for
121, he took the same precautions as to births, marriages,
trials, and population, as in 1831, in the view of being
ile to ascertain the ages of the population, and the periods
’ life at which death ensued, at particular epochs when
e population could be accurately ascertained.
That Glasgow is a place of average health for statistical
trposes may be inferred from the daily state of the wea-
er, which Dr Cleland published in 1831, by which it ap-
:ared that the average quantity of rain which fell yearly
iring thirty years preceding that period amounted to ra-
er less that twenty-three inches. But, more particular-
, the degree of health may be known, and tables formed
r ascertaining the probability of human life, from a series
of the mortality bills, where the ages of the living and those
of persons who have died are stated in connection with
the population, and a table of longevity for Scotland, which
he prepared in 1821, by which it appeared that on an ave¬
rage of all the counties of Scotland, there was one person
eighty years of age for every 143-5^ of the population,
whilst in the county of Lanark, with a population of
316,790, including 263,046 who live in towns, viz. in Glas¬
gow 202,426, and in other towns 60,620, there was one
such person for every 169Ty^, showing a degree of health
in the population of Glasgow nearly equal to that of the
whole of Scotland.
The following results have reference to Glasgow and its
suburbs, which partake of a mercantile and manufacturing
population, or something between Liverpool and Manches¬
ter, the town population being 198,518, and the rural 3908:
In 1831 the population was found to be 202,426, the bu¬
rials 5185, and the rate of mortality consequently 39^-4^.
The births being 6868, there is one birth for every 29^^-
persons. The number of marriages being 1919, there is
^to7o births to each marriage, and one marriage for every
Itk^Mj persons. The number of families being 41,965,
there are 4y!02j persons to each family. It is very satisfac¬
tory to know, that with the same machinery in 1821, the
population being 147,043, the burials 3686, the rate of
mortality was 39t809q, or, in other words, as near as may be
to the mortality in 1831. By reference to the bills of mor¬
tality between the years 1821 and 1831, similar results will
be obtained. Dr Cleland states, that in all the authentic
bills of mortality he had ever seen, there were more males
born than females; but taking the population above fifteen
years, the number of females preponderates. The following
results for Glasgow are derived from the census of 1831.
Births—Males 3,527 Females
Males under five years 15,422 Females
Males under ten years 28,549 Females
Males under fifteen years 39,040 Females
Males under twenty years...47,529 Females
Males under thirty years 62,706 Females
Males—entire population 93,724 Females,
Burials—Males 2,701 Females
...3,341 Excess of males 186
..14,855 Excess of males 567
..27,435 Excess of males 1,114
..38,155 Excess of males 885
..50,411 Excess of females 2,882
..73,419 Excess of females 10,713
108,702 Excess of females .14,978
,...2,484 Excess of males 217
Description of householders :—Married men, 30,032 ;
idowers, 1790; bachelors, 1437; male householders,
1,259; Widows, 6824; spinsters, 1882; female house-
dders, 8706 : Total families, 41,965. Country to which
'e population belongs: Scotch, 163,600; English, 2919;
'ish, 35,554 ; foreigners, 353 ; total, 202,426. Religion
1 the population: Established, 104,162; Dissenters, Epis-
^palians, and Jews, 71,299; Roman Catholics, 26,965;
>tal, 202,426.
b appears from a recent report of a committee of the
vol. x.
House of Commons, on the evidence of persons distin¬
guished by their knowledge in political science, such as
Dr Bowring, Dr Burrows, Mr Grimaldi, and others, that
the public registers in this country are so inefficient as to
render it impossible to determine the law of mortality
among the working classes of the empire, either generally
or locally. Mr Wheeler, clerk to the company of parish
clerks, stated that in London the returns for the mortality
bill are made up in each parish by two old pauper women,
who are utterly incompetent to give correct information,
3 Y
538 GLASGOW.
Glasgow, and frequently receive most fallacious reports; and Mr that property, still continues to be the magna charta f
Finlaison, the government actuary, stated that no faith the college, and is known by the name of Nova Erectio
whatever could be put in bills of mortality as they are The business of the university is transacted in three dig
now prepared. In order to procure an approximation of tinct meetings, viz. those of the senate, the comitia and
the rate of mortality which prevails among the working the faculty. The meeting of senate consists of the rec
classes in this country, that distinguished political in- tor, the dean, the members of faculty, and the other nr
quirer resorted to the public registers at Ostend in Flan- fessors. The rector presides in tin! meeting, except when
ders, where he made an observation on the mortality of affairs are managed for which the dean is competent
that town for a period of twenty-six years ending in 1832. Meetings of the senate are held for the election and ad
The result of his investigations was, that in a population mission of the chancellor and dean of faculty, for the ad-
consisting of about 11,000 souls, the rate of mortality was mission of the vice-chancellor and vice-rector, for electing
as one in thirty-six and one eighth. Mr Finlaison stated, in a representative to the general assembly, for conferring
fividence, that “ he was enabled to determine that Ostend degrees, and for the management of the libraries and other
is (notwithstanding the opinion that prevails in England) matters belonging to the university. The constituent mem-
a very healthy situation, and no doubt is equal to the bers of the comitia are the rector, the dean, the principal
average of England; at least the only knowledge of the the professors, and the matriculated students of the uni¬
law of mortality as prevailing among the lower orders in versity. The rector or vice-rector presides in this meetin"
England, on which he was able to depend, is derived from Meetings of the comitia are held for the election and ad-
that which he obtained in Flanders.” Thus it appears mission of the rector, for hearing public disputations in
that the law of mortality in England is derived from data any of the faculties previously to the conferring of degrees,
of about 11,000 souls in a foreign country, whilst the mor- for hearing the inaugural discourses of the principal and
tality of Glasgow is ascertained from a population of up- professors previously to their admission to their respective
wards of 200,000 souls; and as to the principles upon which offices, and for promulgating the laws of the university, and
the amount of mortality is ascertained, Mr Milne, the ce- other acts of the university and college courts. Themeet-
lebrated political inquirer, and actuary to the Sun Life ing of faculty, or college meeting, consists of the princi-
Office, London, stated as his opinion, in reference to the pal, the professors of divinity, church history, oriental lan-
Glasgow bills published by Dr Cleland in 1831, that “ the guages, natural philosophy, moral philosophy, mathematics,
law of mortality in a large manufacturing town may now logic, Greek, humanity, civil law, medicine, anatomy, and
be determined, though it could not heretofore, for want of practical astronomy. The principal presides in this meet-
the necessary data.” Glasgow may, therefore, fairly claim ing, and has a casting, but not a deliberative vote. The
precedence in whatever relates to the probability of hu- members of faculty have the administration of the whole
man life in large manufacturing towns. revenue and property of the college, consisting of heritage,
University^—The University of Glasgow is a corporate feus, teinds, and bequests, with the exception of a few par-
body, consisting of a chancellor, rector, dean, and prin- ticular bequests, in which the rector and other officers of
cipal, with professors and students. It was originally the university are specially named. They have likewise
founded, like most other establishments of the same na- the right of exercising the patronage of eight professorships
ture, by authority of the see of Rome. Pope Nicolas V. vested in the college. They present a minister to the pa-
by a bull dated the 7th of January 1451, erected and esta- rish of Govan, and have the gift of various bursaries. In
blished it. . the exercise however of one of their privileges, viz. the
The university at this time had received no endowments, election of professors, the rector and dean of faculty have
and was for years possessed of no property except the urii- a vote.
versity purse, into which were put some small perquisites The officer of highest dignity in the university is the
on conferring degrees, and the patronages of two or three chancellor, who is elected by the members of senate. He
small chaplainaries. At first the university had no build- is the head of the university, and by himself or his deputy
ings of its own. It held its meetings in the chapter-house of has the sole privilege of conferring academical degrees upon
the Blackfriars, or in the cathedral. But these defects were persons found qualified by the Senatus Academicus. The
in some measure supplied by the liberality of James, first office of chancellor is held during life. The rectorisan-
Lord Hamilton, an ancestor of the noble house of Hamilton, nually elected by the dean, the principal, the professors,
who, in the year 1459, gave to the principal and other re- and the matriculated students. The electors are divided,
gents of the College of Arts, for their use and accommo- according to their respective birthplaces, into four nations;
dation, a tenement, with its pertinents, in the High Street Glottianna, Transforthana, Loudoniana, and llothseana.
of Glasgow, to the north of the Blackfriars, together with As the majority of the members of each nation constitutes
four acres of land in the Dow-hill. In the deed the noble one vote, in case of an equality, the rector going out of office
donor required the principal and regents, on their first ad- has the casting vote ; and, in his absence, the rector imme-
mission, to declare on oath that they would commemorate diately preceding. The election is always held on the 15th
James Lord Hamilton, and Lady Euphemia, his spouse, of November, except when it falls upon Sunday, and then
the Countess of Douglas, as the founders of the college, the election is held on the following day, and the same per-
Amongst other benefactors of the college distinguished by son is generally re-elected for a second year. It is the duty
their donations chiefly for the support of poor students, of the rector to preserve the rights and privileges of the
were Ann duchess of Hamilton, Robina countess of For- university, to convoke those meetings in which he pre-
far, William earl of Dundonnell, the Duke of Chandos, the sides, and, with his assessors, whom he himself appoints, to
Duke of Montrose, Leighton archbishop of Glasgow, exercise that academical jurisdiction amongst the students
Boulter bishop of Armagh, Mr Snell, Dr Williams, Dr themselves, or between the students and citizens, which is
Walton, Mr Zachary Boyd, and Dr William Hunter. bestowed upon most of the universities of Europe. lh^
The Reformation produced great disorder in the univer- dean of faculties is elected by the senate. This office is held
sity, its members being clergymen of the Catholic persua- for two years, and by virtue of it he is entitled to give direc-
sion, and its chief support being derived from the church, tions with regard to the course of study, and to judge, to-
In 1577 James VI. prescribed particular rules with re- gether with the rector, principal, and professors, of the
gard to the college, and the formation of its government, qualifications of those who desire to be created masters o
and made a considerable addition to its funds. The char- arts, doctors of divinity, &c. The foundation of the office
ter by which the king made these regulations, and gave of principal, almost coeval with that of the university,
*
<
GLASGOW.
539
* »w.
mfirraed by James VI. in 1577. It is in the appointment
the king. The principal has the ordinary superinten-
nce of the deportment of all members of the university,
d is primarius professor of divinity. The professors of
e university of Glasgow may be distributed, according to
e departments of knowledge to which they are respec-
,-ely assigned, into four distinct faculties, those of arts,
I eology, law, and medicine.
The faculty of arts comprehends the professors of Latin
humanity, Greek, logic, ethics, natural philosophy, ma-
ematics, practical astronomy, and natural history. To
is faculty may be added the professors of mathematics,
tronomy, and natural history. The faculty of theology
eludes, besides the principal, who in right of his office
first professor of divinity, three other professorships,
ose of divinity, church history, and oriental languages,
he faculty of law consists of a single professorship, that of
vil law. The faculty of medicine comprehends the pro-
ssorships of anatomy, medicine, materia medica, surgery,
idwifery, chemistry, and botany. The professors of Greek,
gic, ethics, and natural philosophy, whose chairs were the
idlest endowed in the university, are denominated regents,
id enjoy, in right of their regency, certain trifling privi-
jges beyond their brother professors. The regius pro-
ssors are those whose chairs have been recently founded,
idowed, and nominated by the crown, and they are mem-
irs of senate only, not of the faculty of college, viz. natu-
il history, surgery, midwifery, chemistry, botany, and ma-
B , ria medica.
1 The university library was founded in the fifteenth cen-
prl iry. It contains an extensive and valuable collection of
Mm. wks, amongst which are many beautiful editions of the
tiaijf assies. It is always increasing by donations of copies
ff i; 'every new work published in this country, as well as by
Ipoks purchased by the fees received at matriculation, as-
sted by fees received from graduates, and by an annual
•''K lyment from all students, who are entitled to the use of
- ie library under certain limitations.
A small botanic garden adjoining the college was prepar-
i | 1 for the use of the lecturer in botany in 1753 ; but hav-
. ig from various causes become unfit for its purposes, a
ery valuable botanical garden, consisting of eight acres,
»ii J as formed in the neighbourhood of the city by the citi-
| ifl 1 ms of Glasgow. The university subscribed L.2000 to-
>3 f ards its erection, for the privilege of their professor of
' ■mil' otany lecturing in the hall in the garden, and government
as subsequently given a similar sum in support of it.
", lys garden, which was opened in the spring of 1818, for
if■'he variety of rare plants from almost every part of the
'<»■ >'orld, is not exceeded by any botanical garden in the
lii “ ingdom.
The founder of the Hunterian museum was the celebrat-
fll d William Hunter, who was born in the parish of East Kil-
- f ride, in the neighbourhood of Glasgow, in 1710. By his
»i I ill in 1781, he bequeathed to the principal and professors
)(*? f the college his splendid collection of books, coins, paint-
W i igs, anatomical preparations, &c. and appropriated L.8000
w hr the erection of a building for their reception. Thecol-
lft| hetion is valued at L.65,000, viz. medals L.30,000, books
L ^ ..15,000, pictures L.10,000, miscellaneous L.10,000. The
ffli ollection has been considerably increased of late years.
* The public are admitted every lawful day, on payment of
«jlj ne shilling.
There are twenty-seven bursaries connected with the
OK ollege, varying from L.5 to L.40. They are held from
f>ur to six years. Besides these there are two very valu-
ii hie exhibitions. In the year 1688, Mr John Snell, with
view to support episcopacy in Scotland, devised to trus-
K *’ ees a considerable estate near Leamington, in Warwick-
hire, for educating Scotch students at Baliol College, Ox-
ord* By the rise in the value of land, and the improve¬
ments which have from time to time been made on that Glasgow,
estate, the fund now affords about L.130 per annum to each v—-y-'w'
of ten exhibitioners. Another foundation by John War¬
ner, bishop of Rochester, of L.20 per annum to each of
four Scotch students of the same college during their re¬
sidence at Oxford, is generally given to the Glasgow ex¬
hibitioners, so that four of them have a stipend of L. 150 per
annum. The exhibitions are tenable for ten years, but va¬
cated by marriage, or on receiving preferment of a certain
amount. The right of nomination belongs to the prinicpal
and professors of the faculty.
Candidates to be eligible to Snell’s exhibitions must,
first, be natives of Scotland, which the master of Baliol
requires to be proved by the production of an extract from
the parish register of births; secondly, they must have
attended as public students at least turn sessions at the uni¬
versity of Glasgow', or one session there and two at some
other Scottish university ; and, thirdly, they must not be
graduates of any university. Warner’s exhibitions are in
the gift of the Archbishop of Canterbury and Bishop of
Rochester, who usually nominate on the recommendation
of the master of Baliol College. Amongst the distinguished
persons of several professions who have been educated on
Mr Snell’s foundation, may be mentioned, Dr John Dou¬
glas, bishop of Salisbury, Dr Adam Smith, and Dr Mat¬
thew Baillie.
This university has had from its origin men of the highest
talent and literary eminence among its professors and office
bearers. The names of Melville, Baillie, Leishman, Bur¬
net, Simpson, Hutchison, Black, Cullen, Adam Smith,
Reid, Miller, and Richardson, are conspicuous; and the
names of Henry Dundas, Edmund Burke, and other distin¬
guished individuals, are to be found in the list of rectors.
Grammar-School.—This seminary is of remote antiqui¬
ty, but, like some similar institutions of long standing, little
is known of its early history. There was a grammar-school
at Glasgow in the early part of the fourteenth century. It
depended immediately on the cathedral church, and the
chancellor of the diocese had not only the appointment of
the masters, but also the superintendence of whatever re¬
lated to education in the city. The grammar-school con¬
tinued to be a distinct establishment after the erection of
the university, and considerable care appears to have been
taken to supply it with good teachers. In 1494 Mr Martin
Wan, chancellor of the metropolitan church of Glasgow,
brought a complaint before Bishop Blackadder against one
Dwne, a priest of the diocese, for teaching scholars in gram¬
mar, and children in inferior branches, by himself apart,
openly and publicly in the said city, without the allowance
and in opposition to the will of the chancellor. The bishop,
having heard parties, and examined witnesses, decided,
with the advice of his chapter, and of the rector and clerks
of the university, in favour of the chancellor. In the six¬
teenth century the situation of the master of the grammar-
school was highly respectable ; he was to be found among
the non-regentes nominated to elect the rector and to exa¬
mine the graduates. On the 28th of October 1595 the pres¬
bytery directed the regents in the colkge “ to try the Irish
scholars in the grammar school, twitching the heads of reli¬
gion.” At that period the school met at five o’clock in the
morning. On 26th March 1601 the session decided that the
school-house in the Greyfriars Wynd was in a ruinous state,
and directed it to be rebuilt. Mr John Blackburn, who was
master of the grammar-school and lord rector of the uni¬
versity in 1592-1593, resigned his mastership in 1615, on
being appointed minister of the Barony Church.
The records of the town council have been searched in
vain for the plan or system by which the school was con¬
ducted prior to the year 1707. Since that period it has
undergone various changes in the management and system
of education. Sometimes the school was under the con-
GLASGOW.
540
Glasgow, trol of a rector, and at other times the office was laid aside.
Sometimes the office during the course consisted of five,
and at others of only four years. In 1830 the office‘of
rector was abolished, and each of the four masters had
the entire charge of finishing his own scholars during the
four years. But in 1834 this seminary underwent a ma¬
terial alteration. From being a grammar-school, it may
now be considered as an academy. Two of the master¬
ships for Latin and Greek have been suppressed, and in
lieu of these, teachers of English grammar, elocution,
French, Italian, German, writing, arithmetic, geography,
and mathematics, have been introduced, and the name of
the seminary has been changed to that of the High School.
The school is under the immediate management of a com¬
mittee of the town council, aided by the advice and as¬
sistance of the clergy of the city, and by the professors of
the university.
Anderson s University.—This establishment, founded by
Mr John Anderson, professor of natural philosophy in the
university of Glasgow, on the 7th of May 1795, and en¬
dowed by him with a valuable philosophical apparatus,
museum, and library, was incorporated by a seal of cause
from the magistrates and council of this city on the 9th
of June 1796. The university is subject to the inspection
of the Lord Provost, and other official persons, as ordinary
visitors, and is placed under the immediate superinten¬
dence of eighty-one trustees, who are elected by ballot,
and remain in office for life, unless disqualified by non-at¬
tendance. The trustees consist of nine classes of citizens,
viz. tradesmen, agriculturists, artists, manufacturers, phy¬
sicians and surgeons, lawyers, divines, philosophers, and,
lastly, kinsmen or namesakes. The trustees elect annual¬
ly by ballot nine of their number as managers, to whom
the principal affairs of the institution are intrusted during
the year. The managers elect by ballot from their num¬
ber, the president, secretary, and treasurer. Although
the views of the venerable and celebrated founder em¬
braced a complete circle of liberal education, adapted to
the improved state of society, it was found convenient at
first to limit the plan to natural philosophy, chemistry;
mathematics, and geography.
The business of the university commenced on the 21st
of September 1796, by Dr Garnet’s reading, in the trades’
hall, to persons of both sexes, popular and scientific lec¬
tures on natural philosophy and chemistry, illustrated by
experiments. Soon after this period the managers rented,
and then purchased, extensive premises in John Street.
Dr Garnet having been appointed professor of experimen¬
tal philosophy and chemistry in the Royal Institution of
London, which had been formed on the model of this pri¬
mary one, resigned his professorship; and on the 18th of
October 1799, Dr George Birkbeck was appointed as his
successor. In addition to what had been formerly taught,
he introduced a familiar system of instruction, which he
demonstrated by experiments, free of expense. Dr Wil¬
liam Anderson and Dr James Cleland recommended about
500 operatives to this class. This mode of tuition, by
which philosophical subjects are explained in ordinary lan¬
guage, divested of technicalities beyond the comprehen¬
sion ot the students, is continued with great success, at a
small expense, and has been productive of the happiest ef¬
fects on a valuable class of society. Dr Birkbeck resigned
his professorship on the 5th of August 1804, and returned
to London. Dr Andrew Ure was appointed his successor
on the 21st of the following month; and during a period
of twenty-five years discharged the duties of his office with
great ability, when he also went to London to reside.
The affairs of the university becoming more and more
prosperous, the trustees purchased from the city the gram¬
mar-school buildings in George Street; and having made
considerable additions and alterations, the premises now
contain numerous halls for the professors, and for th
museum, which has of late become very rich in its seve \ U?
departments. The university buildings were opened?
November 1828, since which time the classes have bee!
well attended, and soirees have been introduced with th
happiest effect. The subjects professed in 1834, were, firs!
literature, philosophy and popular science, natural philoso¬
phy, logic, ethics, rhetoric, mathematics, natural history
modern languages, oriental languages, drawing and paint!
ing in oil and colours, and popular lectures on the veterb
nary art; and, secondly, surgery, chemistry, medical juris',
prudence, theory of medicine, anatomy, physiology, and
midwifery.
Mechanics' Institution for the Promotion of the Arts and
Sciences.—This society was formed, in 1823, by the me¬
chanics of Glasgow, with the view of disseminating me¬
chanical and scientific knowledge among their fellow ope¬
ratives, particularly those branches more immediately con¬
nected with their daily occupations. Lectures were given
on natural philosophy and chemistry, when a fee of three
shillings was paid by each student, which was afterwards
increased to ten shillings. From the formation of the so¬
ciety to the present time the number of students have
averaged yearly about 500. Free admission is annually
given to the lectures on chemistry and mechanics, and also
to the library, to poor apprentices, one being admitted for
every twenty tickets sold. In this manner 220 have been
admitted since the commencement of the institution. In
1831 the society removed to large premises built for them in
Hanover Street. A colossal statue of James Watt is placed
on the pediment of the building, by a subscription of one
shilling from each student in successive years. In the
building there are commodious apartments for the nume¬
rous models and apparatus, and the library, which now con¬
sists of 3030 volumes on science and general literature.
In the session of 1834 there w^ere three professors, who
gave lectures on natural philosophy, chemistry, popular
anatomy, physiology, and phrenology; the fee for the course
being eight shillings.
Public Green—There is probably no town of equal ex¬
tent in the empire which can boast of such a park as the
green of Glasgow, whether its extent (about 140 imperial
acres), its use to the inhabitants, or its picturesque effect,
be considered.
Mills—The town’s mills on the Molindinar Burn, erect¬
ed about the middle of the fourteenth century, supplied
from the Flogganfield and Frankfield Lochs, are not of so
much use to the inhabitants as formerly, since steam-mills
have been introduced. The water and steam-mills on the
river Kelvin, at Partick and Clayslap, belonging to the
corporation of bakers, are very extensive, and of a superior
construction. The establishment contains a large steam-
mill, seven water-wheels, twenty-two pairs of stones (Bor¬
deaux burrs), six boultin, and three shealing-machines.
The granaries and kilns are proportionate to the mills,
which can grind 12,000 bushels of wheat weekly. The
bakers got a grant of their old mill at Partick, from the
Regent Murray, for their services at the battle of Lang-
side, on 13th May 1568.
Markets.—The markets for meal, butcher-meat, fish, &c.
have been much neglected of late. The great increase of the
town has induced persons at a distance to resort to shops in¬
stead of markets. The live-cattle market is however en¬
titled to particular notice. Prior to the yearl818 the princi¬
pal butchers in this city were frequently obliged to travel a
circuit of seventy or eighty miles to purchase cattle in lots,
and to rent expensive parks in the neighbourhood of the
city to graze them in ; but since the erection of the live-
cattle market the mode of supply is completely changed.
In 1818 the magistrates fitted up a spacious market-place
between the great roads to Edinburgh by Gallowgate and
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u ijg Street, in which there is a commodious inn, stables,
si is, a byre to contain 120 bullocks in view, and 260 pens
contain 9360 sheep. This market-place, said to be the
ni t complete in the kingdom, occupies an area of 29,560
ire yards, or rather more than six imperial acres, is pav-
et vith whinstones, and enclosed with stone walls. Since
it< ormation, graziers and dealers from Aberdeenshire to
I) nfriesshire, and from Berwickshire to Argyleshire, find
it - eir interest to send their cattle to this market, where
th; find a ready sale, and return in cash. It is admitted
th this market has been of great use to all classes of the
ccimunity, excepting perhaps the more wealthy butchers,
jj, dealers are benefited by a regular sale, without running
tl risk of bad debts. The public have a more regular and
phtiful supply of butcher-meat of the best quality. The
bu:her is saved the trouble and the public the expense of
tn elling. The butcher of small capital, who formerly had
n)] the means of getting good meat, can now go to mar-
kd; and if his capital be equal to the purchase of a bullock
ar a dozen of sheep or lambs, be can compete with his
n-re wealthy brethren. Monopoly is now unknown. The
d is of the market are let by public sale at L.1075 per an-
n i. Dr Cleland has the sole merit of projecting and com-
p ing this important establishment.
fhe sales in 1833 were 165,560 head of cattle, and
skp and lambs, viz. bullocks and cowrs 18,360, sheep and
la bs 147,200, exclusively of calves and pigs. In 1822 a
ft rumps of heef were sent by the Edinburgh butchers to
|k(| tl Glasgow market; and this traffic has increased so much,
th during 1833, 7210 rumps were sent to Glasgow, the
a rage value of each rump being 20s. Messrs Allans alone
p,ichased 6676 rumps. The advantages arising from this
n -ket has induced the Irish graziers to send cattle to it.
the 18th of December 1834, the Green Isle steamer
a ved at Glasgow from Drogheda, loaded exclusively with
cde and pigs. This was the first cattle-carrying steamer
ti t arrived in the Clyde. The traffic is to be continued.
Dublic Buildings.—In a work of this nature an archi-
tiitural description of the public buildings in Glasgow
wild be superfluous ; we shall therefore confine ourselves
tmerely mentioning a few of the most prominent of those
anropriated for ecclesiastical purposes, and a few for the
c il concerns of the city. For ecclesiastical, the first in
oser is the cathedral, which is allowed to be the most
s andid edifice of old English architecture that is to be
f nd in Scotland. Its length from east to west is 319
f t, width sixty-three feet, height of the nave ninety
fit, and of the choir eighty-five feet. In this edifice
t re are 147 pillars, and 159 windows of various dimen-
sias, many of them of exquisite workmanship. The
c pt under the choir is not equalled for architectural
e:ct in the kingdom. St Andrew’s, St David’s, and St
1 och’s churches, and the Albion Street and George
feet chapels belonging to tbe dissenters, are fine speci-
i ns of architecture. For civil purposes, the Royal Ex-
< inge is prominent. This building, from designs by Mr
li vid Hamilton, a native of Glasgow, is remarkable both
fj its extent and its architectural decorations. The Hun-
t ian Museum, from designs by Mr William Stark, is a
l iutiful model of a Greek temple. The Royal Infirmary
‘l 1 the Lunatic Asylum are at once ornamental, and ap-
ppriate for their respective purposes.
Streets and Squares.—The streets, with the exception
' some of those in the old part of the town, are all sixty
1 't wide ; and the houses are built of stone and covered
’ th slate. There are four squares, viz. Blythwood s,
1 urge’s, St Enoch’s, and St Andrew’s. The three former
J 2 planted with shrubbery, and St Andrew’s Church
l aids in the centre of the latter.
Burying Grounds There are twenty burying grounds
1 the city and suburbs. The necropolis, formed by the
G O W. 541
merchants’ house, in 1830, in their elevated park adjoin- Glasgow,
ing the cathedral, in imitation of the cemetery of Pere
la Chaise in Paris, stands unrivalled in the kingdom for
picturesque effect.
Monuments and Statues—Amongst others may be enu¬
merated an equestrian statue of William III. erected at
the Cross; an obelisk in honour of Lord Nelson, in the
Green ; a pedestrian statue of Sir John Moore, in bronze,
on a granite pedestal, by Flaxman, in George Square; a
pedestrian statue of William Pitt, in marble, by Flaxman,
in the town-hall ; a trophy monument in honour of Lieu¬
tenant-colonel Cadogan (71st or Glasgow regiment), in
marble, by Hamilton, in the nave of the cathedral; a pil¬
lar surmounted by a statue in honour of John Knox, by
Forrest, in the necropolis; a pedestrian statue of James
Watt, in bronze, on a granite pedestal, in George Square,
by Chauntry; also a pedestrian statue of James Watt, in
marble, by Chauntry, in the Hunterian Museum; and an
architectural monument, with a statue of William M‘Ga-
vin, by Forrest, in the necropolis.
Gaol and Court-Houses.—For a number of years pre¬
viously to 1807, the gaol at the cross had become deficient
in almost every requisite, situated in the centre of the
city, without court-yards, chapel, or infirmary. It con¬
tained no more than thirty-two apartments for the ac¬
commodation of prisoners of every description, collected
occasionally from the populous counties of Lanark, Ren¬
frew, and Dumbarton, and invariably at the justiciary cir¬
cuits, having very slender accommodation for the local
courts of justice, whilst that for the circuit court of justi¬
ciary was quite inadequate. Impressed with the neces¬
sity of affording more suitable accommodation for the
courts of justice, and more convenient and healthful apart¬
ments for prisoners, the magistratesand council, on the 13th
of February 1807, resolved to erect a new gaol and public
offices, in a healthy situation adjoining the river, at the
bottom of the public green. This building, which cost
L.34,800, contains, exclusively of the public offices, 122
apartments for prisoners. As there is a water-closet in
each gallery, every individual prisoner, debtor and delin¬
quent, has access to one of them, and to an unlimited
supply of pure filtrated water from the water company’s
pipes; and pipes are introduced into each court, from
which they are daily washed, and the air in them fre¬
quently cooled in hot weather. There are two rooms,
with ante-rooms, insulated from the gaol, for persons under
sentence of death, and so constructed that irons are never
used. It is believed that this is the only prison in the
kingdom where persons under sentence of death are not
put in irons. Every room is provided with the necessary
utensils at the expense of the corporation. There is a
well-aired infirmary-room, though seldom or never used,
from the healthiness of the prisoners; and the chapel is
seated to contain about 200 persons. The governor’s
house is so constructed that from his sitting parlour he
can overlook both court-yards. The justiciary hall is so
spacious as to contain upwards of 500 persons. The num-
ber of incarcerations in the gaol for debt have of late
years happily decreased, whilst the incarcerations for de¬
linquency have been rather on the increase. The average
number committed yearly during five years ending on the
3ist of December 1833, was 667. From 1765 to 1830,
eighty-nine persons were executed in Glasgow, of which
number five were females. During the first twelve years
there were only six persons executed, whilst in the last
twelve there were thirty-seven. During sixty-six years
previously to 1831, there were twenty-six in which there
were no executions, fifteen in which there was one each
year; ten, two; seven, three; four, four; one, five; and
two in which there were six. From the 29th of Septem¬
ber 1830, to the 20th of January 1834, twelve persons have
542
G L A S G O W.
Glasgow, been executed in Glasgow, viz. eleven males and one fe-
male, of whom six were for murder, one for rape, one for
hamesucken, one for robbery, and three for housebreaking
and theft. From the 4th of May 1818, to the 8th of Oc¬
tober 1834, six persons received sentence of death, but
had their punishment commuted to transportation for life,
viz. four males and two females, of whom one for murder,
one for hamesucken and rape, one for robbery, and one
for housebreaking and theft; the two females for forged
bank-notes.
Bridewell.—The Bridewell in Duke Street wras opened
on the 8th of May 1798, and supported by the corporation
funds for upwards of twenty-four years. This building,
which still remains, consists of six stories, and contains
105 cells. Although but ill suited for classification, it an¬
swered the purpose for a number of years; but, from tl
great increase of population, and consequently of crime in ^
the city and county, it was agreed that the new building ^
should be so large as to contain the city and county nr'
soners, combining the improvements which experience
have pointed out. The authorities having procured an
act of parliament for assessing the city and county for
building and maintaining a Bridewell, they erected a set
of buildings so well suited for the purpose, as to be the
admiration of all those who have made prisons and prison
discipline their study. This prison, which adjoins the
former one, was opened on the 25th of December 1824
It combines all the advantages of modern improvement
security, seclusion, complete classification, and healthful
accommodation.
Abstract Accounts for the year ended the 2d August 1834.
To repairs on the buildings L.15G 10 0
Salaries and wages  835 14 11
By amount of prisoners’ labour, &c L.2182 6 2
To victuals, bedding, clothes, washing, medicine, coal, candle, furniture,
machinery, utensils, stationery, &c L.1664 6 0
Cash paid prisoners for surplus earnings  116 5 3
  1780 11 3
Surplus to be deducted from salaries and wages   
L.992 4 11
401 14 11
Balance, being the cost of Bridewell for the year ended 2d August 1834
L.590 10 0
Table shoiving the number of Prisoners, and the different 'periods of confinement.
Days.
Periods of confinement  | 2 | 4 J 5 | 7 | 8 | 10 | 14 | 15 j 20 | 21 | 30 | 35
Number of prisoners.
1 I 1 1 2 I 5 I 3 I 11 1 46 i 7 1 26 | 8 | 349 1 7
40 | 42 | 50 | 60
17
3 11114
Months.
Periods of confinement  | 3 | 4 | 6 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 12 | 15 | 18 | 24
Number of prisoners 
| 25 j 12 j 69 1 5 | 3- | 1
25
l 1 I 6 I 1
Convicts and
untried Pri¬
soners.
216
1035
932
1967
The average period of confinement according to sen¬
tence is sixty-three and a half days ; according to residence
in the house, fifty-nine and a half days.
The greatest number at one time confined was on the
12th of November 1833, viz. 372, males 199, females 173.
Smallest number at one time, 27th February 1834, 231,
viz. males 123, females 108. Average number daily in
the house 320, viz. males 162, females 158.
Males above seventeen years of age  813
Males below seventeen years of age  222
  1035
Females above seventeen years of age  864
Females below seventeen years of age  68
  932
Total commitments  1967
Remained on 2d August 1833  356
Prisoners in all  2323
Liberated during the year  2030
Remaining on the 2d of August 1834  293
It appears from the above statement, that besides the
sum of L.116. 5s. 3d. paid to inmates, the produce of the
work performed maintained all the prisoners, with a sur¬
plus of L.401. 14s. lid., which surplus goes to lessen the
expense of repairs on the buildings, and the salaries and
wages. The whole deficiency, amounting to L.590. 10s.,
divided by 1967, the number committed, shows that the
net expense to the public for every committal is no more
than 6s., the average period of residence being fifty-nine
and a half days. Taking another view, the deficiency
of L.590. 10s., when applied to 320, the daily average of
inmates, shows the expense of each prisoner to be L.l.
16s. lid. per annum, 2s. lOd. per month, or about 8^d.
weekly. This establishment, so creditable to the city and
county, is conspicuous for the economy with which it is ma¬
naged.
Police.—Till the appointment of a statutory police in
1800, the citizens of Glasgow performed the duties of
watching and warding. The buildings in Albion Street
are very extensive, and were the first in‘Scotland erected
for the exclusive purpose of police.
Of the concerns of the establishment, which is placed un¬
der tire management of the magistrates, and one commis¬
sioner for each ward chosen by the rate payers, the following
is an abstract for 1834: Disbursements, L.15,033. ISs.fig-d.
The receipts arise from one shilling per pound on rents ex¬
ceeding L.l5, and on lower rents proportionally. Besides
the superintendent, collector, clerk, surveyor, and surgeon,
there are eight heads of departments, three lieutenants,
fifty-eight officers, 135 night watchmen, eight coal weighers,
twenty-one lamp-lighters-, fifty firemen, and twenty super¬
numeraries ; in all, 308 persons on the establishment.
There are 2050 gas lamps with single jets, and forty-seven
with three jets ; in all, 2097 lamps. Of this number be¬
tween 800 and 900 are taken down in the summer mont s.
Theatre.—Previously to the Reformation, and for some
time afterwards, pantomime representations ot the history
of our Saviour, his miracles and passion, were exhibite in
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t], city. It does not appear that any theatrical represen-
/ taon was allowed in this city from the Reformation in
],:0 till 1750. At the latter period Mr Burrell’s dancing
J|: in the High Street was used for that purpose, being
Il’o ’ years after the theatre in the Canongate of Edin-
was opened, which was the first regular theatre in
Sctland after the Reformation. In 1752, a booth or
temporary theatre was fitted up adjoining the wall of the
aribishop’s palace, in which Digges, Love, Stampier,
an Mrs Ward performed. Messrs Jackson, Love, and
Bite, comedians, built a regular theatre in the Graham-
str suburb, which was opened in the spring of 1764 by
M Bellamy and other respectable performers. On the
fir night of performance, the machinery and scenery
W(b set on fire by some disorderly persons. When the
st;te was refitted, the theatre was occasionally kept open,
butwith very indifferent success; and at one o’clock on
thimorning of the 16th April 1782 it was burned to the
grjuid. There was no theatre in Glasgow from this pe¬
ril! till January 1785, when the Dunlop Street Theatre,
er ted by Mr Jackson, was opened by Mrs Siddons, Mrs
Jo!lan, and other performers. From this period the taste
fo '.heatricals increased so much, that a subscription rvas
sehn foot for a theatre upon a large scale; and on the
24l:i of April 1805 the most magnificent provincial theatre
in ie empire was opened in Queen Street, at an expense
of <.18,500. It was let on lease for L.1200 per annum;
bn it was soon found that the taste for theatricals did
nokeep pace with the sums laid out for accommodation
arisplendour. The premises were then let at the re-
dibd rent of L.800 to others, who also failed to imple-
m:t their engagement; and even when the rent was low¬
er to L.400, it was paid with difficulty. The property
w then sold at a price only equal to the outstanding
dels and ground rent; so that the shareholders got no¬
ting. This splendid edifice was burned to the ground on
thtforenoon of the 10th of January 1829, a gas-light bav¬
in icome in contact with the ceiling of one of the lobbies
leiing to the upper gallery. After this catastrophe the
ol theatre in Dunlop Street was enlarged and embellished
b)Mr Alexander, and is found to be quite large enough
fo he play-going people of Glasgow and neighbourhood.
I 'ise and Progress of the State of Society.—Prior to
tli Reformation in 1560 the inhabitants of Glasgow were
F state of abject ignorance and superstition, and so
® Ifrderly, that even the ministers of religion found it
tej ruessary to wear arms in the pulpit. For about a cen-
ti after the Reformation the people were very poor, and
M tlriaccommodation in their houses bad. Prior to the famous
nr ting of the general assembly of the church, held in
(IJsgow in 1638, when the struggle took place as to whe-
tl i the episcopal or the presbyterian form of religion
si uld obtain in the church, the magistrates sent to Flan-
®ll; for a hundred muskets, thirty pikes, four cwts. of
pffier, the same quantity of match, and ordered a con-
scjption of a hundred young men to be drilled for the
af roaching meeting; and intestine feuds were so pre-
vj nt that weaponschawing was strictly enforced. At
L period the circulating medium seems to have been ex-
cj lingly scarce, as Provost Stewart sent two men through
fi town to collect what silver things they could find, to
h ;ent to Edinburgh in support of the struggle. On the
‘ > ot March 1698 the magistrates of Glasgow granted
llowance to the jailor for keeping warlocks and witches
111 risoned in the tolbooth, by order of the lords commis-
si ers of justiciary. During the failure of the crops in
' an(l 1800, a number of the citizens of Glasgow pur-
‘ ’«! L.l 17,500 worth of grain, and sold it at low rates
1 he poor, at a loss of L.15,000. In 1816, during a stag-
(’n °1 trade, a subscription of L.9653 was divided among
^'-->0 persons. In 1818, L.6626 was subscribed for the
:
G O W. . 543
relief of persons afflicted with typhus fever. In 1819 large Glasgow,
sums were raised for those who could not find employ-
ment; on that occasion 2040 heads of families, who never
pawned before, were under the necessity of doing so, and
articles were pawned to the number of 7380.
In 1712 the population was 13,832; in 1831, 202,426.
In 1712, the rental amounted to L.7840; in 1831, in the
royalty, without the suburbs, to L.319,372. In 1712 there
were only 202 shops, at from L.5 to 10s.; in 1831, 3184
shops, at from about L.250 to about L.5. In 1740 the
dwelling-houses of the higher classes of citizens contained
only one public room, a dining-room, and even that was
only used when they had company, the family at other
times eating in a bed-room. Entertainments were few and
simple; and the dinner hour was one o’clock. The hus¬
band went to his business after dinner, and the wife gave
tea at four o’clock to her female friends. Shopkeepers
locked their shops during the breakfast and dinner hours.
At this period the people were in general religious, and
particularly strict in the observance of the Sabbath ; some
of them, indeed, to an extent that was considered by others
extravagant and fanatical. There were families who did
not sweep or dust their houses, did not make the beds,
nor allow any food to be dressed, on Sundays. The magi •
strates employed what they called compurgators, to peratn •
bulate the streets during divine service, and seize all per¬
sons whom they found strolling about. At this period the
houses, with few exceptions, were covered with thatch.
Entertainments are now given more frequently, and the
mode of giving them is materially changed. - The value of
the table service, and the style of the furniture, in the
houses of a great number of the Glasgow merchants, are
inferior to none in the land.
Previously to the opening of the tontine coffee-room, it
was usual to transact business in public houses, over a
mixture of whisky and small beer, called pap-in. The open¬
ing of the tontine coffee-room in 1781 set aside this perni¬
cious tippling practice, and tended greatly to abolish the
distinction of rank in mercantile concerns. For some time
after the coffee-room was opened there were but fewr sub ¬
scribers at 21s. On the 10th of December 1834 the sub¬
scribers in this room amounted to 545, at 25s. admission
money. In 1825 the western club was opened; there are
now 280 members. The entrance money is L.21, and the
annual subscription L.5. 5s. The members are admitted
by ballot. The Royal Exchange Coffee-room in Queen
Street was opened on the 6 th of September 1830. There
are now 1264 subscribers, at an annual subscription of 42s.;
so that, independently of those who use the minor reading
rooms, there were in 1834, 2089 persons in Glasgow who
frequented the above rooms.
Until 1776 there were no foot pavements in the city;
but in that year a foot pavement was made at the south-east
end of Candlerigg Street. There are now upwards of a
hundred miles of foot pavements in the city. At the autumn
circuits of 1779, 1782, and 1796, there were no criminal bu¬
siness at the Glasgow circuit courts. At the spring circuit
of 1828, 115 persons w ere accused of crimes, of w hom 83
wrere convicted. In 1781 the revenue of the Glasgow Post-
Office amounted to L.4341. 4s. 9d.; in 1833, to L.36,481.
In 1785 the public markets and a few shops were the only
places where the inhabitants could be supplied with ne¬
cessaries. Now the markets are nearly deserted; butcher-
meat is chiefly sold in shops, and numerous haberdashers
and drapers occupy warehouses instead of shops. With
the exception of Hutcheson’s Hospital, the Town’s Plospi-
tal, the Merchants’ and Trades’ Plouses, the fourteen in¬
corporated trades, and a few benefit societies, the nume¬
rous charitable and benevolent institutions of Glasgow'-
have all originated during the last forty years, as is else¬
where shown. The first common sewrer in Glasgow wras
If
GLASGOW.
544
Glasgow, made in 1790. There are now in forty-five streets rather
more than seven miles of sewers. In 1792 the first steam-
engine for spinning cotton was erected in Glasgow.
Prior to 1804 the city was scantily supplied by twenty-
nine public and a few private wells. In 1806 the Glasgow
Water Company w’as incorporated, and in 1808 the Cran¬
ston Hill Company. From their commencement till 81st
May 1830, the companies had laid out L.320,244. 10s. Id.
on their works, which are now considerably extended. In
1831 there were 38,237 renters of water in the city and
suburbs. Rates for 1834,—Houses rented under L.4, 5s.
per annum ; ditto L.4 and under L.5, and not above
L.6, 7s. 6d.; all above L.6, 6| per cent., or Is. 3d. per
pound on rental. Public works ; high service, i. e. in the
more elevated parts of the city, L.12. 10s. for 1000 gallons
per day ; low service, L.6 ditto; workmen for drinking,
Gd. per head ; founderies, Is. per man ; lowest charge for a
public work, L.4 ; counting-houses, 5s. to 10s. Gd.; water-
closets in ditto, 5s. to 10s. Gd.; horses, 4s.; cows, 3s.
Bridges.—Bridges are a sort of edifices very difficult to
execute, on account of the inconvenience of laying founda¬
tions and walling under water. There are three stone
bridges and one timber bridge over the Clyde at Glasgow.
The original timber bridge over the Clyde having gone
into decay about 1340, Bishop Rae built a stone bridge
at Stockwell Street in 1345. The bridge was originally
twelve feet wide, and consisted of eight arches. In 1777
an addition of ten feet was made to its breadth, and two
of the northmost arches were built up for the purpose of
confining the river within narrower bounds. The commu¬
nication between the city and the south-west parts of Scot¬
land for more than four hundred years was by this bridge.
In 1820 and 1821 it was greatly'improved by the forma¬
tion of footpaths suspended on very tasteful iron framings.
The bridge, as it now stands, is 415 feet long and thirty-
four wide within the railing.
The foundation stone of Jamaica Street bridge was laid
on the 29th of September 1768, by the Right Worshipful
Provost George Murdoch, acting provincial grand mas¬
ter mason for Glasgow. The bridge had seven arches,
was thirty feet wide within the parapets, and five hun¬
dred feet in length. The design was given by Mr William
Mylne, architect in Edinburgh, and was executed by Mr
John Adam.
The foundation stone of Hutcheson’s bridge was laid
in 1794, by Provost Gilbert Hamilton, near the foot of
the Saltmarket, to connect the lands of Hutchesontown
with the city. It had five arches, was 406 feet long and
twenty-six feet wide within the parapets. On the 18th of
November 1795, during an uncommonly high flood in the
river, it was unfortunately swept away, after the parapets
were nearly completed. The foundation stone of a new
bridge was laid on the 18th of August 1829, by the Right
Worshipful Robert Dalglish, substitute grand master ma¬
son for Glasgow, and preceptor of the hospital. This
bridge is built on the site of the former one, from a design
by Mr Robert Stevenson, civil engineer; it is thirty-six
feet wide within the parapets, and 406 feet long, and has
five arches. Mr John Steedman was contractor.
The Jamaica Street Bridge, although considered ele¬
gant and spacious for the time when it was built, had a
very inconvenient ascent. The trustees therefore resolved
to take it down.
The timber bridge at Portland Street is thirty feet
wide within the railing, has a carriage-way and two side
pavements. It was designed by Mr Robert Stevenson, and
executed by Mr William Robertson in 1832.
The increase of trade and population in the city and
adjacent districts having been such as to render the Ja¬
maica Street or Broomielaw Bridge unfit for its purposes,
the trustees therefore resolved to remove it, and to erect
in its stead a bridge which would afford more suitable ri
accommodation, such as the increasing population of the *
neighbouring districts required. Having obtained an act ‘ ^
of parliament, they procured a design from Mr Thomas
Telford, civil engineer, and contracted with Messrs John
Gibb and Son for building the bridge. It is to be faced
with Aberdeen granite, and to have a very gentle accli¬
vity ; it is to be 560 feet long over the newals, to have
seven arches, and to be sixty feet wide over the parapets,
which is wider than any river bridge in the kingdom'.
Dr James Cleland, umpire between the trustees and the
contractors, laid the first stone of the bridge in the south
abutment, eighteen feet below high-water mark, on the
8th of July 1833.
Banks.—The Bank of Scotland was established by char¬
ter in Edinburgh in 1695, and the following year in Glas¬
gow, but was recalled for want of business in 1697. In
1731 it was again established in Glasgow, and recalled in
1733 from a similar cause. In 1749, the Ship Bank com¬
menced business. This was the first bank belonging to the
city; and till lately it was called the Old Bank. Since
1749, a number of banks have been established in Glasgow.
The Glasgow Arms Bank commenced business about the
year 1753, the Thistle Bank in 1761, and the Glasgow
Merchants’ Bank and Messrs Watsons’and Thomson’s hank¬
ing houses were formed shortly afterwards. The Royal
Bank of Scotland, which was established by charter in
Edinburgh in 1727, sent a branch to Glasgow in 1783.
The Glasgow Banking Company commenced operations
in 1809, the Glasgow Union Banking Company in 1830,
and the Western Bank in 1832. These banks, with the
exception of the Arms, Merchants’, Thomson’s, and Wat¬
sons’, still continue to do business in Glasgow. There
are also in Glasgow a branch of the British Linen chartered
bank, and fourteen branches from provincial banks.
Provident Bank.—A provident or savings bank was
opened in Glasgow on the 3d of July 1815, wherein depo¬
sits of one shilling and upwards are received, bearing inte¬
rest at the rate of two and a half per cent, when the sum
amounts to 12s. 8d. and has lain one month in the bank.
The following is a statement of the concerns of the bank
for 1833. It is open every day for deposits, and twice a
week for payments.
Amount of open accounts at the end of the
year L.39,861 4 0
Received from depositors, exclusive of in¬
terest allowed during the year  30,767 3 0
Repaid to depositors, including interest
during dotto.  30,462 11 i
Interest allowed to depositors during ditto. 964 11
From the opening of the bank on 3d July
1815, to the end of the year 1833, num¬
ber of accounts opened 24,039.
Amount of interest paid to depositors from
opening of the bank to the end of year
1833  10,662 18 0
At the end of the year 1833 open accounts
under L.5   1,380 0 0
It is very gratifying to know, that during eighteen years
the working classes in Glasgow have so managed their
savings as to entitle them to L.10,662.18s. interest, wmc ,
but for this institution, might have been laid out for pur¬
poses quite unavailing in the hour of need.
Post-Office.—The arrangements of this office are not
surpassed, if indeed equalled, by any out of London. n
1806, when Mr Bannatyne was appointed post-master, t e
establishment consisted of a post-master, three cler s, a
stamper, and six letter-carriers; and there were four pen
ny-post-offices attached to it for the delivery and receip o
letters in the neighbouring district. Receiving-house5'
the tow n for letters to be taken to the post-office had e
GLASGOW.
tr-d, and had been given up on finding that they were'
n used. There were two deliveries of letters made daily
tcjvery part of the town and suburbs. The Glasgow es-
te lishment now (December 1834) consists of a post-mas-
tf ten clerks, two stampers, a superintendent of letter-
criers, and nineteen letter-carriers ; and there are twenty-
si penny-post-offices and nine sub-offices attached to it
fc the correspondence of the surrounding district. It has
tv Ive receiving-houses distributed in the different parts
o! he town, the letters put into which are carried to the
p,|t-office, to be made up in the separate lines of mails
a‘-hey are successively dispatched. There are four com-
pte deliveries of letters now made daily to every part of
th town and suburbs; and an answer may be received
tb same day to a penny-post letter put into the office, or
a :ceiving-house, in time to be sent out with either of the
tv first deliveries.
W- Office Revenue of Glasgow at the following dates.1
Ii 1781...L.4,341 4 9 In 1830... L34,978 9 0£
1810.. . 27,598 6 0 1831 35,642 19 5
1815.. . 34,784 16 0 1832 36,053 0 0
1820.. . 31,533 2 3 1833 36,481 0 0
1825.. . 34,190 1 7
The number of penny-post letters for Glasgow delivery,
e: lusively of those delivered through the twenty-six out
p ny offices, was, from October 1833 to October 1834,
I !,491, and the amount of the revenue derived from them
L 02.0s. lid. When it is considered that in 1833 the re-
v ue was only L.1700 more than in 1815, whilst the popu-
kon had increased in the same period upwards of 72,000,
a the increase of correspondence in a still greater ratio,
w are led to believe that the revenue is greatly defrauded
b private carrying.
Cental and Stamps.—The rental of the city and suburbs
ii 1833 was L.539,466. Amount of stamps sold in 1828,
II I,213; in 1830, L.103,802; in 1834, L.110,930.
Education.—The attention which has been paid to edu-
caion in Scotland for centuries past has been acknow-
k ged all over Europe. Amidst all the tumult and vio-
li ce of civil contention, and at a time when the very ex-
b nee of the Presbyterian church was at stake, the sub-
jet: of education and of schools was never overlooked,
ly act 43 Geo. III. cap. 54, the salaries of parochial
i s oolmasters, whose schools are not entirely confined in
r al burghs, are to be fixed, from and after the 11th
Sitember 1803, at a sum of from 300 to 400 merks Scots,
: b the minister, and the heritors whose lands in the pa¬
ri amount to L.100 Scots. In twenty-five years after
t above period, or such after period as the salary shall
1 fixed, these heritors and minister are to modify a new
s iry, according to the average price of oatmeal, to be as-
citained by the exchequer, of the value of from one and
a alf to two chalders, and so on from twenty-five years
t twenty-five years; and when there is not a proper
s ool-house, a house for the schoolmaster, and a garden
f him containing at least one fourth of a Scotch acre,
t heritors of the parish must provide these.
Schools—In a large community like that of Glasgow,
v -re schools are ever shifting, it is difficult to ascertain
I f exact number; but the following abstract from Dr
Hand’s Annnla of nioc, _ -
(land’s Annals of Glasgow wall give the reader an idea of
f extent of education in this city. That indefatigable
j1 hor published the names of 144 teachers; and from
statement it appeared that, exclusively of the univer-
s' and thirteen institutions where youth were educated,
1 re were 144 schools; that, including the public institu¬
tions, there were 16,799 scholars, of whom 6516 were taught Glasg
gratis in charity or free schools. These schools were all in "Y
a district containing about 75,000 souls ; it appeared from
the same statement that Sunday schools were established
in 1786, that there were 106 schools, 158 teachers, and
4668 scholars, viz. 2235 boys, and 2433 girls, besides three
adult schools. An infant school .society was instituted in
1827. In 1834 there were six infant schools, viz. the
model school in Saltmarket, a school in Drygate, Chalmers
Street, Marlborough Street, John Street, and Cowcaddens;
and two school-houses are about to be built in Gorbals, and
one in Anderston.
Literature.—From the commercial enterprise which en¬
gages the time and attention of its inhabitants, this city
cannot boast of a literary character. There are many
individuals however of cultivated minds and extensive
attainments, some of whom have formed themselves into
societies for the promotion of literature and science. About
the middle of the last century a literary society was esta¬
blished, consisting chiefly of the professors and clergymen
of the city and neighbourhood, and reckoned amongst its
distinguished members Doctors Adam Smith, Trail, and
Reid, and Mr John Millar, the celebrated professor of law.
A literary and commercial society was formed about the
beginning of the present century, and is composed of a
number of gentlemen, who meet for the discussion of lite¬
rary and commercial topics. During the twenty-seven
years in which records have been kept, upwards of two
hundred essays have been read by the society.
The first newspaper published in the west of Scotland
was the Glasgow Courant, which appeared in the year 1715.
It was published three times a week, consisted of twelve
pages in small quarto, and was sold for three half-pence or
“ one penny to regular customers.” The second number
contained a letter from Provost Aird, colonel of the regi¬
ment of Glasgow volunteers, detailing his views in regard
to the Duke of Argyll’s ultimate success at Sheriffmuir.
The name of the paper was soon changed to that of the
West-Country Intelligencer, which only survived a few
years. From 1715 till the present time there have been
twenty-one attempts to establish newspapers in this city,
and out of that number eleven still survive. The names
of the papers, the dates of their commencement, and the
periods of publication, are as follows:—The Glasgow Cou¬
rant in 1715; the Journal in 1729; the Chronicle in 1775;
the Mercury in 1779; the Advertiser in 1783, but in 1804
its name was changed to that of the Herald; the Courier
in 1791; the Clyde Commercial Advertiser in 1805; the
Caledonia in 1807, but in the same year it merged in the
Western Star ; the Sentinel in 1809 ; a second Chronicle
in 1811; the Scotsman in 1812; the Packet in 1813; a
second Sentinel in 1821; the Free Press in 1823; the
Scots Times in 1825; the Evening Post in 1827; the
Trades’ Advocate in 1829; the Liberator in 1831; the
Scottish Guardian and the Argus in 1832; and the
Weekly Reporter in 1834. The eleven surviving papers
are, the Journal, published once a week; the Herald, twice ;
the Courier, three times; the Chronicle, three times;
the Free Press, twice; the Scots Times, twice; the Even¬
ing Post, once ; the Liberator, once; the Scottish Guar¬
dian, twice; the Argus, twice; and the Weekly Report¬
er, once: so that in Glasgow there are twenty news¬
papers published weekly. It would be invidious to state
the circulation of each paper, even if it could be accu¬
rately obtained; it is, however, known that the circulation
of the Herald on each publishing day for some years past
has rather exceeded eighteen hundred, and that during
w ^rJ^0fiert Sinclair of Stevenson had a grant from King William, of the whole revenue of the post-office of Scotland,
1 Mansion of L.300 per annum to keep up the post.
3 z
1
546
GLASGOW.
Glasgow, the quarter from the 1st of March to the 1st of June 1834j
its advertisements amounted to 3291.
The first circulating library in the west of Scotland was
established in Glasgow in 1753, by Mr John Smith senior,
who lent out books at the rate of one half-penny per vo¬
lume. There are now many circulating as well as public
and private libraries in Glasgow. Of the public libraries,
exclusively of those belonging to the university, to An¬
derson’s university, and to other literary bodies, the more
valuable are, Stirling’s, which was instituted in 1791 ; the
Glasgow, in 1804; and the Robertsonian, in 1814.
Of late years a number of book societies have been es¬
tablished in Glasgow. They are conducted on a plan si¬
milar to that of circulating libraries, with this difference,
that the books belong to the readers themselves, who are
chiefly of the working classes. The periodical book-pub¬
lishing trade, which, till about the year 1796, was scarcely
known in Scotland, is carried on in Glasgow to an extent
surpassing that of any other town in this part of the king¬
dom. By a late parliamentary report, it appeared that in
Scotland there were 414 book hawkers, technically term¬
ed “ canvassers” and “ deliverers,” who, on an average of
seven years, collected L.44,160 per annum in sixpences
and shillings, and five sixteenths of the whole belonged
to Glasgow.
The Maitland Club, which was established in this city
a few years ago, is similar to the Bannatyne Club of Edin¬
burgh, or the Roxburghe Club of London, by the reprint¬
ing, hr private use, of valuable and scarce old books, or the
printing for the first time, in the same manner, of curious
and rare manuscripts illustrative of the history, literature,
or antiquities of Scotland. The club takes its name from
Sir Richard Maitland of Lethington, an officer of state
during the minority of James the Sixth, and wrho, like
Bannatyne, did much service to Scottish literature, by
compiling nearly all the poetry of the nation then in ex¬
istence.
During the last thirty years several magazines and other
periodical works have been published here, but none of
them have succeeded.
Poor.—The proper management of the poor is every¬
where important, but in a great manufacturing community,
subject to numerous vicissitudes unknown to small towns
and rural districts, it is peculiarly so. The poor in nine
of the ten parishes of the city are maintained by an assess¬
ment on the inhabitants, aided by certain donations, and
the collections or offerings at the church doors ; whilst the
poor of the tenth parish are maintained on a separate plan,
to be afterwards mentioned, and the poor of the two sub¬
urban parishes of Barony and Gorbals by a tax on rental,
aided by donations and offerings. Soon after Dr Chal¬
mers’ admission to the Tron Church, on the 21st of July
1815, he discovered that a great improvement might be
made in the mode of maintaining the poor, and particular¬
ly that assessment might be dispensed with. Having ex¬
plained his views to the magistrates, he was translated
to St John’s Church and parish, where he might be the
better able to develope his plan. Accordingly, on the 18th
of August 1819, the town council unanimously resolved
that Dr Chalmers should have a “ separate, independent,
and exclusive management and distribution of the funds
which may be raised by voluntary or charitable collec¬
tions at the doors of St John’s Church, for the relief of
the poor resident in said parish.” The scheme has been
continued by the two clergymen who succeeded Dr Chal¬
mers as pastors in the church; and after a trial of fifteen
years, the energies of what is emphatically called the
agency have not decreased. There is no intricacy in the
scheme. The members of the congregation are liberal in
their voluntary offerings at the church doors. The parish
is divided into small districts; numerous elders and dea¬
cons, to whom districts are assigned, visit their respective GW
poor, by which means imposition is easily detected, and W
the distribution of the fund to the legitimate poor is more
surely and easily accomplished.
We have preferred taking the following abstract from
Dr Cleland’s statistical work, to any statement which could
be made for 1834, as we have the advantage of the go-
vernment enumeration for the former year, to enable our
readers to draw results. It shows the number of pau.
pers in the city and suburbs on the 31st of December
1830, with the expense of maintaining them during that
year.
Number of
Paupers.
St Mungo’s 
St Mary’s 
Blackfriars 
Outer High 
St George’s 
St Andrew’s 
St Enoch’s 
St James’   
St David’s 
St John’s 
In-door and out-door |
paupers in hospital J
Total in city 
In Barony parish.
Gorbals 
Total in city and sub¬
urbs 
179
149
176
148
126
88
137
108
71
70
1057
2309
2237
460
5006
Expense of Main,
tenance.
I
396 12 9
348 7 7
362 11 0
336 5
354 0
205 17
254 5
228 19 21
161 16 8
241 19 1
5773 1 7
7485 4 4
1132 18 OJ
17.281 18 01
The population in the city and suburbs being 202,426,
and the number of paupers 5006, there is one pauper
for every 40^j persons. The population of the ten pa¬
rishes in the city being 89,847, and the number of paupers
2309, there is one pauper for every SS^iy persons. The
number of paupers in the city and suburbs being 5006,
and the amount of their maintenance L.17,281.18s. 0|d.,
this gives to each pauper L.3. 9s. O^d. The number of
paupers in St John’s parish being 70, and the amount of
their maintenance L.241.19s. Id., this gives to each pauper
L.3. 8s. 10-J2d.
1804.
1809.
Abstract of the Expenditure of the Benevolent and Charita¬
ble Institutions of Glasgow, exclusive of Widows Funds,
Benefit Societies, Charity Schools, and Maintenance of
Paupers.
The affairs of the following societies are conducted at
the Religious and Charitable Institution Rooms.
Date of Subscriptions
Formation. f°r
1796. Glasgow Missionary Society L.735 0 0
Glasgow Bible Society 576 0
Nile and George Street Chapels’ Sab-
bath School Society 57 0
Aged Women’s Society HO 0
Glasgow Auxiliary Gaelic School
Society 45(5 0
Glasgow Old Men’s Friend Society, 323 t)
Glasgow Auxiliary Hibernian Society 200 0
Glasgow Auxiliary Bible Society K5o 0
Glasgow Society in aid of the Se-
rampore Missions 503
1811.
1811.
1812.
1813.
1815.
1815.
0 0
Carry over L.3315 0 0
*
GLASGOW.
547
Brought over L.3315 0 0
1817. Glasgow Young Men’s Society for
the Support of Gaelic Schools 118 0 0
1818. Glasgow Auxiliary Moravian Society 622 0 0
1819. Glasgow Society for Promoting
Christianity among the Jews
(auxiliary to the London Soci¬
ety, formed in 1810) 166 0 0
1820. Glasgow Auxiliary Scottish Mission¬
ary Society 265 0 0
1820. Glasgow Deaf and Dumb Institu¬
tion 215 11 10
1821. Glasgow Religious and Church In¬
stitution House Reading-Room 35 0 0
1821. Glasgow Auxiliary Religious Tract
and Book Society for Ireland 56 0 0
1822. Glasgow Seaman’s Friend Society 87 0 0
1823. Glasgow Auxiliary London Mission¬
ary Society (originated in 1815,
re-organized in 1823) 187 0 0
1823. Glasgow Auxiliary Irish Evangelical
Society 74 0 0
1823. Glasgow Religious Tract Society 270 0 0
1825. Glasgow North American Colonial
Society 316 0 0
1825. Orphan’s Institution 500 0 0
1826. Glasgow Continental Society 45 0 0
1826. Glasgow City Mission 800 0 0
1827. Glasgow Auxiliary to the Irish So¬
ciety for Native Schools 367 0 0
1829. Glasgow Naval and Military Bible
Society 130 0 0
1829. Scottish Temperance Society 175 0 0
1830. Glasgow Temperance Society 485 15 10
1830. Glasgow Auxiliary to the British So¬
ciety for Promoting the Religious
Principles of the Reformation 85 0 0
1831. Glasgow Society for Benevolent Vi¬
sitation of the Destitute Sick, and
others in extreme Poverty 50 0 0
1832. Glasgow Christian Instruction So¬
ciety * 15 0 0
1833. Glasgow Association for Promoting
the Interests of the Church of
Scotland 260 0 0
1834. Glasgow Society for Church Accom¬
modation (subscribed in nine
months, viz. two at L.500, one
at L.300, seventy at L.200 each,
fifty-five at L.100, and twelve at
L.50) 21,400 0 0
L.30,039 7 8
0 0
3 1
The following list was prepared a few years ago for a
ublic purpose. Although the expenditure of some of the
istitutions may now vary a little, the aggregate amount
lay be taken as pretty near the truth:
1460. St Nicholas Hospital   L.30
1500^] Fourteen Incorporations 2777
1599. Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons 35 0 0
1605. Merchants’ House  920 12 2
1605. Trades’ House  782 11 8
1639. Hutchison’s Hospital 2580 2 11
1725. Buchanan’s Society  418 15 2
1727. Highland Society  775 0 7
1729. Mitchell’s Mortification  100 0 0
1741. Tennant’s Mortification  46 2 8
Carry over L.8465 8 3
Brought over L.8465 8 3 Glasgow.
1778. Wilson’s Charity  214 1 7
1778. Coulter’s Mortification  60 0 0
1789. Grocers’ Society  95 8 4
1790. Miller’s Charity  264 4 2
1790. Humane Society....,  49 19 0
1790. Society of the Sons of the Clergy.. 228 0 0
1790. Brown’s Society  12 0 0
1790. Watson’s Society  24 7 0
1791. Glasgow Galloway Brotherly Society 49 10 0
1794. Teachers’ Society  21 0 0
1794. Dumfriesshire Society  10 0 0
1796. Faculty of Procurators  74 0 0
1797. Badge of Merit Highland Society.. 12 0 0
1809. Stirlingshire Society  20 0 2
1810. Lunatic Asylum  443 5 0
1811. M{Alpine’s Mortification  70 0 0
1812. Benevolent Society for Clothing the
Poor  34.0 13 10
1815. Magdalene Asylum  485 7 9
Not as-4 • -
certain->-Graham’s Society    164 6 1
ed. 3
Ditto. Ayrshire Society  41 8 0
L.15,191 3 8
Abstract amount of charities partaking of a religious cha¬
racter  L.30,039 7 8
Amount of charities partaking of a bene¬
volent character  15,191 3 8
Amount of religious and charitable funds L.45,230 11 4
Donations for charitable education under the patronage of
the magistrates and ministers of Glasgow. (M‘Lauch-
lan’s includes the Elders.)
1825. Mr M'Lauchlan, Calcutta L.8,281 18 0
1831. Mr James Murdoch, Glasgow.. 4,417 18 6
1833. Dr Bell, London  9,791 13 4
Contingent. Mrs Maxwell, late of Lisbon.. 2,000 0 0
L.24,491 9 10
The number of patients in the hospitals and asylums on
the 25th of March 1831 was 709, viz. in the Royal Infirmary
304, of whom males 143, females 161, under thirty years of
age 148. In the Lunatic Asylum there were 264, viz. in¬
sane 212, of whom males ninety-nine, females 113, under
thirty years forty-six ; idiots eleven, of whom males eight,
females three, under thirty years five ; silly in mind forty-
one, of whom males nine, females thirty-two, under thirty
years six. In the Lock Hospital there were, females twen¬
ty-seven, under thirty years twenty-three. In the Mag¬
dalene Asylum there were thirty-three, all under thirty
years. In the Deaf and Dumb Institution there were thirty-
seven, males twenty-two, females fifteen, under twenty
years thirty-six. The blind persons in the Asylum and
Town Hospital were forty, viz. males twenty-six, females
fourteen, under thirty years twenty-seven. Eye Infirmary
four, males two, females two, under thirty, two.
Presbytery of Glasgow and Synod of Glasgow and Ayr.
—The presbytery consists of the ten ministers of the city
and the twelve surrounding parishes, viz. Barony of Glas¬
gow, Gorbals, Rutherglen, Cumbernauld, Carmunnock,
Cadder, Campsie, Govan, Kirkintulloch, Kilsyth, Cath-
cart, and Eaglesham ; but as the ministers of the chapels
of ease are about to become parish ministers, the mem¬
bers of presbytery will be increased. The synod consists
of eight presbyteries, viz. Glasgow, Ayr, Irvine, Paisley,
Hamilton, Lanark, Dumbarton, and the new presbytery
548
GLASGOW.
In 1638 L.58
In 1642  66
In 1643  78
In 1674  90
In 1723  Ill
In 1762  138
16
13
16
0
2
17
4
8
0
2f
94
Glasgow, of Greenock. The following is a view of the progressive
stipends of nine of the ministers of Glasgow. Till 1788
the stipends were paid in Scots money, viz. in merks or
pounds.
  In 1788 L.165 0 0
In 1796  200 0 0
In 1801  250 0 0
In 1808  300 0 0
In 1814   400 0 0
In 1830  425 0 0
The stipend of the minister of St Mungo is paid in grain
from the teinds, viz. twelve and a half chalders of meal,
twelve and a half chalders of barley, L.30 in money, and
a glebe. This stipend, when the grain is at a moderate
price, amounts to about L.500.
Church Accommodation.—In 1831 the population of
the city and suburbs was 202,426, and the total sittings
in the various places of worship in the city and suburbs
73,425, viz. in the established church 30,928, dissenters,
Episcopalians, and Roman Catholics, 42,497. This is in
the proportion of one sitting to persons, or 20,291
sittings less than the amount required by law.
City Mission.—The want of church accommodation,
and the total inability of the clergymen of the city to attend
to the religious wants of a numerous class of the commu¬
nity, many of whom have no desire for religious instruc¬
tion, led to the formation of the city mission. The society
was instituted upon the 1st of January 1826, for the pur¬
pose of promoting the spiritual welfare of the poor of Glas¬
gow and its neighbourhood, by employing persons of ap¬
proved piety, and otherwise properly qualified, to visit the
poor in their own houses, for the purpose of religious dis¬
course, and to use othe? means of diffusing and increasing
amongst them a knowledge of evangelical truth. In De¬
cember 1831 there were twenty-two licentiates or students
of divinity employed, at salaries of L.40 each ; twenty of
these were on full time, viz. four hours per day, and the
other two on two-thirds time. In addition to the city mis¬
sion, a parochial mission was instituted in 1832, and there
are now one missionary in every parish, and two or three
in the large ones.
Licenses to Sell Spirits.—The number of persons li¬
censed to retail spirituous liquors in the ten parishes of
the city being 1393, and the number of families 19,467,
this gives one licensed person, or public house, to 13-^j
families. If the number of persons who retail spirituous
liquors without being able to obtain a license were taken
into account on the one hand, and the number of tempe¬
rate families who never use a public house on the other,
it may be said that in Glasgow there is at least one place
where spirits are retailed for every twelve families.
Pawnbrokers.—The business of a pawnbroker was not
known in Glasgow till August 1805. At that period an
itinerant English pawnbroker commenced business in a
room in the High Street, but was obliged to give up at
the end of six months, for want of business; and it was
not until the 8th of June 1813 that John Graham, a dis¬
banded town-officer, set up a regular pawnbroking office.
There are now twenty-two licensed pawnbrokers in the
city.
River Clyde.—As the river Clyde, in a commercial point
of view, is of the utmost importance, not only to Glasgow,
but to the western district of Scotland, a brief account
of its improvements must therefore be interesting. In
the beginning of the sixteenth century the channel of the
river for about thirteen miles below Glasgow was so in¬
commoded by fords and shoals as to be scarcely navigable
for even small craft. But in 1556 the inhabitants of the
burghs of Glasgow, Renfrew, and Dumbarton, entered
into an agreement to excavate the river for six weeks al¬
ternately, with the view of removing the ford at Dum-
buck, and some lesser fords. By the exertions of these Gia
parties small flat-bottomed craft were brought up to the Vy!],
Broomielaw at Glasgow, which was then only a landing
shore, there being no regular harbour for more than a
hundred years after that period. In 1653 the citizens
of Glasgow had their shipping harbour at the bailierv of
Cunningham, in Ayrshire ; but this port being distant, and
the land-carriage expensive, the magistrates of Glasgow
treated with the magistrates of Dumbarton for ground on
which to build a harbour and docks at Dumbarton. After
much discussion the negotiation broke up, the magistrates
of Dumbarton considering that the great influx of mariners
would “ raise the price of provision to the inhabitants.” The
magistrates of Glasgow then turned their attention to the
Troon ; and here they were again repulsed for a similar
reason. In 1662, however, they succeeded in purchasing
thirteen acres of ground from Sir Robert Maxwell of
Newark, on which they laid out the town of Port-Glasgow,
built harbours, and made the first dry or graving dock in
Scotland. Soon after the Revolution in 1688 a quay was
formed at the Broomielaw, at the expense of 30,000
merks Scots, or L.1666. 13s. 4d. sterling. The east end
was at the mouth of St Enoch's Burn, and the west at
Robertson Street.
At length, when the magistrates had got a shipping
port and a quay, they directed Mr Smeaton, the celebrat¬
ed engineer, to inspect the river; and on the 13th of Sep¬
tember 1755 he reported, inter alia, that the river at the
ford at the Point House, about two miles below Glasgow,
was only one foot three inches deep at low water, and
three feet eight inches at high water. He proposed that
a lock and dam should be made at the Marlin ford, in or¬
der to secure four and a half feet water up to the quay at
Glasgow. The lock was to be seventy feet long and eigh¬
teen feet wide, and so deep as to take in a flat-bottomed
lighter at four and a half feet draught of water. An act
of parliament was procured for the above purpose, but no¬
thing further was done in it.
The magistrates then required the assistance of Mr John
Golborne of Chester, and he reported, on the 30th of No¬
vember 1768, that the river was in a state of nature; and
that at the shoal at Kilpatrick Sands, and at each end of the
Nushet Island, there was no more than two feet of water.
He then proposed to contract the river by jetties for eight
miles below Glasgow, and to dredge and deepen it, at an
expense of L.8640. Mr Golborne having suggested that
a survey of the river should be taken, the magistrates
employed Mr James Watt, afterwards the celebrated im¬
prover of the steam-engine, who, along with Dr Wilson
and Mr James Barrie, reported that several parts of the
river from the Broomielaw to the Point House had less
than two feet water. In 1770 an act of parliament was
procured, by which the members of the city corporation
were appointed trustees, with power to levy dues. Ihe
trustees then contracted with Mr Golborne for deepening
the river, and in January 1775 he had erected 117 jetties
on both sides, which confined it within narrow bounds, so
that vessels drawing more than six feet water came up to
the Broomielaw at the height of the tide. On the 7th of
September 1781 Mr Golborne made an estimate for bring¬
ing vessels drawing seven feet water to the Broomielaw;
and on the 22d of August 1799 Mr John Rennie, civil en¬
gineer, London, reported his opinion respecting the deep¬
ening of the river; as did Mr Thomas Telford, civil engi¬
neer, London, on 24th of May 1806; Mr John Kennie
again, on the 24th of December 1807; Mr Whidbeyot
Plymouth on the 22d of September 1824; Mr John ’
superintendent of the river, on the 11th of November 13 >
and Mr Atherton, civil engineer, Glasgow, in 1833. n
1825 the trustees obtained another act of parliament, ap¬
pointing five merchants not connected with the corpora
f
ii
i
t
l;
ii
si
k
c
t
»
Ili?
H
GLASGOW.
. t n, additional trustees on the river; and increasing the
(es on all goods passing on the river from Is. to Is. 4d.
pr ton, and on the admeasurement of all vessels coming
t the harbour, in name of harbour dues, from Id. to 2d.
p- ton. The same act authorized dues to be levied for the
u; of the sheds, according to a regulated schedule ; the
f mer dues of Is. per ton on coals having been taken off.
Mr James Spreull was appointed superintendent of the
r;er in 1798; and, until his death in 1824, he was enthu-
sistic in every thing that related to its improvement.
I e increase of trade at the Broomielaw, in consequence
mthese improvements, almost exceeds belief. Less than
fily years ago a few gabbards, and these only about
t rty or forty tons, could come up to Glasgow; now large
v sels, many of them upwards of 300 tons burden, from
America, the East and West Indies, and the Continent,
a often to be found three deep along nearly the whole
h!gth of the harbour. A few years ago the harbour was
oiy 730 feet long; it is now 3340 feet long on the north
Sie of the river, and 1260 on the south. Till of late
yirs there were only a few punts and ploughs for the
p'-pose of dredging the river; now there are four dredg-
ii machines with powerful steam apparatus, and two div-
ii bells. Till lately there were no covering for goods at
ti harbour, and but one small crane for loading and dis-
cmrging; now the shed accommodation on both sides of
f: river is most ample, and one of the cranes for ship-
p g steam-boat boilers, and other articles of thirty tons,
n de by Messrs Claud Gird wood and Co., may, for the
u on of power with elegance of construction, challenge
aithe ports in the kingdom.
Che river for seven miles below the city is confined
whin narrow bounds; and the sloping banks, formed of
v instone, in imitation of ashlar, are unequalled in the
kigdom, whether their utility or their beauty be taken into
a ount. By the year 1831, vessels drawing thirteen feet
si inches of water were enabled to come up to the har-
b ir of the Broomielaw. The increase of trade on the
O de having far exceeded what even the most sanguine
o Id have contemplated, we think that some parts of the
n;r may be widened with advantage. In 1834 the trus-
t s appointed Mr Logan, civil engineer, a gentleman of
gat talent and experience, to direct the improvements
o he river.
fill 1834 the river and harbour dues were annually dis-
p ed of by public sale, but they are henceforth to be col-
Hed by the trustees. The following is a statement of the
a )unt of dues in the years specified. In 1771 the first
y r’s dues were L.1021 ; in 1810, L.4959; in 1812,
1525; in 1814, L.6128; in • 1833, L.20,260; and in
1 4, L.21,260, exclusive of shed dues, which in 1833
a: Hinted to L.1283, and in 1834 to L.1564.
he burgesses of Dumbarton are exempt from river dues,
it irtue of an old charter. From the time the exemption
first claimed, on 9th July 1825 to 8th July 1834, they
a'imnted to L.4722. 13s. viz. sailing vessels L.803. 13s.
4 steam ditto L.3918. 19s. 8d., less L.170. 3s. Id. paid
h shareholders in steam-boats who were not burgesses of
I nbarton.
he river dues have been greatly increased by steam
^ Ration, as appears from the following statement. From
July 1833 to 9th July 1834, the river dues collected
st'd to the gross revenue as follows: Total tonnage on
!’ c'handize, 70£ per cent.; ditto by sailing vessels, includ-
II ferries, 38£ per cent.; ditto by steam ditto, 31|- per
c‘t.; quay dues by ditto 15£ per cent.; ditto by sailing
i° per cent.; shed dues 5^ per cent.; ferries 3^
P cent. Total steam to total sailing vessels as 87^ to
Application of the Steam-Engine in propelling Vessels.—
' aPphcation of steam in propelling vessels long engaged
the attention of men of mechanical genius. In 1736, Mr
Jonathan Hulls obtained a patent for “ a new invented ma¬
chine for carrying vessels or ships out of or into any har¬
bour, port, or river, against wind and tide, or in a calm ;”
but this scheme did not succeed. In 1781, the Marquis
de Fouffroy made some unsuccessful experiments in pro¬
pelling vessels by steam on the Saone at Lyons. In 1785,
Mr James Rumsey of Virginia, and Mr John Fitch of
Philadelphia, made several experiments, which were also
unsuccessful. In the same year, Mr Patrick Miller of Dal-
swinton, Dumfriesshire, made several experiments with
paddles on twin and triple vessels worked by men and
horses, an account of which he published in July 1787.
Soon after this, Mr Miller built a boat with two keels, be¬
tween which he introduced a propelling paddle; and Mr
William Symington of Falkirk applied the steam-engine to
it; and in 1788 Mr Miller and Mr Symington made an
experiment with it on Dalswinton pond. But after several
attempts, it was found that the engine and wheel were so
inefficient as occasionally to require the assistance of manual
labour at a windlass. Some time after this, Mr Miller
caused a larger engine to be made at Carron Works, and
an experiment was made with it on the Forth and Clyde
Canal, which, though answering better than the former,
did not succeed. In 1794, the Earl of Stanhope constructed
a steam-vessel with paddles under her quarters, but with
no better success. In 1801 and 1802, Lord Dundas, then
governor of the Forth and Clyde navigation, employed Mr
Symington to construct a steam-boat for that canal; but
this boat, from what Mr Symington called the “ opposition
of narrow minds,” was laid up in a creek near Bainsford
Bridge, where it remained as a wreck for many years.
The whole race of steam propellers having thus left the
field one by one, without being able to effect their object,
the ground was occupied by Mr Henry Bell, who having a
turn for mechanics, made a steam-engine of three horse
power, and employed Messrs John Wood and Company, ship¬
builders in Port-Glasgow, to build a boat for him, which
he called the Comet. In January 1812, every thing being
in readiness, the Comet began to ply between Glasgow and
Greenock, and made five miles an hour against a head wind,
whilst by simply increasing her power she went at the rate
of seven miles an hour. This was the first vessel that was
successfully propelled on a navigable river in Europe; and
it is very remarkable, that notwithstanding the great pro¬
gress in mechanical science, no improvement has yet been
made on Mr Bell’s mode, although numerous efforts have
been made here and elsewhere for that purpose. It is true
that boats go swifter now than formerly, but the propelling
system remains the same. To this brief account of the
origin of the steam propelling system in this country, it
must be added that the Americans preceded us fully four
years. In October 1807, Mr Robert Fulton, an American
engineer, launched a steam-boat at New York, which plied
with great effect between that city and Albany, a distance
of 160 miles.
Clyde Steam Vessels in 1831 and 1834.
Outsea Boats.
Liverpool 
Belfast 
Dublin 
Londonderry....
Total..,
1831.
Vessels. Tonnage.
12
910
429
370
238
1947
1834.
Vessels. Tonnage.
13
1022
485
274
289
2070
549
Glasgow.
550
Glasgow.
GLASGOW.
Vess.
Boats for goods and passen
gers plying as far as Stran¬
raer on the one side of the
Clyde, and to the West¬
ern Highlands on the
other 
Boats for passengers only,
and plying on the river
and Frith of Clyde 
Luggage boats 
Towing boats 
1831.
Tonn.
25
7
3
600
1728
431
199
1834.
Vess.
Tonn.
10
21
7
3
761
1525
412
199
Abstract.
Vessels.
Outsea boats 
Goods and passengers
Passengers 
Luggage 
Towing 
Total.
1831.
1834.
12
8
25
7
3
55
Tonnage.
1947
600
1728
431
199
4905
Vessels.
13
10
21
7
3
54
Tonnage.
2070
761
1525
412
199
4967
The above tonrrage is register measure; carpenters’
measure in steam-vessels is about one third more.
The number of river boats for 1831 included all those
which had plied during any part of that yeai. Mnny,
however, were sold, some were broken up, and others
were withdrawn in the course of the year, and there were
not so many as twenty-five running at any one time. This
accounts for the apparent falling off in 1834, as the twen¬
ty-one given for that year were actually plying in Dedem-
ber. There is therefore an increase of boats plying on the
river, and preparations are making to establish several
others. All the new boats, either for the outsea or river
trade, are of larger dimensions, greater engine power, and
are much more splendidly fitted up for the accommoda¬
tion of passengers than heretofore. The speed is also
greatly improved. The Liverpool boats in 1831 were
thought to have made good passages when they perform¬
ed the run from Liverpool to Greenock, a distance ot 220
miles, in twenty-four to twenty-six hours. It is now done
much sooner. The steam packet Manchester, of 387 tons
carpenters’ measurement, belonging to Messrs James Mar¬
tin and James and George Burns and Co. of this city, left
the Clarence dock, Liverpool, on Monday evening the
15th December 1834, and arrived in Glasgow, a distance
of 240 miles, discharged and loaded her cargoes, and was
back again in the same dock, within the short period ol
sixty hours. This being done in the dead of winter,
studying the tides in the Mersey and Clyde shows what
can be done by steam navigation. The cabin fares for
the river boats are rather less than one penny per mile,
and outsea boats rather more. To Liverpool the fare is
L.l. 5s.
Stags- Coaches.—Stage-coaches were first used in Scot¬
land in 1678. The first mail-coach from London to Glas¬
gow arrived at the Saracen’s Head on Monday the 7th of
July 1788 ; at that period the mail went by Leeds, a dis¬
tance of 405 miles, and arrived in sixty-five hours, being
nearly six and a half miles in the hour; in 1834, the mail
goes by Wetherby, a distance of 395 miles, and arrives in
forty-one hours and three fourths. The speed from Car¬
lisle to Glasgow is at the rate of eleven miles an hour. On G1
the 10th of January 1799, Mr John Gardner of the Buck’s^
Head, Glasgow, started a coach to Edinburgh with foUr
horses, which performed the journey of forty-two miles in
six hours. The time now occupied on the road by stage-
coaches is about four hours and a half.
In 1833 there were on an average sixty-one stage-
coaches which departed from and returned to Glasgow every
lawful day. The mails every day, viz. to London two,
Edinburgh twelve, Paisley thirteen, Hamilton five, Lanark
three, Perth two, Stirling two, and to other towns twenty,
two. These coaches were drawn by 183 horses, and 671
horses were kept for them. They accommodated 832 pas-
sengers, viz. inside 284, outside 548.
Private Carriages.—Mr Allan Dreghorn, timber mer¬
chant and builder, was the first person who started a pri-
vate carriage in this city; it was made by his own work¬
men in 1752. The number of carriages in the city and
suburbs charged with duty in 1832 was 402, viz. stage¬
coaches sixty-one, hackney carriages 140, private carriages
201, viz. with four wheels 112, two wheels 89.
Relays of post-chaises did not exist in Scotland, except
on the road from Edinburgh to London, till the year 1776,
and even in England relays are of comparatively recent
date. Mr John Glasford, and Mr Andrew Thomson senior,
Glasgow merchants, went to London on horseback in the
year ^l 739. At that period there was no turnpike road
till they came to Grantham, within 110 miles of London.
Up to that point they travelled upon a narrow causeway,
with an unmade soft road upon each side of it; and they
met from time to time strings of pack-horses, from thirty
to forty in a gang, the mode by which goods were trans*
ported from one part of the country to another.
The Forth and Clyde Navigation.—In 1768, an act of
parliament was obtained for making a canal from the river
Forth at or near the mouth of the river Carron in the
county of Stirling, to the river Clyde at or near Dalrnuir
Burnfoot in the county of Dumbarton, with a collateral
cut to the city of Glasgow. On the 10th of June in that
year, Sir Lawrence Dundas dug out the first spadeful of
earth for the formation of the canal, and it was opened
from the eastern to the western sea on the 28th of July
1790. On the 11th of November in the same year, the
basin at Port Dundas was finished. The length ot the
navigation from the Forth to the Clyde is thirty-five miles,
and the cut to Glasgow two and a half miles. There are
thirty-nine locks on the canal, namely, twenty from the
Forth to Glasgow, and nineteen between the great aque¬
duct and the Clyde. The length of the locks between
the gates is seventy-four feet, the width twenty feet, an
the fall ten feet. The medium width of the surface ot
the canal is fifty-six feet, at bottom twenty-seven teet,
and the depth upwards of ten feet. The rise from e
east sea to the summit-level of the Canal at Wineforc oc
is 156 feet, and the descent to the Clyde 150 feet, so tha
the Forth at the east end of the canal is six feet low
than the Clyde, at Bowling. This great canal, wlucii re¬
quired twenty-two years to complete, was oneot the m »
arduous to execute in the kingdom, having to encoun
rocks, precipices, and quicksands; in some places)
through a deep moss, and in others it is banked 7
feet high. It crosses many rivulets and roads, as we *
two considerable rivers, the Imggie and the Ke vin.
bridge over the latter, which consists of fo“r^Je ’The
carries the canal across a deep valley, cost L;85Uy.
canal is supplied with water by eight reservoirs, co
721 acres, and containing 24,902 lockfulls of water.
Mr Kirkman Finlay of Castle Toward, the Prese" L,
vernor, was elected to that important office on 2Utn
each original share of L.100 was L.25; in the pr
i
was eiuciuu lu tuat impui mil* ~ on
1816. At the following balance the r?te,Per
• - i i  r inn t . in the preceuu’o
*
'
GLASGOW.
__. ar L.17. 10s. The annual average revenue during six-
ten years previous to Mr Finlay being appointed gover-
jr was L.30,323. 7s. 6d. and the annual average revenue
( ring sixteen years after it was L.4G,680. 11s. 4d.
In 1832 there were two steam passage boats on the
coal, each of twenty-four horse power. These boats
vnt at the rate of six miles an hour. In 1833 the steam-
lats gave place to swift iron boats, which travel at the
rte of ten miles an hour. Four of these boats leave Port
pndas for Stirling and Edinburgh, and return every law-
f day, and four additional ones are in a state of prepara-
t n. In 1832 the revenue from steam and heavy drag
KS] bits was L.1213. 19s. 5d. In 1833 from the swift boats
$ 15007. 19s. Id.; and in 1834 upwards of L.5000.
I Monkland Canal.—This canal affords a cheap commu¬
tation between the city of Glasgow and the collieries
ii the parishes of Old and New Monkland, distant about
tielve miles. The canal was originally thirty-five feet
bad at the top, and twenty-four at the bottom ; depth of
v ter upon the locksills five feet, and the smallest depth
t oughout any part of the canal four feet six inches.
rJ e banks have been recently raised, by w hich a greater
dnth of water is procured. At Blackhill there are four
]«! ks of two chambers, each chamber seventy-one feet
h g, fourteen feet broad, and tweive feet deep. The head
If el, at the top of Blackhill, is continued to Sheepford, a
citance of eight miles, where there are two single locks of
even feet six inches each, which carries the canal to the
rer Calder. In the spring of 1813 three passage-boats
t 'an to ply to Sheepford, about a mile from Airdrie.
I is canal has been productive to the stockholders for a
r nber of years past.
jlasgow, Paisley, and Ardrossan Canal.—The expense
ol and carriage from Glasgow to the west coast, through
pf t fertile counties of Lanark, Renfrew, and Ayr, abound-
ii with coal and limestone, was long a desideratum. The
o rations on the canal commenced in May 1807, and the
r igation opened between Glasgow and Johnston on the
4 t of October 1811. Although the canal was opened at
t: t period, the trade did not commence till April 1812.
r e length of the canal from PortEglintoun to Ardrossan is
t rty-two miles and three quarters ; from Port Eglintoun
t Johnston eleven miles; breadth at top thirty feet,
r bottom eighteen feet, and depth four feet six inches.
' ere are no locks on that part of the canal yet executed,
v. between Port Eglintoun and Johnston ; but wdien the
cial is carried forward, there will be eight near Johnston
t raise the canal to the summit-level, and thirteen to fall
(..vn to the harbour of Ardrossan. On the 6th of Novem-
1 • 1810, boats were put on this canal, but Mr Houston of
. inston Castle has the merit of introducing swuft iron
lits. During 1830 these boats made four trips daily,
’Miraging twenty-five passengers each trip; in 1831 eight
ftps, averaging thirty-two passengers; in 1832 fourteen
I ps, averaging thirty-four passengers; and during the
fit six months of 1833 they made eighteen trips, averag-
!
i forty-five passengers. During the months of July and
j gust 1834, 50,000 passengers went along the canal;
t: number in one day was 2500. The proportions of the
1 it cabin and second cabin passengers are, one fifth of the
1 it cabin passengers at one penny per mile, and four
f hsot second cabin passengers at three farthings per mile.
e average total fare on the canal is therefore sixteen
j -ntieths of a penny per mile. The swift boats on the
"th and Clyde and Union Canals ply at similar rates.
I nion Canal.—The Union Canal was begun on the 3d of
■j irch 1818. It is thirty-one miles and a half in length
mPort Hopetoun, near Edinburgh, to Port Downie,near
t kirk. The navigation for ten miles west from Port
| petoun was opened on the 22d of March 1822, and to
rt Downie early in May thereafter. The canal is on a
level line for thirty miles from Port Hopetoun; the re¬
maining distance is occupied by eleven locks, each ten
feet deep, so that the Union Canal, at the head of the
locks, is 110 feet above the Forth and Clyde Navigation.
The Union Canal is forty feet broad at the top, twenty
feet at the bottom, and five feet deep. This canal has
not yet been productive to such stockholders as have not
an interest in the Forth and Clyde Navigation.
The intercourse with Glasgow by coaches, steam-boats,
track-boats, and rail-roads, is so great that it almost ex¬
ceeds belief. As some of the coaches and steam-boats
depart and arrive more than once a day, and the mail-
coaches every day, the following may be taken as a low
average of passengers by stage-coaches and steam-boats,
while the others are from the books of the respective com¬
panies. During 1834, sixty-one stage-coaches, each aver¬
aging twelve passengers, arrived and departed during 313
lawful days. This amounted to 458,232 persons in the
year. By thirty-seven steam-boats, twenty-five passengers
each, 579,050 ; by the swift boats on the Forth and Clyde
Navigation and Union Canal, 91,975; by the light iron
boats on the Paisley Canal, 250,000; by the boats on the
Monkland Canal, 31,784; and by the Glasgow and Garn-
kirk Rail-road, 118,882; making the gross number of pas¬
sengers amount to 1,529,923.
Trade, Arts, and Manufactures.—Glasgow is advantage¬
ously situated for commercial pursuits. Placed on the bor¬
ders of one of the richest coal and mineral fields in the island,
with which it communicates by the Monkland Canal, and
by various rail-roads, and connected on the one hand with
the Atlantic by the Clyde, and on the other with the North
Sea and the German Ocean by the Forth and Clyde Navi¬
gation and the river Forth, it possesses facilities peculiarly
favourable for trade. Notwithstanding these local advan¬
tages, Glasgow was not remarkable for trade until a consi¬
derable time after the union with England. Its importance,
in a commercial point of view, may be greatly attributed to
the improvements on the Clyde, and to the enterprising
spirit of its merchants and manufacturers during the. lasf
seventy years. In 1420, a Mr Elphinstone is mentioned
as a curer of salmon and herrings for the French market;
and Principal Baillie mentions that this trade had greatly
increased between the years 1630 and 1664. As an en¬
couragement to trade, then in its infancy, an act was
passed, in which it was stipulated that the whole mate¬
rials used in particular manufactures should be exempt
from duty; and in the same parliament it was enacted,
for the better encouragement of soap manufacturers, that
oil, potashes, and other materials for making soap, should
be exempt from duty. On 31st of January 1638, “ Robert
Fleyming and his partners made offer to the town council
to set up a manufactory in the city, wherein a number
of the poorer sort of people may be employed, provided
they met with sufficient countenance. On considering
which offer, the council resolved, in consideration of the
great good, utility, and profit, which will redound to the
city, to give the said, company a lease of their great lodg¬
ing and backyard in the Drygate, excepting the two front
vaults, free of rent for the space of seventeen years. On
8th May thereafter, the deacon convener reported that the
freemen weavers were afraid that the erecting of the manu¬
factory would prove hurtful to them. On which Patrick
Bell, one of the partners, agreed that the company should
not employ any unfree weavers of the town.”
Letter-press printing was introduced into Glasgow by
George Anderson in the year 1638; and one of the first
works printed by him was an account of the general assem¬
bly, which met there the same year. Anderson came to
Glasgow in consequence of an invitation from the magis¬
trates. It appears, from the records of the town council,
4th January 1640, that the treasurer was directed to pay
552
GLASGOW.
Glasgow, him L.100 in satisfaction of his expenses, “ in transporting
of his gear to this burghe,” and in full of his bygone sala¬
ries from Whitsunday 1638 till Martinmas 1639. It also
appears, from the records of the council, 10th June 1663,
that Anderson was succeeded by his son Andrew as ordi¬
nary printer to the town and college, on condition of his
“ services as well and his prices being as easy as others.
Andrew, who had been a printer in Edinburgh, not finding
matters to his mind here, returned to Edinburgh, and in
1671 he was made king s printer for Scotland. Ander¬
son was succeeded in Glasgow by Robert Saunders, who
styled himself printer to the city, and who was for many
years the only printer in the west of Scotland. But his
predecessor, now the royal typographer, came to Glas¬
gow, and by threats and promises prevailed on Saunders’
workmen to desert him in the midst of an impression
of the New Testament. This oppressive conduct brought
the matter before the privy council, which decided, in
December 1671, that Saunders should be allowed to finish
his book, and that any printer in Scotland had an equal
right with his majesty’s to print the New Testament and
Psalm Book in the letter commonly called English Ro¬
man. Saunders died about 1696, leaving his printing esta¬
blishment to his son Robert, better known by the designa¬
tion “ of Auldhouse,” a property purchased from a young¬
er branch of the family of Maxwell of Pollock. A few of
the works first printed by him were tolerably executed;
but his latter productions are extremely paltry and inac¬
curate. Printing was now, and for some years afterwards,
in the lowest state in Scotland. The exorbitancy of the
royal grant to Anderson had produced the worst effects.
No person appears to have been employed for the sole
purpose of correcting the press; and the low wages given
to pressmen, with the badness of the machines themselves,
also tended to retard the improvement.
The university, in the mean time, was not wanting in
efforts to improve the printing in Glasgow., A paper,
entitled “ proposals for erecting a bookseller’s shop and
a printing-press in the university of Glasgow,’ appears to
have been presented to the faculty in 1713, in which it is
mentioned that they were “ obliged to go to Edinburgh
in order to get one sheet right printed.” During the
same year, Thomas Harvie, a student of divinity, engaged
to furnish one or more printing presses, and in the course
of four years to furnish founts and other materials for
printing Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, on condition that
he should be declared university printer and bookseller
for forty years, “ with all the privileges and immunities
which the university hath or shall have hereafter to be¬
stow on their printer and bookseller.” Although these
terms were probably not ultimately accepted, they seem
at least to have been under frequent consideration ; and
the sketch of a contract with Harvie is preserved among
the university papers. Two years afterwards, “ Donald
Govane, younger, merchant in Glasgow, and printer, was
appointed to the same office for seven years; but his name
appears at very few books.
James Duncan, who printed M‘Ure’s History of Glas¬
gow, continued to print here till about the year 1750.
Robert Urie and Company were printers in the Gallow-
gate in 1740, and during the following year executed se¬
veral works for Robert Faulls (improperly termed Fowlis).
Urie is entitled to the credit of adding to the respectabili¬
ty of the Glasgow press. Amongst the finest specimens
of his work are his editions of the Greek New Testament
and of the Spectator. But the art of printing was carried
to great perfection by the Messrs Faulls, who introduced
into Glasgow a style of printing which, for beauty and cor¬
rectness, has never been surpassed in any country. A
brief account of these distinguished persons cannot fail to
be interesting.
Robert Faulls, the eldest son of Andrew Faulls, was G]
born in or near Glasgow, on the 20th of April 1707, and ^
his brother Andrew on the 22d of November 1712. R0.
bert was sent, at an early period, as an apprentice to a
barber, and seems to have practised the art of shaving for
some time on his own account. While in this situation
Dr Francis Hutchison, then professor of moral philosophy
in the university, discovered in him the talent which was
afterwards cultivated with so much success, encouraged
his desire of knowledge, and suggested to him the idea
of becoming a bookseller and printer. Although Robert
Faulls did not receive a complete university education, he
continued to attend for several years the lectures of his
patron; but Andrew received a more regular education,
and for some years taught the Greek, Latin, and French
languages. Having thus acquired a pretty accurate know-
ledge of books, Robert began business in Glasgow as a
bookseller in 1741, and in the following year the first
production of his press appeared. He was assisted in the
correction of his press by George Rosse, then professor of
humanity in the university, and by James Moor, at that
time a tutor about the college, and afterwards professor
of Greek. To these advantages must be added the ap¬
pointment, on 31st March 1743, of the elder brother as
printer to the university. In the same year he produced
Demetrius Phalerius de Elocutione, apparently the first
Greek book printed in Glasgow, though George Ander¬
son’s printing-house had been nearly a century before sup-
plied with Greek and Hebrew types. In 1744 appeared
the celebrated edition of Horace, the proof sheets of which,
it is well known, were hung up in the college, and a re¬
ward offered to any one who should discover an inaccuracy.
By the year 1746, Faulls had printed eighteen different
classics, besides Dr Hutchison’s class-book in English and
Latin ; and Homer, with the Philippics of Demosthenes,
were advertised as in the press. The Homer appeared in
the following year, both in a quarto and in an octavo form.
The first of these is a very beautiful book, and more cor¬
rect than the other, which was printed after Dr Clarke’s
edition. The success which had attended the efforts of
the Faullses as printers induced the elder brother to ex¬
tend the sphere of his usefulness. After being four times
abroad, he sent home to his brother a painter, an engraver,
and a copperplate printer, whom he had engaged in his
service, returned to Scotland in 1753, and soon afterwards
instituted an academy for painting, engraving, moulding,
modelling, and drawing. The university allowed him the
use of what is now the Faculty Hall as an exhibition room
for his pictures, and of several other rooms for his stu¬
dents ; and three Glasgow merchants afterwards became
partners in the undertaking. The students, according to
the proposed plan, after having given proofs of genius at
home, were to be sent abroad at the expense of the aca¬
demy. But the scheme, which was somewhat romantic,
did not succeed, and was attended with considerable loss
to all concerned. In Faulls’ own words, “ there seemed
to be a pretty general emulation who should run it most
down.”
Letter-press printing has been carried on of late ye^8
to such an extent that it could not be accomplished with¬
out the aid of steam. Messrs Ballantyne and Company ot
Edinburgh were the first in Scotland who printed by steam.
In 1829 or 1830, they fitted up a steam-press for printing
Blackwood’s Magazine and the Waverley novels, boon
after this the Edinburgh, Leith, and Glasgow Advertiser
was printed by steam, then the Edinburgh Weekly r
nicle, Chambers’ Journal, and the Farmers’ Magazine.
1831 the Aberdeen Journal was printed in this way; a
in 1834 Mr Edward Khull fitted up a steam-press for prim¬
ing the Church of Scotland Magazine in this city.
A copartnery for carrying on the whale-fishery,
GLASGOW.
553
ii fL^ing Soap, was entered into in this city on the 15th of
it'j gitember 1674. Mr George Maxwell of Pollock, who
W i; created a baronet in 1682, Provost William Anderson,
a, James Colquhoun, late one of the bailies of the city,
v fe among the original partners. The company employ-
ei ive ships; and the Providence, built at Belfast, was sail-
l^y John Anderson, one of the partners. The company
|y extensive premises at Greenock for boiling blubber
ai curing fish. An advertisement from the company
aneared in the Glasgow Courant on the 11th of Novem-
b!i 1715, being the first advertisement in the first news-
paer in the west of Scotland. It was in the following
 « Any one who wants good black or speckled
St,), may be served by Robert Luke, manager of the
soparie of Glasgow, at reasonable rates.” The soaparie
at the head of Candleriggs Street, now the Commer-
ci; Buildings.
* \ copartnery for the manufacture of ropes was entered
}r!) on the 17th of March 1696. Mr William Crawford of
J danhill, and Mr James Corbet of Kenmure, were among
t), first partners. In 1698 an act of parliament was passed
fdthe further encouragement of the manufacture of ropes
111 cordage in Glasgow, laying a duty on all ropes im-
p ted from the Sound or east seas; and, in return, the
cinpany were to advance a capital of LAO,000 Scots, and
tiftring in foreigners to the work. It is probable that the
onpany’s first premises had gone into decay, as the build-
ii s of what was afterwards known by the name of the
Otsgow Ropework Company, reaching between Stock-
V'il Street and Jamaica Street, were not erected till the
aiumnofl766.
With regard to sugar-houses, although the colonies
wre not laid open to the Scotch until the union, it ap-
pjtrs that there were sugar-houses in Glasgow long be-
f e that period ; for in an action which the crown brought
■aiiinst the sugar bakers in Glasgow and Leith, it was ur-
|pl that they had not only enjoyed the exemption from
th duties and customs on the import of materials for a
gpat number of years, but also the duties of excise upon
f: spirits and other commodities manufactured by them.
J\ length, in 1715, a process was raised against them for
iti'bygone excise duties; and in 1719 the Court of Ex-
toquer found them liable in the sum of LAO,000 ster-
1 5. As the trade could not pay any such sum, a com-
punise was suggested, and a clause added to an act of
] liament authorizing the treasury to treat with them;
1 al by another act the sugar manufacturers were acquit-
0 11 of the LAO,000 on relinquishing their right of exemp-
t n from duties and customs. The statute is general,
: seems to subject all other privileged parties to the
‘"1 f leral custom and excise of the nation. The only par-
t s in Scotland at that time exempt from the importa-
t n duties were the Glasgow and Leith sugar companies,
t; Glasgow soap work, the rope-work companies, and a
11 manufactory ; the three last made a claim as a com-
fbsation for the surrender of their private rights, which
Pps not seem to have been attended to. The buildings
(I Stockwell Place are now erected on the site of the sugar-
1 use.
1 I he tanning of leather seems to have been carried on
i ji Glasgow from an early period. The GlasgowTan-work
• mpany, whose extensive premises were at the head of
ti Gallowgate, commenced soon after the union. 'Ihere
* im to have been three sets of partners in this great un-
trtaking. In 1780 the names of Provost John Bowman,
r Alexander Speirs of Elderslie, Mr John Campbell of
J athic, Mr Robert Bogle of Daldowie, Mr Robert Mar-
* all, and others, appear among its partners.
The brewing business, like the tanning, seems to have
1 en carried on with great spirit. Soon after the union,
■ r Crawford of Milton erected an extensive brewery at
VOL. x.
Grahamston, afterwards the property of Mr Robert Cowan. Glasgow.
The brewing trade was carried on extensively here at an
early period by the Anderston Brewery Company, and by
Messrs Blackstock, Baird, Struthers, Buchanan, &c.
Previously to the union, the foreign trade of Glasgow
was chiefly confined to Holland and France. The union
of the kingdoms, which took place in 1707, having opened
the colonies to the Scotch, the merchants of Glasgow
immediately availed themselves of the circumstance, and
having engaged extensively in a trade with Virginia and
Maryland, soon made their city a mart for tobacco, and the
chief medium through which the farmers-general of France
received their supplies of that article. In 1721 a remon¬
strance was preferred to the lords of the treasury charg¬
ing the Glasgow merchants with fraud. After having
heard parties, and considered the representation, their
lordships dismissed the complaint as groundless, and pro¬
ceeding from a spirit of envy, not from a regard to the
interest of trade or the king’s revenue. To such an ex¬
tent was this branch of commerce carried on in Glasgow,
that for several years previously to 1770 the annual im¬
port of tobacco into the Clyde was from 35,000 to 45,000
hogsheads. In 1771, 49,016 hogsheads were imported.
As the Glasgow merchants were enabled to undersell, and
did undersell, those of London, Bristol, Liverpool, and
Whitehaven, jealousies arose which ended in litigation.
As the tobacco trade was suspended in 1783, at the break¬
ing out of the war with America, the merchants of Glas¬
gow engaged their capital in other pursuits.
Some attempts having been made to open a connection
with the West Indies, the imports from that quarter into
the Clyde in 1775 were as follow : Sugar 4621 hogsheads
and 691 tierces, rum 1154 puncheons and 193 hogsheads,
cotton 503 bags. The following excerpt of imports into
the Clyde from the custom-house books shows the great
increase of this trade. In the year ending the 5th of Janu¬
ary 1815, immediately preceding the battle of Waterloo,
there were imported; sugar, 540,198 hundredweights, two
quarters, twenty-five pounds ; rum, 1,251,092 gallons ; cot¬
ton wool, 6,530,177 pounds. The import duties of these
and other articles amounted to L.563,058. 2s. 6d.; and the
produce was imported in 448 ships, carrying 79,219 tons,
and employing 4868 men in navigating them. These im¬
ports are, exclusive of grain, hemp, tallow, &c. from the
Baltic through the Great Canal. The exports during the
same period to America, the West Indies, and Europe,
amounted to LA,016,181.12s. 2^d.; and 592 ships, 94,350
tonnage, and 6476 men were employed in this traffic.
In 1718 the art of type-making was introduced by James
Duncan. The types used by him are evidently of his own
making, being rudely cut and badly proportioned. He de¬
serves credit how ever for the attempt; and his letters are
little inferior to those used by the other Scottish printers
of that period. He continued to print for many years,
and is well known as the typographer of M‘Ure’s History.
In this book, which is not a creditable specimen of his
work, he is styled “ printer to the city.”
In 1740 the art was brought to great perfection by Mr
Alexander Wilson, afterwards professor of astronomy in
this university, and by his friend Mr John Baine. They
first settled at St Andrews, the place of their nativity; but
soon after removed to Camlachie, a suburb of this city,
where they carried on business till the partnership was dis¬
solved on Mr Baine’s going to Dublin, where he remained
but a short time. The professor removed to Glasgow, and
lived to see his foundery become the most extensive and
the most celebrated of any in Europe. At his death the
business was carried on by his son, and continued by the
family on a very extensive scale for a number of years.
As a considerable part of their types went to London and
Edinburgh, and as other type-makers had commenced bu-
4 A
I
554
GLASGOW.
Glasgow, siness here, the Messrs Wilsons removed in 1834 their sons connected with the university. In contemplating gu
business from this city, one part of it to London, and the the principles of a small working model of Newcomen’s
other to Edinburgh, Alexander conducting the London steam-engine which Professor Anderson sent him to re¬
department, and Patrick the Edinburgh. pair, Mr Watt thought it capable of improvement; and
Although the origin of stereotyping is uncertain, it is having procured an apartment in Delftfield, he shut him-
evident that it was not invented by the French. If it be self up along with his apprentice, Mr John Gardner, phi-
a modern invention, or there be any question as to the losophical-instrument maker, and it was in this place
country in which it v/as first used, the Scots are entitled that the foundation of the great improvement on the
to the preference ; for there certainly was an instance of steam-engine was laid. In 1769, Mr Matt, on the recom-
the art having been used in Edinburgh many years before mendation of Dr Black, formed a connection with DrRoe-
the earliest date at which it is said, or is even supposed to
have been used in France. And in evidence of this, refer¬
ence is made to the original stereotyped page of Sallust,
with the plate and matrix, as well as a copy of the book, in
the Hunterian Museum at Glasgow. Mr Andrew Duncan
introduced stereotyping into this city in 1818 ; and since
that period Messrs Hutchison and Brookman, Edward
Khull, university printer, Blackie and Son, and Fullerton
and Co. carry on the business of stereotyping to a very
great extent.
Steam-Engines, as applicable to Manufactures.—As the
great improvement on the steam-engine was made in
Glasgow, a brief account of that mighty engine may not
be improper here. The steam-engine was invented in the
reign of Charles II. by the Marquis of Worcester, who, in
buck of Carron Iron Works, when he left Glasgow for
Kinneil House, near these works, where he constructed a
small steam-engine. The cylinder was of block-tin, eigh¬
teen inches diameter. The first experiment, which was
made at a coal mine, succeeded to admiration; indeed
his success was so great, that he procured a patent “ for
saving steam and fuel in fire-engines.” Dr Roebuck’s af¬
fairs becoming embarrassed in 1775, Mr Watt formed a
connection with Mr Boulton of Soho, Birmingham, where
they had the exclusive privilege of making steam-engines
for a period of twenty-five years.
On the expiration of the exclusive privilege, the engi¬
neers of this city commenced making steam-engines; and
to such an extent is this business carried on here, that there
are now thirteen firms who make steam-engines or mill
the year 1663, published a book entitled A Century of In- machinery. Some of the works are more like national
ventions. But as the marquis, though notable as a theore- than private undertakings. Three houses alone employ
tical projector, knew little of practical detail, Captain Sa- upwards of a thousand persons in this important branch
vary took up the subject, and published a book in 1696, of trade. . .
entitled The Miners Friend, where he described the Dr Cleland has ascertained that in Glasgow and its sub¬
principles of his improvement, for which he obtained a urbs there are thirty-one diffeient kinds ot manufactures
patent About this time, Papin, a Frenchman, came to where steam-engines are used, and that in these and in
England and becoming familiar with the elastic power of collieries, quarries, and steam-boats, there are 355 steam-
steam, he was, on his return home, employed by Charles, engines = 7366 horse power ; average power of engines
landgrave of Hesse, to raise water by a machine which he
constructed; and from this his countrymen affected to
consider him as the inventor of the steam-engine. In 1707,
the doctor published an account of his inventions. Not
long after this, Mr Amonton contrived a machine which
he called a fire-wheel. It consisted of a number of buckets
placed in the circumference of the wheel, and communi¬
cating with each other by very circuitous passages. One
part of the circumference wras exposed to the heat of a
furnace, and another to a stream or cistern of cold water.
At the death of Amonton, M. Dessandes, a member of the way, and was pressed between two cylinders, whence he
Academy of Sciences at Paris, presented to the academy a bobbin drew it by means of the twist. In 1741 or IIM me
project of a steam-wheel, where the impulsive force of the first mill for spinning cotton was erected in Birmingham;
rather more than 20 horses each.
The Cotton Trade.—The manufacture of linens, lawns,
cambrics, and other articles of similar fabric, was intro¬
duced into Glasgow about the year 1725, and continued
to be the staple manufacture till they were succeeded by
muslins. The following is a brief account of that impor¬
tant event.
About the year 1730 the late Mr J. Wyatt of Birming¬
ham first conceived the project of spinning cotton yarn by
machinery. The wool had to be carded in the common
ention, tnat it buppitiiiicu an wn u. ^
others. Mr Newcomen, a blacksmith at Dartmouth in tablished at Northampton, under the direction ot Mr m
Devonshire, observing that Savary’s engine could not lift man ; but nothing new had occurred in weaving ti i
water from deep mines, set his genius to work, and made when Mr John Kay, a weaver in Bury, invented i
great improvements on it. Savary’s engine raised water shuttle. In 1760 Mr James Hargreave, a weaver at bar
by the force of steam, but in Newcomen’s contrivance hill near Church, in Lancashire, adapted the stoc
by the pressure of the atmosphere, and steam was em- used in the woollen manufacture to the carding ot cotton,
ployed merely as the most expeditious method of pro- and greatly improved them. By their means a Person
ducing a vacuum. This engine was first offered to the able to do double the work, and by more ease than D
public in 1705, but its imperfections were not removed hand-carding. This contrivance was soon succeecieci )
till 1717, when Mr Beighton brought the machine into the
form in which it continues without any material change
till the present day.
The greatest improvement on the steam-engine was,
however, reserved for Mr James Watt, who was born  r —„ j 
at Greenock on the 19th of January 1736. When Mr limited powers when compared with the beautiful m
Watt bad completed his education in Glasgow, he went tions which succeeded it, must be considere as ,
to London in 1754, and returned in 1757, and in a short and leading step in that progress of dlrsc«very wnf ture
time he was appointed philosophical instrument maker to ried improvement into every branch of the manu ^
the university. This circumstance laid the foundation changing, as it proceeds, the nature and charac e
of an intimacy with Drs Adam Smith, Black, and Dick, means of production, by substituting mechamca op
Mr Anderson, Mr Robison, and other distinguished per- for human labour. T.he progress of invention
hand-carding. — —   . ,
the cylinder carding machine. It has not been ascertaine
who was the inventor of this valuable machine, but it 'j
known that the grandfather of the present Sir Robert fee
was among the first who used it. In 1767 Mr Hargreave
invented the spinning jenny. This machine, althougi o
GLASGOW.
555
sth i.
Ml t;
kti 1
' .s rapid. Hargreave in the mean time had removed to
Dttingham, where he erected a small spinning work, and
s >n afterwards died in great poverty. The jenny having
j a short time put an end to the spinning of cotton by the
oumon wheel, the whole wefts used in the manufacture
citinued to be spun upon that machine, until the inven-
tn of the mule jenny, by which, in its turn, it was super¬
sled. It would appear, that whilst Hargreave was produ-
tig the common jenny, Mr (afterwards Sir Richard) Ark-
; ight, was employed in contriving that wonderful piece of
r .'chanism the spinning frame, which, when put in motion,
j rforms of itself the whole process of spinning, leaving to
i m only the office of supplying the material, and of join-
i t or piecing the thread.
In 1769 Mr Arkwright obtained his patent for spinning
vth rollers, and he erected his first mill at Nottingham,
uich he worked by horse power. But this mode of giv-
[ r motion to the machinery being expensive, he built un¬
der mill at Cromford in Derbyshire, in 1771, to which
ntion was given by water. Water twist received its
j me from the circumstance of the machinery from which
i is obtained having for a long time after its invention
fen generally put in motion by water. The only improve-
ijmt, or even alteration, yet made on Sir Richard’s contri-
' nee, the spinning frame, is the machine invented several
ars ago, called the throstle. Instead of four or six spindles
1 ing coupled together, forming what is called a head, with
separate movement by a pulley and drum, as is the case
i the frame, the whole rollers and spindles on both sides of
t; 3 throstle are connected together, and turned by bands
I m a tin cylinder lying horizontally under the machine ;
I t its chief merit consists in the simplification of the ap-
j ratus, which renders the movement lighter. Besides this,
p throstle can with more ease and at less expense than
12 frame, be altered to spin the different grists of yarn.
In the year 1775 Mr Samuel Crompton of Bolton com-
] ited his invention of the mule jenny, so called from its
ing in its structure and operation a compound of the •
inning frame, and of Hargreave’s jenny. The mule was
Jginally worked by the spinner’s hand ; but in the year
92, Mr William Kelly of Glasgow, at that time manager
the Lanark Mills, obtained a patent for moving it by
ichinery; and, although the undisputed inventor of the
ocess, he allowed every one freely to avail himself of its
vantages. A great object expected to be obtained by
is improvement was, that instead of employing men as
inners, which was indispensable when the machine was
be worked by the hand, children would be able to per-
rm every office required. To give the means of accom-
ishing this, Mr Kelly’s machinery was contrived so as to
ave every part of the mule, even to the returning of the
rriage into its place after the draught was finished. But
ter a short trial of this mode of spinning, it was discover-
that a greater amount of produce might be obtained,
d at a cheaper rate, by taking back the men as spinners,
■ (| employing them to return the carriage as formerly,
i dlst the machine performed the other operations. In this
iy one man might spin two mules, the carriage of the one
1 oving out during the time the spinner was engaged in
turning the other. The process of mule-spinning con-
iued to be conducted upon this plan until lately, when
veral proprietors of large cotton works restored that part
Mr Kelly’s machinery which returns the carriage into its
ace after the draught is completed.
During the time that the machines for the different pre¬
sses of cotton spinning were advancing towards perfec-
Jn, Mr James Watt had applied his admirable improve-
ents on the steam-engine to give motion to mill-work in
uieral. His inventions for this end, besides the ingenuity
*d beauty of contrivance which they possess, have had an
nuence upon the circumstances of this country, and of
d I
at! #| i
al 3 |
*li 1 l
mankind, far more important than that produced by any Glasgow,
other mechanical discovery.
The foregoing application merely assisted the spinner in
pushing in the carriage; to meet the more nice and difficult
operations of winding the thread upon the spindle, and form¬
ing it into the proper shape of a cope, still devolved upon
the spinner, and required persons of superior skill and dex¬
terity. The wages of that class of workmen have been main¬
tained at a higher range than in the generality of manufac¬
turing employments. This high rate of wages has led to the
contrivance of many expedients to lessen the cost of pro¬
duction in this process of the manufacture. About the year
1795 Mr Archibald Buchanan of Catrine, now one of the
oldest practical spinners in Britain, and one of the earliest
pupils of Arkwright, became connected with Messrs James
Finlay and Company of Glasgow, and engaged in refitting
their works at Ballindalloch in Stirlingshire. Having con¬
structed very light mule jennies, he dispensed altogether
with the employment of men as spinners, and trained
young women to the work. These he found more easily
directed than the men, more steady in attendance to their
work, and more cleanly and tidy in the keeping of their
machines, and contented with much smaller wages. That
work has ever since been wrought by women, and they
have always been remarkable for their stout, healthy ap¬
pearance, as well as for good looks and extreme neatness
of dress. Mr Buchanan having, in 1802, removed to the
Catrine Works, in the parish of Lorn, Ayrshire, then pur¬
chased by James Finlay and Company, carried some fe¬
male spinners with him, and there introduced most success¬
fully the same system as at Ballindalloch. This system
has from time to time been partially adopted at other
works in Scotland and England, but men are still most
generally employed.
The men having formed a union for the protection of
their trade, as they supposed, have from time to time an¬
noyed their employers with vexatious interferences and re¬
strictions, which have induced a great desire on the part
of the masters to be able to dispense with their employ¬
ment ; and this has led to several attempts to invent a set
of mechanism to perform all the operations hitherto per¬
formed by men or women, thereby forming a self-acting
mule. Mr William Kelly w?as the first to patent a machine of
this description in the year 1792, as has already been stated.
About the same time Mr Archibald Buchanan, of Catrine
Works, then at Deanston Works in Perthshire, made an
attempt to perfect a self-acting mule, but w7as not at that
time successful. The next attempt was by Mr Eaton of
Derby, who took out a patent in 1815, and fitted up a flat
of his mills in Manchester soon after. The mechanism
being complicated, no practical spinners ventured to give
the machine a trial.
In 1825, M. de Jouge, an ingenious French gentleman,
who has been long resident in this country, contrived a
machine of more simple construction, for which he ob¬
tained a patent. These he had in operation at Warring¬
ton in Lancashire, and in Yorkshire; but they have never
made farther progress. The spinners of Manchester and
neighbourhood having been much annoyed by the union
of their spinners, applied to Messrs Sharp, Roberts, and
Company, celebrated machine makers, to allow their Mr
Roberts, a man of great ingenuity, and of much skill and
taste in mechanism, to endeavour to perfect a self-acting
mule. This Mr Roberts undertook, and having devoted
himself to the pursuit, succeeded, after several years of
experiment, and at the expense of a large sum of money
(upwards, it is said, of L.10,000), in producing a machine,
which has been found to work well in the spinning of yarn
not exceeding forty hanks in the pound. In the construc¬
tion of this machine there is a display of great ingenuity,
skill, and taste, and it has been adopted to some extent
556
GLASGOW.
Glasgow, by several extensive spinners. Still, however, there are
''•''V''*"'' objections to these machines, on account of the complexity
and expense of the mechanism ; and from the peculiar
style of the movements, the machine is still liable to
breakage and to considerable tear and wear. About eight
years ago Mr Buchanan having to renew the mules at
Catrine Works, resolved to attempt again a self-actor;
and, with some suggestions from his nephew Mr James
Smith of Deanston Works, and with much ingenuity and
perseverance on his own part, he succeeded in contriving
an effective machine. He has had his whole work in ope¬
ration on this plan for six years past, and, under his pecu¬
liarly good management, the machines perform very well
in low numbers. In 1820 Mr James Smith of Deanston
Works had contrived and constructed the mechanism of
a self-acting mule ; but his attention having been required
to other more extensive and important operations, he laid
it aside, it is believed, without trial. In 1833, Mr Smith,
seeing the desire that existed for a simple and efficient
self-acting mule, and more especially such as could be ap¬
plied to the mules of various constructions at present in
general use in the trade, set about contriving one; and
having made some progress, he came to hear of a very
simple contrivance for facilitating the process of backing
off (one of the most difficult to accomplish in a self-actor),
by John Robertson, an operative spinner, and foreman to
Mr James Orr of Crofthead Mill, in Renfrewshire. Ro¬
bertson, through Mr Orr, obtained a patent for his inven¬
tion, which consisted of other movements, rendering the
mule completely self-acting. Mr Smith, struck with the
simplicity and efficacy of his backing-off movement, which
consists in stripping the coils from the spindles, entered
into an arrangement with Mr Orr and Robertson, and
having united the mechanism of his own patent with that
of Robertson and Mr Orr, they have now wrought out a
machine, which is considered to be more simple and effec¬
tive, and more generally applicable to all mules, than any
other yet brought before the tx*ade, and it is believed it
will soon be generally adopted.
The adoption of the self-acting mules will bring the bu¬
siness of spinning much more under the control of the
master, and will aid much in enabling the spinners of Bri¬
tain to maintain a successful competition against the
cheap labour of other countries, who have less capital and
less facilities for obtaining these improved machines, and
less skill for their management if obtained.
About six years ago Mr Smith of Deanston Works in¬
vented a very simple throstle for spinning water-twist
yarn in the form of a cop, intended to facilitate the manu¬
facture of water-twist shirting. This machine works well,
and the tension of the thread in spinning is maintained by
the action of two fanner’s slades or wings attached to the
stem of the spindle, similar to a mule spindle, and on which
the cop is built, and which, from the uniform and soft re¬
sistance of the air, gives a never-varying tension. But
the most wonderful improvement in water-spinning was
brought to this country from the United States in 1831,
by Mr Alexander Garrick, a native of Glasgow, who then
obtained a patent for the invention. The inventor, a me¬
chanic of the name of Danforth, came with the machine
to this country, and it has now obtained his name, being
denominated the Danforth Throstle., This throstle has
no flies. The twisting part consists of a dead or fast spin¬
dle, on which a socket of about five inches long is fitted
to revolve, and on this the bobbin for receiving the thread
being spun is placed. On the top of the spindle is placed a
hollow cap of one and a half to two inches diameter, which
covers the bobbin; and the thread passing from the roller to
the bobbin, is revolved by the motion of the socket and
bobbin round the outer surface of this cap ; but the cen¬
trifugal force of the thread causes it to fly out from the
cap, and the only point of contact is round the edge of the n
mouth of the cap, when the thread passes to the bobbin
From this, and the resistance of the air to the movement
of the thread, the tension is derived, and is light and uni¬
form. The spindle of the common throstle cannot be driven
to advantage above 4000 or 5000 revolutions in a minute
whilst the Danforth socket may be run with advantage at
8000 or 9000. This machine has been slowly getting into
use, and suits to spin twist from tens to forties. The yarn
has a medium character, betwixt water-twist and mule-
twist. The power required to time this machine is great,
and the tear and wear of the machine considerable. Ano¬
ther American throstle (which, however, was invented in
Scotland thirty years ago), was introduced about four
years ago by Mr Montgomerie of Johnston. It consists
of a long central spindle embraced by a double-necked
flur, and is said to work well, building the yarn in the
form of a cop, or on a bobbin, as may be required. Seve¬
ral are at work about Glasgow. By these and other im¬
provements in the various processes of cotton spinning, as
much yarn can now be spun for 5s. of wages, as cost 20s.
twenty-five years ago.
In the year 1797 a new machine for cleaning cotton was
invented by Mr Neil Snodgrass, now (1835) of Glasgow,
and first used at Johnston, near Paisley, by Messrs Hous¬
ton and Company. It is called a skutching or blowing
machine. Its merits were not sufficiently known till 1808
or 1809, when it was introduced into Manchester. About
that period it received some improvements from Mr Ark¬
wright and Mr Strutt, who applied a fanner to create a
strong draft of air passing through a revolving wire sieve,
whereby the dust and small flur separated from the cot¬
ton by the blows of the skutcher is carried off, and thrown
into a chamber, where it is deposited, or into the open air
out of doors, whilst the opened cotton is stopped by the
sieve, and, arranging into a fleecy form of uniform thick¬
ness, passes by the revolution of the sieve to a roller,
when it is wound up, to be carried to the carding engine.
The most complete arrangement of this machine was
made by Mr Buchanan, of Catrine Works, in 1817, where¬
by the whole processes of opening, cleaning, and lapping
the cotton are performed at once by a series of four skutch-
ers, each with a sieve. The rooms in which these ma¬
chines work are as free of dust as a drawing-room; and
this process, at one time the most disagreeable and un¬
wholesome, is now quite the reverse ; besides, the cotton
being completely freed of the dust and flur, is more cleanly
in all succeeding processes, much to the comfort of the
workers, and the benefit of the work.
Little improvement was made in the carding engine for
many years. About 1812, however, a system of completing
the carding process in one machine was introduced, and is
now pretty generally adopted for numbers under fifties, and
in some cases as high as eighties. In 1815, Mr Smith of
Deanston Works constructed a carding engine, having
the flats or tops moveable on hinges, and applied an ap¬
paratus for turning and cleaning the tops, which was the
first self-topping engine, and with him the idea had origi¬
nated. Two years after, Mr Buchanan arranged a more
perfect machine, and had it adopted in all his water-twist
mills. Some years after he farther improved this appara¬
tus, and obtained a patent. In 1829 Mr Smith again im¬
proved the topping apparatus, by substituting a chain o
successive tops, and had them made of tin plate, to avoi
warping. This improvement, together with a neat an
effective arrangement of cylinders forming a compact sin¬
gle engine, he completed in 1833, and obtained a Pa^nt*
These engines occupy about half the space of the 0 *
ham engine much used in England, make more pertec
work, and will turn off nearly two lbs. per inch of wire per
day for numbers from thirties to forties. Some or t e
h
[tit
:':q
3111
‘a
GLASGOW.
n-vements are extremely striking and beautiful. This
"j n chine gives promise of many advantages to the trade.
' n the roving process some recent improvements have
b n introduced. About ten years ago Mr Henry Houlds-
ttrth junior, of Glasgow, now of Manchester, contrived a
b utiful differential motion for the winding in of the rov-
i, s on the spindle and fly machine, and obtained a pa-
t(,t. This improvement has got much into use. About
tV same time a very peculiar mode of roving was intro-
deed from America by the late Mr James Dunlop, and
wich was afterwards improved and patented by Mr Dyer
oManchester. This machine is called the tube machine,
ail has got much into use for the lower numbers of yarns.
Te rove coming from the drawing rollers, passes through
aiJbe revolving at the rate of flve thousand turns per
miute, whereby a hard twist is thrown up to the rollers,
ad the roving being wound on a spool or bobbin at the
oiosite end of the tube, gives off all the twist, but, from
tl; compression and rubbing it has undergone, retains
aj3und and compact form, and has sufficient tenacity to
pjl round the spool or bobbin, in being drawn into the
sinning machine. This machine is simple, going at a
gi at speed, and turns off a deal of work; but it has not
y been successfully applied to any numbers above forties.
There are now many splendid spinning establishments
iifcnd around Glasgow. Those of the Lanark Company,
o the Clyde, about twenty miles from Glasgow, are the
rist extensive in one establishment; but the three esta-
tijshments of Messrs James Finlay and Company of
(usgow (of which Mr Kirkman Finlay is the head), at
(itrine, Deanston, and Ballindalloch, are the most exten¬
ge ones in the whole kingdom, and employ about two
t iusandfour hundred hands in spinning, weaving, bleach-
ik &c.
In reviewing the various machines which have been in-
v ited for the cotton manufacture, the result terminates in
ts, that one man can now spin as much cotton yarn in a
g en time, as two hundred could have done sixty years ago.
On the 21st of July 1834, Mr Leonard Horner, one of
tl;! parliamentary factory commissioners, reported, “ That
i Scotland there are 134 cotton-mills; that, with the ex¬
ertion of some large establishments at Aberdeen, and one
& Stanley, near Perth, the cotton manufacture is almost
( irely confined to Glasgow, and the country immediately
0' oining to a distance of about twenty-five miles radius ;
ii all these country mills, even including the great work
i Stanley, are connected with Glasgow houses, or in the
t asgow trade. In Lanarkshire (in which Glasgow is si-
irted) there are seventy-four cotton factories; in Ren-
i wshire, forty-one; Dumbartonshire, four; Buteshire,
t o ; Ayrshire, one ; Perthshire, one. In these six coun-
i s there are 123 cotton-mills,” nearly 100 of which
1 long to Glasgow. The following statement, also from
t 'i 3 Factory Commission Report, will give a pretty good idea
I ! the amount of cotton trade in Glasgow : “ In Lanark-
^ : ire there are seventy-four cotton, two wool, and two silk
1 rtories ; seventy-eight steam-engines, namely, seventeen
| ch of fifty horse pow er and upwards ; eleven from forty
j forty-nine horse power ; nine from thirty to thirty-nine
rse power; nineteen from twenty to twrenty-nine horse
wer; twenty from ten to nineteen horse power; two
tier ten horse power. Water-wheels, three each of fifty
rse power and upwards; two under ten horse power,
rtal horse power, 2914, of which steam, 2394, water, 520.
rtal persons employed in factories, 17,949. Of this num-
r, thirteen years and under eighteen years, 5047, viz.
lies 1345, females 3702; under thirteen years 1651, viz.
lies 756, females 895.”
Hie increase of the cotton trade may be seen by the
llowing official statement of cotton wool taken for the
nsumption of Scotland from 1818 till 1834.
Years. Bales.
1827  72,655
1828  74,037
1829  79,742
1830  79,801
1831  85,929
1832  88,162
1833  -.86,964
1834  95,603
Years. Bales.
1818  46,565
1819  ,...50,123
1820  51,994
1821  53,002
1822  55,447
1823  54,891
1824  54,708
1825  56,995
1826  56,117
Cashmere Yarn.—In 1830 the w-eaving of Cashmere
shawls in this country had become so important a branch
of trade as to induce the Board of Trustees for the En¬
couragement of Arts and Manufactures in Scotland, to
offer a premium ol L.300 sterling to the first person who
should establish the spinning of Cashmere wool upon the
French principle in this country. Up to that time the
French had exclusively enjoyed the advantages of that
trade ; and all Cashmere yarns, used in this country in the
manufacture of shawls and other fabrics, had to be import¬
ed from France. The offer of this handsome premium,
together with the other advantages which the carrying on
of the trade held out, induced Captain Charles Stuart
Cochrane, of the royal navy, to attempt, whilst in Paris,
to find out the secret of this manufacture, which, after
many difficulties and much delay, he at last accomplished,
and in 1831 took out patents for the three kingdoms for
the introduction of this peculiar kind of spinning. In the
autumn of that year he prevailed on Messrs Henry Houlds-
worth and Sons ofGlasgow to purchase his patents, and they
accordingly commenced the spinning of Cashmere yarn.
After many difficulties, they succeeded, in 1832, in making
better yarn than the French ; and in the following year re¬
ceived from the Board of Trustees the L.300 sterling as
the premium due for the establishing of the spinning of
Cashmere yarn in this country. Since then the manufac¬
ture has gone on but slowly, though gradually increasing
in extent; and the day is not far distant when it may be
hoped that the beauty of the goods made from Cashmere
yarn will be duly appreciated by our ladies. One thing
is gratifying, that notwithstanding the cheapness of labour
in France, and the long experience the French have had
in this manufacture, we are quite capable, at this moment,
of successfully competing with them in the market, al¬
though the French yarns can be admitted free of duty.
Establishment of Merino Yarn Spinning in Scotland.—-
At the same time that the late Captain C. S. Cochrane
was engaged in Paris in finding out the manufacture of
Cashmere yarn, his attention was attracted by the supe¬
riority of French merino dresses over those made in this
country, and on inquiry found that the peculiar manner
in which the French spun the merino yarn was the prin¬
cipal cause of this difference. Captain Cochrane accord-
ingly got all the information he could possibly obtain re¬
specting this manufacture, and in 1833 established in
Glasgow this peculiar mode of spinning merino yarn on
the French principle. The Board of Trustees offered a
premium of L.300 sterling to the introducer and esta-
blisher of this manufacture, which premium Captain Coch¬
rane accordingly received this year, his merino yarn being
pronounced equal, if not superior, to the best French yarns.
After this satisfactory result the business was extended to
meet the demand of the trade ; but, unfortunately for the
spirited introducer, death cut him short before his plans
were fully brought to a profitable result. The business
is in the mean time being carried on by Messrs Henry
Houldsworth and Sons for the benefit of Captain Coch¬
rane’s partner; and, from the soft and beautiful goods
which can be made from this yarn, almost rivalling the
Cashmere itself, there seems little doubt but that in a
short time, when it becomes well known, the merinos of
557
Glasgow.
558
GLASGOW.
Glasgow.
this country will successfully compete with those of the
French.
Progress of Machinery, Manufactures, and Trade.— The
power-loom was introduced into Glasgow in the year 1793,
by Mr James Lewis Robertson of Dumblane. It was in¬
vented by the Rev. Dr Cartwright of Doncaster, and was
patented by him in 1774. About 1789 or 1790, a number
of these looms were fitted up in the hulks to employ the
convicts. They were driven in a manner similar to the
inkle-loom, of which indeed the whole machine was a mo¬
dification. Mr Robertson having been in London in 1792
or 1793, bought a couple of the looms from the hulks, and
brought them to Glasgow, when they were fitted up and
wrought in a cellar in Argyle Street. He removed the
driving-bar, and employed a large Newfoundland dog, walk¬
ing in a drum or cylinder, to drive the looms. He had an
ingenious old man, William Whyte, from Denny, to manage
the looms; and by a son-in-law of this man’s the design of
the looms was communicated to a bleaching and calico-
printing establishment at Milton, near Dumbarton, in 1794,
where about forty looms were fitted up there for weaving
calicoes for printing. In 1801, Mr John Monteith of Glas¬
gow got a pair of looms from Milton, and in the course of
two years afterwards had 200 looms at work in a portion of his
spinning establishment at Pollockshaws, near Glasgow. In
1803, Mr Thomas Johnston of Bradbury, Cheshire, invent¬
ed a very beautiful and useful machine for warping and
dressing warps; and some time after, Messrs Radcliff and
Ross of Stockport improved the dressing machine, and ob¬
tained a patent for these improvements. This machine
they also employed in dressing webs to be woven on hand-
looms by boys and girls. In 1804, Mr Monteith prevailed
upon Mr Archibald Buchanan of Catrine to take a pair of
looms from him, urging him to improve the machine. Mr
Buchanan worked these looms for a year, with a view to
obtain experience on the subject; and finding the annoy¬
ance of dressing the web in the loom great, he set about
contriving a dressing machine. In this machine he used
cylindrical brushes, and succeeded at that time pretty well;
but, from the obstinacy of the person engaged to work the
machine, and his own want of knowledge in the art of dress¬
ing, he was led to abandon it. He then invented a re¬
markably neat and effective loom, and in 1806 proceeded
to fill a large room with them, and again applied himself
to contrive a dressing machine; he abandoned the cylin¬
drical brushes, and adopted parallel moving ones, similar
to those of Radcliff and Ross, and after much experiment
with various success, and by the exercise of much ingenuity
and perseverance, he succeeded in effecting a complete
machine, and rapidly extended his looms, with the necessary
dressing machines. In the year 1807 he had the first
complete w-ork in Britain, in which w arping, dressing, and
weaving by. power, were uniformly carried on ; and it may
be said that from this establishment emanated the power-
loom weaving of Britain.
When Mr Buchanan first began the power-loom, from
seventy to eighty shots or picks per minute were considered
as great speed; but, from improvements since introduced by
Mr Buchanan and others, a speed of a hundred and forty
shots per minute is now obtained. About this time, Messrs
Foster and Corbet of Glasgow, and the Messrs Crums at
Thornlie Bank, began to use power-looms. About the same
time Mr Peter Manland of Stockport was the first to in¬
troduce the powrer-loom into England on a practical scale.
In 1808 power-looms wrere begun at Deanston, and there
in 1809 tweels, and in 1810 checks, were first woven on
power-looms. In 1818 or 1819, Mr William Perry of
Glasgow began the weaving of figured goods, and some
time since lappets were woven by the Messrs Reids of
Anderston, Glasgow. The Messrs King were the first
persons celebrated for weaving strong shirting and do¬
mestics; and the Messrs Sommerville and Sons have re-n-
cently introduced extensively a very superior manufac-
ture of furniture stripes and checks, and an infinite va-
riety of similar goods for women’s dresses, shirting, &Ci
at their new and splendid works in Hutchesontown. Jlr
William Dunn of Duntocher, the most extensive and suc¬
cessful spinner in Scotland as an individual, has upwards
of six hundred looms, upon which he executes various very
beautiful plain fabrics. The power-loom is daily extend¬
ing into new fields of manufacture, and it is evident that
it will ultimately be the only means of weaving excepting
for fabrics of very complex patterns.
Steam-looms have increased greatly of late years. In Au¬
gust 1831, the Lancefield Spinning Company employed 635
looms ; and Messrs Johnston and Galbraith, James Finlay
and Company7, and William Dunn, 2405. These looms, on
an average, weave fourteen yards each per day. Allowing
each loom to work 300 days in a year, these four com¬
panies would throw off 10,101,000 yards of cloth, which,
at the average price of 4^d. per yard, is L.189,393.15s.
per annum. The power and hand looms belonging to
Glasgow amount to 47,127, viz. steam-looms, 15,127;
hand-looms in the city and suburbs, 18,537; in other
towns for Glasgow manufacturers, 13,463.
The extension of the use of the power-loom has for the
-last twenty years borne hard upon the poor hand-loom
weavers, who have long suffered from low wages with ex¬
emplary patience. The evil w7as at first aggravated by a
natural cause. When the weaver found difficulty in mak¬
ing wages to support his family, the only apparent reme¬
dy was to get looms for his children, girls as well as boys,
and to set them to work also. This, when work was to be
had, helped the individual’s family, but it brought so much
more weaving labour into operation in the trade, previ¬
ously overstocked, that the evil was increased, and every
succeeding year the prices of weaving became lower.
Many attempts have been made by the hand-loom weav-
ers to have their prices regulated by act of parliament, or
boards of trade ; and in this they have occasionally been
aided by some well-meaning men of rank and influence,
but, as might have been expected, without the least suc¬
cess. For why fix the wages or prices of the hand-loom
weavers, whilst those of the mason, joiner, farm-servant,
&c. are left to be adjusted by the constantly operating ^
natural causes springing from demand and supply? 1<
the prices of weaving were fixed, whenever a period of
stagnation arrived, the manufacturers would either get
weavers to do their work at lower prices clandestinely, or
they would cease to manufacture at all, thereby throwing
a great proportion of the weavers completely idle. Be
sides, the hand weavers had a long period of high wages,
averaging far above the rates paid for labour in other
more laborious and skilful professions. I his arose rom
the rapid extension of their trade, and now, in its decline,
they must be contented with the lower rate of wages, unti
their superabundant labour is absorbed by other tra es in
a state of advancement.
Glasgow was the first place in Britain where inkle-wares
were manufactured. In 1732, Mr Alexander Harvey o
of that city, at the risk of his life, brought away from Hac-
lem two inkle-looms and a workman, and was thereby en¬
abled to introduce the manufacture of the article into t is
city. Soon after this, the Dutchman, considering mmse
as ill used by his employer, left Glasgow in disgust, am
communicated his art to Manchester.
The manufacture of green bottles in Glasgow was in r
duced, and the first bottle-house erected on the site o
present Jamaica Street bottle-house, in 1730.
It does not appear that the art of turret-bell making
known in Glasgow till 1735. It was not however til ^’
when Messrs Stephen, Miller, and Company made i
G L A S G O W.
559
tch
fo .he steeple of the Gorbals Church, that large turret-bells
^ made in Glasgow. Since that period they have made
a -eat number, which are equal in quality and tone to any
th ever came from Holland. In the steeple at the Cross
thi'e are twenty-eight bells, denominated chimes, diminish¬
in from live feet three inches to one foot six inches in cir-
criference. The greater part of them have this inscrip-
tinj: “ Tuned by Arniston and Cummin, 28 Bells, for
(Jc-sgow, 1735.”
? a 1742, Messrs Ingram and Company fitted up a print-
fi(i! at Pollockshaws. The first delft manufactory in Scot-
lail was begun in Delftfield, near the Broomielaw, in 1748.
M Laurence Dinwiddie, then late provost, and his brother
Gi ernor Dinwiddie, were two of the first partners.
’lie first shoe-shop in Glasgow was opened in 1749, by
MlWilliam Colquhoun ; and in 1773 Mr George Mackin-
toi, employing at that time upwards of 300 shoemakers
foithe home and export trade, had his shoe-shop in King
Stfcet. Mr Mackintosh had also an agent in Edinburgh,
w ire he employed a number of workmen. At the same
ptiod, the Glasgow Tan-work Company employed nearly
3(1 shoemakers; and to these two houses the whole ex-
p< of shoes was confined.
"he haberdashery business was first introduced into
G 'gow about 1750, by Mr Andrew Lockhart. But al-
thjigh Mr Lockhart was the first person who commenced
th; haberdashery business in this city, it was not till the
auiimn of 1787 that it was carried on to any considerable
escnt. At that period, Mr J. Ross of Carlisle opened a
shi) in Spreull’s new “ land,” and gave the haberdashery
buness a tone which it had never reached before in this
tilt Soon afterwards, two of his shopmen, under the firm
of ray and Laurie, commenced business with an extensive
sMk of goods; and the haberdashery business has rapidly
in leased in this city since that time.
[r John Blair and Mr James Inglis are supposed to have
bon the first persons who had front shops for the sale of
hi; in this city. The shops were both opened in 1750,
thlformer in the Saltmarket, and the latter in the Bridge-
W;
he business of silversmith is of considerable standing
in ilasgow. Mr James Glen, who was a magistrate in
1% succeeded Mr Robert Luke. When the latter first
opned a shop, the trade was but little known in the west of
Sidand. In 1775, when Mr Robert Gray commenced
pWness, the following persons had silversmiths’ shops
h(i‘: Messrs Milne and Campbell, William Napier, Da-
vi Warnock, Napier and Bain, James M‘Ewen, and Adam
Giham. In 1775, the assortment of plate was inconsi-
ddble; but in 1834 there are shops in Glasgow which
wdd he considered as valuable in Fleet Street, and elegant
in:!ond Street. It is not easy to ascertain when the first
w Hen-draper’s shop was opened in Glasgow. In 1761,
^ n Mr Patrick Ewing entered into the trade, it was very
li -ted.
he Iron Trade.—.Although the cotton manufacture has
i the staple trade of Glasgow and neighbourhood for a
*9 ( period, the iron manufacture in its various branches
w* Id appear to be the one which nature" points out as
JH y to furnish the most advantageous employment of the
mur and capital of the district, from the inexhaustible
W|es °f the materials for the making of iron with which it
*7® mds. The local situation of Glasgow, too, is peculiarly
favourable for the cheap conveyance of the bulky and Glasgow,
heavy articles of this manufacture to every quarter of the
world. The city is about equidistant from the Atlantic and
German Seas, and not more than twenty-six miles from
either, communicating with the one by the river Clyde, na¬
vigable by vessels drawing thirteen feet water, and with the
other by the Forth and Clyde Canal, navigable by vessels
also drawing thirteen feet water. It stands at the western
extremity of the district known by the designation of the
Basin of the Clyde, and which, stretching eastward for about
twenty-six miles, and of considerable breadth, is one unin¬
terrupted field of coal, interspersed with bands of rich
black ironstone. Into this mineral field the Monkland Ca¬
nal penetrates twelve miles, having its western extremity
at Glasgow communicating there with the Forth and Clyde
Canal, into which it is introduced. On a parallel line with
this water conveyance there is the Garnkirk and Airdrie
Railway, on a part of which locomotive engines were in¬
troduced on the 2d of July J 831. The Garion-Gill Railway,
which is to be connected with the Garnkirk and Airdrie
Railway, and with the Monkland Canal, will carry the com¬
munication with the mineral field eight miles farther, and
it is expected that the great coal field at Coltness will soon
be opened up. With these advantages for obtaining the
materials, and sending the manufactured article to market,
Glasgow must become the seat of a great iron manufacture.
She has already large establishments for the manufacture
of steam-engines and machinery, and for making the ma¬
chines employed in the processes of cotton-spinning, flax¬
spinning, and wool-spinning. In these works every thing
belonging to or connected with the millwright or engineer
departments of the manufacture is also fabricated. Having
these important and valuable portions of the manufacture
already established, and with the advantages which the
district possesses for carrying on the trade, there is every
reason to expect its rapid growth, and its extension to every
article of iron manufacture.
Neilsoris Patent Hot Blast.—An improvement of na
tional importance has lately taken place in the making of
iron, of which the following is a description. Mr James
B. Neilson, engineer in this city, obtained patents in this
country and France1 for an improvement in the manufac¬
ture of iron, which he designated a Hot Blast. The pa¬
tentee drew up a description of this improvement, of which
the following is an abridgment.
In 1824 an iron maker asked Mr Neilson if he thought
it possible to purify the air blown into blast-furnaces, in a
manner similar to that in which carburetted hydrogen gas
is purified; and from this conversation Mr Neilson perceiv¬
ed that he imagined the presence of sulphur in the air to
be the cause of blast-furnaces working irregularly, and
making bad iron in the summer months. Subsequently to
this conversation, which had in some measure directed his
thoughts to the subject of blast-furnaces, he received in¬
formation that one of the Muirkirk iron-furnaces, situated
at a considerable distance from the engine, did not work
so well as the others; which led him to conjecture that the
friction of the air, in passing along the pipe, prevented an
equal volume of the air getting to the distant furnace with
that which reached to the one situated close by the engine ;
and he at once came to the conclusion, that by heating the
air at the distant furnace, he should increase its volume in
the ratio of the known law according to which air and gases
so ?nf^rance. use ^ie llot klast lias keen adopted to an extent which contrasts singularly with the tardiness displayed by
Pj '.1 .t*'e kn»jlsh and Welsh iron masters in regard to it, and wThich would seem to encourage the idea of the probability of the
ich soon outrivalling us in this important staple. In 1834, the well known engineer Monsieur Dufresnoy published an elaborate
_ rt in recommendation of the use of the “ hot blast,” by order of the minister director-general of the mines of France. From this
hn; 11 tl131 h1 France advantages analogous to those obtained in Scotland have resulted from the use of the “ hot blast”
on making ; in the kingdom of Wurtemberg this has also been the case; and its adoption in Sweden, Saxony, and the states
e ting ol Sardinia, bears testimony to the merits of this Scottish invention.
560
GLASGOW.
Glasgow, expand. Thus, if 1000 cubic feet, say at 50° of Fahren-
heit, were pressed by the engine in a given time, and heat¬
ed to 600° of Fahrenheit, it would then be increased in
f volume to 21,044, and so on for every thousand feet that
would be blown into the furnace. In prosecuting the ex¬
periments which this idea suggested, circumstances, how¬
ever, convinced him, that heating the air introduced for
supporting combustion into air-furnaces would materially
increase its efficacy in this respect; and, with the view of
putting his suspicions on this point to the test, he institut¬
ed the following experiments: To the nozle of a pair of
common smith’s bellows he attached a cast-iron vessel,
heated from beneath in the manner of a retort for gene¬
rating gas, and to this vessel the blowpipe by which the
forge or furnace was blown was also attached. The air
from the bellows having thus to pass through the heated
vessel above mentioned, was consequently heated to a high
temperature before it entered the forge fire, and the result
produced in increasing the intensity of the heat in the fur¬
nace was far beyond his expectation, whilst it made apparent
the fallacy of the generally received theory, that the cold¬
ness of the air of the atmosphere in the winter months was
the cause of the best iron being then produced. But in
overthrowing the old theory, he had also established new
principles and facts in the process of iron making; and, by
the advice and assistance of Mr Charles Mackintosh of
Crossbasket, he applied for and obtained a patent, as the
reward of his discovery and improvement.
Experiments on the large scale to reduce iron ore in a
founder’s cupola were forthwith commenced at the Clyde
Iron Works, belonging to Mr Colin Dunlop, and were com¬
pletely successful; in consequence of which the invention
of Mr Neilson was immediately adopted at the Calder Iron
Works, the property of Mr William Dixon, where the
blast, by being made to pass through two retorts, placed
on each side of one of the large furnaces, before entering
the furnace, effected an instantaneous change both in the
quantity and quality of iron produced, and a considerable
saving of fuel. The whole of the furnaces at Calder and
Clyde Iron Works were in consequence immediately fitted
up on the principle of the hot blast, and its use at these
works continues to be attended with the utmost success.
It has also been adopted at Wilsontown and Gartsherrie
works in Scotland, and at several works in England and
France. The air, at first raised to 250° of Fahrenheit, pro¬
duced a saving of three sevenths in every ton of pig-iron
made ; and the heating apparatus having since been en¬
larged, so as to increase the temperature of the blast to 600°
of Fahrenheit and upwards, a proportionate saving of fuel
is effected; and an immense additional saving is also acquired
by the use of raw coal instead of coke, which may now be
adopted by thus increasing the heat of the blast, the whole
waste incurred in burning the coal into coke being thus also
avoided in the process of iron making. By the use of this in¬
vention, with three sevenths of the fuel which he formerly
employed in the cold air process, the iron maker is now
enabled to make one third more iron of a superior quality.
Were the hot blast generally adopted, the saving to the
country in the article of coal would be immense. In Bri¬
tain about 700,000 tons of iron is made annually, of which
55,500 tons only are produced in Scotland. On these
55,500 tons his invention would save, in the process of ma¬
nufacture, 222,000 tons of coal annually. In England the
saving would be in proportion to the strength and quality
of the coal, and cannot be computed at less than 1,320,000
tons annually ; and taking the price of coals at the low rate
of 4s. per ton, a yearly saving of L.308,400 sterling would
be effected. Nor are the advantages of this invention sole¬
ly confined to iron making. By its use the founder can cast
into goods an equal quantity of iron in greatly less time, and
with a saving of nearly half the fuel employed in the cold
air process ; and the blacksmith can produce in the same Gl
time one third more work with much less fuel than he
formerly required. In all the processes of metallurgical
science, it will be found of the utmost importance in redu-
cing the ores to a metallic state.
Iron Works in Scotland in December 1834.
Furnaces.
Erected in
or about
1767 Carron Company 5
1786 Clyde 4
1786 Wilsontown 1
1790.
1790.
1805.
1805.
1825.
1828.
1834.
Tons.
. 8,000
.12,500
. 3,000
. 4,000
. 7,000
.12,000
.Muirkirk 2..
.Devon 3..
.Calder 4..
.Shotts 1  3,000
.Monkland 3  8,000
.Gartsherrie 3  9,000
.Dundyvan 2  6,000
1790 Cleland.
28  72,500
1  Out of
   blast.
29
These works are all in the neighbourhood of Glasgow ex¬
cepting five, and none of them are thirty miles distant from
that city. Previously to the use of Neilson’s hot blast, 6000
tons of iron were made at Clyde Iron-Works in a year.
In the formation of each ton of iron, eight tons of coal and
fifteen tons of limestone were required. In 1833, when
the hot blast was applied, the same steam-engine made
12,500 tons of iron, each ton requiring only three tons of
coal and eight tons of limestone. The whole of the above
iron works are using the hot blast in all their furnaces,
excepting the Carron Company, who have only yet taken
out a license for one of their furnaces. The best coal for
making iron at the above works does not average above 4s.
per ton.
Supply of Coals in Glasgow.—In 1831 it was ascer¬
tained from authentic documents, that the supply of coals
came from thirty-seven coal-pits ; that the quantity brought
to Glasgow was 561,049 tons, and of that quantity 124,000
were exported, thereby leaving 437,049 tons for the use
of families and public works in the city and suburbs. The
additional consumption since the above statement was
made may be fairly estimated at ten per cent, on the home
consumption, and five per cent, on the export, which makes
the quantity brought to Glasgow in 1834 amount to 610,953
tons. The following is the average prices of coals de¬
livered in quantities in Glasgow during a period of eight
years.
Per Ton.
4d. to 9s. 4d.
lid. to 8s. lid.
6d. to 8s. 6d.
lid. to 8s. lid.
Id. to 12s. Id.
7d. to 10s. 7d.
3d. to 7s. 3d.
In 1821 8s.
1822  7s.
1823  7s.
1824  7s.
1825  Us.
1826  9s.
1827 ..  6s.
1828  5s. lOd. to 6s. 10d.
There has been no variation in the price of coals frotn
1828 to 1834. The best hard splint is laid down on tne
steam-boat quay at 6s. 3d. per ton. >
The manufacture of flint-glass or crystal was introduce
here by Messrs Cookson and Company of Nowcast ei
1777, and is now carried on to a very considerable exte •
In the same year, Messrs George Mackintosh and o
pany established the manufacture of cudbear, an artic
pany esiauiiMieu uic
great value in the process of dyeing; and soon a er ^
great vaiuc 111 me vjj. v*jw**g, > ~.
period a number of chemical works were erected in
neighbourhood of this city. The Chamber of Com
%
(|fi
yii
G L A S
Manufactures was instituted here in 1783, under the
ijr - es of Mr Patrick Colquhoun, at that time an emi-
L t merchant in Glasgow. The dyeing of cottons in Tur-
L red having been introduced by Monsieur Papillon,
:Lrs George Mackintosh and David Dale entered spirit-
T/ into the trade in 1785, and in the same year pulli-
r- handkerchiefs were begun to be made.
*^he business of regular distiller is but of recent date
. jcotiand. Mr William Menzies of Gorbals was the first
■ in th'e west of Scotland who had a licensed still. He
mined his distillery in Kirk Street in 1786 ; and his license
w, the fourth in Scotland, the houses of Messrs Stein,
|ii2 an(l another, having alone preceded him. At that
i« od the duties amounted to about one penny per gallon,
L the best malt spirit was sold at 3s. per gallon.
n 1800 Messrs Tennent, Knox, and Company, esta-
blihed a chemical work at St Rollox, now carried on under
tli firm of Charles Tennent and Company, for the manu-
fJ ure of sulphuric acid, chloride of lime, soda, and soap.
Tfs manufactory, the most extensive of any of the kind
iiflurope, covers ten acres of ground, and within its walls
tlire are buildings which cover 27,340 square yards of
e-und In the premises there are upwards of 100 furna-
!,[ retorts, or fire-places. In one apartment there are
|La vessels to the value of L.7000. In this great con-
cm upwards of 600 tons of coal are consumed weekly.
dessrs Henry Monteith, Bogle, and Company, estabhsh-
rta manufactory for bandana handkerchiefs in 1802, now
c ried on under the firm of Henry Monteith and Gom-
my. This respectable firm also carry on the business of
clton spinning and calico printing. Their establishment
a;Blantyre is most extensive, while their splendid works
a Barrowfield are probably unequalled in the kingdom.
\ th the exception of an attempt on the Continent, which
r ved unsuccessful, the manufacture of bandanas has
fin chiefly confined to this city. The manufacture of silk
i imt in its infancy here; but the throwing and other de-
irtments of the trade bid fair for prosperity.
Gas-Light Company.—A company for lighting Glasgow
v;h gas was incorporated by act of parliament in 1817,
vh a capital of LAO,000, which has been increased to
11150,000. The first street lamp was lighted with gas on
t:: 5th September 1818; there are now upwards of 110
l ies of pipes in the streets.
The works are on a large scale, and, including subsidi¬
se establishments in different parts of the town, occupy
area of 14,831 square yards. The principal establish-
l int now forms a square, of which one side is occupied
1 retorts, condensers, and other apparatus; and lound
12 other three are ranged sheds, under which cannel coals
t2 stored, to preserve them from moisture. These sheds
; 2 calculated to contain 6000 tons, and, to show at any
tie how much coal is on hand, they are divided into
1 mpartments, each containing a certain known quantity,
le company have at present 152 retorts, each capable
making 5000 cubic feet of gas in twenty-four hours.
|P these, a hundred and five are required in winter, and
1 irty in summer. The gas holders are of a very large
:e, and are eight in number, viz. four at the works, and
ur in different parts of the town. By this arrangement the
essure of gas is equalized in all portions of the city and
burbs. Cast-iron pipes to convey the gas are laid on
»th sides of the streets, under the foot pavements, so as
>t to interfere with the water-pipes, and extend to more
ian 100 miles in length. In generating gas for the supply
Glasgow, upwards of9000 tons of coals are annually con-
G O W. 561
sumed. The coke which remains after extracting gas from Glasgow,
cannel coal, and the tar deposited on the cooling of the v—
gas, are used for heating the retorts, and are found to be
very economical fuel. Nor is the tar the only one of the
liquid products that is turned to profitable account. Ihe
ammoniacal water is sold to be used in making cudbear
dye, and the naphtha in dissolving caoutchouc for manu¬
facturing water-proof cloth. The solution of lime, after
having been employed for purifying the gas, is allowed to
stand until the heavier part is precipitated; this is then col¬
lected and sold for manure, and the liquor which remains
(none of the gas-work refuse is allowed to run into the
common sewers of the city) is evaporated under the grate
bars of the retort furnace, thereby increasing the draft,
and consequently the intensity of the fire.
As at other establishments, the gas is purified with lime;
but in addition to this process it is made t'o pass through
a solution of sulphate of iron, by which it is very much
improved in purity. After being purified it passes through
a metre of a very large size, made by Mr Crosley of Lon¬
don, the patentee. Here the gas manufactured is mea¬
sured, and by a beautiful contrivance, called a tell-tale,
which acts by the combined motions of the metre on a
common clock, the quantity passing through each hour of
the day or night is registered, and the extent of any ir¬
regularity in the workmen, as well as the time at which
it happened, is at once detected. The company have been
peculiarly fortunate in procuring the services of Mr James
B. Neilson, engineer, patentee of the iron hot blast. Jo
the scientific attainments of this distinguished manager
the company are chiefly indebted for their uncommon
success, and for the most perfect and beautiful establish¬
ment of the kind in the kingdom.
Messrs James and William Campbell and Company were
the first who retailed soft goods in a warehouse in this city.
In 1817 they commenced business in Saltmarket Street,
whence they removed in 1823 to premises which they
built in Candleriggs Street. The warehouses of this esta¬
blishment, the largest of the kind in the king’s dominions
out of London, contain thirty-one thousand and three square
feet of floor. In these premises the public are supplied
with every kind of soft goods, and purchasers of a halfpenny
lace, or a penny worth of thread, are equally attended to
with those who make larger purchases. Sixty-one persons
are employed in the warehouses; four of them moving
about to see that the others do their duty. The follow¬
ing are the amount of sales during nine years : In 1818,
L.41,122. 6s. 4d.; in 1824, L.156,284. 2s. Id.; in 1827,
L.183,385. 6s. lOd.; in 1829, L.227,881. 16s. 7d.; in 1830,
L.250,899. 9s. Od.; in 1831, L.275,597. 12s. Od.; in 1832,
L.312,207. 5s. 8d.; in 1833, L.367,655. 4s. 9d.; and in
1834, L.423,021. 4s. 7d. Besides these sales, the compa¬
ny manufacture to the value of from LAO,000 to L.80,000
of the goods they sell. Although Messrs James Morrison
and Company, White and Greenwell, and Sewall and Cross
of London, and Harvies and Company of Dublin, turn a
much larger sum annually, Messrs Campbells serve more
customers than any of these highly respectable houses.
The Tea Trade.—The Camden was the first vessel un¬
connected with the East India Company which brought
a cargo of tea direct from Canton to Britain. She was
chartered by Mr Mathieson, a Glasgow merchant, and her
full cargo of Bohea, Congou, Cape Congou, Campio, and
Souchong, was sold in the Royal Exchange Sale Room of
this city on the 14th of November 1834. A number of
London and Edinburgh merchants attended the sale.
(x. X. X.)
4 B
VOL. X.
562
i
GLASS.
History. The general term glass is employed by chemists to de-
note all mineral substances which, on the application of
heat, pass through a state of fusion into hard and brittle
masses, and which, though not always transparent, exhibit
a lustrous fracture when broken. The glass of commerce,
however, to which our remarks are restricted, or the trans¬
parent and artificial substance which is usually distinguished
by the generic name, is produced by the igneous fusion of
siliceous earth with certain alkaline earths or salts, or with
metallic oxides.
The etymology of the word has been much disputed. It
is derived by some from the Latin glades, ice, its resem¬
blance to which is thought to have suggested the title.
Others have remarked, that the common Latin designation
of this substance is vitrum ; and as the Romans applied
this term, in common with the word glastum, to the plant
which we call woad, they have deduced it from the latter
of these, either because the ashes of this plant were used
in the manufacture of glass, or because it exhibited some¬
thing of the bluish colour which is procured from woad.
Glassum, the name given to amber by the ancient Gauls
and Britons, has also been assigned as the origin of the
word. But none of these etymons appears very satisfactory.
The most plausible theory is that which derives the term
from the Saxon verbs glis-nian, or the German gleissen,
splendere, which are'probably contractions of the Anglo-
Saxon ge-lixan, to shine, to be bright. This view is in a
great degree confirmed by the sense in which the term
glass and its derivatives are employed by our older writers,
who frequently apply it to shining or glittering substances,
without reference to colour or transparency. The discus¬
sion of this point, however, as will be easily seen, i.s of very
little importance.
The origin of the manufacture of glass is involved.in
the most impenetrable obscurity, and has occasioned much
learned, but, at best, doubtful speculation. The art is un¬
doubtedly of the highest antiquity. Some even assert that
it was coeval with the art of pottery or brickmaking. But
this is only a conjectural supposition, founded chiefly on the
fact, that it is impossible to excite a strong fire, such as is
necessary in metallurgic operations, without vitrifying part
of the bricks or stones of which the furnace is built. But
it is more than likely, that such imperfect vitrifications
might have been observed long before the idea occurred
of taking advantage of the effects which they displayed, in
manufacturing the useful article of which we are now about
to treat. There can be no doubt that the art of making
glass was well known to the Egyptians. Glass beads and
other ornaments made of that substance, skilfully manufac¬
tured and beautifully coloured, have been found adorning
many of their mummies which are known to be upwards
of three thousand years old. Neri adduces a passage from
the book of Job (chap, xxviii. verse 17), to prove that
glass was known to the Jews at the time when that book
was written. But, unfortunately for his theory, the word
which, following the Vulgate and the Septuagint, he trans¬
lates glass, and which in our version is rendered crystal,
means simply, in the Hebrew root, any diaphanous or shin¬
ing substance, and is often used, according to the fancy of
translators, to denote any body which is beautiful or trans¬
parent. The two problems of Aristotle, “ Why do we see
through glass ?” and “ Why is glass malleable ?” if genuine,
ivhich is very doubtful, comprise the earliest mention of the
substance on record. The DsXog of Herodotus, which he
describes as used by the Ethiopians in their cemeteries, has
been variously interpreted amber or rock crystal. Both mean¬
ings are, however, questionable ; and it is plain he refers to H
a natural, not an artificial production ; for he speaks of it w
as being dug up in large quantities. The same word L
used by Aristophanes, a writer of the same century (tlle
fifth before Christ), in his Nubes; but, in the passage refer¬
red to, it may mean any stone which will permit the tran".
sit of the sun’s rays to form a burning medium; and though
it is by some thought improbable that glass would have been
called a stone, it is yet worthy of remark that Shakspeare
applies the same epithet to it in his King Lear, act v. sc. iii
Theophrastus, who flourished not above a century after
Aristotle (303 a. c.), speaks of the sand of the river Belus
as used in the manufacture of glass, which he certainly dis¬
tinguishes by the name lisXof; and from that date the know-
ledge of the substance seems to have been pretty generally
diffused. A century afterwards we hear of Archimedes hav¬
ing employed burning glasses, amongst other instruments
for the defence of Syracuse against the assaults of the Ro¬
mans under Marcellus, by means of which he set the ene¬
my’s ships on fire. The silence of Polybius, Plutarch, and
Livy, as to this circumstance, may be held to argue against
its accuracy ; but modern experiments have shown, that
it may not be wholly a fabrication, worthy only to be class¬
ed in that ample category of marvels, which
 Graecia mendax
Audet in historia.
Bufibn constructed a burning glass composed of about
four hundred glass planes, each six inches square, so as to
form a concave mirror capable of melting silver at the dis¬
tance of fifty feet, and lead and tin at the distance of one
hundred and twenty feet, and of igniting wood at the dis¬
tance of two hundred feet. This has rendered the feat of
the “ Isthmiacis decus immortale colonis,” as he is styled
by Silius Italicus, less incredible than it appeared before;
but yet it is not impossible that his burning mirror was
composed of polished steel. If the statement as to the ce¬
lebrated sphere of the same philosopher having been con¬
structed of glass can be relied on, the art of manufacturing
glass must have been carried to a high degree of excel¬
lence upwards of two centuries before the Christian era.
A passage in Pliny, which attributes the discovery of
glass to accident, has often been quoted. A merchant
vessel, laden with nitre or fossil alkali, was driven ashore
on the coast of Palestine, near the mouth of the river Belus,
a small stream running from the foot of Mount Carmel in
Galilee, into the Mediterranean. The mariners, unable to
procure stones to rest their cooking vessels upon, used pieces
of their cargo instead. The fire reduced the alkali to a soft
state, and incorporating with the river sand, it melted down
into a vitreous stream. The circumstance was communi¬
cated to the inhabitants of the district, w ho availed them¬
selves of the hint, and engaged in the manufacture of glass.
The story is plausible, and it is no extravagant credulity
to believe, that the world has been indebted for this, as
well as for many other of its most valuable discoveries, to
what, in common language, is called accident. It is cer¬
tain, however, from passages in the works of Strabo and
Josephus, that the sand for about half a mile round the
mouth of the river Belus was peculiarly adapted to the
manufacture of glass. In fact, it wms much used in the
glass-houses of Tyre and Sidon. Some antiquaries main¬
tain that the first glass-house was erected at Diospomi
the ancient capital of the Thebaid ; but that distinction is
generally considered as belonging to the above-mentione
towns. Alexandria, another city of the Phoenicians, was
long and highly celebrated for its glass, and at one tiffl®
GLASS.
563
kal
rnished great part of the glass ware which was used at
j’ jme. To these places the art was exclusively confined
f- some centuries. The expense of the manufacture
jobably prevented an extensive use of the substance, and
i application to the ordinary domestic purposes which it
j w serves. It was considered as an article of luxury, and
speared chiefly in the form of urns or drinking cups.
rjiese latter were often of the most elaborate workman-
sip, and exquisitely embellished with raised, chased, or
namented figures. The cups and cinerary urns which
ve survived the shock of time and accident, prove that
2 ancients possessed great skill in glass-blowing, and
je marked by a delicacy of workmanship which modern
i : has not excelled. The Barberini or Portland vase,
<mposed of deep-blue glass, with figures of a delicate
uite opaque substance raised on it in relief, is a splendid
iBcimen of ancient skill in this department. It was
land in the tomb of Alexander Severus, who died a.d.
5. Several other ancient glass vessels of great beauty
2 preserved in the British Museum.
Though extensively used by the Romans, we do not
i d any mention of glass in any of their writers before
licretius. From the allusions to its lustre and transpa-
ijncy which occur in the writers of the Augustan age,
j iss would seem to have been then manufactured in con-
slerable purity. But, perhaps, the word usually trans-
' ;ed glass may rather refer to some natural production.
;ir, though we know that an excellence in colouring glass
us attained at an early period, which has never been
; rpassed, yet the art of producing it devoid of colour,
e most difficult process in glass-making, since it is easi-
affected by extraneous substances, was then scarcely
lown. Many years afterwards, the Emperor Nero paid
:K)0 sestertia, or about L.50,000 of our money, for two
lall drinking cups with handles, the chief excellence of
i fich consisted in their being colourless. The glass in
mmon use was of very inferior quality, and composed
r the most part of coarse thick metal, sometimes white,
it generally of a bluish colour.
From the circumstance of coloured glass beads and
lulets having been found in druidical remains in this
untry, it has been argued by Pennant and others, that
e art of making glass was known in Britain before its
vasion by the Romans. It can hardly, however, as we
ink, be believed, that a people, who had made very trifl-
% advances in civilization, and who, it is known, were
itirely unacquainted with any other art, should be found
it only conversant with the manufacture of glass, a com-
icated and highly ingenious process, but should excel in
; for the beads and amulets spoken of are of exquisite
wkmanship, and beautifully coloured in imitation of the
rest and most precious stones. There seems little
mbt, therefore, that the ancient Britons procured these
the course of traffic with the Syrians, who visited the
and, as we do those in the South Seas, to drive a trade
th their savage inhabitants in toys and trinkets, giving
i era these in exchange for skins or other natural produc-
I ms. By whatever means, however, these ornaments came
to Britain, it is certain that they were in extensive use,
ough principally for religious purposes, long prior to
e Roman invasion, as they are found in barrows or tu-
uli of a much older date. One at Stonehenge, in par-
'ular, on being opened, was found to be filled with them.
Glain Neidyr, or druidical glass rings, generally about
If as wide as our finger rings, but much thicker, have
-quently been found. The vulgar superstition regarding
esewas, that they were produced by snakes joining their
•ads together and hissing, when a kind of bubble like a
ig was formed round the head of them, which the others,
ntinuing to hiss, blew on till it came off at the tail, when
immediately hardened into a glass ring. Success was
thought to attend any one who was fortunate enough to History,
find one of those snake stones. They were evidently beads
of glass employed by the Druids, under the name of charms,
to deceive the vulgar. They are usually of a green colour,
but some of them are blue, and others variegated with wavy
streaks of blue, red, and white.
Glass utensils have been found in Herculaneum, which
city was destroyed by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius in
the reign of Titus (a. d. 79). A plate of glass also found
there has occasioned much speculation as to its uses. Si¬
milar plates, to which Pliny gives the name of vitrece ca-
mercz, seem to have been employed in a manner not very
well understood by us, as wainscotting for their rooms.
It is disputed whether or not glass was used in Hercula¬
neum for windows.
In the reign of Tiberius, a company of glass manufac¬
turers established themselves in Rome, and had a street
assigned them near the Porta Capena. The articles of
their manufacture were few in number and of inferior
quality, neither did they make rapid improvements in
their art, notwithstanding the large prices which were
then given for glass of foreign manufacture in the impe¬
rial city. In the year 220, they had increased so much
in importance, and the produce of their manufacture was
so considerable, that an impost was laid on it by Alexan¬
der Severus. Dion Cassius and Petronius Arbiter concur
in their account of the discovery of malleable or ductile
glass by a celebrated Roman architect, whose success in
the restoration to its position of a portico which leaned
to one side, had roused the envy and jealousy of Tiberius,
and occasioned his banishment from Rome. Thinking
that his discovery would disarm the emperor’s wrath, the
artist appeared before him bearing a glass vessel, which
he dashed upon the ground. Notwithstanding the vio¬
lence of the blow, it was merely dimpled, as if it had
been brass. Taking a hammer from his breast, he then
beat it out into its original shape; but instead of giving
him the reward which he had expected, the emperor order¬
ed the unfortunate artisan to be beheaded, remarking, that
if his discovery were known, gold would soon be held of
as little value as common clay. This is probably another
version of the story told by Pliny, of an artificer who made
the same discovery, and whose workshop was demolished
by those who had an interest in preventing the introduc¬
tion of an article which would lower the value of gold,
silver, and brass. Although it might not be justifiable to
give unqualified disbelief to these stories, yet the know¬
ledge we at present possess would restrict the possibility of
such a discovery within the narrowest limits. The union
of the properties of malleability and vitrification seems to
be incompatible. Some metallic substances, by the ap¬
plication of intense heat, are reduced to the state of glass,
but at the same time lose their malleability; which fact
would seem to imply that it is impossible to communicate
the latter property to glass. The extraordinary stories
above mentioned have, however, been rationally enough
explained by modern chemists. It has been observed by
Kunckel, that a composition having a glossy appearance,
and sufficiently pliant to be wrought by the hammer, may
be formed; and by Neumann, that, in the fusion of mu¬
riate of silver, a kind of glass is formed, which may be
shaped or beaten into different figures, and may be pro¬
nounced in some degree ductile. Blancourt, in his UArt
de la Verrerie, mentions an artist who presented a bust of
ductile glass to the Cardinal Richelieu, minister of Louis
XIII. But he does not seem to have been more fortunate
than his predecessors; for he was doomed to imprison¬
ment for life, for “ the politic reasons,” as Blancourt with
much simplicity observes (we quote from the translation
published in 1699), “ which, it is believed, the cardinal
entertained from the consideration of the consequences
GLASS.
564
History, of that secret,” which no doubt led him to fear lest the
established interests of French glass manufacturers might
be injured by the discovery. From expressions used by
Elancourt in other parts of his work, we think, that by
malleable glass, such as was produced by this artist, he un¬
derstood some composition similar to those which Kunckel
and Neumann discovered, and was not very exact in limit¬
ing the term to that vitreous substance which we now ge¬
nerally understand when we speak of glass.
The precise period at which the making of window-
glass came into practice is not now certainly known. The
Roman windows were filled with a semitransparent sub¬
stance, called lapis specularis, a fossil of the class of talcs,
which readily splits into thin smooth laminae or plates.
This substance is found in masses of ten or twelve inches
in breadth, and three in thickness ; and, when sliced, very
much resembles horn, instead of which it is to this day
often employed by lantern makers. The Romans were
chiefly supplied with this article from the island of Cy¬
prus, where it abounds. So good a substitute for glass is
it said to have been, that, besides being employed for the
admission of light into the Roman houses, it was also used
in the construction of hot-houses, for raising and protecting
delicate plants ; so.that, by using it, the Emperor Tiberius
had cucumbers at his table throughout the whole year.
There is no positive mention of the use of glass for
windows before the time of Lactantius, at the close of the
third century. But the passage in that writer which re¬
cords the fact (De Opif. Dei, cap. 8), also shows that the
lapis specularis still retained its place. Glass windows are
distinctly mentioned by St Jerome, as being in use in his
time (a. d. 422). A century later, the windows of the
church of St Sophia at Constantinople are represented by
Paul us Silentiarius as being filled with glass. After this
period we meet with frequent mention of them. Joannes
Philippinus (a. d. 630) states that glass was fastened into
the windows with plaster.
The Venerable Bede asserts that glass windows were
first introduced into England in the year 674, by the Abbot
Benedict, who brought over artificers skilled in the art of
making window-glass, to glaze the church and monastery
of Wearmouth. Other authorities attribute the introduc¬
tion of this luxury to Bishop Wilfred junior, who died in
711. It would thus appear, that glass windows were first
introduced into England either about the end of the se¬
venth or the beginning of the eighth century. The use
of window-glass, however, was then, and for many centu¬
ries afterwards, confined entirely to buildings appropriated
to religious purposes ; but in the fourteenth century it was
so much in demand, though still confined to sacred edi¬
fices and ornamental purposes, that glazing had become a
regular trade. This appears from a contract entered into
by the church authorities of York Cathedral in 1338, with
a glazier to glaze the west windows of that structure ; a
piece of work which he undertook to perform at the rate
of sixpence per foot for white glass, and one shilling per
foot for coloured. Glass windows, however, did not be¬
come common in England till the close of the twelfth cen¬
tury. Until this period they were rarely to be found in
private houses, and were deemed a great luxury, and a
token of great magnificence. The windows of the houses
were till then filled with oiled paper, or wooden lattices.
In cathedrals, these and sheets of linen supplied the place
of glass till the eighth century; in meaner edifices lat¬
tices continued in use till the eighteenth.
The glass of the Venetians was superior to any made
elsewhere, and for many years commanded the market of
nearly all Europe. Their most extensive glass-works
were established at Murano, a small village in the neigh¬
bourhood of Venice ; but the produce was always recog¬
nised by the name of Venetian glass. Baron von Lowhen,
in his Analysis of Nobility in its Origin, states that, “ s0 H'
useful were the glass-makers at one period in Venice, and '-’YvJ
so great the revenue accruing to the republic from their
manufacture, that, to encourage the men engaged in it to
remain in Murano, the senate made them all burgesses
of Venice, and allowed nobles to marry their daughters;
whereas, if a nobleman marries the daughter of any other
tradesman, the issue were not reputed noble.”
The skill of the Venetians in glass-making was especi¬
ally remarkable in the excellence of their mirrors. Beck¬
mann, who has minutely investigated the subject, is of
opinion that the manufacture of glass mirrors certainly
was attempted, but not with complete success, in Sidon.at
a very early period; but that they fell into disuse, and were
almost forgotten until the thirteenth century. Previously
to this period, plates of polished metal were used at the
toilette ; and in the rudeness of the first ideas which sug.
gested the substitution of glass, the plates were made of
a deep black colour to imitate them. Black foil even was
laid behind them, to increase their opacity. The metal
mirrors, however, remained in use long after the introduc¬
tion of their fragile rivals, but at length they wholly dis¬
appeared ; a result effected chiefly by the skill of the Ve¬
netians, who improved their manufacture to such a degree
that they speedily acquired a celebrity which secured an
immense sale for them throughout all Europe.
From Italy the art of glass-making found its way into
France, where an attempt was made, in the year 1634, to
rival the Venetians in the manufacture of mirrors. The
first essay was unsuccessful, but another, made in 1665,
under the patronage of the celebrated Colbert, in which
French workmen, who had acquired a knowledge of the
art at Murano, were employed, had better fortune. But a
few years afterwards, this establishment, which was situat¬
ed in the village of Tourlaville, near Cherbourg, in Lower
Normandy, was also threatened with ruin by a discovery, or
rather improvement, in the art of glass-making, effected by
one Abraham Thevar t. This improvement consisted in cast¬
ing plates of much larger dimensions than it had hitherto
been deemed possible to do. Thevart’s first plates were
cast at Paris, and astonished every artist by their magni¬
tude. They' were eighty-four inches long and fifty inches
wide, whereas none previously made exceeded forty-five
or fifty inches in length. Thevart was bound by his patent
to make all his plates at least sixty inches in length and
forty in breadth. In 1695 the two companies, Thevarfs
and that at Tourlaville, united their interest, but were so
unsuccessful, that, in 1701, they were unable to pay their
debts, and w'ere, in consequence, compelled to discharge
most of the workmen, and abandon several of their fur¬
naces. Next year, however, a company was formed, un¬
der the management of Antoine d’Agincourt, who re-en¬
gaged the discharged workmen ; and the works realised
considerable profits to the proprietors, a circumstance which
is attributed wholly to the prudent management of D’Agin¬
court.
Early in the fourteenth century the French government
made a concession in favour of glass-making, by decree¬
ing, that not only should no derogation from nobility fo -
low the practice of the art, but that none, save gentle¬
men, or the sons of noblemen, should venture to engage
in any of its branches, even as working artisans, ibis
limitation was accompanied by a grant of a royal charter
of incorporation, conveying important privileges, un er
which the occupation became eventually a source of grea
wealth to several families of distinction. .
It has been said that the manufacturing of win ow
glass was first introduced into England in the year •
But a contract, quoted by Horace Walpole, in his Ante o ^
of Painting, proves that this article was made in Lng a^
upwards of a century before that period. This curiois
I
i:
ill
ti
Hi
til
565
glass.
y. ocument is dated in 1439, and bears to be a contract troduce l into one entire sheet. For a long period the pic- History.
Htween the Countess of Warwick and John Prudde of tured glass used in cathedrals was merely painted on the
Yestminster, glazier, whom she employed, with other surface, the art of incorporating the colours with the glass
tidesmen, to erect and embellish a magnificent tomb for by fusion, the method now practised, being unknown till
ti; earl, her husband. John ± rudde is thereby bound to the beginning of the fifteenth century. This great im»
u; “ no glass of England, but glass from beyond seas; provement is ascribed to a painter of Marseilles, who
astipulation which, besides showing that the art of mak- went to Rome during the pontificate of Julius II,; but his
is; window-glass was known and practised in England in discovery went no further than the producing of different
ti; fifteenth century, seems also to indicate that it was colours on different pieces of glass, and having them after-
iierior to what could be obtained from abroad. The finer wards united in the old fashion. This art was, at a later
s t of window-glass was made at Crutched Friars, Lon- period, greatly improved by Albert Durer and Lucas of
ui, in 1557. The first flint-glass made in England was Leyden, the latter of whom brought it nearly to the state
nnufactured at the Savoy House, in the Strand ; and the in which it is now practised.
flit plate-glass, for looking-glasses, coach windows, and The first painted glass executed in England was in the
snilar purposes, was made at Lambeth, by Venetian work- time of King John; previously to this, all stained or paint-
i n, brought over in 1670 by the Duke of Buckingham, ed glass was imported from Italy. The next notice of it
The art of glass-making was introduced into Scotland occurs in the reign of Henry III. The treasurer of that
i the reign of James VI. An exclusive right to ma- monarch orders that there be painted, on three glass win-
rfacture it within the kingdom, for the space of thirty- dows in the chapel of St John, a little Virgin Mary hold-
c«' years, was granted by that monarch, to Lord George ing the child, and the Trinity, and Saint John the* Apos-
Ly, in the year 1610. This right his lordship transfer- tie. Some time after, he issues another mandate for two
H in 1627, for a considerable sum, to Thomas Robinson, painted windows in the hall.
r rchant-tailor in London, who again disposed of it for Even at this early period, however, England boasted of
1250, to Sir Robert Mansell, vice-admiral of England, eminent native artists in glass painting, amongst the first
7e first manufactory of glass in Scotland, an extremely of whom was John Thornton, glazier of Coventry. This
rrle one, was established at Wemyss in Fife. Regular person was employed, in the time of Henry IVi, by the
virks were afterwards commenced at Prestonpans, Leith, dean and chapter of York cathedral, to paint the eastern
a;l Dumbarton. Crown-glass is now manufactured at window of that splendid edifice ; and for the beautiful and
Virrington, St Helens, Eccleston, Old Swan, and Newton, masterly workmanship which he exhibited in this speci-
I ncashire ; at Birmingham, Plunslet near Leeds, and men of his skill, he received four shillings per week of re-
II stol. It is also manufactured of excellent quality on gular wages. He was bound to finish the work in less
t Tyne and Wear. Great improvements have recently than three years, and to receive, over and above the week-
b:n made in the manufacture of crown-glass; and we ly allowance, one hundred shillings for each year; and if
tiieve this article, as made in England, is superior in the work was done to the satisfaction of his employers, he
cnlity to that of any other nation. was to receive, on its completion, a further sum of L.10.
There is good reason for supposing that the art of stain- From this period downwards there have been many
i or painting glass is coeval with the art of making glass skilful native artists, although the Reformation greatly
ii If, since, as has been noticed above, it is difficult to impeded the progress of the art, by banishing the ungodly
nke it without colour. The possibility of subjecting this ostentation of ornamented windows from churches; in-
p pensityto the will of the manufacturer must have very deed, so serious was this interruption, that the art had
c iously presented itself, although it certainly requires nearly altogether disappeared in the time of Elizabeth.
Ir ch art and chemical knowledge to produce perfect spe- Amongst the most eminent glass painters who first ap-
c lens of this description of manufacture. This perfec- peared upon the revival of the art, were Isaac Oliver, born
t i seems, however, to have been attained at a very early in 1616, and William Price, who lived about the close of
p iod. It is certain that the art was known in Egypt the seventeenth century. This last person was for many
a least 3000 years ago. We have already mentioned the years the only glass painter in England. He is said to
hiutilul imitations of precious stones, found adorning have discovered, what is to this day a desideratum in the
r mmies which are known to have existed for that time, art of glass staining, the secret of producing a rich, clear,
V; meet with frequent mention of specimens of Eastern bright, and transparent red, the most difficult to strike,
v rkmanship of consummate beauty, upon which great and the most expensive of all the colours employed in
v ue was placed. The Emperor Hadrian, whilst at Alex- glass painting. But Price having died soon after making
a Iria, was presented by an Egyptian priest, with two glass this discovery, his secret died with him. This artist was
cos, which sparkled with colours of every kind, and succeeded by a person at Birmingham, who, in 1757, fit-
v ich had been used in the service of the temple. These ted up a window for Lord Lyttleton, in the church of
1 prized so highly that he ordered that they should be Hajely. To him succeeded one Peckit of York, who
1 'duced only on festivals and great solemnities. The attained considerable eminence in the art.
y rks of Caylus and Winkelmann furnish some striking During all this time, however, and indeed until a com-
utances of ancient skill in the formation of pictures by paratively recent date, painted glass was regarded as too
j1 iin&of delicate glass fibres of various hues, which, after costly and too magnificent an article to be otherwise em-
t ng fitted together with the utmost nicety, were conglu- ployed than in decorating religious edifices or the palaces
ited by fusion into a solid mass. The art of combin- of nobles; and even in the latter case it was but sparing-
111 ^le various colours, so as to produce pictures, such as is ly used. Modern improvement has now placed this beau-
n v Poetised, is comparatively of recent date. The earliest tiful ornament within the reach of very ordinary circum-
^ rimens of this kind of vvork discover a factitious joining stances; and, when this is considered, it must excite a
- c afferent pieces of glass, differently tinged, and so ar- strong feeling of surprise to find how little so elegant a
r ged as, by a species of mosaic work, to produce the luxury is even yet in demand. The art of staining glass
I]1-ire or figures wanted. The various pieces are held to- is now practised with very great success. The colours of
g her generally by a vein of lead, run upon the back of modern artists, we venture to allege, notwithstanding
G picture, precisely at their junction. what is often urged to the contrary, equal in variety and
^iut modern ingenuity has superseded this clumsy expe- richness those of the ancients; and, with the superior
nt; and every colour used in painting can now be in- knowledge which we now possess of the principles of draw-
566
GLASS.
Crown- mg, and of Bringing several colours together on a single gether when annealing; an operation which takes om Cro*5. ;
Glass, sheet, encouragement alone is wanting to attract artists eight to fourteen days at most. There is thus less risk of (i
of talent and inventive genius to the pursuit of the art, any thing dropping from the roof of the furnace.
and to carry it to a greater height of excellence than it The inside of the square of the furnace is built either of
has ever reached in the hands of their predecessors.
MANUFACTURE OF CROWN-GLASS.
In order to secure success to his operations, the glass
manufacturer must bestow the utmost care upon the erec¬
tion of his furnaces. They must be well and substantial¬
ly built, of the best materials, of the most approved con¬
struction, and under the direction of a builder of tried
skill and extensive experience. A false economy in these
respects cannot fail of leading to the most ruinous re¬
sults.
Crown-glass is the best kind of glass now employed in
the glazing of windows, and is so called to distinguish it
from the common, broad, or spread glass, which was in use
before the introduction of crown-glass, but which, on ac¬
count of its inferior quality, is now rarely used. In the ma-
Stourbridge fire-clay annealed^ or the Newcastle fire-stone,
to the thickness of sixteen inches. The outside is built
of common brick about nine inches in thickness.
The furnace is thrown over an ash-pit, or cave as it is
called, which admits the atmospheric air, and promotes
the combustion of the furnace. This cave is built of stone
until it comes beneath the grate-room, when it is formed
of fire brick. The abutments are useful for binding and
keeping the furnace together, and are built of masonry.
The furnaces are stoutly clasped with iron all round, to
keep them tight. In four-pot furnaces this is unneces¬
sary, provided there be four good abutments.
Bottoming Hole. Plate CCLXVII. figs. 3 and 4. Eleva¬
tion and ground plan. The interior is of common fire¬
brick, the mouth either of common fire-brick or Stour¬
bridge clay, and the outside entirely of common brick.
Flashing Furnace. Figs. 5 and 7. Elevation and ground
nufacture of crown-glass the following furnaces and arches plan. 1 he outside is built of common brick, the inside oi
are required, viz. calcar arch, main furnace, bottoming
hole, flashing furnace, nose hole, and annealing kiln.
A Calcar Arch for burning frit is a common reverbera¬
tory furnace, and is about ten feet long, seven feet wide,
and two feet high. A building ground plan and elevation
of one is shown in Plate CCLXVI. figs. 4 and 5. The
crown and sides are built of fire-brick, and the other parts
of common brick. The bottom should be carefully join¬
ed and cemented, as the salt is apt to ooze through it.
The Main or Glass-making Furnace is an oblong square,
built in the centre of a brick cone, large enough to con¬
tain within it two or three pots at each side of the grate-
room, which is either divided, as shown in the plan, or
runs the whole length of the furnace, as the manufacturer
likes. Plate CCLXVI. fig. 3 is a ground plan, fig. 2 is an
end elevation, and fig. 1 a front elevation, of a six-pot fur-
1, 2, 3, fig. 1, are the working holes for the pur-
fire-brick, and the mouth or nose of Stourbridge fire-clay.
Nose Hole. Fig. 6. Elevation. This is a small aperture
off the flashing furnace, and of the same materials. Fig. 7,
ground plan.
Annealing Kiln. Figs. 8 and 9. It is built of common
brick, except around the grate-room, where fire-brick is
used.
The materials of which crown-glass is usually com¬
posed are kelp and fine white sand. Pearl ashes, or cer¬
tain other alkalis, sometimes supply the place of the for¬
mer of these substances. The quality of kelp is extremely
various. That from Orkney is superior to what is made
in Ireland, the Hebrides, or the lower parts of Scotland.
It is found to contain less alkali, and to produce glass of a
better colour.1 For the glass-maker’s purposes the kelp of
the Orkneys is decidedly the best. It is freer from sul¬
phur than the others, the presence of which makes the
pose of ventilation, for putting in the materials, and for glass green, crude, and fretful. The following is the course
taking out the metal to be wrought. 4, 5, 6, 7 are pipe pursued in the preparation of kelp. The fuel are cut
holes for warming the pipes before beginning to work with from the rocks in the months of -May, June, and Juy.
them, 8, 9, 10 are foot-holes formending the pots and They are then brought to the shore, and, after being sprea
sieges. 11 is a bar of iron for binding the furnace, and out and dried, are thrown into a pit lined with stones, in
keeping it from swelling. which a large fire of peat has been previous y in e
The arch, as shown in fig. 2, is of an elliptic form. On this fire the weed is heaped from time to time, until
A barrel arch, that is, an arch shaped like the half of a a large mass is accumulated, and the whole is reilu^e
barrel cut longwise through the centre, is sometimes used, a state of fusion. It is then well mixed and leve e ,an
But this soon gives way when used in the manufacture of allowed to cool. When sufficiently cold, it is ta en rom
crown-glass, although it does very well in the clay-fur- the pit, and broken into portable masses, for the convem
nace for bottle-houses. ence of transportation. To prevent the dissipation ot the
The best stone for building furnaces is fire stone from alkali, a thing very apt to occur, the greatest care is ne
Coxgreen, in the neighbourhood of Newcastle. Its qua- cessary in every part of this process; ln Sat.er|^
lity is a close grec, and it contains a greater quantity of and drying, as well as in the burning of the fuel, in e
talc than the common fire stone, which seems to be the treatment of the mass whilst in a state of fusion, an i
chief reason of its resisting the fire better. The great its exposure to the atmosphere during these opera ion •
danger in building furnaces is, lest the cement at the top Kelp burners are but too frequently guilty of care essne
should give way with the excessive heat, and, by dropping in this respect. In some places they burn the uci10 P ^
into the pots, spoil the metal. The top should therefore be which are not lined with stones, and, of consequence,
built with stones only, as loose as they can hold together and earthy substances mingle with tne fused mass,
after the centres are removed, and without any cement no uncommon thing for the makers to increase t ic wj'!S
whatever. The stones expand and come quite close to- of kelp intentionally, foolishly thinking to procure a ig
1 Some eminent chemists assert that, although the usual quantity of kelp be added in the manufacture of glass, the weight o ^
glass produced is nothing more than the original weight of the sand. But this is not the case with the Orkney kelp, for t
has less alkali, it contains more insoluble matter than the West Highland kelp, and of course produces a larger quantity o g
The West Highland yields glass of very inferior colour to that procured by the use of Orkney kelp.
* The best mode of preparing kelp, as invented by Colonel Fullarton, is by burning it in a reverberatory furnace, an
ing it down in the form of cakes, in the same manner as frit, which we shall afterwards have occasion to describe. When so Pr P ^
it is more fit for the glass manufacturer, being free of extraneous matter. This method is now employed by extensive m
kelp in Ireland.
fit
ll
,
f
I
fian
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I
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trill
Oifot
GLASS.
56:
cr ri ce for it by so doing. Such adulteration is, however,
ato lie detected by the kelp merchant, and the article, which
otherwise have brought a good price, is reduced to
lessilian a third of its value. The inferiority of the Low-
M lantkelp to that of Orkney and the Hebrides, may with
aft,/ be attributed as much to this practice as to the
infeiority of the fuci. Some idea, but at best a very un-
i crin one, of the quality of kelp may be formed by the
exannat*00 °f external appearance. A chemical ana-
]ygi of its properties can alone give security to the manu-
facl-rer. In preparing it for the manufacture of glass,
it ifiirst broken into small pieces, either by the hand or
by .machine called a stamper. It is then put into a mill
and round into a fine powder, stones and all other extra-
neo; matter being picked out. The powder is afterwards
pasal through brass wire sieves.
Yith regard to the other component part of window-
(Tlaa namely, sand, that of the best description is procured
fronLynn Regis, in Norfolk. That procured from Alum
Ba'.on the western coast of the Isle of Wight, is also of ex-
cellht quality. The superiority of this sand arises from the
circmstance of its containing a greater quantity of minute
trai parent crystals than is found in the sand of any other
pla in the country. In preparing the sand, it is usually
waned in a large vat with boiling or cold water, until the
war ruhs off quite clear. The sand is then put into a
caldiing arch, where it is subjected to a strong heat for
twrty-four hours. During this time it is kept red hot,
anoimmediately on being taken out is plunged into pure
coliwater. This has the effect of dividing the particles
of nd, and making it unite more readily with the alkali
dumg the process of calcining. Some use nitre during
thitprocess, which consumes any sulphureous matter that
ma: be present, or extraneous substances of an animal
or "getable nature, and reduces them to an earth not in-
jurms to glass. When this operation is completed, it is
rei ved into the mixing room, where the proportions
of iiaterial are adjusted and mingled together, previously
toiieir fritted or calcined. Here the materials, the
san and the kelp powder, are carefully proportioned, gene¬
rals in the degree of eleven of kelp to seven of sand, some
nu, ifacturers using eleven to eight, which are mixed up
ac/rding to the judgment of the mixer. The majority of
git manufacturers are now giving up the use of kelp. With-
imie last few years the improvements in the manufacture
of irbonate of soda have been very great, while it has also
falm considerably in price. Instead, therefore, of using
sm an impure alkali as kelp with sand, carbonate of soda
wi; sand and lime is employed, which gives glass of as
goil a colour as plate, and is attended with many other
ad; ntages which the old materials do not possess. Manu-
famrers, instead of kelp, purchase sulphur, and with it
mile sulphuric acid. YVith sulphuric acid and muriate of
so they make sulphate of soda, to which lime, coal, &c.
ar idded, and thus produce carbonate of soda, which, with
sa and lime, is made into glass. The operations for pre-
pasag these materials are carried on within their own pre-
m s by several extensive glass manufacturers. The fol-
lofng mixture has been found to produce an excellent
qtiity of glass :^3 cwts. Lynn sand ; 2^ ditto carbonate
ofoda; l4 lbs. nitre; 14 ditto lime; 7 ditto charcoal;
or fourth of the above weight of cullet.
his mixture will make a very excellent glass when
fii furnace is kept at a proper heat. The proportions
ra t, of course, be regulated in some degree by the heat
" bh the furnace attains. The addition of any other
hfedient will injure the quality and colour of the glass.
If nay be either fritted or not before being put into
tb pots. The use of this mixture saves coals, time, and
"yes, as the founding occupies from sixteen to twen¬
ty .ours only, whilst in other cases the time occupied by
this process is from twenty to twenty-four hours. It can
also be blown to a thinner and finer substance, and is thus
liable to a less duty. When the sand and kelp are tho¬
roughly mixed, the compost is put into a calcining arch or
reverberatory furnace, where it is subjected to a heat so
strong as to reduce it to a semifluid state. Whilst in this
state, it is stirred without intermission, to prevent the for¬
mation of knots containing more sand than the rest of the
batch, an effect resulting from the dissipation of the alkali
by excess of heat. The process of calcining requires more
or less time according to the varying properties of the in¬
gredients composing the batch. From three to four hours
is the time usually occupied by each batch. The frit, as
the substance is now called, is taken from the furnace,
spread upon a plate of iron whilst yet hot, and, before it
becomes quite cold, divided into large cakes. In the opi¬
nion of many, it cannot be too old for use ; as when new
the glass made from it is full of what are called seeds. It
is commonly kept about six months by opulent manufac¬
turers. The last operation consists in throwing the frit
into the melting pots, which are of the form represented in
Plate CCLXVIII. fig. 2.
To prevent stones or clay from the furnace falling into
the pot, those used in making flint-glass are always covered
in on the top; and the same thing has been tried in crown
pots, made with two openings, one in the front and one
in the back, the back one to be plugged up when begin¬
ning to work from the front of the pot. This method suc¬
ceeded very well, but was abandoned from the length of
time it required ; a circumstance which more than coun¬
terbalanced its advantages.
These pots or crucibles are made of the finest clay. That
from Stourbridge in Worcestershire is considered the best.
Great care is requisite in the selection, and in cleansing it
from extraneous particles, the presence of which, even in
the smallest degree, will injure the pot. A fine powder
procured by grinding old crucibles is generally mixed, in a
proportion seldom larger than a fourth, with what is term¬
ed the virgin clay. This mixture dries more rapidly, con¬
tracts less while drying, and presents a firmer resistance
to the action of the fire and alkali used in the composition
of glass than the mere unmixed clay. These ingredients
having been mixed, they are wrought into a paste in a large
trough, and carried to the pot loft, covered in such a way
as to exclude dust and other minute particles. Here a
workman kneads this paste by tramping it with his na¬
ked feet, turning it from time to time until it becomes as
tough as putty. It is then made into rolls, and wrought,
layer upon layer, into a solid and compact body, every
care being taken to keep it free of vacuities, as latent air
would, by its expansion in the furnace, cause an immedi¬
ate rupture of the pots.
After pots are made, very great care is necessary to bring
them to the proper state of dryness before taking them to
the annealing or pot arch. In drying they commonly
shrink about two inches in the circumference. When pots
are made during summer, the natural temperature is suffi¬
cient. In winter they are kept in a temperature of from
fifty to fifty-five degrees Fahrenheit. They remain in the
room where they are made for a period varying from nine
to twelve months. Being afterwards removed to another
apartment, where the heat is from eighty to ninety degrees
Fahrenheit, they are kept there for about four weeks. They
are then removed for four or five days, more or less, ac¬
cording to their previous state of dryness, to the annealing
arch (of which figs. 1 and 2, Plate CCLXVII. is an ele¬
vation and ground plan), which is gradually and cautiously
heated up till it reaches the temperature of the working
furnace, whither, after being sufficiently annealed, they are
carried as quickly as possible. Pots last upon an average
from eight to ten wreeks. Their value is usually estimated
Crown-
Glass.
568
G L A
S S.
Crown- at L.8 or L.10 each. A section of a crown-glass pot, show-
Glass. ing their usual dimensions, is given at Plate CCLXVIII.
' tig. 2.
To the frit thrown into these pots there is added a pro¬
portion, about an eighth, of cullet or broken crown-glass.
After this has been done, the furnace is raised to the high¬
est possible degree of heat. The pots are filled every third
hour or so, according as the frit melts, till they are com¬
pletely full. The intensity of the heat is then increased,
if possible, till the metal, as it is now called, is reduced to
fine liquid glass, which is then ready for the operations of
the workman.1 From.twenty-four to thirty hours in all
are required for this process, which is called founding.2
The furnace is slackened for about two hours, and the
metal being now in a workable state, the first operator who
approaches the furnace in which the pot of liquid glass is
placed is the skimmer, who skims off all crude or extrane¬
ous substances from the surface of the metal. Next fol¬
lows the gatherer, who is provided with an iron pipe or
tube, six or seven feet in length, and of this shape.
ymiwihiitm
Having previously heated that end of the tube which
takes up the glass, he dips it into the pot of metal; and by
turning it gently round, gathers about one and a half pound
of liquid glass on the end of it. Having allowed this to
cool for a little, he again dips it into the pot, and gathers
an additional quantity, of from two and a half to three
pounds. This is also permitted to cool as before, when the
operation of dipping is again repeated, and a sufficient
quantity of metal, from nine to ten pounds weight, is ga¬
thered, to form what is technically called a table or sheet
of glass. The rod, thus loaded, is held for a few seconds in
a perpendicular position, that the metal may distribute it¬
self equally on all sides, and that it may, by its own weight,
be lengthened out beyond the rod. The operator then
moulds the metal into a regular form, by rolling it on a
smooth iron plate, called the “ marver,” a term corrupted
from the French word marbre.
He then blows strongly through the tube, when his
breath penetrating the red-hot mass of glass, causes it to
swell out into a hollow pear-shaped vessel, thus :
The tube with the elongated sphere of glass at the end of
it is then handed to the blower, who heats it a second and
third time at the furnace, pressing the end, between each
blowing, against the bullion bar, so called from the part
thus pressed forming the centre of the sheet or bull’s eye,
thus:
By the dexterous management of this operation, the glass
is brought into a somewhat spherical form.
The blower heats a third time at the bottoming hole,
and blows the metal into a full-sized globe thus:
When this part of the process has been completed,’and
the glass has been allowed to coo-1 a little, it is rested on
the casher box, and an iron rod, called a “ pontil” orpunty
rod, on which a little hot metal has been previously gather¬
ed, is applied to the flattened side, exactly opposite the
tube, which is detached by touching it with a piece of iron,
dipped beforehand in cold water, leaving a circular hole
in the glass of about two inches diameter. The operation
of attaching the punty is shown by the following plate.
1 The sandiver or glass gall is removed while the furnace is at its extreme degree of heat. , t0
5 A piece of wood about eleven inches long by seven broad, with a hole three inches by one inch, forms an excellent protectio
the eyes from the heat to which they are exposed when examining the metal in the pots.
/
GLASS.
w[|re the aperture made by its separation from the tube is
no presented and kept until it has become sufficiently
du ile to fit it for the operation of the flashing furnace.
WVlst here, it is turned dexterously round, slowly at first,
an- afterwards with increasing rapidity ; and the glass
yit ling to the centrifugal force, the aperture just mention¬
ed becomes enlarged.
'he workman, taking great care to preserve, by a regu-
lamotion, the circular figure of the glass, proceeds to whirl
it hund with increasing velocity, until the aperture suddenly
flii; open with a loud ruffling noise, which has been aptly
ccipared to the unfurling of a flag in a strong breeze ; and
tl glass becomes a circular plane or sheet, of from four to
ft, - and a half feet diameter, of equal thickness through-
o’, except at the point called the bullion or bull’s eye, where
itis attached to the iron rod. The following figure will
g-je some idea of this very beautiful part of the process.
The sheet of glass, now fully expanded, is moved round
lh a moderate velocity until it is sufficiently cool to re¬
in its form. It is carried to the mouth of the kiln or an-
569
nealing arch, where it is rested on a bed of sand, and de¬
tached from the punty rod by a shears. The sheet or table
is then lifted on a wide pronged fork, called a faucet, and
put into the arch to be tempered, where it is ranged with
many others set up edgewise, and supported by iron frames
to prevent their bending. From four to six hundred tables
are placed in one kiln.
A sketch of the interior of a crown-glass house, during
the progress of these operations, has been given in Plate
CCLXVIII. fig. 1.
The kiln having been clayed up, the fire is permitted to
die out, and the heat diminished as gradually as possible.
When the glass is properly annealed, and sufficiently cold
to admit of its being handled, it is withdrawn from the
oven, after the removal of the wall built into the front of
the arch, and is then quite ready for the glazier’s use. It
is first, however, removed to the manufacturer’s warehouse,
where the circular sheets are cut into halves, and assorted
into the different qualities, known to the tradesmen by the
names of seconds, thirds, and fourths.
We conclude our remarks on the manufacture by observ¬
ing, that the quality of glass does not depend upon the mix¬
tures alone, but also upon the treatment it receives after it
has been made, the quality of the coals, and management of
the furnaces. Cleanliness in every department of the ma¬
nufacture, a general knowledge of chemistry, and of the art
in all its details, with the most unremitting industry, and
skill in the direction and government of the operatives, are
all essentially necessary for the production of good glass.
MANUFACTURE OF BRITISH SHEET-GLASS.
This article is only manufactured by Messrs Chances
and Hartleys, of West Bromwich, near Birmingham, who,
after having visited the glass manufactories of France,
Belgium, and Germany, commenced, in 1832, the making
of British sheet. The principle upon which it is manufac¬
tured is the same as that acted upon in the making of
common or green glass. The metal is formed into cylin¬
ders, and then flattened into sheets. The French, Belgi¬
ans, and Germans, having pursued this system for the last
fifty years in making their window-glass, have much im¬
proved the old mode of making it; and as the parties who
are now manufacturing this article in England are crown-
glass makers, and have imported all the improvements
adopted in the making of sheet-glass in France, Belgium,
and Germany, and combined with these the improvements
which their experience as crown-glass makers had taught
them during the same period, they have surpassed the
French, Belgians, and Germans in sheet-glass, and can now
compete with them in all parts of the world.
There is no crown-glass made in France; and their win¬
dow-glass, though superior to our broad or common glass,
is not equal to the British sheet. In Germany there is
little crown-glass made, and that of a very inferior quality.
The greater part of the glass made in that country is sheet,
and it is of much better quality than the French or Bel¬
gian. In Germany a common sort of glass is made, in the
following manner : Three or four workmen form a partner¬
ship, and, having fixed upon a place in the woods where
clay and sand are easily met with, they proceed to build a
glass-house with wood and clay. They then make the
pots, and, from the ashes of the wood which they burn, ob¬
tain potash, which, after it has been mixed with sand, they
melt into glass. They blow the metal into cylinders, flat¬
ten it into sheets, cut, pack, in short, perform the whole
operations from first to last, themselves. A good deal of
the best of the glass made in this manner is sent to Nu-
remburg, where it is polished and sent into Holland. Some
of it is sometimes smuggled into this country, and is known
by the designation of Dutch glass.
4> c
British
Sheet.
570
GLASS.
British
Sheet.
The expense of making British sheet is about the same
as making crown-glass, excepting in the case of large squares,
when it is much less; in crown-glass it is very difficult to
get a square 34 X 22, but in sheet-glass the common size
is 40 X 30; nay, sheets are sometimes made as large as
50 X 36. Its other advantage over crown is, that it has
none of that wavy or curved appearance, by which the vi¬
sion is so much distorted in crown-glass; but, at the same
time, sheet-glass has rather an unpleasant appearance when
viewed from the outside of a building,' in consequence of
an unevenness of surface, technically termed cockled;
when viewed, however, from the inside, it is difficult to dis¬
tinguish it from plate-glass.
The materials employed in the making-of sheet-glass
are the same as those used in the making of crown-glass.
The large melting furnace is also very similar; in France
and Belgium they usually contain six or eight pots, but at
the manufactory at West Bromwich the furnace contains
ten pots, each containing seven cwts. of metal, which re¬
quires fourteen hours to melt.
In a line with each pot, and four feet from the ground,
are erected ten stages, with an open space between each,
of about two feet, through which the workman swings his
glass when making cylinders. When the metal is ready
for working, the ten workmen take their stations, each
having his own pot and stage, and also an assistant, and
commence making the cylinders, as follows: After gather¬
ing the quantity of metal required (which varies from three
to twenty pounds), the workman places it in a horizontal
position upon a wooden block, which has been hollowed,
so that, when the workman turns the metal, it shall form
it into a solid cylindrical mass. In the mean time, the as¬
sistant, with a sponge in his hand, and a bucket of water
by his side, lets a fine stream of water run into the block,
which keeps the wood from burning, and also gives a bril¬
liancy to the surface of the glass. The water, the moment
it comes in contact with the glass, is raised to the boiling
point, and, in that state, does no injury to the metal; but it
is only when the metal is at a high temperature that such
is the case; for, whenever the glass is cooled to a certain
degree, it immediately cracks upon coming in contact with
water. Wlien the workman perceives that the mass of
metal is sufficiently formed and cooled, he raises the pipe
to his mouth at an angle of about seventy-five degrees, and
commences blowing it, at the same time continuing to turn
it in the wood block, till he perceives the diameter to be
of the requisite dimensions, which are usually about ten
inches. He then reheats this cylindrical mass, and, when
it is sufficiently softened, commences swinging it over his
head, continuing to reheat and swing till he has made it
the desired length, which is commonly about forty inches.
It is now in a cylindrical form, forty inches long and ten
inches in diameter, one end being closed, and the other
having the pipe attached to it. The workman now begins
to open the end which is closed, for which purpose he en¬
closes the air in the cylinder, by stopping the aperture
of the pipe with his finger; and then placing the closed
end of the cylinder towards the fire, it becomes softened,
while at the same time the air within is expanding, and, in
about thirty seconds, the glass becomes too soft to re¬
tain it, and bursts, a small aperture being formed at the
point of the cylinder. The workman then turns the cy¬
linder round very quickly, and, by keeping it warm at
the same time, flashes it out perfectly straight; the other
end, which is attached to the pipe, has now to be cut off.
This is done in the following manner: The workman hav¬
ing gathered a small quantity of metal on the pontil, draws
it out into a thread of about one eighth of an inch in dia¬
meter, laps it round the pipe end of the cylinder, and, after
letting it remain there for about five seconds, withdraws it
suddenly, and immediately applies a cold iron to the heated
part, which occasions such a sudden contraction, that't
cracks off where the hot string of glass has been placed
round it. The workman having now formed a perfect cv
Under of forty inches in length and ten in diameter, has'
before it can be flattened, to split it on one side, so that it
can be opened out; but before doing this, he is oblwed to
let it cool, and then, laying the cylinder horizontally upon
a bench, draws a red hot iron two or three times alone the
Inna* 4.1  1 . .P uie
Gla$
S*’
inner surface. The cylinder, thus heated, immediately
splits along the heated part, owing to the expansion of the
glass when heated, its cylindrical form preventing its break¬
ing at the point of expansion.
The blower having now completed his cylinder, hands it
over to the flattener to make it into a flat sheet; to accom¬
plish which, two furnaces are built together, the one for
flattening the cylinders, the other for annealing the sheets,
the former being kept at a much higher temperature than
the latter. The cylinder, after being gradually reheated, is
placed in the centre of the flattening furnace, upon a smooth
stone, with the cracked side upwards. In a short time it be¬
comes softened with the heat, and by its own weight falls
out into a flat square sheet of forty inches by thirty. The
flattener, with a piece of charred wood, rubs it quite smooth,
and then places it in the annealing arch, where it remains
about three days to be annealed. A workman will make
sixty cylinders 40 X 50 in one day; and a flattener can
flatten the same number in the same time. This glass can
be made of any thickness from one twentieth to half an
inch ; but, in consequence of the heavy duty in this coun¬
try, it is seldom made more than one twelfth of an inch in
thickness, crown-glass being about one sixteenth.
The same enterprising company also manufacture large
oval and square British shades, used for covering French
clocks and other ornaments, and commonly called French
shades. We believe they are the only persons in this coun¬
try who do so, as, till within the last two years, we have
been supplied entirely from France. From their being
made in England, and greatly decreased in price (being fifty
per cent, cheaper than when imported from France), this
beautiful ornament is now becoming very generally used.
There is another species of glass called broad or common
window-glass, which is formed of the coarsest materials.
The ingredients usually employed are, six measures of
soap-boilers’ waste, three of kelp, and three or four of sand.
After these have been fritted for from twenty to thirty
hours, they are removed while red hot to the pots in the
working furnace, where, in the space of from twelve to
fifteen hours, they are reduced to a fluid state. The metal
is taken out in the manner already described, and blown
into globes about a foot in diameter. A piece of iron dip¬
ped in cold water is run along them, and produces a crack
nearly rectilinear ; and, while yet warm and ductile, these
spheres are opened out and flattened on a smooth iron
plate at the mouth of the furnace.
MANUFACTURE OF PLATE-GLASS.
This description of glass may be manufactured in the
same manner as broad window-glass, or by casting the
materials in a state of fusion upon a flat surface. Little
correct information has been published relative to the ma¬
nufacture of plate-glass, from the reluctance of proprie¬
tors to permit their works to be examined by individuals
capable of giving an intelligible account of them. If such
are permitted to scan the mysteries, they are generally re¬
stricted to keep secret the information which they have ac¬
quired. The late Mr Parks the chemist, however, seems
to have been exempted from this condition, and having
visited the premises of the British Plate-Glass Company)
at Ravenhead, in Lancashire, he has published a short ac¬
count of the process as there carried on. Besides the
4
Ksl
GLASS.
U3ve manufactory, there are other two in Great Britain;
fesrs Cookson and Co.’s, South Shields, and W. A. A.
J test’s, Eccleston, near St Helen’s ; and plate-glass is also
rj.de at the celebrated works at St Gobain in France, be-
s:es other places upon the Continent.
The following is Loysel’s account of the relative propor-
t ins of the materials used at St Gobain, in the manufacture
opiate-glass. White sand, 100 parts ; carbonate of lime,
1. ditto; soda, 45 to 48 ditto; fragments of glass of like
qiility, 100 ditto; oxide of manganese, The following
pjiportions of ingredients are said to produce the best de-
s-iption of this article. Lynn sand which has been well
vphed and dried, 720 parts; alkaline salt containing 40
pj' cent, of soda, 450 ditto; lime slaked and sifted, 80 ditto;
Dire, 25 ditto ; broken plate-glass, 425 ditto. These quan-
tijes produce one pot of metal which yields 1200 pounds
eglass.
Grreat nicety must be observed in conducting the pro-
oses of this manufacture. The materials must be selected
F;h the utmost care. The sand should be of the whitest
ad finest description, and well washed and passed through
atieve, previously to being mixed with the other ingre-
dlnts. Soda is always preferred to potash, because it un¬
fits a higher degree of fluidity to the glass, and also
tl:ause the impurities which it contains are more easily
djsipated by the heat. Lime acts as a flux, and manga-
jiiie has the effect of giving a slightly reddish hue to the
EKture by which the colours of the other materials are
rutralized, so that scarcely any appreciable tint remains,
(ibalt is likewise used in some manufactories, much for
t same purpose as manganese. The broken glass, or
c\ht as it is technically called, is those fragmentary por-
tlns which are cut from the plates when they are squared,
tithat which may flow over in the process of casting. The
slid, lime, soda, and manganese, being properly mingled
i ithe proportions above given, are fritted in small furna-
cif, where the temperature is gradually raised to a red or
riite heat, and there maintained until no more vapour is
<ilived, nor change undergone by the mixture. This pro-
(i»s occupies six hours, and after its completion the other
ii;redients are added, consisting of cullet and cobalt. At
‘iSobain there are two kinds of crucibles employed; the one
i which the glass is melted is called &pot, and has the shape
cun inverted truncated cone; the other is entitled acuvette;
ifs kept empty in the furnace, and exposed to the full de-
g‘e pf heat. Forty hours are requisite to vitrify the ma-
t ials properly, and bring the glass to a fit state for cast-
L- The pots are skimmed in the manner already de-
i ibed. When the liquid mass has been properly refined, the
fvette is filled by a copper ladle, and after sufficient time
i allowed for the bubbles created by this disturbance to
< :ape, it is removed to the table where the plates are cast.
' pper was the metal of which tables were formerly con-
s ucted; but cast iron has now been found to answer the
1‘pose completely, and it is greatly superior to copper
i this respect, that it remains uninjured during all the sud-
<m transitions of temperature to which it must be subject-
<!• The British Plate-Glass Company were the first to
i reduce this improvement. They procured a plate fifteen
j ;t long, nine feet wide, and six inches thick. The sides
> a provided with metallic ribs, the depth being exactly the
i :asure of thickness which it is desired the glass should
of. During the casting there is a similar rib tempora-
y attached to the lower end of the table. The cuvette
1 ing filled with melted glass, it is withdrawn from the fur-
: ce by means of a crane, taken to the upper end of the
i sting table, and after being properly scummed, and ele-
ted to a sufficient height by means of a crane, it is emp-
! d of its contents. The surface of the melted matter is
! 3n smoothed by means of a large hollow copper cylin-
• *'> which extends across the table, resting upon the side
571
ribs. This is set in motion, and rolled over the glass, by
which process it is spread out into a sheet of uniform breadth
and thickness. When the plate has become completely
hardened, it is carefully inspected, to see that no flaws or
bubbles appear on the surface. Should any be found, the
sheet is immediately divided by cutting through them. It
is afterwards removed to the annealing oven, where it is
placed in a horizontal position, and remains for about fifteen
days. When glass is in a high state of fluidity it is liable
to be injured even by a draught of air, so that the apart¬
ment must be kept as free as possible from disturbance.
The opening or shutting of a door, by setting the air in
motion, might impair the value of the plate. After having
been withdrawn from the annealing oven, they have to un¬
dergo the operations of squaring, grinding, polishing, and
silvering, before they are fit for the market. These processes
have thus been described by a late writer upon the subject.
“ The first process—that of squaring and smoothing the
edges—is performed by passing a rough diamond along the
surface of the glass, guided by a square rule ; the diamond
cuts to a certain depth into the substance, when, by
gently striking the glass with a small hammer underneath
the part which is cut, the piece comes away; and the
roughnesses of the edge then left are removed by pincers.
The plate is then taken to the grinding apartment.
“ The next step is to imbed each of the plates upon a ta¬
ble or frame adjusted horizontally, and made of either free¬
stone or wood, cementing the glass securely thereto by
plaster of Paris. One plate being then reversed and sus¬
pended over another, the material employed in grinding
their surfaces is introduced between the two, and they are
made to rub steadily and evenly upon each other by means
of machinery set in motion by a steam-engine.” River
sand and water were formerly used for the purpose of
abrading the surface, but ground flint is now substituted, as
answering the purpose better. When one side of each
plate has been sufficiently ground, it is loosened from the
frame, and turned over, so as to present the other surface
to be ground in the same manner. Some degree of pres¬
sure is employed, by loading the upper plate with weights,
as the grinding of each side approaches to completion.
The process thus described used formerly to last during
three entire days, but this time is now much abridged.
The greatest attention is required in order to finish with
the surfaces perfectly level and parallel, for which end a
rule and plumb-line are employed.
By means of this grinding, the plates will have been made
level; but they are too rough to receive a polish. To fit
them for this, they must again be ground with emery pow¬
der of increasing degrees of fineness. The preparation and
sorting of this powder are effected in the following simple
and ingenious manner:—“ A considerable quantity of
emery is put into a vessel containing water, and is stirred
about violently until the whole is mechanically mixed with
the water. Emery is absolutely insoluble by such means;
and if the mixture were left at rest during a sufficient time,
the whole would subside in layers; the coarsest and heavi¬
est particles sinking first, and so on successively, until the
very finest particles would range themselves as the upper
stratum. Previously to this, however, and while these
finest grains are still suspended in the water, it is poured
off into a separate vessel, and the emery is there allowed to
settle. A fresh supply of water is poured into the first
vessel, the contents of which are again violently agitated,
and allowed partially to subside as before. A shorter in¬
terval is allowed for this than in the first case; and then
the liquor is poured off into a third vessel, by which means
emery of the second degree of fineness is separated.
This operation is repeated in order to obtain powders
having four different degrees of fineness. The deposits are
then separately dried upon a stove to a consistence proper
Plate-
Glass.
572
Stained
Glass.
GLASS.
for making them up into small balls, in which form they
are delivered to the workmen.
“ In this further rubbing together, or, as it is called, smooth¬
ing of the glass plates, it must be understood that the coars¬
est emery is first used, and so on, substituting powders hav¬
ing increasing degrees of fineness as the work proceeds.”1
These processes finished, the glass, although perfectly
even, appears opaque or deadened on the surface, and re¬
quires polishing. This is effected in the following manner.
A piece of wood is covered with numerous folds of woollen
cloth, the layers being divided by some carded wool inter¬
posed between each, the whole forming a tolerably hard
but elastic cushion, which is furnished with a handle. The
plate is laid upon a bed of plaster, as already described,
and the cushion being wetted, is covered with the red oxide
of iron (the colcothar of commerce), and moved backwards
and forwards upon the surface of the plate. Lastly, if the
glass be intended for mirrors, it is silvered, that is, covered
on one side with a thin coating of mercury.
The process of blowing plate-glass differs so slightly
from the methods used in producing broad glass that they
need not be here repeated. Any difference that does exist,
arises from the great bulk and weight of the mass of glass
operated upon.
STAINED AND PAINTED GLASS.
The invention of the art of colouring glass, that is, im¬
buing it throughout with any particular tint, seems, as we
have already had occasion to remark, to be nearly coeval
with the discovery of the art of making the substance
itself, Egyptian ornaments, and druidical beads, of the
highest antiquity, as already mentioned in our historical
notices, having been found of numerous and surprisingly
beautiful colours. The art of staining and painting glass
so as to form pictorial representations of objects, is, how¬
ever, of comparatively recent date. The precise period
of its introduction is unknown, but it is at least certain
that it has existed for many centuries in different degrees
of excellence, and that it has moreover been gradually
advancing in improvement. The earliest record which
we possess concerning the existence of this beautiful art
is of the age of Pope Leo III., that is, about the year 800,
a period which witnessed the erection of many of the most
magnificent ecclesiastical edifices upon the Continent. Se¬
veral centuries, however, elapsed before stained glass came
into general use. The earliest specimens with which we
are acquainted differ from those of more recent date, in¬
asmuch as they are composed of small pieces of glass im¬
bued throughout with colour during the process of manu¬
facture, and to which artists give the name of pot metal.
These were united by joinings of lead after having
been cut to the required shapes, and are thus made to
form a species of Mosaic work; but, as might be expect¬
ed, they do not possess that breadth of colour, or truth
and delicacy of effect, which the improvements of more
modern artists have enabled them to communicate to their
works. The manufacture of stained glass was for many
centuries confined to the Continent, and was nowhere
prosecuted with so much success as at Venice. At the
same period that the pointed style of architecture
reached the meridian of its splendour in England, we
find native artists who were fully qualified to do justice
to the grandeur of the buildings they were called on to
adorn, and not unworthy of being put in competition
with their most successful foreign rivals. In proof of
this we need only refer to the windows of York Minster,
of the collegiate chapels and halls of Oxford, and those
of the chapel of King’s College, Cambridge. A pretty
general, but very erroneous, idea exists with regard to the
superiority of the colours employed in ancient glass paint-
ing over those in use at the present day. It is believed
by many, and taken for granted by others, that not only
is the same brilliancy unattainable by modern skill, but
that the art of producing the colours themselves is itself
entirely lost. This is a very mistaken notion; for not
only are those now employed as brilliant and durable as
the colours of the ancients, but others have been added
which they most probably did not know how to produce'
or at least did not use. Amongst these are pink, straw
colour, and other compound tints. That indiscriminating
veneration for the antique, which has so often and so se¬
riously interfered with the claims of modern art to the en¬
couragement to which it is entitled, has operated against
glass painting and staining with perhaps fully more force
than against any other art. It has induced a belief that
excellence in the art is confined to the ancients; and
that all the productions of the modern glass stainer and
painter are mere flimsy imitations of those of the artists
of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Nothing far-
ther is necessary to convince any one of the injustice and
absurdity of this notion, than a visit to the warehouse or
workshop of any respectable glass painter and stainer of the
present day.
The following observations are deserving of the atten¬
tion both of artists and others less immediately interested
in the subject. “ Captivated with the vivid hues of the
antique, persons have remarked, with more frequency than
judgment, ‘ such colours certainly cannot be equalled in
the present day.’ With the exception, perhaps, of its re¬
ference to the ancient ruby, which appears to have been
lost for the past two centuries, this assertion may be alto¬
gether denied; and more than this, besides commanding
all the resources of the old artists, ours of the present
day are in possession of many practical advantages which
the former had not, among which is that of their being
able to lay every variety of colour on one and the same
piece of glass, and thus often to execute with nicety in ten
pieces a subject on which a hundred formerly would not
have been so well bestowed. With these opportunities,
and with greatly improved ideas upon the science of paint¬
ing in general, our artists should be qualified for produc¬
tions of a higher order than those of their ancient prede¬
cessors ; and it remains, then, to be asked, on what account
they fail to imitate their works with success. The chief
occasion of this may be found in the imperfect acquaint¬
ance which the modern artists have with the principles
of old English design, both pictorial and architectural.
They seem to forget that these principles are totally dis¬
tinct from those observed in the paintings of the later
Italian masters, whose figures and groups are hot unfre-
quently copied for the embellishment of our windows in
the pointed style, but always without success. Strict
simplicity, solemn dignity, and appropriate costume, are
primary points for consideration in imitating the figures of
our old windows. In the imitation also of those architec¬
tural decorations with which such figures were anciently
surrounded, it is worse than puerile to suppose that mould¬
ings and foliage borrowed from the Greek and Italian sys¬
tems can by any possibility be so arranged as to bear a
resemblance to the characteristic features of the old Eng¬
lish style, a style as isolated as it is magnificent. Errors
such as these can only be avoided by means of patient
and attentive study, both of actual remains and of the
numerous explanatory works now rendered generally ac*
cessible by the invaluable labour of able antiquaries an
Glaa
Glass Manufacture, Gardner’s Cabinet Cyclopcedia, No. 26.
«
fell!
GLASS.
573
14] d ughtsmen. But after an adequate acquaintance with
t] principles of design is attained, those of execution are
^ n ess to be observed; all the subjects of the painting,
ai<: especially those of an architectural character, being
re eved more by strong black outline and variety of co¬
le r than by the use of decided shadows. Modern imi-
teons are frequently injured by displaying too much of
irdern art; the work, by being too highly finished, and
tl t in few pieces, often loses the glittering effect that at-
tads its more simple prototype. An additional precau-
ti|i to be observed consists in the avoidance of excessive
tbth of colour ; a consideration, the neglect of which has
gsen to some modern imitations a vulgar, gaudy appear-
a|:e, totally dissimilar to the equalised and subdued, yet
lii'ly colouring, observed in the best specimens of the
ml die ages.”
The want of harmony here complained of is too often
a;l offensively manifest in modern public buildings,
wich have been fitted up with stained-glass windows, and
were the absurd incongruities of style have marred ra-
tlir than increased the elegance of the structure. Flo-
nand meaningless mouldings, scrolls and foliage, are seen
dlturbing the simple beauty of Grecian architecture, or
t austere and majestic grandeur of a Gothic pile ; so that
ppple seem to have been careless as to the character or
p priety of the ornament, provided they did but procure
smething in the shape of stained glass. No doubt much
oithis evil is to be attributed to the unskilfulness of the
aiists employed, few of whom are possessed of a suffi-
ont knowledge of design, or the more intricate principles
oithe pictorial art, to enable them to suit their embellish-
rmts to edifices of a noble or commanding character.
Ifeadvantages inherent in the art itself tend to debar
fim engaging in it men whose talents as painters ensure
t: m patronage and success by adhering to the palette and
ti‘ canvass. The expense of materials; the tedious and
ptcarious nature of the process, where the artist cannot
vitch with satisfaction the effect which each additional
soke of his brush gives to the work as it grows beneath
li hand, but must await in suspense the result of its ex-
f inure in the kiln; the difficulty of introducing such works
f art to general notice ; and the uncertainty of ultimate
miuneration for his labours; prevent the man of genius
f m prosecuting an art, which nevertheless presents the
r st favourable opportunities for the expression of his
i as. There are not wanting, however, specimens of
( tinguished excellence produced by modern skill in
t; higher branches of this art, especially in the histori-
( department. They certainly do not possess that mel-
1 r richness of colour, that calm and imposing grandeur
< character, which distinguishes many of the older pro-
(ctions, but they excel them in accuracy of drawing,
iil in details; and while we know that it is perfectly pos-
?■( le to combine the various excellencies of former artists
vth those of a more recent date, we do not despair of
fciing greater triumphs achieved in the art of staining
! iss than have yet been effected. Every variety of sub-
|;t may be executed in this style. To the landscape
I inter it offers peculiar advantages, from the power-
l1 contrasts in light and shade which it enables him to
Induce; while to the painter of flowers it affords a
i ;ans wholly unequalled for displaying the delicacy and
11 the same time splendour of colour, which his proto¬
res in nature place before his eyes.
It is somewhat strange, that while almost every other
11 has been called on to contribute in someway or other
1 our domestic comforts, or to the adornment of our
1 'ellings, that of glass painting and staining, though its
! eductions are not more expensive than many of these,
1 d are certainly not inferior in elegance, should yet be
t rarely applied to domestic purposes, where it could
be employed with admirable effect. When stained glass
has been used in the embellishment of the mansions of
the middling, or even of the upper classes, it has been v
hitherto in a great measure confined to hall and staircase
windows, and to windows placed in similar situations;
but its use might be much extended, with great advan¬
tage in point of ornamental beauty.
If, for instance, the windows of a room were filled with
stained glass, whose prevailing tints should harmonize
with the predominating colour in the apartment, a strik¬
ing and singularly pleasing effect would be produced.
Where the expense, or any other objection, might be
urged against figured glass, in which masses of brilliant
colour are employed, that description which is plain and
of one tint, such as brown, ruby, pale yellow, or similar
hues, might be substituted; and if selected with reference
to the prevailing colour of the interior with the view of
either heightening or deepening its complexion, a warmth
and richness of tint would be thrown around the apart¬
ment, such as no other contrivance of art can communi¬
cate. And where both of these descriptions of coloured
glass might be found unsuitable, either from the expense
or the too great exclusion of light, there is a third de¬
scription of ornamental glass which might be employed,
and which is not subject to these objections. This is a pale
tracery, resembling lacework, which, when properly exe¬
cuted, is exceedingly beautiful, and is marked by an ap¬
pearance of singular lightness and elegance. The intro¬
duction of such windows as might thus be produced would
greatly enhance the beauty of our domestic architecture.
Except in the name, painting on glass has no resem¬
blance to any other department of the pictorial art but
that of porcelain. Both the colours, and the process of
their application throughout, are entirely different. While
animal and vegetable substances are freely used as colour¬
ing matter in every other department of the pictorial art,
they are wholly excluded in that of glass painting, where
all the pigments used are subjected, after being laid on,
to the operation of fire, to make them penetrate the body
of the glass, or become fused on its surface—a process
which would wholly destroy the colouring properties of
such substances. All the colours employed in glass paint¬
ing and staining are oxides of metals or minerals, as gold,
silver, cobalt, which not only stand the fire, but require
the powerful interference of that agent to bring out their
brilliancy and transparency. Some colours, on the appli¬
cation of heat, penetrate the body of the glass, and, from
this circumstance, are called stains; while others, being
mixed with a vitreous substance called flux, become fused
or vitrified on the surface. The former produces a va¬
riety of colours, and all of them are perfectly transparent.
The produce of the latter are only semitransparent, but
they may be made to yield any colour or tint required.
In preparing these colours, the most important point
to be attended to is, to have all those that are to be used
at the same time of an equal degree of softness. To at¬
tain this, those that are hard, and require a great degree
of heat to make them effective, must be fixed first; leav¬
ing the soft colours, for which a slight heat only is neces¬
sary, to the last. If used promiscuously, and without re¬
gard to this precaution, some of the colours would be ren¬
dered too fluid, while others would be insufficiently fused,
and the work in consequence spoiled. It is likewise of
great importance to make a proper selection of glass for
the purposes of staining and painting, as one kind will
assimilate more freely with one colour than with another.
The description of glass generally chosen for painting or
staining is the best crown-glass.
It does not seem necessary to enter at length here into
the details of the process of glass painting and staining,
as our account of the processes and mixtures must of ne-
Stained
Glass.
574
GLASS.
Cutting*
Crown- cessity be almost entirely a recapitulation of what has
Glass been more fully and satisfactorily stated in other works,
than the space allotted to this part of the subject would
permit us to do; while all such details would be nearly use¬
less for any practical purpose, there being scarcely a possibi¬
lity of either communicating or acquiring such a knowledge
of the art of glass painting or staining as would enable any
person to understand or practise it successfully, unaided
by personal observation and extensive experience.
CROWN-GLASS CUTTING.
This is a subject of very great importance to the gla¬
zier. Since the sheets of glass are circular, and the panes
of glass most commonly used of a square or oblong shape,
it is evident that there must some waste result from cutting
up a sheet. The grand object of the glass-cutter, there¬
fore, in the first place, is not only to cut up the sheet into
panes which shall produce the least waste, but also, since
the sheets of glass vary in size, to know what panes can
be obtained from a sheet of a given diameter. To the
glass-cutter this is well known, and to the general reader
it can scarcely be explained so as to be completely under¬
stood. The utensils necessary for this purpose are a cross
cutting board and a breaking out board, both of which are
graduated or indented with brass lines in such a manner as
to show through the sheet of glass, when laid on the cut¬
ting table, how many panes of one size, and how many of
another, may be obtained from a sheet of given dimensions:
squares and laths, on which feet, inches, and fractional parts
are marked, are also necessary.
Crown-glass always cuts best in a warm temperature.
When it happens to be hard, which is seldom the case (a
bad diamond, or not knowing how to use a good one, being
the usual cause of breakage), it has been found to cut bet¬
ter after warming the glass before the fire, which has the
effect of diminishing the tension of the ill-annealed glass.1
GLAZING OF WINDOWS.
Before proceeding to speak of glazing, the order in which
its various processes present themselves naturally demands
that we should say something of putty.
This important and indispensable article in the glazier’s
trade is composed of whiting and linseed oil. Chalk is
sometimes used instead of the former, but the expense and
labour incurred in preparing it is much greater, and be¬
sides it is generally mixed with sand, so that it is no object
to the glazier to employ it. Whiting is in every way to be
preferred ; it must be thoroughly dried before the oil is add¬
ed to it, otherwise the union will not be effected, or at least
it will be very imperfect.
After the whiting has been thoroughly dried and pre¬
pared, it ought to be passed through a very fine sieve, and
all the lumps and knots that remain pulverised, and then
also passed through the sieve. Great care must be taken to
keep the whiting free of sand and other extraneous substances.
When putty is to be made, put the proper quantity of
oil into a tub or other open vessel, and gradually add the
whiting whilst yet in a hot state, at the same time keeping
the whole in motion with a stick, until it becomes of a
sufficient consistency to admit of being wrought by the
hand on a board or table. Having been removed thither
from the tub, it must be wrought up with dry whiting,
until it is converted into a solid compact mass. When
brought to this state, it ought to be put into a hollowed
stone or mortar, and beat with a wooden mallet till it be¬
comes soft and tenacious, when more whiting must p,
added, until it has attained a proper consistency.
It is considered that the putty is improved if the whitine ^
and oil, after being mixed, are allowed to remain for about
twenty hours before being wrought up. After putty has
been made, it should be firmly packed in a cask, from which
it may be taken from time to time, as it is required. It
ought not to be used for ten or twelve days after it is made
when its colour, from having at first been a dull yellow’
will have changed to a whitish free-stone, which renders
it more suitable for most purposes. After a lapse of six or
eight weeks, the putty in the cask will become hard; but it
is easily restored to its original softness, by being beat as
before, and it is much improved by this second operation.
Putty is made in England in large quantities, and is
ground in a mill in the same way as white lead; but this
is no improvement, as it is generally overwrought in this
method of preparation, and rendered so tough and tena¬
cious that it does not work well, and is entirely without
that degree of pliability which putty ought to possess.
When putty is required of a superior degree of fineness,
and which will also dry quickly, add a little sugar of lead,
or litharge ; and if an increase of strength be wanted, a
little white lead.
We now proceed to glazing.
To glaze well, neatly,'and expeditiously, simple as the
operation may appear, is an art for the thorough acquire¬
ment of which many years of practice are necessary.
When a glazier receives an order to glaze a house, he
must first, of course, proceed to measure the work to be
done. In doing this, he must take the full size of the
panes, that enough may be left for stripping, so as to pro¬
duce an accurate fit into the sashes. This fitting must be
performed with great care and nicety, leaving about one
thirty-second part of an inch of space on each side and
end of the pane, between it and the check. In other
words, the pane must fill the space appropriated for it, to
within the thirty-second part of an inch, or thereabouts.
This space is left to provide for such occurrences as the
wood swelling with moisture, or the building setting, in
which cases the panes would be apt to crack.
When the panes have been fitted into the checks of the
sashes in the manner spoken of, they must be removed,
and the checks well bedded with beat putty. This done,
the panes are again returned to their places, and gently
pressed or lodged into the bedding, the workman, as it
were, humouring the glass should it be bent or twisted,
and taking care that there is no hard extraneous substance
mingled with the putty, which might endanger, if not ac¬
tually break, the glass. When a pane is perfectly bedded
it lies quite firm, and does not spring from the putty; but
when, either from a perverse bend or twist in the glass, or
any other accidental cause, it happens that it cannot be
made to go quite close to the check, the vacant space
must be carefully and neatly filled upon the back puttying,
otherwise the window will not be impervious to the wea¬
ther, and will be very apt to fall into decay by the admis¬
sion of moisture.
It may not be superfluous to observe here, that the con¬
vex or round side of the pane, where such a shape occurs,
should be presented to the outside, and the concave or
hollow to the inside. The reasons for recommending tins
disposition of such panes are so obvious that they nee
hardly be enumerated. It may, however, be stated gene
rally, that when thus placed, they resist the weather be er
than if the hollow sides were exposed to it.
After the pane has been bedded, the next process i
1 To glaziers and others who may wish to obtain a thorough acquaintance with the subject, we would recommend a small volun^
r>l niiKlicVioH ontitlcul C'mHrn-.dints duHpw nmA dln^pvts 1YTnn-nnl Willinm L'goP.P'T. Kflinhlircrh. nlass-cutter JUKI
lately published, entitled Crown-Glass Cutter and Glazier's Manual, by William Cooper, Edinburgh, Glass-cutter and
Maker, &c. in Ordinary to the King for Scotland
i
*
h
GLASS.
575
0.
0,oide puttying. This putty should be kept in the fore
J c] ck, about the thirty-second part of an inch below the
lo3l of the inside check, so as to allow the thin layer of
p;:)t which binds these two substances together to join
tl putty and glass ; and that it may not offend the eye
b being seen from the inside ; and that, when it is
pnted, the brush may not encroach on any visible part
outlie pane, leaving those ragged lines or marks which
x: so often seen from the inside on ill-finished windows,
!ai[ which are so displeasing to the eye. This operation,
ani finishing the corners, are two nice points in the, art,
an! therefore, when properly done, discover the neat-
h ded and skilful tradesman.
t is the opinion of some experienced glaziers, that the
ir de puttying, which is the next process, ought to be al-
loed to remain eight days before being finished off, while
iers, again, say that this should be immediately done.
Te experience of the writer inclines him to the former
opion. By standing over for some little time, the putty
aiuires a hardness which admits of a better and neater
fi : h than when it is in the soft working state, and in this
wv also it is not liable to shrink. Of course this is only
npmmended in cases of extensive jobs. When only a
fti panes are done, it is better to finish them off at once,
tlm subject the employers to the inconvenience of a
stnnd visit from the glazier for so trifling a purpose.
Vhen the finishing does take place, however, the putty
rmt be cut clean off with the putty knife, and on a level
will the style of the astragals. Complete the work by
icaning the glass and putty with a 000 duster brush,
wteh removes all dust and loose putty from the pane,
lil tly and effectually.1
I 'lot-House Glazing.—The frames or sashes of a hot-
hiise ought, before being glazed, to receive two coats
©white paint, to which a small portion of red lead has
bin added to facilitate its drying, and to give increased
sirngth and durability to the paint.
. fhe panes in the roofs of hot-houses are generally of
etier of three forms ; the first is the square pattern ; the
siond is the tapered, that is, terminating in an obtuse
a lie; and the third the semicircular. The first is most
g! orally used ; the second is considered an improvement
© the first, in so far as the tapered point carries off the
m down the centre of the pane, and thereby preserves
tl astragals; but there is a loss in shaping the glass to
tl tapered point. The third or semicircular is deeided-
lyhe best pattern of the three; the water is not only
diwn to the centre of the pane, and the astragals pro-
tiCed from the rain, but this pattern has a more elegant
ajiearance, when uniformly glazed, than either of the two
o :er shapes. There is no loss in cutting the glass to the
ewe, and it is therefore not more expensive.
he dimensions of hot-house panes are generally about
shindies, and are made to overlay each other, to an ex-
tet regulated by the circumstance of their being puttied
a he overlay or not.
f it is intended to fill in the overlays with putty, they
®i d not be more than a quarter of an inch in depth ; but
jf t is not intended to putty them, they must then be at
k: t five eighths of an inch.
he overlays, however, ought always to be puttied, and
1 f°r two reasons. First, because it will more certain-
13 ecure their being water-tight; and because, in the next
P -e, it will prevent the breakage to which the panes are
liable from the freezing of the water, or moisture, which Glazing,
lodges in the overlay, and, expanding, shivers the glass
in all directions; when they are filled with putty, such an
accident cannot happen.
In glazing hot-house roofs, it must be observed, that the
courses ought to run from end to end, and that the smaller
panes, when such are used, should be reserved for the top.
When sashes are glazed, they ought to stand for eight
or ten days before taking off the back putty, and they
ought not to be painted for about three wrecks afterwards,
that the putty may consolidate. Great care, too, should
be taken, when the sashes are newly glazed, that they be
not in any way twisted or bent, as such an accident would
almost inevitably start the panes from their beds, and thus
render them pervious to water.
When sashes are of considerable dimensions, say about
six feet by three, they should be strengthened by having
two iron rods placed across them at equal distances, and
screwed to the astragals. This will serve to prevent the
accident of twisting, to which such frames are extremely
liable, and which is very injurious to them after they have
been filled with glass.
The putty used for glazing hot-houses ought to be of
the very best description, as, from the circumstance of its
position, it is necessarily more exposed to the action of
the weather than in the perpendicular windows. The
putty used for filling in the overlays ought to be of black
or lead colour, which, as every glazier knows, is imparted
to it by working it up with lamp-black; but as this sub¬
stance has the effect of weakening the putty, the defect
may be remedied by adding two pounds of white lead,
ground in oil, to each stone of putty, and in a similar pro¬
portion to smaller or greater quantities. Indeed all putty
used in glazing hot-houses ought to have a portion of
white lead mixed with it, as it adds greatly to its strength.
Lattice or Lead Windows.—This antique and singular¬
ly beautiful style of glazing has unaccountably fallen much
into disuse, although of late years it has certainly under¬
gone something like a resuscitation, in consequence of a
revival of the public taste for stained glass, and a growing
predilection for Gothic architecture in churches, cottages,
and the like. For these, and for staircase windows, and
indeed all windows similarly situated, as in halls, lobbies,
or the like, it is peculiarly adapted.
It may be proper to premise, that lead windows require
stained or coloured glass for producing their fullest and
best effects, and it was with stained glass only that they
were originally constructed; but very neat and elegant
windows are executed in this style with plain glass, where
variety and beauty of figure are made to compensate for
the absence of colour
Lead windows may be made to any pattern, and in this
there is great scope for the display of a correct taste. In
the time of Elizabeth, this branch of the glazier’s art was
carried to great excellence, especially by one Walter
Geddes, who was employed in glazing most of the royal
and public buildings of that period. This person execut¬
ed in this style some windows of transcendent beauty,
displaying an endless variety of the most elegant and ela¬
borate figures. The most useful and most common de¬
scription of plain glass lead windows, however, are those
of the diamond or lozenge shape; but, as already said,
they may be made to any pattern desired. The follow¬
ing are a few specimens of lattice windows. (See Plate
In taking out old glass from windows, the cold putty knife is used ; but when the putty has been in the windows for ten or
tl 1 ^rs’it; becymes nearly as hard as stone, and impenetrable to the knife. In this case there are various means used to extract
glass from the frames. The application of hot iron to the putty is sometimes adopted ; but this cannot with safety be applied to
V' bedding, to which the glass obstinately adheres. Muriatic acid diluted with water is an excellent means of removing putty from
“ction being assisted by rubbing the putty occasionally with a bit of stick. The most effectual way to remove the glass,
n the frames are worthless and the glass valuable, is to put the frames into ahorse dunghill, keeping the whole damp (if the wea-
is not so) for several weeks, which completely loosens the glass, and rots or destroys the frames.
570
GLASS.
Glazing. CCLXIX.) Fig. 1 is the east window of St Giles’ Church,
Edinburgh. Fig. 2 is a less imposing, but still a ver}'
chaste and beautiful, specimen of a lattice window. This
has a beautiful effect by introducing stained glass into the
long skittle-shaped pieces, and in the rosette in the centre.
Fig. 3 represents the architecture of a window in Oxford
Cathedral, filled with stained glass in the Gothic style.
The lead work can be adapted with ease to any pattern
that may be chosen for the glass; and it can likewise be
made to any breadth, from one eighth to five eighths of an
inch. The one eighth, however, is only used for fancy work,
and is not as yet much in demand ; that which is most ge¬
nerally used is three-eighth lead. This width makes neat¬
er and better work than that of any other dimensions.
The glazier may purchase prepared leading for windows
in any quantity; but he will produce it himself at half
the cost, and probably more to his own satisfaction. The
apparatus and tools necessary for doing this are, a gla¬
zier’s vice, or lead mill, moulds for casting the lead into
slender bars or rods of about eighteen inches in length,
which is the first process; a three-fourth inch chisel; a
hard-wood fillet for forcing the glass into the grooves in
the lead frame-work; and an opener or wedge tool, made
also of hard wood, or ebony, for laying open the grooves
for the reception of the glass; two copper bolts for sol¬
dering, the end formed like an egg. A correct delinea¬
tion of the vice or mill alluded to is given in Plate CCLXX.
in describing which, in its various connected parts, the same
letters of reference are adapted to the different figures, so
far as necessary, which, with the isometrical views, will
facilitate the comprehension of their parts and properties.
Fig. 1, an end view, partly open, of a mould for casting
three varieties of patterns, which are thus prepared for
being forced through the machine. By an ingenious con¬
struction of the handle, it is made to lock and unlock by
inclined planes, acting on studs, aa. Fig. 2, a side view,
also partly open; and fig. 3, an isometrical view of the
mould prepared for pouring in the metal.
The metal or cast being removed from the mould, a
pair of the dies (one only of each pair is represented),
according to the pattern required, figs. 4, 5, 6, 7, are
placed in the machine, as seen at cc, fig. 8, isometrical
view. After they are put in, a thin iron cover (b, fig. 10),
with an oblong hole in the middle, is put on to guide the
metal into the rollers. Figs. 9,10, and 11, represent three
views of the machine as prepared for operating. In figs.
9 and 11, the metal, dd, is represented passing through
the machine, which is accomplished by turning the winch
handle, ee, acting on two equal sized toothed wheels, ff.
On the axles of these are two rollers, gg, slightly serrat¬
ed (dotted through in figs. 8 and 10); these rollers draw
the metal through, while the dies give the desired form.
To allow the axles and rollers to be placed in the frame
or body of the machine, A, the cover, h, is removed by
unscrewing the bolt, i, figs. 8, 10, 11. The toothed
wheels, ff, are also taken off, by unscrewing the nuts, kk.
The tempering screw bolt, /, is for adjusting the dies
after they are put in their place. The screw bolts, mm,
are for fixing the machine to a table or bench.
Fig. 12 is an isometrical view of the cover, h, removed
to show the ports, nn, through which the axles of the
rollers pass.
Fig. 13 shows the shape of the bolt used for soldering
the lead windows, and fig. 14 the opener already described.
The lead intended to be employed in window making
must be soft, and of the very best quality ; and great care
must be taken to have the moulds properly tempered,
otherwise the lead will not be equally diffused in them,
and the castings consequently not perfectly solid through¬
out, as they ought to be.
If this is not attended to, that is, if the castings are
not perfectly solid, they will come out of the mil]
which they are presented after being taken frotn’th
moulds, all fretted on the edges, and thus in a state J
tally unfit for the purpose for which they were intended
The castings are, as already noticed, usually about
eighteen inches in length, and are afterwards extended
by the mill represented by the figure above, to the length
of five or six feet. °
It may not be unnecessary to add, that the mill not
only extends the lead, and reduces it, at the pleasure of
the operator, to the dimensions required, but at the same
time forms the grooves into which the edge of the glass
is afterwards introduced in forming the window. °
When the lead has been prepared in the manner de¬
scribed, the glazier ought to proceed to cut out the panes
wanted. For this operation he must prepare by first out-
lining the full dimensions of the window, and then lining
it off to the pattern required, shaping the panes accord¬
ingly. . If the window is of a large size, this may be done
by compartments, to be afterwards united, and thus be
more conveniently wrought. Great accuracy must be
observed in cutting the panes, or a very irregular panel
will be produced, as those lines that ought to be parallel
or otherwise will not be correctly so, which will greatly
injure the appearance of the work.
When all the glass has been cut for the window, the
next thing to be done is to open the grooves in the lead
with the opener or wedge tool. The panes are then, in
order that they may be water-tight, fastened very firmly
into the grooves with the wooden fillet already spoken of
(which may be fixed on the handle of the chisel or cutting
tool), the parallel lines of lead being secured in their pro¬
per places on the board, when the window is of the dia¬
mond shape, by a small nail at either end, until the course
is finished, when the work is permanently fastened by run¬
ning a small quantity of solder gently over the two con¬
necting pieces of lead at each joint, or angular point.
When the window has been completed, it should be re¬
moved from the working board to a flat table, and there
covered with a thick layer of cement, composed of white
lead, lamp black, red lead, litharge, and boiled linseed oil,
with a half-worn paint brush, and the composition careful¬
ly rubbed into every joint. This will render the window
completely impervious to the weather, as the cement, if
properly laid on, will fill every chink, where it will soon
become as hard and durable as any other of the materials
of which the window is composed. When this operation
has been completed, clean the window with a cloth and
whiting. Should the outside be wanted black, omit the
blacking in the first compost; and finish by laying on the
lamp black with a polishing brush.
The window, on being fitted into the frame, that is, on
being set in its place in the building for which it is intend¬
ed, ought to be supported with three-eighth inch iron rods,
extending three eighths of an inch beyond the breadth oi
the frame on each side, running across it at the distance of
from twelve to fourteen inches from each other, and secured
to the lead frame-work at intervals, either with copper wire,
or lead bands manufactured by the mill. These rods, for ob¬
vious reasons, ought to be so arranged as to intersect the
window exactly at the terminating point of a row of the
diamonds. For instance, if the diamonds are each six
inches in length or height, the first rod ought to intersect
the window at the top of the third row, or eighteen inches
from the bottom of the frame, and so on, until the window
be equally divided in this way throughout its whole length.
If the diamond, again, be only three inches in length, then
the first rod ought to pass at the top of the fourth row, or
twelve inches from the bottom, this proportion of distance
being, of course, maintained throughout. The usual dis¬
tance is fourteen inches, but this must be regulated by the
AE:
1 ; |l
glass.
M
bmdth of the window between the mullions. If the mul-
HdS are of stone, the grooves in which the window is set
ouht to be filled up with Roman cement, or mastic. If
of rood, with oil putty.
THE CUTTING DIAMOND.
efore the introduction of the diamond as an agent in
wire with a file or otherwise, exactly opposite to the cut¬
ting point, as a guide to him in his operations when he
comes to fix it permanently in the socket head of the
handle. When doing this, care rs taken to keep it exactly
parallel with the inclined plane of the socket head.
The cutting point having been ascertained, and the dia¬
mond fixed into its place, the wire is then cut off about a
quarter of an inch below the diamond, and filed down to
577
, .. „ " . e— cui iiiuu ueiow me cuamona, ana mea down to
cu mg glass, that operation was performed by means of fit exactly into the aperture in the socket head, into which
pmrv. sharn nointed instruments of tbp u 1
WlS!
eniry, sharp pointed instruments of the hardest steel, and
soietimes red-hot iron. These were the only contrivances
kn:vn and practised by the ancient glaziers.
i considering the diamond in its relations to the pur-
j>o fs of the window-glass cutter, there occur some circum-
sta;:es not unworthy of remark. Amongst these, it may
besoticed, that the cutting point of the diamond must be
a i tural one \ an artificial point, however perfectly form¬
ed-vill only scratch the glass, not cut it. The diamond
of ring, for instance, will not cut a pane, but merely
nut it with rough superficial lines, which penetrate but
a ry little way inwards. Artificial points, corners, or
antes, therefore, produced by cutting the diamond, are
ad ted only for writing or for drawing figures on glass,
an isuch were those used by Schwanhard, Rost, and the
otlir old artists who were celebrated for ornamenting
gkii vessels. The cutting diamond does not write so
we on glass, from the circumstance of its being apt to
emr too deeply, and take too firm a hold of the surface,
an ithus become intractable. It may further be noticed,
thi! an accidental point produced by fracturing the dia-
raod, is as unfit for cutting as an artificial one. Such a
po t will also merely scratch the glass. No point, in short,
th; is not given by the natural formation of the mineral,
wi answer the purposes of the window-glass cutter.
he large sparks, as the diamonds used for cutting glass
availed, are generally preferred to the small ones, from
thi circumstance of their being likely to possess, although
thi is by no means invariably the case, a number of cut-
tin points; while the very small sparks are not always
fon d to possess more than one. Thus, if the point of the
lattr is worn or broken off, although the spark be turned,
an "cset in its socket, it will still be without the power of
cu;ng, and consequently useless, while the former, on un-
detoing the same operation, will present a new and effec-
tiv point.
he large sparks are called mother sparks, and are some-
tints cut down into as many smaller fragments bearing the
san! name, as there are natural points in them. Each
oi ese, therefore, can have only one cutting point, and are
coitequently only proportionately valuable to the glazier,
sini' they cannot be restored by resetting.
,/ie Setting of Diamonds is a process with which every
gUler ought to be acquainted; nor is it an art of difficult
ac(3irement; some practice, and a little patience, are all
tn; *is necessary.
i fter having selected a stone, as clear and pellucid as
Jw e, resembling a drop of water, and of an octoedrical
it must be soldered. The rough or superfluous metal
around the stone is removed with a file; and, lastly, the
setting is polished with emery or sand paper. Such is the
most approved method of setting new diamonds, and it ap¬
plies equally to the resetting of old ones. But in the lat¬
ter case, the first process, that of detaching the stone from
its bed, is accomplished either by means of a knife, or by
applying the blowpipe.
The art of managing the diamonds in glass-cutting, so
as to produce effective results, can only be attained by
considerable experience. The diamond must be held in a
particulai position, and with a particular inclination, other¬
wise it wall not cut, and the slightest deviation from either
renders an attempt to do so abortive. In the hands of an
inexpei ienced person, it merely scratches the glass, leaving
a long rough furrow, but no fissure. The glazier judges
by his ear of the cut made. When the cut is a clean and
effective one, the diamond produces, in the act of being
drawn along, a sharp, keen, and equal sound. When the
cut is not a good one, this sound is harsh, grating, and ir¬
regular. On perceiving this, the operator alters the incli¬
nation and position of his diamond, until the proper sound
is emitted, when he proceeds with his cut.
Although the diamond cuts glass of an ordinary thick¬
ness with facility, it does not easily cut that which is of
more than a medium thickness. In such cases, the desir¬
ed division is effected by the application of a hot iron,
which being brought in contact with the glass at certain
points, produces a fissure in the direction required.
The diamonds employed in glass-cutting, are of the
description known by the technical name of hort, a clas¬
sification which includes all such pieces as are too small
to be cut, or are of a bad colour, and consequently unfit
for ornamental purposes. These are accordingly select¬
ed from the better sort, and sold separately, at an inferior
price.
Though there are many substances that will scratch
glass, the diamond was thought to be the only one that
would cut it; but some experiments of Dr Wollaston have
shown that this is not strictly correct. That eminent phi¬
losopher gave to pieces of sapphire, ruby, spinel ruby, rock
crystal, and some other substances, that peculiar curvilinear
edge which forms the cutting point in the diamond, and in
which, and in its hardness, its singular property of cutting
entirely lies, and with these succeeded in cutting glass with
a perfectly clear fissure. They lasted, however, but for a
very short time, soon losing their edge, although prepared
jklL ' & ui au uuiueuncui at a great expense of labour and care ; while the diamond
or as near to that form as it can be procured, the comes ready formed from the hand of nature, and will last
man proceeds to ascertain which is its cutting point, for many years
j*’ it jhas more than one, which is the best. This will
>und to be that point which has the cutting edges of
Crystal placed exactly at right angles to each other, and
pa ng precisely through a point of intersection made by
mo Tossing of the edges
MANUFACTURE OF FLINT-GLASS OR CRYSTAL.
This is the species of glass of which the finest and most
[LTtZ6 V'1 Tc euhrt:s- beautiful articles used for domestic purposes or for orna-
tenf an • Pl0VI rS a Piece1of C0PPer or brass wire, a quar- ment are made. It is also largely employed in the manu-
itsfrirL l!! m dlTeter’ havmS a hole drilled in one of facture of optical glasses, and for other philosophical pur-
rn, i to ,;‘rge f noaSh.t0 contain three fourths of the dia- poses. It is the heaviest, the most brilliant, and also
m iiis hn? ti HaVmg temP°rarily secured the diamond the most costly, of all the vitrified compounds. In order
JL it~f’ the setter ascertains the cutting point, by to convey an idea of the manufacture of flint-glass, we pro-
it, ? ma V a Plece of glass; and when he has discovered pose to give an account of a work in the vicinity of Edin-
l. x S ltS P°Sltlon by making a sliSht notch in the burgh. Our description will be best understood by fre-
4 D
Flint
Glass.
578
GLASS.
Flint-
Glass.
quently referring to Plate CCLXX1. Fig. 1 represents a
cone twenty-two feet two inches in diameter at the bottom,
eight feet diameter at the top, and sixty feet in height. It
contains twelve arches ; a is a front view ot one of them.
Each of these arches contains one pot, and the whole of
them are heated by means of flues which ramify round the
■whole cone, proceeding from one general furnace. The
furnace, which is circular, is fifteen feet four inches in di¬
ameter, and six feet in height inside to the centre of thc^
crown. Fig. 2 represents a pot which is manufactured of
Stourbridge clay, of the best quality. From the bottom
to the highest part the pot is thirty-eight inches in height,
and the width outside thirty-four inches. The orifice of
the pot measures about eight inches across. About four¬
teen hours are necessary before the pots can all be filled,
on account of the metal sinking into less bulk as it melts.
During the whole time the furnace must be kept as hot as
possible. After the pots are all filled, about forty-four
hours elapse before the vitrified mass is brought to a pro¬
per state for working. More or less time is necessary
according to the state of the materials, and from time to
time the pots must be carefully scummed in order to re¬
move any impurities.
As in every other branch of glass making, the propor¬
tions of the ingredients used for making flint-glass vary
with almost every manufactory. The following is reckon¬
ed an excellent compound. Fine white sand, six hundred¬
weights and a half; red lead or litharge {minium), three
hundredweights and a half; calcined potash, two hundred¬
weights ; nitre, eighty-four pounds; manganese, from
eight to eighteen ounces, according to circumstances ;
arsenic, from one to two pounds ; cullet, or broken crystal,
a quantity sufficient to fib up the pots. The above quan¬
tities of materials fill two pots. On the authority of the
Messrs Aikin,1 a very excellent article may be made from
120 parts of fine white sand, forty parts well purified pearl
ash, thirty-five parts litharge, thirteen parts nitre, and a
small quantity of black oxide of manganese. The P™1-
cipal difference between flint and other kinds of glass is in
there being present in its composition a considerable quan¬
tity of some metallic oxide. All metals in a state of oxi¬
dation will combine with silica and an alkali to form glass.
Only lead and bismuth, however, can be employed in suf¬
ficient quantity so as to produce a bright colourless article.
The other metals impart various hues to the mass. Lead
being the cheapest of the two metals, is that universally
employed. If it be used, however, in too great a quantity,
it will not only tinge the glass of a yellow colour, but pro¬
duce an inconveniently soft material.
After the metal has been brought to a state when it is fit
for being wrought, the workmen commence operations.
The implements which they use are few in number and
simple in construction. The first tool required is a hollow
iron tube betw'een four and five feet in length, and one
eighth of an inch in the bore ; it is technically called the
iron, and is dipped into the pot in the manner represented
in Plate CCLXXI. figs. 5 and 6. After a sufficient quan¬
tity has been collected on the end of this rod, it is with¬
drawn from the pot and suspended for a few seconds in a
perpendicular position, that the glass, which is at the
under end, may be lengthened out beyond the rod. It
is then rolled upon the marver. This process, by which
the glass is rolled into a cylindrical form, is represent¬
ed by fig. 7. The glass is now of a consistency to admit
of its being blowm into a hollow globe, as exhibited in
fig. 8. The globe, however, not being rendered sufficient¬
ly thin by this first distension, it is repeated until the ves¬
sel has assumed the dimensions required. In every case
of blowing, the pressure of the breath must be continued Fli,
upon the tube for a short while, to prevent the globe from Gla
collapsing, which would be the case were the confined air ^
allowed to escape. The external pressure would be greater
than the resistance offered from within. If it is required
to elongate the globe, this may be effected by dexterously
whirling it in a circular manner through the air. The
crystal is now in a fit state for lying horizontally upon the
chair arms, as shown in figs. 9 and 10. The chair arms
are merely two pieces of wood lying parallel to each other
upon the workman’s seat or chair. The arm which lies
next the heated metal is protected from injury by being
covered with an iron plate. Another instrument, called a
punty or “ pontil,” is employed. This is a solid iron rod of a
cylindrical shape, and smaller and lighter than the hollow
tube at first used. A small quantity of melted glass is col¬
lected upon one end of this by an assistant, and applied to
the end of the globe, as shown in fig. 9. The two masses
of glass are thus united together, and that attached to the
hollow tube is easily separated from it by touching it near
to where the tube enters the globe, with a small piece of
iron wetted with water. By this means the glass cracks,
and a smart blow upon the iron tube completes the dis¬
union. The workman now takes the punty from his assist¬
ant, and laying it upon the chair arms, rolls it backwards
and forwards with his left arm, whilst with his right he
moulds it into the various shapes required, by means of a
very few simple instruments. By one of these, called a
procello, the blades of which are attached by an elastic
bow, like a pair of sugar tongs, the dimensions of the
vessel can be enlarged or contracted at pleasure. Any
superfluous material is easily cut away by means of a pair
of scissars, glass when red hot being very easily divided.
For smoothing and equalizing the sides of the vessel, a
piece of wood, generally cedar, is used ; and the workman
is also furnished with compasses and graduated scale, to en¬
sure the regularity in shape and size required. The article
being finished, is detached from the punty in the same way
as formerly, and weighed in a pair of scales to see. that
there has been the proper quantity of glass consumed in its
manufacture. It is then carried by means of a pronged stick
to the annealing oven, or Her as it is technically called.
The process of annealing is one of the last importance;
because, were glass not properly annealed, it would crac
with even very slight changes of temperature ; see the ar¬
ticle Annealing in this work. Plate CCLXXI. ng.d, re¬
presents an annealing oven. It is simply a long, ow, rec
angular chamber, heated at one end, and provided with va¬
rious shallow iron trays, which can be passed along the
bottom of the chamber. Upon these trays the manutac-
tured goods are put; and the her pans, as they are succes
sively filled, are pushed towards the colder end ot the
oven, from whence they are taken in a state little warmer
than the temperature of the external atmosphere.
Glass Cutting.—The cutting, or rather the grinding o
crystal, forms a distinct business in a flint-glass-house,
the manufactory before alluded to, steam pow er is enlP _
ed to give motion to the machinery by which t e Pr
of cutting is effected. A shaft proceeding from the eng
causes the revolution of several large drums, w hi
along each side of the cutting room. Upon these
belts run, which proceeding upwards, pass over
wheels (such us a, fig. 4). By this means the cu« g
wheel b is made to revolve with great celerity. 1L ,
it the workman is placed, and applies to the su™c
wheel the article which is to be cut. Above th &
wheel is a conical-shaped vessel c, made of wood, a
with fine sand, which being moistened with ware,
1 Dictionary of Chemistry, vol. i. p. 49G.
* ;le-
J -».
GLASS.
irough upon the cutting wheel at the lower extremity, in
I regular discharge. The hole in the bottom is of such
' imensions, and so situated, as to admit the escape of the
jquisite quantity of moistened sand. Below the wheel is
vessel, d, which receives the sand and water run down
pon the wheel. Every one who has seen a crystal shop,
mst have remarked the infinitely varied appearances which
ie articles formed of flint-glass present. It is evident
lat, to produce these, the wheels must be of very various
rms, broad, narrow, flat edged, mitre-edged, that is, hav-
g two faces, which form a sharp angle at their point of
eeting, convex, concave, &c. They are made of iron
)th cast and malleable, of Yorkshire stone, and of willow
ood. The iron wheels are used in the roughest part of
e operations, and articles ground by these are further
noothed down by a wheel of Yorkshire stone. Wooden
heels are employed in the further smoothing and polish-
g of the crystal. For smoothing the surface, the edge
' the wheel is dressed with either rotten stone or pumice
one; and for imparting to it the highest degree of polish,
itty powder is employed.
There are certain crystal shades in use for softening the
;ht diffused by lamps. The process by which this lessen-
g of the transparency is effected is called frosting. The
ugliness is imparted to the inner, not the outer surface
the vessel; and it is done by the former being fixed in a
die, and rubbed by a workman with a piece of wood co¬
red with wet sand.
BOTTLE-GLASS.
Plate CCLXVIII. fig. 4, is a ground plan, showing all
e necessary buildings for two bottle-houses, and in one
the houses the ground plan of a four-pot furnace and
h arches. The furnace is an oblong square, similar to
lat we have described the crown-furnace to be, but arch-
over in the barrel shape. It is erected in the centre of
e brick cone, above a cave, which admits the atmo-
here to the grating. The working holes of this furnace,
posite each pot, for putting in the materials and taking
t the liquid glass, are each about one foot in diameter,
c each angle of the furnace there is also a hole about the
me size communicating with the calcining arch, and
mitting the flame from the main furnace, which re-
rberates on and calcines the materials in the arch. Fig. 1
ows the main furnace; 2, 3, 4, 5, the ash arches for
Icining the materials ; 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, annealing arch-
; 12, two-pot arches ; 13, what is considered an improv-
plan ; 14, clay-house, for picking, grinding, sifting, and
erwards working the clay into paste for the purpose of
inufacturing pots ; 15, mill house for grinding clay ; 16,
building containing a calcar furnace for experiments,
for preparing the materials, when the ash arch attached
the main furnace is under repair, including, 1, a sand crib,
d 2, an ash crib for sifting and mixing the materials, suffi-
mt for two houses.
The common green or bottle glass is made of the coarsest
! Uerials; sand, lime, sometimes clay, any kind of alkali
alkaline ashes, whose cheapness may recommend it to
c manufacturer, and sometimes the vitreous slag produ-
d horn the fusion of iron ore. The mixture most com-
mly used is soap-maker’s waste, in the proportion of three
-asures to one measure of sand. The green colour of
18 rass occasioned by the existence of a portion of
'n v-1 ?an(^ am^ it may be, also in the vegetable ashes
' r^"lch it is composed.
o distinguish it from flint-glass, which pays a higher
J )> government does not allow the use of any but the
(arsest kind of sea or river sand. When castor oil or
ampatgne bottles are wanted, a portion of crown-glass
ct 15 added, to improve the colour. The impurity of
the alkali, and the abundance of fluxing materials of an
earthy nature, combined with the intense heat to which
they are subjected, occasion the existence of but a very
small proportion of real saline matter in the glass; and
thereby render it better than flint-glass for holding fluids
possessing corrosive properties.
The soap-maker’s waste is generally calcined in two of
the coarse arches, figs. 3 and 4, which are kept at a strong
red heat from twenty-four to thirty hours, the time requir¬
ed to melt the materials and work them into glass, which is
termed a journey. After the soap-maker’s waste is taken
out of the arch, it is ground and mixed with sand in the
proportions already mentioned. This mixture is put into
the fine ai dies, and again calcined during the working jour¬
ney, which occupies about ten or twelve hours more. When
the journey is over, the pots are again filled with the red-
hot materials out of the fine calcining arch. Six hours are
required to qielt this additional quantity of materials. The
pots are again filled up, and in about four hours this filling
is also melted. The furnace is then kept at the highest
possible degree of heat, and in the course of from twelve
to sixteen hours, according as the experience of the found¬
er may determine, the materials in the pots are formed
into a liquid glass fit for making bottles. The furnace is
now checked by closing the doors of the cave, and the
metal cooling, it becomes more dense, and all the extrane¬
ous matter not formed into glass floats upon the top. Be¬
fore beginning to work, this is skimmed off in the way
already described in our account of crown-glass mak¬
ing. A sufficient quantity of coals is added at intervals,
to keep the furnace at a working heat till the journey is
finished.
After the pots have been skimmed, the person who be¬
gins the work is the gatherer, who, after heating the pipe,
gathers on it a small quantity of metal. After allowing
this to cool a little, he again gathers such a quantity as he
conceives to be sufficient to make a bottle. This is then
handed to the blower, who, while blowing through the tube,
rolls the metal upon a stone, at the same time forming the
neck of the bottle. Fie then puts the metal into a brass or
cast-iron mould of the shape of the bottle wanted, and, con¬
tinuing to blow through the tube, brings it to the desired
form. The patent mould now in use is made of brass, the
inside finely polished, divided into two pieces, which the
workman, by pressing a spring with his foot, opens and
shuts at pleasure. The blower then hands it to the finish¬
er, who touches the neck of the bottle with a small piece
of iron dipt in water, which cuts it completely off from the
pipe. Fie next attaches the punty, which is a little metal
gathered from the pot, to the bottom of the bottle, and
thereby gives it the shape which it usually presents. This
punty may be used for from eighteen to twenty-four dozen
of bottles. It is occasionally dipped into sand to prevent
its adhering to the bottle. The finisher then warms the
bottle at the furnace, and taking out a small quantity of
metal on what is termed a ring iron, he turns it once round
the mouth, forming the ring seen at the mouth of bottles.
He then employs a shears to give shape to the neck. One
of the blades of this shears has a piece of brass in the cen¬
tre, tapered like a common cork, which forms the inside
mouth; to the other blade is attached a piece of brass,
used to form the ring. The bottle is then lifted by the
neck on a fork by a little fellow about ten years of age,
and carried to the annealing arch, where the bottles are
placed in bins above one another. This arch is kept a
little below melting heat, till the whole quantity, which
amounts to ten or twelve gross in each arch, is deposited,
when the fire is allowed to die out.
Such is a brief view of the various methods of manufac¬
turing glass. The physical properties of this useful sub-
579
Bottle.
Glass.
580
Duties.
'—.—1
.GLASS.
stance will naturally fall to be treated of under the heads
of the several sciences in which glass is employed.
The manufacture of glass is subjected to the excise laws ;
and the duties are not only very heavy, but the regulations
for levying them are most complex and oppressive. The
injuries which are inflicted upon trade by such a system of
taxation are strikingly exemplified in the case of glass. In
1794, when the duty was L.l. Is. 5d. per cwt. for plate
and flint, the other kinds being taxed in proportion, the
quantities paying duty were as follow: Flint and plate,
67,615cwt.; broad,20,607; crown, 83,940; bottle,227,467.
The duties were successively raised, until in 1813 they
amounted to L.4. 18s. The result of this was, that in 1816
the consumption had declined to, plate, 29,600; broad,
6140; crown, 55,502; bottle, 155,595.
In 1825 the duty was reduced one half, and the con¬
sumption rose to about what it was in 1794. But since
the wealth and population of the country have more than
doubled since that period, and as general luxury has been n
greatly extended, the manufacture of glass ought to have W1 ^
been nearly trebled. This would certainly be the ease * ■
were the duties lowered or abolished. The following ac- * t'
counts show the pernicious influence of the existing duties •
I.—Account of the number of Glass-Houses respectiveln
employed in the Manufacture of Broad, Crown, Flint
Plate, and common Bottle Glass, in each year from 1829
to 1832 inclusive, in the United Kingdom.
Years.
1829
1830
1831
1832
Broad
Glass.
Crown.
28
25
24
28
Flint.
54
54
55
59
Plate.
Common
Bottle-Glass.
42
39
36
39
!'
3
I
S
II
i
II.—Account of the Quantities of Flint, Plate, Broad, Crown, and Bottle Glass, charged ivith the Duty in each year
from 1829 to 1832 respectively, with the Rates of Excise Duty and Revenue accruing thereon.
1829
1830
1831
1832
Flint-
Glass.
Cnit.
79,250
72,942
75,619
75,771
M
56
Plate.
Cwt.
14,484
13,301
15,067
12,270
60
Broad.
Cwt.
6,864
4,845
5,915
5 304
30
Crown. « 3
Cwt..
114,862
96,565
100,086
103,902
s. d.
73 6
Bottle-
Glass.
Cwt.
382,894
340,793
293,868
316,365
Gross Duty.
L. s. d.
831,809 18 10
725,597 1 3
736,512 0 1
748,097 3 11
Drawback.
Revenue.
L. s.
224,794 17
182,678 4
204,152 2
189,565 7
L. s. I
607,015 1 8
542,918 16 7
532,359 18 1
558,531 16 3
III.—Account of the Quantities of British-made Glass retained for Home Consumption, with the Imports of Foreign
Glass entered for Home Consumption ; the Amount of Customs-Duty on the latter, and the Nett Revenue arising from
British Glass, in each year from 1829 to 1832 both inclusive.
We can only notice a few of the regulations as to the
manufacture of glass. Every glass-maker must take out
an annual license, which costs him L.20 for each glass¬
house ; and he must make entry at the next excise-office,
of all work-houses, furnaces, pots, pot-chambers, annealing
arches, warehouses, and the like, under a penalty of L.200.
Previously to the charging of the pots, twelve hours’ notice
must be given in writing, of the time of beginning, the
weight of metal, and the species of glass, on pain of L.50.
If any material or preparation be put into a pot after no¬
tice has been given and a gauge taken by the officer,
penalty of L.50 is incurred; and if the manufacture be of
flint-glass, the penalty is L.200. The officers are allowed
to have access to the works at all hours by day and night,
any attempt to obstruct them incurring a penalty of L.200;
and the counterfeiting, altering, or effacing any marks
made by them being visited with a penalty of L.500;
connivance at its being done subjects the aggressor to a
fine of L.200. The whole of the metal intended to be
manufactured into common-glass bottles is to be worked
within sixteen hours next after the same shall be begun ;
and when the bottles are put into the annealing arches,
manufacturers are then, in the presence of the officer, to
charge the pots with fresh materials, other than broken
glass, not less than fifty pounds weight; and declarations
are to be delivered in writing, of the number of such bottles,
on penalty of L.l00. Fraudulent weighing of glass is visit¬
ed with a heavy penalty. Notices are not to be given for
drawing out bottles, but only between eight o’clock in the
morning and six o’clock in the afternoon. No crown-glass,
German sheet-glass, or broad window-glass, can be manu¬
factured beyond the thickness of one-ninth part of an inch,
without being subjected to the duty paid on plate-glass.
Such are a few of the laws and regulations, alike vexatious
and impolitic, which have retarded the progress of glaSs"
making, and that too at a time when almost every other
species of manufacture had far more than doubled itse •
In fact, from the making of the pots themselves to t e
packing up of the glass for sale, every thing is done after
a certain manner, which is determined by act of Parl^
ment. This being the case, how improvements are to e
made in the art it is difficult to conceive. The laws w ic
regulate the packing and exportation of glass are e(lui^
burdensome with those relative to its manufacture-
amount of drawback allowed upon this article will be see
from the table above given. (Y< y' ^
c
4
*
G L A
G L A
581
Engraving on Glass. Professor Beckmann has proved,
at, as early as the year 1670, the art of etching upon
ass was discovered by Henry Schwanhard, son of George
:hwanhard, who was a celebrated glass-cutter, patronis-
by the Emperor Ferdinand III. about the middle of
e last century. At the time of his death, 1697, the fa-
:er practised his art at Prague and Ratisbon. Whether
e son followed the same business at the same towns, or
moved to Nuremberg, is not very evident; but in the
ar above mentioned, some aqua-regia (nitro-muriatic
jid) having accidentally fallen on his spectacles, he was
: rprised to find the glass corroded by it, and become
nite soft. He thus, it is said, found himself in posses-
-in of a liquid by which he could etch writing and figures
ton plates of glass.
But it is probable, as Beckmann seems to think, that he
d discovered the fluoric acid itself; for in the year 1725
ere appeared in a periodical work the following receipt
r making a powerful acid, by which figures of every kind
n be etched upon glass.
“ When the spiritus nitri per distillationem has passed
to the recipient, ply it with a strong fire, and when well
phlegmated, pour it, as it corrodes ordinary glass, into
Weldenberg flask. Then throw into it a pulverised green
Dhemian emerald, otherwise called hesphorus (which,
nen reduced to powder, and heated, emits in the dark a
een light), and place it in warm sand for twenty-four
mrs. Take a piece of glass well cleaned, and freed from
grease by means of a ley; put a border of wax round
about an inch in height, and cover it all over with the
iove acid. The longer you let it stand so much the bet-
r; and at the end of some time the glass will be corrod-
I, and the figures which have been traced out with sul-
mr and varnish will appear as if raised above the pane
Hi
it
glass.”
That the Bohemian emerald, or hesphorus, mentioned in
is receipt, is green sparry fluor, cannot, says the profes-
r, be doubted ; and he seems to have as little doubt of
e receipt itself having passed from Schwanhard and his
holars to the periodical work of 1725, from which it was
serted in the Oekonomische Encyclopadie of Krunitz.
his supposition certainly acquires a considerable degree
probability from the similarity of Schwanhard’s method
etching to that which is here recommended, and which
so different from what is now followed. At present the
ass is covered with a varnish either of isinglass dissolv-
1 in water, or of turpentine oil mixed with a little white
ad, through which the figures to be etched are traced
on copper; but Schwanhard, when he had drawn his
pires, covered them with varnish, and then by his liquid
irroded the glass around them. His figures, therefore,
lien the varnish was removed, remained smooth and
ear, appearing raised from a dim or dark ground; and
!. Beckmann, who had persuaded some ingenious artists
make trial of this ancient method of etching, declares
at such figures have a much better effect than those
i hich are cut into the glass.
Burning Glass. See Burning Glass.
Weather Glass. See Barometer.
Musical Glasses. See Harmonica.
Looking Glasses. See Mirror.
GLASTONBURY, a town of Somersetshire, in the
undred of Glaston Twelve Hides, 130 miles from Lon-
m. It is situated in a district of peculiar fertility, and
uch of the pasture land within the two parishes of which
>e town consists is of higher value for fattening cattle
ian any other in the rich county in which it stands,
his place was once an island, called in Latin Avalonia.
was surrounded by water forced up by the strength of
>e tide, but embankments having been made and drains
instructed in very remote ages, the land has been con¬
verted into rich pasture. This was effected by the abbot Glatz
and his monks, who, notwithstanding the vast expenditure II
lavished upon their abbey, were the great leaders of the Glauber,
agricultural improvements of their age. «-
The abbey, founded at a very early period, was, for ex¬
tent and wealth, the next to that of Westminster. The ab¬
bot was a lord of parliament; and the ruins which remain
are sufficient proofs of the magnificence of the whole esta¬
blishment. Although, as might be expected from its age,
the abbey is in a dilapidated state, yet the architectural
beauty of what remains, and especially that of the chapel,
causes the whole to be visited with eager curiosity. The
abbot’s kitchen is tolerably perfect, and the eastern window
of the chapel is worthy of admiration. The legend of the
visit of Joseph of Arimathea, and his budding staff con¬
verted into a thorn, blooming at Christmas, is well known ;
as well as that of St Dunstan having taken the devil by
his nose with a pair of red hot tongs. Both are related
of this place, though the first is doubted and the second
ridiculed.
Near the town, upon an insulated and lofty mount, Glas¬
tonbury tower is visible from all parts of the surrounding
country. It was formerly an oratory, dedicated to St Mi¬
chael, and afterwards enlarged so as to form a magnificent
church and monastery, both of which were destroyed by
an earthquake in 1271. Many of the private buildings in
the town still display curious decorations of carved work
of very ancient date. The present town contains two
parish churches, dedicated to St John and to St Benedict.
It was an ancient corporation, and returned members to
parliament till the year 1539, when the abbot was put to
death, and that charter taken away; but a new charter
was granted in the reign of Queen Anne, under the powers
of which the town is governed by a mayor, eight aldermen,
and sixteen burgesses. The market is held on Tuesday,
and is but thinly attended. The population amounted in
1801 to 2035, in 1811 to 2340, in 1821 to 2630, and in
1831 to 2984. There is now but little trade in the town,
and the making of stockings, which once afforded employ¬
ment, is nearly lost. Being on the great road leading from
Bristol and Bath to Exeter and Plymouth, there is much
travelling, especially of late years, since the roads have
been improved.
GLATZ, a strongly fortified city, the capital of a circle
of the same name, in Prussian Silesia. It stands on a
sand hill above the river Neisse, and is defended by two
powerful forts, which command the passes from Austria.
It contains five Catholic and two Lutheran churches, se¬
veral barracks, and 889 houses, with 8231 inhabitants, ex¬
clusively of the garrison. It is a place where many manu¬
factories are carried on, especially that of damask table
linen, and other goods, both of linen and woollen; also
soap-boiling, tannery, and distilling. Long. 16. 34. E.
Lat. 50. 23. N.
GLAUBER, John Rodolph, a German chemist, born
at the commencement of the sixteenth century, was one
of those who were most ardently occupied with “ the great
work,” namely, the discovery of the philosopher’s stone.
Full of love and enthusiasm for the marvellous, he aban¬
doned himself without reserve to the extravagant ideas
which then prevailed in chemistry. His long and painful
labours, pursued with indefatigable perseverance, and an
energy worthy of a nobler object, were almost always
directed towards the discovery of the panacea, the philo¬
sopher’s stone, and other chimeras with which the alchy-
mists amused the imagination. Infatuated with the doc¬
trine of the adepts, he may be said to have passed his life
over alembics and furnaces, and, in fact, he is regarded as
a second Paracelsus. Not less presumptuous than his
model, he boasted of the discovery of several wonderful
secrets. Whether he was truly convinced of the reality
582
Glaucha
II
Glaucus.
G L A
of his inventions, or whether, like empirics of all classes,
he proposed to profit by the ignorance and blind credu¬
lity of men, he had the art to seduce many persons by
promises as vain as they were exaggerated. He is even re¬
proached with having carried on a vile traffic in pretended
secrets, which he sometimes sold at an exorbitant price to
different individuals, and afterwards published with his
name in order to enhance his reputation. Devoid of the
instruction and force of mind necessary to enable him to
deduce just inferences from the numerous experiments
which he had performed with ability and address, Glauber
only attained a subaltern or secondary rank amongst the
chemists. But he, nevertheless, discovered several im¬
portant facts, which have materially contributed to make
better known certain salts and some metals, which, event¬
ually, had a marked influence on the progress of chemistry
and materia medica. Thus, in examining the residue of the
decomposition of sea-salt by the sulphuric acid, this labori¬
ous chemist discovered the sulphate of soda, to which his
name is irrevocably attached under the denomination of
Glauber’s Salt. His writings on dry baths and sulphurous
fumigations entitle him, in certain respects, to be regarded
as the inventor of confined vapour baths, which have been
latterly brought forward as a new discovery; and he is
equally the inventor of several chemical medicaments,
the use of which is still preserved in most of the pharma¬
copoeias. We are also indebted to him for a great number
of works (thirty in all), an exact list of which may be
found in the curious article entitled Glauber, in the fourth
volume of Adelung’s History of Human Folly. A collec¬
tion of them was printed in several volumes 8vo, and in
two volumes 4to, at Frankfort, 1658, 1659, and translated
into English by Pack, London, 1689, in folio. Of these
the principal are, 1. Deutschlands Wallfahrt, or Prosperity
of Germany, Amsterdam, 1656, often reprinted ; 2. Furni
Novi Philosophici, or Description of a new Method of
Distilling, Amsterdam, 1648, in 8vo, translated into French
by Duteil, Paris, 1659, in 8vo; 3. De Medicina Univer¬
sal!, sive de Auro potabili vero, Amsterdam, 1658, in 8vo';
4. Miraculum Mundi, Amsterdam, 1653, in 8vo ; 5. Phar¬
macopoeia Spagyrica, Amsterdam, 1654, in 8vo ; 6. De
Tartaro ex Vini foecibus, 1655, in 8vo; 7. Dissertatio
Medica Hermetica et Catholica magni Naturae magiste-
rialis Mysterii, Frankfort, 1656, in 8vo; 8. Consolation of
Navigators, Amsterdam, 1659, in 8vo ; 9. Opus Minerale,
Amsterdam, 1651, in 8vo ; 10. De Elia Artista, Amster¬
dam, 1668, in 8vo. Glauber published many other alchy-
mical productions, which are neither less obscure nor less
enigmatical than the preceding, and in which vague hypo¬
theses and chimerical conceptions supply the place of facts
and of reasoning. All his works are in German ; and al¬
though most of them have the first words of the title in
Latin, there is good ground for believing that Glauber
did not understand that language. (a.)
GLAUCHA, a city of the circle of Erzgeberg, in the
kingdom of Saxony. It is in the form of a half moon, situ¬
ated on the river Mulda, is walled, and contains 742 houses,
with 4340 inhabitants, who are employed in the manufac¬
tures of various cotton goods.
GLAUCOMA, in Medicine and Surgery, the name of
a disease in the eye, in which the crystalline humour is
converted into a bluish or greenish colour, and its transpa¬
rency thereby diminished. The word comes from yXavxog,
sea-green, sky-coloured, or greyish.
GLAUCUS, a marine god, or deity of the sea. There
are a great many fabulous accounts of this divinity; but
his poetical history is, that, before his deification, he was a
fisherman of the town of Anthedon, and having one day
taken a considerable number of fishes, which he laid upon
the bank, he on a sudden perceived that these fishes, hav¬
ing touched a kind of herb which grew on the shore, re-
G L A
ceived new strength, and leaped again into the sea • unon
which he was tempted to taste of the herb himself, and
presently leaped into the sea after them, where he was me- Glazin
tamorphosed into a Triton, and became one of the sea-gods Wv>
GLAZIER, an artificer who works in glass. The prin¬
cipal part of a glazier’s business consists in fitting panes of
glass to the sashes and window-frames of houses, pictures
and the like, and in cleaning the same.
GLAZING, the encrusting of earthen ware with a vi-
treous substance, the basis of which is lead.
The workers of common earthen ware, however, are not
at the trouble of thus previously making a pure glass of
lead. Their usual composition for glazing wuire is formed
of white sand forty pounds, of red lead twenty pounds, of
pearl ashes twenty pounds, and of common salt twelve
pounds. The sand is pow dered by grinding, and then the
other ingredients are added and ground together; after
which they are calcined for some time with a moderate
heat, and when the mixture is cold it is reduced to pow¬
der, and when wanted for use tempered with water. The
proportion of these ingredients may be occasionally varied.
The ware, after being turned on the wheel and dried in the
open air, is covered over with the above composition by
means of a brush ; and when set in the furnace the violent
heat soon reduces it to a perfect glass, covering the whole
internal and external surface of the vessel.
We may observe in general, however, that lead ought
to be excluded from the composition of glazings, and other
fluxes substituted in its stead. A transparent glazing may
be prepared without lead, by calcining forty pounds of
white sand, twenty-five pounds of pearl ashes, and fifteen
pounds of common salt, and proceeding as before; and a
more perfect transparent glazing may be made of sand forty
pounds, of wood ashes perfectly burned fifty pounds, of
pearl ashes ten pounds, and of common salt twelve pounds.
The receipts annexed are taken for the most part from
Kunckel, who says that they are the true glazings used at
Delft, and in other Dutch manufactories.
Black is made of red lead eight parts, iron filings three
parts, copper ashes three parts, and zaffer two measures.
This when melted makes a brown black; and if it be want¬
ed blacker, more zaffer must be added to it.
Blue is thus prepared ; take lead ashes or red lead one
pound, clear sand or powdered flints two pounds, common
salt two pounds, wdrite calcined tartar one pound, Venice
or other glass half a pound, zaffer half a pound; mix them
well together and melt them several times, quenching them
always in cold water. If it be desired to have it fine and
good, put the mixture into a glass furnace for a day or two.
Another blue glazing may be formed of one pound of
tartar, a quarter of a pound of red lead, half an ounce of
zaffer, and a quarter of a pound of powdered flints, which
must be fused and managed as in the last receipt. Or,
take two pounds of calcined lead and tin, add five pounds
of common salt, five pounds of powdered flints, and of zat-
fer, tartar, and Venetian glass, each one pound; calcine
and fuse the mixture as before. Or, again, take of red
lead one part, of sand three parts, and of zaffer one part.
For a violet-blue glazing, take four ounces of tartar, two
ounces of red lead, five ounces of powdered flints, and half
a drachm of manganese.
Brown is made of red lead and flints, of each fourteen
parts, and of manganese tw o parts, fused; or of red lead
twelve parts, and manganese one part, fused. A brown
glazing, to be laid on a white ground, may be made o
manganese two parts, and of red lead and white glass one
part of each, twice fused. Flesh-coloured is made of twe ve
parts of lead ashes, and one of white glass, lo PrePare
the gold-coloured, take of litharge three parts, of sand or
calcined flint one part; pound and mix these well togct er,
then run them into a yellow glass with a strong fire, foun
4
G L A
, is glass, and grind it into a subtile powder, which moisten
If]/, th a well-saturated solution of silver; form it into a
ste then put it into a crucible, and cover it with a lid.
^ inly at first a gentle degree of fire; then increase, and
(ntinue it until a green glass has been obtained. Pound
1 3 glass again, and grind it to a fine powder; moisten
if p powder with some beer, so that by means of a hair pen-
( you may apply it upon the vessels or any piece of earth-
( 'ware. The vessels which are painted or covered over
\ th this glazing must first be well heated, then put under
, raffle; and as soon as the glass runs, they must be
t oked, by holding them over burning vegetables, and
12n taken out. Heinsius of St Petersburg, who sent this
r :eipt to the Royal Society, uses the words afflare debes
I mm, which is rendered “ smoke them,” in the transac-
tns. (Phil. Trans. No. 465, sect. 6.)
Kunckel gives several preparations for a gold-coloured
i ilow glazing. This may be produced by fusing a mixture
t three parts of red lead, two parts of antimony, and one
j rt of saffron of Mars; by again melting the powdered
i iss, and repeating the operation four times; or by fusing
ir or five times a composition of red lead and antimony
each an ounce, and of scales of iron half an ounce; or
calcining and fusing together eight parts of red lead,
s: parts of flints, one part of yellow ochre, one part of an-
t lony, and one part of white glass. A transparent gold-
i loured glazing may be obtained by twice fusing red lead
t d white flints, of each twelve parts, and of filings of iron
i e part.
Green may be prepared from eight parts of litharge or
II lead, eight parts of Venice glass, and four parts of brass
j st or filings of copper; or from ten parts of litharge,
t elve of flint or pebble, and one of ces ustum or copper
Aes. A fine green glazing may also be produced by fusing
< e part of the Bohemian granate, one part of filings of
upper, one part of red lead, and one part of Venetian
! iss; or by fusing one part of white glass, and the same
i. antity of red lead, and of filings of copper, powdering
te mass, and adding one part of Bohemian granate to two
; rts of this pow der. A fine green may likewise be ob-
; ned by mixing and grinding together any of the yellow
izings with equal quantities of the blue glazings ; and all
re shades and teints of green will be obtained by varying
Is proportion of the one to the other, and by the choice
the kind of yellow and blue.
Sea-green is made of five pounds of lead ashes, one
und of tin ashes, three pounds of flint, three quarters of
)ound of salt, half a pound of tartar, and half a pound of
pper dust. Iron colour is prepared from fifteen parts of
id ashes or red lead, fifteen of white sand or flints, and
e of calcined copper. This mixture must be calcined
d fused. Liver colour is prepared from twelve parts of
harge, eight of salt, six of pebble or flint, and one of
inganese. Purple brown consists of lead ashes fifteen
rts, clean sand or powdered flints eighteen parts, manga-
i se one part, and white glass fifteen measures, to which
me add one measure of zaffer. Red is made of antimony
i ree pounds, litharge or red lead three, and rust of iron
e, which are ground to a fine powder; or take two
unds of antimony, three of red lead, and one of calcined
(Iron of Mars, and proceed as before.
The white glazing for common ware is made of forty
unds of clear sand, seventy-five pounds of litharge or
id ashes, twenty-six of potashes, and ten pounds of salt;
d these are thrice melted into a cake, quenching it each
ne in clear cold water. Or it may be made of fifty
mnds of clean sand, seventy of lead ashes, thirty of wood
lies, and twelve of salt. For a fine white, take two
unds of lead and one of tin ; calcine them to ashes ; of
is take two parts, calcined flint, white sand, or broken
■ rite glass, one part, and salt one part; mix them w ell to-
G L I
583
gether and melt them into a cake for use. The trouble of Glebe
calcining the tin and lead may be prevented by procuring II
them in a proper state. A very fine white glazing may be Glisson.
obtained by calcining twro parts of lead and one part of
tin ; and taking one part of this mass, and of flints and
common salt one part each, and fusing the mixture. A
white glazing may also be prepared by mixing a hundred
pounds of masticot, sixty pounds of red lead, twenty pounds
of calcined tin or putty, and ten pounds of common salt,
and calcining and powdering the mixture several times.
Yellow is prepared of red lead three pounds, calcined
antimony and tin two pounds of each; or, according to
some, of equal quantities of the three ingredients. These
must be melted into a cake, then ground to a fine powder,
and this operation must be repeated several times; or it
may be made of fifteen parts of lead ore, three parts of li¬
tharge of silver, and fifteen parts of sand. A fine yellow-
glazing may be procured by mixing five parts of red lead,
two parts of powdered brick, one part of sand, one part of
the white glazings, and two parts of antimony, calcining
the mixture and then fusing it. Or take four parts of
w-hite glass, one part of antimony, three parts of red lead,
and one part of iron scales, and fuse the mixture ; or fuse
sixteen parts of flints, one part of iron filings, and twenty-
four parts of litharge. A light-yellow glazing may be pro¬
duced with ten parts of red lead, three parts of antimony
and three of glass, and two parts of calcined tin. A citron-
yellow is made of six parts of red lead, seven parts of fine
red brick dust, and two parts of antimony. This mixture
must be calcined day and night for the space of four days,
in the ash-hole of a glass-house furnace, and at last urged
to fusion.
The Romans had a method of glazing their earthen ves¬
sels, which in many respects appears to have been superior
to ours. The common brown glazing easily scales off,
cracks, and in a short time becomes disagreeable to the
eye ; besides, it is very easily destroyed by acids, nor can
vessels glazed in this manner be even employed to hold
water, without part of it oozing through their pores. Lead
is also very destructive to the human body; and if acids
are unwarily put into vessels glazed with lead, the liquors
will receive a dangerous impregnation from the metal.
The Roman glazing, which is still to be seen upon urns
excavated in several places, appears to have been made of
some kind of varnish ; and Pliny gives us a hint that it was
made of bitumen. He tells us that it never lost its beauty,
and that at length it became customary to glaze over sta¬
tues in this manner. As this varnish sunk deep into the
substance of the ware, it was not subject to those cracks
and flaws w hich disfigure our vessels; and as it w^as not
liable to be corroded by acids, it was not subject to any
of the accidents which may ensue from the use of vessels
glazed with lead.
GLEBE, amongst miners, signifies a piece of earth in
which is contained some mineral ore.
Glebe, in Law, the land belonging to a parish church,
besides the tithes.
GLEND ALAGH, otherwise called the Seven Churches,
anciently a celebrated town of Ireland, situated five miles
north-west of Rathdrum, in the county of Wicklow, and
province of Leinster. The name signifies the valley of
the two lakes.
GLISSON, Francis, an English physician, born in
1597, at Rampisham, in the county of Dorset, was edu¬
cated at Cambridge, and, during forty years, occupied the
chair of medicine in that university. In 1634, he was ad¬
mitted into the college of physicians in London, of which
he afterwards became president; and, in 1639, this body ap¬
pointed him professor of anatomy. He filled this situation
with much credit at the commencement of the civil war,
when he took refuge in Colchester ; but after the surren-
584
G L O
G L O
der of that city to the parliamentary forces, he went to
London, and became a member of that association of learned
men which was afterwards transformed into the Royal So¬
ciety. In 1650, he published his treatise De Rachitide,
seu morbo puerili, a malady then new in England, where
it had only appeared about thirty years before. Glisson
was assisted in the composition of this treatise by Doctors
Bate and Regemortes. In 1654, appeared his Anatomia
Hepatis, in 8vo, with an appendix concerning the lympha¬
tic ducts, then recently discovered ; in 1672, the Tractatus
de natura substantire energetica, seu de vita Natura ejusque
tribus primis facultatibus; and in 1677, the year of his
death, the book De Ventriculo et Intestinis, in 4to, the first
work containing conjectures as to the nature of the simple
fibre, and an exposition of the innate principle of irritabi¬
lity, as it is denominated by our author. Glisson was also the
first who attributed the contraction of the heart, and of the
other muscles, to the action of a stimulus on their irritable
principle. He likewise treats largely and judiciously of
the peristaltic and antiperistaltic motion. The greater part
of his works have often been reprinted in different coun¬
tries. They contain new methods and discoveries, amongst
others that of the capsule of the vena portce, at least he
had the merit of being the first to examine and describe
it with accuracy. He was also the author of a treatise
De Lymphceductis nuper repertis, Amsterdam, 1659, which,
and his book entitled Anatomica prolegomena et Anatomia
Hepatis, are considered as the best of his works. Boer-
haave regarded him as the most exact of all the anato¬
mists ; and Haller, speaking of one of his works, describes
it as an excellent book, “ like all those written by the same
author.” Glisson’s views on physiology are now held in
little estimation. (a.)
GLOBE, in Geometry, a round or spherical body, com¬
monly called a Sphere.
Globe is more particularly used for an artificial sphere
of metal, plaster, paper, or other matter, on the convex
surface of which is delineated a map, or representation
either of the earth or heavens, with the several circles of
the sphere.
Globes are of two kinds, terrestrial and celestial; both of
considerable use, the one in astronomy, and the other in geo¬
graphy, for performing many of the operations in these
sciences, in an easy and obvious manner, so as to be con¬
ceived without any knowledge of their mathematical prin¬
ciples.
The fundamental parts, common to both globes, are an
axis, representing that of the world; and a spherical shell,
or cover, forming the body of the globe, on the external
surface of which the representation is drawn.
GLOGAU, a city of Prussian Silesia, the capital of a
circle to which it gives its name. It is situated on the left
bank of the Oder, where the Dominsel falls into that river.
It is strongly fortified, and has also a citadel. It contains
the cathedral on an island in the Oder, eight other Catho¬
lic, and two Lutheran churches, one Reformed church, and
885 houses, with 10,253 inhabitants, of whom 1800 are
Jews. It is a manufacturing city, and produces much linen
and cotton goods; and it has tanneries, breweries, and
other trades. Long. 16. 1. 25. E. Lat. 51. 38. N.
GLORY, renown or celebrity. The love of renown, or
the desire of fame and reputation, appears to be one of the
principal springs of human action. Glory, therefore, is
not to be contemned, as some of the ancient philosophers
affected to teach; but it imports us to regulate our pursuit
of it by the dictates of reason; and if the public approba¬
tion follow not, the search must be abandoned. We ought
to have our judgment well instructed as to what actions are
truly glorious, and to remember, that in every important
enterprise, as Seneca observes, Recte facti fecisse merces est,
officii fructus ipsum officium est, the reward of a thing well
done is to have done it, the fruit of a good office is the
office itself. Those who by other methods contrive to wT''
place their names in many mouths, show that they rather
seek after a great reputation than a good one, and their
reward is oftener infamy than fame.
Men generally, and indeed almost instinctively, afljx
glory to such actions only as have been produced by an
innate desire of public good ; and this may be measured
by that degree of influence which the thing done has upon
the common happiness. If the actions of the hero conduct
soonest to glory and with the greatest splendour, and if the
victorious general is so great after a signal engagement, it
is because the service he has performed is considered as a
service done for all; and because we think without reflect¬
ing, that he has saved our habitations, our wealth, our chil¬
dren, and every thing that attaches us to life. If the man
of science, who in his study has discovered and calculated
the motions of the heavenly bodies, who in his alembics
has detected some of the secrets of nature, or who has ex¬
hibited to mankind a new art, rises with less noise to fame
it is because the service which he renders is more widely
diffused, and is often of less service to the present than to
succeeding generations.
The consequences of these two advantages are, therefore,
as opposite as the causes are different; and whilst the be¬
nefits secured by the warrior appear to exert no more in¬
fluence, and his glory is obscured, that of a celebrated wri¬
ter or inventor still increases, and becomes more and more
enlarged. His works every day recall his name to the re¬
membrance of those who read them, and thus still add to
his celebrity and fame.
This posthumous fame indeed has been decried by some
writers, and, in particular, the author of the Religion of
Nature delineated has treated it as highly irrational and ab¬
surd. “ In reality,” says he, “ the man is not known ever
the more to posterity, because his name is transmitted to
them; he doth not live, because his name does. When
it is said Julius Caesar subdued Gaul, conquered Pompey,
&c., it is the same thing as to say, the conqueror of Pom¬
pey was Julius Caesar ; that is, Caesar and the conqueror of
Pompey is the same thing; Caesar is as much known by
one designation as by the other. The amount then is only
this, that the conqueror of Pompey conquered Pompey; or
somebody conquered Pompey; or rather, since Pompey is as
little known now as Caesar, somebody conquered somebody.
Such a poor business is this boasted immortality, and such
is the thing called glory among us ! To discerning men
this fame is mere air, and what they despise, if not shun.”
But surely it were to judge a little too curiously to view
matters thus. For, as is observed by the judicious author
of Fitzosborne’s Letters, although fame with posterity
should be, in the strict analysis of it, no other than what is
here described, a mere uninteresting proposition, amount¬
ing to nothing more than that somebody acted meritori¬
ously ; yet it would not necessarily follow, that true philo¬
sophy should banish the desire of it from the human breast;
since this passion may be, as most certainly it is, wisely
implanted in our species, notwithstanding the correspond¬
ing object should in reality be very different from what it
appears in imagination. Do not many of our most refined
and even contemplative pleasures owe their existence to
our mistakes ? It is but extending some of our senses to
a higher degree of acuteness than we now possess them, to
make the fairest views of nature, or the noblest productions
of art, appear horrid and deformed. To see things as they
truly are in themselves, would not always, perhaps, be
of advantage to us in the intellectual world, any more than
in the natural. But, after all, who shall certainly assure
us that the pleasure of virtuous fame dies with its posses¬
sor, and reaches not taanother scene of existence ? fher®
is nothing, it should seem, either absurd or unphilosophicai
To
G L O
j, supposing it possible, at least, that the praises of the
cpd and the judicious, the sweetest music to an honest
e/ in this world, may be echoed back to the mansions of the
i, jjKt; that the poet’s description of Fame may be literally
^ tie> and that though she walks upon earth, she may yet lift
if head into heaven.
To be convinced of the great advantage of cherishing
tjs high regard to posterity, this noble desire of an after
li- in the breath of others, one need only look back upon
tr history of the ancient Greeks and Romans. For what
aier principle was it which produced that exalted strain
civirtue in those days, which may well serve, in so many
ripects, as a model to these ? Was it not the consentiens
ti's bonorum, the incorrupta vox bene judicantium, as Ci-
cro calls it, “ the concurrent approbation of the good, the
irorrupted applause of the wise,” that animated their
Hist generous pursuits ?
In short, can it be reasonable to extinguish a passion
vdch nature has universally lighted up in the human
bliast, and which we constantly find burning with greatest
scngth and brightness in the noblest and best constituted
mures ? Accordingly, revelation is so far from endeavour-
iii to eradicate the seed which nature has thus deeply
ii ilanted, that it rather seems, on the contrary, to cherish
a;l forward the growth thereof. To be “ exalted with
hhour,” and to be “ had in everlasting remembrance,”
at among the number of those encouragements which the
Jivish dispensation offered to the virtuous; and the per-
S'i from whom the sacred Author of the Christian system
weived his birth, is herself represented as rejoicing that
“’ll generations would call her blessed.”
jLOSS, a comment on the text of any author, intend-
ato explain his sense more fully, whether in the same lan-
gpge or in any other. (See the article Commentary.)
lie word evidently comes from the Greek yAweffa, tongue ;
t; office of a gloss being to explain the text, as that of
ti tongue is to unfold the feelings and sentiments of the
mud.
• Gloss is likewise used to signify a literal translation,
oi an interpretation of an author, word for word, in ano-
tT language.
GLOSSARY, a dictionary, explaining the obscure and
a liquated terms in some old author. Such are Du Cange’s
LT.in and Greek Glossaries, Spelman’s Glossary, and
Kunet’s Glossary at the end of his Parochial Antiquities.
jLOSSOPETRA, or Glottopetra, in Natural His-
kty, a kind of extraneous fossil, somewhat in the form of
aterpent’s tongue. It is frequently found in the island
otilalta, and other places.
GLOUCESTER, a city, the capital of the county of
tl! same name, 106 miles from London. It is situated
111:1 rich and beautiful valley, on the banks of the river
S! ern. It is sheltered on the east by a range of hills,
o descending which the vale displays itself, containing
tli verdant plains, the ancient buildings of the city, the
wding river, and, in the distance, the group of pictu-
r<H]ue eminences called the Malvern Hills, The city
c sists ot four streets, distinguished by the names of the
ci final points, and crossing each other in the centre at
n it angles. They are broad, well built, clean, and ex-
C"ently paved. The chief building is the cathedral, begun
il 047, and the ecclesiastical residences around it. That
ei ice was enlarged at subsequent periods, till it was erect-
8" into a bishop’s see in the reign of Henry VIII. It is
*;l feet in length, 144 in breadth, and adorned with a
wier 199 feet in height. The interior has an impressive
jK’ect, and is decorated with several monuments, and a
My choir. It is a corporation, consisting of a recorder
G L O
585
which has been commonly conferred upon a member of Glouees-
the royal family. The principal manufacturing employ- tershire.
ment is making pins, great quantities of which are sent
to London ; but, besides this, making malt and cordage,
and building barges, afford some occupation. There is a
little foreign trade in the importation of wine, spirits, and
West India produce; and this has been increased by the
construction of a canal parallel to the Severn, which al¬
lows ships to avoid the shoals and sinuosities of that river.
I here is also some transit trade in iron ware, pottery,
salt, and in timber, which descend the Severn from the
counties to the northward. Some mineral springs, similar
to those of Cheltenham, have lately been discovered,
which have been resorted to by visitors, and have occa¬
sioned an increase of buildings appropriated for their
reception. I here are well-supplied markets on Wednes¬
days and Saturdays. The population amounted in 1801
to 7597, in 1811 to 8280, in 1821 to 9744, and in 1831
to 11,993.
Gloucester is the name of several counties and towns
in the United States of America. The counties will be
described in the articles upon the several states where they
are situated; and the towns are too unimportant to require
separate notice.
GLOUCESTERSHIRE, one of the English counties
on the western side of the kingdom. On the north-east it
is bounded by Warwickshire, on the north-west by Wor¬
cestershire ; Oxfordshire and Berkshire bound it on the
east, Wilts and Somerset on the south, and Hereford and
Monmouth on the west. The greatest length is seventy
miles, and the greatest breadth thirty-five. Its area, includ¬
ing its rivers, is 1718 square miles, or 1,099,520 acres.
The number of inhabitants at each of the four decennial
censuses has been as follows, viz.:—in 1801, 250,809; in
1811, 285,514; in 1821, 335,843; and in 1831, 386,700.
In this enumeration the city of Bristol is included; for,
though a part of it stands within the county, of Somerset,
yet in each of the parliamentary surveys it is considered as
a part of the county of Gloucester, w ithin which division
the greater portion of it is situated. The most consider¬
able places, and their population, are the following:
Minchin-Hampton 7,255
Painswick 4,099
Horsley 3,690
Dursley 3,226
Newent 2,859
Tetbury 2,939
a corporation,
twelve aldermen, one of whom is the mayor, and a
gl® kocty of freemen, who elect two members to the
* use of Commons. This city gives the title of duke,
ol. x.
Bristol 103,886
Gloucester  18,376
Cheltenham  22,942
Stroud  8,607
Tewkesbury  5,780
Bisley  5,896
Cirencester  5,420
The foreign trade of this county is considerable, and
centres chiefly in Bristol. Latterly, however, Gloucester
has enjoyed a considerable share of it. This has been
chiefly owing to the completion of a broad and deep canal
parallel to the Severn, which admits vessels from sea to
reach Gloucester. The principal trade from Bristol is to
the West Indies, but both places maintain intercourse with
America, Portugal, Spain, and other foreign territories, and
import much wine, Merino wool, oil, and other commodi¬
ties.
The internal trade of this county is, however, by far the
most important. By the river Severn, which passes through
it, it is enabled to maintain a regular intercourse with the
potteries and glass manufactories of Worcestershire and
Staffordshire, with the salt works of Droitwich, and with
those parts of Warwickshire, Staffordshire, and Shropshire,
which furnish the heavy iron goods that would not bear the
expense of land-carriage. Though the Severn is not na¬
vigable except for flat-bottomed vessels, and for these only
at spring tides, yet the craft on that river is very con¬
siderable ; and at Stourport there is a connection with all
the numerous canals which traverse the centre of the king-
4 E
586
GLOUCESTERSHIRE.
dom. Besides the river Severn, the Wye is navigable for raised from the quarries of Gloucestershire. Limestone Glouce,
small craft to a considerable distance from its mouth, and of excellent quality extends from Cromhall south-east to tershi
facilitates the commercial intercourse with Monmouthshire Sodbury, and south-west to Aust-Clitt; and the rocks of
and Herefordshire. Clifton yield an excellent stone, from which much lime is
Several navigable canals have been constructed in this made, both for domestic consumption ami for exportation
county with the view of promoting its internal communi- to the West Indies. Freestone is found on the Cotswold
cation. The most remarkable of these is the Thames and Hills, and near Lydney some gritstones are raised, which
Severn Canal, which communicates with the latter river are adapted by the mill-wrights to their purposes,
through the Stroud Canal, and with the former river at the Gloucestershire is one of the chief manufacturing coun¬
town of Lechlade. It was begun in 1783, and finished in ties ; and though a greater progress has been made of late
ten years. The summit-level is two hundred and forty- years in the northern counties of Lancaster and York, it
one feet above the level of the Stroud Canal, and a hun- is still very much distinguished in this particular. The
dred and thirty feet above the river Thames at the place woollen manufacture has long been established in what
of its junction. These rises of level are surmounted by are provincially called £/ie a district in the valleys,
locks, admirably contrived and executed ; and in one place between the range where the Cotswold Hills, with a less
it passes under the park of Lord Bathurst, through Sap- elevation, assume the name of the Stroud Hills. Be-
perton tunnel, and, after being buried for the distance of tween the ranges of these hills there are clear and rapid
two miles and five furlongs, again emerges near Ciren- streams, which supply the mills in which the manufac-
cester. The tunnel is lined with masonry, arched above, tures are carried on. I he principal seats of the manu-
and at the bottom has an inverted arch, except in some Pictures are in the thickly-peopled parishes of Bisley,
very few places, where, passing through a solid rock, that Hampton, Stroud, Painswick, Woodchester, Horsley,
expense has been spared. The breadth of the canal is forty- Stonehouse, Stanley, Uley, Dursley, and Wotton-under-
two feet at the top and thirty feet at the bottom, and it Edge. Almost the whole process is now performed by
is constructed for barges adapted to the locks upon the machinery except the weaving. The dyers in this dis-
river Thames, as well as those of the canal. The barges trict are celebrated for their scarlet, but more especially
are twelve feet wide, from seventy to eighty feet long, for their dark-blue colours, the excellence of which is at¬
tributed to some peculiar properties in the Stroud water.
The greater part of the cloths of this county are dyed in
the piece, not in the wool. Those of the superior quality,
made from Merino wool, are destined either for the con¬
sumption of the kingdom or for the supply of Russia;
and some few are exported to America. The inferior
kinds, made of the wool of the Cotswold, the Hereford,
or the Southdown sheep, are mostly calculated for the
markets of India and China. These are sent to London
and when loaded carry seventy tons, and draw about four
feet of water. This work has, however, been more splen¬
did than beneficial. The expense of its construction ex¬
ceeded L.250,000, and the tolls are scarcely more than
sufficient to defray the expense of the necessary repairs.
In fact, it connects two rivers, the navigation of which
is bad; but especially that of the Thames, which, before
it reaches Oxford, is subject to great expense in horses
to draw the barges; it has many shallows where the ves¬
sels must be lightened to pass over them, and is liable to white, and the agents of the East India Company select
frequent impediments, sometimes from a scarcity of wa- such as suit their demand, which are dyed to the requi-
ter, and sometimes from inundations. The trade which site colours, and pressed and packed by their own diiler-
once passed through this canal has been diminished by ent tradesmen in the vicinity of the metropolis. Cassi-
the opening of the Kennet and Avon, which forms a bet- meres of the best quality are also made in this district to
ter medium for the transit of goods from Bristol or Glou- a very considerable extent.
cester to London. The Hereford and Gloucester Canal, In the city of Gloucester and its vicinity there are se-
designed to connect these two cities, passes near Boyce veral considerable manufactories of pins, which, minute
through a tunnel one mile and a quarter in length, be- as is the article, furnish employment to upwards of fifteen
tween the Severn and Ledbury, to which place, a dis- hundred persons. A bell foundery was established there
tance of seventeen miles, the rise is a hundred and eighty-, in 1500, which has been continued to the present time,and
three feet. is a of hereditary occupation in a family of the name
The mineral riches of this county are almost wholly of Rudhall, who have carried it on for the last hundred
confined to iron; for, though veins of lead exist at Sod- and fifty years, and during that period have cast severa
bury, Deynton, and other places, they are not sufficiently thousands of bells for different churches,
productive of ore to induce the working of them. Iron is The vicinity of Bristol is crowded with manufactories
abundant in many parts of the county; but the principal of various kinds. The sugar refinery is very considerab e,
forges are on the western side of the Severn, near Lyd- and produces some of the best kinds of white sugar,
ney, in the forest of Dean, where both charcoal and coal Glass of all kinds, for windows and for domestic purposes,
are abundantly produced. On both sides of the Severn is made there. I he copper and brass manufactuies area.o
coal is worked to a considerable extent. The forest of large establishments. Hard white soap is an aitice o
Dean contains upwards of ahundred-and twenty coal pits, considerable importance;^ much is sent to Lonuun^a^a
whence the city of Gloucester and its vicinity are supplied large quantity is exported to America and the\\ est Indie-
Bristol, Hats, leather, saddlery, shoes, white lead, gunpowder,
with that necessary article. At Kingswood, near Bristol,  , , „. .
thereareconsiderableveins,butthesebeingatagreatdepth, earthen ware, salt, snufl, and beer, are made in *iec1/.
the proprietors can scarcely compete with the miners of neighbourhood of Bristol, and form the rudiments o i
Monmouthshire, though by many of the inhabitants of the foreign trade, as well as administer to its domestic in e
city the coals of Kingswood are preferred to those brought course with the western counties, and with Wales.
lineral springs in this coun- The agriculture of Gloucestershire partakes of very
by water from Newport. The mineral springs m mis cuun- j.nc agm-un-uic ui vjiuw^o^v,.,
ty, at Clifton, at Cheltenham, at Stow-on-the-Wold, and at ferent characters, according to the elevation o* D® ^
Bourton-on-the-Water, are well known ; and the two for- On the eastern side of the county, a district o >
mer places, as well by their natural beauties as by their acres, extending over the Cotswold Hills, provinci ^
medicinal waters, attract considerable numbers of occa- distinguished by the name of stone brash land. us ^
sional visitors, who there find all those accommodations of country is very undulating, but none of the sura ^
which the best watering-places can afford. No part of the rise to a great height, so that the vyhole is cultivate
kingdom produces better or more abundant stone than is the intervals between the ridges of hills there are g
i »3-
i'; ■ ire.
1)1)
i
-
GLOUCESTERSHIRE.
587
Jly beautiful rivulets, by which the inhabitants are The hedge-rows are filled with elm, oak, ash, and maple Glouces-
labled so to irrigate their meadows as to produce early trees, and the apple and pear trees are abundantly scat- tershire.
•ass for their young lambs. I he hills, whatever be the tered in the fields, as well as in large orchards near the
irfacc, have uniformly a calcareous basis, which admi- villages. Cider and perry form very valuable portions of
bly adapts them for the growth of sainfoin. In no part the produce of each farm. The proportion of arable land
England is that valuable grass cultivated to so great an is small; the rich pastures feed numerous cows; and but-
;tent, or with such bountiful results. It has been an ar- ter and cheese are the articles on which many farmers
•le of very ancient cultivation, and in this soil has the almost wholly depend.
operty of producing hay for twenty successive years. The vale of Gloucester is in the form of an arc, of which
requires, however, great care in the first laying down, the river Severn may be said to form the chord. It is pro-
; d that all other grasses, as well as weeds, be eradicated ; tected from the cold northerly and easterly wind^ by the
iter which, as it draws its nourishment from a great depth, Cotswold and Stroud Hills, and hence is well adapted for the
has little or no tendency to exhaust the soil on the sur- growth of fruit trees. Though there are now no vineyards,
;:e. In process of time jt becomes choked by other William of Malmesbury, in the twelfth century, said that “no
jasses, when the land is again returned to the arable state, county in England has more numerous or richer vineyards ;
is the practice of the best farmers to have one seventh or which yields grapes more abundantly or of better flavour,*
rt of their land constantly bearing sainfoin. The re- as the wine is but little inferior to that of France in sweet-
aining six portions of the farm are divided pretty near- ness.” The apple and pear trees of the district yield, how-
in equal proportions between turnips, barley, clover ever, most profusely, liquors which, in the estimation of
rye-grass, wheat, peas, and oats. The principal de- the inhabitants, are far preferable to any wine from foreign
ndence for producing fertility is the large flocks of countries. The soil of this vale is generally of a rich sandy
eep which are bred here, and which are usually folded loam, on a very retentive and tenacious subsoil of clay,
a dressing for the turnips. It is a common practice to Fallowing is deemed indispensable on all the arable lands
re the soil, and burn it, that the weeds may be destroyed, which are thrown in very high ridges, about eight yards in
i d that the ashes may furnish manure. The crops of bar- breadth, with furrows between them, from twenty-four to
y are moderately good. Wheat is sown at very early thirty inches deep. Barley, oats, clover, beans, and wheat
riods, sometimes in August, but it seldom produces even yield most abundant crops, and of the best quality. The
noderate crop if sowed later than September or early greater part of the land is, however, in permanent pasture, re-
October. The average produce of that grain does not ceiving no other manure than the faeces of the cattle that are
grazed on it, and, in some instances, the rich sediment de¬
posited by occasional inundations. The meadows feed num¬
berless cows, and the dairies, besides the cheese, the name of
which is derived from this county, furnish large quantities of
butter, fatten many calves, and, with the whey and butter¬
milk, rear and fatten great numbers of swine. The swine are
of a peculiarly large breed, and the market for them at Glou¬
cester is by far the most considerable in the kingdom. The
fattening of them does not, however, wrholly depend on the
dairy, but large quantities of oil-cake are applied to that pur¬
pose. The cheese denominated Gloucester has long enjoyed
great celebrity both at home and abroad. It is usually made
in the summer months, from May to October inclusive. The
number of cows belonging to individuals seldom exceeds
from thirty to forty. The uniformity of the quality is such
that the factors, who are the middlemen, contract for the
eir being nearly destitute of trees, and to the want of whole produce of the dairies without examining it, know-
rdant hedges; for the fences are almost uniformly stone ing the value of the cheese from the quality of the land
ills, about four feet and a half in height. The farms are on which the cows are pastured.
nerally large, from three hundred to twelve hundred The vale of Berkley is separated from that of Glouces-
res; and the homesteads, as well as the cottages of the ter by a natural intersection, and, like it, is bounded to the
jourers, being usually situated in the valleys, and there- westward by the river Severn. Its surface is moreirregu-
re not in sight at a distance, the face of the country lar, but though the undulations are numerous, they are not
s a poor and depopulated aspect. The depth of the excessive. The hills are covered with beech trees, and the
il is scarcely more than five inches : sometimes, how- face of the district is both rich and picturesque. The soil
er, it is very tenacious, but the experience of the natives is uniformly fertile in a very extraordinary degree. Nearly
s taught them, that even the most clayey soils do not the whole is rich pasture or orchard, and the arable land
quire frequent ploughings. At each ploughing, consi- does not form one seventh part of the valley. The soil is
a rich fat loam, occasionally mixed with a prolific clay, and
generally resting on a retentive subsoil. The dairy farms
are of smaller extent than in the adjoining vale, but they
far excel them in* the proportional quantity of the cheese
which they yield, and the quality is also much superior. The
cheese commonly denominated double Gloucester is almost
nilar. The vale of Evesham, a considerable part of wholly made in the vale of Berkley, and in the neighbour-
liich is in Worcestershire, is watered by tlie river Avon, hood is known by that name. It is usually made in the
)d is highly productive in corn, pasture, and fruits. On months of May, June, and July in dairies, where, later in
e arable lands, the most general rotation is a clean fal- the summer, a thinner kind is manufactured. Its excellence
then barley or oats ; next beans or clover; and, lastly, depends upon attention to its management, as well as on
beat. The wheat is generally sown in November or the quality of the land on which the cattle are fed. The
ecember, the produce is commonly abundant, and the quantity of cheese made in this vale is about 1200 tons an-
am is of the best quality. The district is well wooded, nually, and each cow is estimated to yield 350 pounds.
ceed sixteen bushels to the acre, and it is not of the
st quality. The soil is more congenial to the produc-
m of peas than to any other crop, and hence they form
important article of cultivation. The sheep of this
strict, for whose food, as the enumeration of the crops
ows, the principal provision is made, are of a peculiar
eed, without horns, the wool rather long, and not of a
ry fine quality. They are said to be indigenous to these
11s, but have of late been improved by crossing with
her races. The Southdown sheep have recently been
ed here, and are gradually acquiring a preference, as
ey do wherever they are introduced on soils of an infe-
>r quality; Few parts of England have been more im-
oved in cultivation within the last forty years than the
itswold Hills. They have, however, in spite of this im-
ovement, but a cold and barren appearance, owing to
rahle quantities of stone-rubble are brought to the sur-
I ce.
lo the westward of the Cotswold Hills, and inclining
the northwards, the rich vales of Evesham, Gloucester,
id Berkley, are spread. The agricultural system which
practised, though it has some variations, is generally
The western side of the Severn is principally occupied
by the forest of Dean. It abounds with excellent oak and
beech trees, and produces abundance of cider, especially
one kind called Stire-cider, which is highly valued. The
forest formerly contained 43,000 acres, but has been di¬
minished by several royal grants; it is, however, now a
most important district, on account of the large ship-tim¬
ber which it produces. It abounds with coal and with iron
ore, and the miners are regulated by peculiar courts.
The most remarkable curiosities of this county are the
Roman antiquities at Woodchester, which have been ac¬
curately described by that indefatigable antiquary Lysons;
the Roman roads, which traverse it in various directions ;
the' numerous antique coins which have been frequently
found in the fields ; the vestiges of ancient fortifications,
and the ruins of monastic edifices.
This county has long conferred the title of duke on va¬
rious members of the royal family, or in ancient times on
those connected with that of the reigning prince. It gives
titles also to Marquis Camden, Earl of Berkley, Earl
Bathurst, Lord Sherborne, and Lord Segrave. For elec¬
tion purposes it is formed into the eastern division, the
polling-places of which are Gloucester, Stroud, Tewkes¬
bury, Cirencester, Camden, Northleach, and Chelten¬
ham; and the western, the polling-places of which are
Wotton-under-Edge, Newent, Newenham, Coleford, Sod-
bury, Thornbury, and Dursley.
Two members for each are returned to parliament from
Bristol, Gloucester, Cirencester, and Tewkesbury; and one
for each from Cheltenham and Stroud; making, with four
for the county, fourteen in all. The seats of noblemen
and gentlemen are very numerous, but the most remark¬
able of these are Badminton, the Duke of Beaufort’s;
Berkley Castle, Lord Segrave’s; Oakley Grove, Lord
Bathurst’s; Sherborne, Lord Sherborne; Tolworth, Lord
Ducie; King’s Weston, Lord de Clifford ; Hengham Court,
Sir William Guise’s; Fairford, Mr Raymond Barker;
Whitcombe Park, Sir William Hicks; Gatcombe Park,
Mr Ricardo; and Blaze Castle, Mr Harford’s.
GLOVE, a covering for the hand and wrist. To throw
the glove was a practice or ceremony very usual amongst
our forefathers, being the challenge by which one man de¬
fied another to single combat. It is still retained at the
coronation of our kings, when the king’s^champion casts
his glove in Westminster hall, and thus challenges all men
to dispute the royal title.
Favyn supposes the custom to have arisen amongst the
eastern nations, who in all their sales and deliveries of
lands, goods, and the like, used to give the purchaser
their glove by way of delivery or investiture. To this effect
he quotes Ruth (iv. 7), in which the Chaldee paraphrase
has glove where the common version renders the Hebrew
word by shoe. He adds, that the Rabbin interpret by
glove that passage in the 108th Psalm, In Idumeam exten-
dam calceamentam mewn, Over Edom will I cast out my
shoe. Accordingly, amongst us, he who took up the glove,
thereby declared his acceptance of the challenge, and as
a part of the ceremony, took the glove off his own right
hand, and cast it upon the ground, that it might be taken
up by the challenger. This had the force of a mutual
engagement to meet at the time and place which might
be appointed by the king, the parliament, or the judges.
Gloves are now a common article of dress. They are
most commonly made of leather; but there are others
made of silk, thread, cotton, or worsted. Leather gloves
are made of the skins of the chamois, kid, lamb, beaver,
doe, elk, and other animals. The leather of gloves is not,
properly speaking, tanned, but cured with alum, by which
it is rendered soft and pliable. Some sorts of leather
gloves admit of being washed, others do not. Woodstock
and Worcester, but particularly the former, are famed for
the manufacture of leather gloves of a superior quality
The produce of the Worcester manufacture has been es v.
timated at about 42,000 dozen pairs of oil-leather or bea¬
ver gloves, and 470,000 dozen pairs of kid and lamb-skin
gloves, the value of the whole being about L.375 000
There are other places in England celebrated for their
manufacture of gloves ; and Dundee, in Scotland, has W
been famed for the production of this article. Maclm
nery is occasionally employed in sewing gloves ; but this
process is not considered as cheaper than that accom¬
plished by manual labour, and is only had recourse to
when it is wished to have the stitches correctly equidis¬
tant. Limerick used to be famous for the manufacture
of a kind of ladies’ gloves, called chicken gloves. Great
quantities of cotton gloves are made at Nottingham and
Leicester. Until the year 1825 the importation of leather
gloves and mitts was prohibited; but at that period a duty
was laid upon them, and they are now allowed to enter.
The total quantity of these articles imported in the year
1832 was 126,386 dozen pairs, and the total receipt of
duty on them L.27,106. The number of lamb and kid
skins entered for home consumption in the year ending
1831 was 3,901,241, and the number of dozen pairs of
gloves produced in the same year 585,180.
Gloves were used for certain purposes at a very early
period. It is believed that the Persians used them, and
they were employed by the Greeks and Romans in cer¬
tain kinds of labour. During the middle ages gloves were
worn by certain functionaries as a mark of dignity, but as
civilization advanced they gradually became common to
all classes of the community.
GLOVER, Richard, was the son of Richard Glover,
a Hamburg merchant in London, and was bom in St
Martin’s Lane in the year 1712. He very early evinced
a strong propensity for poetry, and whilst at school wrote,
amongst other pieces, a poem to the memory of Sir Isaac
Newton, which is prefixed to the view of that incompa¬
rable author’s philosophy, published by his intimate friend
Dr Pemberton, 1728, in 4to. But though possessed of ta¬
lents which were calculated to obtain distinction in the li¬
terary world, he was content to devote his attention to com¬
merce, and at a proper period commenced Hamburg mer¬
chant. He still, however, cultivated literature, and asso¬
ciated with those who were eminent in science. One of
his earliest friends was Matthew Green, the author of
some poems, which after his death were collected and
published by Mr Glover in 1737. In that year Mr Glover
married Miss Nunn, with whom he received a handsome
fortune; and in the same month published Leonidas, a
poem in quarto, which in two years passed through three
editions. This poem was inscribed to Lord Cobham, and
upon its first appearance was received by the world with
great approbation, though it has since been unaccountably
neglected. Lord Lyttleton, in a popular publication call¬
ed Common Sense, and in a poem addressed to the au¬
thor, praised it in the warmest terms; and in 1738 Dr
Pemberton published observations on poetry, especially
epic, occasioned by the poem of Leonidas, merely with
a view to point out its beauties. In 1739 Mr Glover
published London, or the Progress of Commerce, quarto;
and a ballad entitled Hosier's Ghost. Both these pieces
seem to have been written with a view to incite the pub¬
lic to resent the misconduct of the Spaniards; and the
latter had a very considerable effect. At this period po¬
litical dissensions raged with great violence, more espe¬
cially in the metropolis; and at different meetings of tie
livery on these occasions, Mr Glover was always calle o
the chair, and acquitted himself in a very able manner,
his conduct being patriotic and his speeches mas telly- tn
the year 1744 the Duchess of Marlborough died, an y
her will left to Mr Glover and Mr Mallet L.500 each,
liil
iiiet
G L O
mte the history of the Duke of Marlborough’s life. This
' b (uest, however, never took effect. It is supposed that
(;iver early renounced his share of it; and Mallet,
tl ugh he continued to talk of performing the task almost
a; ongas he lived, is now known never to have made the
Ifi t progress in the work. About this period Mr Glo-
v* withdrew a good deal from public notice, and lived in
mrement. He had been unsuccessful in business, and
wu a laudable delicacy bad preferred an obscure retreat
tooopular observation, until his affairs should be placed
oi i better footing. He had been honoured with the at-
ta.ion of Frederick prince of Wales, who once presented
hi with a complete set of the classics, elegantly bound,
8i, on his absenting himself for some time on account of
tl embarrassment in his circumstances, sent him, it is
sa, L.500. The prince died in March 1751 ; and in the
yfy following Mr Glover was once more drawn from
hiiretreat by the importunity of his friends, and stood
av andidate for the office of chamberlain of London. But
itmfortunately happened that he did not declare him-
sc until most of the livery had engaged their votes, and
hcce he lost his election. In 1753 Mr Glover produced
at lruryLane his tragedy of Boadicea, which was acted
ni; nights, in the month of December. It had the ad-
vi.tage of the performance of Garrick, Mossop, Mrs Cib-
bi and Mrs Pritchard. From the prologue it seems to
lire been patronised by the author’s friends in the city;
am Dr Pemberton wrote a pamphlet to recommend it.
h 1761 Mr Glover published Medea, a tragedy written
onthe Greek model; but it was not acted until 1767,
w n it appeared for the first time on the stage at Drury
Hie for Mrs Yates’ benefit. On the accession of George
Uihe appears to have surmounted the difficulties of his
si ation. In the parliament which was then called, he
w chosen member for Weymouth, and continued to sit
at.uch until its dissolution. In 1770 a new edition of the
pum of Leonidas being required, it was republished in
tv volumes duodecimo, corrected throughout, and ex-
teded from nine books to twelve. It had also several
ni characters added, and the old ones were placed in
n< situations. The improvements made in it were very
ccsiderable ; but public curiosity was not at tliis period
siiciently alive to recompense the pains bestowed on
tl once popular performance. The calamities arising
fr i the wound given to public credit in June 1772, by
tl: failure of the bank of Douglas, Heron, and Company,
in cotland, occasioned Mr Glover’s taking an active part
in titling these complicated concerns, and also in endea-
vi ring to relieve the distress then so universally felt. In
F ruary 1744 he called the annuitants of that banking
huse together, at the King’s Arms Tavern, and laid pro-
P< ds before them for the security of their demands,
w i which they were fully satisfied. He also undertook
tooanage the interests of the merchants and traders of
L.don concerned in the trade to Germany and Holland,
ui of the dealers in foreign linens, in their application to
p&iament in May 1774. The speeches which he made
oi )oth these occasions were published in a pamphlet.
F lie succeeding year he was engaged in behalf of the
^ >t India merchants in their application to parliament,
oi examined the witnesses and summed up the evidence
io le same masterly manner as he had done on former oc-
cs ons. For the assistance he afforded the merchants in
tl business, he was complimented by them with a ser-
vi of plate, of the value of L.300; and the speech
w "h he delivered in the house was also printed. This,
^ believe, was the last opportunity he had of displaying
ublic his oratorical talents. Having now arrived at a
p# od of life which demanded a retreat from business,
f Glover withdrew to ease and independence, and spent
th remainder of his days with dignity and honour. It is
G L U 5S9
probable that he still continued his attention to poetry, as
it appears that, besides an epic poem of considerable
length, he left some tragedies and comedies behind him
in manuscript. After experiencing the infirmities of age,
he died on the 25th of November 1785, leaving behind
him a most estimable character as a man, a citizen, and
a writer.
GLUCK, Chevalier Christopher, an eminent musi¬
cal composer, was born in the Upper Palatinate, on the
frontiers of Bohemia, in 1714. He commenced his studies
at Prague, and at a very early period of life distinguished
himself by the proficiency he had acquired upon several
musical instruments, particularly the violoncello. In Italy,
whither he went in the service of a nobleman, he received
instructions from Martini, and produced his first opera at
Milan. He came to England in the year 1745. The re¬
bellion having then just broke out, foreigners were regard¬
ed with jealousy, and the opera was on that account closed;
but through the exertions of Lord Middlesex it was re¬
opened with a temporary political performance, called La
Caduta de' Giganti, the music of which Gluck was em¬
ployed to compose. He afterwards brought out his Pira-
mo e Tisbe, which was little else than an assemblage of fa¬
vourite airs from his previous works. The cold reception
this opera met with first convinced him that music, to be
effective, must be strictly adapted to the spirit and cha¬
racter of the poetical subject. This consideration induced
Gluck to lay down certain general principles, which are
said to have influenced all his subsequent labours in com¬
position. These were, first, to impart to music all the
force and expression it is capable of producing, and which
was best attained by uniting it to the simple but animated
poetry, full of natural and well-defined ideas; secondly, to
make the air follow the rhythm and accents of the words,
and construct the accompaniments so as to invigorate the
sentiment, or contrast them with it. The system he adopt¬
ed may be described as one entirely subservient to the ef¬
fect of dramatic performance, where the music is never
estranged from the scene and situations of the characters,
and where the interest results from the perfect interfusion
of sound with sense.
His unsuccessful attempts in England at length induced
Gluck again to visit Italy, where he found leisure to culti¬
vate his taste both in music and poetry. In pursuance of
his new design, he studied the classical Italian poets, and
derived from their writings more enlarged ideas as to the
effects which might be elicited by the union of poetry with
music. Flis darling object now was to connect himself, and
act in conjunction, with some man of true poetic genius;
and Gluck was so fortunate as to find such a co-operator in
the person of Calzabigi, who undertook to write dramas ex¬
actly to his taste. In the following extract from the dedi¬
cation of Alceste, Gluck assigned his reasons for deviating
from the beaten track; and describes his ideas on operatic
composition with much force and perspicuity. “ When I
undertook to set this poem, it was my design to divest the
music entirely of all those abuses with which the vanity of
singers, or the too great complacency of composers, has so
long disfigured the Italian opera, and rendered the most
beautiful and magnificent of all public exhibitions the most
tiresome and ridiculous. It was my intention to confine
music to its true dramatic province, of assisting poetical
expression, and of augmenting the interest of the fable,
without interrupting the action, or chilling it with useless
and superfluous ornaments; for the office of music, when
joined to-poetry, seemed to me to resemble that of colour¬
ing in a correct and well-disposed design, where the lights
and shades only seem to animate the figures, without alter¬
ing the outline. I determined, therefore, not to stop an
actor in the heat of a spirited dialogue, for a tedious rito-
ruel, nor to impede the progress of passion, by lengthen-
Glucir.
590
G L U
G L U
Gluck.
ing a single syllable of a favourite word, merely to display
agility of throat; and I was equally inflexible in my reso¬
lution not to employ the orchestra to so poor a purpose as
that of giving time for the recovery of breath, sufficient for
a long and unmeaning cadence. I never thought it neces¬
sary to hurry through the second part of a song, though
the most impassioned and important, in order to repeat the
words of the first part regularly four times, merely to finish
the air where the sense is unfinished, and to give an oppor¬
tunity to the singer of showing that he has the imperti¬
nent power of varying passages, and disguising them, till
they shall be no longer known to the composer himself.
In short, I tried to banish all those vices of the musical
drama, against which good sense and reason have in vain
so long exclaimed. I imagined, that the overture ought to
prepare the audience for the action of the piece, and serve
as a kind of argument to it; that the instrumental accom¬
paniment should be regulated by the interest of the drama,
and not leave a void in the dialogue between the air and
recitative; that they should neither break into the sense
and connection of a period, nor wantonly interrupt the
energy or heat of the action. And, lastly, it was my opi¬
nion, that my first and chief care, as a dramatic composer,
was to aim at a noble simplicity; and I have accordingly
shunned all parade of unnatural difficulty in favour of clear¬
ness, nor have I sought or studied novelty, if it did not
arise naturally from the situation of the character and poe¬
tical expression ; and there is no rule of composition which
I have not thought it my duty to sacrifice, in order to fa¬
vour passion and produce effects.”
The opera of Orfeo was the first attempt of Gluck in the
new course he had shaped out for himself. It was pro¬
duced at Vienna, and at first excited astonishment, which
however soon gave way to delight; and the opera was per¬
formed in all the principal cities of Italy with rapturous
applause. The Italians were transported with a style at
once so novel and chaste, so masculine and energetic.
When the Orfeo afterwards came to be translated into
French, Rousseau was so much charmed with it that he
did not miss a single representation ; and it is in allusion
to this circumstance that he says, “ If so much exalted
pleasure can be enjoyed in the space of two hours, it serves
to convince us that life is really good for something.”
In the year 1774 Gluck came to Paris, and after study¬
ing with great assiduity and careful examination the cha¬
racteristics of the French language, he composed his fa¬
mous operas of Iphigenie en Aulide and Alceste, which were
received with a degree of enthusiasm unparalleled in the
annals of music. By these successes Gluck came to be
regarded as the national musician of France. The conge¬
niality of his style with the standard favourites Lulli and
Rameau called forth general admiration. “ The almost
universal cry at Paris,” says Burney, “ was now that he
had recovered the dramatic music of the ancient Greeks;
that there was no other worth hearing; that he was the
only musician in Europe who knew how to express the
passions. These and other encomiums preparatory to his
apotheosis, were uttered and published in the journals and
newspapers of Paris, accompanied with constant and con¬
temptuous censures of Italian music, when Piccini arrived.
This admirable composer, the delight and pride of Naples,
as Gluck was of Vienna, had no sooner erected his standard
in France, than all the friends of Italian music, of Rous¬
seau’s doctrines, and of the plan, if not the language, of
Metastasio’s dramas, enlisted in his service. A furious war
broke out; all Paris was on the qui vive. No door was
opened to a visitor, without this question being asked, pre¬
viously to his admission, “ Monsieur, estes vous Picciniste
ou Gluckiste ?” But these disputes were obviously futile
as regarded the merits of Gluck and Piccini; for the
genius and particular styles of these great composers were
so essentially different, that to praise the one was bv no
means to detract from the powers of the other.
Gluck composed in 1774 his opera of Armide, which
was followed by Iphigenie eii Tauride, and some others'
and after having completely revolutionized the music of
France, he returned to Vienna, where he remained until
his death in the year 1787.
Gluck has been well called the Michel Angelo of mu¬
sic. He was the originator of a school which has opened
up great and various sources of enjoyment to taste, and
mightily influenced the character of the whole art. His
genius was of the highest order. His invention was un¬
equalled, particularly in dramatic painting and theatrical
effect. Some critics complain that he is defective in song;
but an intimate acquaintance with his works disproves
the assertion; and we have the emphatic declaration of
Rousseau, “ que le chant lui sortait par les pores.” It is
true that we cannot perhaps cull from his compositions
such melodious flowers as luxuriate in t\\echef-d'<xuvma{
Gimarosa, Mozart, and Rossini, and which gratify the
sense frequently as much when detached, as when blend¬
ed in their original wreath. The melodies of Gluck will
not, with a few exceptions, stand the test of such a parti¬
tion. They are essentially musical phrases which belong
to a great and expanded work of imagination. They are
the links of a chain, the component elements of a compre¬
hensive design, which must be judged of relatively, and
with reference to combination.
Thus it is that, when we criticise Gluck, we should not
examine his operas in detail. We must consider them as we
would a noble edifice, in the aggregate of its beauty. The
same spirit that actuates us in reading the epics of Virgil
and Tasso should exercise its dominion when we listen to
the music of Gluck. His aim was rather to satisfy the
mind than to flatter the ear; his music appears only to
impart energy or softness to the declamation, as the dif¬
ferent situations of the several characters require; and
such is the effect of his operas when properly performed,
that many persons who hear them become so deeply inte¬
rested, that they cannot for an instant withhold their eyes
from the stage, and are kept in perpetual anxiety till the
denouement of the drama ; so fervently does he appeal to
the sympathies of mankind, and gratify the sweetest
yearnings of our nature.
Whilst we admire the perfect symmetry and almost in¬
definable beauty of the operas of Gluck, we are equally
charmed with the amazing fertility of his inventive powers.
His airs are invariably original; he never copies himself.
If his melodies do not always catch the ear, it is because
we do not take them in connection with the passion or
sentiment they are meant to express. Tried by that test,
we find them exquisitely appropriate. In recitative Gluck
is universally allowed to be greatest among the great. In
this department he is still the model which the best mas¬
ters copy, and nothing can surpass his movements for su¬
blimity, boldness, and sustained beauty. The chorusses
in his operas are full of animation and imposing effect.
His judicious employment of orchestral accompaniments,
and the striking effects which he thereby produced, was
a new feature in music ; and much as this has since been
studied, nothing can better assure us of his superlative ge¬
nius, than the fact, that up to this day, he stands highest
in that essential branch of operatic composition, which in¬
deed it may almost be said he created.
Whatever may be the opinion of some persons in regard
to the general effect of the music of Gluck, all are agreed
in assigning to him the palm of superiority in his treat¬
ment of classical subjects, and depicting scenes of deep
and overpowering grief. “ He is,” says an anonymous
author, “ the only master capable of grappling with a
classical subject; he could give us, better than any,
Gy
it
G L U
Ariadne passioning for Theseus’ injury
And unjust flight.
v lovers, tyrannically separated for ever, have the de-
v* g‘jr 0f his.” “ It is,” says a writer in the Harmonicon,
J wn scenes of great distress, in which the human heart is
rut by complicated misery, or in situations where it is
tfn by the tempestuous fury of unbridled passions, that
CtJck, transported beyond the bounds of ordinary genius,
lijvvs such energy and colouring of passion, as to become
apnce poet, painter, and musician. It may be that his
epression of passion is sometimes too strong for common
Mirers; but
. 1 dchappe souvent des sons h la douleur,
iui sont faux pour I’oreille, niais sont vrais pour le cCeur.”
The operas of Gluck, much to the discredit of modern
tlte, are seldom heard in France or England ; but in
Cirmany they are frequently performed; and in Berlin,
wen any of his great operas are given, the theatres are
c»vvded to excess. The Germans indeed regard Gluck
aithe greatest of all dramatic composers. The style of
lif airs is studied, and great attention bestowed on their
eect; and there is a warmth and an intensity displayed
h the performers in taking the recitative, and an energy
itheir action, which nothing but such music as Gluck’s
clild inspire.
Ipluck is described as having been of a frank and open
curacter, although his temper was hasty and choleric.
F was very rigid in exacting from performers the ut-
nst purity and correctness of execution. (z. z.)
IpLUCKSTADT, a city, the capital of the duchy of
Ililstein, belonging to the German dominions of Denmark.
I! is strongly fortified on the north bank of the Elbe,
viere that river is joined by the Little Rhine. It is in a
rirshy but fertile district, and contains 558 houses, with
ii)0 inhabitants. The harbour is good, and from it se-
vral vessels are annually equipped for the Greenland
vi ale fishery. Long. 9. 21. E. Lat. 53. 47. N.
'GLUE, an inspissated jelly, of a tenacious nature, em-
piyed by artificers as a cement. It is made from various
sostances, according to the uses to which it is to be ap-
jud, but most commonly by boiling the parings of hides
si 1 other offals in water, and then straining the viscid
utter through a wicker basket, and suffering the impu-
rres to subside, after which process it is again boiled,
(immon glue is made of the skins of animals, such as oxen,
qvs, sheep, and the like. The parings are first digested in
hie water, to remove grease and dirt from them ; they
£i then steeped in water, and stirred from time to time;
Utly, they are piled in a heap to allow of the water be-
Ji; pressed out, and then put into the boiler. The water
i generally kept near to a boiling heat, without being
s lered to enter into ebullition. When sufficiently thick,
t: glue is poured into flat frames or moulds ; and when
mgealed it is cut up into square pieces, and afterwards
oed in a coarse net. Glue improves by age, and that is
tnsidered as the best which, if steeped in water three or
fir days, swells without melting, and resumes its former
euensions after being dried. A transparent and beau-
G1 glue is made of the shreds and parings of vellum,
1 chment, or white leather.
GLUTTONY, a voracity of appetite, or a propensity
f gormandising.
une of our Danish kings, named Hardyknute, was so
giat a glutton, that a historian calls him iiocca de Porco,
1 ine’s Mouth. His tables were covered four times a
4)' with the most costly viands which the air, the sea,
c the land could furnish; and as he lived, so he died;
f he fell down dead whilst revelling and carousing at a
1 dding banquet at Lambeth. His death was so welcome
I his subjects that they celebrated the day with sports
LI pastimes, calling it Hock-tide, which signifies scorn
G M E
591
and contempt. With this king ended the reign of the
Danes in England.
GMELIN, John George, public lecturer on botany
and physic at Tubingen, member of the Royal Society of
Gottingen, and also of the Academy of Sciences at Stock¬
holm, was born on the 12th of August 1709, at Tubin¬
gen, where his father was an apothecary. Such was his
diligence whilst at school, that he was qualified to attend
the academical lectures at the age of fourteen, and was
created doctor of medicine when only nineteen. About
this time he paid a visit to the metropolis of the Russian
empire, that he might have the pleasure of seeing some
of his former teachers; and there he became acquainted
with Blumentrost, director of the academy, who intro¬
duced him to the meetings of the members, and procured
for him a pension. At Petersburg he was so much es¬
teemed, that when he intimated a wish, in 1729, to return
to Tubingen, he was honoured with a place amongst the
regular members of the academy, and chosen professor
of chemistry and natural history in the year 1731. In
order to carry into execution a plan which had been
formed by Peter the Great, for exploring a passage to
China and Japan along the coast of the Russian empire,
Gmelin was selected, along with two others, as properly
qualified for that undertaking, which had also for its ob¬
ject to ascertain the boundaries of Siberia. The depart¬
ment of natural history was assigned to him; and he had
with him and his companions, six students, two draftsmen,
two hunters, two miners, four land-surveyors, and twelve
soldiers, with a sergeant and drummer. They began their
journey on the 19th of August 1733; and in 1736 Steller
and a painter joined their society, to assist Gmelin in his
arduous labours. By exploring Kamtschatka, they hoped to
accomplish their mission in a satisfactory manner, for which
purpose Steller proceeded to this place, whilst the rest of
the party continued their travels through Siberia. In Feb¬
ruary 1743 Gmelin returned to Petersburg in safety, after
a dangerous journey which lasted nine years and a half,
but proved of the utmost importance to various branches
of science. He resumed the offices which he had filled
before; and having paid a visit, in 1747, to his native
country, he was chosen professor, whilst absent, in the
room of Bachmeister. But in May 1755, he was seized
with a violent fever, which put a period to his valuable
life, in the forty-fifth year of his age. He was undoubted¬
ly one of the most eminent botanists of the eighteenth cen¬
tury, and has rendered his name immortal by his Flora Si-
birica, sen historia plantarum Siberia, in four parts, large
quarto. He determined the boundaries between Europe
and Asia, which every geographer has adopted since his
day. Through all his works the traces of great modesty,
a sacred regard to truth, and the most extensive know¬
ledge of nature, are remarkably conspicuous.
Gmelin, Samuel Theophilus, was born at Tubingen on
the 23d of June 1745. After having taken the degree of
doctor in medicine at the age of nineteen, he went to
finish his studies at Leyden, where a conformity of tastes
for natural history united him with Pallas. Finding him¬
self involved in difficulties, he entertained the idea of em¬
barking as surgeon on board of a vessel bound for the East
Indies ; but in the mean time, whilst waiting for assistance
from his family, he established himself in the little town of
Brill. The vicinity of the sea, aud some excursions which
he made by water in the neighbourhood, afforded him an
opportunity of collecting many marine plants, and examin¬
ing with attention the sea-w eeds, and suggested to him the
idea of writing their history. He next visited Belgium,
and then proceeded to Paris, w here he was well received by
Adanson, w ho inspired him with something of his own
aversion to the system of Linnaeus. After a short stay iu
his native country, he was, in 1766, called to St Petersburg^
Gmelin.
592
ONE
G N O
Gnesen.
Gmund there to profess botany. Catherine II., faithful to the plan berg, formerly a part of Poland. It extends over 441
11 executed by several of her predecessors, of causing learned square miles, contains eight cities and towns, and 2^3 "m
men to travel in different parts of the Russian empire, or- villages, with 31,200 inhabitants. The capital is the city of GikL
dered a new expedition of the same description to be un- the same name, which stands on a lake between two lul]s ^
dertaken. Gmelin obtained permission to join this expedi- It contains a cathedral and twelve Catholic churches, two
tion ; and after having had the honour of being presented convents, and a nunnery. It is the see of an archbishop
to the empress, he set out in the month of June 1768, vi -c —j *  r . “n
sited the Valdai Mountains, passed the winter at Woronetz,
and descended the Don as far as Tscherkask. Here the
frightful picture which was drawn of the journey by the
steppes, and along the frontier to the mouth of the Terek in
the Caspian Sea, induced him to renounce his first project;
and he returned by the ordinary route, as far as Zaritzin,
in order to proceed to Astrakan by the Volga. In the
years 1770 and 1771 he visited different harbours of the
Caspian, and examined with peculiar attention those parts
of the Persian provinces bordering upon that sea, of which
he has given a circumstantial account in his travels. Ac¬
tuated by a zeal for extending his observations, he attempt¬
ed to pass through the western provinces of Persia, which
are in a state of perpetual disturbance, and infested by nu¬
merous banditti. In this expedition he, in April 1772,
quitted Enzelli, a small trading place in Ghilan, upon the
once the primate of Poland. The town is fortified, and
contains 4500 inhabitants, who carry on brewing, distillin?
tanning, and making linens, and have two large fairs an¬
nually. Long. 17. 31. 25. E. Lat. 52. 25. 30. N.
GNOMES, Gnomi, certain imaginary beings, who, ac¬
cording to the cabalists, inhabit the inner parts of the
earth. They are supposed to be small in stature, and the
guardians of quarries, mines, and other similar works.
GNOMON, in Dialling, the style, pin, or cock of a dial
which by its shadow shows the hour of the day. The gno¬
mon of every dial represents the axis of the earth. (See
Dial and Dialling.) The word is Greek, which
literally implies something that makes a thing know'n,
in consequence of the style or pin indicating or making
known the hour.
GNOSTICS, ancient heretics, who arose principally in
the East, from the very origin of Christianity. It appears,
southern shore of the Caspian; but, on account of many from several passages in the sacred writings, that many
persons were infected with the Gnostic heresy in the first
century, though the sect did not render itself conspicuous,
either for number or reputation, before the time of Hadrian,
when some writers erroneously date its rise. The name is
formed of the Latin gnosticus, and that from the Greek ym-
difficulties and dangers, did not, until the 2d of December
1773, reach Sallian, a town situated at the mouth of the
river Koor. He thence proceeded to Baku and Kuba, in
the province of Shirvan, where he met with a friendly re¬
ception from Ali Feth Khan, the sovereign of that district.
But after he had been joined by twenty Uralian Cossacks, r/xo;, knowing, a verbal derivative of yivuffxu, I know; and
and when he was only four days journey from the Russian was adopted by the members of this sect, as if they were the
fortress of Kislar, on the Terek, he and his companions only persons who had the true knowledge of Christianity,
were, on the 5th of February 1774, arrested by order of Accordingly, they looked upon all other Christians as simple,
Usmei Khan, a petty Tartar prince, through whose terri- ignorant, and barbarous persons, who explained andinter-
tories he was obliged to pass. Usmei urged as a pretence
for this arrest, that thirty years before several families had
escaped from his dominions, and had found an asylum in
the Russian territories ; adding, that Gmelin should not
be released until these families were restored. The pro¬
fessor was removed from prison to prison ; and at length,
wearied out with continued persecutions, he expired, on the
27th of June, at Achmet-Kent, a village of the Caucasus.
preted the sacred writings in a too low, literal, and unedi¬
fying signification.
At first the Gnostics were only the philosophers and
wits of those times, who formed for themselves a peculiar
system of theology, agreeably to the philosophy of Pytha¬
goras and of Plato, to which they accommodated all their
interpretations of Scripture. But Gnostics afterwards be¬
came a general name, comprehending different sects and
who, though they differed amongst themselves as to circum¬
stances, yet all agreed in some common principles. They
were such as corrupted the doctrine of the gospel by a pro¬
fane intermixture with its divine truths of the tenets of the
oriental philosophy concerning the origin of evil and the
creation of the world. Such were the Valentinians, Simo-
nians, Carpocratians, Nicolaitans, and others.
The denomination of Gnostics was also sometimes ap¬
plied more particularly to the successors of the first Nico¬
laitans and Carpocratians in the second century. Such as
desire to become thoroughly acquainted with their doc¬
trines, reveries, and visions, may consult Irenaeus, Tertullian,
Clemens Alexandrinus, Origen, and Epiphanius, particu-
His death was occasioned partly by vexation for the loss of parties of heretics, who appeared in the first centuries, and
several papers and collections, and partly by disorders con¬
tracted from the fatigues of his long journey. Some of his
papers had been sent to Kislar during his imprisonment,
and the others were not without great difficulty rescued
from the hands of the barbarian who had detained him in
captivity. The arrangement of these papers, which form
the fourth volume of his travels, w'as at first consigned to
the care of Guldenstaedt, but upon his death was transferred
to the learned Pallas. The works of Gmelin are, 1. Histo-
ria Fucorum iconibus illustrata, St Petersburg, 1768, in
4to ; 2. Voyages dans differentes parties de 1’Empire de
Russie, pour faire des Recherches relatives a THistoire Na-
turelle, St Petersburg, 1770, 1774, 1784, in four vols. 4to; _ _ _
3. Several Memoirs in the Collections of the Society of larly the first of these writers, who narrates their opinions
Haerlem, and of the Academy of St Petersburg. Gmelin at large, and at the same time confutes them; indeed
was also editor of volumes iii. and iv. of the Hora Sibirica dwells more expressly on the Valentinians than any otier
of his uncle. sort of Gnostics; but he shows the general principles upon
GMUND, a bailiwick of the kingdom of Wurtemberg, which all their mistaken opinions were founded, and tie
in the circle of Jaxt, extending over 121 square miles, method they followed in explaining Scripture. He accuse’
and comprehending two cities, one market-town, and 131 them of introducing into religion certain vain and n icu
villages, with 22,640 inhabitants. It is a mountainous and lous genealogies, that is, a kind of divine processions or
woody district, not yielding corn equal to the demand, emanations, which had no foundation except in their own
The capital is a city of the same name, situated on the river
Rems. It contains 806 houses, and 5875 inhabitants,
who are employed in making cloths, hosiery, and other
clothing, and many of them in the trade of silversmiths
and jewellers. Long. 10. 0. 4. E. Lat. 48. 48. 15. N.
GNESEN, a circle of the Prussian province of Brom-
wild imaginations.
In fact, the Gnostics admitted that these aeons or ema^
nations were nowhere expressly delivered in the sacr
writings ; but insisted, at the same time, that Jesus C ris^
had intimated them in parables to such as could understan
him. They built their theology not only upon the gospe
r
G N O
s. ai the epistles of St Paul, but also upon the law of Moses
J a I the prophets. The writings of the latter were pecu-
]j ;ly serviceable to them, on account of the allegories and
alj.sions with which they abound, and which are capable
o idifferent interpretations ; but their doctrine concern-
ii j the creation of the world by one or more inferior be-
ii s of an evil or imperfect nature, led them to deny the
diine authority of those books of the Old Testament
Wich contradicted this idle fiction, and filled them with
ambhorrence of the religion of Moses, who, they alleged,
w> actuated by the malignant author of this world, and
ccsulted his own glory and authority, not the real advan-
tg;3 of men. Their persuasion that evil resided in matter,
asi ts centre and source, made them treat the body with
cctempt, discourage marriage, and reject the doctrine of
tl resurrection of the body and its re-union with the im-
nrtal spirit. Their notion that malevolent genii presid-
eein nature, and occasioned diseases and calamities, wars
an desolations, induced them to apply themselves to the
stily of magic, in order to weaken the powers or to sus-
ped the influence of their malignant agents.
Ipe Gnostics considered Jesus Christ as the Son of
Gp, and consequently inferior to the Father, as a being
w > came into the world for the rescue and happiness of
nrerable mortals, oppressed by matter and evil beings;
buthey rejected our Lord’s humanity, upon the principle
the every thing corporeal is essentially and intrinsically
eii; and hence the greater part of them denied the re-
aly of bis sufferings. They attached great value to the
kinning of the gospel of St John, where they fancied
tilt they saw their aeons, or emanations, under the Word,
tl Life, and the Light. They divided all nature into
tl be kinds of beings, hylic or material, psychic or animal,
m pneumatic or spiritual. Upon the same principle they
alli distinguished three sorts of men; material, animal,
at spiritual. The first, who were material, and incapa-
bbof knowledge, inevitably perished, both soul and body ;
tin third, such as the Gnostics themselves pretended to
biJwere all certainly saved; but the psychic, or animal,
w» were intermediate between the two others, were ca-
p®le either of being saved or damned, according to their
g«(d or evil actions.
fith regard to their moral doctrines and conduct, they
we much divided. The greater part of the sectadopt-
ei ustere rules of life, recommended rigorous abstinence,
ai prescribed severe bodily mortifications, with the view
of iurifying and exalting the mind. Some, however, main-
tated that there was no moral difference in human ac-
tiiis, and thus confounding right and wrong, gave a loose
n. to the passions, asserting the innocence of following
bhdly all their impulses, and of living according to their
ti ultuous dictates. They supported their opinions and
pmtice by various authorities ; some referred to fictitious
ai apocryphal writings of Adam, Abraham, Zoroaster,
C ast, and his apostles ; others boasted that they had de-
dded their sentiments from certain doctrines of Christ
wdi had been concealed from the vulgar ; others affirm-
hat they had arrived at superior degrees of wisdom by
ailnnate vigour of mind; and others asserted that they
▼ e instructed in these mysterious parts of theological
s<;nce by Theudas, a disciple of St Paul, and by Mat-
fi ;s, one of the friends of our Lord. The tenets of the
ai' ent Gnostics were revived in Spain in the fourth cen-
tL by a sect called the Priscillianists.
he appellation of Gnostic sometimes also occurs in a
S' 1 sense, in the writings of the ancient ecclesiastical au-
tf's, particularly those of Clemens Alexandrinus, who, in
person of his Gnostic, describes the characters and
jf ‘‘ties of a perfect Christian. This point he labours in the
s|! nth book of his Stromata, where he shows that none but
*1 Gnostic or learned person has any true religion. He af-
I OL. X.
GOA 593
firms, that were it possible for the knowledge of God to be Goa.
separated from eternal salvation, the Gnostic would make
no scruple in preferring the knowledge; and that if God
would promise him impunity for doing any thing he had
once spoken against, or offer him heaven on those terms,
he would never alter his measures. In this sense the fa¬
ther uses Gnostics, in opposition to the heretics of the
same name ; affirming that the true Gnostic is he who has
grown old in the study of the Holy Scriptures, and who
preserves the orthodox doctrine of the apostles and of the
church ; whereas the false Gnostic abandons all the apos¬
tolical traditions, imagining himself wiser than even the
apostles. But the name of Gnostic, which was originally
the most glorious, became at length infamous from the idle
opinions and dissolute lives of the persons who affected it.
GOA, a celebrated city of Hindustan, in the province of
Bejapoor, and the capital of all the Portuguese settlements
in the East Indies. It is the residence of the viceroy, and
of the chief Portuguese inhabitants; the seat of the su¬
preme court of judicature, and the see of an archbishop,
who is primate of the East. It is situated on the north
side of an island, is about twelve miles long and six broad,
and stands at the mouth of the Mandova river. Goa consists
of two distinct cities. The old one is eight miles up the
river, and is now almost deserted by the secular Portu¬
guese, on account of its being unhealthy. It contains
many magnificent churches, and exhibits specimens of ar¬
chitecture superior to any thing attempted by Europeans
in other parts of India, particularly the church and convent
of St Augustin. The city is large, the streets are straight,
the houses regularly and handsomely built of stone in the
European style, many of them large and magnificent,
though they are now no longer inhabited. The viceroy
and principal inhabitants reside in the new city, which is
at the mouth of the river, and within the forts. It possesses
two harbours, one on each side of the island, both of
which are well defended by various castles and batteries
mounting heavy cannon. The towns are also fortified, but
they are of too great an extent to withstand a siege. Al-
goada Point, which is in longitude 67. 73. 53. east, latitude
15. 29. north, forms the northern extremity of Goa Bay.
It has a lighthouse and small fort on it; but the principal
fort is situated close to the sea, on the south-east side of
the headland, where there is a well of excellent water,
from which the shipping are supplied. Nostra Senhora
de la Cabo, a large monastery, of a white appearance, is
situated on the summit of the bluff point of land, about
two miles and a half south-east of Algoada, which forms
the south side of the bay. The common anchorage is
abreast of Algoada fort, the flag-staff bearing about
north at half a mile distance from the shore. The bar at
the entrance of the river is about two miles to the east¬
ward of Algoada Point, having sixteen or eighteen feet on
it at high-water of spring-tides. The bottom is hard and
rocky; and the channel so winding and intricate, that a
ship ought not to enter the river without a pilot. After
the early part of May, when it is considered unsafe to re¬
main at the anchorage in the roads, the Portuguese send
their large ships, which cannot run into the river, to Marma-
gon roads, four or five miles to the southward of Algoada
fort, where they are sheltered from the south-west mon¬
soon by mooring close under the north-east side of that
peninsula. The colonial settlement at Goa seems now to
be almost abandoned by the mother country, and the in¬
habitants scarcely retain the national language or man¬
ners. The trade has also greatly fallen off, and the people
are impoverished, so that the best families are reduced to
gain a scanty subsistence by working at lace or muslin.
Not more than three ships arrive from Portugal in the
course of the year, and these generally proceed to the
British settlements to complete their cargoes for Europe.
4 F
594 GOA
GOD
Goch.
The trade from Goa to China is carried on by one or two.
ships in the year, which are called China ships. These
Carry to Surat, and the ports to the northward, Chinese and
European goods, and returning with cotton and other
articles, call at Goa to complete their cargoes for China.
They commence their trade at the most southern settle¬
ment, which is Ajengo, and thence they proceed to Co¬
chin, Calicut, Tellicherry, and Mangalore, and then to
Goa ; at these different places they take in pepper, carda-
mums, cassia, lignea, and other articles, which they resell
at their northern settlements, and complete the voyage
within the year. A coasting trade is carried on in small
vessels with the different ports on the coast, whence they
return to Goa with produce, which forms the home car¬
goes of their ships. With Macao and the British set¬
tlements an inconsiderable trade is carried on; the im¬
ports consisting principally of piece goods, raw silk, grain,
sugar, woollens, and a few European articles, whilst the
exports are piece goods, betel nut, hemp, and other arti¬
cles of trifling amount.
Goa was taken from its Hindu rajahs of Bijanagur, by
the Bhamenee sovereigns of the Deccan. On the arrival
of the Portuguese on the Malabar coast it was an opulent
place, well fortified, and subject to Zabaim, a potent
prince, from whom it was taken by the Portuguese gene¬
ral Albuquerque. It was retaken by the native prince,
after which Albuquerque, having received reinforcements,
again succeeded in 1510 in making himself master of the
city after a bloody assault. He improved its defences,
and constituted it the capital of all his conquests ; and it
has ever since remained in possession of the Portuguese,
who during the sixteenth century extended their con¬
quests, and obtained possession of numerous places on the
sea-coasts of India. In the course of these operations
they were involved in hostilities with the Mahrattas ; and
advancing inland, laid siege to the town of Pondah. Here
they were surrounded by a large Mahratta force, and ef¬
fected their retreat with great difficulty and serious loss.
Having formed an alliance with Aurungzebe, they suc¬
ceeded in repulsing the Mahrattas, with whom they at
length concluded a peace. In 1518 the Portuguese power
in India was at its height, and from this period it began
to decline. In 1580 the Portuguese possessed the follow¬
ing places in India, namely, Diu Damaun, Choul, Baheen,
Salsette, Bombay, and Goa. They had factories at Ba¬
bul, Onore, Barcelore, Mangalore, Cananore, Calicut,
Cranganore, Cochin, and Quilon. They had establish¬
ments on the coast of Ceylon, and factories in the Bay of
Bengal, at Masulipatam, Negapatam, and St Thome, with
commercial stations in Bengal. They possessed, besides,
the city of Malacca, and factories on the coasts of.the
Burman empire and the province of Chittagong. They
acquired possession of the Spice Islands in the Eastern
Archipelago, and carried on a considerable intercourse
with Japan and China. They did not acquire Macao until
1586. After the conquest of Portugal in 1580, by Phi¬
lip II. of Spain, the intercourse of the colonies with the
mother country was much abridged; and this eastern
empire, composed of the loose materials of recent con¬
quest, began to decay, from the vices of its internal ad¬
ministration, and from the power of the priests. It has
now altogether declined, and forms a very inconsiderable
appendage to the mother country. The travelling distance
from Poonah is 245 miles, from Bombay 292, from Delhi
1158, and from Calcutta 1300 miles. Long. 73. 42. E.
Lat. 15. 30. N. (Milburn, Oriental Commerce; Buchan¬
an, Travels in Mysore; Macpherson, History of the Trade
of India ; &c.)
GOACH, the capital town of the Macassar country, in
the island ot Celebes. It is sometimes called the kingdom
of Goach. Here the Malays, after the arrival of the Por¬
tuguese in 1512, were allowed to build a mosque, as th
were not yet converted to the Christian religion. In 177«
the city was stormed by the Dutch, and the fortification eld
razed. ''"vj
GOALPARAH, a town of Hindustan, in the provinc
of Bengal, and district of Rangamatty, situated on the sourt
shore of the Brahmapootra, near the frontier of Assam*
Here is carried on a very considerable trade with the
Assamese, who bring coarse cloths, stick-lac, gold, ivon
wax, and tar, which they exchange for salt, silks, and fine
muslins. The trade would be more considerable, were it
not impeded by the disorderly state of the country, and the
savage manners of the chiefs, who defraud and frequently
murder the traders. A detachment of native infantry is
stationed here to guard the frontier, and no European is
allowed to proceed beyond it without a pass from the go¬
vernment. It is a hundred and seventy miles north by east
from Dacca. Long. 90. 32. E. Lat. 26. 8. N.
GOAND, a mountainous district of Hindustan, in the
province of Gundwana, intersected by the Mahanuddy river.
The inhabitants are very uncivilized, and boast of never
having been subdued, though they are rendered tributary
by the rajah of Nagpoor. The country is poor, and there
are no good roads.
. GOAT Island, the southernmost of the Bashee islands,
in the Eastern Seas, It is the smallest of the group, flat
and level, and has a number of goats in it, from which it
derives its name. Long. 120. 13. E. Lat. 13. 52. N.
GOBAN, a small island, with a town, at the mouth of
the Euphrates, where it empties itself into the Persian
Gulf, fifty miles east-south-east of Bassora.
GOBELIN, Giles, a celebrated French dyer, in the
reign of Francis L, who, having discovered a method of
dyeing a beautiful scarlet, had his name given to the finest
French scarlets. His house, in the suburb of St Marcel
at Paris, and the rivulet which he made use of, are still call¬
ed the Gobelins. An academy for drawing, and a manu¬
factory of fine tapestries, were erected in this quarter in
1666; for which reason the tapestries are called Gobelin.
GOBINGUNGE, a town of Bengal, in the district of
Ghoraghaut, situated on the eastern bank of the Currattya
river. It carries on a considerable trade in grain and cotton.
Long. 89. 3. E. Lat. 25. 6. N.
GOBLET, or Gobelet, a kind of drinking cup, or
bowl, commonly of a round figure, and without either foot
or handle. The word is French, gobelet, which Salmasius
and others derive from the barbarous Latin cupa. Bu-
daeus deduces it from the Greek xvmXXov, a sort of cup
GOCAUK, a town of Hindustan, in the province of
Bejapoor. It is a place of considerable extent and im¬
portance, situated on a hill, and watered and defended on
the south side by the Gutpurba river, whilst on the other
three sides it is surrounded by a brick wall and a wet
ditch. Here is an extensive manufacture of cotton and
silk goods. The silk is procured from Bengal by way of
Goa. It was taken from the king of Bejapoor by Sultan
Muazim, son of Aurungzebe, in 1685, but does not now
contain any buildings or ruins of consequence. About
two miles from this place is a very fine cataract, 169 yards
broad, and 174 feet in perpendicular height. It is formed
by the river Gutpurba, which is precipitated from the hills
to the low country. Long. 75. 6. E. Lat. 16. 20. N.
GOD, one of the many names of the Supreme Being-
God is also used in speaking of any false deity of the
heathens. The Greeks and Latins, it is observable, did
not mean by the name of god, an all-perfect being, of
whose nature, eternity, infinity, omnipresence, and omni"
potence, were essential attributes; amongst them, the wor
only implied an excellent and superior nature, and, ac¬
cordingly, they gave the appellation of gods to all being8
of a rank or class higher and more perfect than men, espe-
tfu
lleir
tttll
GOD
ingt|1lly to those who were inferior agents in the divine ad-
nnistration. Thus men themselves, according to their
E!5tem, might become gods after death ; inasmuch as
fpir souls might attain to a degreQ of excellence superior
tithat which they were capable of while in life.
GODALMING, a market-town of the hundred of its
c,n name, in the county of Surrey, on the great road to
J rtsmouth, thirty-four miles from London. It is very
jjasantly situated in a valley, watered by the river Wye,
viich is navigable to the Thames, and by the latter to the
ntropolis. There is a corporation consisting of a warden
ail eight assistants, but it returns no member to parlia-
mnt. There is a well-attended market on Saturdays, at
vdch much corn, especially barley, is sold; and making
ijnto malt is one branch of the trade carried on, and by
t« river much is transmitted to London. The popula-
t n amounted in 1801 to 3405, in 1811 to 3543, in 1821
tt4098, and in 1831 to 4529.
GODAVERY, a large river of India, which has its rise
lithe Western Ghauts, seventy miles to the north-east
ci Bombay, and which, with a circuitous curve, flows
rarly over the whole breadth of the peninsula in a south-
ciit direction. After traversing the province of Aurunga-
Rl and the country of Tellingana from west to east, it
t ns to the south-eastward, and, receiving the Bain Gonga
sout ninety miles above the sea, besides many smaller
ri ers, separates into two principal channels at Rajamundry,
ce of which falls into the Bay of Bengal a few miles
tilth of the town of Coringa, and the other a little below
I.rsipore, forming between them the island of Nagur,
cnprehending 500 square miles, and which, being inter-
ti;ted by various ramifications from these rivers, includes
tueral tide-harbours for vessels of moderate burden, and
i:highly fertile and productive. Ingeram, Coringa, Ya-
urn, Bandarmalanka, and Narsipore, are among the places
t uated at the mouth of this river, which appears to be
tl3 most considerable stream that rises between the Ganges
tid Cape Comorin. Its whole course may be estimated
ti nearly 800 miles, (having, owing to the peculiar configu-
ii ion of the Indian peninsula, which rises to its height
inch nearer the western than the eastern shore, nearly
ti.versed the country from sea to sea. During the rainy
aason the Godavery rolls a prodigious volume of water
tl the ocean; in many places it is more than a mile in
Ladth. During the dry season its bed consists in many
] ices of an expanse of sand, the river being divided into
i merous shallow streams. Extensive forests of teak
i es line the shores of the river until it emerges from the
"laut Mountains.
GODDARD, Jonathan, an eminent physician and
i emist, and one of the first promoters of the Royal So-
< ity, was born about the year 1617. He was elected a
I low of the College of Physicians in 1646, and appointed
I' ider of the anatomical lecture in that college in 1647.
j* he took part against Charles I., accepted the warden-
ii ip of Merton Colleg,e, Oxford, from Oliver Cromwell
’icn chancellor, and sat as sole representative of that
} iversity in Cromwell’s parliament, he was removed from
II wardenship by Charles II. He was then, however,
pfessor of physic at Gresham College, to which he re-
' ed, and continued to attend those meetings which gave
f th to the Royal Society, upon the first establishment
' which he was nominated one of the council. Being
j ly persuaded that the preparation of medicines was not
^;s the physician’s duty than prescribing them, he con-
i intly prepared his own; and in 1668 he published a
;atise recommending his example to general practice.
2 died of an apoplectic attack in 1674; and his memory
Js been preserved by the drops which bear his name,
t lerwise called Gutter Anglicana;, the secret of which he
!f d to Charles II. for L.5000.
GOD 595
GODDESS, a heathen deity of the female sex. It was Goddess
the peculiar privilege of the goddesses to be represented ^ 1
naked on medals ; for it was supposed that the imagina- Godwin,
tion must be awed and restrained by the consideration of
the divine character.
GODFATHERS and Godmothers, persons who, at
the baptism of infants, answer for their future conduct,
and solemnly promise that they will renounce the devil
and all his works, and follow a life of piety and virtue ;
and by this means lay themselves under an indispensable
obligation to instruct them, and watch over their conduct.
Ihis custom, which is of great antiquity in the Christian
church, was probabty instituted to prevent children being
brought up in idolatry, in case their parents died before
they arrived at years of discretion. The number of god¬
fathers and godmothers is reduced to two in the church
of Rome, and three in the church of England ; but former¬
ly there was no limit to the number.
GODFREY of Bouillon, prince of Lorraine, a celebrat¬
ed crusader, and victorious commander. He was chosen
general of the expedition which the Christians undertook
for the recovery of the Holy Land, and sold his dukedom
to prepare for the war. He took Jerusalem from the
Turks in 1099; but his piety would not permit him to
wear a diadem of gold in the city where his Saviour had
been crowned with thorns. The sultan of Egypt after¬
wards sent against him a powerful army, which he defeat¬
ed with terrible slaughter. Godfrey died in 1160.
GODMANCHESTER, a town of the county of Hun¬
tingdon, in the hundred of Toesland, fifty-eight miles from
London. It stands in a damp situation on the river Ouse,
and is said to have been once a very large city. It is now
only remarkable for the excellence of its soil and agricul¬
ture. It is a corporate town, but sends no members to
parliament, and is so near to Huntingdon as to need no
market. The inhabitants amounted in 1801 to 1573, in
1811 to 1779, in 1821 to 1953, and in 1831 to 2146.
GODSTONE, a town of the county of Surrey, in the
hundred of Tandridge, twenty miles from London. It
stands at the foot of the range of chalk hills, in a healthy
soil and mild climate. The inhabitants, who are chiefly
occupied in agriculture, amounted in 1801 to 1081, in
1811 to 1156, in 1821 to 1210, and in 1831 to 1397.
GODWIN, Francis, son of Dr Godwin, bishop of Bath
and Wells, was born at Havington, Northamptonshire, in
1561. After passing through the usual course of gram¬
mar-school instruction, he was sent to Christ Church Col¬
lege, Oxford, where he was elected a student in 1578,
and took his degree of bachelor in 1580, and that of mas¬
ter of arts in 1583. About this time he wrote an amusing
piece on a philosophical subject, which, as it contradicted
certain received notions, he never published, but which
appeared about five years after his death, under the title
of the Man in the Moon, or a discourse of a Voyage
thither, by Domingo Gonzalez, 1638, in 8vo. This sati¬
rical production, which displays considerable fancy and
even genius, seems to have afforded to Dr Swift several
hints of which he availed himself in his voyage to La-
puta; and, what is still more remarkable, it shows the au¬
thor to have been acquainted with the Copernican system.
He also suppressed another piece, entitled Nuncius Inani-
matus, or the Inanimate Messenger, intended to com¬
municate various methods for conveying intelligence se¬
cretly, speedily, and safely ; a production which appears
to have been the prototype of Bishop Wilkins’ Mercury,
or secret and swift Messenger. It was published, however,
in 1657, and afterwards translated by Dr Thomas Smith.
Some time after he had taken his degree, Godwin entered
into holy orders, and soon became rector of Samford-Or-
cais in Somersetshire, a prebendary in the church of Wilts,
and canon-residentiary, also vicar of Weston-in-Zoyland
in the same county. Having turned his attention to the
subject of British antiquities, he became acquainted with
Camden, whom he accompanied in ajourney through Wales
in 1590,in search of curiosities; but, although he took great
pleasure in these inquiries, he at length confined himself
entirely to ecclesiastical history and antiquities. He was
created bachelor of divinity in 1593, and doctor in 1595,
when, having resigned the vicarage of Weston, he was ap¬
pointed rector of Bishop’s Lidiard in the same county. In
1601 he published his Catalogue of the Bishops of Eng¬
land, since the first planting of the Christian religion in
this island ; a work in which he embodied his collections
in ecclesiastical biography, and which, through the inter¬
cession of Lord Buekhurst, to whom he acted as chaplain,
procured him the bishopric of LlandafF. In 1615 he published
another edition, with numerous alterations and additions ;
but this having been very erroneously printed, owing to the
author’s distance from the press, he recast the whole in an
elegant Latin dress, and the year after sent it abroad to
be printed. This last edition was dedicated to the king,
who in return conferred upon him the bishopric of Here¬
ford, to which he was translated in 1617. The work was
afterwards reprinted, in the year 1743, with a continua¬
tion by Dr Richardson, the whole being in one volume
folio, with a portrait of Godwin, and other embellishments.
In 1616 he published, in Latin, Rerum Anglicarum Hen¬
rico VIII., etc. regnantibus, which was translated and pub¬
lished by his son under the title of Annals of England,
containing the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., and
Queen Mary, in folio. His last publication was a Com¬
putation of the Value of the Roman Sesterce and Attic
Talent, which appeared in the year 1630. After this he
fell into a languishing disorder, which put a period to his
existence in April 1633. (a.)
Godwin, or Goodwin Sands. See Kent.
GOELWARAH, a district of Hindustan, in the pro¬
vince of Gujrat, situated within the 2lst and 22d parallels
of north latitude, and bounded on the east by the Gulf of
Cambay. The greater part of this country, adjacent to
the Gulf of Cambay, was ceded by the Mahratta chief the
Guicowar, in 1805, in part payment of the subsidiary force
supplied for his protection. It is famous for a breed of
cattle, and its chief town is Gogo.
GOEST, a city of the Westphalian Prussian province,
the capital of a circle of the same name. It is in a fertile
district, is surrounded with walls, and contains 6745 inha¬
bitants, who are employed in various kinds of manufac¬
tures, but mostly on a contracted scale. It was formerly
one of the Hanse towns, and enjoyed the right of coining
money. Long. 8. 1. E. Lat. 51. 54. 15. N.
GOETHE, John Wolfgang von, a man of command¬
ing influence in the literature of modern Germany
throughout the latter half of his long life, and possessing
two separate claims upon our notice; one in right of his
own unquestionable talents; and another much stronger,
though less direct, arising out of his position, and the ex¬
travagant partisanship put forward on his behalf for the
last forty years. The literary body in all countries, and
for reasons which rest upon a sounder basis than that of
private jealousies, have always been disposed to a repub¬
lican simplicity in all that regards the assumption of rank
and personal pretensions. Valeat quantum valere potest, is
the form of license to every man’s ambition, coupled with
its caution : let his influence and authority be commensu¬
rate with his attested value : and, because no man in the
present infinity of human speculation, and the present
multiformity of human power, can hope for more than a
very limited superiority, there is an end at once to all ab¬
solute dictatorship. The dictatorship in any case could
be only relative, and in relation to a single department of
art or knowledge; and this for a reason stronger even
than that already noticed, viz. the vast extent of the field
on which the intellect is now summoned to employ itself r
That objection, as it applies only to the decree of the diffi. wT*'
culty, might be met by a corresponding degree of men- ^
tal energy; such a thing may be supposed, at least. But
another difficulty there is, of a profounder character, which
cannot be so easily parried : those who have reflected at
all upon the fine arts, know that power of one kind is often
inconsistent, positively incompatible, with power of ano¬
ther kind. For example, the dramatic mind is incompa¬
tible with the epic. And though we should consent to
suppose that some intellect might arise endowed upon a
scale of such angelic comprehensiveness as to vibrate
equally and indifferently towards either pole, still it is
next to impossible, in the exercise and culture of the two
powers, but some bias must arise which would give that
advantage to the one over the other which the right arm
has over the left. But the supposition, the very case put,
is baseless, and countenanced by no precedent. Yet, under
this previous difficulty, and with regard to a literature
convulsed, if any ever was, by an almost total anarchy,
it is a fact notorious to all who take an interest in Ger¬
many and its concerns, that Goethe did in one way or
other, through the length and breadth of that vast coun¬
try, establish a supremacy of influence wholly unexam¬
pled ; a supremacy indeed perilous in a less honourable
man, to those whom he might chance to hate, and with re¬
gard to himself thus far unfortunate, that it conferred upon
every work proceeding from his pen a sort of papal indul¬
gence, an immunity from criticism, or even from the ap¬
peals of good sense, such as it is not wholesome that any
man should enjoy. Yet we repeat that German literature
was and is in a condition of total anarchy: with this soli¬
tary exception, no name, even in the most narrow section of
knowledge or of power, has ever been able in that coun¬
try to challenge unconditional reverence ; whereas, with
us and in France, name the science, name the art, and
we will name the dominant professor ; a difference which
partly arises out of the fact that England and France are
governed in their opinions by two or three capital cities,
whilst Germany looks for its leadership to as many cities
as there are residenzen and universities : for instance, the
little territory with which Goethe was connected present¬
ed no less than two such public lights; Weimar, the mi-
denz or privileged abode of the Grand Duke, and Jena,
the university founded by that house. Partly, however,
this difference may be due to the greater restlessness,
and to the greater energy as respects mere speculation,
of the German mind. But no matter whence arising, or
how interpreted, the fact is what we have described: ab¬
solute confusion, the “ anarch old” of Milton, is the one
deity whose sceptre is there paramount; and yet there it
was, in that very realm of chaos, that Goethe built his
throne. That he must have looked with trepidation and
perplexity upon his wild empire and its “ dark founda¬
tions,” may be supposed. The tenure was uncertain to
him as regarded its duration ; to us it is equally uncertanj,
and in fact mysterious, as regards its origin. Meantime
the mere fact, contrasted with the general tendencies of
the German literary world, is sufficient to justify a notice,
somewhat circumstantial, of the man in whose favour,
whether naturally by force of genius, or by accident con¬
curring with intrigue, so unexampled a result was effected.
Goethe was born at noonday on the 28th of August
1749, in his father’s house at Frankfort on the Maine.
The circumstances of his birth were thus far remarkable,
that, unless Goethe’s vanity deceived him, they led to a
happy revolution hitherto retarded by female delicacy
falsely directed. From some error of the midwife who at¬
tended his mother, the infant Goethe appeared to be sti
born. Sons there were as yet none from this marriage,
everybody was therefore interested in the child s litei
and the panic which arose in consequence, having sur-
GOETHE.
v 2d its immediate occasion, was improved into a public
j ri0lution (for which no doubt society stood ready at that
n?ment) to found some course of public instruction from
tl; time forward for those who undertook professionally
t] critical duties of accoucheur.
r’ We have noticed the house in which Goethe was born,
gnivell as the city. Both were remarkable, and fitted to
Jave lasting impressions upon a young person of sensibi-
Ih. As to the city, its antiquity is not merely venerable,
b- almost mysterious; towers were at that time to be
ft'nd in the mouldering lines of its earliest defences,
wiich belonged to the age of Charlemagne, or one still
edier; battlements adapted to a mode of warfare ante-
ri- even to that of feudalism or romance. The customs,
u.ges, and local privileges of Frankfort, and the rural dis¬
torts adjacent, were of a corresponding character. Fes-
tiids were annually celebrated at a short distance from
tl; walls, which had descended from a dateless antiquity.
Jlsry thing which met the eye spoke the language of el-
d ages ; whilst the river on which the place was seated,
itigreat fair, which still held the rank of the greatest in
Clristendom, and its connection with the throne of Cae-
g; and his inauguration, by giving to Frankfort an inte-
r t and a public character in the eyes of all Germany, had
tii effect of countersigning, as it were, by state authority,
tii importance which she otherwise challenged to her
atestral distinctions. Fit house for such a city, and in
di; keeping with the general scenery, was that of Goethe’s
fiber. It had in fact been composed out of two contigu-
0) houses; that accident had made it spacious and ram-
bhg in its plan ; whilst a further irregularity had grown
01 of the original difference in point oflevel between the
ci responding stories of the two houses, making it neces-
s;y to connect the rooms of the same suite by short flights
cisteps. Some of these features were no doubt removed
tl the recast of the hou^e under the name of “ repairs”
(1 evade a city bye-law), afterwards executed by his
filler; but such was the house of Goethe’s infancy, and
Mali other circumstances of style and furnishing equally
as ique.
The spirit of society in Frankfort, without a court, a
11 versity, or a learned body of any extent, or a resident
milky in its neighbourhood, could not be expected to
( play any very high standard of polish. Yet, on the
(ler hand, as an independent city, governed by its own
aoarate laws and tribunals (that privilege of autonomy so
< irly valued by ancient Greece) and possessing besides
a esident corps of jurisprudents and of agents in various
riiks for managing the interests of the German emperor
a 1 other princes, Frankfort had the means within herself
(giving a liberal tone to the pursuits of her superior ci-
t sns, and of co-operating in no inconsiderable degree
vi h the general movement of the times, political or intel-
1 tual. The memoirs of Goethe himself, and in particu-
1 the picture there given of his own family, as well as
t ier contemporary glimpses of German domestic society
i those days, are sufficient to show that much knowledge,
1 ich true cultivation of mind, much sound refinement
(taste, were then distributed through the middle classes
eGerman society; meaning by that very indeterminate
tipression those classes which for Frankfort composed the
«stocracy, viz. all who had daily leisure, and regular funds
f employing it to advantage. It is not necessary to add,
1'cause that is a fact applicable to all stages of society,
tit Frankfort presented many and various specimens
1 original talent, moving upon all directions of human
eculation.
^et, with this general allowance made for the capaci-
s of the place, it is too evident that, for the most part,
ey lay inert and undeveloped. In many respects Frank-
rt resembled an English cathedral city, according to the
standard of such places seventy years ago, not, that is to
say, like Carlisle in this day, where a considerable manu¬
facture exists, but like Chester as it is yet. The chapter
of a cathedral, the resident ecclesiastics attached to the
duties of so large an establishment, men always well edu¬
cated, and generally having families, compose the original
nucleus, around which soon gathers all that part of the
local gentry who, for any purpose, whether of education
for their children, or of social enjoyment for themselves,
seek the advantages of a town. Hither resort all the
timid old ladies who wish for conversation, or other forms
of social amusement; hither resort the valetudinarians,
male or female, by way of commanding superior medical
advice at a cost not absolutely ruinous to themselves ; and
multitudes besides, with narrow incomes, to whom these
quiet retreats are so many cities of refuge.
Such, in one view, they really are; and yet in another
they have a vicious constitution. Cathedral cities in
England, imperial cities without manufactures in Ger¬
many, are all in an improgressive condition. The public
employments of every class in such places continue the
same from generation to generation. The amount of su¬
perior families oscillates rather than changes; that is, it
fluctuates within fixed limits: and, for all inferior families,
being composed either of shopkeepers or of menial ser¬
vants, they are determined by the number, or, which, on
a large average, is the same, by the pecuniary power, of
their employers. Hence it arises, that room is made for
one man, in whatever line of dependence, only by the
death of another; and the constant increments of the
population are carried off into other cities. Not less is
the difference of such cities as regards the standard of
manners: how striking is the soft and urbane tone of the
lower orders in a cathedral city, or in a watering place
dependent upon ladies, contrasted with the bold, often
insolent, demeanour of a self-dependent artisan or mu¬
tinous mechanic of Manchester and Glasgow.
Children, however, are interested in the state of socie¬
ty around them, chiefly as it affects their parents. Those
of Goethe were respectable, and perhaps tolerably repre¬
sentative of the general condition in their own rank. An
English authoress of great talent, in her Characteristics
of Goethe, has too much countenanced the notion that
he owed his intellectual advantages exclusively to his
mother. Of this there is no proof. His mother wins
more esteem from the reader of this day, because she
was a cheerful woman, of serene temper, brought into ad¬
vantageous comparison with a husband much older than
herself, whom circumstances had rendered moody, fitful,
sometimes capricious, and confessedly obstinate in that
degree which Pope has taught us to think connected with
inveterate error:
Stiff in opinion, always in the wrong,
unhappily presents an association too often actually oc¬
curring in nature, to leave much chance for error in pre¬
suming either quality from the other. And, in fact,
Goethe’s father was so uniformly obstinate in pressing his
own views upon all who belonged to him, whenever he
did come forward in an attitude of activity, that his fami¬
ly had much reason to be thankful for the rarity of such
displays. Fortunately for them, his indolence neutralized
his obstinacy. And the worst shape in which his trouble¬
some temper showed itself, was in what concerned the reli¬
gious reading of the family. Once begun, the worst book as
well as the best, the longest no less than the shortest, was
to be stedfastly read through to the last word of the last
volume ; no excess of yawning availed to obtain a reprieve,
not, adds his son, though he were himself the leader of
the yawners. As an illustration, he mentions Bowyer’s
History of the Popes ; which awful series of records, the
597
Goethe.
v—-‘Y*'*-'
598
GOETHE.
Goethe, catacombs, as it were, in the palace of history, were actual-
n-traversed from one end to the other of the endless
mite by the unfortunate house of Goethe. Allowing,
however, for the father’s unamiableness in this one point,
upon all intellectual ground both parents seem to have
met very much upon a level. Two illustrations may suf¬
fice, one of which occurred during the infancy of Goethe.
The science of education was at that time making its
first rude motions towards an ampler development; and,
amongst other reforms then floating in the general mind,
was one for eradicating the childish fear of ghosts, &c.
The young Goethes, as it happened, slept not in separate
beds only, but in separate rooms ; and not unfrequently
the poor children, under the stinging terrors of their
lonely situation, stole away from their “ forms,” to speak
in the hunter’s phrase, and sought to rejoin each other.
But in these attempts they were liable to surprises from
the enemy; papa and mamma were both on the alert,
and ,often intercepted the young deserter by a cross
march or an ambuscade; in which cases each had a sepa¬
rate policy for enforcing obedience. The father, upon
his general system of “ perseverance,” compelled the fu¬
gitive back to his quarters, and, in effect, exhorted him
to persist in being frightened out of his wits. To his
wife’s gentle heart that course appeared cruel, and she
reclaimed the delinquent by bribes; the peaches which
her garden walls produced being the fund from which
she chiefly drew her supplies for this branch of the secret
service. What were her winter bribes, when the long
nights would seem to lie heaviest on the exchequer, is not
said. Speaking seriously, no man of sense can suppose
that a course of suffering from terrors the most awful,
under whatever influence supported, whether under the
naked force of compulsion, or of that connected with
bribes, could have any final effect in mitigating the pas¬
sion of awe, connected, by our very dreams, with the sha¬
dowy and the invisible, or in tranquillizing the infantine
imagination. .
A second illustration involves a great moral event in
the history of Goethe, as it was, in fact, the first occa¬
sion of his receiving impressions at war with his reli¬
gious creed. Piety is so beautiful an ornament of the
youthful mind, doubt or distrust so unnatural a growth
from confiding innocence, that an infant freethinker is
heard of not so much with disgust as with perplexity. A
sense of the ludicrous is apt to intermingle ; and we lose
our natural horror of the result in wonder at its origin.
Yet in this instance there is no room for doubt; the fact
and the occasion are both on record ; there can be no ques¬
tion about the date ; and, finally, the accuser is no other
than the accused. Goethe’s own pen it is which proclaims,
that already, in the early part of his seventh year, his re¬
liance upon God as a moral governor had suffered a vio¬
lent shock, was shaken, if not undermined. On the 1st of
November 1755 occurred the great earthquake at Lisbon.
Upon a double account, this event occupied the thoughts
of all Europe for an unusual term of time ; both as an ex¬
pression upon a larger scale than usual ctf the mysterious
physical agency concerned in earthquakes, and also for the
awful human tragedy1 which attended either the earthquake
itself, or its immediate sequel in the sudden irruption of
the Tagus. Sixty thousand persons, victims to the dark
power in its first or its second avatar, attested the Titanic
scale upon which it worked. Here it was that the shallow
piety of the Germans found a stumbling-block. Those
who have read any circumstantial history of the physical
signs which preceded this earthquake, are aware that in i
England and Northern Germany many singular phenomena v
were observed, more or less manifestly connected with the
same dark agency which terminated at Lisbon, and run-
ning before this final catastrophe at times so accurately
varying with the distances, as to furnish something 1^
a scale for measuring the velocity with which it moved
These German phenomena, circulated rapidly over all Ger¬
many by the journals of every class, had seemed to give to
the Germans a nearer and more domestic interest in the
great event, than belonged to them merely in their univer¬
sal character of humanity. It is also well known to ob¬
servers of national characteristics, that amongst the Ger¬
mans the household charities, the pieties of the hearth, as
they may be called, exist, if not really in greater strength,
yet with much less of the usual balances or restraints, i
German father, for example, is like the grandfather of other
nations ; and thus a piety, which in its own nature scarce¬
ly seems liable to excess, takes, in its external aspect, too
often an air of effeminate imbecility. These two considera¬
tions are necessary to explain the intensity with which this
Lisbon tragedy laid hold of the German mind, and chiefly
under the one single aspect of its undistinguishing fury,
Women, children, old men—these, doubtless, had been
largely involved in the perishing sixty thousand; and that
reflection, it would seem from Goethe’s account, had so far
embittered the sympathy of the Germans with their distant
Portuguese brethren, that, in the Frankfort discussions, sub
len murmurs had gradually ripened into bold impeachment
of Providence. There can be no gloomier form of infidelity
than that which questions the moral attributes of the Great
Being in whose hands are the final destinies of us all. Such,
however, was the form of Goethe’s earliest scepticism,
such its origin; caught up from the very echoes which
rang through the streets of Frankfort when the subject
occupied all men’s minds : and such, for any thing that
appears, continued to be its form thenceforwards to the
close of his life, if speculations so crude could be said to
have any form at all. Many are the analogies, some close
ones, between England aud Germany with regard to the
circle of changes they have run through, political or social,
for a century back. The challenges are frequent to a com¬
parison ; and sometimes the result would be to the advan¬
tage of Germany, more often to ours. But in religious
philosophy, which in reality is the true popular philosophy,
how vast is the superiority on the side of this country.
Not a shopkeeper or mechanic, we may venture to say,
but would have felt this obvious truth, that surely the
Lisbon earthquake yielded no fresh lesson, no peculiar
moral, beyond what belonged to every man’s experience in
every age. A passage in the New Testament about the
fall of the tower of Siloam, and the just construction of that
event, had already anticipated the difficulty, if such it could
be thought. Not to mention, that calamities upon the
same scale in the earliest age of Christianity, the fall of the
amphitheatre at Fidenae, or the destruction of Pompeii,
had presented the same problem as the Lisbon earthquake.
Nay, it is presented daily in the humblest individual case,
where wrong is triumphant over right, or innocence con¬
founded with guilt in one common disaster. And that the
parents of Goethe should have authorized his error, if only
by their silence, argues a degree of ignorance in them
which could not have co-existed with much superior know¬
ledge in the public mind.
Goethe, in his Memoirs (book vi.), commends his father
for the zeal writh which he superintended the education ot
The
1 ^ ^ls no picture can ever hope to rival that hasty one sketched in the letter of the chaplain to the Lisbon factory. *
plague of Athens as painted by Thucydides or Lucretius, nay even the fabulous plague of London by De Foe, contain no scenes or
situations equal in effect to some in this plain historic statement. Nay, it would perhaps be difficult to produce a passage from Ew-
kiel, from Tischylus, or from Shakspeare, which would so profoundly startle the sense of sublimity as one or two of his incidents-
GOETHE.
599
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“eld
hiichildren. But apparently it was a zeal without know-
le, e. Many things were taught imperfectly, but all ca-
Hiily, and as chance suggested them. Italian was studied
«] tie, because the elder Goethe had made an Italian tour,
an: had collected some Italian books, and engravings by
It an masters. Hebrew was studied a little, because
G the the son had a fancy for it, partly with a view to
th logy, and partly because there was a Jewish quarter,
gl(] my and sequestrated, in the city of Frankfort. French
oflied itself no doubt on many suggestions, but originally
on K'casion of a French theatre, supported by the staff of
thiFrench army when quartered in the same city. Latin
wa gathered in a random way from a daily sense of its ne-
ce:ity. English upon the temptation of a stranger’s adver-
tigfiient, promising upon moderate terms to teach that lan-
guge in four weeks ; a proof, by the way, that the system of
bo; innovations in the art of tuition had already commenced.
Ri. ng and fencing were also attempted under masters ap-
p»ntly not very highly qualified, and in the same desultory
st1: of application. Dancing was taught to his family,
sti' ige as it may seem, by Mr Goethe himself. There is
g®l reason to believe that not one of all these accomplish-
mrts was possessed by Goethe, when ready to visit the
uri ersity, in a degree which made it practically of any use
to im. Drawing and music were pursued confessedly as
amsements ; and it would be difficult to mention any at-
taiinent whatsoever which Goethe had carried to a point
ofkcellence in the years which he spent under his father’s
cai, unless it were his mastery over the common artifices
of) letre and the common topics of rhetoric, which fitted
hi: for writing what are called occasional poems and zm-
pnnptus. This talent he possessed in a remarkable degree,
am at an early age ; but he owed its cultivation entirely to
hlhelf.
#'i a city so orderly as Frankfort, and in a station privL
lejpd from all the common hardships of poverty, it can
hjllly be expected that many incidents should arise, of
mrh separate importance in themselves, to break the mo-
nehny of life ; and the mind of Goethe was not contem-
pllive enough to create a value for common occurrences
tin ugh any peculiar impressions which he had derived
friri them. In the years 1763 and 1764, when he must
1)£!3 been from fourteen to fifteen years old, Goethe wit-
ne ed the inauguration and coronation of a king of the
Idhans, a solemn spectacle connected by prescription
wi i the city of Frankfort. He describes it circumstan-
tii y, but with very little feeling, in his Memoirs. Pro-
baty the prevailing sentiment, on looking back at least
toiiis transitory splendour of dress, processions, and ce¬
re on ial forms, was one of cynical contempt. But this
hoould not express, as a person closely connected with a
Giman court, without giving much and various offence. It
is ith some timidity even that he hazards a criticism
u{|i single parts of the costume adopted by some of the
ac rs in that gorgeous scene. White silk stockings, and
pinps of the common form, he objects to as out of har-
wty with the antique and heraldic aspects of the gene¬
ra :ostume, and ventures to suggest either boots or san¬
ds as an improvement. Had Goethe felt himself at li-
btsy from all restraints of private consideration in com-
Pf ng these Memoirs, can it be doubted that he would
h; ; taken his retrospect of this Frankfort inauguration
fr' i a different station; from the station of that stern
re dution which, within his own time, and partly under
hi wn eyes, had shattered the whole imperial system of
“lines, in whose equipage this gay pageant made so
ptfcipal a figure, had humbled Caesar himself to the dust,
left him an emperor without an empire. We at least,
foil our parts, could not read without some emotion one
“tte incident of these gorgeous scenes recorded by
G'the, namely, that when the emperor, on rejoining his
wife for a few moments, held up to her notice his own
hands and arms arrayed in the antique habiliments of
Charlemagne, Maria Theresa—she whose children were
summoned to so sad a share in the coming changes—gave
way to sudden bursts of loud laughter, audible to the
whole populace below her. That laugh on surveying the
departing pomps of Charlemagne, must, in any contem¬
plative ear, have rung with a sound of deep significance,
and with something of the same effect which belongs to a
figure of death introduced by a painter, as mixing in the
festal dances of a bridal assembly.
I hese pageants of 1763-64 occupy a considerable space
in Goethe’s Memoirs, and with some logical propriety at
least, in consideration of their being exclusively attached
to hrankfort, and connected by manifold links of person
and office with the privileged character of the city. Per¬
haps he might feel a sort of narrow local patriotism in re¬
calling these scenes to public notice by description, at a
time when they had been irretrievably extinguished as
realities. But, after making every allowance for their
local value to a Frankfort family, and for their memor¬
able splendour, we may venture to suppose that by far
the most impressive remembrances which had gathered
about the boyhood of Goethe, were those which pointed
to Frederick of Prussia. This singular man, so imbecile
as a pretender to philosophy and new lights, so truly he¬
roic under misfortunes, was the first German who created
a German interest, and gave a transient unity to the Ger¬
man name, under all its multiplied divisions. Were it
only for this conquest of difficulties so peculiar, he would
deserve his German designation of Fred, the Unique
{Fritz der einzige). He had been partially tried and
known previously; but it was the Seven Years’War which
made him the popular idol. This began in 1756 ; and to
Frankfort, in a very peculiar way, that war brought dis¬
sensions and heart-burnings in its train. The imperial
connections of the city with many public and private in¬
terests, pledged it to the anti-Prussian cause. It happen¬
ed also that the truly German character of the reigning
imperial family, the domestic habits of the empress and
her young daughters, and other circumstances, were of
a nature to endear the ties of policy: self-interest and
affection pointed in the same direction. And yet were
all these considerations allowed to melt away before
the brilliant qualities of one man, and the romantic en¬
thusiasm kindled by his victories. Frankfort was divided
within herself; the young and the generous were all de¬
dicated to Frederick : a smaller party, more cautious and
prudent, were for the imperialists. Families were di¬
vided upon this question against families, and often against
themselves; feuds, begun in private, issued often into
public violence ; and, according to Goethe’s own illustra¬
tion, the streets were vexed by daily brawls, as hot and as
personal as of old between the Capulets and Montagues.
These dissensions, however, were pursued with not
much personal risk to any of the Goethes, until a French
army passed the Ithine as allies of the imperialists. One
corps of this force took up their quarters in Frankfort;
and the Comte Thorane, who held a high appointment
on the staff, settled himself for a long period of time in
the spacious mansion of Goethe’s father. This officer,
whom his place made responsible for the discipline of the
army in relation to the citizens, was naturally by temper
disposed to moderation and forbearance. He was indeed
a favourable specimen of French military officers under
the old system; well bred, not arrogant, well informed,
and a friend of the fine arts. For painting, in particular, he
professed great regard and some knowledge. The Goethes
were able to forward his views amongst German artists;
whilst, on the other hand, they were pleased to have thus
an opportunity of directing his patronage towards some
Goethe.
t
600
GOETHE.
Goethe, of their own needy connections. In this exchange of good
'*t*~Y^* offices, the two parties were for some time able to main¬
tain a fair appearance of reciprocal good will. This on
the comte’s side, if not particularly warm, was probably
sincere; but in Goethe the father it was a masque for in¬
veterate dislike. A natural ground of this existed in the
original relations between them. Under whatever dis¬
guise or pretext, the Frenchman was in fact a military
intruder : he occupied the best suit of rooms in the house,
used the furniture as his own; and, though upon private
motives he abstained from doing all the injury which his
situation authorized (so as in particular to have spread
his fine military maps upon the floor rather than disfigure
the decorated walls by nails), still he claimed credit, if
not services of requital, for all such instances of forbear¬
ance. Here were grievances enough ; but, in addition to
these, the comte’s official appointments drew upon him a
weight of daily business, which kept the house in a con¬
tinual uproar. Farewell to the quiet of a literary amateur,
and the orderliness of a German household. Finally, the
comte was a Frenchman. These were too many assaults
upon one man’s patience. It will be readily understood,
therefore, how it happened, that, whilst Goethe’s gentle-
minded mother, with her flock of children, continued to be
on the best terms with Comte Thorane, the master of the
house kept moodily aloof, and retreated from all inter¬
course.
Goethe, in his own Memoir, enters into large details upon
this subject; and from him we shall borrow the denoue¬
ment of the tale. A crisis had for some time been lower¬
ing over the French affairs in Frankfort; things seemed
ripening for a battle; and at last it came. Flight, siege,
bombardment, possibly a storm, all danced before the
eyes of the terrified citizens. Fortunately, however, the
battle took place at the distance of four or five miles from
Frankfort. Monsieur le Comte was absent, of course, on
the field of battle. His unwilling host thought that on
such an occasion he also might go out in quality of spec¬
tator ; and with this purpose he connected another, worthy
of a Parson Adams. It is his son who tells the story,
whose filial duty was not proof against his sense of the lu¬
dicrous. The old gentleman’s hatred of the French had
by this time brought him over to his son’s admiration of
the Prussian hero. Not doubting for an instant that vic¬
tory would follow that standard, he resolved on this day to
offer in person his congratulations to the Prussian army,
whom he already viewed as his liberator from a domestic
nuisance. So purposing, he made his way cautiously to
the suburbs; from the suburbs, still listening at each ad¬
vance, he went forward to the country; totally forgetting,
as his son insists, that, however completely beaten, the
French army must still occupy some situation or other
between himself and his German deliverer. Coming, how¬
ever, at length to a heath, he found some of those marau¬
ders usually to be met with in the rear of armies, prowling
about, and at intervals amusing themselves with shooting
at a mark. For want of a better, it seemed not improbable
that a large German head might answer their purpose:
certain signs admonished him of this, and the old gentle¬
man crept back to Frankfort. Not many hours after came
back also the comte, by no means creeping, however ; on
the contrary, crowing with all his might for a victory which
he averred himself to have won. There had in fact been
an affair, but on no very great scale, and with no distin¬
guished results. Some prisoners, however, he brought, to¬
gether with some wounded; and naturally he expected all
well disposed persons to make their compliments of con¬
gratulation upon his triumph. Of this duty poor Mrs
Goethe and her children cheerfully acquitted themselves
that same night; and Monsieur le Comte was so well pleased
with the sound opinions of the little Goethes, that he sent
them in return a collection of sweetmeats and fruits. All
promised to go well; intentions, after all, are not acts; and
there certainly is not, nor ever was, any treason in takin?
a morning’s walk. But, as ill luck would have it, just as
Mr Goethe was passing the comte’s door, out came the
comte in person, purely by accident, as we are told-
but we suspect that the surly old German, either under
his morning hopes or his evening disappointments, had
talked with more frankness than prudence. “ Good even¬
ing to you, Herr Goethe,” said the comte; “ you are
come, I see, to pay your tribute of congratulation. Some¬
what of the latest, to be sure ; but no matter.” “ By no
means,” replied the German ; “ by no means; mit nichten.
Heartily I wished, the whole day long, that you and your
cursed gang might all go to the devil together.” Here was
plain speaking, at least. The Comte Thorane could no
longer complain of dissimulation. His first movement was
to order an arrest; and the official interpreter of the
French army took to himself the whole credit that he did
not carry it into effect. Goethe takes the trouble to re¬
port a dialogue, of length and dulness absolutely incredi¬
ble, between this interpreter and the comte. No such dia¬
logue, we may be assured, ever took place. Goethe may,
however, be right in supposing that, amongst a foreign
soldiery, irritated by the pointed contrasts between the
Frankfort treatment of their own wounded, and of their
prisoners who happened to be in the same circumstances,
and under a military council not held to any rigorous re¬
sponsibility, his father might have found no very-favour¬
able consideration of his case. It is well, therefore, that
after some struggle the comte’s better nature triumphed.
He suffered Mrs Goethe’s merits to outweigh her hus¬
band’s delinquency; countermanded the order for arrest,
and, during the remainder of their connection, kept at
such a distance from his moody host as was equally de¬
sirable for both. Fortunately that remainder was not very
long. Comte Thorane was soon displaced; and the whole
army was soon afterwards withdrawn from Frankfort.
In his fifteenth year Goethe was entangled in some con¬
nection with young people of inferior rank, amongst whom
was Margaret, a young girl about two years older than
himself, and the object of his first love. The whole affair,
as told by Goethe, is somewhat mysterious. What might
be the final views of the elder parties it is difficult to say;
but Goethe assures us that they used his services only in
writing an occasional epithalamium, the pecuniary acknow¬
ledgment for which was spent jovially in a general ban¬
quet. The magistrates, however, interfered, and endea¬
voured to extort a confession from Goethe: he, as the son
of a respectable family, was to be pardoned; the others to
be punished. No confession, however, could be extorted;
and for his own part he declares that, beyond the offence
of forming a clandestine connection, he had nothing to
confess. The affair terminated, as regarded himself, in a
severe illness. Of the others we hear no more.
The next event of importance in Goethe’s life was his
removal to college. His own wishes pointed to Gottingen,
but his father preferred Leipsic. Thither accordingly he
went, but he carried his obedience no farther. Declining
the study of jurisprudence, he attached himself to general
literature. Subsequently he removed to the university of
Strasburg; but in neither place {could it be said that he
pursued any regular course of study. His health suffered
at times during this period of his life; at first from an
affection of the chest, caused by an accident on his hrst
journey to Leipsic ; the carriage had stuck fast in tne
muddy roads, and Goethe exerted himself too much in as¬
sisting to extricate the wheels. A second illness conneete
with the digestive organs brought him into considerab e
danger. .
After his return to Frankfort, Goethe commenced ^
if!
in
GOETHE.
601
c:eer as an author. In 1^ 3, and the following year, he pointment punctually; made himself even more agreeable; Goethe,
mde his maiden essay in Goetz of Berlichingen, a dra- and finally received a formal invitation to enter the service
n: (the translation of which, remarkably enough, was des- of this excellent prince, who was now beginning to collect
ti :d to be the literary coup d essai of Sir Walter Scott), around him all those persons who have since made W eimar
ail in the far-famed Werther. Ihe first of these was so distinguished a name in connection with the German
p ited; and in consequence the author found some diffi- literature. With some opposition from his father, who
c ty in paying for the paper of the genuine edition, which held up the rupture between Voltaire and Frederick of
pit of the expense, by his contract with the publisher, Prussia as a precedent applving to all possible connections
ft I upon himself. The general and early popularity of the of princes and literati, Goethe accepted the invitation ; and
KiDnd work is well known. \ et, except in so far as it henceforwards, for upwards of fifty-five years, his fortunes
E;ht spread his name abroad, it cannot be supposed to were bound up with those of the ducal house of Weimar,
hue had much influence in attracting that potent patronage The noble part which that house played in the great
wich now began to determine the course of his future modern drama of German politics is well known, and would
li i So much we collect from the account which Goethe have been better known had its power been greater. But
himself has left us of this affair in its earliest stages. the moral value of its sacrifices and its risks is not the
• I was sitting alone in my room,” says he, “ at my fa- less. Had greater potentates shown equal firmness, Ger-
df’s house in Frankfort, when a gentleman entered, whom many would not have been laid at the feet of Napoleon,
atmrst I took for Frederick Jacobi, but soon discovered by In 1806 the grand duke was aware of the peril which
awmited the allies of Prussia ; but neither his heart nor his
conscience would allow of his deserting a friend in whose
army he held a principal command. The decisive battle
took place in his own territory, and not far from his own
palace and city of Weimar. Personally he was with the
Prussian army; but his excellent consort stayed in the
palace to encourage her subjects, and as far as possible to
conciliate the enemy by her presence. The fortune of that
friids had brought us the most interesting accounts from great day, the 14th of October 1806, was decided early :
Wimar, in particular that the Duchess Amelia, mother of and the awful event was announced by a hot retreat and a
tbi young grand duke and. his brother, summoned to her murderous pursuit through the streets of the town. In the
asHtance in educating her sons the most distinguished evening Napoleon arrived in person ; and nowr came the
trying moment. “ The duchess,” says an Englishman well
acquainted with Weimar and its court, “ placed herself on
the top of the staircase to greet him with the formality of a
courtly reception. Napoleon started wdien he beheld her,
Qui etes vous ? he exclaimed with characteristic abruptness.
Je suis la Duchesse de Weimar. Je vous plains, he retort¬
ed fiercely, J’ecraserai votre mari ; he then added, ‘ I shall
dine in my apartment,’ and rushed by her. The night was
spent on the part of the soldiery in all the horrid excesses
tl dubious light to be a stranger. He had a military air ;
ar announcing himself by the name of Von Knebel, gave
roi to understand in a short explanation, that being in the
Pissian service, he had connected himself, during a long
rt dence at Berlin and Potsdam, with the literati of those
Aes; but that at present he held the appointment from
tl court of Weimar of travelling tutor to the Prince
C istantine. This I heard with pleasure ; for many of our
mu in Germany; and that the university of Jena co-ope¬
ra! d powerfully in all her liberal plans. I was aware also
tk Wieland was in high favour; and that the German Mer¬
ely (a literary journal of eminence) was itself highly cre-
diible to the city of Jena, from which it issued. Abeauti-
fuiind well-conducted theatre had besides, as I knew, been
laily established at Weimar. This, it was true, had been
d(i royed; but that event, under common circumstances
soikely to be fatal as respected the present, had served
or to call forth the general expression of confidence in of rapine. In the morning the duchess sent to inquire con-
thJyoung prince as a restorer and upholder of all great
in rests, and true to his purposes under any calamity.”
Tlinking thus, and thus prepossessed in favour of Weimar,
it is natural that Goethe should be eager to see the prince.
Nihing was easier. It happened that he and his brother
ofhe elder.
pon this occasion an accident, rather than any previ-
oi; reputation of Goethe, was probably the determining
oo sion which led to his favour with the future sovereign
of fVeimar. A new book lay upon the table; that none
cerning the health of his majesty the emperor, and to soli¬
cit an audience. He, who had now benefited by his dreams,
or by his reflections, returned a gracious answ er, and in¬
vited himself to breakfast with her in her apartment.” In
the conversation which ensued, Napoleon asked her if her
Ci stantine were at this moment in Frankfort, and Von husband were mad, upon which she justified the duke by
Kitbel willingly offered to present Goethe. No sooner appealing to his own magnanimity, asking in her turn if
sa than done ; they repaired to the hotel, where they his majesty would have approved of his deserting the king
fo id the illustrious travellers, with Count Goertz, the tutor of Prussia at the moment when he was attacked by so po¬
tent a monarch as himself. The rest of the conversation
was in the same spirit, uniting with a sufficient concession
to the circumstances of the moment a dignified vindication
of a high-minded policy. Napoleon was deeply impressed
with respect for her, and loudly expressed it. For her
of he strangers had read it, Goethe inferred from observ- sake, indeed, he even affected to pardon her husband, thus
>n that the leaves were as yet uncut. It was a work making a merit with her of the necessity which he felt, from
of loser (Patriolische Phantasien) ; and, being political other motives, for show ing forbearance towards a family so
ra er than literary in its topics, it presented to Goethe, nearly allied to that of St Petersburg. In 1813 the grand
pr iously acquainted wdth its outline, an opportunity for duke was found at his post in that great gathering of the
co ersing with the prince upon subjects nearest to his nations which took place on the stupendous fields of Leip-
hc t, and of showing that he was not himself a mere stu- sic, and was complimented by the allied sovereigns as one
d'1 Is recluse. The opportunity was not lost; the prince of the most faithful amongst the faithful to the great cause,
an bis tutor were much interested, and perhaps a little yet undecided, of national independence.
su rised. Such subjects have the further advantage, ac- With respect to Goethe, as a councillor so near the
co ing to Goethe’s owm illustration, that, like the Arabian duke’s person, it may be supposed that his presence was
never wanting where it promised to be useful. In the
earlier campaigns of the duke, Goethe was his companion ;
but in the final contest with Napoleon he was unequal to
the fatigues of such a post. In all the functions of peace,
ret In order to pursue the conversation, Goethe was in- however, he continued to be a useful servant to the last,
V111 to meet them soon after at Mentz. He kept the ap- though long released from all official duties. Each had in-
>L. x. 4 G
ffi'sand and one nights, as conducted by the Sultana
Scffierezade, “ never ending, still beginning,” they
jw y come to any absolute close, but so interw eave one
ln' another, as still to leave behind a large arrear of inte-
602
GOETHE.
Goethe, deed most honourably earned the gratitude of the other.
Goethe had surrendered the flower of his years and the
best energies of his mind to the service of his serene mas¬
ter. On the other hand, that master had to him been at
once his Augustus and his Maecenas ; such is his own ex¬
pression. Under him he had founded a family, raised an
estate, obtained titles and decorations from various courts ;
and in the very vigour of his life he had been allowed to
retire, with all the honours of long service, to the sanctuary
of his own study, and to the cultivation of his leisure, as
the very highest mode in which he could further the pub¬
lic interest.
The life of Goethe was so quiet and so uniform after
the year 1775, when he may first be said to have entered
into active life, by taking service with the Duke of Wei¬
mar, that a biographer will find hardly any event to notice,
except two journeys to Italy, and one campaign in 1792,
until he draws near the dose of his long career. It cannot
interest an English reader to see. the dates of his succes¬
sive appointments. It is enough to know that they soon
raised him to as high a station as was consistent with lite¬
rary leisure; and that he had from the beginning enjoy¬
ed the unlimited confidence of his sovereign. Nothing
remained, in fact, for the subject to desire which the prince
had not previously volunteered. In 1825, they were able
to look back upon a course of uninterrupted friendship, main¬
tained through good and evil fortunes unexampled in their
agitation and interest for fifty years. The duke com¬
memorated this remarkable event by a jubilee, and by a
medal in honour of Goethe. Full of years and honour, this
eminent man might now begin to think of his departure.
However, his serenity continued unbroken nearly for two
years more, when his illustrious patron died. That shock
was the first which put his fortitude to trial. In 1830
others followed; the duchess, who had won so much ad¬
miration from Napoleon, died; then followed his own son ;
and there remained little now to connect his wishes with
the earth. The family of his patron he had lived to see
flourishing in his descendants to the fourth generation.
His own grandchildren were prosperous and happy. His
intellectual labours were now accomplished. All that re¬
mained to wish for was a gentle dismission. This he found
in the spring of 1832. After a six days’ illness, which
caused him no apparent suffering, on the morning of the
22d of March he breathed away as if into a gentle sleep,
surrounded by his daughter-in-law and her children. Never
was a death more in harmony with the life it closed ; both
had the same character of deep and absolute serenity.
Such is the outline of Goethe’s life, traced through its
principal events. But as these events, after all, borrow
their interest mainly from the consideration allowed to
Goethe as an author, and as a model in the German literature,
—that being the centre about which all secondary feelings
of interest in the man must finally revolve,—it thus be¬
comes a duty to throw a glance over his principal works.
Dismissing his songs, to which has been ascribed by some
critics a very high value for their variety and their lyrical
enthusiasm ; dismissing also a large body of short miscel¬
laneous poems, suited to the occasional circumstances in
which they arose ; we may throw the capital works of
Goethe into two classes, philosophic novels, and dramas.
The novels, which we call philosophic by way of express¬
ing their main characteristic in being written to serve a
preconceived purpose, or to embody some peculiar views
of life, or some aspects of philosophic truth, are three, viz.
the Werther’s Leiden; secondly, the Wilhelm Meister; and,
lastly, the Wahloer-wandschaften. The first two exist in
English translations ; and though the Werther had the dis¬
advantage of coming to us through a French version, al¬
ready, perhaps, somewhat coloured and distorted to meet
the Parisian standards of sentiment, yet, as respects
Goethe and his reputation amongst us, this wrong has been r
redressed, or compensated at least, by the good fortune of Cf h
his Wilhelm Meister, in falling into the hands of a transla-
tor whose original genius qualified him for sympathizine
even to excess with any real merits in that work. This
novel is in its own nature and purpose sufficiently obscure •
and the commentaries which have been written upon it bv
the Humboldts, Sehlegels, &c. make the enigma still more
enigmatical. We shall not venture abroad upon an ocean
of discussion so truly dark, and at the same time so illimit¬
able. Whether it be qualified to excite any deep and sin¬
cere feeling of one kind or another in the German mind,—
in a mind trained under German discipline,—this we will
consent to waive as a question not immediately interesting
to ourselves. Enough that it has not gained, and will not
gain, any attention in this country ; and this not only be¬
cause it is thoroughly deficient in all points of attraction
to readers formed upon our English literature, but because
in some capital circumstances it is absolutely repulsive.
We do not wish to offend the admirers of Goethe ; but the
simplicity of truth will not allow us to conceal, that in vari¬
ous points of description or illustration, and sometimes in
the very outline of the story, the Wilhelm Meister is at
open war, not with decorum and good taste merely, but
with moral purity and the dignity of human nature. As a
novelist, Goethe and his reputation are problems, and like¬
ly to continue such, to the countrymen of Mrs Inchbakl,
Miss Harriet Lee, Miss Edgeworth, and Sir Walter Scott.
To the dramatic works of Goethe we are disposed to pay
more homage ; but’ neither in the absolute amount of our
homage at all professing to approach his public admirers,
nor to distribute the proportions of this homage amongst his
several performances according to the graduations of thn
scale. The Iphigenie is built upon the old subjectof Iphi-
genia in Tauris, as treated by Euripides and other Grecian
tkamatists; and, if we are to believe a Schlegel, it is in
beauty and effect a mere echo or reverberation from the
finest strains of the old Grecian music. That it is some¬
what nearer to the Greek model than a play after the fa¬
shion of Racine, we grant. Setting aside such faithful
transcripts from the antique as the Samson Agonistes, we
might consent to view Goethe as that one amongst the
moderns who had made the closest approximation to the
Greek stage : Proximus, we might say, with Quintilian, but
with him we must add, “ sed longo intervallo; and it in the
second rank, yet nearer to the third than to the first, iwo
other dramas, the Clavigo and the Egmont, fall below the
Iphigenie by the very character of their pretensions; the
first as too openly renouncing the grandeurs of the ideal;
the second as confessedly violating the historic truth of
character, without temptation to do so, and without any
consequent indemnification. The Tasso has been suppos¬
ed to realize an Italian beauty of genial warmth and of
sunny repose; but from the common defect of German
criticism—the absence of all sufficient illustrations—it is as
difficult to understand the true nature and constituents of
the supposed Italian standard set up for the regulation of
our judgments, as it is to measure the degree of approach
made to that standard in this particular work. Eugenie is
celebrated for the artificial burnish of the style, but other¬
wise has been little relished. It has the beauty of marble
sculpture, say the critics of Goethe, but also the coldness
We are not often disposed to quarrel with these critics as
below the truth in their praises ; in this instance we are-
The Eugenie is a fragment, or (as Goethe himself cale
it in conversation) a torso, being only the first drama 111 a
trilogy or series of three dramas, each having a separate
plot, whilst all are parts of a more general and comprehen
sive plan. It may be charged with languor in the movemen
of the action, and with excess of illustration. Thus, e. </•
the grief of the prince for the supposed death of his dang1
G O E
e, r, is the monotonous topic which occupies one entire act.
it the situations, though not those of scenical distress,
so far from being unexciting, that, on the contrary,
ay are too powerfully afflicting.
The lustre of all these performances, however, is eclips-
by the unrivalled celebrity amongst German critics of
te Faust. Upon this it is better to say nothing than too
jj;le. How trifling an advance has been made towards
oaring the ground for any sane criticism, may be under-
iod from this fact, that as yet no two people have agreed
iput the meaning of any separate scene, or about the drift
a the whole. Neither is this explained by saying, that
Util lately the Faust was a fragment; for no additional
IJht has dawned upon the main question since the publi-
cdon of the latter part.
„ One work there is of Goethe’s which falls into neither
a the classes here noticed; we mean the Hermann and
!lirothea, a narrative poem, in hexameter verse. This ap-
pirs to have given more pleasure to readers not critical,
tin any other work of its author; and it is remarkable
tut it traverses humbler ground, as respects both its
soject, its characters, and its scenery. From this, and
cljier indications of the same kind, we are disposed to infer
tjit Goethe mistook his destination ; that his aspiring na-
fo e misled him; and that his success would have been
p ater had he confined himself to the real in domestic life,
vi hout raising his eyes to the ideal.
We must also mention, that Goethe threw out some
ri/el speculations in physical science, and particularly in
qysiology, in the doctrine of colours, and in comparative
automy, which have divided the opinions of critics even
tire than any of those questions which have arisen upon
j| nts more directly connected with his avowed character
(i poet.
It now remains to say a few words by way of summing
i his pretensions as a man, and his intellectual power in
tffc age to which he belonged. His rank and value as a
n ral being are so plain as to be legible to him who runs,
literybody must feel that his temperament and constitu-
tinal tendency was of that happy quality, the animal so
rifely balanced with the intellectual, that with any ordinary
nasure of prosperity he could not be otherwise than a good
rtn. He speaks himself of his own “ virtue,” sans phrase ;
ad we tax him with no vanity in doing so. , As a young
r n even at the universities, which at that time were bar-
biously sensual in Germany, he was (for so much we col-
lilt from his own Memoirs) eminently capable of self-re-
s lint. He preserves a tone of gravity, of sincerity, of re-
sict for female dignity, which we never find associated
vfh the levity and recklessness of vice. We feel through-
ct, the presence of one who, in respecting others, respects
Ifiself; and the cheerfulness of the presiding tone per-
s des us at once that the narrator is in a healthy moral
icndition, fears no ill, and is conscious of having meditated
me. Yet at the same time we cannot disguise from cur¬
sives that the moral temperament of Goethe was one
vlich demanded prosperity: had he been called to face
ffiat afflictions, singular temptations, or a billowy and agi-
tbd course of life, our belief is that his nature would have
ft in found unequal to the strife ; he wrould have repeated
tt mixed and moody character of his father. Sunny pros-
Fl ity was essential to his nature ; his virtues were adapt-
f: to that condition. And happily that was his fate. He
| 1 no personal misfortunes; his path was joyous in this
- > and even the reflex sorrow from the calamities of his
‘hnds did not press too heavily on his sympathies; none
C'these were in excess either as to degree or duration,
hi this estimate of Goethe as a moral being, few people
M vd differ with us, unless it were the religious bigot. And
tlfflim we must concede thus much, that Goethe was not
^ t religious creature which by nature he was intended to
GOG
603
become. This is to be regretted: Goethe was naturally pious, Goethe
and reverential towards higher natures; and it was in the I!
mere levity or wantonness of youthful power, partly also GoS’
through that early false bias growing out of the Lisbon
earthquake, that he falsified his original destination. Do we
mean, then, that a childish error could permanently master
his understanding ? Not so; that would have been cor¬
rected with his growing strength. But having once arisen,
it must for a long time have moulded his feelings; until
corrected, it must have impressed a corresponding false bias
upon his practical way of viewing things ; and that sort of
false bias, once established, might long survive a mere error
of the understanding. One thing is undeniable. Goethe
had so far corrupted and clouded his natural mind, that he
did not look up to God, or the system of things beyond the
grave, with the interest of reverence and awe, but with the
interest of curiosity.
Goethe, however, in a moral estimate, will be viewed
pretty uniformly. But Goethe intellectually, Goethe as a
power acting upon the age in which he lived, that is ano¬
ther question. Let us put a case; suppose that Goethe’s
death had occurred fifty years ago, that is, in the year 1785,
what would have been the general impression ? Would
Europe have felt a shock ? Would Europe have been sen¬
sible even of the event ? Not at all: it would have been
obscurely noticed in the newspapers of Germany, as the
death of a novelist who had produced some effect about ten
years before. In 1832, it was announced by the post-horns
of all Europe as the death of him who had written the Wil¬
helm Meister, the Iphigenie, and the Faust, and who had
been enthroned by some of his admirers on the same seat
with Homer and Shakspeare, as composing what they term¬
ed the trinity of men of genius. And yet it is a fact, that,
in the opinion of some amongst the acknowledged leaders
of our own literature for the last twenty-five years, the
Werther was superior to all which followed it, and for mere
power was the paramount work of Goethe. For ourselves,
we must acknowledge our assent upon the whole to this ver¬
dict ; and at the same time we will avow our belief that the
reputation of Goethe must decline for the next generation
or two, until it reaches its just level. Three causes, we are
persuaded, have concurred to push it so far beyond the
proportion of real and genuine interest attached to his
works, for in Germany his works are little read, and in
this country not at all: First, his extraordinary age; for
the last twenty years Goethe had been the patriarch of the
German literature: secondly, the splendour of his official
rank at the court of Weimar ; he was the minister and pri¬
vate friend of the patriot sovereign amongst the princes of
Germany: thirdly, the quantity of enigmatical and unin¬
telligible writing which he has designedly thrown into his
latter works, by way of keeping up a system of discussion
and strife upon his pwn meaning amongst the critics of his
country. These disputes, had his meaning been of any value
in his own eyes, he would naturally have settled by a few
authoritative words from himself; but it was his policy to
keep alive the feud in a case where it was of importance that
his name should continue to agitate the world, but of none
at all that he should be rightly interpreted, (w. w. w.)
GOG and Magog, two names generally joined together
in Scripture. Moses, however, speaks of Magog the son
of Japhet, but says nothing of Gog. Gog was prince of
Magog, according to Ezekiel, in whose writings Magog
signifies the country or people, and Gog the king of that
country. The generality of the ancients considered Magog
as the father of the Scythians and Tartars; and several
interpreters discovered many traces of their name in the
provinces of Great Tartary. Others have been of opinion
that the Persians were the descendants of Magog; and
some have imagined that the Goths were descended from
Gog and Magog, and that the wars described by Ezekiel,
604
GOG
G O L
Goggrah and undertaken by Gog against the saints, were no other
li than those which the Goths carried on in the fifth age
Goguet. agajnst t]ie Roman empire. Bochart has placed Gog in
the neighbourhood of Caucasus. He derives the name of
this celebrated mountain from the Hebrew Gog Chasan,
the Fortress of Gog. He maintains that Prometheus, who
is said to have been chained to Caucasus by Jupiter, is no
other than Gog. In Iberia there was a province called the
Gogarene. Lastly, the generality of writers believe that
Gog and Magog, mentioned in Ezekiel and the Revela¬
tion, are to be taken in an allegorical acceptation, as sig¬
nifying such princes as were enemies to the church and
saints. Thus, by Gog in Ezekiel many understand Antio-
chus Epiphanes, the persecutor of the Jews who remain¬
ed firm to their religion ; and by the person of the same
name in the Revelation they suppose to be meant Anti¬
christ, the great enemy of the church and faithful. Some
have endeavoured to prove that the Gog spoken of in
Ezekiel, and Cambyses king of Persia, were one and the
same person ; and that Gog and Magog in the Revela¬
tion denote generally the enemies and persecutors of the
church.
GOGGR AH, a river of Hindustan, which forces its way
through the great Himalaya chain, though its exact source
has never been ascertained. It afterwards falls into the
Sareyn at Swarojadwara, the united streams afterwards
being named indifferently the Goggrah, Sarfew, or Deva
river. This river flows through the district of Kemaon
and province of Oude, and at Manjee joins the Ganges, of
which it is one of the largest tributary streams. It is na¬
vigable for large boats to the foot of the hills, and is held
sacred by the Hindus. There are several large towns on
its banks.
GOGO, a sea-port of Hindustan, in the province of Guj-
rat,and district of Goelwarah, situated on the west side of
the Gulf of Cambay. It is considered as a safe roadstead
during the south-west monsoon, where ships may be sup¬
plied with stores and provisions, and repair any damage
they may have sustained. The inhabitants, who are prin¬
cipally Mahommedans, build vessels of from fifty to three
hundred tons burden; and carry on a considerable trade
with Bombay and other places, the chief export being
cotton. The Lascars of this place are named Siddhees;
they are descendants of the Abyssinians, and are held in
much estimation for their nautical skill and bravery. It
is an ancient town, and has fallen greatly into decay; but
since it came into the possession of the British it has been
gradually increasing in commerce and population. Long.
72. 21. E. Lat. 21. 41. N.
GOGUET, Antoine-Yves, a distinguished French wri¬
ter, was born at Paris on the 18th January 1716. From
his infancy he was connected by the ties of friendship with
Alexander Conrad Fugere, the learned editor of the Jour¬
nal des Savants; and there never perhaps existed between
two friends such an entire conformity of tastes and charac¬
ter. They studied philosophy together at the college of
Harcourt, and after having terminated their studies there,
both felt the necessity of recommencing them. To this laud¬
able object they accordingly applied themselves with an
ardour which was at length crowned with success. The
former laboured without any other object than that of in¬
structing himself; but the latter had a plan to which all his
studies were directed. When Goguet undertook the work
which distinguishes his name, Fugere assisted him with
criticisms and materials. The success of this work was
well deserved ; and of the two friends, Fugere was the one
whom that success flattered the most. Robust health ap¬
peared to promise long life to Goguet; and he had applied
himself to new labours, when he was seized by the small¬
pox, a disease which he had always dreaded, but without de¬
ciding to have recourse to inoculation. He died on the 2d
of May 1758, at the age of forty-two years and three r
months. By his will, he bequeathed his library to Fugere
but the latter was so deeply affected by the death of his Goiii
friend, that he only survived him three days. This af- Wv
fecting incident rs perhaps without a parallel in the history
of friendship. The work of Goguet is entitled Del’Origin
des Lois, des Arts, et des Sciences, et des leur Progres chez
les anciens peuples, Paris, 1758, in three volumes 4to. Of
this valuable wrork there have been several editions; but
the first is the best. An excellent translation of it was
published at Edinburgh in 1761, in three volumes octavo.
It is stated in the Edinburgh Review (vol. xiv. p. 409) as
a fact “ not generally known, that this translation came
from the pen of Dr Plenry, the historian of Great Britain.”
The period embraced in the work extends from the estab¬
lishment of civil society to the reign of Cyrus. It is di¬
vided into three parts, and each into six books, which
treat separately of government, the arts and manufactures,
the sciences, commerce and navigation, the military art,
and, lastly, manners and usages. The state of each of these
objects of inquiry at different epochs is examined conti¬
nuously ; and facts, investigated with equal erudition and
good faith, always serve as the basis of the reasonings.
The style is agreeable, without, however, being exempt
from some indications of bad taste. At the end of each
volume are discussed, in learned dissertations, those points
the detailed examination of which could not easily enter
into the body of the work. Goguet intended to write a
History of the Progress of Laws, Arts, and Sciences in
France, since the establishment of the Monarchy; and it
is much to be regretted that he did not live to carry into
execution an undertaking which, proceeding ffom his pen,
would have been invaluable. An Eloge of Goguet was
printed in the Annee Litteraire, 1758, tome iv., and in the
supplement to the Journal des Savants for the month of
July in the same year. (a.)
GOHUD, afortified town of Hindustan, in the provinceof
Agra, and capital of an extensive district of the same name.
The district is situated on the south side of the river Chum-
bul, and between the 26th and 27th degrees of north lati¬
tude. It is a mountainous territory, but is fertile in the
valleys, and abounds with strong positions, particularly the
celebrated fortress of Gualior. About the middle of the
last century Gohud was a small village attached to the dis¬
trict of Gualior, and the rannah’s ancestors were zemindars
of this village. Bheem Singh, the rannah, prior to the
battle of Paniput, in 1761 acquired possession of Gualior,
but it was taken from him by the Mahrattas. When this
nation lost the battle of Paniput, the rannah of Gohud at¬
tempted to shake off their yoke, but was conquered by Ha-
goonauth Row in 1766, and compelled to continue tribu¬
tary. On a subsequent rupture Gohud was taken by Scin-
dia in 1784. On the 17th of January 1804 a treaty was
concluded by the British government with the rannah of
Gohud, by which he wras to be established in the sove¬
reignty of Gohud, Gualior, and a considerable number of
adjacent districts. This treaty, however, was never carried
into effect, and a new treaty was concluded, by which the
rajah agreed to relinquish the country and fort of Gohud,
and the adjoining districts. Gohud is sixty-five miles
south-west from the city of Agra. Long. 78. 21. E. Laf*
26. 21. N.
GOLCONDA, a strong fortress of Hindustan, situated
on a hill about six miles west-north-west from Hyderabad,
strongly defended both by nature and art, but being situ¬
ated on a rock, is excessively hot and unhealthy. Re
principal inhabitants and bankers of Hyderabad are per¬
mitted to reside in this fort, to which they retire with their
property on any alarm. It was once the capital of an ex
tensive kingdom of native Hindu princes, and afterwar Jj
principal division of the Bhamenee sovereignty, on the
Tei
G O L
of ' hich it again became the seat of a monarchy under the
Cutub Shahee dynasty. It was taken by Aurungzebe by
trochery in 1687, after a siege of seven months. In its
vionity are numerous handsome tombs.
■ OLD, the most valuable of all the metals, is of a bright
ye:)W colour when pure, but becomes more or less white
in roportion as it is alloyed with other metals. It is the
he iest of all the metals, platina only excepted.
ative gold is found in veins, but these are seldom or
nej r very large. It is generally very minutely dissemi-
naid, and can only be detected by washing the pulverized
mitral strata in which it exists, such as the sand of rivers,
andie mould of valleys and plains, whither it had been trans-
poied by running water. Gold is obtained from the allu-
viasoils of several islands in the Indian Ocean ; from seve-
rabarts of Africa, a part of which is called the Gold Coast,
om.ccount of the quantities of this metal formerly found
thi 2; from the sands of several European rivers, and also
th< e of the United States: but by far the greatest quan-
tit:of gold is found in the South American mines. Hum-
bod estimates the average product of gold per annum, of
So:h America and New Spain, at nearly 11,000,000 dol¬
lar: In Russia and the United States there are also mines
of old. Adding the produce of the American to that of
thi Russian mines, their total produce during each of the
foi decennial periods ending with the year 1829, has been
estaated as follows by Macculloch, in his Dictionary of
Cvmerce (p. 943):
Ten years ending 1799 L.3,295,000
  1809  4,180,000
  1819  3,955,000
  1829  5,752,000
he gold produced in the United States in 1832 was in
va-e above L.135,000. It is chiefly obtained by washing
thwioil in the valleys. The produce of the European mines
of ungary, Saxony, and other places, has been somewhat
va uely estimated ; but it must be trifling compared with
thtquantities derived from the new world. With regard to
thuquantity of gold annually consumed, no correct idea
caabe formed, because it is utterly impossible to estimate
ho much of old gold is wrought up in the fabrication of
ne materials. As to the future supply of this precious
mod, it seems probable that it will increase when the an-
aroy in which the South American states have been so
Ion involved shall terminate.
old Coast. See Guinea.
i old IFire, a cylindrical ingot of silver, superficially
gil 2r covered with gold at the fire, and afterwards drawn
sunessively through a great number of little round holes,
of wire-drawing iron, each less than the other, until it
att ii the fineness required.
1 old Wire flattened, is the former wire flattened be-
tw n two rollers of polished steel, to fit it to be spun on a
sti , or to be used flat, without spinning, in certain stuffs,
su< as laces, embroideries, and the like.
old Thread, or Spun Gold, is flattened gold, wrapped
or id over a thread of silk, by tw isting it with w heel and
>rc bobbins.
I old Leaf, or Beaten Gold, is gold beaten with a hammer
ini! exceedingly thin leaves, so that an ounce may be ex-
teiied into one thousand six hundred leaves, each three
inees square, in which state it covers more than 159,052
tm s its former surface.
jr Plates for Enamelling are generally made of du-
cai 3°ld, the fineness of which is from 23£ to 23f carats;
aiJ ' the finest gold is the best for this purpose, unless
wh‘e some parts of the gold are left bare and unpolished,
a*1 watch-cases, snuff-boxes, and the like, for which pur-
P0(! a mixture of alloy is necessary, and silver is preferred
10 i >pper, because the latter disposes the plates to become
Vanished and to turn green.
G O L
605
Shell Gold is that used by those employed in gilding and Shell Gold
illuminating, and with which gold letters are WTitten. It li
is made by grinding gold leaves, or gold-beaters’ fragments, GoWoni.
with a little honey, and afterwards separating the honey
from the powdered gold by means of water. When the
honey is washed away, the gold may be put on paper or
kept in shells. When it is used it is commonly diluted
with gum-water or soap-suds. The German gold powder,
prepared in this manner from the Dutch gold leaf, is gene¬
rally used ; and when it is well scoured with varnish, it an¬
swers the end in japanners’ gilding as well as the genuine.
Gold Size, for burnished gilding, is prepared of one
pound and a half of tobacco-pipe clay, half an ounce of red
chalk, a quarter of an ounce of black lead, forty drops of
sweet oil, and three drams of pure tallow. Grind the clay,
chalk, and black lead, separately, very fine, in water; then
mix them together, add the oil and tallow, and then grind
the mixture to a due consistence.
GO LDAP, a circle in the Prussian government of
Gumbinnen, extending over 260 square miles, and con¬
taining 23,370 inhabitants. The capital is a city of the
same name, which stands at the issue of a river out of a
lake. It contains two Lutheran churches, and 3120 inha¬
bitants. Long. 22. 12. 25. E. Lat. 54. 17. 35. N.
GOLDBERG, a circle of the Prussian government of
Leignitz, in Silesia, extending over 220 square miles, and
including two cities and eighty villages, with 38,900 inha¬
bitants. The capital is a city of the same name, which
stands on an elevation of 830 feet, at the foot of which is
the river Katsbach. Near to it are mines of iron and man¬
ganese, and gold was formerly found. It is now a flour¬
ishing manufacturing place, with 6000 inhabitants, who
produce cloths and flannels.
GOLDEN, something which has a relation to gold, or
consists of gold.
Golden Calf was a figure of a calf, which the Israelites
cast in gold, or some preparation of that metal, and set up
in the wilderness to worship during Moses’ absence in the
mount; and which that legislator at his return burned,
ground to powder, and mixed with the water the people
were to drink.
Golden Fleece, in the ancient mythology, was the skin
or fleece of the ram upon which Phryxus and Hella are
supposed to have swum across the sea to Colchis, and which
being sacrificed to Jupiter, was hung upon a tree in the
grove of Mars, guarded by two brazen-hoofed bulls, and a
monstrous dragon that never slept. The fleece was taken
and carried off by Jason and the Argonauts.
Many authors have endeavoured to show that this fable
is an allegorical representation of some real history, parti¬
cularly of the philosopher’s stone ; whilst others have ex¬
plained it by the profit of the wool trade to Colchis, or
the gold which they commonly gathered there with fleeces
in the rivers.
Order of the Golden Fleece is a military order instituted
by Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, in 1429. It took
its denomination from a representation of the golden fleece,
borne by the knights on their collars, which consisted of
flints and steels.
Golden Number, in Chronology, a number showing
what year of the'moon’s cycle any given year is. See
Chronology.
Golden Rule, in Arithmetic, a rule or praxis, of great
use and extent in the art of numbers, by which we find a
fourth proportional to three quantities given. The golden
rule is also called the Rule of Three and Rule of Propor¬
tion. See Arithmetic.
GOLDONI, Charles, the most celebrated comic wri¬
ter of Italy in the eighteenth century, and in his own coun¬
try styled the Italian Moliere, was born at Venice in the
year 1707, in which city his father acted in the capacity of
606 G O -L
Goldoni, physician. His attachment to the drama became conspi-
cuous even in childhood, and this his father countenanced
and cherished, by erecting a theatre in his own house,
where young Goldoni and some of his companions were
the actors. It is said that he even drew the outline of a
comedy of his own invention when he was not more than
eight years of age ; a most extraordinary, though not very
credible, indication of future eminence. He was taught
rhetoric at Perugia, in the college of the Jesuits, and pro¬
secuted his philosophical studies at Rimini. The stage,
however, had too many attractions for him, to admit of his
paying much attention to Aristotle or Quintilian, and he
eloped from Rimini with a company of comedians, when
they removed to Chiozza. His father attempted in vain to
induce him to study either physic or the law ; yet his ar¬
dent imagination was so forcibly struck with a particular
ceremony of the church, that he conceived the intention
of turning capuchin ; but the dissipation of Venice soon ex¬
tinguished this fancy. After the demise of his father he
was prevailed upon by his surviving parent to engage in
the profession of the law for immediate support; but some
unknown causes induced him to leave the bar, after which
he proceeded to Milan, and was there appointed secretary
to the Venetian resident. “
At Milan he brought out his first performance, under
the title of 11 Gondoliere Veneziano, which had all the suc¬
cess that could be expected from such a composition. He
afterwards removed to Verona, where he joined himself to
a company of players, and also entered into the state of
wedlock. He composed a number of pieces for the com-
pany to which he attached himself, and amongst these his
tragedy of Belisarius, which was performed for the first time
at Venice on the 24th of November 1734, with the greatest
success. Whilst as Venice he formed the laudable resolu¬
tion of reforming the Italian stage, which at that time was
disgraced by contemptible farce and low buffoonery. With
this view, having made himself acquainted with the true
nature of comedy, ne kept within the limits of nature and
decorum; and such was the fertility of his genius, such
his indefatigable industry, that he produced no fewer than
sixteen comedies and forty-two other theatrical pieces in
the course of about twelve months. Nor is it a less re¬
markable circumstance that some of these hasty perform¬
ances are considered as his masterpieces. His works, in
ten volumes 8vo, were first printed in 1753, and in 1761
his new pieces amounted to fifty-nine. And here ends the
literary life of Goldoni in Italy; for about this time he
accepted an engagement of two years in Paris, where he
found a numerous company of excellent performers in the
Italian theatre. His first attempt was unsuccessful, be¬
cause he had to contend with the pantomimic drollery
which was most agreeable to the depraved taste of the
times. When about to leave Paris on the expiration of
his engagement, he was introduced to the court, and ap¬
pointed teacher of the Italian languages to the princesses.
He had lodgings assigned him in Versailles, but his al¬
lowance was not sufficient to enable him to dispense with
writing for the stage. Meanwhile, being anxious to show
the French nation that he merited a high place among their
dramatic writers, he neglected no means calculated to ren¬
der him master of the French language; and, at the age
of sixty-two, he ventured to write a comedy in French,
which was brought out under the title of Le Bourru Bien-
fnisant, and received great applause in the court theatre.
His next production was L'Avare Fastueux, also a come¬
dy ; and this was succeeded by Volponi, which he wrote
after he had retired from court. The last work which he
undertook was the Memoires pour servir d CHistoire de
sa Vie et d celle de son Theatre, which, after having been
about three years occupied with the composition, appeared
in 1787, when he entered into the eightieth year of his
G O L
his wife, Anne, daughter of the Reverend MrJones,
ter of the diocesan school of Elphin, he had five sons
two daughters. His eldest son Henry entered the cni
and to him the Traveller is dedicated ; the second was
age. These Memoirs, written with unaffected simplicity and r
sincerity, display the real character both of the author and w. '
the man, and supply the most ample information respecting ^
the history of his life. Deprived of his pension soon after
the commencement of the revolution, Goldoni was reduced
to absolute indigence, and passed the evening of his life in
extreme distress. At length he fell sick; and it was only
in his last moments, on the 7th of January 1793, that the
Convention, apprised of his situation, decreed, on the re¬
port of Chenier, that his pension should in future be paid
out of the national treasury, and that the arrears due to
him should be immediately discharged. But it was too
late. Goldoni died on the day after this decree was pass¬
ed. But, on the recommendation of Chenier, a pension of
1200 francs was granted to his widow, aged seventy-six
and the arrears due to her husband were also paid to her.
If the rapidity with which Goldoni composed prevented
him from attaining the first rank as a comic writer, it will
easily be conceded that he stands foremost in the second.
His fertility is prodigious, and if his works betray marks of
haste or of carelessness, they at least show ready invention,
and, considering the diversity of his subjects, extraordinary
resources as a comic writer. The greatest fault with which
he is reproached is having contributed to corrupt the lan¬
guage of his country, which he seems to have been unable
to write with purity, elegance, and propriety; and, in fact,
we find ease, originality, and, if we may so express it, puri¬
ty of style only in his comedies written in the Venetian dia¬
lect, which was his vernacular idiom. His merits are, hav¬
ing contributed to reform the Italian stage, supplanted farce
and low buffoonery, naturalised genuine comedy in his na¬
tive country, and replaced the extravagances which had so
long corrupted the public taste, by pieces in which a regu¬
lar plot and natural characters supply the place of nonsen¬
sical ribaldry and ridiculous exaggeration. His comic opera
entitled Buona Figliuola, with music by Piccini, was the
first production which introduced both the poet and the
composer to the knowledge of our countrymen. The only
complete edition of Goldoni’s works is that printed at Leg¬
horn, 1788, 1791, in thirty-one vols. 8vo.
GOLDSMITH, or, as some choose to express it, silver¬
smith, an artist who makes vessels, utensils, and ornaments,
in gold and silver.
The goldsmith’s work is either performed in the mould,
or beat out with the hammer or other instrument. All
works which have raised figures are cast in a mould, and
afterwards polished and finished ; plates or dishes of silver
or gold are beaten out from thin flat plates; and tankards,
and other vessels of the kind, are formed of plates soldered
together, their mouldings being beaten out, not cast. The
business of the goldsmiths formerly required much more
labour than it does at present; for they were then obliged
to hammer the metal from the ingot to the thinness they
wanted; but the flattening mills which have been latterly
invented reduce metals to the thinness required, at a very
moderate expense. The goldsmith makes his own moulds,
and, for that reason, should be a good designer, and have
a taste in sculpture; he ought also to know enough o
metallurgy to be able to assay mixed metals, and to mix
the alloy.
Goldsmith, Oliver, an eminent English poet and ge¬
neral writer, was born on the 29th of November 1728, at a
place called Pallas, in the parish of Forney and county
Longford, in Ireland. His father, the Reverend Char es
Goldsmith, was a clergyman of the established church, w 0
had been educated at Dublin, and afterwards held the n
ing of Kilkenny West, in the county of Westmeath. 1
E3S
til
%
rdo
G O L*
ver.-ho is supposed to have faithfully represented his father
in tl? character of the village preacher in the poem of the
Dented Village. Oliver was originally intended for some
menintile employment, and with this view he was instruct¬
ed i; reading, writing, and arithmetic, at a common school;
but is lie had shown an early predilection for poetry, and
betuyed some inequalities of temper and conduct which
seeu'd to indicate a disposition more favourable to the
juriits of genius than the regularity of business, he was
iutp a school of reputation to qualify him for entering
the diversity with the advantage of suitable preparation,
itii.ne 174)4, being then in his fifteenth year, he was en¬
ters as a sizer at Trinity College, Dublin; and in this
senary he continued a few years, when he took a bache-
lofiSlegree; but his brother not being able to obtain any
prerment after he left the college, Oliver, by the advice
of gelation, turned his thoughts to the study of physic;
andiafter attending some courses of anatomy in Dublin,
jiroieded, in the year 1752, to Edinburgh, where he studied
thefcveral branches of medicine under the different pro-
fessirs in that university. But his thoughtless disposition
soot involved him in difficulties; and he was obliged to
lea'I Scotland precipitately, in consequence of engaging to
pay; considerable sum of money for a fellow student. A
lew) ays afterwards, about the beginning of the year 1754,
he f.rived at Sunderland, near Newcastle, where he was
amced at the suit of a tailor in Edinburgh, to whom he
had>pven security for his friend. But by the good offices
of ]|f Laughlan Maclane and Dr Sleigh, he was soon de-
livecd out of the hands of the bailiff, and took his passage
on oard a Dutch ship to Rotterdam, where, after a short
sta'l he proceeded to Brussels. He then visited the great¬
er art of Flanders ; and, after passing some time at Stras-
buiiand Louvain, where he obtained the degree of bachelor
of jlysic, he accompanied an English gentleman to Berne
anddeneva, in Switzerland.
•0lis undoubted that this ingenious but unfortunate per-
sortravelled on foot during the greater part of his tour.
Hefcad left England with very little money ; and being of
a pilosophical turn, and at that time possessing a body
capole of sustaining every fatigue, and a heart not easily
apj; led at danger, he became an enthusiast in the design
he ad formed of seeing the manners of different coun-
trit He had some knowledge of the French language
arum music, and he played tolerably well on the German
flutj; which, from an amusement, became at some times his
onlirneans of subsistence. His learning produced him a
hositable reception at most of the religious houses; and
hisinusic made him welcome to the peasants of Flanders
another parts of Germany. “ Whenever I approached
a flsant’s house towards night-fall,” said he, “ I played
onipf my most merry tunes, and that procured me not
onlia lodging, but subsistence for the next day; but in
trui I must own, whenever I attempted to entertain per-
sonof a higher rank, they always thought my performance
odihs, and never made me any return for my endeavours
to ease them.”
'i Goldsmith’s arrival at Geneva, he wras recommended
as oroper person for a travelling tutor to a young man who
haibeen unexpectedly left a considerable sum of money
hy s uncle, formerly an eminent pawnbroker near Holborn.
Tl: youth, who had been articled to an attorney, deter-
roi d, on receipt of his fortune, to see the world ; and, on
hisi ngaging with his preceptor, made a provision that he
shi Id be permitted to govern himself; but Goldsmith
soi found his pupil understood extremely well the art of
ravaging his money concerns, avarice being, in fact, his
rujhg passion. His questions were usually how money
mi1 it be saved, which was the least expensive course of tra-
vc ng, and whether any thing could be bought that would
tU! to account when disposed of again in London. Such
G o L go?
curiosities on the way as could be seen for nothing he was Goldsmith,
ready enough to look at; but if the sight of them requir- '—-y-w
ed to be paid for, he usually asserted that he had been
told they were not worth seeing. A companion of this
turn could not be much to Goldsmith’s taste, and in
truth must have been intolerable to any one. During
his continuance in Switzerland he assiduously cultivated
his poetical talent, of which he had given some proofs
even whilst at Edinburgh. It was from this country
that he sent the first sketch of his poem called the Tra¬
veller to his brother the clergyman in Ireland, who, giv-
ing up fame and fortune, had retired with an amiable
wile, to happiness and obscurity, on an income cf only
L.40 a year. From Geneva Mr Goldsmith and his pupil
visited the south of France, where the young man, upon
some disagreement with his preceptor, paid him the small
part of his salary which was due, and embarked at Mar¬
seilles for England. Our wanderer was thus left once
more at large in the wide world, and passed through a va¬
riety of difficulties in traversing the greater part of France.
At length his curiosity being satiated, he bent his course
towards England, and arrived at Dover in the year 1756.
When he reached London, his stock of cash did not
amount to a couple of shillings; and being an entire
stranger in the metropolis, his mind was filled with the
most gloomy reflections on his embarrassed situation.
With some difficulty he discovered the part of the town
in which his old acquaintance Dr Sleigh resided. This
gentleman received him with the warmest affection, and
liberally invited him to share his purse until some esta¬
blishment could be procured for him. Unwilling, how¬
ever, to be a burden to his friend, Goldsmith, a short
time afterwards, embraced an offer which was made him
to assist Dr Milner in instructing young gentlemen at
an academy at Peckham ; and for a short time he acquit¬
ted himself greatly to the doctor’s satisfaction, But hav¬
ing obtained some reputation by some criticisms he had
written in the Monthly Review, Mr Griffith, the proprie¬
tor, engaged him in the compilation of that work; and,
resolving to pursue the profession of writing, he returned
to London, as the mart where abilities of every kind
were sure to meet distinction and rew'ard. As his finan¬
ces were by no means in a good state, he determined to
adopt a plan of the strictest economy, and took lodgings
in an obscure court in the Old Bailey, where he wrote
several ingenious little pieces. Mr Newberry, who was
at that time a great encourager of men of literary abili¬
ties, became a patron of our author, and introduced him
as a wu-iter in the Public Ledger, in which his Citizen of
the World originally appeared, under the title of Chinese
Letters.
Fortune now seemed to bestow some notice on a man
whom she had long neglected. The simplicity of his cha¬
racter, the integrity of his heart, and the merit of his pro¬
ductions, made his company acceptable to a number of
respectable families; and he emerged from his shabby
apartments in the Old Bailey to the politer air of the
Temple, wdiere he took handsome chambers, and lived in
a genteel style. The publication of his Traveller, and his
Vicar of Wakefield, was followed by the performance of
his comedy of the Good-Natured Man at Covent Garden
Theatre; a production which placed him in the first rank
of the poets of the age.
Amongst many persons of distinction who were desi¬
rous to know him was the Duke of Northumberland ; and
the circumstance which attended his introduction to that
nobleman is worthy of being related, as showing a strik¬
ing trait of his character. “ I was invited,” said the doc¬
tor, as he was then universally called, “ by my friend Mr
Percy, to wait upon the duke, in consequence of the satis¬
faction he had received from the perusal of one of my
608
G O L
G O L
Goldsmith, productions. I dressed myself in the best manner I could,
and, after studying some compliments I thought neces¬
sary on such an occasion, proceeded to North&mberland
House, and acquainted the servants that I had particular
business with his grace. They showed me into an anti¬
chamber ; where, after waiting some time, a gentleman
very genteelly dressed made his appearance. Taking him
for the duke, I delivered all the fine things I had com¬
posed in order to compliment him on the honour he had
done me; when, to my great astonishment, he told me I
had mistaken him for his master, who would see me im¬
mediately. At that instant the duke came into the apart¬
ment, and I was so confused on the occasion, that I want¬
ed words barely sufficient to express the sense I enter¬
tained of the duke’s politeness, and went away extremely
chagrined at the blunder I had committed.” Absence,
simplicity, credulity, and entire ignorance of the world,
appear to have formed the principal elements in the
character of this amiable but somewhat eccentric man
of genius. He was indeed “ in wit a man, simplicity a
child.”
Previously to the publication of his Deserted Village,
the bookseller had given him a note for a hundred gui¬
neas for the copyright, which the doctor mentioned a few
hours afterwards to one of his friends, who observed, it
was a very great sum for so short a performance. “ In
truth,” replied Goldsmith, “ I think so too ; I have not
been easy since I received it, therefore I will go back
and return him his note.” This he absolutely did, and
left it entirely to the bookseller to pay him according to
the profits produced by the sale of the piece, which, how¬
ever, proved to be very considerable.
During the last rehearsal of his comedy entitled She
Stoops to Conquer, which Coleman had no opinion would
succeed, on the doctor’s objecting to the repetition of one
of Tony Lumpkin’s speeches, being apprehensive it might
injure the play, the manager with great keenness replied,
“ Psha, my dear doctor, do not be fearful of squibs, when
we have been sitting almost these two hours upon a bar¬
rel of gunpowder.” The piece, however, contrary to Cole¬
man’s expectation, was received with uncommon applause
by the audience ; and Goldsmith’s pride was so much hurt
by the severity of this observation, that it entirely put an
end to his friendship for Coleman.
Notwithstanding the great success of his pieces, by
some of which, it has been asserted on good authority, he
cleared L.1800 in one year, his circumstances were by no
means in a prosperous condition. This was partly owing
to the liberality of his disposition, and partly to an unfor¬
tunate habit he had contracted of gaming, the arts of which
he knew very little of, and consequently became the prey
of those who were unprincipled enough to take advantage
of his simplicity.
Just before his death he had formed a design of exe¬
cuting an Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, the
prospectus of which he actually published. In this work
several of his literary friends, particularly Sir Joshua
Reynolds, Dr Johnson, Mr Beauclerc, and Mr Garrick,
had undertaken to furnish him with articles upon differ¬
ent subjects; and he entertained the most sanguine ex¬
pectations of its success. The undertaking, however, did
not meet with that encouragement from the booksellers
which he had imagined it would undoubtedly receive ;
and he used to lament this circumstance almost to the last
hour of his existence.
He had been for some years afflicted, at different times,
with a violent strangury, which contributed not a little
to embitter the latter part of his life ; and which, united
with the vexations he suffered on other accounts, brought
on a kind of habitual despondency. In this unhappy con¬
dition he was attacked by a nervous fever, which, being
improperly treated, terminated his existence on the 4th
April 1774, at the age of forty-five.
The learned leisure which he loved to enjoy was too
Gtilf )
J l
often interrupted by distresses which arose from the libe-
rality of his temper, and which sometimes threw him into
loud fits of passion. But this impetuosity was corrected
upon a moment’s reflection ; and his servants have been
known upon these occasions purposely to throw them¬
selves in his way, that they might profit by it immediately
afterwards; for he who had the good fortune to be re-
proved was certain of being rewarded for it. The univer-
sal esteem in which his poems wrere held, and the never-
failing pleasure which they afford in the perusal, are strik¬
ing proofs of their merit. He was a studious and correct
observer of nature ; happy in the selection of his images,
the choice of his subjects, and the harmony of his versifil
cation; and though his embarrassed situation prevented
him from putting the last hand to many of his produc¬
tions, his Hermit, his Traveller, and his Deserted Vil¬
lage, bid fair to retain their place amongst the most
finished pieces in the English language.
Besides the works already mentioned, he wrote, 1. His¬
tory of the Earth and Animated Nature, in 6 vols. 8vo;
2. History of England, in 4 vols. 8vo ; 3. History of Rome,
in 2 vols.; and, 4. Abridgments of the two last, for the
use of schools. Goldsmith’s Miscellaneous Works were
collected and published by Bishop Percy, who prefixed to
his edition a valuable and interesting life of the author.
GOLF, the name of a certain game amongst the Scotch,
and said to be peculiar to their country. Amongst this
people it has been very ancient; for there are statutes
prohibiting it as early as the year 1457, lest it should in¬
terfere with the sport of archery. It is commonly play¬
ed on rugged or broken ground, covered with short grass,
in the neighbourhood of the sea shore. A field of this
sort is in Scotland called links. The game is generally
played in parties of one or two on each side. Each party
has an exceedingly hard ball, somewhat larger than a
pullet’s egg ; and this they strike with a-slender and elas¬
tic club, of about our feet in length, crooked in the head,
and having lead run into it to make it heavy. The ball
being struck with this club, flies sometimes to the distance
of two hundred yards, and the game is gained by the
party who puts his ball into the hole with the fewest
strokes. But the game does not depend solely upon strik¬
ing the longest ball, but also upon measuring the strength
of the stroke, and applying it in such direction as to lay
the ball in smooth ground, whence it may easily be moved
at the next stroke. To encourage this amusement, the
city of Edinburgh, in the year 1744, gave to the company
of golfers a silver club, to be played for annually by the
company, the victor to append a gold or silver piece to
the prize. For their better accommodation, twenty-two
members of the company, in the year 1768, subscribed
L.30 each to build a house where their meetings might
be held. The spot chosen for this purpose was the south¬
west corner of Leith Links, where an area was taken in
feu from the magistrates of Edinburgh, and a house an
tavern built upon it. St Andrews has long been celebrat¬
ed for the game of golf.
GOLIUS, James, a professor of Arabic and mathema¬
tics at Leyden, was descended from a considerable fann y
of the same name, and born at the Hague in the year 15 •
He was early sent to the university of Leyden, where e
studied under Erpenius ; and having made himself mas¬
ter of the learned languages, applied himself to the slu y
of mathematics, physic, and divinity. He afterwards tra
veiled into Africa and Asia; and was greatly e^ee®e
both by the king of Morocco and the sultan of lur ey
He at length returned to Leyden loaded with manuscrip^)
and in 1624 succeeded Erpenius in the Arabic chair.
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he ad been an eye-witness of the wretched state of
Ch otianity in the Mahommedan countries, he was filled
witjthe compassion of a fellow Christian ; and none ever
soli ted for a place of honour and profit with greater
eagi'ness than he did for procuring a new edition of the
Ne; Testament, in the original language, with a transla-
tiounto the modern Greek by an archimandrite; and as
the> are some of these Christians who use the Arabic
tonne in divine service, he also caused to be dispersed
anugst them an Arabic translation of the confession of
thefrotestants, together with the Catechism and Liturgy.
In. 526 he was chosen professor of mathematics, and
discharged the functions of both professorships with the
gre;est applause during forty years. He was likewise
appinted interpreter in ordinary to the states for the
Araic, Turkish, Persian, and other eastern languages,
andaad an annual pension conferred upon him, together
with present of a gold chain and a beautiful medal, which
he ire as a badge of his office. Although entitled to be
comdered as an universal scholar, Golius excelled chiefly
in gilology and languages, in the acquisition of which he
evired equal ability and application. At the age of fifty-
fou ie made himself master of Persian, in which he wrote
addionary, afterwards printed in Castell’s Lexicon Hep-
tagi ton; he was intimately acquainted with the Turkish ;
andie had made such progress in the Chinese that, though
he i plied late in life to the study of it, he was able to read
andunderstand books written in that language. Besides
therorks which he had printed and published, he left
sev al unfinished manuscripts, which, if he had lived to
conrlete them, would have done credit to his talents and
leaning. His published works are, 1. Chadzrat-aladab
ninielam alarab, hoc est, Proverbia quaedam Alis Impe-
rati s Muslemici, et Carmen Togra’i poetae doctissimi,
nectnn Dissertatio quaedam Aben-Synae, Leyden, 1629,
in ko; 2. Lexicon Arabico-Latinum, contextum ex pro-
batiribus Orientis lexicographis : accedit index copiosis-
simu, qui Lexici Latino-Arabici vicem explore possit,
Le'en, 1653, in folio; 3. Muhamedis filii Ketiri Ferga-
nens, qui vulgo Alfraganus dicitur, elementa Astrono¬
mic: Arabice et Latine, cum notis ad res exoticas sive
Oriiitales, quae in iis occurrunt, Amsterdam, 1669, in
4toi4. Ahmedis Arabsiadae vitae, et rerum gestarum Ti-
mu; qui vulgo Tamerlanes dicitur, Historia, Leyden,
163 in 4to; 5. An edition of the Arabian Grammar of
'.rpaius, to which Golius added, Adagiorum Arab, cen-
turij iii. Poetarum sententiae lix. Consessus i. Haririi, Car-
meiiAbu-Olae, and Patriarchae Antioch. Eliae iii. qui flo-
ruili irca annum Christi 1180, homilia de nativ. Christi;
6. Ictionarium Persico-Latinum, left in manuscript at
bis eath, and published, as already mentioned, in Cas-
teli i Lexicon Heptaglotton. Golius died on the 28th of
Sep: mber 1667.
PLTZIUS, Henry, a celebrated engraver and painter,
wasiiorn in 1558, at Mulbreck, in the duchy of Juliers. He
was aught engraving by Theodore Cuerenhart, and suc-
cee ul well in the practice of the art, notwithstanding
die isadvantage of a lame hand, which was occasioned
by is falling into the fire whilst young. He was first em-
p]°’!d by his master, and afterwards he worked for Phi-
bp alle. Domestic troubles and ill health having in¬
due 1 him to travel, he went through Germany into Italy;
and-assed under a feigned name, that his studies might
not e interrupted. He visited Bologna, Florence, Na¬
ples and Venice, constantly applying himself to drawing
lrot|the antique statues, and studying the works of the
gre: masters. At Rome he resided longest; and in that
pCUyie produced several excellent engravings from Poli-
don Raphael, and other eminent painters. On his return
t0 k, native country he established himself at Haerlem,
- he engraved many of the drawings which he had
Vu x.
isfai, by
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G O N 609
made during his abode in Italy. He died at Haerlem in Gombroon
1617, aged fifty-nine. !l
GOMBROON, a celebrated sea-port of Persia, in the .
province of Laristan, situated in a barren country on a
bay of the Gulf of Ormus. This was at one time the first
sea-port in the kingdom of Persia, being the port of Shi¬
raz, and of all the southern provinces; and it was at that
time strongly fortified. The houses were large and hand¬
some, but the place was considered very unhealthy. Gom¬
broon is still a place of considerable trade. The customs
amount to about 20,000 rupees a year, for which the
imaum of Muskat, to whom the town is subject, accounts
to the kings of Persia. The town is large, and the houses
are built in a much more commodious manner than is usual
in the towns of Persia. The fort of Minab, by which the
town is defended, is divided into the upper, centre, and
lower forts. Close to the fort a small river breaks through
the hills, and forms a pass from the eastward. This river,
together with the canals made to diffuse its waters, serve
as ditches to the fort. Ihe country for forty-five miles
around Minab is covered with villages, abounds in dates,
and supplies all the neighbouring country with grain.
Forage is so plentiful that the cattle of the adjoining dis¬
tricts are sent in great numbers to feed there during the
hot season. The English obtained permission to settle a
factory here in 1613. About 1620 the Dutch obtained
the same privilege ; and when Ormus was captured in
1622, by the English and Persians, merchants resorted
thither in great numbers, and commerce greatly increased
The English remained here till 1759, when the factory,
defenceless and totally neglected, was attacked by the
French under Count d’Estaing, to whom it surrendered.
The factory was afterwards re-established, but has long
since been withdrawn, in consequence of the unhealthi¬
ness of the climate. Long. 56. 12. E. Lat. 27. 18. N.
GOMERSALL, a township of Yorkshire, within the
parish of Birstall, in the wapentake of Morley, in the
west riding of Yorkshire. The woollen manufactory em¬
ploys the greater part of the inhabitants, who in 1801
amounted to 4309, in 1811 to 5902, in 1821 to 5952, and
in 1831 to 6189.
GOMOR, a circle of the Hungarian province of the
Hither Theiss, extending over 1596 square miles, and com¬
prehending a city, twelve market-towns, and two hundred
and sixty villages, with 164,000 inhabitants. It is the
most mountainous portion of Hungary, and includes part of
the Carpathian range. It contains many mines, and the
metals obtained from these give occupation to the people,
who apply them to making hardware. The climate is cold
and raw, but the soil produces flax, tobacco, and some
corn, abundance of cattle, and some butter and cheese.
Linen goods are manufactured to some extent. The capi¬
tal is a small town of the same name, where the Lutherans
have a college with a good library.
GOMORRAH, one of the cities of the plain or of the
vale of Siddim, in Judaea, destroyed together with Sodom
by fire from heaven, on account of the wickedness of the
inhabitants.
GONDAR, the capital of Abyssinia, situated, according
to Mr Bruce’s observations, in latitude 12. 30. north, and
longitude 57. 40. east from Greenwich. See Abyssinia. *
GONDI. See Retz, Cardinal de.
GONDOLA, a flat boat, very long and narrow, and
chiefly used at Venice for rowing on the canals. The word
is Italian, gondola. Du Cange derives it from the modern
Greek xovvnXas, a bark or Utile ship ; but Lancelot deduces
it from yovbv, a term in Athenaeus for a sort of vase.
GONIEH, a fortified town on the coast of the Black
Sea, on the south of the Phasis, and which, though proper¬
ly forming part of Georgia, is almost entirely dependent
on the Turkish government. It was formerly a consider-
4 H
■
610
GOO
GOO
Gonong
A pee
Good.
able place, but is now sunk into a miserable village. It
is 80 miles east-north-east of Trebisond.
GONONG APEE, one of the smaller Banda Islands, at
the north-east end of the harbour of Beema, in the island
of Sumbawa, and forming the west side of the north en¬
trance of Sapy Straits. It derives its name from a large
volcano about 1500 feet in height, and which terminates
in two high peaks, and constantly emits smoke and ashes.
It is separated from Neira by a narrow strait, and at a dis¬
tance has the appearance of a heap of cinders. On the
south side of the island are two forts, originally intended
to defend the west channel of Lantore harbour ; but owing
to the eruption of the volcano in 1778, the lava flowed
down in such quantities as to render them in a great de¬
gree useless.
GONONG TELLOO, a town in the island of Celebes,
situated on a river of the same name, two miles from the
sea, on the north side of the great bay of Tominie or Go¬
nong Telloo, which stretches inland nearly to the west side
of Celebes. It was subject to the Dutch, who had a con¬
siderable fort on the river, with two small ones at its en¬
trance, but it was reduced when the island of Celebes was
taken possession of by the British in 1812. Ships can an¬
chor at the entrance of the river in deep water; and just
within the entrance are two small coves, either of which
a ship may haul into, and be sheltered from the strong
freshes that come down the river. The inhabitants are
Malays and Mahommedans. A considerable trade is car¬
ried on, and the rajah is the principal merchant. The ar¬
ticles chiefly imported are opium, iron, gunpowder, piece-
goods of a common kind, and coarse cutlery. Gold is one
of the principal exports, and also tortoise-shell; the gold is
procured from a mine to the westward of Gonong Telloo.
Long. 123. E. Lat. 0. 30. S.
GONIOMETRY, a method of measuring angles, so
called by M. de Lagny, who published several papers on
this method in the Memoirs of the Academy of Sciences in
the years 1724, 1725, 1729. M. de Lagny’s method of
goniometry consists in measuring the angles with a pair of
compasses, and that without any scale whatsoever, except
an undivided semicircle. Thus, having any angle drawn upon
paper to be measured, produce one of the sides of the
angle backwards behind the angular point; then with a
pair of fine compasses describe a pretty large semicircle from
the angular point as a centre, cutting the sides of the pro¬
posed angle, which will intercept a part of the semicircle.
Take this intercepted part exactly between the points of
the compasses, and turn them successively over upon the
arc of the semicircle, to find how often it is contained
in it; and as after this there is commonly some remainder,
take such remainder in the compasses, and in like manner
find how often it is contained in the last of the integral
parts of the first arc ; and if there be again some remainder,
find in like manner how often this last is contained in the
former; and so on continually, till the remainder become
too small to be taken and applied as a measure. By this
means may be obtained a series of quotients, or fractional
parts, one of another, which being properly reduced into
one fraction, give the ratio of the first arc to the semicircle,
or of the proposed angle to two right angles, or a hundred
and eighty degrees, and consequently that angle itself in
degrees and minutes.
GONORRHCEA, an efflux of matter from the urethra,
most commonly owing to venereal infection.
GOOCHNAUTH, a village of Hindustan, in the pro¬
vince of Gujrat and district of Werrear, situated on the
south bank of the Bunass river about three miles south¬
east from Rahdunpoor. The neighbouring country is in
a state of high cultivation, and most of the fields are en¬
closed. It belongs to a Mahommedan chief.
GOOD, in general, whatever is apt to increase plea¬
sure, to diminish pain; or, which amounts to the same r
thing, whatever is calculated to procure or preserve to us Isb
the possession of agreeable sensations, and remove those '
of an opposite nature. See Moral Philosophy. Cape,
Goon’s Island, an island on the north coast of New H
Holland, in Torres Strait, about two miles in length, p ^
has a rocky soil, and is hilly and covered with wood. It r
abounds in a species of silk cotton plant. Long. 142 10 V
Lat. 10. 32. S. '
Goon Fortune, or Poro, an island in the Eastern Seas
near the west coast of Sumatra, about thirty-six miles in
length and six in breadth. Long. 98. 30. E. Lat. 1.5, §
Goon Friday, a fast of the Christian church, in me¬
mory of the sufferings and death of Jesus Christ. It j8
observed on the Friday in holy or passion week; and it is
called, by way of eminence, good, because of the blessed
effects of our Saviour’s sufferings, which were a propitia-
tory or expiating sacrifice for the sins of the world. The
commemoration of our Saviour’s sufferings has been ob¬
served from the very first ages of Christianity, and was
always kept as a day of the strictest fasting and humilia¬
tion. Amongst the Saxons it was called Long Friday,
but for what reason, except perhaps the long fastings and
offices then used, is uncertain.
GOOD HOPE, Cape of, a district of country in the
southern portion of Africa, in the possession of Great Bri¬
tain. In the distribution of land and water, this cape oc¬
cupies a conspicuous place on the map of the globe. It
separates the Indian Ocean from the Atlantic, and divides
the voyage to Hindustan into two nearly equal portions.
To double this Cape, and bear across the ocean to the gol¬
den shores of India, was an object of ambition to the ear¬
ly Portuguese navigators. It was first descried, in 1493,
by Diaz, who commanded a Portuguese squadron. (See
Gama.) The tempestuous nature of the sea, however,
caused by the conflict of contending oceans running in op¬
posite directions, compelled the navigator to return. By
him the newly discovered land was called the Cape of
Tempests ; but the king of Portugal gave it the more aus¬
picious name which it still bears. The formidable barrier,
however, was not passed until 1497, when the celebrated
Vasco de Gama, with his characteristic boldness, sur¬
mounted every difficulty, and carried the Portuguese flag
into the Indian Sea. The Portuguese, however, founds
richer spoil in the kingdoms of the East; and although they
frequently touched at the Cape, they did not make any
permanent settlement there. But the Dutch early saw the
importance of forming a station at the Cape, and fixed
upon it as a place where their vessels might take in water
and provisions. But they did not, properly speaking, co¬
lonize it, until the middle of the seventeenth century, when
they Founded Cape Town. This led to further improve¬
ments, and the colony gradually assumed its present dimen¬
sions. The natives were either compelled to fly beyond
the mountains, or they were reduced to a state of abject
slavery. During the war with revolutionary France, the
Cape wras reduced by the British in 1797, but was ceded to
Holland by the peace of Amiens. When the war recom¬
menced, it again yielded to Britain, and the permanent pos¬
session of it was confirmed by the congress of Vienna m
1815.
This colony is bounded on the north and east by the
Orange and Fish Rivers, and on the west and south by the
Atlantic and Southern Oceans. The country exten s
from latitude 26. to 33. 55. 40. south. It includes the
country inhabited by the Hottentot race and the Bo?^ li¬
anas. The country upon the map presents a very irreo11
lar figure ; but Mr Barrow, reducing it to a parallelogram,
computed that the Cape Colony comprehended an area
at least 120,000 square miles. Of this great tract o ^r
ritory, a very considerable proportion is a sterile was
(ill:
CAPE OF GOOD HOPE,
ffi .
jjf (tains of vast and barren mountains enclose level plains
onposed of a hard surface of clay, thinly sprinkled over
• v;h sand, and producing straggling tufts of stunted shrubs.
^ ie mountains generally extend in the direction of east
ad west, but there are exceptions to this rule.
The first great chain of mountains, which runs east and
vist, is called Lange Kloof or Long Pass. Between it
ad the southern coast there lies an irregular belt of land
film twenty to sixty miles in width. It is indented by
sieral bays, and, possessing a good soil and a more mild
a;l equable temperature than the interior parts of the co¬
ld y, it is well clothed with vegetation, and is in many
pj'ts wooded with forest trees. The next great chain is
tf Swartebergen, or Black Mountains. It is more lofty
ad rugged than the first, and in many places consists of
ciuble, and sometimes treble ranges of hills. Between it
ail the first chain there lies a belt which is about the mean
v lth of that between the first and the sea. Its surface
livery various, being composed in some parts of barren
I[Js; in others of arid tracts of clay land called karroo ; and
i;some,places of fertile land. This belt lies higher than
t first; but the temperature is less uniform, and alto-
Mher it is not so valuable as the other. The third great
r ige is the Nieuweveld Mountains, which, with the second,
ci doses the Great Karroo,1 an arid plain 309 miles in
llgth, and eighty in breadth. This desert, which forms
tii third step or terrace of Southern Africa, is greatly ele-
v ed above the second. It is destitute of inhabitants, and
ciost of vegetation. What there is of the latter is parched
£i 1 shrivelled by the heat of the sun, and from the want of
ii isture. On the western coast are also elevated chains
ci mountains. To the northward the country is more bar-
i! i and sandy than towards the eastward. Sandstone rest-
i; upon a base of granite composes all the continuous
mins of mountains in Southern Africa. These are the
U'St prevailing rocks; the next in frequency are clay-
site, and there are also greywacke, quartz rock, and dole-
r \ In some parts the sandstone is traversed by veins
cred iron ore. Dr Clarke Abel mentions a vein six feet
vie, and extending for upwards of a hundred feet.
On the western coast there are two principal rivers, the
irg or Mountain River, which falls into St Helena Bay,
! 1 the Olifant or Elephant’s River, which falls into the
>nthern Atlantic in south latitude 31. 30. Both these
r ers have obstructions at their mouths, which prevent
t ‘ir being navigable. On the south coast are several
(iisiderable rivers, one of which is the Great Fish River.
All these streams are well stocked with various kinds of
fci. Breede or Braad River is navigables by ships of 200
t s burden, and its mouth has been called Port Beaufort.
1 re the exports of the district are made. The Grautz
i he next great river of the coast. It is a collection of
vters from the Great Karroo, the Black Mountains, and
t ■ maritime chain. The other streams it is unnecessary
t mention. Southern Africa possesses but few lakes,
®d of these some are salt. There is also a paucity of
® ings ; and although much rain falls in Cape District, it
< irds comparatively few, on account of the peculiar na-
ti e and relative position of the strata.
Cape Colony is divided into two provinces, the eastern
®d western, which are again subdivided into districts, ar-
ruged as under:
Western Province.—Cape District, Stellenbosch, Cale-
fb, Zwellendam, Worcester (formerly Julbach), Clan-
' Ham.
' hastern Province.—Graaff Reynet, Beaufort, Somerset,
4^any, Uitenhage, George, Fredericksburg,
pt is to be observed that some of these districts have
been united into one, since the commissioners of inquiry
into the state of the colony suggested the propriety of
dividing Cape Colony into two provinces. Although they
are of nearly equal superficial extent, in their physical cha¬
racter and productions they are very unlike. The western
districts produce chiefly corn and wine, and the eastern are
principally adapted for pasturage.
Cape District is the most populous and prosperous of the
whole. It consists of two parts; the peninsula on which
the town stands, and the slip of land extending from the
shore of fable Bay to the mouth of Berg River, and se¬
parated from Stellenbosch and Drakenstein by the Little
Salt River, Deep River, and Mossel Bank River. This is
about eighty miles from north to south, and twenty-five from
east to west; whilst the Cape Peninsula is about thirty
miles in length and eight in breadth. Both comprehend a
surface of about 2240 square miles, and contain a popula¬
tion of 7462 souls, exclusively of the capital.
Cape Peninsula is distinguished for the richness and va¬
riety of its vegetable productions. Some of the finest bo¬
tanical specimens which now adorn the gardens of Europe
have been derived from this quarter of the w orld. In no
other place do the bulbous plants in particular exhibit so
many beautiful varieties. Others of the vegetable tribes,
which are rather for ornament than use, are likewise nu¬
merous and beautiful; but there is a deficiency of building
timber and fire wood, although forests of oak are said to
exist to the east of False Bay, in that part called Hotten¬
tot Land. Many European plants have been introduced, as
the vines of France, and the fruits of the north of Europe ;
and it is believed that the tea of China, the coffee of Java,
the cotton of India, and the tobacco of America, as well as
other valuable vegetable productions, might be successfully
cultivated at the Cape. Of metals, copper, native iron, sil¬
ver, and lead, are known to exist, and coal is said to have
been discovered. This would no doubt be an invaluable ac¬
quisition to the natural wealth of the Cape; but at present
the staple commodities upon which the colony depends are
the produce of the wine districts; grain, hides, and skins ;
horses, argol, aloes, and wool. Perhaps silk might be made
a source of colonial revenue, for here the mulberry grows to
perfection, and the climate is precisely adapted to the worm.
With regard to the zoology of the Cape of Good Hope, as
there is little peculiar to this part of Southern Africa, and as
under the head of Africa sufficient details are given, it is
unnecessary to recapitulate what will be found in that ar¬
ticle. We shall commence our topographical descriptions
with the seat of government, Cape Town.
Cape Town, the capital of the colony, lies at the bottom
of Table Bay, about thirty-two miles north from the Cape
of Good Hope, and on the western side of the territory to
which it gives its name, in longitude 18. 21. E. and lati¬
tude 33. 55. 56. S. The town, as we have already men¬
tioned, was founded by the Dutch in 1650, after which it
shared in the various vicissitudes which were experienced
by the colony. The streets are regularly laid out in straight
lines, crossing each other at right angles. Though unpaved,
they are kept in excellent order, many of them being wa¬
tered by canals, and planted on each side with oaks. The
houses are built of brick, and faced with a stucco of lime,
and they are decorated with cornices and architectural de¬
vices. Each house has in front a paved platform, called
the stoep or step, usually eight or ten feet wide, and
raised from two to four feet above the level of the street.
It is here that the inhabitants retire to enjoy the air, or the
converse of friends. The roofs have only an inclination suf¬
ficient to allow the rain to run dow n. Although the houses do
not display the luxury and splendour of European man-
61]
Cape of
Good
Hope.
‘ The word karroo belongs to the Hottentot language, and signifies dry or and.
CAPE OF GOOD HOPE.
612
Cape of
Good
Hope.
sions, they are nevertheless commodious and comfortable.
There are three churches here, one for the Reformed or
Calvinistic congregation, the established church of the
Dutch government; one for the performance of the English
service, built in 1820 ; and a third belonging to the Luthe¬
rans, who are a numerous body. Besides these, there is a
meeting-house open to preachers of various denominations ;
and the Malays have a place of worship, in which the Ma-
hommedan service is performed. The public buildings of
Cape Town are, the government-house, which stands in a
garden surrounded with plantations ; the burgher senate-
house, a large handsome building, where civic business is
transacted, and which stands on one side of a square, where a
market for vegetables is held ; the commercial exchange, a
building which contains the court of justice, the secretary’s
office, and most of the principal public offices ; the custom¬
house, and other public buildings, such as are necessary in
conducting the affairs of a large town. It is defended by
a castle of considerable strength, which commands the
jetty or landing place, and part of Table Bay, and com¬
pletely controls the only road between the town and coun¬
try. Table Bay is capable of containing any number of
ships ; but it is exposed to the westerly winds during the
months of June, July, and August, during which there is
thrown in a heavy swell, which often proves very destruc¬
tive. This is the great drawback upon Cape Town, other¬
wise so admirably adapted for a commercial station. Dur¬
ing the prevalence of the easterly monsoon, however, Table
Bay is perfectly safe; whilst the cheapness of provisions,
the healthiness of the climate, and, above all, its position,
render it an excellent resting place for vessels bound to or
returning from India, China, Australia, and other places.
Large quantities of corn of a very good description are
produced in the immediate neighbourhood of Cape Town ;
but its free exportation, is restrained, none being allowed
to be sent abroad, except a specified quantity decided upon
by government after an investigation into the state of the
crops. Large quantities of wine, and of what is called
brandy, are produced at the Cape ; but, with the exception
of Constantia, they are very inferior. Considerable quan¬
tities of hides, skins, and horns, are exported. They are
principally brought from Algoa Bay, on the eastern side of
the colony ; and the trade has increased very fast during
the last six or seven years. Horses, butter, beef, ivory,
whale oil, aloes, argol, and various other articles, are among
the exports. The imports at the Cape consist of woollens,
cottons, hardware, earthen ware, furniture, haberdashery,
soap, paper, books, and portions of most articles used in
this country. Piece-goods and teak timber are imported
from India, tea from China, sugar from India and the Mau¬
ritius, &c. The total revenue of the Cape Colony for the
year 1832 amounted to L. 130,808. 7s. 3£d.; the expendi¬
ture for the same year was L.126,889. Os. 9|d ; leaving a
balance or surplus of L.3919. 6s. 10|d. The trade between
the colonists and the independent natives is subjected to
restraints, which do not work advantageously. According
to the accounts published by the board of trade, the values
of the products imported into and exported from the Cape
of Good Hope in 1831 were as under.
Countries.
Great Britain....
British colonies.
Foreign states..
Imports.
L.281,445
37,751
25,855
L.345,051
Exports.
L.127,468
70,957
14,700
L.213,125
During the same year, the ships and tonnage entering
inwards from, and clearing outwards to, the under-mention¬
ed countries, were—
Countries.
Britain 
British colonies.
Foreign states...
Inwards.
Ships. Tons.
79
88
38
20,737
29,960
14,769
205 65,466
Outwards.
Ships. T
104
75
52
231
33,393
19,097
9,915
62,405
Cape,
Ooot
Hoik1
According to the Cape Almanac, the population in
1829-30 amounted to 13,103 free persons, and 5838 slaves
making in all 18,491.
Articles, the Produce and Manufacture of the Cape Colony,
exported in 1829.
Articles.
Amount.
Aloes, 375,736 lbs. and 61 casks and
cases, estimated value   
Argol, 22,422 lbs 
Butter, 105,519 lbs. and 152 casks and
jars  
Beef, pork, and tongues, salted, 1780
casks and kegs 
Beer, 3306 gallons 
Biscuits and rusks, 20,000 lbs 
Corn, grain, meal, &c. viz.
Barley and oats, 13,553 muids..
Beans and peas, 60 muids 
Bran, 36,332 lbs 
Flour, 78,224 lbs ....
Wheat, 24,236 muids 
Cheese 
Curiosities  
Confectionery, 
Candles, 11,584 lbs 
Carriages 
Feathers, ostrich, 539 lbs. and 31 boxes
Fish 
Fruits, dried, 133,333 lbs 
green 
Garden seeds and bulbs 
Gum, 16,943 lbs. and 2 cases 
Hides, horse and ox, 79,035 pieces 
Horns, 244,610 in number 
Hay, 29,160 lbs 
Horses, 314 in number 
Ivory, 25,497 lbs. and 227 tusks,
bundles and casks 
Lime, 72 half-aams 
Leather, 2 cases 
Mules, 48 head 
Oil, whale, 34,662 gallons and 90 casks
Oxen, cows, and calves, 444 head....
Polonies 
Potatoes and onions, 367 muids 
Poultry 
Salt, 288 muids  
Sheep, 3282 in number; pigs, 33
goats, 2 
Spirits, viz.
Brandy, 1408^ gallons  
Liqueurs, 24 gallons 
Soap, 1218 lbs 
2,794 0 0
535 0 0
5,570 16 4|
4,353 7 li
240 0 0
228 0 0
4,163
87
121
866
23,449
31
467
29
383
38
1,917
1,589
4,236
49
413
96
33,722
5,989
79
8,753
6 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
10 0
12 6
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
10 5
0 0
0 0
2 0
0 0
18
6 0
0 0
0 0
3,759 0 0
10 0 0
10 0 0
688 0 0
4,023 6 0
1,782 0 0
63 0 0
169 0 0
138 0 0
28 16 0
1,506 10 0
85 0 0
20 0 0
24 0 0
Carryforward 1112,508 0 10|
Sll!
CAPE OF GOOD HOPE.
Articles.
Amount.
Brought forward...
saddlery and harness 
skins, viz.
Goat, 91,781 pieces and 55 bundles
Seal, 3928 pieces 
Sheep, 77,343 pieces 
Calf, 1414 pieces and 2 bundles...
Rabbit and mole, 490 pieces...,
Karosses, 1 case 
Fallow, 13,333 lbs 
Finegar, 428 gallons 
Vine, ordinary, 1,548,977^ gallons..,
Constantia, 2874 gallons 
Vool, 33,280 lbs. and 11 bags 
V ood 
Vbalebone, 13,038 lbs. and 229 bundles
Vax, bees’, 910 lbs 
'ebras, 4 head. 
Supplies to his Majesty's Navy.
leef, fresh, 137,662 lbs 
liscuit, 259,616 lbs 
oread, soft, 118,480 lbs 
flour, 57,422 lbs 
lay 5630 lbs 
laisins, 10,722 lbs 
ibeep, 34 in number, and oxen 23...
Vegetables, 30,013 lbs 
Vine, ordinary, 18,091 imperial quarts
Total estimated value of coloniaH
produce and manufactures ex- >
ported during the year 1829.... )
L.
112,508
23
514
834
3,795
169
14
7
408
13
146,936
2,137
1,220
73
1,392
22
148
0 101
0 0
15 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
10 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
10 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
717 0 0
2,859 0 0
740 0 0
632 0 0
26 0 0
191 0 0
83 0 0
306 0 0
1,432 0 0
277,200 15 101
The whites are composed of individuals from various
uropean nations. Ihe most numerous of the inhabitants
e ^ie Dutch, who still occupy places of importance. The
.ves are for the most part Malays, or natives of Madagas-
r and the eastern coast. The Hottentots prefer a coun-
1 and are generally averse to residing in towns. In
gard to the society of Cape Town, Mr Thomson observes,
Of the habits and customs of the Cape Dutch in Cape
)wn and its vicinity, I need only say, that they are be-
ming every day more decidedly English. It will be a
utter ol regret, if they ever so entirely change as to lose
me of their present character. They are a frank and
spitable, and at the same time a prudent and thrifty
^e.”1 The old Dutch court of justice, which till within
ew years administered the law, has been superseded by
’ourt more on the English model, consisting of a chief
’tice and three puisne judges, with an attorney general,
|' *nstead of the old fiscal. Landrosts and humraden have
on supplanted by civil commissioners, resident magis-
les, and justices of peace. A council has been appoint-
' assist the governor with its advice, and consists of
!? C l‘°f justice, the government secretary, the military
* icer next in command to the governor for the time be-
11, the accountant general, and the chief commissioner of
1 - eastern province. But the most important of all is,
order in council, by which the Hottentots and other
j e coloured population are placed under the equal pro-
‘.tion of the laws, and declared to be, as subjects of the
itish government, in every respect upon the same foot-
, as the white colonists, whether Dutch or English.
A minute topographical description of the extended and
thinly-peopled territory comprehended within the Cape<:
Colony is unnecessary. A few particular places, however,
may be described. In the vicinity of the capital there is a
very conspicuous mountain called Table Mountain, which
rises to the height of 3582 feet above the level of the sea.
It commands a view of vast extent, and its sides afford a
rich treat to the botanist and geologist. In the same pe¬
ninsula on which the above mountain stands, are two others
nearly as conspicuous and interesting. One of them is
termed the Lion’s Head, and has an elevation of 2160 feet
above the level of the sea; the other is denominated the
Lion s Rump, and its height is 1142 feet. About seventy-
five miles from Cape Town, in the direction of south-east
by east, are the warm baths of Swarteberg. To the north
of these is the Guadenthal, or Bavian’s Mountain, where
the Moravian missionaries have their principal settlement.
Ihe members of this religious colony have been highly
useful to the poor proscribed Hottentots. Near Algoa Bay,
and 450 miles eastward of Cape Town, is situated Bethels-
doip, the piincipal establishment of the London Missionary
Society. Those who have visited this place describe its
outward appearance as being far from prepossessing. The
country around is bleak and barren, and w'ants water for
irrigation. However, many of the Hottentot families oc¬
cupy substantial and commodious houses, whilst some have
reached a degree of comfort and convenience far above
the average of the frontier boors. The manufactures of
England are used as clothing; many native artificers are
to be met with ; and, altogether, from the aspect of intel¬
ligence which the inhabitants exhibit, as described by the
most recent travellers, there is no room to doubt that they
are rapidly rising in the scale of society. There are a num¬
ber of other missionary stations scattered throughout Cape
Colony, and they all appear to have done, and to be still
doing some good.
In 1820 a company of Scottish emigrants to the num¬
ber of 5000, under the patronage of the British govern¬
ment, planted a colony in the district of Albany, on the
frontiers of Caffreland, and conferred on it the name of
Glen-Lynden. The late Mr Pringle, who headed the
party, thus speaks of the settlement in 1834: “ A few
words in conclusion about our settlement of Glen-Lyn¬
den. Under the blessing of Providence its prosperity
has been steadily progressive Without having any
pretensions to wealth, and with very little money among
them, the Glen-Lynden settlers, with some few excep¬
tions, may be said to be in a thriving, and, on the whole,
in a very enviable condition.” This puts down at once
the assertions which have been made in various publica¬
tions, that the attempt had proved unsuccessful. It is
impossible to calculate the benefits which may result
from the enterprise of the intrepid Scottish emigrants.
Keeping out of view entirely the moral effects which must
result from their intercourse with the rude tribes around
them, science seems likely to be greatly benefited by this
colony. The number of the settlers has very much in¬
creased, and by their gradual diffusion over this vast
continent, they may yet be the first to convey to us in¬
formation respecting the interior of Africa, all attempts
to explore which have hitherto proved equally fruitless
and fatal.
The past history of the native races of Cape Colony,
since the latter became known to Europeans, presents
nothing but a dark picture of fierce tyranny on the one
side, and gloomy submission on the other. Their domes¬
tic feuds also have tended greatly to enhance their mise¬
ries. Ihe condition of the Hottentot is still very abject,
613
Cape of
food Hope.
v r—A
r Thomson’s Travels in South Africa, vol. ii. p. 423.
614 GOO
Cape of on account of the oppression of the district authorities,
GoodHope. though the missionaries have done much to alleviate it.
But we cannot enter into details relative to the conflict
which was carried on between interested rapacity on the
one hand, and Christian philanthropy on the other. Am¬
ple information upon this subject will be found in Dr
Phillips’ Researches in South Africa. A late writer thus
describes the personal appearance and general character
of the Hottentots.
“ This unfortunate tribe has become noted and almost
proverbial for presenting man in his lowest estate, and
under the closest alliance with the inferior orders of
creation. It must, indeed, be admitted, that they take
particular pains to render their external appearance the
most hideous that the human body can possibly present.
Grease is poured over their persons in copious streams,
which, being exposed to the perpetual action of smoke,
forms on their skin a black and shining cake, through
which the native colour, a yellowish brown, is scarcely
ever perceptible. Grease in Africa forms the chief dis¬
tinction of rank,—the rich besmearing themselves with
fresh butter, while the poorer classes are obliged to tear
the fat from the bowels of slaughtered animals. They as¬
sign as a reason for this singular practice an effect which
has been readily admitted by judicious travellers, namely,
that such a coating has in this climate a most salutary in¬
fluence in defending them from the rays of the sun, and
in averting many cutaneous disorders. Nature seems to
have aided the task of disfiguring them, by covering the
head with irregular tufts of hard and coarse hair, and
causing singular prominences, composed of fat, to jut out
in parts where they are least ornamental. Nor do their
habits of life present any thing to redeem this outward
deformity. Their kraals consist of a confused crowd of
little conical hovels, composed of twigs and earth, in
which large families sit and sleep, without having room
to stand upright. The fire in the middle fills these man¬
sions with thick smoke, the floors of which are deeply co¬
vered with every species of filth. At festivals, when an
ox or a sheep is killed, the Hottentots rip open the belly,
tear out the entrails, which they throw on the coals, and
feast on them before the animal is completely dead. Yet
they are a friendly, merry, hospitable race, living together
in the greatest affection and harmony. The sluggish and
senseless stupidity with which they have been so general¬
ly taxed, seems to have been in a great measure produced
by their degrading subjection to the Dutch boors. In
their free state they had a republican form of polity, and
konquers or captains of the kraal, who led them to war,
which they carried on with extreme fury. This command¬
er usually sounded a pipe or flageolet, during which his
men fought without intermission; but as soon as the mu¬
sic ceased they began to retreat. The Hottentots direct
their darts and throwing-sticks with a sure aim, surround
and attack wild animals with skill and vigour, and evade
their springs with a dexterity which no European can
equal. They tan, dress, and shape skins ; make mats of
flags and bulrushes; also twist strings for their bows out
of the sinews of animals ; and even mould iron into cutting
instruments with considerable expertness. In their free
and happy state they displayed the same passion for the
dance and song which is general throughout Africa.”
With respect to his religion, the unenlightened Hotten¬
tot, although he believed in a good God and a malignant
power, had neither temples nor priests ; but with super¬
stitious veneration he hailed the new and full moon with
dances and rejoicings, prolonged throughout the night.
Certain localities were held sacred as the abodes of de¬
parted spirits. Lastly, the Hottentot had a little shining
beetle, which he exalted almost to the dignity of a deity.
From the cruel treatment which this unfortunate tribe
GOO
has received from its provincial oppressors, their numberG
at present in the colony does not surpass 15,000. The 'V8
few kraals of independent Hottentots which still remain Gooneei
on its outer border are supposed to amount to about
10,000.
For a further account of the Hottentots, see the article
Africa, vol. i. part ii. p. 226. Under the heads Boshu-
anas, and Bosjesmans or Bushmen, the tribes which
bear these names will be found described.
According to the official returns, the population of the
Cape Colony, in 1831, consisted of, whites and free co¬
loured, males 48,672, females 44,043; slaves, males 18,812
females 15,321; total, 126,848. But it seems probable
that this is a statement in defect rather than in excess
and that the population may be taken at 140,000.
Good Hope, or Hope Island, an island in the South Pa¬
cific Ocean, discovered by Le Maire and Schouten in
1616. The land is mountainous, and covered with co¬
coa-nut trees. Long. 174. 50. E. Lat. 16. S.
GOODOUR, a town of Hindustan, in the Balaghaut
ceded territory, ten miles west by south from the town
of Carnaul. Long. 77. 51. E. Lat. 15. 46. N.
GOOHAUT, a town in the Afghan territories, in the
province of Cabul, twelve miles west of the Indus. Long.
76. 40. E. Lat. 32. 51. N.
GOOLE, a hamlet in the parish of Snaith and the wa¬
pentake of Osgoldcross, in the west riding of Yorkshire.
As it stands on the river Ouse, which is navigable to that
point, it has appeared advisable to establish a custom¬
house there, by which the trade of the whole surrounding
country has been considerably facilitated and increased.
The population amounted in 1801 to 294, in 1811 to 320,
in 1821 to 450, and in 1831 to 1671.
GOOLGUNGE, a town of Hindustan, in the province
of Allahabad and district of Bundelcund, twenty-six miles
south-south-east from Patna. It is situated in long. 85.
38. E. and lat. 24. 26. N.
GOOLPUSSRA, a town or village in the Nepaul do¬
minions. It stands on the skirts of the great forest; and
although it is the thoroughfare for most of the merchan¬
dise which passes between Nepaul, Benares, Oude, and
Patna, over the Cheesapany Mountains, it is but a mean
village. The road thence to Bechiacori through the great
forest is practicable for wheel-carriages, and there are
two or three stations on the way. In the vicinity of this
place is an extensive forest of fine timber, especially of
that kind called saul, next in value to teak, some of the
trees of which measure a hundred feet between the
branches, and from eight to nine feet in the girth. Long.
85. 10. E. Lat. 27. 1. N.
GOOMSUR, a town of Hindustan, at the north-west
extremity of the Northern Circars, forty-three miles north¬
west from Ganjam. The neighbouring country is covered
with impervious forests of bamboo, on which the inhabi¬
tants were wont to rely for their defence, and did not
think it necessary to erect redoubts. The whole district
is considered as one of the hottest regions in India. Long.
84. 55. E. Lat. 19. 53. N.
GOOMTY, a river of Hindustan, so named from it»
winding course, and which has its source in the moun¬
tains of Kemaon, whence it flows in a south-east direction
through the province of Oude, and, after passing the citiei
of Lucknow, Sultanpore, and Joanpore, falls into the
Ganges about fourteen miles below Benares. It is navi¬
gable for boats as high as Lucknow at all times of the
year-
GOONDIPOORAM,atown of Hindustan, in the North¬
ern Circars, forty-six miles north by west from Cicacole-
It is in long. 83. 51. E. and lat. 18. 59. N.
GOONEE, a river of Hindustan, in the province o
Sinde, which rises in the hills of Poollejar, and flowing
jin I
;l»tl
;iut
met
G O R
ck- a westerly direction, afterwards falls into the Indus,
r ith which it forms a very large island called Majur.
luring the rainy season it is navigable for boats from
J landavie, a port of Cutch, to Hyderabad, the capital of
inde.
GOORACKPOOR, a district of Hindustan, in the pro-
nce of Oude, situated to the north of the Goggrah or
ewah river, and between the 26th and 28th degrees of
rirth latitude. To the north it is separated by hills and
rests from the Nepaulese territories, to the south it is
)unded by the Dewah or Goggrah river, and on the
ist by the Gunduck. In 1801 this district was ceded
. the British, in virtue of a treaty concluded between
ie nabob of Oude and the Marquis Wellesley. The
inntry abounds with forests of fine timber; and since it
ime into the possession of the British, periodical fairs
ive been established, in order to promote a free inter-
mrse with the Nepaulese, and the other inhabitants of the
ountains to the north, and with Goorackpoor. These
irs are numerously attended by traders from the neigh-
mring provinces, and to them also was sent part of the
jmpany’s investment of woollens. The principal towns
re Goorackpoor, Buckrah, and Mutgur. If this district
tere properly cleared and cultivated, it is thought that it
ould be one of the finest parts of the British dominions
India, being situated to the north of Bengal, and wa¬
red by three rivers, and various streams from the hills.
Goorackpoor, the capital of the above-mentioned
strict, situated on the eastern bank of the Boora Rapty
ver, which is navigable for boats at all seasons of the
3ar. It had formerly a brick wall, which is now in ruins,
is the residence of the civil establishment of the dis-
ict. The travelling distance east from Lucknow is 170
iles. Long. 83. 22. E. Lat. 26. 45. N.
GOOSE. See Ornithology.
GoosE-Neck, in a ship, a piece of iron fixed on the one
id of the tiller, to which the lanyard of the whip-staff or
le wheel-rope comes, for steering the ship.
Goose- Wing, in nautical language. When a ship sails
efore or with a quarter-wind on a fresh gale, to make the
ore way, a boom and sail are launched out on the lee-
de, and the sail so fitted is called a goose-wing.
GOOTY, a hilly district of Hindustan, in the Balag-
int ceded territories, situated chiefly between the 15th
id 16th degrees of north latitude. Gooty formed a dis-
'•ict in the empire of Aurungzebe. Between the years
776 and 1779 it was conquered by Hyder, and the ra¬
il was carried off, and never more heard of. With the
-st of the Balaghaut, it was ceded by the nizam to the
impany in 1804, and now forms part of the collectorship
Bellary. The fortress of Gooty js the capital, and was
rtnerly the seat of an independent Mahratta govern-
ent. It is 228 miles travelling distance from Seringa-
atam, and 269 from Madras. Long. 77. 35. E. Lat. 15.
N.
GOPPINGEN, a bailiwick of the kingdom of Wurtem-
2rg, in the circle of the Black Forest. It extends over
14 square miles, comprehending one city, three market-
•wns, and sixty-nine villages, occupied by 28,106 per-
>ns. It is mountainous and woody, with little corn land ;
at produces large quantities of flax, and breeds much
ack cattle. The capital is a city of the same name, si-
tated on the river Fils, and was burnt down in 1782; but
has been rebuilt, and now contains 620 houses, with
140 inhabitants, who are employed in spinning and weav-
g cotton, and in making paper, hats, porcelain, woollen
Joth, and other articles. Long. 9. 30. 10. E. Lat. 48. 41.
I).N. b
goragaut, a town and zemindary of Hindustan, in
province of Bengal, ninety miles north-east from
ioorshedabad. Long. 89. 10. E. Lat. 25. 13. N.
G O R
GORAM Isle, a small island in the Eastern Seas?Goram Isle
about twenty miles in circumference, and about one day’s II
sail east by north from Banda. It is inhabited by Ma- Gordianus.
hommedans, and is said to contain twelve mosques. In
1774 the Dutch attacked it with an armed force of Bug-
gesses, but they were repulsed by the inhabitants.
GORCAH, or Ghoorcah, a district of Hindustan, in
the province of Nepaul. It is situated between the 28th
and 29th degrees of north latitude, and between the 84th
and 85th degrees of east longitude. The country is moun¬
tainous and barren, and is intersected by a branch of the
Kaly Gunduk river. The territory is principally occupied
by the Brahminical and Khebric tribes, though it con¬
tains several Rajpoot families. It wras formerly ruled by
an aristocracy, consisting of thirty heads of families ; but
about fifty years ago one of their chiefs having gained
the ascendency, conquered Nepaul, and became the sove¬
reign of the whole country ; since w’hich period the his¬
tory of this district is merged in that of Nepaul.
Gorcah, or Ghoorca, is the capital of the above-men¬
tioned district. After the conquest of Nepaul in 1768,
the seat of government was transferred to Catmandoo; and
this place having been neglected, is now gone to decay.
Near the city is a considerable mass of rock crystal.
GORCUM, a city of the province of Holland, in the
Netherlands. It is situated on the right bank of the river
Merwe, is strongly fortified, and contains 1390 houses,
with 5169 inhabitants, who carry on extensive fisheries,
and much trade in corn. Long. 4. 53. 10. E. Lat. 51. 49.
50. N. It is the capital of a circle of the same name,
containing 32,680 inhabitants.
GORDIAN Knot, in Antiquity, a knot made in the lea¬
thers or harness of the chariot of Gordius king of Phrygia,
so very intricate that there was no finding where it began
or ended. The inhabitants had a tradition, that the oracle
had declared that he who untied this knot should be
master of Asia. Alexander having undertaken it, was un¬
able to accomplish it; when, fearing lest his not untying
it should be deemed an ill augury, and prove a check in
the way of his conquests, he cut it asunder with his
sword, and thus either accomplished or eluded the oracle.
GORDIANUS, an illustrious Roman senator, who
claimed his descent on the father’s side from the Gracchi,
and on the mother’s from the Emperor Trajan. He seems
to have been one of the richest senators of Rome, but
his unambitious spirit, and his devotion to the study of
literature, probably saved him from a violent death and
the loss of his property. Fie was raised to the dignity of
sedile in the reign of Caracalla, and the magnificence of
the public shows he exhibited far surpassed any thing
which Rome had ever witnessed. He was twice raised
to the dignity of consul, by Caracalla a. d. 213, and by
Alexander a. d. 229. Flis long life was spent in the
study of letters; nor does he seem to have taken an ac¬
tive part in public affairs till he was named proconsul of
Africa by the senate, an appointment which was highly
approved of by Alexander, whose original letter on the
subject to the senate is still preserved. (Hist. Aug.
p. 152.) When the tyrant Maximin succeeded to the
throne, he appointed a procurator of Africa worthy of
himself, who exacted with the utmost severity the taxes he
himself had imposed; but being murdered by the people,
they proclaimed Gordian and his son emperors, A. n. 237.
At first unwilling to accept the honour, he at length yield¬
ed to the pressing invitation of the people. The Gordians
erected their court at Carthage, and no sooner did the
deputation sent by the emperors to the senate make its
appearance, than that body joyfully confirmed their elec¬
tion. Meanwhile Capelianus, governor of Mauritania,
marched against Carthage with such rapidity, that they
were unable to collect troops in sufficient numbers to op-
6 JO
G O R
Gordon, pose him. The }'Ounger Gordian fell at the head of a
few guards ; and his father, whose reign had not exceeded
thirty-six days, put an end to his life on the first news of
the defeat. Gordian was the author of a poem, in thirty
books, on the actions of Antoninus Pius and Marcus Au¬
relius. (Herodian, vii.; Hist. Aug. )
Gordianus, surnamed the Pius, was grandson of the
elder Gordian. When the news of his grandfather’s death
reached Rome, the senators elected Maximus and Balbi-
nus emperors, as best fitted to oppose the threatened at¬
tack of Maxirnin ; but the people insisted that one of the
family of Gordian should also be raised to the empire. This
boy was only thirteen years of age; and when Maximus
and Balbinus fell in an insurrection of the soldiers, Gordian
was left as sole emperor. Having married Fabia Sabina
Tranquillina, the daughter of his master of rhetoric, he
appointed his father-in law Micitheus prefect of the prae¬
torian guards, and through his assistance emancipated
himself from the hands of his mother’s eunuchs. Mici¬
theus proved himself an able minister, and discharged the
military duties of his office with vigour and ability. He
induced the young emperor to proceed against the Per¬
sians, who had invaded Mesopotamia, and during the
whole of the expedition Micitheus watched over the safety
and discipline of the army. Micitheus, however, died,
with strong suspicions of having been poisoned by Philip,
his successor in the prefecture. A short time afterwards
a sedition broke out among the soldiers, which was fo¬
mented by Philip, and Gordian was killed, A. d. 244, near
the conflux of the Euphrates with the little river Abo-
ras. (See L'Histoire des quatre Gordiens, par Abbe Du-
bos ; also Caspar, Historia trium Gordianorum, Deventer,
1697.)
GORDON, Alexander, a distinguished draughtsman,
scholar, and antiquary, who resided many years in Italy,
and also travelled in France, Germany, and other coun¬
tries. The date of his birth has not been ascertained.
In 1736 he was appointed secretary to the society for en¬
couraging learning; and the same year he succeeded Dr
Stukeley as secretary to the Society of Antiquaries, an
office which he resigned in 1741 in favour of Mr Joseph
Ames. He was for a short time secretary to the Egyp¬
tian Club, composed of Lord Sandwich, Dr Shaw, Dr
Pococke, and other distinguished persons who had visited
Egypt. In 1741 he accompanied Governor Glen to Caro¬
lina, where, besides a grant of land which he received, he
held several offices, and died a justice of the peace, leav¬
ing a handsome estate to his family. He published, 1.
Itinerarium Septentrionale, or a Journey through most
parts of the Counties of Scotland, in two parts, with six¬
ty-six copperplates, 1726, folio; 2. Supplement to the Iti¬
nerarium, 1732, folio; 3. The Lives of Pope Alexander VI.
and his son Csesar Borgia, comprehending the wars in the
reign of Charles VIII. and Louis XII., and the chief trans¬
actions and revolutions in Italy from 1492 to 1516, with
an appendix of original pieces; 4. A complete History
of the Ancient Amphitheatres, more especially regarding
the architecture of these buildings, and in particular that
of Verona, by the Marquis Scipio Maffei, translated from
the Italian, 1730, 8vo, afterwards enlarged in a second
edition ; 5. An Essay towards explaining the Hieroglyphi-
cal Figures on the Coffin of the ancient Mummy belonging
to Captain William Lethieullier, 1737, folio, with cuts;
6. Twenty-five Plates of all the Egyptian Mummies and
other Egyptian Antiquities in England, 1739, folio.
Gordon, Thomas, noted for his translations and politi¬
cal writings, was born at Kirkcudbright, in Galloway, about
the end of the seventeenth century. When a young man
he repaired to London, where he supported himself by
teaching languages, until he procured employment under
the Earl of Oxford, in Queen Anne’s time, but in what
G O R
capacity is not known. He first distinguished himself by
two pamphlets in defence of Hoadly, in the Bangorian
controversy ; and these recommended him to Mr Trench. ^
ard, an author of the same stamp, in conjunction with''
whom he wrote letters under the name of “ Cato,” upon
a variety of important public subjects. About the same
time they published another periodical paper, under the
title of the “ Independent Whig,” which was continued
some years after Trenchard’s death by Gordon alone, and
directed against the hierarchy of the church, but with
more acrimony than had been evinced in Cato’s Letters.
On the death of his associate, Sir Robert Walpole retain¬
ed him to defend his administration, which he did in se¬
veral pamphlets; and at the time of his death, which hap-
pened on the 28th of July 1750, he was first commissioner
of the wine licenses, an office which he had enjoyed many
years. Gordon published English translations of Sallust
and Tacitus, with additional discourses, containing much
good matter. Two collections of his tracts have also
been preserved ; the one entitled A Cordial for Low Spi¬
rits, in three volumes; and the other, The Pillars of Priest¬
craft and Orthodoxy Shaken, in two volumes. But these,
like many other posthumous productions, might have been
suppressed without detriment to his reputation.
GORE, in Heraldry, one of the abatements, which, ac¬
cording to Guillim, denotes a coward. It is a figure con¬
sisting of two arch lines, drawn one from the sinister chief
and the other from the sinister base, and both meeting in
an acute angle in the middle of the fess point. See He¬
raldry.
GORGE, in Architecture, the narrowest part of the
Tuscan and Doric capitals, between the astragal, above
the shaft of the pillar and the annulets.
Gorge, in Fortification, the entrance into any piece of
fortification, consisting of the distance or space between
the extremities of the two faces; as between the faces of
a half-moon, redoubt, or bastion.
GORGED, in Heraldry, the bearing of a crown, coronet,
or the like, about the neck of a lion, a swan, or otherani-
mal; in which case it is said the lion or cygnet is gorged
with a ducal or other coronet.
Gorged is also used when the gorge or neck of a pea¬
cock, swan, or the like bird, is of a different colour or me¬
tal from the rest.
GORGET, a kind of breastplate, like a half-moon, with
some device thereon.
GORGONS, in Antiquity and Mythology. Authors are
not agreed in the accounts which they give of the Gorgons.
The poets represent them as three sisters, whose names
were Stheno, Euryale, and Medusa, the last of whom was
mortal; and having been deflowered by Neptune, was kill¬
ed by Perseus; but the two former were subject neither
to age nor to death. They are described as having wings
on their shoulders, and serpents round their heads; their
hands were of brass, and their teeth of a prodigious size,
so that they were objects of terror to mankind. After the
death of Medusa, her sisters, according to Virgil, were
appointed to keep the gate of the palace of Pluto.
Multaque praeterea variarum monstra ferarum,
Gorgones, Harpyiaeque.
Diodorus Siculus represents the Gorgons and Amazons as
having been two warlike nations of women, whoinhabrted
that part of Libya situated on the lake Tritonidis. The
extermination of these female nations was not effecte
till Hercules undertook and performed the task.
Pausanias says that the Gorgons were the daughters o
Phorbus, after whose death Medusa his daughter reigne
over the people dwelling near the lake Tritonidis. 1 e
queen was so passionately fond of hunting and war, t a
she laid waste the neighbouring countries. At last re
seus made war on them, and killed the queen herse .
Gor(!
ill a
ki;
;as,
%
G O S
ton tit when he came to view' the field of battle, he found
^ t} queen’s corpse so extremely beautiful, that he order-
t. (l her head to be cut off, and carried it with him to show
j j;o his countrymen the Greeks, who could not behold it
vnhout being struck with astonishment.
. Others represent them as a kind of monstrous women,
c/ered with hair, who lived in woods and forests; and
oters, again, make them animals resembling wild sheep,
wose eyes had a poisonous and fatal influence.
; 50RLEST0N, a village, or rather town, of the county
dSuffolk, in the hundred of Mutford and Lothingland,
111 miles from London. It may be viewed as a suburb
t<j:he town of Yarmouth in Norfolk, from which it is se-
prated only by a bridge over the river Yare. The popu-
]Jon amounted in 1801 to 1728, in 1811 to 1814, in 1821
t(|1928, and in 1831 to 2116.
'j lORLiEUS, Abraham, an eminent antiquary, born
a Antwerp, who gained a great reputation by collecting
mlals and other antique remains. He was chiefly fond
oihe rings and seals of the ancients, of which he pub-
liied a prodigious number in 1601, under the title of
l\ctyliotheca; sive Annulorum Sigillarium, quorum apud
p ;cos tam Grcecos quam Romanos usus ex ferro, cere, ar-
gi\to, etauro, Promptuarimn. This was the first part of
tliwork; the second, entitled Variorum Gemmarum, qui-
b, antiquitas in signando uti solita sculpturce, appeared af-
to vards. This work has undergone several editions, the
b t of which is that of Leyden, 1695, containing a great
n uber of cuts, and also a short explanation of these by
llmovius. In 1680 he published a collection of medals,
wich, however, if we may believe the Scaligerana, it is
n safe alwrays to trust. Gorlaeus selected Delft as the
p eof his residence, and died there in 1609.
iORLITZ, a city of Prussian Silesia, the capital of a
cnle of the same name. It stands on the river Neisse,
uin an elevated spot, and is a well-built town, with walls
aisind it. It contains several public institutions for edu-
ciion and for benevolence, and eight churches, a public
li ny, and cabinet of natural history. The houses are
l<|9, and the population 9900 inhabitants, who are indus-
trrusly employed in various trades and manufactures.
iORZ, a fortified city of the Austrian province of
Tbste, on the river Isonzo, containing, besides a cathe-
di and four other churches, 707 houses, with 9050 inha-
bhnts, who are engaged in silk manufactories, in making
Ifiiber, and bleaching wax. Near to it is Monte Santo,
ct brated for the goodness of its wine. Long. 13. 23. E.
U 45. 57. N.
( lOSBERTON, a parish of the county of Lincoln, in the
pijs of Holland and hundred of Kirton, 102 miles from
L don and eight from Boston. It is in a rich agricultural
dbrict. The inhabitants amounted in 1801 to 1139, in
h i to 1301, in 1821 to 1618, and in 1831 to 1951.
iOSHEN, a canton of Egypt, which Joseph procured
k bis father and his brethren when they came to dwell
mhat country. It was the most fruitful part of the coun-
h ; and its name seems to be derived from the Hebrew,
Ci hem, which signifies “ rainbecause this province
ly g very near the Mediterranean, was exposed to rains,
»(ch were very rare in other cantons, and more espe-
c‘ y in Upper Egypt.
'OSLAR, a city of the province of Hildesheim, in the
Tjdom of Hanover. It stands in the Hartz Mountains,
be foot ot the Rammelsberg, on the river Gosse. It
*6 a ancient town, with narrow streets and large antiquely-
&ioned houses. It contains four churches and two re-
•j his houses, and is the seat of some provincial courts
ol iw. Much of the ore extracted from the mines in the
®j;hbourhood is here purified, and a great part of it con-
ed into appropriate utensils in some large manufac-
,'ss* ll has considerable breweries and distilleries, and
3L. X.
GOT
two vitriol works, and it contains 6700 inhabitants.
10. 14. 1. E. Lat. 54. 27. N.
GOSPEL, the history of the life, actions, death, resur¬
rection, and ascension, and also of the doctrine, of Jesus
Christ. The word is Saxon, and of the same import with
the Latin term evangelium, which signifies glad tidings or
good news. This history is contained in the writings of
St Matthew, St Mark, St Luke, and St John, who are
hence called Evangelists. The Christian church never
acknowledged as canonical any more than these four gos¬
pels; notwithstanding which several apocryphal gospels
are handed down to us, and others are entirely lost.
GOSPOR T, a market-town of Hampshire, in the parish
of Alverstoke, in the Portsdown division of the hundred
of Christchurch, seventy-eight miles from London. It
may' be considered as one of the suburbs of Portsmouth,
from which it is separated by the mouth of the harbours,
over which boats of all descriptions are constantly passing
from one side to the other. As a part of our greatest
naval arsenal, the town is fortified on the land side by a
chain of redoubts, and some of the most important forti¬
fications which command the entrance of the harbour;
and the anchoring places of Stokes Bay are in this town!
The royal brewery and cooperage, the storehouses for
various kinds of provisions, and the grand powder maga¬
zines of Priddyshard, are all here. To the south is the
magnificent hospital for sick and wounded sailors, which
is capable of accommodating more than two thousand pa¬
tients. There is also an extensive establishment for the
manufacture of anchors. Besides the trade which Gos¬
port derives from the royal navy, it enjoys considerable
foreign commerce. There are markets on Tuesdays,
Thursdays, and Saturdays, which are amply supplied. The
population depends on the state of peace or of war. It
amounted in 1801 to 11,295, in 1811 to 11,279, in 1821 to
10.972, and in 1831 to 12,637.
GOSSAMER is the name of a fine filmy substance,
like cobwebs, which is observed floating in the air, in
clear days in autumn, and is more discernible in stubble-
fields, and upon furze and other low bushes, than else¬
where.
GOTEBORG, or Gottenburg, a province in the south¬
ern part of Sweden. It is bounded on the north by Nor¬
way, on the east by Elfsborg, on the south by Halland, and
on the west by the German Ocean. It extends over 1894
square miles, is divided into five bailiwicks, comprehends
five cities or towns, and 2891 rural establishments; and
has a population of 119,504 individuals. The surface is
generally mountainous, but has some plains in the southern
parts; but even in these, the soil is so thin as to be scan¬
tily productive. The chief food of the inhabitants, as well
as the chief exports, consists of fish, which abound on the
coasts and in the rivers.
GOTHA, a principality forming a part of the dominions
of the grand duchy of Saxe Coburg Gotha, in Germany.
It is an elevated district of the Thuringian Mountains,
where, though the climate is cold, the soil is fertile. Some
of the portions are separated from the main body, and from
each other, by the intervening territory of other states. The
extent of the whole is 649 square miles. It is divided into
fourteen bailiwicks, and contains five cities, six market-
towns, a hundred and sixty-four villages, with 88,639 in¬
habitants. The capital, the city of Gotha, in longitude
10. 37. 33. east, and latitude 50. 57. 4. north, is 1220 feet
above the level of the sea, one of the most beautiful of the
Saxon cities. It contains 1256 houses, and 12,500 inhabi¬
tants. The ducal palace or castle rises above the city, and
has a magnificent appearance from the whole surrounding
country. There are in it some fine pictures, a library of
60,000 volumes, and a museum of coins and medals, both
ancient and modern, surpassing any other in Europe. Near
4 i
617
Long* Gospel
Gotha.
613
GOT
GOT
Gothard the city, on a lake, is an astronomical observatory, long oc-
I! cupied by Baron Zach, the celebrated astronomer. It is a
Gothofred. town 0f considerable trade, having manufactories of cotton,
woollen, and linen goods, and other articles.
GOTHARD, one of the highest mountains of Switzer¬
land, and from the top of which there is one of the finest
prospects in the world. It is eight miles from Aldorf.
GOTHEBORG, Gothenburg, or Gottenburg. See
Goteborg and Gottenburg.
GOTHIC, in general, whatever has any relation to the
Goths. Thus we say, Gothic customs, Gothic architecture,
&c. See Architecture.
GOTHOFRED, or Godefroy, Denis or Dionysius,
a celebrated jurisconsult, born at Paris in 154)9, was al¬
lied by birth to the highest families connected with the
profession of law, and himself one of its most distinguish¬
ed ornaments. After having completed his classical stu¬
dies, he applied himself to that of law, and received the
instructions of the famous professors who then taught in
the universities of Louvain, Cologne, and Heidelberg.
On his return to France, the civil disorders which broke
out in all parts having forced him to seek an asylum in
foreign countries, he retired to Geneva, where he hoped
to find the tranquillity necessary for his pursuits. He was
received with distinction, and nominated to a chair of law
in 1580. Henry IV. appointed him magistrate of Gex
in 1589 ; but this city having the year after been taken
by the Duke of Savoy, his house was pillaged, and no re¬
source remained for him but to pass into Germany.He,
however, proceeded no farther than Strasburg, where he
taught the Pandects from 1591 till 1600, when the elec¬
tor palatine called him to Heidelberg. But the proceed¬
ings of his colleagues forced him six months afterwards
to return to Strasburg, where he remained three years
more, at the end of which time he consented to resume
his functions at Heidelberg, upon an assurance which was
given him that he should have nothing to apprehend from
the jealousy of the other professors. It was only then
that his countrymen became sensible of the fault which
had been committed in not endeavouring to retain in
France a man of such distinguished merit, and he was of¬
fered the chair which Cujas had just left vacant at Bour-
ges ; but he declined the offer upon the ground of his age,
which did not admit of his attempting to form a new es¬
tablishment ; and he alleged the same excuse in opposition
to all the instances which were made to draw him to An¬
gers, to Valence, and to other universities of France and
Germany. In 1618 he was sent as deputy by the elector
palatine to Louis XIII., who received him well, and solicit¬
ed him to remain in Paris; but Godefroy had become at¬
tached to Heidelberg, where he enjoyed all the consider¬
ation due to his talents, and where he desired to end his
days. In this expectation, however, he was disappointed.
The war, which extended to the palatinate, forced him to
return a third time to Strasburg, where, oppressed with
grief and infirmities, he expired on the 7th of September
1622, in the seventy-third year of his age. His friend
Bernegger pronounced his funeral oration, which is print¬
ed in the Opuscula of Loisel. Of all the works of Gode¬
froy, that which does him the greatest honour, and ensures
him a permanent rank amongst jurisconsults, is his edition
of the Corpus Juris Civilis, the publication of which forms
an epoch in the history of the science. His text is that
which had been adopted for ordinary reading in the uni¬
versities and at the bar, and his notes are much esteem¬
ed. The Corpus of Godefroy has passed through a num¬
ber of editions, but the most valuable are those of Paris,
Vitre, 1628, in two vols. folio, and Amsterdam, Elzevir,
1563, also in two vols. folio. Among the other works of
Godefroy maybe mentioned, 1. Notae in Ciceronem, Lyons,
1588 and 1591, in 4to; 2. Antiquae Historic ex xxvii.
auctoribus contextae libri sex, Basil, 1590, in 8vo; 3. Con-
jecturae, variae lectiones, et loci communes in Seneca
printed at the end of the works of Seneca; 4. Autores
Latinae linguae in unum redacti corpus, adjectis notis, Ge-
neva, 1595 and 1602, in 4to ; 5. Maintenue et Defense
des Princes souverains et Eglises Chretiennes contre les
attentats et excommunications des Papes de Rome, 159|
in 8vo: 6. Dissertatio de Nobilitate, Spires, 1611, in 4to -
7. Statuta Galliae juxta Francorum, Burgundiorum, Gcs
thorum et Anglorum in ea dominantium Consuetudines
Frankfort, 1611, in folio. (Ai) ’
GOTHS (in Latin Gothi, Goti, and Gothones), a se¬
condary denomination of that great, powerful, and victori¬
ous race which, after a protracted struggle, at length over¬
turned the Roman empire, and diffused itself throughout
the whole of Europe, excepting Russia, Poland, and Hun¬
gary. The Scythians or Goths were distinguished from
the Celts, with whom they have often been confounded, by
characteristics equally obvious and remarkable. This we
shall have occasion to establish in the sequel of the present
article. Many learned authors, however, have contended
for the identity of these races; all antiquity has been ran¬
sacked for proofs and authorities by the writers on the op¬
posite sides of the question ; and in a discussion which might
surely have been carried on with moderation and good man¬
ners, the utmost heat and exacerbation of feeling have un¬
accountably been evinced. Amongst those who have con¬
tended for the identity of the Goths and Celts, the first
place is due to Cluverius and Pelloutier, who have asserted
this proposition in its most unqualified form; and likewise
to Sir William Jones, though he contends for nothing more
than an identity of origin, leaving the question of subse¬
quent divergence and secondary distinction untouched. On
the other hand, of all the champions for the diversity of
these races, Mr Pinkerton is by far the most formidable,
and, seconded as his views have been by an able writer in
the Edinburgh Revieiv, and also by Dr Jamieson in his
Hermes Sythicus, they must be allowed to have greatweight
by all who attentively consider and examine the question
at issue. Conceiving that the arguments and reasonings
of Cluverius and Pelloutier have been entirely overthrown,
and that the diversity contended for has been established
by a mass of evidence and authority which cannot be shaken,
what we propose in this article, therefore, is to lay before
our readers the substance of Mr Pinkerton’s very learned
argument, modified however by the views of succeeding
writers.
Of the Scythians an ample account is given by Herodo¬
tus in his fourth book, where he also mentions the Gete,
whom Darius subdued whilst advancing against the wan¬
dering Scythians who lived on the other side of the Ister
or Danube. From the earliest periods of history, therefore,
mention is made of the Scythce and Getce as only separated
by a river. But the name of Goths is not nearly so ancient.
The first mention of it occurs in the time of the Emperor
Decius, in the year of Christ 250, when part of them in¬
vaded the empire from Getia, and Decius, in attempting to
expel them from Thrace, w as vanquished and slain. After
this they are as frequently mentioned in the Latin authors
by the names of Getce and Gothi, as the Scythe formerly
were in the Greek; and, subsequently to this period, all
the Greek wmiters uniformly call those Scythe whom the
Latin authors denominate Gothi. This being the case,
Mr Pinkerton shows, first, that the Getce and Gothi v w
the same people; and, secondly, that the Gete or Gol n
were the same with the Scythce. ,
1. That the Getce and Gothi were the same, is ProU’
by a multitude of authorities, which our limits prevent us
from enumerating in detail. It may suffice to mention, t a
Dio, who wrote under Alexander Severus, about the yc^
230, entitles his history of the Goths Tirtw, or the Ge u
Goth1
*
hs.
i'li!:
GOTHS.
istory; that Spartian, who wrote about the year 300,
',iys, in his Life of Antoninus Caracallus, Gotti Getce diceren-
ir, “ the Goths were then called Getae,” and, again, in his
,ife of Antoninus Geta, Getticus quasi Gotticus, “ Getic
; we would now say Gothicthat Claudian always calls
ie Goths Getce, and entitles his poem on the Gothic war
)e hello Getico ; that Sidonius Apollinaris frequently calls
ie Goths Getce, and denominates the Ostrogoths Massa-
‘doe; that Orosius says, Getce qui et nunc Gothi, “the
let*, who are now also called Gothsthat St Jerome
ates that the Goths were anciently called Getae; that in
ie panegyric of Ennodius, on Theodoric, king of the
loths, it is said, “ Nam illud quo ore celebrandum est quod
ietici instrumenta roboris, dum provides ne interpellentur
ia nostra, custodisthat, according to Procopius, “ the
roths are a Getic racethat Jornandes entitles his history
)e Getarum sive Gothorum origine et rebus Gestis, and
instantly uses the names Getce and Gol/ii as synony-
ious; and, finally, that Isidorus says the Getm and Gothi
-e the same. This identity, therefore, seems to be com-
etely established; especially as there is not even a sha-
bw of authority on the opposite side,
i 2. It appears equally certain that the Getce or' Goths
!ere the same with the Scythians. Strabo, Pliny, and Pto-
my, all rank the Getae as Scythians. Trebellius Pollio, in
'alieno, says, “ Scythce autem, idest,Gothorum, Asiam
istabant.” Dexippus, who is supposed to have written in
ic reign of Gallienus, entitled his history of the wars be-
: !ireen the Romans and Goths 2KY0IKA, or Scythic histo-
j ies, and called the Goths 2xuJz/, Scythce. Priscus em-
oys the words Scythians and Goths synonymously. Eu-
ipius denominates the Scythians, whom Valens planted
Mocsia, Goths. Procopius speaks of “ all the other
othic nations, who were also called Scythians in ancient
; nes.” Theophanes, writing in the year 370, states “that
' e Scythians are in their tongue called Goths,” according
the relation of Trajanus Patricius, “ in the history of his
vn time.” Syncellus states that “ the Scythians are also
lied Goths in their own language ;” and the same author
,kewise says, “ when a great many Scythians, called Goths,
id passed the river Ister in the time of Decius, they ra¬
ged the Roman empire.” Jornandes always speaks of the
oths, Getm, and Scythae, as one people, and uses these
imes synonymously. Isidorus commences his chronicle
the Goths in Spain with these words : “ Gothorum anti-
ilssimum esse regnum certum est, quod ex regno Scytha-
m est exortum.” Procopius frequently calls the Eede-
ti, so well known in the Lower Empire, Goths ; and Sui-
■S, in voce, denominates them Scythians. Lastly, Ammi-
us Marcellinus, mentioning the death of Decius, who fell
battle against the Goths or Getae, denominates the latter
"ythicce gentes. “ That the Scythians and Getce were the
me people,” says Dr Jamieson, “ is attested by incontro-
rtible evidence.”1
Having thus established that the Scythians, Getae, and
fpths, are all one people, Pinkerton next proceeds to coo¬
ler the question whether the Scythians or Goths went
an Scandinavia into Asia, or whether, on the contrary,
ey came from Asia into Europe. And, in prosecution of
is curious and important inquiry, he endeavours, in the
st place, to show that the common notion of the Scy-
ians having originated from Scandinavia is groundless,
ns opinion, which has been somewhat hastily adopted by
ontesquieu, Gibbon, and other writers of the first name,
8 l)een built on a single sentence in the fourth chapter
Jornandes, namely, “ Ex hac igitur Scania insula, quasi
icma gentium, aut certe velut vagina nationum, cum rege
0 nomine Berig Gothi quondam memorantur egressi.”
619
But no weight can reasonably be attached to this single
authority, however direct and explicit; first, because the
work of Jornandes being, as is commonly supposed, only
an abridgment of a large history of the Goths by his con¬
temporary Cassiodorus, it is possible that in this as well as
in other particulars, the abridgment may be inaccurate,
more especially as it would seem to have been written sole¬
ly from memory, after a perusal of three days ; secondly,
because though he generally followed Cassiodorus, he add¬
ed many things from the Greek and Roman writers ; third¬
ly, because Scandinavia having been, down to a late period,
almost overrun with impenetrable forests, there was neither
room nor subsistence in that country for so vast a popula¬
tion as that which so often invaded, and at last overturned,
the Roman empire ; fourthly, because we learn from Adam
of Bremen, who wrote in the eleventh century, that, even
in Denmark, the sea coasts alone were then peopled, whilst
the interior parts of the country were one immense forest;
and, lastly, because it can be proved from many authorities,
in opposition to the single one of Jornandes, which is more¬
over highly improbable in itself, that the Scythians originat¬
ed from Asia. On this last point some of Pinkerton’s autho¬
rities have been disputed both by the author of the Vindi¬
cation of the Celts, and also by the able writer in the Edin¬
burgh Revievj already referred to, who have each convict¬
ed him of sundry errors and inaccuracies of detail; but such
is the redundancy of evidence which he has produced in
support of his views, that, after every reasonable deduction
has been made, enough remains to establish the position,
that at a period probably as early as the year 1400 before
Christ, the Scythians had advanced from the vicinity of
the river Araxes, entered the Cimmerian Bosphorus, whence
they afterwards spread themselves westward arid northward
over a considerable part of Europe. He shows that Hero¬
dotus, Diodorus, and indeed all the writers who have oc¬
casion to mention the subject, down to the sixth century,
when Jornandes wrote, are in opposition to this monastic
historian, and uniformly represent the Scythians as having
passed, from the south of Asia, in a north-westerly direc¬
tion, until, in process of time, they spread themselves all
over Europe.
We pass over the chapter upon the real origin and first
progress of the Scythians or Goths, whom Pinkerton traces
from the banks of the Indus, through Persia, to the shores
of the Caspian, and proceed to state the results at which
he has arrived in the succeeding one, which treats of the
western settlements of this people. From their intermediate
position on the Euxine, the Scythians gradually extended
themselves over the most part of Europe; and, according
to Pinkerton, the Greeks and Romans, though refined by
adventitious circumstances, certainly belonged to the same
great family of mankind. We may also mention here,
that, both on historical and on philological grounds, Dr
Jamieson, in his Dissertation and in his Hermes Seythicus,
contends strenuously for the Scythian origin of the Greeks,
and, by many new and ingenious arguments, supports this,
which forms one of the principal points of Pinkerton’s hy¬
pothesis. According to the latter, the Scythians succes¬
sively invaded and settled in Thrace, Illyricum, Greece,
Italy, Germany, and Scandinavia; in other words, he en¬
deavours to show that the Thracians, Illyrians, Greeks, Ita¬
lians, Germans, and Scandinavians, were all Scythians or
Goths. And all this seems to us to be proved, as far at
least as such a subject can be established by ancient au¬
thorities. The Scythian origin of the Thracians and Illy¬
rians is indisputable. But there is more difficulty respect¬
ing the ancient inhabitants of Greece, taking that denomi¬
nation in the large sense given to Hellas, as including Ma-
Goths.
1 Hermes Scythicus, Dissert, on the Origin of the Greeks, sec. 2.
620
GOTHS.
Goths, cedon, and extending from Thrace and Illyricum to the
Cretan, Ionian, and Sicilian Seas. From the concurrent
testimony of the Greek writers, it appears, first, that the
ancient inhabitants of Hellas were the Pelasgi; and, se¬
condly, that the Hellenes were the same people who had
formerly been called the Pelasgi, being, in fact, a small tribe
of the Pelasgi who, having last settled in the country, had
the good fortune to give their name to the whole. Pin¬
kerton next considers, first, who the Pelasgi were not, and,
secondly, who they were. They were not Egyptians, be¬
cause the two small colonies of Egyptians who settled in
Athens and Argos from the earliest times, were specially
distinguished as a different people from the Pelasgi; be¬
cause the Greek mythology has little or no affinity to the
Egyptian ; and because the Greek language differs entirely
from the Coptic, in which are embodied the remains of the
old Egyptian. They were not Phoenicians, because of all
the reasons urged respecting the Egyptians. They were
not Celts, because the latter were confined to the farthest
west, whereas Greece was surrounded by Scythians; be¬
cause the form and structure of the Celtic tongue are as
remote as possible from that of the Greek; and because
the manners, customs, and usages of the Celts, as described
by the Greek and Roman authors, are entirely dissimilar
to those of the earliest Greeks. They were not Sarmatae,
because there is reason to doubt whether the latter entered
Europe more than a thousand years before our era, where¬
as the progressive advancement of the Scythians dates from
a much earlier period; because the manners of the earliest
Greeks had nothing in common with those of the Sarmatic
or Tartar tribes; and because the Slavonic language, which
was spoken by the Sarmatians, differs from the Greek in
grammatical structure as well as in nomenclature. But
the Pelasgi, or Hellenes, were Scythians of Thrace ; a po¬
sition which, besides being established by authority, is ren¬
dered highly probable from the circumstance that ancient
Hellas was everywhere surrounded either by the Scythians
or the sea. For the full illustration of this branch of the
subject, however, we must refer the reader to the fourth
chapter of Mr Pinkerton’s Dissertation, to Dr Doig’s paper
on the Ancient Hellenes,1 and to the Hermes Scythicus of
Dr Jamieson, passim. A similar mode of reasoning leads
to the conclusion that the Italians, as well as the Greeks,
were Scythians.
In the second part of his Dissertation, where he contem¬
plates the extended settlements of the Scythians or Goths
over all Germany, and in Scandinavia, Mr Pinkerton en¬
deavours, in the first place, to show, negatively, that the
Germans were not of Sarmatic nor of Celtic origin; and,
secondly, he attempts to prove, positively, that they were
Scythians, from identity of language, from the testimonies
of the ancient authors, and from similarity of manners
and institutions. The details required for the illustration
of both branches of his argument are necessarily compli¬
cated, and do not admit of abridgment. But the reason¬
ing is throughout strictly logical, and the conclusion can
only be affected by impeaching the accuracy or validity of
the premises. This, we are aware, has, to a considerable
extent, been done in the Vindication of the Celts, in the
Edinburgh Review, and in other works; and it must be
confessed that the most unsparing severity of criticism is
provoked, and in some measure justified, by the tone of
insolent dogmatism wdfich Pinkerton thought proper to as¬
sume, no less than by the contemptuous language in which
he is pleased to characterise almost every writer whose
opinions happened to differ from his own. But notwith¬
standing all his errors, aggravated as they unfortunately
are by some misrepresentations, the stability of his argu¬
ment remains as yet unshaken; and even those who hav-
been most successful in detecting his blunders, will, if im^
partial, be the first to admit the great learning which he
has brought to bear on his subject, and the ability with
which he has throughout conducted his reasoning. in
tracing the distinctive characteristics of the Goths and the
Celts, he has, in fact, established his case, independently
altogether of the positive evidence derived from authori¬
ties, which is afterwards supplied in profusion. Races of
men which are found to differ in person, in manners in
laws, in religion, and in language, cannot, upon any known
principle of reason, be admitted to have had a common ori¬
gin, whatever we may be led to believe upon the paramount
authority of revelation.
Upon the whole, in reference to the subject of the Goths
and Celts, the following points may be considered as esta¬
blished by the best evidence which the case admits of, viz.
1. At a period so early as the age of Sesostris, that is, at
least 1400 years before Christ, the Scythians, previously
established on the western shores of the Caspian and the
eastern shores of the Euxine, had extended their conquests
into Europe, and advanced at least as far as Thrace and
the surrounding countries. 2. About 640 years before
Christ, the Scythians drove the Cimmerians (believed to
be the same people with the Cimbri and the Cymry) out
of Europe, or forced them to take refuge in wild, moun¬
tainous, and inaccessible regions. 3. The Scythae were
afterwards known in history by the names of Getce, Gothi,
and Germani; but whether distinguished by these names, or
by the more comprehensive appellation of Scythians, they are
to be regarded as one and the same people. 4. The prin¬
cipal part of the population of every country in Europe,
excepting Russia, Poland, and Hungary, where the Slavo¬
nic race predominates, is of Gothic origin and descent,
though variously modified by the force of adventitious cir¬
cumstances. 5. With regard to the Celts, the testimony of
the earliest writers authorizes us to place their principal
settlement, in the fifth century before our era, in the south¬
west of Gaul, or neighbourhood of the Pyrenees, whence
they appear to have been driven by the Germans or Goths
on the east, and the Aquitani (probably an Iberian race)
on the south, to that part of Gaul where they were found
in the time of Caesar. 6. The Slavi, who invaded the
north-west of Europe after the destruction of the Roman
empire, were an Asiatic tribe ; and the present inhabitants
and languages of Russia, Bohemia, Hungary, Poland, and
Dalmatia, are derived from them.
Dr Jamieson, in the Dissertation prefixed to his Hermes
Scythicus, adopts the same views, and follows nearly the
same line of argument, as Mr Pinkerton, in considering the
historical proofs of the Scythian origin of the Greeks. He
shows that the Scythians and Getae were one people, that
the Goths were identical with the Getae, and that the
Thracians were of Scythian origin. He then treats of the
diffusion of the Pelasgi throughout Greece; the identity
of the Hellenes with the Pelasgi; the erroneous opinions
which have been entertained respecting the origin of this
people; the origin of their name; the proofs from testi¬
mony of the Scythian origin of the Pelasgi; the progress
of this people as illustrative of their origin; the language
of the Pelasgi; and, lastly, the resemblance of the Greek
language to that of the Scythians. He next adverts to the
origin of the religion of the Greeks, and of those called
Hyperboreans, and, by an elaborate analytical examination,
endeavours to show that the mythology of the Greeks, or at
least their theocracy, was of Scythian descent, and merely
an improved or polished form of the ruder system of super¬
stition which the Goths imported into Europe from their
Goth
V
ii(
l
fj
Sll
1 Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, vol. iii. part 2, p. 131.
GOT
. (, ginal settlements, and of which the principal features are
J s 11 preserved in the Scandinavian mythology. These to¬
ps exhaust the historical disquisition, which, however, is
i no small degree purely philological. But, in the second
j rt of his work entitled Hermes Scythicus, the learned
: U estimable author applies himself to demonstrate the af-
fiity of the Scythian and Greek language by a critical and
Ie mological examination of the purely elementary parts of
re one, with cognate or corresponding forms of expression
i the other; and, in prosecuting this refined and delicate
ailysis, he displays equal erudition and ingenuity, accom-
j I lied, however, it must be admitted, with a little occa-
ssnal straining. Whatever may be thought of the hypo-
twis, therefore, the learning brought to bear upon the
s;)ject is worthy of all acceptation ; and every philosophi-
c, inquirer into the origin and structure of languages must
fjl grateful to Dr Jamieson for the curious and interesting
iiormation which he has so laboriously accumulated.
The most ancient proofs of the affinity of Scythian and
fbeek, which the doctor has referred to in his inquiry,
a; derived from the celebrated version of Ulphilas, bishop
c the Moeso-Goths, which appears to have been executed
aout the year 360 of our era, though some learned wri-
t s have affirmed that it was executed in the reign of
(nstantine the Great. It is much to be regretted, that
othe labours of Ulphilas, all that remains is his version
c the four gospels, nearly one half of which has been
1 t; and some fragments of his translation of the Epistle
t the Romans. The proofs derivable from the Mceso-
Othic are thus extremely limited. But recourse may
t had to the Anglo-Saxon, a derivative dialect of the an-
c nt Gothic, introduced into England about the year 450,
o nearly a century after the date of the version of Ulphi-
1;1. There is not, indeed, extant any Anglo-Saxon writer
c er than Caedmon, who flourished about three centuries
lifer than the Bishop of Mcesia ; but so close is the affini-
tlfef these two languages, that Hickes, the learned author
c the Thesaurus Linguarum Septentrionalium has includ-
oboth in the same grammar. The form of speech which
lit the next claim in point of antiquity is the Alemanic
oTranco-Theotiscan; but of this there exist no memo-
r s of an earlier date than the reign of Charlemagne.
Te Islandic is the oldest and purest dialect of the Go-
t i which still exists as a living language. This lan-
g ige, in its more ancient form, has been called the Ru-
n from the character in which it was written; and in it
S'nund the Wise wrote the Edda which bears his name,
t' ards the close of the eleventh century. The Suio-Go-
itlfc, including the ancient language of Sweden, is nearly
a ed to the Islandic, and constitutes one of the sources
fun which the proofs of affinity are principally derived,
flally, without attempting to pronounce any opinion as
t<the result of Dr Jamieson’s analytical investigation, we
ny however be permitted to observe, that, if there exist
Sl h an affinity as that contended for between the Gothic
at Greek, and if an argument be thence deduced as to
tl Scythian origin of the people by whom the latter was
fl !ven, the well-known fact of the striking affinity, amount-
!r almost to identity, which is found to subsist between
tli Greek and the sacred language of India, the Sanscrit,
rc >t give an entirely new direction to the inquiry into
« origin and descent of nations, and lead us to extend
O'1 views on this subject far beyond the range to which
■L Jamieson, and those who have followed in his foot-
st'is, have confined their researches.
Pinkerton’s History of Scotland, vol. ii. Dissertation
J^e Origin and Progress of the Scythians and Goths,
•pburgh, 1814, in 8vo. Vindication of the Celts, from
fj aent Authorities ; with observations on Mr Pinkerton’s
pothesis concerning the Origin of the European Na-
s> London, 1803. Edinburgh Review, vol. ii. p. 355
G O U
621
Gouda.
et seqq. Jamieson’s Hermes Scythicus, or the Radical Gotten-
Affinities of the Greek and Latin Languages to the Go- burg
thic, &c. Edinburgh, 1814. Doig on the Ancient Hellenes,
Edinburgh Transactions, vol. iii.) (a.) ,
GOTTENBURG, a city, the capital of the province of
that name, in Sweden. It is built on the south side of
the Goetaelf, about two miles from its mouth. The har¬
bour is good, and capable of admitting ships of war. It
contains 1500 houses, and 21,540 inhabitants. The trade
is very considerable, as well for the export of native pro¬
ductions, wood, iron, and copper, as for the import of East
and West India goods and articles from the south of Eu¬
rope. It is situated in longitude 11. 33. E. and latitude
57. 42. N.
GOT BINGEN, one of the provinces, called a principa¬
lity, into which the kingdom of Hanover is divided. It
was formerly a part of the duchy of Brunswick, but was
afterwards united with Calenburg. Of late some parts of
Hesse, and the bailiwick of Hunnersruck in Hildesheim,
have been united with it, and the whole extends over
811 square miles, or 519,040 English acres. The province
is bounded on the north by the duchy of Brunswick and
the province of Grubenhagen, on the east by Grubenha-
gen, on the south by the Prussian provinces and by Hesse
Cassel, and on the west by Hesse and the Prussian West¬
phalian dominions. In 1812 it contained 96,593 inhabi¬
tants, of whom 2374 were Catholics, 5680 Reformed, 1166
Jews, and the remainder Lutherans. There has been a
rapid increase in the population since that period.
The face of the country is hilly, almost mountainous;
but between the elevations are valleys, through which the
various rivers run, of greater or less extent, and of very
high fertility. The Weser, formed by the junction of the
Werra and the Fulda, is the principal river, into which
the Line falls, and is navigable to Miinden. The soil is
good, and the cultivation well conducted, so that the
province yields much more both of corn and cattle than
it consumes. Besides food, the soil produces flax, hemp,
and tobacco. The products of mines are some iron and
rock salt, coals, and alum. The manufacture of linen is
of the domestic kind, carried on by spinning in the long
nights of the winter. The chief foreign trade consists
in the exportation of linen, yarn, wax, and honey. The
chief place is the city of the name of the province, cele¬
brated for its university, founded in 1734. The profes¬
sors in it are numerous and learned, and the students
vary from 1200 to 2000. It possesses a most valuable
library of 300,000 volumes, a botanic garden, several
museums, and philosophical apparatus. The collection
of models, and the observatory, are valuable establish¬
ments. The city contains 923 houses, and about 11,000
inhabitants, exclusively of the members of the university
who carry on manufactures of linen, woollen, and other
goods. Besides, there are many printing presses.
GOTTLAND, a province in the south of Sweden, in¬
cluding the island of that name, with the others near it
on the Baltic Sea, about forty-five miles from the east of
Sweden. The province has a surface of 528 square miles,
comprehends one city, with 1088 insulated settlements,
and contains 32,988 inhabitants. The chief occupation is
the fishing and agriculture, the latter of which supplies
the scanty demands of the province for food; but pota¬
toes make a great portion of the products. The only trade
is at Wisby, the capital of the province.
GOUDA, a city of the Netherlands, in the province
of Holland and circle of Rotterdam. It is situated on the
river Gauwe, which flows out of the Yssel. It is well built,
and has a considerable trade in making serges and baize ;
but the chief manufacture is that of pottery ware, and es¬
pecially of tobacco pipes, which affords occupation to more
than 5000 persons. It contains five churches : that of St
622
GOV
GOV
Goudhurst John is distinguished for one of the most powerful organs
II in Holland. The inhabitants are 12,000. Long. 4. 35. 50.
Govern- E Lat 51 50 51 N
— GOUDHURST, a town of the county of Kent, in the
hundred of Marden, within the lake of Scray, forty-four
miles from London. It was once a place of some conse¬
quence in the woollen manufacture, but that has decayed.
The inhabitants amounted in 1801 to 1782, in 1811 to
2082, in 1821 to 2579, and in 1831 to 2758.
GOULART, Simon, a minister of Geneva, was born r
at Senlis in 1543, and was one of the most indefatiga-
ble writers of his time. He made considerable additions Gove'
to the Catalogue of Witnesses of the Truth, composed bv
Illyricus; and acquired a great reputation by his works ^
the principal of which are, 1. A translation of Seneca-2
A collection of memorable histories ; 3. A translation of
St Cyprian Z>e Lapsis ; 4. Several devotional and moral
treatises. He died at Geneva in 1628.
V
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I
I
GOVERNMENT.
I.— 771 e End of Government, viz. the Good or Benefit for
the sake of which it. exists.
The question with respect to Government is a question
about the adaptation of means to an end. Notwithstand¬
ing the portion of discourse which has been bestowed up¬
on this subject, it is surprising to find, on a close inspec¬
tion, how few of its principles are settled. The reason
is, that the ends and means have not been analysed; and
it is only a general and undistinguishing conception of
them which is found in the minds of the greatest number
of men. Things, in this situation, give rise to intermin¬
able disputes ; more especially when the deliberation is sub¬
ject, as here, to the strongest action of personal interest.
In a discourse limited as the present, it would be ob¬
viously vain to attempt the accomplishment of such a task
as that of the analysis we have mentioned. The mode,
however, in which the operation should be conducted,
may perhaps be described, and evidence enough exhibit¬
ed to sfcow in what road we must travel, to approach the
goal at which so many have vainly endeavoured to arrive.
The end of Government has been described in a great
variety of expressions. By Locke it was said to be “ the
public good; ” by others it has been described as being
“ the greatest happiness of the greatest number. ” These,
and equivalent expressions, are just; but they are defec¬
tive, inasmuch as the particular ideas which they embrace
are indistinctly announced ; and different conceptions are
by means of them raised in different minds, and even in
the same mind on different occasions.
It is immediately obvious, that a wide and difficult field
is presented, and that the whole science of human nature
must be explored, to lay a foundation for the science of
Government.
To understand what is included in the happiness of the
greatest number, we must understand what is included in
the happiness of the individuals of whom it is composed.
That dissection of human nature which would be neces¬
sary for exhibiting, on proper evidence, the primary ele¬
ments into which human happiness may be resolved, it
is not compatible with the present design to undertake.
We must content ourselves with assuming certain results.
We may allow, for example, in general terms, that the
lot of every human being is determined by his pains and
pleasures; and that his happiness corresponds with the
degree in which his pleasures are great, and his pains are
small.
Human pains and pleasures are derived from two sour¬
ces : they are produced either by our fellow-men, or by
causes independent of other men.
We may assume it as another principle, that the concern
of Government is with the former of these two sources;
that its business is to increase to the utmost the pleasures,
and diminish to the utmost the pains, which men derive
from one another.
Of the laws of nature, on which the condition of man
depends, that which is attended with the greatest number
of consequences, is the necessity of labour for obtaining
the means of subsistence, as well as the means of the
greatest part of our pleasures. This is, no doubt, the pri¬
mary cause of Government; for if nature had produced
spontaneously all the objects which we desire, and in suf¬
ficient abundance for the desires of all, there would have
been no source of dispute or of injury among men; nor
would any man have possessed the means of ever acquir¬
ing authority over another.
The results are exceedingly different, when nature pro¬
duces the objects of desire not in sufficient abundance for
all. The source of dispute is then exhaustless; and every
man has the means of acquiring authority over others, in
proportion to the quantity of those objects which he is
able to possess.
In this case, the end to be obtained, through Govern¬
ment as the means, is, to make that distribution of the
scanty materials of happiness which would ensure the
greatest sum of it in the members of the community, taken
altogether; preventing every individual, or combination of
individuals, from interfering with that distribution, or mak¬
ing any man to have less than his share.
When it is considered that most of the objects of desire,
and even the means of subsistence, are the product of la¬
bour, it is evident that the means of ensuring labour must
be provided for as the foundation of all.
The means for the ensuring of labour are of two sorts;
the one made out of the matter of evil, the other made
out of the matter of good.
The first sort is commonly denominated force; and
under its application the labourers are slaves. This mode
of procuring labour we need not consider ; for if the end
of Government be to produce the greatest happiness of
the greatest number, that end cannot be attained by mak¬
ing the greatest number slaves.
The other mode of obtaining" labour is by allurement,
or the advantage which it brings. To obtain all the ob¬
jects of desire in the greatest possible quantity, we must
obtain labour in the greatest possible quantity; and, to ob¬
tain labour in the greatest possible quantity, we must raise
to the greatest possible height the advantage attached to
labour. It is impossible to attach to labour a greater de¬
gree of advantage than the whole of the product of labour.
Why so ? Because, if you give more to one man than the
produce of his labour, you can do so only by taking it away
from the produce of some other man’s labour. ThegreaG
est possible happiness of society is, therefore, attained by
ensuring to every man the greatest possible quantity ot
the produce of his labour.
How is this to be accomplished? for it is obvioustna
every man who has not all the objects of his desire, ias
inducement to take them from any other man who is wea •
er than himself: and how is he to be prevented?
One mode is sufficiently obvious; and it does not appMr
that there is any other: The union of a certain num er
of men, to protect one another. The object, it is plalt1’
can best be attained when a great number ol men com
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. b e, and delegate to a small number the power necessary
p; protecting them all. This is Government.
’J ^Vith respect to the end of Government, or that for the
gi e of which it exists, it is not conceived to be necessary,
ojthe present occasion, that the analysis should be car-
r d any further. What follows is an attempt to analyze
means.
lent
GOVERNMENT.
623
rid
*
] _77;e Means of attaining the End of Government, viz.
^ower, and Securities against the Abuse of that Power.
Two things are here to be considered ; the power with
vdch the small number are intrusted; and the use which
ftty are to make of it.
VVith respect to the first, there is no difficulty. The
eiments out of which the power of coercing others is fa-
heated, are obvious to all. Of these we shall, therefore,
n: lengthen this article by any explanation.
All the difficult questions of Government relate to the
mans of restraining those in whose hands are lodged the
pvers necessary for the protection of all, from making a
tlluseofit.
jWhatever would be the temptations under which indi-
v uals would lie, if there was no Government, to take
tb objects of desire from others weaker than themselves,
uder the same temptations the members of Government
II to take the objects of desire from the members of the
onmunity, if they are not prevented from doing so. What-
then, are the reasons for establishing Government,
tji! very same exactly are the reasons for establishing se-
o ities, that those intrusted with the powers necessary
fl protecting others make use of them for that purpose
s ely, and not for the purpose of taking from the mem-
li'S of the community the objects of desire.
] .— That the requisite Securities against the Abuse of
Power are not found in any of the simple Forms of Go¬
vernment.
There are three modes in which it may be supposed
t it the powers for the protection of the community are
<noble of being exercised. The community may under-
Re the protection of itself, and of its members. The
1 .vers of protection may be placed in the hands of a few.
. id, lastly, they may be placed in the hands of an indi-
N lual. The Many, the Few, the One; these varieties
f;near to exhaust the subject. It is not possible to con-
( ve any hands, or combination of hands, in which the
]livers of protection can be lodged, which will not fall
i tier one or other of these descriptions. And these va-
i ties correspond to the three forms of Government, the
1 miocratical, the Aristocratical, and the Monarchical.
It will be necessary to look somewhat closely at each
(•these forms in their order.
! 1. The Democratical. It is obviously7 impossible that
i; community in a body can be present to afford protec-
tn to each of its members. It must employ individuals
f that purpose. Employing individuals, it must choose
t'm; it must lay down the rules under which they are
tiact; and it must punish them, if they act in disconfor-
nty to those rules. In these functions are included the
Fee great operations of Government; Administration,
legislation, and Judicature. The community, to perform
of these operations, must be assembled. This circum-
Fnce alone seems to form a conclusive objection against
k- democratical form. To assemble the whole of a com-
^inity as often as the business of Government requires
1 rformance, would almost preclude the existence of la-
lur; hence that of property; and hence the existence of
l1 s community itself.
There is another objection, not less conclusive. A whole
community7 would form a numerous assembly. But all nu- Govem-
merous assemblies are essentially incapable of business, ment.
It is unnecessary to be tedious in the proof of this propo-
sition. In an assembly, every thing must be done by
speaking and assenting. But where the assembly is nu¬
merous, so many persons desire to speak, and feelings, by
mutual inflammation, become so violent, that calm and ef¬
fectual deliberation is impossible.
It may be taken, therefore, as a position, from which
there will be no dissent, that a community in mass is ill
adapted for the business of Government. There is no
principle more in conformity with the sentiments and the
practice of the people than this. The management of the
joint affairs of any considerable body of the people they
never undertake for themselves. What they uniformly do
is, to choose a certain number of themselves to be the ac¬
tors in their stead. Even in the case of a common bene¬
fit club, the members choose a committee of management,
and content themselves udth a general control.
2. The Aristocratical. This term applies to all
those cases in which the powers of Government are held
by any number of persons intermediate between a single
person and the majority. When the number is small, it is
common to call the Government an Oligarchy; when it is
considerable, to call it an Aristocracy. The cases are es¬
sentially the same, because the motives which operate in
both are the same. This is a proposition which carries,
we think, its own evidence along with it. We, therefore,
assume it as a point which will not be disputed.
The source of evil is radically different in the case of
aristocracy, from what it is in that of democracy7.
The community cannot have an interest opposite to its
interest. To affirm this would be a contradiction in terms.
The community within itself, and with respect to itself,
can have no sinister interest. One community may in¬
tend the evil of another; never its own. This is an indu¬
bitable proposition, and one of great importance. The
community may act wrong from mistake. To suppose that
it could from design, would be to suppose that human
beings can wish their own misery.
The circumstances from which the inaptitude of the
community, as a body, for the business of Government,
arises, namely, the inconvenience of assembling them, and
the inconvenience of their numbers when assembled, do
not necessarily exist in the case of aristocracy. If the
number of those who hold among them the powers of Go¬
vernment is so great as to make it inconvenient to as¬
semble them, or impossible for them to deliberate calmly
when assembled, this is only an objection to so extended
an aristocracy, and has no application to an aristocracy
not too numerous, when assembled, for the best exercise
of deliberation.
The question is, whether such an aristocracy may be
trusted to make that use; of the powers of Government
which is most conducive to the end for which Government
exists ?
There may be a strong presumption that any aristo¬
cracy, monopolizing the powers of Government, would not
possess intellectual powers in any very high perfection.
Intellectual powers are the offspring of labour. But an
hereditary aristocracy are deprived of the strongest mo¬
tives to labour. The greater part of them will, therefore,
be defective in those mental powers. This is one objec¬
tion, and an important one, though not the greatest.
We have already observed, that the reason for which
Government exists is, that one man, if stronger than an¬
other, will take from him whatever that other possesses
and he desires. But if oneiman will do this, so will se¬
veral. And if powers are put into the hands of a com¬
paratively small number, called an aristocracy, powers
which make them stronger than the rest of the commu*
624
GOVERNMENT.
Govern- nity, they will take from the rest of the community as
merit, much ag they please of the objects of desire. They will
' thus defeat the very end for which Government was in¬
stituted. The unfitness, therefore, of an aristocracy to
be intrusted with the powers of Government, rests on de¬
monstration.
3. The Monarchical. It will be seen, and therefore
words to make it manifest are unnecessary, that, in most
respects, the monarchical form of Government agrees with
the aristocratical, and is liable to the same objections.
If Government is founded upon this, as a law of human
nature, that a man, if able, will take from others any thing
which they have and he desires, it is sufficiently evident
that when a man is called a king, it does not change his
nature ; so that when he has got power to enable him to
take from every man what be pleases, he will take what¬
ever he pleases. To suppose that he will not, is to affirm
that Government is unnecessary; and that human beings
will abstain from injuring one another of their own ac¬
cord.
It is very evident that this reasoning extends to every
modification of the smaller number. Whenever the powers
of Government are placed in any hands other than those
of the community, whether those of one man, of a few, or
of several, those principles of human nature which imply
that Government is at all necessary, imply that those per¬
sons will make use of them to defeat the very end for
which Government exists.
IV.—An Objection stated, and answered.
One observation, however, suggests itself. Allowing, it
may be said, that this deduction is perfect, and the infer¬
ence founded upon it indisputable, it is yet true, that if
there were no Government, every man would be exposed
to depredation from every man ; but, under an aristocracy,
he is exposed to it only from a few; under a monarchy,
only from one.
This is a highly-important objection, and deserves to be
minutely investigated.
It is sufficiently obvious, that, if every man is liable to
be deprived of what he possesses at the will of every man
stronger than himself, the existence of property is impos¬
sible ; and, if the existence of property is impossible, so
also is that of labour, of the means of subsistence for an
enlarged community, and hence of the community itself.
If the members of such a community are liable to depri¬
vation by only a few hundred men, the members of an
aristocracy, it may not be impossible to satiate that limit¬
ed number with a limited portion of the objects belonging
to all. Allowing this view of the subject to be correct, it
follows, that the smaller the number of hands into which
the powers of Government are permitted to pass, the hap¬
pier it will be for the community: that an oligarchy, there¬
fore, is better than an aristocracy, and a monarchy better
than either.
This view of the subject deserves to be the more care¬
fully considered, because the conclusion to which it leads
is the same with that which has been adopted and pro¬
mulgated by some of the most profound and most bene¬
volent investigators of human affairs. That Government
by one man, altogether unlimited and uncontrolled, is bet¬
ter than Government by any modification of aristocracy,
is the celebrated opinion of Mr Hobbes, and of the French
Economists, supported on reasonings which it is not easy
to controvert. Government by the many they with reason
considered an impossibility. They inferred, therefore, that,
of all the possible forms of Government, absolute monarchy
is the best.
Experience, if we look only at the outside of the facts,
appears to be divided on this subject. Absolute monarchy,
under Neros and Caligulas, under such men as emperors f
Morocco and sultans of Turkey, is the scourge of hum°
nature. On the other side, the people of Denmark, tired o^t
with the oppression of an aristocracy, resolved that the1'
king should beabsolute; and, under their absolute monarch
are as well governed as any people in Europe. In Greece
notwithstanding the defects of democracy, human nature
fjovtnu
, vie
ran a more brilliant career than it has ever done m
other age or country. *** aD^
As the surface of history affords, therefore, no certain
principle of decision, we must go beyond the surface and
penetrate to the springs within.
When it is said that one man, or a limited number of
men, will soon be satiated with the objects of desire, and
when they have taken from the community what suffices
to satiate them, will protect its members in the enjoyment
of the remainder, an important element of the calculation
is left out. Human beings are not a passive substance.
If human beings, in respect to their rulers, were the same
as sheep in respect to their shepherd; and if the king or
the aristocracy were as totally exempt from all fear of
resistance from the people, and all chance of obtaining
more obedience from severity, as the shepherd in the case
of the sheep, it does appear that there would be a li¬
mit to the motive for taking to one’s self the objects of de¬
sire. The case will be found to be very much altered
when the idea is taken into the account, first, of the resist¬
ance to his will which one human being rauy expect from
another; and, secondly, of that perfection in obedience
which fear alone can produce.
That one human being will desire to render the person
and property of another subservient to his pleasures, not¬
withstanding the pain or loss of pleasure which it may
occasion to that other individual, is the foundation of Go¬
vernment. The desire of the object implies the desire
of the power necessary to accomplish the object. The
desire, therefore, of that power which is necessary to ren¬
der the persons and properties of human beings subservi¬
ent to our pleasures, is a grand governing law of human
nature. • ■-■i «H
What is implied in that desire of power, and, what is
the extent to which it carries the actions of men, are the
questions which it is necessary to resolve, in order to dis-
cover the limit which nature has set to the desire on the
part of a king, or an aristocracy, to inflict evil upon the
community for their own advantage.
Power is a means to an end. The end is every thing,
without exception, which the human being calls pleasure
and the removal of pain. The grand instrument for at¬
taining what a man likes is the actions of other men.
Power, in its most appropriate signification, therefore,
means security for the conformity between the will of one
man and the acts of other men. This, we presume, is not
a proposition which will be disputed. The master has
power over his servant, because when he wills him to do
so and so, or, in other words, expresses a desire that he
would do so and so, he possesses a kind of security that
the actions of the man will correspond to his desire. The
general commands his soldiers to perform certain opera¬
tions, the king commands his subjects to act in a certain
manner ; and their power is complete or not complete, in
proportion as the conformity is complete or not complete
between the actions willed and the actions performed.
The actions of other men, considered as means for the at¬
tainment of the objects of our desire, are perfect or imper¬
fect, in proportion as they are or are not certainly and in¬
variably correspondent to our will. There is no limit,
therefore, to the demand of security for the perfection of
that correspondence. A man is never satisfied with a
smaller degree if he can obtain a greater. And as there
is no man whatsoever, whose acts, in some degree or other,
COVER
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lissome way or other, more immediately or more remote-
] may not have some influence as means to our ends,
Ure is no man, the conformity of whose acts to our will
,<i would not give something to secure. The demand,
tbrefore, of power over the acts of other men is really
b;indless. It is boundless in two ways; boundless in the
nmber of persons to whom we would extend it, and bound-
Itn in its degree over the actions of each.
t would be nugatory to say, with a view to explain
any this important principle, that some human beings
iry be so remotely connected with our interests as to
mke the desire of a conformity between our will and their
anions evanescent. It is quite enough to assume, what
npody will deny, that our desire of that conformity is un-
liiited, in respect to all those men whose actions can be
sis posed to have any influence on our pains and pleasures.
Vfth respect to the rulers of a community, this at least is
c»:tain, that they have a desire for the uniformity between
tljir will and the actions of every man in the community.
41 for our present purpose this is as wide a field as we
ntd to embrace.
■pith respect to the community, then, we deem it an
ejpblished truth, that the rulers, one or a few, desire an
e: ct conformity between their will and the acts of every
umber of the community. It remains for us to inquire
ttfvhat description of acts it is the nature of this desire
t(t;ive existence.
Tere are two classes of means by which the confor-
u:y between the will of one man and the acts of other
Tin may be accomplished. The one is pleasure, the other
pm.
Vith regard to securities of the pleasurable sort for ob-
tstiing a conformity between one man’s will and the acts
olother men, it is evident, from experience, that when
a 1 an possesses a command over the objects of desire, he
m/, by imparting those objects to other men, ensure, to
a reat extent, conformity between his will and their ac-
tiiis. It follows, and is also matter of experience, that
tli; greater the quantity of the objects of desire which
hfriay thus impart to other men, the greater is the num-
bm of men between whose actions and his own will he
ci! ensure a conformity. As it has been demonstrated
til; there is no limit to the number of men whose actions
wdesire to have conformable to our will, it follows, with
euial evidence, that there is no limit to the command
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wMi we desire to possess over the objects which ensure
tit result.
t is, therefore, not true that there is in the mind of a
or *n the minds of an aristocracy, any point of satu-
fe on with the objects of desire. The opinion, in exami-
niion of which we have gone through the preceding
aulysis, that a king or an aristocracy may be satiated
wn the objects of desire, and, after being satiated, leave
to he members of the community the greater part of
Wf.t belongs to them, is an opinion founded upon a par-
tiuand incomplete view of the laws of human nature.
^e have next to consider the securities of the painful
sc which may be employed for attaining conformity be-
tvien the acts of one man and the will of another.
ie are of opinion, that the importance of this part of
tc subject has not been duly considered; and that the
bu ness of government will be ill understood till its nu-
to ous consequences have been fully developed,
leasure appears to be a feeble instrument of obedience
omparison tvith pain. It is much more easy to despise
p sure than pain. Above all, it is important to consider,
h in this class of instruments is included the power of
. ng away life, and with it of taking away not only all
" pleasures of reality, but, what goes so far beyond
in|in, all the pleasures of hope. This class of securities
lS’ lerefore, incomparably the strongest. He who de-
N M E N T. 625
sires obedience, to a high degree of exactness, cannot be Govem-
satisfied with the power of giving pleasure; he must have nient.
the power of inflicting pain. He who desires it to the
highest possible degree of exactness, must desire power
of inflicting pain sufficient at least to ensure that degree
of exactness; that is, an unlimited power of inflicting
pain ; for, as there is no possible mark by which to distim
guish what is sufficient and what is not, and as the human
mind sets no bounds to its avidity for the securities of
what it deems eminently good, it is sure to extend, be¬
yond almost any limits, its desire of the power of givinu
pain to others.
It may, however, be said, that how inseparable a part
soever of human nature it may appear to be, to desire to
possess unlimited power of inflicting pain upon others, it
does not follow, that those who possess it will have a de¬
sire to make use of it.
I his is the next part of the inquiry upon which we
have to enter; and we need not add, that it merits all
the attention of those who would possess correct ideas
upon a subject which involves the greatest interests of
mankind.
The chain of inference, in this case, is close and strong,
to a most unusual degree. A man desires that the actions
of other men shall be instantly and accurately correspond¬
ent to his will. He desires that the actions of the great¬
est possible number shall be so. Terror is the grand in¬
strument. Terror can work only through assurance that
evil will follow any want of conformity between the will
and the actions willed. Every failure must, therefore, be
punished. As there are no bounds to the mind’s desire
of its pleasure, there are of course no bounds to its desire
of perfection in the instruments of that pleasure. There
are, therefore, no bounds to its desire of exactness in the
conformity between its will and the actions willed; and,
by consequence, to the strength of that terror which is
its procuring cause. Every, the most minute failure, must
be visited with the heaviest infliction; and, as failure in
extreme exactness must frequently happen, the occasions
of cruelty must be incessant.
_ We have thus arrived at several conclusions of the
highest possible importance. We have seen, that the
very principle of human nature upon which the necessity
of Government is founded, the propensity of one man to
possess himself of the objects of desire at the cost of ano¬
ther, leads on, by infallible sequence, where power over a
community is attained, and nothing checks, not only to
that degree of plunder which leaves the members (ex¬
cepting always the recipients and instruments of the plun¬
der) the bare means of subsistence, but to that degree of
cruelty which is necessary to keep in existence the most
intense terror.
The world affords some decisive experiments upon hu¬
man nature, in exact conformity with these conclusions.
An English gentleman may be taken as a favourable spe¬
cimen of civilization, of knowledge, of humanity, of all the
qualities, in short, that make human nature estimable.
The degree in which he desires to possess power over his
fellow-creatures, and the degree of oppression to which
he finds motives for carrying the exercise of that power,
will afford a standard from which, assuredly, there can be
no appeal. Wherever the same motives exist, the same
conduct, as that displayed by the English gentleman, may
be expected to follow, in all men not farther advanced in
human excellence than him. In the West Indies, before
that vigilant attention of the English nation, which, for
many years before emancipation, had imposed a check
upon the masters of slaves, there was not a perfect ab¬
sence of all check upon the dreadful propensities of power.
But yet it is true, that these propensities led English
gentlemen, not only to deprive their slaves of property,
GOVERNMENT.
and to make property of their fellow-creatures, but' to
treat them with a degree of cruelty, the very description
of which froze the blood of their countrymen, who were
placed in less unfavourable circumstances. The motives
of this deplorable conduct are exactly those which we
have described above, as arising out of the universal de¬
sire to render the actions of other men exactly conform¬
able to our will. It is of great importance to remark,
that not one item in the motives which had led English
gentlemen to make slaves of their fellow-creatures, and to
reduce them to the very worst condition in which the ne¬
groes have been found in the West Indies, can be shown
to be wanting, or to be less strong, in the set of motives
which universally operate upon the men who have power
over their fellow-creatures. It is proved, therefore, by
the closest deduction from the acknowledged laws of hu¬
man nature, and by direct and decisive experiments, that
the ruling one, or the ruling few, would, if checks did not
operate in the way of prevention, reduce the great mass
of the people subject to their power, at least to the con¬
dition of negroes in the West Indies.1
We have thus seen, that of the forms of Government
which have been called the three simple forms, not one is
adequate to the ends which Government is appointed to
secure ; that the community itself, which alone is free
from motives opposite to those ends, is incapacitated by
its numbers from performing the business of Government;
and that whether Government is intrusted to one or a few,
they have not only motives opposite to those ends, but
motives which will carry them, if unchecked, to inflict
the greatest evils.
These conclusions are so conformable to ordinary con¬
ceptions, that it would hardly have been necessary, if the
development had not been of importance for some of our
subsequent investigations, to have taken any pains with
the proof of them. In this country at least, it will be
remarked, in conformity with so many writers, that the
imperfection of the three simple forms of Government is
apparent; that the ends of Government can be attained
in perfection only, as under the British constitution, by
an union of all the three.
V.— That the requisite Securities are not found in a Union
of the Three simple Forms of Government. Doctrine of
the Constitutional Balance.
The doctrine of the union of the three simple forms of
Government is the next part of this important subject
which we are called upon to examine.
The first thing which it is obvious to remark upon it is,
that it has been customary, in regard to this part of the
inquiry, to beg the question. The good effects which have
been ascribed to the union of the three simple forms of
Government, have been supposed; and the supposition has
commonly been allowed. No proof has been adduced ;
or if any thing have the appearance of proof, it is the re¬
ference to the British constitution. The British constitu¬
tion, it has been said, is an union of the three simple forms
of Government; and the British Government is excellent.
To render the instance of the British government in any
degree a proof of the doctrine in question, it is evident
that three points must be established; 1st, That the Bri¬
tish Government is not in show, but in substance, an union
of the three simple forms ; 2dly, That it has peculiar ex¬
cellence ; and, 3dly, That its excellence arises from the
union so supposed, and not from any other cause. As
these points have always been taken for granted without
examination, the question with respect to the effects of
an union of the three simple forms of Government m
be considered as yet unsolved. ^
The positions which we have already established with
regard to human nature, and which we assume as foundt
tions, are these: That the actions of men are governed
by their wills, and their wills by their desires : That their
desires are directed to pleasure and relief from pain as
ends, and to wealth and power as the principal means •
That to the desire of these means there is no limit; and
that the actions which flow from this unlimited desire are
the constituents whereof bad Government is made. Rea-
soning correctly from these acknowledged laws of human
nature, we shall presently discover what opinion, with re¬
spect to the mixture of the different species of Govern¬
ment, it will be incumbent upon us to adopt.
The theory in question implies, that of the powers of
Government, one portion is held by the king, one by the
aristocracy, and one by the people. It also implies, that
there is on the part of each of them a certain unity of
will, otherwise they would not act as three separate
powers. This being understood, we proceed to the in¬
quiry.
From the principles which we have already laid down,
it follows, that of the objects of human desire—and, speak-
ing^more definitely, of the means to the ends of human
desire, namely, wealth and power—each of the three par¬
ties will endeavour to obtain as much as possible.
After what has been said, it is not suspected that any
reader wall deny this proposition ; but it is of importance
that he keep in his mind a very clear conception of it.
If any expedient presents itself to any of the supposed
parties, effectual to said end, and not opposed to any pre¬
ferred object of pursuit, wTe may infer, with certainty, that
it will be adopted. One effectual expedient is not more
effectual than obvious. Any two of the parties, by com¬
bining, may swallow up the third. That such combination
will take place, appears to be as certain as any thing which
depends upon human will; because there are strong mo¬
tives in favour of it, and none that can be conceived in op¬
position to it. Whether the portions of power, as original¬
ly distributed to the parties, be supposed to be equal or
unequal, the mixture of three of the kinds of Government,
it is thus evident, cannot possibly exist.
This proposition appears to be so perfectly proved, that
we do not think it necessary to dwell here upon the sub¬
ject. As a part, however, of this doctrine, of the mixture
of the simple forms of Government, it may be proper to
inquire, whether an union may not be possible of two of
them.
Three varieties of this union may be conceived; the
union of the monarchy with aristocracy, or the union of
either with democracy.
Let us first suppose that monarchy is united with aristo¬
cracy. Their power is equal or not equal. If it is n°t
equal, it follows, as a necessary consequence, from the
principles which we have already established, that the
stronger will take from the weaker, till it engrosses the
whole. The only question, therefore, is, What will hap¬
pen when the power is equal ?
In the first place, it seems impossible that such equalit)
should ever exist. How is it to be established ? 0r ^
what criterion is it to be ascertained ? If there is no sue
criterion, it must, in all cases, be the result of chance,
so, the chances against it are as infinite to one. The idea,
therefore, is wholly chimerical and absurd.
Besides, a disposition to overrate one’s own advantages,
Goven
rnent
1 An acute sense of this important truth is expressed by the President Montesquieu : “ C’est une experience eternelle, que
fiomme qui a du pouvoir est porte a en abuser; if va jusqu’a ce qu’il trouve des limites.”—Esprit de LqLc, ii. 4.
tout
i
DM
Ml
h
government.
n., ad underrate those of other men, is a known law of hu-
. run nature. Suppose, what would be little less than mi-
^ rculous, that equality were established, this propensity
vmld lead each of the parties to conceive itself the strong-
,The consequence would be, that they would go to
vx, and contend till one or other was subdued. Either
tose laws of human nature, upon which all reasoning with
nspect to Government proceeds, must be denied, and then
t j utility of Government itself may be denied, or this con-
usion is demonstrated. Again, if this equality were es-
t dished, is there a human being who can suppose that it
viuld last ? If any thing be known about human affairs it
rthis, that they are in perpetual change. If nothing else
i erfered, the difference of men in respect of talents would
i undantly produce the effect. Suppose your equality to
1 established at the time when your king is a man of ta-
1 its, and suppose his successor to be the reverse ; your
t uality no longer exists. The moment one of the parties
j superior, it begins to profit by its superiority, and the
Equality is daily increased. It is unnecessary to extend
te investigation to the remaining cases, the union of de-
i )cracy with either of the other two kinds of Government,
is very evident that the same reasoning would lead to
e same results.
In this doctrine of the mixture of the simple forms of
vernment is included the celebrated theory of the ba-
ice among the component parts of a Government. By
is it is supposed, that, when a Government is composed
monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, they balance
* e another, and by mutual checks produce good Govern-
;ent. A few words will suffice to show, that, if any theory
; serve the epithets of “ wild, visionary, chimerical,” it is
at of the balance. If there are three powers, how is it
: ssible to prevent two of them from combining to swal-
w up the third ?
The analysis which w^e have already performed, will
able us to trace rapidly the concatenation of causes and
fleets in this imagined case.
We have already seen that the interest of the commu-
(ty, considered in the aggregate, or in the democratical
int of view, is, that each individual should receive pro-
-tion, and that the powers which are constituted for that
rpose should be employed exclusively for that purpose.
» this is a proposition wholly indisputable, it is also one
which all correct reasoning upon matters of Government
ust have a perpetual reference.
We have also seen that the interest of the king, and
the governing aristocracy, is directly the reverse ; it is
have unlimited power over the rest of the community,
; d to use it for their own advantage. In the supposed
se of the balance of the monarchical, aristocratical, and
* mocratical powers, it cannot be for the interest of either
e monarchy or the aristocracy to combine with the de-
)cracy ; because it is the interest of the democracy, or
1 mmunity at large, that neither the king nor the aristo-
1 icy should have one particle of power, or one particle of
j e wealth of the community, for their own advantage.
I lie democracy or community have all possible motives
endeavour to prevent the monarchy and aristocracy from
T seising power, or obtaining the wealth of the commu-
- y> for their own advantage. The monarchy and aris-
1 'racy have all possible motives for endeavouring to ob-
”n unlimited power over the persons and property of the
* uimunity. The consequence is inevitable ; they have
< possible motives for combining to obtain that power ;
* d unless the people have power enough to be a match
both, they have no protection. The balance, therefore,
a thing, the existence of which, upon the best possible
U'dence, is to be regarded as impossible. The appear-
ces which have given colour to the supposition are alto-
frher delusive. *
627
VI—/n the Representative System alone the Securities for Govern-
good Government are to he found. ment.
What then is to be done ? For, according to this rea¬
soning, we may be told that good Government appears to
be impossible. The people, as a body, cannot perform the
business of Government for themselves. If the powers of
Government are intrusted to one man, or a few men, and
a monarchy, or governing aristocracy, is formed, the re¬
sults are fatal; and it appears that a combination of the
simple forms is impossible. t
Notwithstanding the truth of these propositions, it is
not yet proved that good Government is impossible. For
though the people, who cannot exercise the powers of Go¬
vernment themselves, must intrust them to some one in¬
dividual or set of individuals, and such individuals will in¬
fallibly have the strongest motives to make a bad use of
them, it is possible that checks may be found sufficient to
prevent them. The next subject of inquiry, then, is the
doctrine of checks. It is sufficiently conformable to the
established and fashionable opinions to say, that, upon the
right constitution of checks, all goodness of Government
depends. To this proposition we fully subscribe. No¬
thing, therefore, can exceed the importance of correct
conclusions upon this subject. After the developments
already made, it is hoped that the inquiry will be neither
intricate nor unsatisfactory.
In the grand discovery of modern times, the system of
representation, the solution of all the difficulties, both spe¬
culative and practical, will perhaps be found. If it cannot,
w'e seem to be forced upon the extraordinary conclusion,
that good Government is impossible. For as there is no
individual, or combination of individuals, except the com¬
munity itself, who would not have an interest in bad Go¬
vernment, if intrusted with its powers; and as the com¬
munity itself is incapable of exercising those powers, and
must intrust them to some individual or combination of
individuals, the conclusion is obvious. The community
itself must check those individuals, else they will follow
their interest, and produce bad Government.
But how is it the community can check ? The com¬
munity can act only when assembled ; and then it is in¬
capable of acting.
The community, however, can choose representatives,
and the question is, whether the representatives of the
community can operate as a check ?
VII.— What is required in a Representative Body, to make
it a security for good Government ?
We may begin by laying down two propositions, which
appear to involve a great portion of the inquiry; and
about which it is unlikely that there will be any dispute.
I. The checking body must have a degree of power suf¬
ficient for the business of checking.
II. It must have an identity of interest with the com¬
munity ; otherwise it will make a mischievous use of its
power.
I. To measure the degree of power which is requisite
upon any occasion, we must consider the degree of power
which is necessary to be overcome. Just as much as
suffices for that purpose is requisite, and no more. We
have then to inquire what power it is which the represen¬
tatives of the community, acting as a check, need power
to overcome. The answer here is easily given. It is all
that power, wheresoever lodged, which they, in whose
hands it is lodged, have an interest in misusing. We have
already seen, that to whomsoever the community intrusts
the powers of Government, whether one, or a few, they
have an interest in misusing them. All the power, there¬
fore, which the one or the few, or which the one and the
628
GOVERNMENT,
Govern- few combined, can apply to ensure the accomplishment of
ment. their sinister ends, the checking body must have power
to overcome, otherwise its check will be unavailing. In
other words, there will be no check.
This is so exceedingly evident, that we hardly think it
necessary to say another word in illustration of it. If a
king is prompted by the inherent principles of human na¬
ture to seek the gratification of his will; and if he finds
an obstacle in that pursuit, he removes it, of course, if he
can. If any man, or any set of men, oppose him, he over¬
comes them, if he is able; and to prevent him, they must,
at the least, have equal power with himself.
The same is the case with an aristocracy. To oppose
them with success in pursuing their interest at the expense
of the community, the checking body must have power
successfully to resist whatever power they possess. If
there is both a king and an aristocracy, and if they would
combine to put down the checking force, and to pursue
their mutual interest at the expense of the community,
the checking body must have sufficient power successful¬
ly to resist the united power of both king and aristocracy.
These conclusions are not only indisputable, but the
very theory of the British constitution is erected upon
them. The House of Commons, according to that theo¬
ry, is the checking body. It is also an admitted doctrine,
that if the king had the power of bearing down any oppo¬
sition to his will that could be made by the House of
Commons, or if the king and the House of Lords com¬
bined had the power of bearing down its opposition to their
joint will, it would cease to have the power of checking
them : it must, therefore, have a power sufficient to over¬
come the united power of both.
II. All the questions which relate to the degree of
power necessary to be given to that checking body, on
the perfection of whose operations all the goodness of
Government depends, are thus pretty easily solved. The
grand difficulty consists in finding the means of consti¬
tuting a checking body, whose powers shall not be turned
against the community for whose protection it is created*
There can be no doubt that if power is granted to a
body of men called representatives, they, like any other
men, will use their power, not for the advantage of the
community, but for their own advantage, if they can. The
only question is, therefore, how they can be prevented ?
in other words, how are the interests of the representa¬
tives to be identified with those of the community?
Each representative may be considered in two capaci¬
ties ; in his capacity of representative, in which he has the
exercise of power over others ; and in his capacity of mem¬
ber of the community, in which others have the exercise
of power over him.
If things were so arranged, that, in his capacity of re¬
presentative, it would be impossible for him to do himself
so much good by misgovernment, as he would do himself
harm in his capacity of member of the community, the
object would be accomplished. We have already seen,
that the amount of power assigned to the checking body
cannot be diminished beyond a certain amount. It must
be sufficient to overcome all resistance on the part of all
those in whose hands the powers of Government are lodg¬
ed. But if the power assigned to the representative can¬
not be diminished in amount, there is only one other way
in which it can be diminished, and that is in duration.
This, then, is the instrument; lessening of duration is
the instrument by which, if by any thing, the object is to
be attained. The smaller the period of time during which
any man retains his capacity of representative, as compar¬
ed with the time in which he is simply a member of the
community, the more difficult it will be to compensate the
sacrifice of the interests of the longer period, by the pro¬
fits of misgovernment during the shorter.
This is an old and approved method of identifying as r
nearly as possible the interests of those who rule with
the interests of those who are ruled. It is in pursuance ^
of this advantage that the members of the British House
of Commons have always been chosen for a limited period.
If the members were hereditary, or even if they were
chosen for life, every inquirer would immediately pro-
nounce that they would employ, for their own advantage,
the powers intrusted to them ; and that they would go
just as far in abusing the persons and properties of the
people, as their estimate of the powers and spirit of the
people to resist them would allow them to contemplate as
safe.
As it thus appears, by the consent of all men, from
the time when the Romans made their consuls annual
down to the present day, that the end is to be attained by
limiting the duration, either of the acting, or (which is
better) of the checking power, the next question is, to
what degree should the limitation proceed ?
The general answer is plain. It should proceed, till
met by overbalancing inconveniences on the other side.
What then are the inconveniences which are likely to flow
from a too limited duration ?
They are of two sorts ; those which affect the perform¬
ance of the service for which the individuals are chosen,
and those which arise from the trouble of election. It is
sufficiently obvious, that the business of Government re¬
quires time to perform it. The matter must be propos¬
ed, deliberated upon, a resolution must betaken and exe¬
cuted. If the powers of Government were to be shifted
from one set of hands to another every day, the business
of Government could not proceed. Two conclusions, then,
we may adopt with perfect certainty; that whatsoever
time is necessary to perform the periodical round of the
stated operations of Government, this should be allotted
to those who are invested with the checking powers; and,
secondly, that no time which is not necessary for that
purpose should by any means be allotted to them. With
respect to the inconvenience arising from frequency of
election, though it is evident that the trouble of elec¬
tion, which is always something, should not be repeated
oftener than is necessary, no great allowance will need to
be made for it, because it may easily be reduced to an in¬
considerable amount.
As it thus appears that limiting the duration of their
power is a security against the sinister interest of the peo¬
ple’s representatives, so it appears that it is the only se¬
curity of which the nature of the case admits. The only
other means which could be employed to that end would
be punishment on account of abuse. It is easy, however,
to see that punishment could not be effectually applied.
In order to punishment, definition is required of the
punishable acts; and proof must be established of the
commission. But abuses of power may be carried to a
great extent, without allowing the means of proving a de¬
terminate offence, bio part of political experience is more
perfect than this.
If the limiting of duration be the only security, it is un¬
necessary to speak of the importance which ought to be
attached to it.
In the principle of limiting the duration of the power
delegated to the representatives of the people, is not m-
cluded the idea of changing them. The same individua
may be chosen any number of times. The check of
short period for which he is chosen, and during which e
can promote his sinister interest, is the same upon the man
who has been chosen and re-chosen twenty times, as upon
the man who has been chosen for the first time. And t ere
is good reason for always re-electing the man who has on
his duty, because the longer he serves, the better ®C(lu®*jj-
ed he becomes with the business of the service. Upon
GOVERNMENT.
629
print1,.
till®
rW
rei
-itliii "
ptnciple of re-choosing, or of the permanency of the indi-
v ual, united with the power of change, has been recom-
n tided the plan of permanent service with perpetual power
o removal. This, it has been said, reduces the period
vwhin which the representative can promote his sinister
ii ::rest, to the narrowest possible limits ; because the mo-
mnt when his constituents begin to suspect him, that mo-
mnt they may turn him out. On the other hand, if he
c itinues faithful, the trouble of election is performed once
f( all, and the man serves as long as he lives. Some dis-
antages, on the other hand, would accompany this plan,
'lie present, however, is not the occasion on which the ba¬
ilee of different plans is capable of being settled.
VII What is required in the Elective Body, to secure the
requisite Properties in the Representative Body.
Ha'
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M’h
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itpen
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itjires
lose
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itlers
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feu
fk
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teinil
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times
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Having considered the means which are capable of being
eiployed for identifying the interest of the representatives
wen chosen, with that of the persons who choose them, it
mains that we endeavour to bring to view the principles
wich ought to guide in determining who the persons are
b whom the act of choosing ought to be performed.
It is most evident that upon this question every thing
( pends. It can be of no consequence to ensure, by short-
Bts of duration, a conformity between the conduct of the
mesentatives and the will of those who appoint them, if
Use who appoint them have an interest opposite to that
cithe community ; because those who choose will, accord-
i i to the principles of human nature, make choice of such
[’•sons as will act according to their wishes. As this is a
oect inference from the very principle on which Govern-
r:nt itself is founded,’ we assume it as indisputable.
We have seen already, that if one man has power over
oners placed in his hands, he will make use of it for an
e*l purpose, for the purpose of rendering those other men
ti abject instruments of his will. If we, then, suppose
t it one man has the power of choosing the representatives
c the people, it follows that he will choose men who will
itheir power as representatives for the promotion of this
1 i sinister interest.
• We have likewise seen, that when a few men have power
t. en them over others, they will make use of it exactly for
tt same ends, and to the same extent, as the one man. It
tnally follows, that if a small number of men have the
c Dice of the representatives, such representatives will be
(hsen as will promote the interests of that small number,
tt reducing, if possible, the rest of the community to be the
elect and helpless slaves of their will.
In all these cases it is obvious and indisputable, that all
f benefits of the representative system are lost. The re-
I sentative system is, in that case, only an operose and
cunsy machinery for doing that which might as well be done
uhout it; reducing the community to subjection under
tt one or the few.
When we say the few, it is seen that in this case it is of
' importance whether we mean a few hundreds or a few
tkusands, or even many thousands. The operation of
II sinister interest is the same ; and the fate is the same
f all that part of the community over w hom the power
[ exercised. A numerous aristocracy has never been
II nd to be less oppressive than an aristocracy confined to
aiaw.
1 he general conclusion, therefore, which is evidently
Published, is this ; that the benefits of the representa-
t'e system are lost, in all cases in which the interests of
T; choosing body are not the same with those of the com-
i unity.
J h h very evident, that if the community itself were the
ffljosing body, the interest of the community and that of
f; choosing body would be the same. The question is,
whether that of any portion of the community, if erected Govem-
into the choosing body, would remain the same ? ment.
One thing is pretty clear, that all those individuals whose
interests are indisputably included in those of other indivi¬
duals, may be struck oft’ without inconvenience. In this
light may be viewed all children up to a certain age, whose
interests are involved in those of their parents. In this
light also women may be regarded, the interest of almost
all of whom is involved either in that of their fathers or in
that of their husbands.
Having ascertained that an interest identical with that
of the whole community is to be found in the aggregate
males of an age to be regarded as stei juris, who may be
deemed the natural representatives of the whole popula¬
tion, we have to go on and inquire whether this requisite
quality may not be found in some less number, some aliquot
part of that body.
As degrees of mental qualities are not easily ascertained,
outward and visible signs must be taken to distinguish, for
this purpose, one part of these males from another. Appli¬
cable signs of this description appear to be three; years,
property, profession or mode of life.
According to the first of these means of distinction, a
portion of the males, to any degree limited, may be taken,
by prescribing an advanced period of life at which the
power of voting for a representative should commence.
According to the second, the elective body may be limited,
by allowing a vote to those only who possess a certain
amount of property or of income. According to the third,
they may be limited, by allowing a vote only to such per¬
sons as belong to certain professions, or certain connexions
and interests. What we have to inquire is, if the interest
of the number, limited and set apart, upon any of those
principles, as the organ of choice for a body of representa¬
tives, will be the same with the interest of the commu¬
nity ?
With respect to the first principle of selection, that of
age, it would appear that a considerable latitude may be
taken without inconvenience. Suppose the age of forty
were prescribed as that at which the right of suffrage should
commence, scarcely any laws could be made for the bene¬
fit of all the men of forty, which would not be laws for the
benefit of all the rest of the community.
The great principle of security here is, that the men of
forty have a deep interest in the welfare of the younger
men ; for otherwise it might be objected with perfect
truth, that if decisive power were placed in the hands of
men of forty years of age, they would have an interest, just
as any other detached portion of the community, in pursu¬
ing that career which we have already described, for re¬
ducing the rest of the community to the state of abject
slaves. But the great majority of old men have sons,
whose interest they regard as an essential part .of their
own. This is a law of human nature. There is, therefore,
no great danger that, in such an arrangement as this, the
interests of the young would be greatly sacrificed to those
of the old.
WTe come next to the inquiry, whether the interest of
a body of electors, constituted by the possession of a cer¬
tain amount of property or income, would be the same
with the interest of the community?
. It will not be disputed, that, if the qualification were
raised so high that only a few hundreds possessed it, the
case would be exactly the same with that of the consign¬
ment of the electoral suffrage to an aristocracy. This we
have already considered, and have seen that it differs in
form rather than substance from a simple aristocracy.
We have likewise seen, that it alters not the case in regard
to the community, whether the aristocracy be some hun¬
dreds or some thousands. One thing is, therefore, com¬
pletely ascertained, that a pecuniary qualification, unless
630
GOVERNMENT.
Govern¬
ment.
it were very low, would only create an aristocratical go¬
vernment, and produce all the evils which we have shown
to belong to that organ of misrule.
This question, however, deserves to be a little more
minutely considered. Let us next take the opposite ex¬
treme. Let us suppose that the qualification is very low,
so low as to include the great majority of the people. It
would not be easy for the people who have very little pro-
pert}', to separate their interests from those of the people
who have none. It is not the interest of those who have
little property to give undue advantages to the possession
of property, which those who have the great portions of
it would turn against themselves.
It may, therefore, be said, that there would be no evil
in a low qualification. It can hardly be said, however, on
the other hand, that there would be any good; for if the
whole mass of the people who have some property would
make a good choice, it will hardly be pretended that, add¬
ed to them, the comparatively small number of those who
have none, and whose minds are naturally and almost ne¬
cessarily governed by the minds of those who have, would
be able to make the choice a bad one.
We have ascertained, therefore, twm points. We have
ascertained that a very low qualification is of no use, as
affording no security for a good choice, beyond that which
wrould exist if no pecuniary qualification was required.
We have likewise ascertained, that a qualification so high
as to constitute an aristocracy of wealth, though it were
a very numerous one, would leave the community without
protection, and exposed to all the evils of unbridled power.
The only question, therefore, is, whether, between these
extremes, there is any qualification which wmuld remove
the right of suffrage from the people of small, or of no
property, and yef constitute an elective body, the inte¬
rest of which would be identical with that of the commu-
nity ?
It is not easy to find any satisfactory principle to guide
us in our researches, and to tell us where we should fix.
The qualification must either be such as to embrace the
majority of the population, or some thing less than the ma¬
jority. Suppose, in the first place, that it embraces the
majority, the question is, whether the majority would have
an interest in oppressing those wdio, upon this supposition,
would be deprived of political power? If we reduce the
calculation to its elements, we shall see that the interest
which they wmuld have, of this deplorable kind, though it
would be something, would not be very great. Each man
of the majority, if the majority were constituted the go¬
verning body, would have something less than the benefit
of oppressing a single man. If the majority w'ere twice as
great as the minority, each man of the majority w-ould
only have one half the benefit of oppressing a single man.
In that case, the benefits of good government, accruing to
all, might be expected to overbalance to the several mem¬
bers of such an elective body the benefits of misrule pecu¬
liar to themselves. Good Government would, therefore,
have a tolerable security. Suppose, in the second place,
that the qualification did not admit a body of electors so
large as the majority; in that case, taking again the calcu¬
lation in its elements, we shall see that each man would
have a benefit equal to that derived from the oppression
of more than one man ; and that, in proportion as the elec¬
tive body constituted a smaller and smaller minority, the
benefit of misrule to the elective body would be increased,
and bad Government would be ensured.
It seems hardly necessary to carry the analysis of the
pecuniary qualification, as the principle for choosing an
elective body, any farther.
We have only remaining the third plan for constituting
an elective body. According to the scheme in question,
the best elective body is that which consists of certain
classes, professions, or fraternities. The notion is, that
when these fraternities or bodies are represented, the com¬
munity itself is represented. The way in which, accord¬
ing to the patrons of this theory, the effect is brought
about, is this. Though it is perfectly true that each of
these fraternities would profit by misrule, and have the
strongest interest in promoting it; yet, if three or four
such fraternities are appointed to act in conjunction, they
will not profit by misrule, and will have an interest in no¬
thing but good Government.
This theory of representation we shall not attempt to
trace farther back than the year 1793. In the debate on
the motion of Mr, afterwards Earl Grey, for a reform in the
system of representation, on the 6th of May of that year,
Mr Jenkinson, afterwards Earl of Liverpool, brought for¬
ward this theory of representation, and urged it in oppo¬
sition to all idea of reform in the British House of Com¬
mons, in terms as clear and distinct as those in which it
has since been clothed by other leading men on both
sides of that House. We shall transcribe the passage from
the speech of the latter, omitting, for the sake of abbre¬
viation, all those expressions which are unnecessary for
conveying a knowledge of the plan, and of the reasons
upon which it wras founded.
“ Supposing it agreed,” he said, “ that the House of Com¬
mons is meant to be a legislative body, representing all de¬
scriptions of men in the country, he supposed every per¬
son w'ould agree that the landed interest ought to have the
preponderant weight. The landed interest was, in fact,
the stamina of the country. In the second place, in a
commercial country like this, the manufacturing and com¬
mercial interest ought to have a considerable weight, se¬
condary to the landed interest, but secondary to the land¬
ed interest only. But was this all that was necessary?
There were other descriptions of people, which, to distin¬
guish them from those already mentioned, he should style
professional people, and whom he considered as absolutely
necessary to the composition of a House of Commons. By
professional people, he meant those members of the House
of Commons who wished to raise themselves to the great
offices of the state ; those that were in the army, those that
were in the navy, those that were in the law.” He then,
as a reason for desiring to have those whom he calls “ pro¬
fessional people ” in the composition of the House of Com¬
mons, gives it as a fact, that country gentlemen and mer¬
chants seldom desire, and seldom have motives for desiring,
to be ministers and other great officers of state. These minis¬
ters and officers, however, ought to be made out of the House
of Commons. Therefore, you ought to have “ professional
people” of whom to make them. Nor was this all. “ There
was another reason why these persons were absolutely ne¬
cessary. We were constantly in the habit of discussing in
that house all the important concerns of the state. It was
necessary, therefore, that there should be persons in the
practice of debating such questions.” “ There was a third
reason, which, to his mind, w'as stronger than all the rest.
Suppose that in that house there were only country gen¬
tlemen ; they would not then be the representatives of the
nation, but of the landholders. Suppose there were in that
house only commercial persons; they would not be the re¬
presentatives of the nation, but of the commercial interests
of the nation. Suppose the landed and commercial interest
could both find their way into the house ; the landed interest
would be able, if it had nothing but the commercial interest
to combat with, to prevent that interest from having its due
weight in the constitution. All descriptions of persons in
the country would thus, in fact, be at the mercy of the lan
holders.” JHe adds, “ the professional persons are, then,
what makes this house the representatives of the poop c-
They have collectively no esprit de corps, and prevent any
esprit de corps from affecting the proceedings of the hou
Govern,
D'ent.
Wv
GOVERNMENT.
n. either the landed nor commercial interest can materially
Ilect each other; and the interests of the different profes-
jns of the country are fairly considered. The honoura-
, e gentleman (Mr Grey), and the petition on this table,
ther proposed uniformity of election. His ideas were the
Sverse—that the modes of election ought to be as varied
possible ; because, if there was but one mode of election,
ere would, generally speaking, be but one description of
rsons in that house; and by a varied mode of election
, ,ly could that variety be secured.”
There is great vagueness undoubtedly in the language
Ire employed, and abundant wavering and uncertainty in
I e ideas. But the ideas regarding this theory appear in
je same half-formed state in every speech and writing in
nich we have seen it adduced. The mist, indeed, by
vhch it has been kept surrounded alone creates the diffi-
<lty ; because it cannot be known precisely how any thing
igood or bad till it is precisely known what it is.
i According to the ideas of Lord Liverpool, the land-
] Iders ought to be represented ; the merchants and ma-
iifacturers ought to be represented; the officers of the
imy and navy ought to be represented ; and the practi-
nners of the law ought to be represented. Other patrons
< the scheme have added, that literary men ought to be
jpresented. And these, we believe, are almost all the
Uternities which have been named for this purpose by
liy of the advocates of representation by clubs. To en-
ire the choice of representatives of the landholders,
lidholders must be the choosers; to ensure the choice
i representatives of the merchants and manufacturers,
iKjrchants and manufacturers must be the choosers; and
.#■ with respect to the other fraternities, whether few or
nny. Ihus it must be at least in substance, whatever
■ic form under which the visible acts may be performed,
fxording to the scheme in question, these several frater-
des are represented directly ; the rest of the community
represented directly; but it. will be said by the pa-
ijpns of that scheme, that it is represented virtually,
.deli, in this case, answers the same purpose.
. From what has already been ascertained, it will appear
ortain, that each of these fraternities has its sinister in¬
rest, and will be led to seek the benefit of misrule, if it
liable to obtain it. This is frankly and distinctly avow-
m by Lord Liverpool; and by those by whom it is not
4 owed, it seems impossible to suppose that it should be
pputed.
Let us now, then, observe the very principle upon
dch this theory must be supported. Three, or four, or
We, or more clubs of men, have unlimited power over
i e whole community put into their hands. These clubs
1 ve, each and all of them, an interest, an interest the
me with that which governs all other rulers, in mis-
jjvernment, in converting the persons and properties
1 the rest of the community wholly to their own bene-
1 Having this interest, says the theory, they will not
-i ike use of it, but will use all their powers for the bene-
■ the community. Unless this proposition can be
J pported, the theory is one of the shallowest by which
: e pretenders to political wisdom have ever exposed
•Lmselves.
Let us resume the proposition. Three, or four, or five
1 temities of men, composing a small part of the com-
junity, have all the powers of Government placed in their
nds. If they oppose and contend with one another,
1 ey will be unable to convert these powers to their own
nefit. If they agree, they wdll be able to convert them
1 mlly to their own benefit, and to do with the rest of the
< imnunity just what they please. The patrons of this
Gtem of representation assume, that these fraternities
] be sure to take that course w hich is contrary to their
J eiest. The course which is according to their interest,
631
appears as if it had never presented itself to their imagi- Govern-
nations. ment.
There being -two courses which the clubs may pursue,
one contrary to their interest, the other agreeable to it,
the patrons of the club system must prove, they must place
it beyond all doubt, that the clubs will follow the first
course, and not follow the second ; if not, the world will
laugh at a theory which is founded upon a direct contra¬
diction of one of the fundamental principles of human na¬
ture.
In supposing that clubs or societies of men are govern¬
ed, like men individually, by their interests, we are surely
following a pretty complete experience. In the idea that
a certain number of those clubs can unite to pursue a com¬
mon interest, there is surely nothing more extraordinary,
than that as many individuals should unite to pursue a
common interest. Lord Liverpool talks of an esprit de
corps belonging to a class of landholders, made up of the
different bodies of landholders in every county in the king¬
dom. He talks of an esprit de corps in a class of mer¬
chants and manufacturers, made up of the different bodies
of merchants and manufacturers in the several great towns
and manufacturing districts in the kingdom. What, then,
is meant by an esprit de corpse Nothing else but a union
for the pursuit of a common interest. To the several clubs
supposed in the present theory, a common interest is creat¬
ed by the very circumstance of their composing the re¬
presenting and represented bodies. Unless the patrons
of this theory can prove to us, contrary to all experience,
that a common interest cannot create an esprit de corps in
men in combinations, as well as in men individually, we
are under the necessity of believing, that an esprit de corps
would be formed in the classes separated from the rest of
the community for the purposes of representation; that
they w ould pursue their common interest; and inflict all
the evils upon the rest of the community to which the
pursuit of that interest would lead.
It is not included in the idea of this union for the pur¬
suit of a common interest, that the clubs or sets of persons
appropriated to the business of representation should to¬
tally harmonise. There wmuld, no doubt, be a great mix¬
ture of agreement and disagreement among them. But
there would, if experience is any guide, or if the general
laws of human nature have any powder, be sufficient agree¬
ment to prevent their losing sight of the common interest;
in other words, for ensuring all that abuse of power which
is useful to the parties by whom it is exercised.
The real effect of this motley representation, therefore,
would only be to create a motley aristocracy ; and, of
course, to ensure that kind of misgovernment which it is
the nature of aristocracy to produce, and to produce equal¬
ly, whether it is a uniform or a variegated aristocracy ;
w hether an aristocracy all of landowners; or an aristo¬
cracy in part landowners, in part merchants and manu¬
facturers, in part officers of the army and navy, and in part
lawyers.
We have now, therefore, examined the principles of the
representative system, and have found in it all that is
necessary to constitute a security for good Government.
We have seen in what manner it is possible to prevent in
the representatives the rise of an interest different from
that of the parties who choose them, namely, by giving
them little time, not dependent upon the will of those
parties. We have likewise seen in what manner identity
of interest may be ensured between the electoral body and
the rest of the community. We have, therefore, discover¬
ed the means by which identity of interest may be ensur¬
ed between the representatives and the community at
large. We have, by consequence, obtained an organ of
Government which possesses that quality, without which
there can be no good Government.
632
GOVERNMENT.
Govern-
ment.
IX.—First Objection: That a perfect Representative Sys¬
tem, if established, would destroy the Monarchy and the
House of Lords.
The question remains, whether this organ is competent
to the performance of the whole of the business of Govern¬
ment? And it may be certainly answered, that it is not.
It may be competent to the making of laws, and it may
watch over their execution: but to the executive functions
themselves, operations in detail, to be performed by indi¬
viduals, it is manifestly not competent. The executive
functions of Government consist of two parts, the adminis¬
trative and the judicial. The administrative, in this coun¬
try, belong to the king; and it will appear indubitable,
that, if the best mode of disposing of the administrative
powers of government be to place them in the hands of
one great functionary, not elective, but hereditary; a king,
such as ours, instead of being inconsistent with the repre¬
sentative system, in its highest state of perfection, would
be an indispensable branch of a good Government; and,
even if it did not previously exist, would be established by
a representative body whose interests were identified, as
above, with those of the nation.
The same reasoning will apply exactly to our House of
Lords. Suppose it true, that, for the perfect performance
of the business of legislation, and of watching over the exe¬
cution of the laws, a second deliberative assembly is ne¬
cessary ; and that an assembly, such as the British House
of Lords, composed of the proprietors of the greatest landed
estates, with dignities and privileges, is the best adapted
to the end: it follows, that a body of representatives, whose
interests were identified with those of the nation, would
establish such an assembly, if it did not previously exist:
for the best of all possible reasons; that they would have
motives for, and none at all against it.
Those parties, therefore, who reason against any mea¬
sures necessary for identifying the interests of the repre¬
sentative body with those of the nation, under the plea that
such a representative body would abolish the king and the
House of Lords, are wholly inconsistent with themselves.
They maintain that a king and a House of Lords, such as
ours, are important and necessary branches of a good Go¬
vernment. It is demonstratively certain that a represen¬
tative body, the interests of which were identified with
those of the nation, would have no motive to abolish them,
if they were not causes of bad Government. Those per¬
sons, therefore, who affirm that it would certainly abolish
them, affirm implicitly that they are causes of bad, and not
necessary to good Government. This oversight of theirs
is truly surprising.
The whole of this chain of deduction is dependent, as
we stated at the beginning, upon the principle that the
acts of men will be conformable to their interests. Upon
this principle, we conceive that the chain is complete and
irrefragable. The principle, also, appears to stand upon a
strong foundation. It is indisputable that the acts of men
follow their will; that their will follows their desires; and
that their desires are generated by their apprehensions of
good or evil; in other words, by their interests.
X.—Second Objection: That the People are not capable of
acting agreeably to their Interest.
The apprehensions of the people respecting good and
evil may be just, or they may be erroneous. If just, their
actions will be agreeable to their real interests. If erro¬
neous, they will not be agreeable to their real interests,
but to a false supposition of interest.
We have seen that, unless the representative body are
chosen by a portion of the community, the interest of which
cannot be made to differ from that of the community, the
interest of the community will infallibly be sacrificed to G
the interest of the rulers.
The whole of that party of reasoners who support aris- ^
tocratical power, affirm, that a portion of the community
the interest of whom cannot be made to differ from that
of the community, will not act according to their interest
but contrary to their interest. All their pleas are grounded
upon this assumption ; because, if a portion of the com¬
munity, whose interest is the same with that of the com¬
munity, would act agreeably to their own interest, they
would act agreeably to the interest of the community, and
the end of Government would be obtained.
If this assumption of theirs is true, the prospect of man¬
kind is deplorable. To the evils of misgovernment they
are subject by inexorable destiny. If the powers of Go¬
vernment are placed in the hands of persons whose inte.
rests are not identified with those of the community, the
interests of the community are wholly sacrificed to those of
the rulers. If so much as a checking power is held by the
community, or by any part of the community, where the
interests are the same as those of the community, the hold¬
ers of that checking power will not, according to the as¬
sumption in question, make use of it in a way agreeable,
but in a way contrary to their own interest. According to
this theory, the choice is placed between the evils which
will be produced by design, the design of those who have
the power of oppressing the rest of the community, and an
interest in doing it; and the evils which may be produced
by mistake, the mistake of those who, if they acted agree¬
ably to their own interest, would act well.
Supposing that this theory were true, it would still be a
question between these two sets of evils, whether the evils
arising from the design of those who have motives to em¬
ploy the powers of Government for the purpose of reducing
the community to the state of abject slaves of their will,
or the evils arising from the misconduct of those who never
produce evil but when they mistake their own interest, are
the greatest evils.
Upon the most general and summary view of this ques¬
tion, it appears that the proper answer cannot be doubtful.
They who have a fixed invariable interest in acting ill, will
act ill invariably. They who act ill from mistake, will
often act well, sometimes even by accident, and in every
case in which they are enabled to understand their inte¬
rest, by design.
There is another, and a still more important ground of
preference. The evils which are the produce of interest
and power united, the evils on the one side, are altogether
incurable: the effects are certain while that conjunction
which is the cause of them remains. The evils which
arise from mistake are not incurable ; for if the parties who
act contrary to their interest had a proper knowledge of
that interest, they would act well. What is necessary,
then, is knowledge. Knowledge, on the part of those
whose interests are the same as those of the community,
would be an adequate remedy. But knowledge is a thing
which is capable of being increased ; and the more it is
increased, the more the evils on this side of the case would
be reduced.
Supposing, then, the theory of will opposed to interest
to be correct; the practical conclusion would be, as there is
something of a remedy to the evils arising from this source,
none whatever to the evils arising from the conjunction o
power and sinister interest, to adopt the side which has te
remedy, and to do whatever is necessary for obtaining tne
remedy in its greatest possible strength, and for applying
it with the greatest possible efficacy. ,
It is no longer deniable that a high degree of knowle ge
is capable of being conveyed to such a portion of the com
munity as would have interests the same with those o
community. This being the only resource for good Govern
GOVERNMENT.
. {uot, those who say that it is not yet attained stand in this
diimma; either they do not desire good Government, which
• is|ie case with all those who derive advantage from bad;
oifhey will be seen employing their utmost exertions to
inrease the quantity of knowledge in the body of the com-
mtiity.
. 'he practical conclusion, then, is actually the same,
w ather we embrace or reject the assumption that the com-
miiity are little capable of acting according to their own
imrest. That assumption, however, deserves to be con-
siii red. And it would need a more minute consideration
thh the space to which we are confined will enable us to
bicow upon it.
)ne caution, first of all, we should take along with us ;
ar. it is this, that all those persons who hold the powers
ohrovernment, without having an identity of interests with
ths community, and all those persons who share in the pro-
fiti which are made by the abuse of those powers, and all
ttee persons whom the example and representations of the
tvr first classes influence, will be sure to represent the
ccimunity, or a part having an identity of interest with the
ccimunity, as incapable in the highest degree of acting ac-
c( ling to their own interest; it being clear that they who
hue not an identity of interest with the community, ought
tc mid the power of Government no longer, if those who
hue that identity of interest could be expected to act in
an tolerable conformity with their interest. All represen-
tapns from that quarter, therefore, of their incapability so
tact, are to be received with suspicion. They come from
ini rested parties; they come from parties who have the
stmgest possible interest to deceive themselves, and to
ei eavour to deceive others.
t is impossible that the interested endeavours of all those
pipes should not propagate, and for a long time success-
ti y uphold, such an opinion, to whatever degree it might
b'iound, upon accurate inquiry, to be without foundation.
• L parallel case may be given. It was the interest of
tl | priesthood, when the people of Europe were all of one
retgion, that the laity should take their opinions exclusive-
lyii'om them; because, in that case, the laity might be ren-
dufed subservient to the will of the clergy, to any possible
e: mt; and as all opinions were to be derived professedly
ft p the Bible, they withdrew from the laity the privilege
ol leading it. When the opinions which produced the Re-
fcwation, and all the blessings which may be traced to it,
bman to ferment, the privilege of the Bible was demanded.
Tib demand was resisted by the clergy, upon the very
suie assumption which we have now under contemplation.
“ he people did not understand their own interest. They
wild be sure to make a bad use of the Bible. They would
dijve from it not right opinions, but all sorts of wrong opi-
. here can be no doubt that the assumption, in the reli-
ghis case, was borne out by still stronger appearance of
ci fence than it is in the political. The majority of the
l^ple may be supposed less capable of deriving correct
ojnions from the Bible, than of judging who is the best
nu i to act as a representative,
i experience has fully displayed the nature of the assump-
‘n regard to religion. The power bestowed upon the
pe de, of judging for themselves, has been productive of
i effects, to a degree which has totally altered the con-
dr >n of human nature, and exalted man to what may be
^ 'd a different stage of existence.
or what reason then is it we are called upon to believe,
“E it a portion of the community, having an identity of
633
ment.
interests with the whole community, have the power cf Govern-
choosing representatives, they will act wholly contrary to *
their interests, and make a bad choice ?
Experience, it will be said, establishes this conclusion.
We see that the people do not act according to their inte¬
rests, but very often in opposition to them.
I he question is between a portion of the community,
which, if intrusted with power, would have an interest in
making a bad use of it, and a portion which, though in¬
trusted with power, would not have an interest in making
a bad use of it. The former are any small number what¬
soever, who, by the circumstance of being intrusted with
power, are constituted an aristocracy.
From the frequency, however great, with which those who
compose the mass of the community act in opposition to
their interests, no conclusion can, in this case, be drawn,
without a comparison of the frequency with which those
who are placed in contrast with them act in opposition to
theirs. Now it may with great confidence be affirmed,
that as great a proportion of those who compose the aristo-
cratical body of any country, as of those who compose the
rest of the community, are distinguished for a conduct un¬
favourable to their interests. Prudence is a more general
characteristic of the people who are without the advantages
of fortune, than of the people who have been thoroughly
subject to their corruptive operation. It may surely be said,
that if the powers of Government must be intrusted to
persons incapable of good conduct, they were better in¬
trusted to incapables who have an interest in good Govern¬
ment, than to incapables who have an interest in bad.
It will be said that a conclusion ought not to be drawn
from the unthinking conduct of the great majority of an
aristocratical body, against the capability of such a body
for acting wisely in the management of public affairs; be¬
cause the body will always contain a certain proportion
of wise men, and the rest will be governed by them. No¬
thing but this can be said with pertinency, And, under
certain modifications, this may be said with truth. The
wise and good in any class of men do, to all general pur¬
poses, govern the rest. The comparison, however, must
go on. Of that body whose interests are identified with
those of the community, it may also be said, that if one
portion of them are unthinking, there is another portion
wise ; and that, in matters of state, the less wise would be
governed by the more wise, not less certainly than in that
body whose interests, if they were intrusted with power,
could not be identified with those of the community.
If we compare in each of these two contrasted bodies
the two descriptions of persons, we shall not find that the
foolish part of the democratical body are more foolish than
that of the aristocratical, nor the wise part less wise.
Though, according to the opinions which fashion has
propagated, it may appear a little paradoxical, we shall
probably find the reverse.
That there is not only as great a proportion of wise men
in that part of the community which is not the aristocracy,
as in that which is, but that, under the present state of
education, and the diffusion of knowledge, there is a much
greater, we presume there are few persons who will be
disposed to dispute. It is to be observed, that the class
which is universally described as both the most wise and
the most virtuous part of the community, the middle rank,
are wholly included in that part of the community which
is not the aristocratical. It is also not disputed, that in
Great Britain the middle rank are numerous, and form a
large proportion of the whole body of the people. Ano-
• if’fm?st instructive display of these and similar artifices for the preservation of mischievous power, after the spirit of the times
to be hostile to it, may be seen in Father Paul’s History of the Council of Trent.
OL. X. 4, L
634 G O W
Gower, ther proposition may be stated, with a perfect confidence
'"■’’’Y''"'' in the concurrence of all those men who have attentively
considered the formation of opinions in the great body of
society, or, indeed, the principles of human nature in ge¬
neral. It is, that the opinions of that class of the people
who are below the middle rank, are formed, and their minds
are directed, by that intelligent and virtuous rank who come
the most immediately in contact with them, who are in the
constant habit of intimate communication with them, to
whom they fly for advice and assistance in all their numerous
difficulties, upon whom they feel an immediate and daily
dependence, in health and in sickness, in infancy and in old
age; to whom their children look up as models for their
imitation, whose opinions they hear daily repeated, and ac¬
count it their honour to adopt. There can be no doubt
that the middle rank, which gives to science, to art, and to
legislation itself, their most distinguished ornaments, the
chief source of all that has exalted and refined human na¬
ture, is that portion of the community of which, if the basis
of representation were ever so far extended, the opinion
would ultimately decide. Of the people beneath them, a
vast majority would be sure to be guided by their advice
and example.
The incidents which have been urged as exceptions to
GOWER, John, one of the most ancient of the English
poets, was contemporary with Chaucer, the father of English
poetry, and his intimate friend. Of what family, or in
what part of the kingdom, he was born, is uncertain. He
studied the law, and was some time a member of the society
of Lincoln’s Inn, where his acquaintance with Chaucer com¬
menced. Some have asserted that he was chief justice of
the common pleas; but this is by no means certain. In
the first year of Henry IV. he became blind; a misfortune
which he laments in one of his Latin poems. He died about
the year 1400, and was buried in St Mary Overy, which
church he had rebuilt chiefly at his own expense. His
tomb, which was magnificently and curiously ornament¬
ed, still remains, but it has been repaired in later times.
From the collar round the neck of his effigy on the tomb,
it is conjectured that he had been knighted. As to his
character as a man, it is impossible, at this distance of
time, to state any thing with certainty. With regard to his
poetical talents, he was admired at the time when he wrote,
though a modern reader may find it difficult to discover
much harmony or genius in any of his compositions. He
wrote, 1. Speculum Meditantis, un Traitee selonc les auc-
teurs, pour ensampler les Amants marietz au Jins qils la Joy
de lour seints espousailles, pourront pei'jine loyalte guarder,
et al honeur de Dieu salvement tener, in ten books ; 2. Vox
Clamantis, in Latin verse, a chronicle of the insurrection
of the commons in the reign of Richard II., in ten books ;
3. Confessio Amantis, printed at Westminster by Caxton
in 1493, also London, 1532, 1554, a sort of poetical sys¬
tem of morality, interspersed with a variety of moral
tales; and, 4. De Rege Henrico IV., printed in Chaucer’s
works. There are likewise several historical tracts, in
manuscript, written by Gower, which are to be found in
different libraries, besides short poems printed in Chau¬
cer’s works. At a very early period Gower had become
obsolete. Skelton, in the Boke of Philip Sparrow, says,
“ Gower’s Englishe is oldand, about the beginning of
the sixteenth century, his language was out of use. A
second edition of the Confessio Amantis was printed by
Barthelet in 1532, a third in 1544, a fourth in 1554, and,
at the distance of two centuries and a half, a fifth was
published in a modern edition of the English poets. Gow¬
er was esteemed a man of great learning, and he appears
to have lived and died in affluence.
G R A
this general rule, and even as reasons for rejecting it m -
be considered as contributing to its proof. What sienY G°*li
the irregularities of a mob, more than half composed m gL
the greater number of instances, of boys and women, and'^Y'
disturbing, fora few hours or days, a particular town?
What signifies the occasional turbulence of a manufactur.
ing district, peculiarly unhappy from a very great defick
ency of a middle rank, as there the population almost wholly
consists of rich manufacturers and poor workmen; with
whose minds no pains are taken by anybody; with whose
afflictions there is no virtuous family in the middle rank
to sympathize ; whose children have no good example of
such a family to see and to admire; and who are placed
in the highly unfavourable situation of fluctuating between
very high wages in one year, and very low wages in an¬
other? It is altogether futile, with regard to the founda¬
tion of good government, to say that this or the other por¬
tion of the people may at this or the other time depart
from the wisdom of the middle rank. It is enough that
the great majority of the people never cease to be guided
by that rank; and we may, with some confidence, chal¬
lenge the adversaries of the people to produce a single in¬
stance to the contrary in the history of the world.
(a. a. a.)
GOWN, Robe, a long upper garment worn by lawyers,
divines, and other graduates, who are hence called mn
of the gown, or gownmen. At Rome they gave the name
“ virile gown,” toga virilis, to a plain kind of gown which
their youth assumed on arriving at puberty. This they
particularly denominated prcetexta.
GRABE, John Ernest, a learned theologian, was born
at Konigsberg in the year 1666. The perusal of the
works of the fathers having inspired him with doubtsasto
some points of his creed, he explained them in a memoir
addressed to the consistory of Sambia, and departed with
the resolution of repairing to a city where he could make
open profession of the Catholic religion. The elector of
Brandenburg ordered three theologians to examine, each
separately, the memoir of Grabe ; and some of the reasons
contained in the answers which they made to it having
struck him forcibly, he demanded a safe conduct, which
was granted him, and proceeded to Berlin to confer with
Speuer, one of his adversaries. Upon some of the points
in dispute they came to agree; but Grabe persisting in
maintaining the necessity of the apostolical succession in
the ministry, Speuer, having despaired of overcoming his
conviction of this doctrine, counselled him to proceed to
England, where he would find it established. Grabe fob
lowed this advice, and, having reached London, got him¬
self ordained priest according to the English ritual; but
not being able to bring his belief into accordance with
that of the church which he had entered, he always pre¬
served his private opinions touching the eucharist and
consecration. Nevertheless, the regularity of his conduct,
and his useful labours, recommended him to notice; he
obtained some benefices ; and Queen Anne granted him
a pension, which he enjoyed till his death, which took
place at London on the 13th of September 1711, in the
forty-fifth year of his age. His works, which have obtained
him the reputation of a learned and laborious man, but in¬
different critic, are, 1. Specilegium SS. Patrum et Htere*
ticorum saeculi post Christi natum primi, secundi, tertn,
Oxford, 1698 and 1699, in 8vo ; 2. S. Irenmi episcopi Lug*
dunensis ad versus hoereses libri v. Oxford, 1702, in folio;
3. Vetus Testamentum juxta Septuaginta Interpretes,
Oxford, 1707, 1719, 1720, and 1729, in folio; 4. Litur-
gia Graeca, Hague, 1715, in 8vo; 5. De forma consecra-
tionis Eucharistise, hoc est, Defensio Ecclesiae Graeco
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[I'JillS
citra Romanam, London, 1721, in 8vo; 6. Editions of
t] First Apology of St Justin Martyr, of the works of
f orge Bull, and of the treatise of Daubuz pro Testimonio
pivii Josephus de Jesu Christo ; 7. Doubts presented to
ti! Consistory of Sambia, in German, two writings in
Uglish against Whiston, and some polemical pieces of
]jfle importance. • (a.)
■ GRACCHUS, Tiberius Sempronius, the son of Ti-
b ius Gracchus, who had been censor, twice consul, and
h|l triumphed twice. His mother was the celebrated Cor-
mia, daughter of Scipio Africanus the Elder, and she
tos left by the death of her husband with the charge of
wfewer than twelve children. She lost all except three;
oe daughter, married to Scipio the Younger, and two
sifis, Caius and Tiberius. Tiberius was born about 163
hc. and was murdered 133 b. c. He began early to ex-
htit proofs of great talents, and his mother appears to
hfe cultivated his mind by every means in her power.
p; was distinguished from his brother Caius by his mild-
m;s of manner and the dignity of his deportment. The
lilguage of Tiberius was chaste and polished; that of
(lius exhibited more of pretension and splendour. The
to brothers, however, were equally attentive to their du-
tias magistrates, and in their self-government in respect
ttpleasure they were perfectly alike. Tiberius served
It first campaign under Scipio the Younger in Africa
C c. 146), and made himself much beloved by the army,
lli was some time afterwards (b. c. 137) appointed quaes-
ti, and attended the consul C. Mancinus in the Numan-
trn war. This consul was one of the most unfortunate
gierals the Romans ever had, and conducted matters so
iithat he and his whole army were obliged to submit to
(nditions of peace imposed by the Numantians. That
rpple refused to treat with any one except Tiberius Grac-
cus,andhe was employed to draw up the articles of peace.
ie peace, however, was disavowed at Rome, and Man-
oms was delivered up to the Numantians naked and in
tiains. Tiberius was spared, chiefly through the interest
ad influence of Scipio, his brother-in-law. It was now
tint Tiberius entered on the stormy path of politics, and
lib measure which he first advocated was of a magnitude
si ted to the part he intended to act in the affairs of his
oantry. It was to restrain the avarice of the rich, and
II compel them to give up the possession of the public
1 ids, of which they had unjustly become masters. Cai-
i Laelius, the friend of Scipio, had attempted to correct
1 s disorder ; but, frightened by the opposition of men in
jjwer, he gave up the undertaking. No sooner, however,
M Tiberius been elected tribune of the people, than he
«termined to make an attempt to restore their share of
13 public lands to the poor. No law could have been of
i milder nature than that which he proposed to intro-
<i ce; for, instead of punishing those who had infringed
lie rights of the community, they were to receive a sum
• money for foregoing their groundless claims. Nothing,
liwever, could induce the rich to listen for a moment to
te proposal; and, like all reformers of abuses, he was ac-
4 sed of attempting to throw the country into disorder, and
subvert the constitution of the state. Incensed at this,
1 berius no longer kept on terms with his opponents, but
]toposed another law of a severer character, which com-
I mdedalltoquitthe lands which they held contrary to law.
' iis law was confirmed by the people, and three com-
k ssioners were appointed to survey the public domain.
1 berius, his brother Caius, and his father-in-law Appius
^audius, received orders to make the survey. If he had
< ntented himself with the passing of this measure, we
i ould have regarded him as a patriot rather than a de-
i'lgogue; but his position had now become so critical,
i d his enemies so numerous, that he was urged forward
i his career by a regard to his own personal safety rather
than by a reference to the good of the republic. In re- Gracchus
tiring to a private station he would have been exposed to II
the vengeance of his enemies, and he could not expect to ,
be re-elected tribune, unless by some new proof of his
devotion to the popular cause. He therefore proposed
laws for shortening the time of military service, and for
granting an appeal from the judges to the people. As
the bench of judges consisted entirely of senators, he
proposed that an equal number of knights and senators
should be admitted. On the day when these laws were
to be put to the vote, his opponents resolved to create a
disturbance, during which they would have an opportuni¬
ty of putting him to death. Tiberius became acquainted
with it during the meeting of the assembly, and as there
was great clamour, he had no other way of communicating
the information than by touching his head with his hand,
to signify the danger he was in. Some one ran to the
senate and informed them that Tiberius had demanded
a diadem of the people. This excited a great commo¬
tion in the senate, and Scipio Nasica rushed out with nu¬
merous attendants, and having put the people to flight,
killed Tiberius in the Forum. (Plutarch, Life of Ti¬
berius Gracchus ; Liv. Epit. 58.)
Gracchus, Caius Sempronius, was nine years younger
than his elder brother Tiberius, having been born in the
year b. c. 154. He had as yet taken no part in public affairs
when his brother was murdered, but he soon showed that
he did not intend to lead a life of idleness. He cultivat¬
ed his powers of eloquence, and the senate began to have
apprehensions of his succeeding to the power of his bro¬
ther. They were not therefore sorry when he was ap¬
pointed quaestor to the consul Aurelius Orestes, b. c. 126,
in Sardinia, as it took him away from Rome. He became
so great a favourite with the inhabitants of Sardinia, that
though they had obtained from the senate an exemption
from the burden of clothing his men, he had so much in¬
fluence with them, that he prevailed on them to send a vo¬
luntary supply. On his return to Rome, whither he repair¬
ed contrary to orders, he offered himself a candidate for the
tribuneship, and was elected b. c. 123, against the wishes
of the nobility. He now brought forward a number of
laws to increase the authority of the people, of a nature
similar to those which his brother had advocated. He pro¬
posed to divide the public lands among the poor, to clothe
the soldiers at the public expense, without diminution of
their pay, and to give to the Italian allies the right of voting
at elections ; but his most important measure was, that he
took the judicial authority from the patricians, and conferred
it on the equestrian order. He took great interest also in
the constructing of public roads through Italy, and building
granaries. He kept up his influence amongst the people
by sending colonies of the poorer citizens to Tarentum
and Capua ; but the senate, fearing that his power would
soon no longer be capable of being controlled, tried to draw
the people from him by gratifying them in every thing.
Caius however was appointed tribune a second time (b.c.
122), without even declaring himself a candidate, and pro¬
ceeded to Africa to plant a colony at Carthage. During his
absence one of his colleagues, Drusus, succeeded in gain¬
ing the favour of the people ; and this induced Caius to
hasten home. The following year the consul Opimius
determined to repeal many of the laws which had been
passed by Caius; and as the party of the latter mustered
in great force, and that of the consul was equally reso¬
lute, an engagement took place, in which the friends of
Caius were defeated, and he himself killed, to the great
grief of the Roman people, whose interests he had labour¬
ed to promote. (Plutarch, Life of Caius Gracchus ; Liv,
Epit. 60, 61.)
GRACE, amongst divines, is used, first, to denote the
free love and favour of God, which is the spring and
G R A
G R A
source of all the benefits we receive from him; and, se¬
condly, to signify the work of the Spirit in renewing the
soul after the image of God, and continually guiding and
strengthening the believer to obey his will, to resist sin,
and to overcome it.
Grace is also used, in a peculiar sense, to signify a short
prayer said before and after meat.
The proofs of the moral obligation of this ceremony,
drawn from passages in the New Testament, are so well
known that it is needless to insist on them. But others,
derived from the practice of different nations, and of re¬
mote antiquity, may not be uninteresting.
1. Athenseus tells us, in his Deipnosophist (lib. ii.), that
in the famous regulation made by Amphictyon, king of
Athens, respecting the use of wine, both in sacrifices and
at home, he required that the name of Jupiter the Sus-
tainer should be decently and reverently pronounced. The
same writer (lib. iv. p. 149) quotes Hermeias, an author
extant in his time, who mentions a people in Egypt, inha¬
bitants of the city of Naucratis, whose custom it was on
certain occasions, after they had placed themselves in the
usual posture of eating at table, to rise again and kneel,
upon which the priest or precentor of the solemnity began
to chant a grace, according to a stated form amongst them ;
and when that was over, they joined in the meal in a so¬
lemn sacrificial manner. Heliodorus has a passage to the
same purpose in his JEthiopica, where it is stated that it
was the custom of the Egyptian philosophers to pour out
libations and utter ejaculations before they sat down to
meals. Porphyry (in his treatise De Abstinentia, lib. iv.
p. 408) gives a high character of the Samnean gymnoso-
phists in Egypt for the strictness of their lives; and, as
one circumstance in their favour, he observes, that at the
sounding of a bell before their meals, which consisted only
of rice, bread, fruits, and herbs, they went to prayers;
that when these were ended, and not before, the bell again
sounded, and they sat down to eat. This religious usage
or nte was also common amongst the ancient Greeks, and, if
Clement of Alexandria rightly informs us, it was derived
from yet older times. He mentions that this people, when
they met together to refresh themselves with the juice of
the grape, sung a piece of music, in imitation of the Hebrew
psalms, which they called a scholion. Livy (lib. xxxix.)
likewise speaks of it as a settled custom amongst the old
Romans, that they offered sacrifice and prayer to the gods
at their meals and compotations. But one of the fullest
testimonies to our purpose is given by Quintilian (De¬
clam. 301): Adisti mensam, says he, ad quam cam venire
ccepimus, Deos invocamus.
Frigautius, in his elegant and instructive narrative of the
expedition of the Jesuit missionaries into China (book i. p.
fiS)? gives this account of the people of that country in the
particular now under consideration. “ Before they place
themselves for partaking of an entertainment, the person
who makes it sets a vessel, either of gold, or silver, or
marble, or some such valuable material, in a charger full
of wine, which he holds with both his hands, and then
makes a low bow to the person of chief quality or charac¬
ter at the table. Then from the hall or dining-room he
goes into the porch or entry, where he again makes a very
low bow, and turning his face to the south, pours out this
wine upon the ground as a thankful oblation to the Lord
of heaven. After this, repeating his reverential obei¬
sance, he returns into the hall.” The Turks also pray for
a blessing on their meat; and many more instances might
be produced of infidels who constantly observe the same
custom in some way or other.
2. The fact, therefore, with respect to the heathen world
being thus evident, we proceed to notice the sentiments
and conduct of the Jews in this particular. Their histo¬
rian Josephus, giving a detail of the rites and customs of
the Essenes, who were confessedly the strictest and m
pious professors of the Jewish religion, has this retnarkahf ^
passage: “ The priest,” says he, “ prays for a blessin!
before they presume to take any nourishment; and it '
looked upon as a great sin to take or taste before.” Tt 'S
follows the thanksgiving after meat. “ When the meaP
he proceeds, “ is over, the priest prays again; and th
company with him bless and praise God as their preserver6
and the giver of their life and nourishment.” ’
But Philo, in his book De Vita Contemplativa, gives an
account of a body of men and women stricter than even
the Essenes. He distinguishes them by no particular
name, though his relation is minute and circumstantial-
namely, that on certain special occasions, before “ they
took their meals, they placed themselves in a proper de^
cent order, when, lifting up their hands and eyes to hea¬
ven, they prayed to God that he would be pleased to be
propitious to them in the use of those his good creatures ”
It appears, from the Hebrew ritual, that the Jews had
their hymns and psalms of thanksgiving, not only after eat¬
ing their passover, but on a variety of other occasions, at
and after meals, and even between their several courses
and dishes; as when the best of their wine was brought
upon the table, or their aromatic confections, or the fruits
of the garden, or the like. Upon the day of the passover
was sung the 114th psalm, “ When Israel went out of
Egypt.”
Aristseus has also a passage on the same subject.
“ Moses,” says he, “ commands that when the Jews are
going to eat or drink, the company should immediately
join in sacrifice or prayer.” It is doubtful where Rabbi
Eleazar found this sentence, and its genuineness has been
controverted. But supposing it not to be found in script^
it is sufficient to know that the Jews constantly practised
this custom, upon the foundation of an ancient tradition
and general usage. That the prophet Daniel gave thanks
before meat is evident from the Apocryphal book concern¬
ing Bel and the Dragon, where (verses 38, 39) we find
that “ Daniel said, Thou hast remembered me, 0 God,
neither hast thou forsaken them who seek thee and love
thee; so Daniel arose, and did eat.” Of this text Pru-
dentia takes notice in Cathemirin (hymn iv.):
His sumptis Danielis excitavit
In codum faciem, ciboque fortis.
Amen reddidit, altelujah dixit.
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It may be observed by the way, that the poet is a little
mistaken in making the prophet give thanks after meat;
for, according to the text, he did so before.
GRACES, Gratis, C/iarites, in the heathen theolo¬
gy, were fabulous deities, three in number, who attended
on Venus. Their names were, Aglaia, Thalia, and Euphro-
syne ; or, according to some authors, Pasithea, Euphro-
syne, and iEgiale. They were supposed by some to be the
daughters of Jupiter and Eurynome, and by others to be
the daughters of Bacchus and Venus. Some suppose the
Graces to have been four in number ; and make them the
same with the Horce or Hours, or rather with the four sea¬
sons of the year. A marble in the king of Prussia’s cabinet
represents the three Graces in the usual manner, with a
fourth seated and covered with a large veil, having under¬
neath the words Ad Sorores IIII. But this group we may
understand to be the three Graces, and Venus, who was
their sister, as being daughter of Jupiter and Dione. The
Graces were always supposed to hold one another by the
hands, and never to have parted. They were painted
naked, to show that they borrowed nothing from art,
and that they had no other beauties than such as were
purely natural. Yet in the first ages they were not re¬
presented naked, as appears from Pausanias (lib. vi. and
ix.), who describes their temple and statues. They were
len
G R A
>g.|i’ wood, all but the head, the feet, and the hands, which
^ ere of white marble. Their robe or gown was gilt; and
ie of them held in her hand a rose, another a dye, and
ie third a sprig of myrtle.
SGRiEVIUS, the Latinized form of GRiLFE, John
eorge, one of the most learned and laborious writers of
js time, was born at Naumburg, in Saxony, on the 29th
' January 1632. He began his studies in the gymna-
jm of Pforta, and completed them at the university of
™ eipsic, under Rivinus and Strauch. Graeviuswas led to
e study of letters by his natural inclination, and every
iy he became more and more devoted to this pursuit,
ut his father wished that he should study the law;
rauch seconded this view; and Graevius obeyed, though
ith repugnance. About the same time it happened that
s father had occasion to send him into East Friesland
accelerate the payment of a considerable debt. This
_ urney fixed the destination of Grsevius. Having suc-
■ ssfully accomplished the object of his mission, he had
e curiosity to visit Holland, where Salmasius, Heinsius,
, d Frederick Gronovius, were then in the zenith of their
putation. The conversation of Gronovius revealed to
the painful truth that his studies had been almost en-
ely unavailing, that he had been taught according to the
■ inciples of a bad school, and that he had no time to lose
he desired to correct the vices of its method of instruc-
•nn. At this period the taste in Latinity had been cor-
pted in almost all the German universities. Justus Lip-
: is had first set the example. Despairing of ever attain-
] ; the classical elegance of Manucius, Muretus, and a small
i mber of other learned men of their age, he had aban-
< ned their model, Cicero, and betaken himself to the imi-
1 ;ion of some writers of an inferior order, who belonged
i t to the golden age of the Latin language. In a man of
f :h merit as Justus Lipsius this was a temerity excused
jljrhaps by other qualities of a superior order; in his imi-
l ors it implied the total absence of reason and taste. In
13 rudeness of Ennius, amongst the rugged archaisms of
Icuvius, and the ignoble trivialities of Plautus, they went
tliseek for words and phrases, which they accommodated
fall subjects, even the gravest. They affected ridiculous
] nts, and certain finesses of thought, by which all the vi-
sjur of the style was enervated; and they cut down into
mil periods, of studied brevity, a language already ren¬
ted meagre and dry. Grsevius, ill directed, had entered
i on the same evil path. But he entreated Gronovius to
ttome thenceforth his guide, nor could he have chosen
cfe more able; so, having abandoned jurisprudence, he
pssed two years at Deventer, attending assiduously the
Wsons of his new master. He then proceeded to Amster-
tln to hear Alexander Morus and David Blondel, whose
tinsels decided him to quit Lutheranism for the sect of
M vin. Peter Burmann, his panegyrist, anxious that this
nmge of religion should not be misrepresented, declares
it did not proceed from interested motives, and that
tl new convert listened only to the voice of his con-
s mce. Graevius, whose reputation had now begun to be
e ended, was, in 1656, called to the university of Duis-
b g; and he had been there two years, surpassing all the
jpes which had been conceived of his talents, when
tonovius, who had entered the university of Leyden,
S' cited the magistrates of Deventer to appoint Grmvius
L successor. They agreed to this application, and Gras-
V|3, notwithstanding the efforts of the elector of Bran-
« burg, who, in order to retain him, offered an augmen-
t?<on of fees, quitted an university for a simple gymna-
*'"n, influenced probably by the desire of living under a
“ government. After a stay of three years at Deven-
he yielded to the solicitations of the university of
Lecht, which offered him the chair of history, then vacant
h :he death of iEmilius. This satisfied all his ambition,
G R A
637
and, content with his situation, he declined the invitations Grafting
of the magistrates of Amsterdam and Leyden, who twice II
attempted, by brilliant offers, to attach him to the schools Graham-
in those cities. The elector palatine, who wished to draw
him to Heidelberg, was also refused; the king of Prussia
was not more fortunate; and the republic of Venice, which
offered him a chair in the university of Padua, had as
little success, although, in the hope of inducing him to
accept, it had promised him, besides considerable appoint¬
ments, full liberty on the score of religion, and all necessary
protection against the importunity of the inquisitors. But
none of these offers could overcome his resolution. The
eager desire of foreigners to obtain his services was justi¬
fied by the great reputation which he had attained as pro¬
fessor. Pupils crowded to his lectures, not only from all
Holland, but from all Europe. In Germany, particularly,
almost all the great lords sent their sons to be educated
by him ; and he reckoned amongst his auditors sons of
pnnces, and even of kings; for William III., who made
him his historiographer, had confided to his care the young
Prince of Nassau. J o the reputation of a great professor
Graevius joined that of a learned writer and able critic.
Paquot, and before him G. Burmann in the Trajectum,
Eruditum, have given a complete list of his works. The
principal are, 1. An edition of the Letters of Casaubon,
Brunswick, 1655 ; 2. The Solecist of Lucian, Amsterdam,
1668, in Bvo, with notes rich in grammatical erudition ;
3. Hesiod, with a collection of excellent observations un¬
der the title of Lectiones Hesiodece ; 4. Justin, 1669, cum
Notis Variorum; 5. Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius,
Utrecht, 1680, cum Notis Variorum \ 6. Suetonius, 1672;
7. Florus, 1680; 8. The Commentaries of Caesar; 9. The
miscellaneous Letters of Cicero, his Letters to Atticus,
his Treatise of Offices, and his Discourses, cum Notis Va¬
riorum. But his masterpiece is his Thesaurus Antiquita-
tum Romanarum, in 12 vols. folio, a work of incredible
labour and research, to which he afterwards added The¬
saurus Antiq. et Hist. Italics, printed the year after his
death, 1704, in 3 vols. folio, and continued by his succes¬
sor Peter Burmann. Besides all these works, which are
more than sufficient to have exhausted the industry of
ten ordinary men, Graevius edited the Philological Lexi¬
con of Martinus, the treatise of Junius De Pictura Vete-
rum, the Greek and Latin Poetry of Huet, and several
works of Meursius; and, in concert with Peter Burmann
and Holthen, he had commenced a reimpression of the
Inscriptions of Gruter. But in the midst of his labours
death surprised this indefatigable scholar, who was sudden¬
ly carried off by an attack of apoplexy, on the 11th of
January 1703, in the seventy-first year of his age. Fa-
bricius has published a collection of his Prefaces and Let¬
ters, and Burmann a collection of his Discourses, (a.)
GRAFTING, or Engrafting, in Gardening, is the
taking a shoot from one tree, and inserting it into another,
in such a manner that both may unite closely and become
one tree. By the ancient writers on husbandry and gar¬
dening, this operation is called incision, to distinguish it
from inoculation or budding, which they call inserere oculos.
GRAHAM, James, Marquis of Montrose, a man cele¬
brated by one party as a hero comparable to the greatest
of antiquity, and branded by another as a renegade and a
traitor. His name, his exploits, and his character belong
properly to history (see the article Britain) ; but he de¬
serves notice here as one who occupied his intervals of
leisure, few and far between, with the elegant and peace¬
ful pursuits of literature. Such of his poems as have been
preserved, though they possess but little merit in them¬
selves, are remarkable as the effusions of a mind in which
the most heroic and chivalrous daring seems to have been
attempered by a degree of refinement beyond his age, and
a capacity for pursuits less dazzling, but far more innocent
638
Graham
G
II
rammar.
G R A
and useful, than those which have shed an equivocal lustre
on his name. His desertion of the covenanters may perhaps
be excused, but cannot be defended ; amidst the conflicts of
exasperated parties and the excitement of civil commotion,
it is not easy to steer a consistent and blameless course;
but the laws of honour and morality are nevertheless un¬
changeable. Having joined the royal cause, however, he
devoted himself to promote its success ; and if his caution
had been equal to his genius, or if he had been provided
with the necessary supplies, he would in all probability
have reduced the kingdom of Scotland to the necessity of
acknowledging the royal authority. But, from want of
means, his conquests were lost almost as soon as gained;
victory produced him no solid advantage ; and the first re¬
verse he experienced proved his ruin. His second attempt,
after the death of Charles I., was accordingly hopeless from
the commencement; he was completely defeated by the
army sent against him ; and, being betrayed into the hands
of the enemy by the laird of Assynt, his intimate friend, he
was carried to Edinburgh, and executed with every cir¬
cumstance of indignity, on the 21st of May 1650. His
exploits made him a hero, and to this his enemies added
the distinction of martyrdom. Considered as a commander^
Montrose was merely a bold and active partisan; a sort of
guerilla chief, whose services would have been invaluable
to the party he had espoused, if there had been in the field
a regular force with which he could have connected his
operations, but who, acting independently, contributed
merely to aggravate the evils of the contest, without in the
slightest degree affecting its result.
Graham, Sir Richard, Lord Viscount Preston, eldest
son of Sir George Graham of Netherby, in Cumberland,
was born in the year 1648. He was sent by Charles II.
G R A
as ambassador to Louis XIV., and was master of the ward- Gnh
robe and secretary of state under James II. But when ^
the revolution took place, he was tried and condemned, onGramiini(
a charge of attempting the restoration of that prince; and
although he obtained a pardon by the queen’s intercession,
he spent the remainder of his days in retirement. He pub¬
lished an elegant translation of Boethius on the Consola¬
tions of Philosophy, and died in 1695.
Graham, George, clock and watch-maker, the most in-
genious and accurate artist of his time, was born in 1675.
After his apprenticeship, Mr Tompion received him into
his family on account of his merit, and treated him with a
kind of parental affection as long as he lived. Besides his
universally acknowledged skill in his profession, he was a
complete mechanic and astronomer ; the great mural arch
in the observatox-y at Greenwich was made for Dr Halley,
under his immediate inspection, and divided by his own
hand ; and from this incomparable original, the best foreign
instruments of the kind were copied by English artists.
The sector by which Dr Bradley first discovered two new
motions in the fixed stars was of his invention and con¬
struction ; and when the French academicians were sent
to measure a degree of the meridian in Lapland, with the
view of determining the figure of the earth, Mr Graham
was considered the fittest person in Europe to supply them
with instruments. He was for many years a member of
the Royal Society, to which he communicated several in¬
genious and important discoveries. He died in 1751.
GRAMINA, Grasses, one of the seven tribes or natu¬
ral families, into which all vegetables are distributed by
Linnaeus in his Philosophia Botanica. They are defined
to be plants which have very simple leaves, a jointed stem,
a husky calyx termed gluma, and a single seed.
GRAMMAR.
Grammar is the art of speaking or writing any lan^
guage with correctness and propriety ; and the purpose of
language is to communicate our thoughts.
Grammar, considered as an art, necessarily supposes the
px-evious existence of language; and as its design is to
teach any language to those wlxo are ignorant of it, it must
be adapted to the genius of that particular language of
which it treats. A just method of grammar, therefore,
without attempting any alterations in a language already
introduced, furnishes certain observations called rules, to
which the methods of speaking used in that language may
be reduced; and this collection of rules is called the gram¬
mar of that particular language. For the greater distinct¬
ness with regard to these rules, grammarians have usually
divided this subject into four distinct heads : Orthography,
ox the art of combining letters into syllables, and syllables
into words ; Etymology, or the art of deducing one word
from another, and the various modifications by which the
sense of any one word can be diversified consistently with
its original meaning or its relation to the theme whence it
is derived ; Syntax, or what relates to the construction or
due disposition of the words of a language into sentences
or phrases ; and Prosody, or that which treats of the quan¬
tities and accents of syllables, and the art of making verses.
But grammar, considered as a science, views language
only as significant of thought. Neglecting particular and
arbitrary modifications introduced for the sake of beauty
or elegance, it examines the analogy and relation between
words and ideas ; distinguishes between those particulars
which are essential to language and those which are only
accidental; and thus furnishes a certain standard, by which
different languages may be compared, and their several ex
cellencies or defects pointed out. This is what is calico
Philosophical or
Kmei
0
ptu
ittui
it is
jlest
pfo
UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR.
The origin of language is a subject which has employed
much learned investigation, and about which there is still
a diversity of opinion. The design of speech is to com¬
municate to others the thoughts and perceptions of the
mind of the speaker ; but it is obvious, that between an in¬
ternal idea and any external sound there is no natural re¬
lation ; that the word Jire, for instance, might have deno¬
minated the substance which we call ice, and that the word
ice might have signified Jire. Some of the most acute feel¬
ings of man, as well as of every other animal, are indeed
expressed by simple inarticulate sounds, which, as they
tend to the preservation of the individual, or the eonUnu
ance of the species, and invariably indicate either pain o
pleasure, are universally understood; but these mar c ^
late and significant sounds are very few in number, an
they can with any propriety be said to constitute a na
ral and universal language, it is a language of which roan
a mere sensitive being partakes in common with the o
animals. _ , -ja
Man is endowed not only with sensation, but also
the faculty of reasoning; and simple inarticulate
are insufficient for expressing all the various modxnc
GRAMMAR.
639
lar. # thought, for communicating to others a chain of argu-
jentation, or even for distinguishing between the different
.i nsations either of pain or of pleasure ; a man scorched
i th fire or unexpectedly plunged amongst ice, might utter
tie cry naturally indicative of sudden and violent pain;
tig cry would be the same, or nearly the same, but the
aisations of cold and heat are widely different., Articula-
ti n, by which those simple sounds are modified, and a par¬
ti ular meaning fixed to each modification, is therefore ab-
siutely necessary to such a being as man, and forms the
luguage which distinguishes him from all other animals,
ad enables him to communicate with facility all that di-
vrsity of ideas with which his mind is stored, to make
1] own his particular wants, and to distinguish with accu-
n y all his various sensations. Those sounds thus modi-
ftd are called words; and as words have confessedly no
ntural relation to the ideas and perceptions of which they
a significant, the use of them must either have been the
limit of human sagacity, or have been suggested to the
1st man by the author of nature.
Whether language be of divine or human origin, is a
< estion upon which, though it might perhaps be soon re-
i Ived, it is not necessary to enter here. Upon either sup-
i sition, the first language, compared with those which
icceeded it, or even with itself as afterwards enlarged,
last have been extremely narrow and rude. If it was of
I iman contrivance, this will be readily granted ; for what
it was ever invented and brought to a state of perfection
li illiterate savages ? If it was taught by God, which is
a least the more probable supposition, we cannot imagine
vat it would be more comprehensive than the ideas of
.# ose for whose immediate use it was intended ; that the
i st men should have been taught to express pains or plea-
«res which they never felt, or to utter sounds that should
; terwards be significant of ideas which at the time of ut-
: ranee had not occurred to the mind of the speaker. Man
it ice taught the elements of language would be able of him-
j If to improve and enlarge it as his future occasions re-
uired.
As all language is composed of significant words vari-
Msly combined, a knowledge of them is necessary previous
: our acquiring an adequate idea of language as con-
ioicted into sentences and phrases. But as it is by words
•flat we express the various ideas which occur to the mind,
1 is necessary to examine how ideas themselves are sug-
Ksted, before we can ascertain the various classes into
tich words may be distributed. It is the province of
to trace our ideas from their origin, as well as to
' ifold the process of reasoning; but it is necessary at
esent to observe, that our earliest ideas are all ideas of
nsation, excited by the impressions that are made upon
ir organs of sense by the various objects with which we
e surrounded. Let us therefore suppose a reasonable
dng, devoid of every possible prepossession, placed upon
1 is globe; and it is obvious that his attention would in
! e first place be directed to the various objects which he
1 w existing around him. These he would naturally en-
liavour to distinguish from one another; and if he were
ther learning or inventing a language, his first effort would
‘ to give them names, by means of which the ideas of
em might be recalled when the objects themselves should
' absent. This is one copious source of words, and forms
1 natural class which must be common to every language,
and which is distinguished by the name of nouns ; and as Grammar.;
these nouns are the names of the several substances which
exist, they have likewise been called substantives.
It would likewise be early discovered that every one of
these substances was endowed with certain qualities or at¬
tributes, to express which another class of words would be
requisite, since it is only by their qualities that substances
themselves can attract our attention. Thus, to be weighty,
is a quality of matter; to think, is an attribute of man.
Therefore in every language words have been invented to
express the known qualities or attributes of the several
objects which exist. These may all be comprehended un¬
der the general denomination of attributives.
Nouns and attributives must comprehend all that is es¬
sential to language j1 for every thing which exists, or of
which we can form an idea, must be either a substance or
the attribute of some substance; and therefore the two
classes which we denominate substances and attributes must
comprehend all the words that are necessary to communi¬
cate to the hearer the ideas which are present to the mind
of the speaker. If any other words occur, they can only
have been invented for the sake of dispatch, or introduced
for the purposes of ease and ornament, to avoid tedious
circumlocutions or disagreeable tautologies. There are
indeed grammarians of great name, who have considered
as essential to language an order of words, of which the
use is to connect the nouns and attributes, and which are
said to have no signification of themselves, but to become
significant by relation. Hence all words which can possi¬
bly be invented are by these men divided into two general
classes ; those which are significant of themselves, and those
which are not. Words significant of themselves are either
expressive of the names of substances, and therefore called
substantives ; or of attributes, and therefore called attribu¬
tives. Words which are not significant of themselves must
acquire a meaning either as defining or connecting others,
and are therefore arranged under the two classes of defini¬
tives and connectives.
That in any language there can be words which of them¬
selves have no signification, is a supposition which a man
free from prejudice will not readily admit. For to what pur¬
pose, we ask, should they have been invented ? As they are
significant of no ideas, they cannot facilitate the communi¬
cation of thought, and must therefore be only an incum¬
brance to the language in which they are found. But in
answer to this it has been said, that these words, though
devoid of signification themselves, acquire a sort of mean¬
ing when joined with others, and that they are as necessary
to the structure of a sentence as mortar is to the structure
of an edifice ; for as stones cannot be arranged into a re¬
gular building without a cement to bind and connect them,
so the original words significant of substances and attri¬
butes cannot be made to express all the variety of our ideas
without being defined and connected by those words which
of themselves signify nothing. It is wonderful that he who
first suggested this simile did not perceive that it tends to
overthrow the doctrine which it is meant to illustrate. For
surely the cement is as much the matter of the building as
the stones themselves are ; it is equally solid and equally
extended. By being united with the stones, it neither ac¬
quires nor loses any one of the qualities essential to mat¬
ter ; it neither communicates its own softness nor acquires
their hardness. By this mode of reasoning, therefore, it
1 This is the doctrine of many writers on the theory of language; yet it is not easy to conceive mankind so far advanced in the
t of abstraction as to view attributes by themselves independently of particular substances, and to give one general name to each attri-
ite wheresoever it may be found, without having at the same time words expressive of affirmation. We never talk of any attri-
ite, a colour for instance, without affirming something concerning it; as, either that it is bright or faint, or that it is the colour of
me substance. It will be seen afterwards,' that to denote affirmation is the proper office of what is called the substantive verb;
, “ Milk is white.” That verb therefore appears to be as necessary to the communication of thought as any species of words what¬
ever; and if we must range words under a few general classes, we should be inclined to say that nouns, attributes, and affirma-
(,es, comprehend all that is'really essential to language.
640
GRAMMA R.
Grammar, would appear that the words called definitives and connec-
tives, so far from having of themselves no signification, are
equally essential to language, and equally significant with
those which are denominated substantives and attributives;
and upon investigation it will be found that this is the
truth. For whatever is meant by the definition or connec¬
tion of the words which all men confess to be significant,
that meaning must be the sense of the words of which the
purpose is to define and connect; and as there can be no
meaning where there are no ideas, every one of these defi¬
nitives and connectives must be significant of some idea,
although it may not always be easy or even possible to ex¬
press that idea by another word.
These different modes of dividing the parts of speech
we have just mentioned because they have been largely
treated of by grammarians of high fame. But it does not
appear to us that any man can feel himself much the wiser
for having learned that all words are either substantives or
attributives, definitives or connectives. The division of
words into those which are significant of themselves, and
those which are significant by relation, is absolute nonsense,
and has been productive of much error and much mystery
in some of the most celebrated treatises on grammar. It
is indeed probable that any attempt to establish a different
classification of the parts of speech from that which is com¬
monly received, will be found of little utility either in prac¬
tice or in speculation. As far as the former is concerned,
the vulgar division seems sufficiently commodious; for
every man who knows any thing, knows when he uses a
noun and when a verb. With respect to the latter, not to
mention that all the grammarians from Aristotle to Horne
Tooke have differed on the subject, it should seem to be
of more importance, after having ascertained with preci¬
sion the nature of each species of words, to determine in
what circumstances they differ than in what they agree.
In most languages, probably in all cultivated languages,
grammarians distinguish the following parts of speech, viz.
noun, pronoun, verb, participle, adverb, preposition, con¬
junction. The Latin and English grammarians admit the in¬
terjection among the parts of speech, although it is confess¬
edly not necessary to the construction of the sentence, being
only thrown in to express the affection of the speaker; and in
the Greek and English tongues there is the article prefix¬
ed to nouns when they signify the common names of things,
to point them out, and to show how far their signification
extends. In the method of arrangement commonly fol¬
lowed in grammars, adjectives are classed with substantives,
and both are denominated nouns. But it is certain that, when
examined philosophically, an essential difference is discover¬
ed between the substantive and the adjective; and therefore
some philologists of eminence, when treating of this subject,
have given the following classification of words, which we
shall adopt: The article, noun, pronoun, verb, parti¬
ciple, ADJECTIVE, ADVERB, PREPOSITION, CONJUNCTION,
interjection. All these words are to be found in the Eng¬
lish language, and therefore we shall examine each class,
endeavour to ascertain its precise import, and show in what
respects it differs from every other class. It is impossible
to investigate the principles of grammar without confining
the investigation in a great measure to some particular
language from which the illustrations must be produced ;
and that we should prefer the English language for this
purpose can excite no wonder, as it is a preference which
is due ’ to every tongue from those by whom it is spoken.
The principles, however, which we shall here expound and
elucidate, being in substance the same with those so clear¬
ly and ingeniously established by Dr John Hunter of St
Andrews, in his oral prelections on philology, will be found
to apply universally; and our inquiry, though principally
illustrated from the English language, will be an inquiry
into Philosophical and Universal Grammar.
I. Of the Noun or Suostantive.
Nouns are all those words by which objects or substances
are denominated, and which distinguish them from one an-
other, without marking either quantity, quality, action or
relation. The substantive or noun is the name of the thin?
spoken of, and in Greek and Latin is called name; for it is
tvoga in the one, and nomen in the other; and if in English we
had called it the name rather than the noun, the appellation
would perhaps have been more proper, as this last word
being used only in grammar, is more liable to be misun¬
derstood than the other, which is in constant and familiar
use. That nouns or the names of things must make a part
of every language, and that they must have been the words
first suggested to the human mind, will not be disputed.
Men could not speak of themselves, or of any thing else,'
without having names for themselves and the various ob¬
jects with which they are surrounded. Now, as all the ob¬
jects which exist must be either in the same state in which
they were produced by nature, or changed from their ori¬
ginal state by art, or abstracted from substances by the
powers of imagination, and conceived by the mind as hav¬
ing at least the capacity of being characterised by qualities;
this naturally suggests a division of nouns into natural, as
man, vegetable, tree ; artificial, as house, ship, watch; and
abstract, as whiteness, motion, temperance.
But the diversity of objects is so great, that had each in¬
dividual a distinct and proper name, it would be impossible
for the most tenacious memory, during the course of the
longest life, to retain even the nouns of the narrowest lan¬
guage. It has therefore been found expedient, when a
number of things resemble each other in some important
particulars, to arrange them all under one species; to which
is given a name that belongs equally to the whole species,
and to each individual comprehended under it. Thus the
word man denotes a species of animals, and is equally ap¬
plicable to every human being; the word horse denotes
another species of animals, and is equally applicable to
every individual of that species of quadrupeds ; but it can¬
not be applied to the species of men, or to any individual
comprehended under that species. We find, however, that
there are some qualities in which several species resemble
each other ; and therefore we refer them to a higher order
called a genus, to w hich we give a name that is equally ap¬
plicable to every species and every individual comprehend¬
ed under it. Thus, men and horses and all living things on
earth resemble each other in this respect, that they have
life. We refer them therefore to the genus called animal;
and this word belongs to every species of animals, and to each
individual animal. The same classification is made both of
artificial and abstract substances ; of each of w hich there
are genera, species, and individuals. Thus, in natural sub¬
stances, animal, vegetable, and fossil, denote genera; man,
horse, tree, metal, species; and Alexander, Bucephalus, oak,
gold, individuals. In artificial substances, again, edifice is a
genus ; house, church, tower, are species ; and the Vatican,
St Paul’s, and the Tower of London, are individuals. Last¬
ly, in abstract substances, motion and virtue are genera;
flight and temperance are species ; the flight of Mahom-
med, and temperance in wine, are individuals. By arrang¬
ing substances in this manner, and giving a name to each
genus and species, the nouns necessary to any language
are comparatively few and easily acquired ; and when we
meet with an object unknown to us, we have only to exa¬
mine it with attention, and, comparing it with other ob¬
jects, to refer it to the genus or species which it most near¬
ly resembles. By this contrivance we supply the want ot
a proper name for the individual; and, as far as the resem¬
blance is complete between it and the species to w hich it
is referred, and of which we have given it the name, we
may converse and reason about it without danger of error;
«,tl
ierei
grammar.
641
Pereas had each individual in nature a distinct and pro-
j p:- name, words would be innumerable and incomprehen-
r J(le; and to employ our labours in language would be as
ii > as that study of numberless written symbols which has
.n'.n attributed to the Chinese.
\lthough nouns are thus adapted to express, not the in-
4(iduals, but the genera or species into which substances
*1 classed ; yet, in speaking of these substances, whether
mural, artificial, or abstract, all men must have occasion
tonention sometimes one of a kind, and sometimes more
tfn one. In every language, therefore, nouns must ad-
iri of some variation in their form, to denote unity and
p»rality; and this variation is called number. Thus in
tli English language, when we speak of a single place of
huitation, we call it a house ; but if of more, we call them
buses. In the first of these cases the noun is said to be
iailie singular, in the last case it is in the plural number.
Gi’ek nouns have also a dual number to express two in-
di duals, as have likewise some Hebrew nouns ; but this
vt ation is evidently not essential to language ; and it is
poiaps doubtful whether it ought to be considered as an
elgance or as a deformity.
ilut although number be a natural accident of nouns, it
C£ only be considered as essential to those which denote
geera or species. Thus we may have occasion to speak
dine animal or of many animals, of one man or of many
nr i; and therefore the nouns animal and man must be
cauble of expressing plurality as well as unity. But this
isfot the case with respect to the proper names of indivi-
diils; for we can only say Xenophon, Aristotle, Plato, in
thd singular; as, were any one of these names to assume
a ural form, it.would cease to be the proper name of an
imvidual, and become the common name of a species. Of
thl, indeed, we have some examples in every language.
Vilen a proper name is considered as a general appellative
niter which many others are arranged, it is then no longer
tbiname of an individual, but of a species, and as such
ao its of a plural; as the Caesars, the Howards, the Pel-
hiss, the Montagues; but Socrates can never become plural,
asnng as we know of no more than one man of that name.
T! reason of all this will be obvious, if we consider that
evry genus may be found whole and entire in each of its
sfi ies; for man, horse, and dog, are each of them an en-
tii and complete animal; and every species may be found
w: le and entire in each of its individuals, Socrates, Plato,
ar Xenophon, being each of them completely and entire¬
ly man. Hence it is, that every genus, though one, is
m liplied into many; and every species, though one, is
al multiplied into many, by reference to those beings
w . h are their subordinates; but as no individual has
am such subordinates, it can never in strictness be con-
su red as many ; and so, as well in nature as in name, is
tonty an individual which cannot admit of number.
esides number, another characteristic, visible in sub-
stiices, is that of sex. Every substance is either male or
re lie, or both male and female, or neither the one nor
thtother. So that with respect to sexes and their nega-
h< ■ all substances conceivable are comprehended under
mi fourfold consideration, which language would be very
wiorfect it it could not express. Now the existence of
■©oaphrodites being rare, if not doubtful, and language
•jPg framed to answer the ordinary occasions of life, no
pn ision is made, in any of the tongues with which we
^acquainted, for expressing, otherwise than by a name
on purpose, or by a periphrasis, duplicity of sex.
. h regard to this great natural characteristic, gramma¬
rs have made only a threefold distinction of nouns:
those which denote males are said to be of the masculine Nouns.
gender; those which denote females, of the feminine ; and
those which denote substances that admit not of sex, are
said to be neuter, or of neither gender. All animals have
sex, and therefore the names of all animals should have
gender. But the sex of all is not equally obvious, nor
equally worthy of attention. In those species which are
most common, or of which the male and female are, by
their size, form, colour, or other outward circumstances,
eminently distinguished, the male is sometimes called by
one name, which is masculine, and the female by a differ¬
ent name, which is feminine. Thus in English we Say,
husband, wife ; king, queen ; father, mother ; son, daughter,
and so on. In others of similar distinction, the name of
the male is applied to the female only by prefixing a syl¬
lable or by altering the termination ; as man, woman ; lion,
lioness; emperor, empress, anciently emperess; master,
mistress, anciently masteress; and so in other similar in¬
stances. When the sex of any animal is not obvious, or
not material to be known, the same name, in some lan¬
guages, is applied, without variation, to all the species, and
that name is said to be of the common gender. Thus in
Latin bos albus is a white ox, and bos alba a white cow.
Diminutive insects, though they are doubtless male and fe¬
male, seem to be considered in the English language as if
they were really creeping things. No man, speaking of a
worm, would say he creeps, but it creeps upon the ground.
But although the origin of genders is thus clear and obvi¬
ous, yet the English is the only language with which we
are acquainted that deviates not, except in a very few in¬
stances, from the order of nature. Greek and Latin, and
many of the modern tongues, have nouns, some masculine,
some feminine, which denote substances where sex never
had existence. Nay, some languages are so particularly de¬
fective in this respect, as to class every object, inanimate as
well as animate, under either the masculine or the feminine
gender, as they have no neuter gender for those which are
of neither sex. This is the case with the Hebrew, French,
Italian, and Spanish. But the English, strictly following
the order of nature, puts every noun which denotes a male
animal, and no other, in the masculine gender ; every name
of a female animal, in the feminine ; and every animal -
whose sex is not obvious, or known, as well as every inani¬
mate object whatsoever, in the neuter gender. And this
gives our language an advantage above most others in the
poetical and rhetorical style; for when nouns naturally
neuter are converted into masculine and feminine, the per¬
sonification is more distinctly and more forcibly marked.
Some very learned and ingenious men have endeavoured,
by what they call a more subtile kind of reasoning, to dis¬
cern even in things without a sex a distant analogy to that
natural distinction, and to account for the names of inanimate
substances being, in Greek and Latin, masculine and fe¬
minine. But such speculations are wholly fanciful, and
the principles upon which they proceed are overturned by
an appeal to facts. Many of the substances that, in one
language, have masculine names, have in others names
that are feminine ; which could not be the case were this
matter regulated by reason or nature. Indeed, for this, as
well as many other anomalies in language, no other reason
can be assigned than that custom,
Quern penes arbitrium est, et jus, et norma, loquendi.
It has been already observed that most nouns are the
names, not of individuals, but of whole classes of objects
termed genera and species.1 In classing a number of
individuals under one species, we contemplate only those
ir. 18 almost unnecessary to observe, that the words genus and species, and the phrases higher genus and lower species, are taken
- m the logical sense; and not as the words genus, species, order, class, are often employed bv naturalists.
0L- x- '4m
642
GRAMMAR.
m
Nouns, qualities which appear to be important, and in which the
several individuals are found to agree, abstracting the mind
from the consideration of all those which appear to be less
essential, and which in one individual may be such as have
nothing exactly similar in any other individual upon earth.
Thus, in classing the individuals which are comprehended
under the species denominated horse, we pay no regard to
their colour or their size ; because experience teaches us
that no particular colour or size is essential to that indivi¬
dual living creature, and that there are not perhaps upon
earth two horses whose colour and size are exactly alike.
But the qualities which in this process we take into view,
are the general shape, the symmetry, and proportion of the
parts ; and in short, every thing which appears evidently
essential to the life of the individual and the propagation
of the race. All these qualities are strikingly similar in all
the individuals which we call horses, and as strikingly dis¬
similar from the corresponding qualities of every other in¬
dividual animal. The colour of a horse is often the same
with that of an ox ; but the shape of the one animal, the
symmetry and proportion of his parts, are totally different
from those of the other ; nor could any man be led to class
the two individuals under the same species. It is by a similar
process that we ascend from one species to another, and
through all the species to the highest genus. In each spe¬
cies or genus in the ascending series fewer particular qua¬
lities are attended to than were considered as essential to
the genus or species immediately below it; and our con¬
ceptions become more and more general as the particular
qualities which are the objects of them become fewer in
number. The use of a general term, therefore, can recal
to the mind only the common qualities of the class, the
genus, or species, wdrich it represents. But we have fre¬
quent occasion to speak of individual objects. In doing
this, we annex to the general term certain words signifi¬
cant of particular qualities, which discriminate the object
of which we speak from every other individual of the class
to which it belongs, and of which the general term is the
common name. For instance, in advertising a thief, we are
obliged to mention his height, complexion, gait, and what^
ever may serve to distinguish him from all other men.
The process of the mind in rendering its conceptions
particular, is indeed exactly the reverse of that by which
it generalizes them. For, as in the process of generaliza¬
tion, it abstracts from the ideas of any number of species
certain qualities in which they differ from each other, and
of the remaining qualities in which they agree constitutes
the first genus in the ascending series ; so, when it wishes
to make its conceptions more particular, it annexes to the
idea of any genus those qualities or circumstances which
were before abstracted from it; and the genus, with this
annexation, constitutes the first species in the descending
series. In like manner, when it wishes to descend from
any species to an individual, it has only to annex to the
idea of the species those particular qualities which discri¬
minate the individual intended from the other individuals
of the same kind.
This particularizing operation of the mind points out
the manner of applying the general terms oflanguage for
the purpose of expressing particular ideas. For, as the
mind, to limit a general idea, connects that idea with the
idea of some particular circumstance, so language, as we
have already observed, in order to limit a general term,
connects that term with the word denoting the particular
circumstance. Thus, in order to particularize the idea of
horse, the mind connects that general idea with the cir¬
cumstance, suppose, of whiteness ; and in order to parti
cularize the word horse, language connects that word with
the term white ; and so in other instances. Annexation
therefore, or the connecting of general words or terms in
language, fits it for expressing particular conceptions'
and this must hold good alike in all languages. But the
methods of denoting this annexation are various in vari-
ous tongues. In English and most modern languages we
commonly use for this purpose little words, which we
have chosen to style particles ; and in the Greek and La-
tin languages, the cases of nouns answer the same end.
Cases, therefore, though they are accidents of nouns
not absolutely necessary, have been often considered as
such ; and they are certainly worthy of our examination
since there is perhaps no language in which some cases
are not to be found, as indeed without them or their va¬
rious powers no language could readily answer the pur-
poses for which it was formed.
All the oblique cases of nouns, if we except the voca¬
tive, are merely marks of annexation ; but as the connec¬
tions or relations subsisting among objects are very vari-
ous, some cases denote one kind of relation, and some an¬
other. We shall endeavour to investigate the connection
which each case denotes, beginning with the genitive.
This is the most general of all the cases, and gives no-
tice that some connection indeed subsists between two
objects, but does not point out the particular kind of con¬
nection. That we must infer, not from our nature or ter¬
mination of the genitive itself, but from our previous
knowledge of the objects connected. That the genitive
denotes merely relation in general, might be proved by
adducing innumerable examples, in which the relations
expressed by this case are different; but we shall content
ourselves with one observation, from which the truth of
our opinion will appear beyond dispute. If an expression
be used in which are connected by the genitive case, two
'words significant of objects between which a twofold re¬
lation may subsist, it will be found impossible, from the
expression, to determine which of these two relations is
the true one, which must be gathered wholly from the
context. Thus, for example, from the phrase injuria re-
gis, no man can know whether the injury mentioned be
an injury suffered or an injury inflicted by the king; but
if the genitive case notified any particular relation, no such
ambiguity could exist. This case therefore gives notice,
that two objects are somehow connected,1 but it marks
not the particular sort of connection. Hence it may be
translated by our particle of, which will be seen afterwards
to be of a signification equally general.
The dative and accusative cases appear to have nearly
the same meaning; each of them denoting apposition, or the
junction of one object with another. Thus, when anyone
says, Comparo Virgilium Homcro, Homer and Virgil are
conceived to be placed beside one another, in order to
their being compared ; and this sort of connection is de¬
noted by the dative case. In like manner, when it is said
latus humeros, breadth is conceived as joined to or connect¬
ed in apposition with shoulders ; and the expression may
be translated “ broad at the shoulders.” ,
This apposition of two objects may happen either with¬
out previous motion, or in consequence of it. In the fore¬
going instances no motion is presupposed; but if one say,
Misit aliquos subsidio eorum, the apposition is there m con¬
sequence of motion. In like manner, when it is said fro-
fectus est Romani, his apposition with Rome is conceive
as the effect of his motion thither. From this idea of ie
-Via,.
^Yv
1 The Greek grammarians seem to have been aware of the nature of this case when they called it vrru<n; yiwiv, or thegcnerii
a name of which the Latin grammarians evidently mistook the meaning when they translated it casus gcnitivus, or the genera i ’
which is a name totally foreign to its nature.
ion
rei
If
Ik
grammar.
jjcusative, the reason is obvious why the object after the
' jjtive verb is often put in that case ; it is because the ac-
tin is supposed to proceed from the agent to the patient,
fit the same thing happens with respect to the dative
o<e, and for the same reason. Thus, Antonins Icesit Ci-
eronem, and Antonins nocuit Ciceroni, are expressions of
te same import; in each the action of hurting is conceiv-
« as proceeding from Antony to Cicero ; and this is fine-
] illustrated by the passive form of such expressions, where
t3 procedure above mentioned is expressly marked by the
Imposition ab, as Cicero nocetur, Cicero Iceditur ab Anto-
io- It is therefore not true that the accusative is that
6?e, at least the only case, which to an efficient nomina-
fte and a verb of action subjoins either the effect or the
Jpive subject; nor is the dative the only case which is
timed to express relations tending to itself. The only
t:ng essential to these two cases is to denote the apposi-
tm or junction of one object with another; and this they
o nearly, if not altogether, in the same manner, although
fr m the custom of language they may not be indifferently
^joined to the same verb.
• The Greek language has no ablative case; but in the
itin, where it is used, it denotes concomitancy, or that
<le thing accompanies another. From this concomitancy
i sometimes draw an inference, and sometimes not. For
e imple, when it is said, Templum clamore pelebant, cla-
rriur is represented as concomitant of their going to the
tmple ; but here no inference is drawn. From the phrase
plleo metu, although nothing more is expressed than that
weness is a concomitant of the fear, yet we instantly in-
fl that it is also the effect of the fear. In most instances
were the ablative is used, an inference is drawn, of which
tl: foundation is some natural connection observed to
shsist between the objects thus connected in language.
',,hen this inference is not meant to be drawn, the prepo-
& on is commonly added; as, interfectus est cum gladio, he
ills slain with a sword about him ; interfectus est gladio, he
vis slain with a sword as the instrument of his death.
The remaining cases, which have not been noticed, are
ti - nominative and the vocative. These are in most in¬
s' nces alike in termination, which makes it probable that
tfey were originally one and the same case. The founda-
tin of this conjecture will appear from considering the use
ttivvhich each of these cases is applied. The nominative
iEmployed to call up the idea of any object in the mind
f«the hearer. But when a man hears his own name men-
ttined, his attention is instantly roused, and he is naturally
H to listen to what is to be said. Hence, when one man
>3ant particularly to solicit the attention of another, he
wild naturally pronounce that other person’s name ; and
tlis the nominative case would pass into a vocative, of
v*ich the use is always to solicit attention.1
fhe Greek and Latin among the ancient, and the Ger-
r«n among the modern languages, express different con-
retions or relations of one thing with another by cases.
11 English this is done for the most part by prepositions ;
fell the English being derived from the same origin as the
(rnnan, that is, from the Teutonic, has at least one varia-
t i of the substantive to answer the same purpose. For
1 lance, the relation of possession, or belonging, is often
dressed by a different ending of the substantive, which
Wy he well called a case. This case answers nearly to
t genitive case in Latin ; but as that is not a denomina-
Ufa significant of the nature of the case in any language,
it may perhaps in English be more properly called the pos¬
sessive case. Thus, Gods grace, anciently Godis grace, is
the grace belonging to or in the possession of God ; and
may be likewise expressed by means of the preposition, as,
the grace of God.
Although the word Godis is as evidently an inflexion of
the noun God as the word Dei is an inflexion of Deus,
there are grammarians who have denied that in English
there is any true inflexion of the original noun, and who
have said that the noun with the addition of that syllable
which we consider as the sign of a case, ceases to be a
noun, and becomes a definitive ; a word which with them
is devoid of signification. Thus, in the expression Alex¬
ander s house, the word Alexander’s stands not as a noun,
but as an article or definitive, serving to ascertain or point
out the individuality of the house. But this is a palpable
mistake. The word Alexander s serves not to point out
the individuality of the house, but to show to whom the
house belongs ; and is therefore beyond dispute not an ar¬
ticle, but a noun in the possessive case. Again, when we
say St Peter s at Rome and St Paul s at London, the words
St Peter s and St Paul’s are neither articles, nor, as has
been absurdly imagined, the proper names of edifices, like
the Rotunda or the Circus, but they are, in the possessive
case, the names of the two apostles to whom the churches
were dedicated, and to whom they are supposed to belong.
But that this, which we have called the possessive case,
is really not so, must be evident, it is said, because there are
certain circumstances in which it cannot be substituted for
the noun with the preposition prefixed. Thus, though a man
may say, I speak of Alexander, I write of Caesar, I think
of Pompey, he cannot say, I speak Alexander’s, I write
Caesar’s, or I think Pompey’s. This is indeed true, but it
is nothing to the purpose. For though I may say Loquor
be Alexandra, Scribo be Ccesare, Cogito be Pompeio, I
cannot say, Loquor Alexandri, Scribo Ccesaris, or Cogito
Pompeii; and therefore all that can be inferred from this
argument is, that as the Latin genitive is not always of the
same import with the preposition de, so the English pos¬
sessive is not always of the same import with the pre¬
position of Upon the whole, then, we may conclude that
English nouns admit of one inflexion; and that though
cases are not so essential to nouns as gender and number,
no language can be wholly without them or their various
powers.
II. Of Articles or Definitives.
The intention of language is to communicate thought,
or to express those ideas which are suggested to us by our
senses external and internal. The ideas first suggested to
us are those of pain and pleasure, and of the objects with
which we are surrounded; and therefore the words first
learned must be nouns, or the names of objects natural, ar¬
tificial, and abstract. Every object about which the human
mind can be conversant is strictly and properly speaking
particular; for all things in nature differ from one another in
numberless respects, which, not to mention the idea of se¬
parate existence, so circumstance and individualize them,
that no one thing can be said to be another. Now the use
of language being to express our ideas or conceptions of
these objects, it might naturally be expected that every
object should be distinguished by a proper name. This
would indeed be agreeable to the truth of things, but we
have already seen that it is altogether impracticable. Ob-
The chief objection to this conjecture, that the nominative and vocative were originally the same case, is taken from the Latin
Hgue, in which the nouns of the second declension ending in us terminate their vocative in e. But this is easily accounted for.
s in such words was often dropped, as appears from the scanning of old Latin poetry; when this
was done, the u being short,
"Md naturally in pronunciation pass into e,*a like short vowel; and thus, in the vocative case, e would in time be written instead
lllf.
643
Articles-
V—-y-W
Articles, jects have therefore been classed into genera and species ;
and names given, not to each individual, but to each genus
and species. By this contrivance of language, we are en¬
abled to ascertain in some measure any individual that may
occur, and of which we know not the proper name, only
by referring it to the genus or species to which it belongs,
and calling it by the general or specific name ; but as there
is frequent occasion to distinguish individuals of the same
species from one another, it became necessary to fall upon
some expedient to mark this distinction. In many languages
general and specific terms are modified and restricted by
three orders of words; the article, the adjective, and the
oblique cases of nouns. The cases of nouns we have alrea¬
dy considered; the adjective will employ our attention af¬
terwards ; at present our observations are confined to the
article, a word so very necessary, that without it, or at least
some equivalent invention, men could not employ nouns to
any of the purposes of life, or indeed communicate their
thoughts at all. As the business of articles is to enable us,
upon occasion, to employ general terms to denote particu¬
lar objects, they must be considered in combination with
the general terms as merely substitutes for proper names.
They have, however, been commonly called definitives;
because they serve to define and ascertain any particular
object so as to distinguish it from the other objects of the
general class to which it belongs, and, of course, to denote
its individuality. Of words framed for this purpose, whe¬
ther they have by grammarians been termed articles or not,
we know of no language that is wholly destitute. The na¬
ture of them may be explained as follows.
An object occurs with which, as an individual, we are
totally unacquainted ; it has a head and limbs, and appears
to possess the powers of self-motion and sensation ; we
therefore refer it to its proper species, and call it a dog, a
horse, a lion, or the like. If it belongs to none of the spe¬
cies with which we are acquainted, it cannot be called by
any of their names ; we then refer it to the genus, and call
it an animal.
But this is not enough. The object at which we are look¬
ing, and which we want to distinguish, is not a species or-
a genus, but an individual. Of what kind ? Known or
unknown ? Seen now for the first time, or seen before
and now remembered ? This is one of the instances in
which we shall discover the use of the two articles a and
the ; for, in the case supposed, the article A respects our
primary perception, and denotes an individual as unknown;
whereas the respects our secondary perception, and de¬
notes individuals as known. To explain this by an exam¬
ple : I see an object pass by which I never saw till now:
What do I say ? There goes a beggar with a long beard.
The man departs and returns a week after : What do I
then say ? There goes the beggar with the long beard.
Here the article only is changed ; the rest remains unalter¬
ed. Yet mark the force of this apparently minute change.
The individual once vague is now recognised as something
known ; and that merely by the efficacy of this latter arti¬
cle, which tacitly insinuates a kind of previous acquain¬
tance, by referring a present perception to a like percep¬
tion already past.
This is the explanation of the articles A and the as
given by the learned Mr Harris, and thus far what he says
on the subject is certainly just; but it is not true that the
article the always insinuates a previous acquaintance, or
refers a present perception to a like perception already past.
I am in a room crowded with company, of which the great¬
er part is to me totally unknown; I feel it difficult to
breathe from the grossness of the enclosed atmosphere;
and, looking towards the window, I see in it a person whom
I never saw before. I instantly send my compliments to
the gentleman in the window, arid request that, if it be not
inconvenient, he will have the goodness to let a little
fresh air into the room. Of this gentleman I have no nre-
vious acquaintance ; my present perception of him is mv
primary perception, and yet it would have been extremelv
improper to send my compliments to a gentleman in the
window. Again, there would be no impropriety in saying
“ A man whom I saw yesterday exhibiting a show to the
rabble was this morning committed to jail charged with the
crime of housebreaking.” Notwithstanding the authority
therefore, of Mr Harris, and his master Apollonius, we may
venture to affirm, that it is not essential to the article a
to respect a primary perception, or to the article the to
indicate a pre-established acquaintance. Such may indeed
be the manner in which these words are most frequently
used ; but we see that there are instances in which they
may be used differently. What, then, it may be asked, is
the import of each article, and in what respects do they
differ ? ' ||
We answer, that the articles A and the are both of
them definitives, as, by being prefixed to the names of ge¬
nera and species, they so circumscribe the latitude of those
names as to make them for the most part denote indivi¬
duals. A noun or substantive, without any article to li¬
mit it, is taken in its widest sense. Thus the word man
means all mankind;
The proper study of mankind is man ;
where mankind and man may change places without mak¬
ing any alteration in the sense. But let either of the ar¬
ticles of which we are treating be prefixed to the word
man, and that word is immediately reduced from the
name of a whole genus to denote only a single individual;
and instead of the noble truth which this line asserts, the
poet will be made to say, that the proper study of man¬
kind is not the common nature which is diffused through
the whole human race, but the manners and caprices of
one individual. Thus far therefore the two articles agree;
but they differ in this, that though they both limit the
specific name to some individual, the article A leaves the
individual itself unascertained ; whereas the article the
ascertains the individual also, and can be prefixed to the
specific name only when an individual is intended of
which something may be predicated that distinguishes it
from the other individuals of the species. Thus, if I say,
a man is fit for treasons, my assertion may appear strange
and vague ; the sentence, however, is complete, and wants
nothing to make it intelligible; but if I say, the man is
fit for treasons, I speak nonsense; for as the article the
shows that I mean some particular man, it will be impos¬
sible to discover my meaning till I complete the sentence,
and predicate something of the individual intended to dis¬
tinguish him from other individuals.
The man that hath not music in himself....
Is fit for treasons.
A man, therefore, means some one or other of the human
race indefinitely ; the man means, definitely, that particu¬
lar man who is spoken of. The former is called the inde¬
finite, the latter the definite, article.
The two articles differ likewise in this respect, that as
the article a serves only to separate one individual object
from the general class to which it belongs, it cannot be
applied to plurals. It has indeed the same signification
nearly with the numerical word one ; and in French and
Italian the same word that denotes unity is also the ar¬
ticle of which we now treat. But the essence of the ar¬
ticle the being to define objects, by pointing them out as
those of which something is affirmed or denied which is
not affirmed or denied of the other objects of the same
class, it is equally applicable to both numbers; for things
may be predicated of one set of men, as well as of a singe
man, which cannot be predicated of other men. The use
nil it
itert
iich
GRAMMAR.
645
. ail import of each article will appear from the following
O eimple: “ Man was made for society, and ought to ex-
fcyd his good will to all men ; but a man will naturally
pertain a more particular regard for the men with whom
Ik has the most frequent intercourse, and enter into a
gjll closer union with the man whose temper and disposi-
t n suit best with his own.”
We have said that the article a cannot be applied to
pirals, because it denotes unity. But to this rule there
ii apparently a remarkable exception in the use of the
aiectives few and many (the latter chiefly with the word
y,nt before it), which, though joined with plural substan-
t;.es, yet admit of the singular article a : as, a few men,
aureat many men. The reason of this is manifest from
tb effect which the article has in these phrases. It means
ajmall or a great number collectively taken, to which it
ges the idea of a whole, that is, of unity. Thus likewise
avundred, a thousand, is one whole number, an aggregate
ocmany collectively taken, and therefore still retains the
aiicle A, though joined as an adjective to a plural sub-
smtive; as, a hundred years. The exception therefore
innly apparent; and we may affirm that the article a
u versally denotes unity.
|l'he indefinite article is much less useful than the other;
ad therefore the Greek and Hebrew languages have it
ne, though they have both a definite article. In lan-
giges of which the nouns, adjectives, and verbs, have
is exion, no mistake can arise from the want of the inde¬
fir te article; because it can always be known by the ter-
nnations of the noun and the verb, and by the circum-
srnces predicated of the noun, whether a whole species
aone individual be intended. But this is not the case in
Iglish. In that language, the adjectives having no va-
r tion with respect to gender or number, and the tenses
ot the verbs being for the most part the same in both
ambers, it might be often doubtful, had we not the in-
dinite article, whether the specific name was intended
Wexpress the whole species or only one individual. Thus,
fi ve say in English, man was horn sent from God, we
nr st be understood to mean that the birth of every man
fi rom God, because to the specific term the indefinite
aiicle is not prefixed. Yet the words, Eyivilo uvfywroe
ai oraX/ijvof iraga Qsov, convey no such meaning to any
pr son acquainted with the Greek language ; as the word
u wmg, without any article, is restricted to an individual
b its concord with the verb and the participle ; and the
Sisse of the passage is, a man was horn, or existed, sent
f,\m God. But though the Greeks have no article cor-
mponding to the article a, yet nothing can be more
n irly related than their *0 to our the ; *0 fiaaXsvg, the
kiy, TO bugov, the yift. In one respect, indeed, the
(teek and English articles differ. The former is varied
atording to the gender and number of the noun with
vfich it is associated, being b, masculine, i], feminine, ro,
wter, and o'i, ai, ra, in the plural number ; whereas the
Eglish article suffers no change, being invariably the
b ore nouns of every gender and in both numbers. There
a? , however, some modern languages which, in imitation
oi the Greek, admit of a variation of their article which
rates to gender ; but this cannot be considered as essen-
t to this species of words, and it may be questioned
Wether it be an improvement to the language. In
togues of which the nouns have no inflexion, it can only
swe to perplex and confuse, as it always presents a par¬
ti ilar idea of sex where in many cases it is not ne-
c sary.
I The articles already mentioned are allowed to be strict-
h'wd properly such by every grammarian; but there are
sue words, such as this, that, any, some, all, other, &c.
tyich are generally said to be sometimes articles and
S'i letimes pronouns, according to the different modes of
using them. That words should change their nature in this Articles,
manner, so as to belong sometimes to one part of speech
and sometimes to another, must appear very extraordi¬
nary ; and if it were a fact, language would be a thing
so equivocal, that all inquiries into its nature, upon prin¬
ciples of science and reason, would be vain. But we
cannot perceive any such fluctuation in any word what¬
ever ; though we know it to be a general charge brought
against words of almost every denomination, of which we
have already seen one instance in the possessive case of
nouns, and shall now see another in those words which
are commonly called pronominal articles.
If it be true, as we acknowledge it to be, that the ge¬
nuine pronoun always stands by itself, assuming the power
of a noun, and supplying its place, then is it certain that
the words this, that, any, some, &c. can never be pronouns.
We are indeed told, that when we say this is virtue, give
me that, the words this and that are pronouns; but that
when we say, this habit is virtue, that man defrauded me,
then are they articles or definitives. This, however, is
evidently a mistake occasioned by overlooking those ab¬
breviations in construction which are frequent in every
language, and which, on account of that very frequency,
have perhaps escaped the attention of grammarians whose
sagacity has been successfully employed on matters less
obvious. When we say this is virtue, it is evident that we
communicate no intelligence till we add a substantive to
the word this, and declare what is virtue. The word this
can therefore in no instance assume the power of a noun,
since the noun to which it relates, though for the sake of
dispatch it may be omitted in writing or conversation,
must always be supplied by the mind of the reader or
hearer, to make the sentence intelligible, or this itself of
any importance. When we have viewed speech analysed,
we may then consider it as compounded. And here, in
the first place, we may contemplate that synthesis which
by combining simple terms produces a truth; then by
combining two truths produces a third; and thus others
and others in continued demonstration^ till we are led, as
by a road, to the regions of science. Now this is that su¬
perior and most excellent synthesis which alone applies
itself to our intellect or reason, and which to conduct ac¬
cording to rule constitutes the art of logic. After this we
may turn to those inferior compositions which are pro¬
ductive of the pathetic, &c. Here, if any where, the word
this may be thought to stand by itself, and to assume the
power of a noun ; but let any man complete the construc¬
tion of each sentence, and he will perceive that this is no
more than a definite article. Thus, we may contemplate
that synthesis which by combining simple terms produces
a truth ; then by combining two truths produces a third
truth ; and thus other truths and other truths in continu¬
ed demonstration, till we are led, as by a road, into the
regions of science. Now this combination of truths is that
superior and most excellent synthesis which alone applies
itself to our intellect or reason, and which to conduct ac¬
cording to rule constitutes the art of logic. After we
have contemplated this art, we may turn, &c.
The word that is generally considered as still more
equivocal than this ; for it is said to be sometimes an ar¬
ticle, sometimes a pronoun, and sometimes a conjunction.
In the following extract it appears in all these capacities;
and yet, upon resolving the passage into parts, and com¬
pleting the construction, it will be fouud to be invariably
a definite article. “ It is necessary to that perfection, of
which our present state is capable, that the mind and
body should both be kept in action ; that neither the fa¬
culties of the one nor of the other be suffered to grow lax
or torpid for want of use; but neither should health be
purchased by voluntary submission to ignorance, nor
should knowledge be cqltivatecl at the expense of health;
1
646
GRAMMAR.
Articles, for that must enable it either to give pleasure to its pos-
sessor, or assistance to others.” If this long sentence be
resolved into its constituent parts, and the words be sup¬
plied which complete the construction, we shall see the
import of the word that to be precisely the same in each
clause. “ The mind and body should both be kept in ac¬
tion ; that action is necessary to that perfection of which
our present state is capable; neither the faculties of the
one nor of the other should be suffered to grow lax or
torpid for want of use; the degree of action proper to
prevent that laxness is necessary; but neither should
health be purchased by voluntary submission to ignorance,
nor should knowledge be cultivated at the expense of
health ; for that health must enable it either to give plea¬
sure to its possessor, or assistance to others.” Again:
He that’s unskilful will not toss a ball.
A man unskilful (he is that) will not toss a ball. Here
the word that, though substituted for what is called the
relative pronoun, still preserves unchanged its definitive
import; and in every instance, except where it maybe
used very improperly, it will be found to be neither more
nor less than a definitive article.
It appears, then, that if the essence of an article be to
define and ascertain, the words this and that, as well as
any, some, all, &c. which are commonly called pronominal
articles, are much more properly articles than any thing
else, and as such should be considered in universal gram¬
mar. Thus, when we say, this picture I approve, but that
I dislike, what do we perform by the help of the words
this and that, but bring down the common appellative to
denote two individuals, the one as the more near, the
other as the more distant ? So when we say, some men
are virtuous, but all men are mortal; what is the natu¬
ral effect of this all and some, but to define that univer¬
sality and that particularity which would remain indefinite
were we to take them away? The same thing is evident
in such sentences as, “ some substances have sensation,
others want it; choose any way of acting, and some men
will find fault,” &c. For here some, other, and any serve all
of them to define different parts of a given whole ; some, to
denote any indeterminate part; any, to denote any inde¬
finite mode of action, no matter what; and other, to de¬
note the remaining part, when a part has been assumed
already.
We have said that the article is a part of speech so very
necessary, that without it, or some equivalent invention,1
mankind could not communicate their thoughts; and that
of words falling under this description we know of no lan¬
guage which is wholly destitute. We are aware that these
positions may be controverted; and that the Latin may
be instanced as a language which, without articles, is not
only capable of communicating the ordinary thoughts of
the speaker to the mind of the hearer, but which, in the
hands of Cicero, Virgil, and Lucretius, was made to serve
all the purposes of the most profound philosopher, the
most impassioned orator, and the most sublime poet.
That the Latin has been made to serve all these purposes
cannot be denied, although Lucretius and Cicero both
complain, that on the subject of philosophy, where the
' use of articles is most conspicuous, it is a deficient lan¬
guage. But should we grant what cannot be demand¬
ed, that these two great men were unacquainted with the
powers of their native tongue, our positions would still
remain unshaken; for we deny that the Latin is wholly
without articles. It has indeed no word of precisely the
same import with our the or the Greek e ; but the place of
the indefinite article a might be always supplied, if ne. , .
cessary, with the numerical word unus. It may be so *
even in English ; for we believe there is not a single in- ^
stance where the words one man, one horse, one virtue
might not be substituted for the words a man, a horse a
virtue, without in the slightest degree altering the sense
of the passage where such words occur. This substitution
however, can be but seldom or never necessary in the
Latin tongue, of which the precision is much greater than
that of the English would be without articles, because
the oblique cases pf the Latin nouns, and the inflexion of
its verbs, will almost always enable the reader to deter¬
mine whether an appellative represents a whole species
or a single individual. The want of the definite article
the seems to be a greater defect; yet there are few in¬
stances in which its place might not be supplied by
or by that without obscuring the sense; and the Latin
tongue is by no means deficient of articles corresponding
to these two. Let us substitute the words one and that
for a and the in some of the foregoing examples, and we
shall find, though the sound may be uncouth, the sense
will remain. Thus,
That man who hath not music in himself....
Is fit for treasons,
conveys to the mind of the reader the very same senti¬
ment which the poet expresses by the words the man that
hath not music, &c. Again, Man was made for society,
and ought to extend his good will to all men-, but o«e
man will naturally entertain a more particular regard for
those men with whom he has the most frequent intercourse,
and enter into a closer union with that man whose temper
and disposition suit best with his own. Now the words
hie and Me being exactly of the same import with the
words this and that, it follows, that wherever the place of
the article the may in English be supplied by f/iis or by
that, it may in Latin be supplied by hie or by Me. This
is the case with respect to Nathan’s reproof of David,
where the definite article is indeed most emphatical. The
original words might have been translated into English,
“ thou art that man,” as well as “ thou art the manand
in Latin they may with the utmost propriety be rendered,
“ Tu es Me homo.” Indeed the words hie and f//e, and
we might instance many more, though they are common¬
ly called pronouns, are in truth nothing but definite ar¬
ticles. Hie is evidently exs; and Me is most probably de¬
rived from the Hebrew word al, in the plural ale, which
may be translated indifferently, either the or that. But,
what proves beyond dispute that these words are not pro¬
nouns, but articles, is, that in no single instance will they
be found to stand by themselves and assume the power
of nouns. For the sake of dispatch, or to avoid disagree¬
able repetitions, the noun may indeed be often omitted;
but it is always supplied by the reader or hearer, when
hie and Me appear in their proper place, and are seen to be
invariably definitive articles. We shall give an example
of the use of each word, and dismiss the subject.
In the first oration against Catiline, Cicero begins with
addressing himself in a very impassioned style to the trai¬
tor, who was present in the senate-house. He then ex¬
claims pathetically against the manners of the age, and
proceeds in these words: Senatus hcec intelligit, consul
videt, Hie tamen vivit. Vivit? immo vero etiam in senaium
venit; fit publici consilii particeps. In this passage hie can¬
not be a pronoun ; for from the beginning of the oration
there occurs not a single noun of which it can possib y
supply the place. When the orator uttered it, he was
probably pointing with his finger at Catiline, and every
1 As in the Persian and other eastern languages, in which the place of our indefinite article is supplied by a
nouns which are meant to be particularized.
termination to those
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The
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lerw
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tkt
ima
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icor
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defii
lty,t
sstar
Us
\ tlt
well
diet
Ass
If
GRAMMA R,
c;e of his audience would supply the noun in his own
1 rrnd, as we do when we translate it, “ yet this traitor
lies.” When Virgil says,
Ilk ego, qui quondam gracili modulatus avena
, Carmen,
iiis obvious that he means, I am that man, or that poet,
wio sung, &c.; and though we may translate the words
< I am he who tuned his song,” yet when we construe the
pssage we are under the necessity of supplying either
ntes or vir, which shows that Me is nothing more than a
afinite article signifying that or the. -It appears, then,
tat the Latin tongue is not wholly destitute of articles,
ajfew cases can occur where the Greek o and our the may
i : be supplied by the words hie and Me, which have in
or opinion been very improperly termed pronouns. If
tl.re be any such cases, we can only confess that the
Htin language is defective; whereas, had it no articles,
iis not easy to conceive how it could answer, to a culti-
^ed people, the ordinary purposes of speech.
-The articles this and that, unlike a and the, are varied
acording as the noun, with which they are associated, is
iithe singular or in the plural number. Thus wre say,
Ijs and that man in the singular, and these and those men
iithe plural. The Latin articles hie and Me, for such we
vil call them, are varied, like the Greek 6, not only with
tb number, but also with the gender of their nouns. In
Ifliguages where the structure of a sentence may be so
chnged from the order of nature, as it commonly is in
(Seek and Latin, and where the reader is guided, not by
til: position, but by the terminations of the words, to those
viich are in concord and those which are not, these va-
rrtions of the articles have their use ; but in English they
SB', of no importance. Were it not that the custom of the
Ijguage, the forma loquendi as Horace calls it, has de-
timined otherwise, there would be no more impropriety
iisaying this or that men, than in saying some men or the
m.
JAs articles are by their nature definitives, it follows of
Cffse that they cannot be united with such words as are
iitheir own nature as definite as they may be, nor with
such words as, being uridefinable, cannot properly be made
a erwise; but only with those words which, though in¬
finite, are yet capable through the article of becoming
finite. Hence the reason why it is absurd to say, the I
Mhe thou, because nothing, as will be seen afterwards,
c i make these pronouns more definite than they are of
tlimselves; and the same may be said of proper names.
Wither can we say, the both, because the word both is
Hits own nature perfectly defined. Thus if it be said,
have read both poets,” this plainly indicates a definite
per, of whom some mention has been made already. On
t contrary, if it be said, “ I have read two poets,” this
my mean any pair out of all that ever existed. And
hoce the numeral being in this sense indefinite, as in-
dfed are all others as well as itself, is forced to assume
til article whenever it would become definite. Hence also
i|!1s that as two, when taken alone, has reference to some
p nary and indefinite perception, whilst the article the has
Mjrence to some perception secondary and definite, it is
M language to say two the men, as this would be blending
o ncompatibles, that is, it would be representing two men
ai defined and undefined at the same time. On the con-
wry, to say, both the men, is good language; because the
sjstantive cannot possibly be less apt, by being defined,
tiicoalesce with a numeral adjective which is defined as
wl as itself. So likewise it is correct to say, the two
Mie, these two men, or those two men; because here the
iuicle, being placed at the beginning, extends its power
aiivell through the numeral adjective as the substantive,
a I tends equally to define them both.
Vs some of the above words admit of no article because
they are by nature as definite as may be, so there are
others which admit it not because they are not to be defined
at all. Of this sort are all interrogatives. If we question
about substances, we cannot say, the ivho is this, but who
is this ? And the same both as to qualities and quanti¬
ties ; for we say, without an article, tohat sort of, how
many, how great ? The reason is, the article the respects
beings of which we can predicate something; but interro¬
gatives respect beings about which we are ignorant, and
of which we can therefore predicate nothing; for as to
what we know, interrogation is superfluous. In a word,
the natural associates of articles are all those common ap¬
pellatives which denote the several genera and species of
beings: and it may be questioned whether in strictness
of speech they are ever associated with any other words.
We have said that proper names admit not of the arti¬
cle, being in their own nature definite. This is true,
whilst each name is confined to one individual; but as
different persons often go by the same name, it is neces¬
sary to distinguish these from one another, to prevent the
ambiguity which this identity of name would otherwise
occasion. For this purpose we are obliged to have re¬
course to adjectives or epithets. For example, there were
two Grecian chiefs who bore the name of Ajax; and it
was not without reason that Mnestheus used epithets
when his intention was to distinguish the one from the
other. “ If both Ajaxes cannot be spared,” said he, “ at
least let mighty Telamonian Ajax come.” But as epithets
are diffused through various subjects, in as much as the
same adjective may be referred to many substantives, it
has been said to be necessary, in order to render both parts
of speech equally definite, that the adjective itself assume
an article before it, which may indicate a reference to
some single person only. It is thus we say, Trypho the
Grammarian, Apollodorus the Cyrenian, &c. This is the
doctrine of Mr Harris, from which, with the highest re¬
spect for the learning of the author, we feel ourselves
obliged to dissent. In the examples given, the article
the is certainly not associated with the words Gramma¬
rian and Cyrenian, in the same manner in which it is as¬
sociated with the word man in the sentence, “ The man
that hath not music in himself.” When we say Apollo¬
dorus the Cyrenian, we may, without folly or imperti¬
nence, be asked, the Cyrenian what? And the moment
this question is answered, it vrill be seen that the article
defines, not an adjective, but a substantive. If the answer
be, the Cyrenian philosopher, the article the is associated
witli the word philosopher, and the phrase Apollodorus
the Cyrenian is an abbreviation of Apollodorus the phi¬
losopher of Cyrene. In like manner, Trypho the gramma¬
rian, is Trypho the grammarian writer, or Trypho the wri¬
ter of grammar. Such abbreviations are very common.
We say familiarly the Speaker, and are understood to mean
a high officer in the British parliament; yet as speaker is
a name common to many men, we may without impropriety
be asked, what speaker we mean ; and if so, wre must reply,
the Speaker of the House of Commons. But that which is
eminent is supposed to be generally known; and there¬
fore, in common language, the speaker is deemed a suffi¬
cient designation of him who presides over the lower house
of parliament. Hence, by an easy transition, the definite
article, from denoting reference, comes to denote emi¬
nence also; that is to say, from implying an ordinary pre¬
acquaintance, to presume a kind of general and universal
notoriety. Thus a king is any king, but the king is that
person whom we acknowledge as our sovereign, the king
of Great Britain. In Greek, too, as in English, the arti¬
cle is often a mark of eminence; for the Poet meant Homer,
and the Stagyrite meant Aristotle ; not but that there were
many poets besides Homer, and many stagyrites besides.
Aristotle, but none equally illustrious.
647
Articles.
648
GRAMMA R.
Pronouns. Before we dismiss the Article, we shall produce one ex-
ample to show the utility of this species of words ; which,
although they may seem to be of small importance, yet,
when properly applied, serve to make a few general terms
sufficient for expressing with accuracy all the various ob¬
jects about which mankind can have occasion to converse.
Let man be the general term, which I have occasion to
■ employ for the purpose of denoting some particular. Let
it be required to express this particular as unknown, I
say a man; known, I say the man ; definite, a certain man ;
indefinite, any man ; present and near, this man ; present
and at some distance, that man ; like to some other, svah
a man; different from some other, another man; an inde¬
finite multitude, many men; a definite multitude, a thou¬
sand men; the ones of a multitude taken throughout,
every man; the same ones taken with distinction, each
man; taken in order, first man, second man, &c.; the
whole multitude of particulars taken collectively, all men ;
the negation of that multitude, no man ; a number of par¬
ticulars present and near, these men ; at some distance, or
opposed to others, those men ; a number of individuals se¬
parated from another number, other men; a small indefi¬
nite number, few men ; a proportionally greater number,
more men; a smaller number, feiver men. And so we
might proceed on almost to infinitude. But not to dwell
longer upon this subject, we shall only remark, that mi¬
nute changes in principles lead to mighty changes in ef¬
fects ; so that principles are well entitled to regard, how¬
ever trivial they may appear.
III.—Of Pronouns, or Substantives of the second order.
To men who are neither intoxicated with their own
abilities, nor ambitious of the honour of building new sys¬
tems, little pleasure can accrue from differing upon points
of science from writers of great and deserved reputation.
In such circumstances a man of modesty, although he
will not upon the authority of a celebrated name adopt
an opinion of which he perceives not the truth, must al¬
ways advance his own notions with some degree of diffi¬
dence, as being conscious that the truth which he cannot
perceive, may be visible to a keener and more perspica¬
cious eye. In these circumstances we feel ourselves with
regard to some of the most celebrated writers on gram¬
mar, from whom, concerning one or two points, compara¬
tively indeed of but little importance, we have already
been compelled reluctantly to differ. In treating of pro¬
nouns we are likely to deviate still farther from the beat¬
en track ; but that we may not be accused of acting the
part of dogmatists in literature, and of claiming from others
that implicit confidence which we refuse to give, we shall
state with fairness the commonly received opinions, point
out in what respects we think them erroneous, assign our
reasons for calling them in question, and leave our readers
to judge for themselves. The most celebrated writer in
English who has treated of pronouns, and whom, since
the publication of his Hermes, most other writers have im¬
plicitly followed, is Mr Harris, who, after a short intro¬
duction, proceeds thus:—
“ All conversation passes between individuals, who will
often happen to be till that instant unacquainted with
each other. What, then, is to be done ? How shall the
speaker address the other, when he knows not his name ?
or how explain himself by his own name, of which the
other is wholly ignorant? Nouns, as they have been de¬
scribed, cannot answer this purpose. The first expedient
upon this occasion seems to have been pointing, or indi¬
cating by the finger or hand; some traces of which are
still to be observed, as a part of that action which natu¬
rally attends our speaking. But the authors of language
were not content with this. They invented a race of
words to supply this pointing; which words, as they al- p
ways stood for substantives or nouns, were characterized W0UI8'
by the name of pronouns. These also they distinguished
into three several sorts, calling them pronouns of the first
the second, and the third person, with a view to certain
distinctions, which may be explained as follows: 
“ Suppose the parties conversing to be wholly unac¬
quainted, neither name nor countenance on either side
known, and the subject of the conversation to be the
speaker himself. Here, to supply the place of pointing
by a word of equal power, the inventors of language fur¬
nished the speaker with the pronoun I; 1 write, /say, /
desire, &c.; and as the speaker is always principal with
respect to his own discourse, this they called, for that rea¬
son, the pronoun of the first person.
“ Again, suppose the subject of the conversation to be
the party addressed. Here, for similar reasons, they in¬
vented the pronoun thou ; thou writest, thou walkest, &c.
And as the party addressed is next in dignity to the
speaker, or at least comes next with reference to the dis¬
course, this pronoun they therefore called the pronoun of
the second person.
“ Lastly, suppose the subject of conversation neither
the speaker nor the party addressed, but some third ob¬
ject different from both. Here they provided another
pronoun, he, she, or it; which, in distinction to the two
former, was called the pronoun of the third person. And
thus it was that pronouns came to be distinguished by
their respective persons!’
The description of the different persons here given is
taken, we are told, from Priscian, who took it from Apol¬
lonius. But whatever be the deference due to these an¬
cient masters, their learned pupil, though guided by them,
seems not to have hit upon the true and distinguishing
characteristic of the personal pronouns. He supposes,
that when the names of two persons conversing together
are known to each other, they may, by the use of these
names, express all that the personal pronouns express;
but this is certainly not true. To us, at least, there ap¬
pears to be a very material difference between saying
“ George did this,” and “ I did thisnor do we think
that the power of the pronoun would be completely sup¬
plied by the name, even with the additional aid of indica¬
tion by the hand. So, when one man says to another
with whom he is conversing, “ James did so and so;” it
is surely not equivalent to his saying “ You did so and so.”
If such were the case, one might pertinently ask, when
both persons are known to each other, Why do they use
the personal pronouns ? Mr Harris tells us, that “ when
the subject of conversation is the speaker himself, he uses
I; and when it is the party addressed, he uses thou.
But, in fact, the nature of the personal pronouns has no
sort of connection with the subject of conversation, whe¬
ther that conversation relate to the speaker, the party ad¬
dressed, or a Greek book. In this sentence, “ I say that
the three angles of every triangle are equal to two right
angles,” the speaker is surely not the subject of the dis¬
course ; nor is the party addressed, but the truth of his
assertion, the subject of discourse in the following sen¬
tence: “ say, that Horne Tooke’s Diversions ol Pur-
ley is the most masterly treatise on grammar, as far as it
goes, that you have ever seen.” Mr Harris uses the
phrase “ becoming the subject of conversation, in no
other sense than that when the speaker has occasion to
mention himself, he uses I; when the party addressed, thou,
and when some other person or thing, he, she, or it. But we
know that he may use other words by no means equiva¬
lent to the two first of these pronouns, which su ”
ciently mark himself, and the party addressed; and t a
he may use indifferently, and without the smallest *”Jury
to the sense, either the third pronoun, or the word or
GRAMMA R.
649
0»s«
irceo
It a
«ike
istrat
isr.^
tleris
drat
lied I
ema
Mlp
atli"
'expi
'tliel
n sp
and!
rj
nun
BOD
lilies
npi
espe
ml
esec
taker
10ft
eodI;
;Swit
1 tlo
Id, tli
iscal
ideal
irdsv
!,ori
the
tsoo
labsi
coavi
dress
^ei
djdi
Mom
the a
W'e |
Mo®
tuber
»esi
tabs
dress
kject
Ml
w ch it is merely a substitute. A man who sustains va-
riiis characters may design himself by any one of them,
ffjs Mr Pitt might have spoken of himself as the first
lujl of the treasury, chancellor of the exchequer, or mem-
b, for the university of Cambridge ; and in each case he
wuld have been what Mr Harris calls the subject of con-
vi sation; yet every one feels that none of these designa-
tiiis would have been equivalent to I. What, then, is the
forre of the personal pronouns ?
t appears to be simply this: The first denotes the
spiker, as characterised by the present act of speaking, in
cotradistinetion to every other character which he may
b»ir. The second denotes the party addressed, as cha-
werised by the present circumstance of being addressed, in
ecstradistinction to every other character. And what is
caed the pronoun of the third person is merely a nega¬
te of the other two, as the neuter gender is a negation of
thl masculine and feminine. If this account of the per-
scid pronouns be true, and we flatter ourselves that its
tn;h will be obvious to every body, there is but one way
ofbxpressing by other words the force of the pronouns
of he first and second person. Thus, 11 The person who
n< speaks to you did so and so,” is equivalent to “ /did
sc nd so;” and “ The person to whom I now address my-
se did so and so,” is equivalent to “ You did so and so.”
Iflence we see why it is improper to say the I or the
thh; for each of these pronouns has of itself the force of
alfeun with the definite article prefixed, and denotes a
p(ii-on of whom something is predicted, which distin-
gtyhes him from all other persons. / is the person who
nor speaks, thou is the person who is now addressed by
Ai speaker. Hence too we see the reason why the pro-
nom / is said to be of the first, and the pronoun thou of
th second person. These pronouns can have place only
inmonversation, or when a man, in the character of a
pwlie speaker, addresses himself to an audience; but it
isibvious that there must be a speaker before there can
bm hearer; and therefore, that the pronouns may follow
A! order of nature, I, which denotes the person of the
spjiker, must take place of thou', which denotes the per-
sci of the hearer. Now the speaker and the hearer being
Ail only persons engaged in conversation or declamation,
I with great propriety called the pronoun of the first,
ar thou the pronoun of the second person. We have
sail, that with respect to pronouns, the third person, as
it called, is merely a negative of the other two. This is
evlent from the slightest attention to the import of those
wi'ds which are called pronouns of the third person. He,
sM or it, denotes not the person either of the speaker or
off he hearer; and, as we have just observed, no other
pe ion can have a share in conversation or declamation.
Aiabsent person or an absent thing may be the subject
ofionversation, but cannot be the speaker or the person
aaressed. He, she, and it, however, as they stand by
thdnselves, and assume the power of nouns, are very pro-
pey denominated pronouns; but they are not personal
pi iouns in any other sense than as the negation of sex
is ie neuter gender.
fe have already seen that nouns admit of number;
pi loans, which are their substitutes, likewise admit of
m iber. There may be many speakers at once of the
saie sentiment, as well as one, who, including himself,
sp iks the sentiment of many; speech may likewise be
accessed to maiiy at a time, as well as to one; and the
suiect of the discourse may likewise be many. The pro-
n#o, therefore, of every one of the persons must admit of
number to express this singularity or plurality. Hence Pronouns,
the pronoun of the first person /, has the plural we; that
of the second person thou, has the plural ye or you; and
that of the third person he, she, or it, has the plural they,
which is equally applied to all the three genders.
The Greeks and Romans, when addressing one person,
used the pronoun in the singular number thou; whereas
in the polite, and even in the familiar style, we, and many
other modern nations, use the plural you. Although in
this case we apply you to a single person, yet the verb
must agree with it in the plural number; it must neces¬
sarily be, you have, not you hast. You was, the second
person plural of the pronoun placed in agreement with the
first or third person singular of the verb, is an enormous,
though common solecism, which ought to be carefully
avoided. In very solemn style, as when we address the
Supreme Being, we use thou, perhaps to indicate that he
is God alone, and that there is none like unto him ; and
we sometimes use the same form of the pronoun in con¬
temptuous or very familiar language, to intimate that the
person to whom we speak is the meanest of human beings,
or the dearest and most familiar of our friends. A king,
exerting his authority on a solemn occasion, adopts the
plural of the first person, “ tve strictly command and
charge;” meaning, that he acts by the advice of counsel¬
lors, or rather as the representative of a whole people.
But in all cases in which the use of the pronoun deviates
from the nature of things, the verb in concord deviates
with it; for, as will be seen afterwards, these two words
universally agree in number and person.
But though ail these pronouns have number, neither in
Greek, Latin, or any m6dern language, do those of the
first and second person carry the distinctions of sex. The
reason is obvious,1 namely, that sex, and all other proper¬
ties and attributes whatever, except those mentioned
above as descriptive of the nature of these pronouns, are
foreign from the intention of the speaker, who, when he
uses the pronoun I, means the person who now speaks, no
matter whether man or woman; and when the pronoun
thou, the person, no matter whether man or woman, to
whom he now addresses himself, and nothing more. But
the pronoun of the third person denoting neither the
speaker nor the hearer, but the subject of the discourse,
and being merely the substitute of a noun which may be
either masculine, feminine, or neuter, must of necessity
agree with the noun which it represents, and admit of a
triple distinction significant of gender. In English, which
allows its adjectives no genders, this pronoun is he in the
masculine, she in the feminine, and it in the neuter; the
utility of which distinction may be better found in sup¬
posing it away. Suppose, for example, that we should in
history read these words, He caused him to destroy him,
and were informed that the pronoun, which is here thrice
repeated, stood each time for something different; that is
to say, for a man, for a woman, and for a city, whose
names were Alexander, Thais, and Persepolis. Taking
the pronoun in this manner, divested of its gender, how
would it appear which was destroyed, which the destroyer,
and which the cause that moved to the destruction ? But
there is no ambiguity, when we hear the genders distin¬
guished : when we are told with the proper distinctions,
that she caused him to destroy it, we know with certainty
that the prompter was the woman; that her instrument
was the hero; and that the subject of their cruelty was
the unfortunate city. From this example we would be
surprised how the Italians, French, and Spaniards could
‘Th,
(s’1
utet
'OL,
JBl! I he reason assigned by Mr Harris and his followers is, that “ the speaker and hearer being generally present to each other, it
dhave been superfluous to have marked a distinction by art, which from nature and even dress was commonly apparent on both
■” This is perhaps the best reason which their description of the personal pronouns admits, hut it is not satisfactory; for the
•pfter and hearer may meet in the dark, when different dresses cannot be distinguished.
3L. x. 4 N
650
Pronouns.
GRAMMAR.
express themselves with precision or elegance with no
more than two variations of this pronoun.
Although in every language with which wre are ac¬
quainted, there is but one pronoun for each of the first
and second persons; and although it is obvious, from the
nature and import of those words, that no more can be
necessary; yet the mere English reader may perhaps be
puzzled with finding three distinct words applied to each;
/, mine, and me, for the first person; thou, thine, and thee,
for the second. The learned reader will see at once that
the words mine and me, thine and thee, are equivalent to
the genitive and accusative cases of the Latin pronouns
of the first and second persons. That mine is a pronoun
in the possessive case is obvious; for if I were asked
“ whose book is that before me?” I should reply, “ It is
mine,”1 meaning that it belongs to me. That the word
me is the same pronoun in the case which the Latin gram¬
marians call the accusative, is evident from the import of
that word in the sentence he admires me, where the ad¬
miration is supposed to proceed from the person spoken
of to the person who speaks. It appears, therefore, that
though English nouns have only two cases, the nomina¬
tive and possessive, the pronouns of that language have
three, as, I, mine, me ; thou, thine, thee ; he, his, him, &c.;
and that these are cases, can be questioned by no man
who admits that mei, mihi, me, are cases of the Latin pro¬
noun ego. Both pronouns, the Latin and the English, are
irregularly inflected; and perhaps those words which are
called the oblique cases of each may have originally been
derived from nominatives different from ego and /; but
these nominatives are now lost, and mei and mine have,
beyond all dispute, the effect of the genitives of the La¬
tin and English pronouns of the first person. These va¬
riations, however, cannot be looked upon as an essential
part of language, but only as a particular refinement, in¬
vented to prevent the disagreeable repetition of the pro¬
noun, which must frequently have happened without such
a contrivance. This seems to have been the only reason
why pronouns have been endowed with a greater variety
of cases than nouns. Nouns are in themselves greatly
diversified. Every genus and every species of objects has
a distinct name, and therefore the sameness of sound does
not so often occur among them as it would among the
pronouns, without cases, where the same I, thou, he, she,
or it, answers for every object which occurs in nature;
but by this diversity in the form of the words, the caco-
phonia, which would be otherwise disgusting, is in a great
measure avoided. It is, probably, for the same reason
that the plural of each of these pronouns is so very differ¬
ent from the singular. Thus from I, mine, me, in the
singular, is formed, in the plural, we, ours, us; from thou,
thine, and thee, ye ox you, yours, you; and from he, she, it,
his, hers, its, him, her, it, in the singular, they, theirs, them,
in the plural. In all of which there is not the least re¬
semblance between the singular and plural of any one
word; and except in he, his, him; it, its; they, theirs,
them; there is not any similarity between the different
cases of the same word in the same number.
From the account here given of the personal pronouns,
it appears that the first or second will, either of them, co¬
alesce with the third, but not with each other. For ex¬
ample, it is good sense, as well as good grammar, to say in p
any language, I am he, thou art he, we were they, you were
they; but we cannot say, I am thou, nor thou art I, nor we
are you, &c. The reason is, there is no absurdity for the
speaker to be also the subject of the discourse, as when it
is said, I am he ; or for the person addressed, as when we
say, thou art he. But for the same person, in the same
circumstances, to be at once the speaker and the party ad¬
dressed, is impossible ; for which reason the coalescence
of the pronouns of the first and second persons is likewise
impossible.
I, thou, he, she, and it, are all that are usually called per¬
sonal pronouns. There is another class of words, which
are called sometimes pronominal adjectives, sometimes ad¬
jective pronouns, sometimes possessive pronouns; and by
one writer of grammar they have been most absurdly termed
pronominal articles. It is not worth while to dispute about
a name; but the words in question are my, thy, her, our
your, their. These words are evidently in the form of ad¬
jectives ; for, like other English adjectives, they have no
variation to indicate either gender, number, or case; and
yet they are put in concord with nouns of every gen¬
der and both numbers, as, my ivife, my son, my hook; her
husband, her so7is, her daughters, &c. But though in the
form of adjectives, they have the power of personal pro¬
nouns in the possessive case : my booh is the book of me,
or the book of him who now speaks ; our house is the house
of us, or the house occupied by the persons who now speak;
her husband, is the husband of a woman who can be known
only from something preceding in the discourse; and their
property is the property of them, of any persons, whether
men or women, or both, who have been previously men¬
tioned. Words which have the form of adjectives, with
the power of pronouns, may, without impropriety, be called
pronominal adjectives ; and such is the name by which we
shall henceforth distinguish them. To these pronominal
adjectives, as well as to the personal pronouns, are subjoin¬
ed the words own and self, and in the plural selves; in
which case they are emphatical, and imply a silent contra¬
riety or opposition. Thus, I live in my own house; that
is, not in a hired house. This I did with my own hand;
that is, not by proxy. This was done by myself; that is,
not by another. The word self subjoined to a personal
pronoun forms also the reciprocal pronoun ; as, we hurt our¬
selves by vain rage ; he blamed himself for his misfortune.
Himself, itself themselves, are supposed by Wallis to be put,
by corruption, for his self its self their selves; so that self
is always a substantive or noun, and not a pronoun. This
seems to be a just observation; for we say, the man came
himself, they went themselves; where the words himself and
themselves cannot be accusatives, but nominatives, and were
anciently written his self their selves.
There are other words which are usually ranked under
the class of pronouns ; as who, which, what. These, when
employed in asking questions, are called interrogative pro¬
nouns ; though a name more characteristic might surely
be found for them. Their import, however, will be more
easily ascertained after we have considered another species
of pronouns, which have been denominated relatives, and
with which they are intimately connected.
The pronouns already mentioned may be called prepo-
—
1 If we mistake not, Dr Johnson has somewhere affected to ridicule Bishop Lowth for considering the word mine as the possessive
case of the pronoun of the first person. According to the doctor, mine is the same word with the pronominal adjective my ,- and was
anciently used before a vowel, as my was befoi'e a consonant. This is not said with the lexicographer’s usual precision. Thatnttw
was anciently used before a vowel is certain ; but it does not therefore follow that it is the same word with my. If it were, wemigM
on every occasion substitute either of these for the other, without offending against grammar, however we might injure the sounj,
but we apprehend that this is not the case. “ That book is mine," is good English ; but “ that book is my" would be a gross so e-
cism. The reason is, that mine is a genuine pronoun, and stands by itself with the power of a noun; but my, being an adjective,
cannot stand by itself.
GRAM
1 is.: sive, as may indeed all substantives, because they are ca-
of introducing or leading a sentence: but there is
fjother pronoun which has a character peculiar to itself,
which, as it is never employed but to connect senten-
«5, and must therefore have always a reference to some-
ttng preceding, is called the subjunctive or relative pro-
Etin. This pronoun is in Greek, 6; 57, <j ; in Latin, qui,
qpe, quod; and in English, who, which, what.
J In order to determine with precision the nature and im-
p;-t of the relative pronoun, it will be necessary to ascer-
tm the powers which it contains, or the parts of speech
ho which it is capable of being resolved. Now, it is ob-
v.us that there is not a single noun, or prepositive pro-
run, which the relative is not capable of representing;
fi‘ we say, I who saw him yesterday cannot he mistaken;
vu who did not see him may have been misinformed;
TREY who neither saw nor heard can know nothing of the
wtter; the things which he exhibited were wonderful.
Ibm these examples, it is apparent, in the first place, that
ti: relative contains in itself the force of any other pro¬
run ; but it contains something more.
■If from any sentence in which there is a relative, that
native be taken away, and the prepositive pronoun which
i -epresents be substituted in its stead, the sentence will
Me its bond of union, and stand quite loose and uncon-
rrted. Thus, if instead of saying the man is wise who
vaks little, we should say the man is wise he speaks little,
tii sentence would be resolved into two ; and what is af¬
fined of the man’s wisdom, would have no connection
wh the circumstance of his speaking little. Hence it is
f3 dent, in the second place, that the relative contains the
flee of a connective as well as of the prepositive pronoun,
^fhat kind of connection it denotes is next to be ascer-
tined.
It may be laid down as a general principle, that, by
nans of a relative pronoun, a clause of a sentence, in
v' ich there is a verb, is converted into the nature of an
Elective, and made to denote some attribute of a sub-
j'nce, or some property or circumstance belonging to the
as ecedent noun. 1 hus, when it is said, homo qui pvu~
(Mia praditus est, the relative clause, qui prudentia pree-
ms est, expresses nothing more than the quality of pru-
t ice in concrete with the subject homo, which might have
him equally well expressed by the adjective prudens. In
Hi manner, when we say, vir sapit qui pauca loquitur,
t relative fact expresses the property of speaking little
•belonging to the man, and as being that quality which
M A R.
(>51
constitutes, or from which we infer, his wisdom; but ifPronouns.
there were such a word as pauciloquens, that quality might
very properly be expressed by it, and the phrase vir sapit
pauciloquens would express the same assertion with vir
sapit qui pauca loquitur.
Now if a relative clause expresses that which might be
expressed by an adjective, the presumption is, that it may
be resolved into the same constituent parts. But every
adjective contains the powers of an abstract substantive,
together with an expression of connection; and may be
resolved into the genitive case of that substantive, or into
the nominative with the particle of prefixed, which, in
English, corresponds to the termination of the genitive in
the ancient languages. That the member of a sentence
in which there is a relative, may, in every instance, be
analysed in the same manner, will be apparent from the
following examples. Vir qui sapit, vir sapiens, and vir
sapientice, “ a man who is wise, a wise man, and a man of
wisdom,” are certainly phrases of the same import. Again,
homo, cui ingratus est animus, malus fit amicus, may be
translated into Greek, ayfyuros dxag/tfr/aj xaxo; ymroc/ <pi\os;
and into English, “ the man of ingratitude is a bad friend.”
I hus then it appears, that the relative pronoun contains
in itself the force of the prepositive pronoun, together with
that connection implied in English by the preposition^
and in the ancient languages by the genitive case. When
one says, vir sapit qui pauca loquitur, the relative clause
qui pauca loquitur expresses that attribute of the man from
which his wisdom is inferred. It is conceived by the mind,
as stripped of its propositional form, and standing in the place
of a substantive noun governed in the genitive case by vir.
The whole sentence might be thus translated, “ the man
of little speaking is wiseor, did the use of the English
language admit of it, “ the man of he speaks little is wise.”
In like manner, when it is said, “ Man, who is born of wo¬
man, is of few days and full of trouble,” the relative clause
is equivalent to an abstract noun in the genitive case, and
the whole might be expressed in the following manner:
“ Man of fte is born of woman is of few days and full of
trouble.”
It is obvious that these expressions into which, in the
instances adduced, the relative clauses have been resolved,
will appear extremely uncouth and offensive ; but it is not
meant to recommend them as common modes of phraseo-
logy. Against their being employed as such, present use
loudly remonstrates.1 They are introduced only with a
view to show the true import of the relative pronoun ; and
It is worthy of-*observation, however, that, repugnant as such expressions are to the present idiom of the English language
re is nothing in the nature of the thing that could render the use of them improper. All prepositions, as will be seen afterwards'
«expressive of relations subsisting between those objects of which they connect the signs in discourse. Those objects may be de¬
lta, either by single words, and then the preposition will govern a noun ; or by assertions, and then it will govern a nominative
a verb. thus, when it is said, “ I came after his departure,” the preposition after expresses the relation between two events
mcoming and his departure, and governs a substantive noun ; but if it is said, “ I came after he departed,” the preposition in this
' 1 or’as shall be shown afterwards, it is absurd to call it in the one instance a preposition, and in the other a conjunction) ex-
psses the same relation as before, but governs a nominative and a verb. '
Lius last expression is exactly similar to those employed above. When one savs, for example, “ the man of he speaks little is wise ”
n-vever uncouth the expression may appear from its not being supported by the'authority of custom, the preposition of is used pre-
« iy in the same manner, and serves the very same purpose, as when it is said, “ the man of little speaking is wise.” In both cases
enotes the relation between the two objects, man and little speaking; only in the one it is prefixed to a noun, in the other to an
I™ clausf of a sentence, the import of which is to be taken as a noun. Custom has indeed determined that prepositions shall
tiih pmoses g°Vern 3 n°Un than a nominative and a verb? but the-v are> 111 their own nature, equally well adapted to answer
1 if/?, Sf pronoun,of the third Person is merely the substitute of some noun, an objector may ask, What noun is here represented
Weaks little is wise.” Who is meant by the pronoun he.« We answer, the man who is declared to be wise. The
rnt of ,P nC?u- , lnattoellfl0n to the radical signification of the word of, which a late ingenious writer has shown to be the fra<r.
fflen Ltiv.i? °r An«!°-Saxon signifying consequence or offspring. If this be admitted, and, after the proofs which he has
l "’ J tmnkft cannot be denied, the uncouth phrase, “ The man of he speaks little is wise,” may be thus resolved, “ The man,
L f° '? mind is) Ac speaks little, is wise; or, in other words. “ The man, in consequence of his speaking little, is wise.”
t onpLf,e r,riter’. ])Ir Ho,:ne r°oke’ has show" that °f al,d/°r> th<mgh of different radical meanings, may often be substituted
C asp win i K ° Pr wllbour^ injury to the sense. Let this substitution be made in the present instance, and the propriety of the
• made in p appare.nt: Phe man is yvisf/or he sPeak? little” 11 must be remembered, however, that such a substitution cannot
ut-111 every instance, because/or signifies cause, and of signifies consequence.
652
GRAMMAR.
Prunouns. for that purpose they are well adapted. That pronoun
seems to be of use only when there is a deficiency of ad¬
jectives or substantives to denote some complex attribute
by which we want to limit a general term or expression.
Where such adjectives or substantives exist in language,
we may indeed use the relative or not at pleasure. Thus
we may say, homo qui grandia loquitur, or homo grandi-
loquus ; because the adjective and the relative clause are
precisely of the same meaning. But if the Latins were
called upon to translate avOguvrof uurobidaxroQ, we believe
they must have made use of the relative pronoun, as we
know not any corresponding adjective in their language.
The learned and ingenious Mr Harris, in his Treatise
on Universal Grammar, has given an analysis of the rela¬
tive pronoun very different from that which has been given
by us. The result of his inquiry is, that the relative is
equivalent to another pronoun, together with an expres¬
sion of connection of that kind which is denoted by the
particle and. This analysis he exemplifies, and endeavours
to confirm, by the sentence, “ Light is a body which
moves with great celerity.” Now, says he, instead of which
substitute the word and it, and in their united powers you
see the force and character of the pronoun here treated.
But let any one attentively consider these two expressions,
“ Light is a body which moves with great celerity,” and
“ Light is a body and it moves with great celerityand
he will find that they are not precisely equivalent. For, to
speak in the language of logic, there is in the first but one
proposition, of which the subject is light, and the predicate
a complex term expressed by the words, body which moves
with great celerity. In the second there are two proposi¬
tions, or two predications, concerning light; first, that it is
a body ; and, secondly, that it moves with great celerity.
The relative clause, in the first case, expresses a property
of the antecedent body, which, with that property, is pre¬
dicated of the subject light; in the second case, this pro¬
perty is removed from the predicate of which it was an es¬
sential part, and is improperly converted into a new predi¬
cation of the subject. The sentence may be resolved upon
our principles, and its precise import preserved; a^ “ Light
is a body of it moves with great celerity; ” the clause “ it
moves with great celerity,” is conceived by the mind as
having the force of an abstract substantive, and is connect¬
ed with the antecedent body by the preposition of, answer¬
ing to the termination of the genitive case. This abstract
substantive thus connected expresses a quality of the body
light. But by this example Mr Harris’s doctrine is not ex¬
hibited in all its absurdity ; it may be proper to try it by
another.
Let us suppose that the following assertion is true ;
“ Charles XII. was the only monarch who conquered king¬
doms to bestow them on his friends.” Here it is evident
there is but one proposition, of which the predicate is ex¬
pressed by the words, “ only monarch who conquered king¬
doms to bestow them on his friendsso that the relative
clause is a necessary part of the predicate, and has, like an
abstract noun in the genitive case, the effect of modifying
the general term monarch. Resolve this sentence on Mr
Harris’s principles, and you have two propositions of which
the first is a notorious falsehood: “ Charles XII. was the
only monarch, and he conquered kingdoms to bestow them
on his friends.” But instead of and substitute of, thus,
“ Charles XII. was the only monarch of he conquered king¬
doms to bestow them on his friends,” and you preserve the
true import of the expression.1
Are there no cases, then, in which the relative may be Pro
resolved into the connective and with a prepositive pr0. v!?
noun ? Undoubtedly there are, and we shall now endea- ^
vour to ascertain them.
Adjectives in language have two different effects upon
the substantives to which they belong, according to the na-
ture of the attribute which they express. If the attribute
expressed by the adjective be competent to all the species
of which the substantive is the specific name, it is plain
that the adjective does not modify or limit the substantive
for this obvious reason, that nothing can modify which is
not discriminative. Thus, when Horace says, Praia canu
albicant pruinis, the adjective canis denotes a quality com¬
mon to all hoarfrost; and therefore cannot modify the sub¬
stantive, because it. adds nothing to the conception of which
that substantive is the name. But when the attribute ex¬
pressed by the adjective is competent to some individuals
only of the species of which the substantive is the name,
the adjective has then the effect of modifying or limiting
the substantive. Thus when one says vir bonus, he makes
use of an adjective which modifies the substantive, be¬
cause it expresses a Quality or attribute which does not be¬
long to all men.
The clause of a sentence, in which there is a relative,
as it is in every other respect, so is it in this, equivalent
to an adjective; it either modifies, or does not modify,
the antecedent, according as the attribute which it ex¬
presses is or is not characteristic of the species to which
the antecedent belongs. Thus, when it is said, “ Man, who
is born of woman, is of few days and full of trouble,” the
relative clause “ who is born of woman,” expresses an
attribute common to all men, and therefore cannot mo¬
dify. In like manner, when we say, “ Socrates, who
taught moral philosophy, was virtuous,” the clause, “who
taught moral philosophy,” does not modify. In both these
instances the relative clause might be omitted; and it
might be said with equal truth, “ Man is of few days and
full of trouble,” and “ Socrates was virtuous.”
But if it be said, vir sapit qui pauca loquitur, the rela¬
tive clause, qui pauca loquitur, modifies the antecedent
vir; for it is not affirmed of every man that he is wise,
but only of such men as speak little. So “ Charles XII.
was the only monarch who conquered kingdoms to be¬
stow them on his friends and, “ the man that endureth
to the end shall be savedwith many more examples
that will occur to every reader.
Now it will be found that it is only when the relative
clause expresses such a property or circumstance of the
antecedent as does not limit its signification, that the re¬
lative pronoun can be resolved into a prepositive pronoun
with the conjunction and, and that in these cases the re¬
lative clause itself is of very little importance. Thus in
the assertion, “ Charles XII. was the only monarch who
conquered kingdoms to bestow them on his friends,
where the relative clause is restrictive, the who cannot
be resolved into and ^consistently with truth or common
sense. But in the expression, “ Man, who is born of wo¬
man, is of few days and full of trouble,” the relative w/w
may be so resolved, at least without violating truth, thus,
“ man is of few days and full of trouble, and he is born of
a woman.” The only difference between the sentence
with the relative who, and the same sentence thus resolv¬
ed, is, that, in the former case, it contains but one predica¬
tion ; in the latter two, and these but loosely connected.
Thus, then, it appears that the general analysis of the
1 Mr Harris was probably led into his opinion, from considering the Latin qui or quis as compounded of que and is (See Hermcti
p. 81, 82, third edit.). But the notion of Perizonius is perhaps better founded, who, in his notes to the Minerva of Sanctius, cons’-
ders it as immediately taken from the Greek ns, which in the Doric is made and in the Latin quis. For it seems highly proba ^
as some ingenious writers have endeavoured to show, that the Latin is a dialect of the Greek. Of this at least we may be certai ,
that many words in the former are immediately adopted from the latter.
(>#1/
,ybf
le o
iatis
Iftb
an 3
see
iolve
II no'
©nc
indal
spee
lich
and i
twit
;con
:t;"
aceiv
exai
liclii
:in t'
:mii
tffO
Ijoi:
it tin
Ibis
dilie:
ivec
D,tll
serv
esno
esno
Mb
ecla
two;
!cor
/.
los
eve
it is
:es$a
ailic!
tbes
dent,
tof
ads.
ena1
posit
aodil
ative
I not
dica
netbi
ibe
spec:
ierei
said.
puni
i11)
ite a
ij01
affirn
sonii
ive,;
ion;
0tbei
?tri
GRAMMAR.
653
restive pronoun is into the particle of, and a prepositive
prioun; but that there are also occasions on which it
ni^ be resolved into a prepositive pronoun and the par-
tii.; and, without materially altering the sense. Now,
wiit is the reason of this distinction ?
ii f the relative clause be equivalent to an adjective, or
to:n abstract substantive in the genitive case, it is easy
toiee that the relative itself may, in every instance, be
reylved into another pronoun and the particle of; but it
w not perhaps be quite so evident how it should in any
inrance be resolved by and. This last analysis has its
foudation in the nature of the particles of and and; or,
to:3peak more properly, in the nature of the attribute
w ch the relative clause expresses. Both the particles
ojtnd and are used to link or join conceptions together ;
bi with this difference, that of has the effect of making
tb conceptions it connects figure in the mind as one ob-
jej; whereas the conceptions connected by and are still
coceived separately as before. To explain ourselves by
an xample : suppose we take two words, man and virtue,
wch denote two distinct ideas or conceptions, and join
tllm together by the particle of, saying man of virtue;
tf1 mind no longer views them separately as significant
of wo conceptions, but of one. Take the same words,
ai join them together by the particle and, saying man
m virtue; the conceptions denoted by man and virtue
an still viewed separately as two, and notice is only given
tilt they are collaterally connected.
’his being the case, it follows, that when the relative
nullifies the antecedent, or, in other words, when the re¬
late clause and the antecedent denote but one concep-
tiii, the relative must then be resolved by of, in order to
pmserve this unity of conception. But when the relative
dils not modify the antecedent; that is, when its clause
duls not express any necessary part of a complex concep-
tiii, then the conceptions or ideas denoted by the rela-
tii clause and the antecedent may be viewed separately
asi wo; and therefore the relative may be resolved into
til corresponding prepositive pronoun and the particle
0»;
'o state this reasoning in a light somewhat different.
hi every relative clause, which expresses an attribute
tilt is not applicable to a whole genus or species, must
nwessarily modify some general term, that is, restrict its
sibification ; and as that general term must belong either
tc he subject or to the predicate of a proposition ; it is
eMent, that every such relative clause is a necessary
pi t of that subject or predicate in which its antecedent
stiids. If therefore a relative clause, which modifies, be
ts -n away either from the subject or the predicate of a
pi )osition ; or if that connection, in consequence of which
ittiodifies, be dissolved, which is always done when the
rutive is resolved by and; then the proposition itself
w not hold true. The reason is, that the subject or the
P’ licate becomes then too general; for, in the one case,
soiething is predicated of a whole genus or species, which
CK be predicated only of some individuals of that genus
oripecies ; and in the other, a general predication is made
w re only a particular one can be applied. Thus, if it
b*said, “ all men who transgress the laws are deserving
o mnishmentthe subject of the proposition is express-
e by the words, “ all men who transgress the laws.”
Tie away the clause of the relative “ who transgress
tk laws,” and say, “ all men are deserving of punishment
®11 you have a proposition which is not true, because that
is tfirmed of the whole species which can be affirmed only
ome individuals. Retaining now the clause of the re-
WH'e, but resolving it by and, you have the same propo-
sjpn as before; and together with it, in this instance,
afther which is equally false, namely, “ all men, and
Mb transgress the laws, are deserving of punishment
that is, “ all men are deserving of punishment, and all men Pronouns,
transgress the laws.”
But when the attribute expressed by the clause of the
relative is characteristic of the genus or species of the an¬
tecedent, and consequently applicable to every individual
which that genus or species comprehends, the relative
clause may be entirely omitted without affecting the truth
of the proposition, w'hich is already as general as it can
be. As in this case the import of the relative clause is
not restrictive of the signification of the antecedent, it is
of little consequence whether the attribute be represent¬
ed by the connective part of the relative, as of the ante¬
cedent, or be affirmed to belong to the antecedent in a
separate assertion. Thus it matters not much, whether
we say, “ man, who is subject to death, ought not to be
too much elated,” that is, according to our analysis, “ man
of he is subject to death, ought not to be too much elated;”
or whether, forming the relative clause into a separate as¬
sertion, and connecting the two by the particle and, we
say “ man, and he is subject to death, ought not to be too
much elated.” In the one sentence, indeed, the reason
is implied why man should not be too much elated, his
being subject to death ; and in the other, no reason is as¬
signed for this; we only affirm that man is subject to
death, and likewise that he should not be too much elat¬
ed ; but as both affirmations are equally true and evident,
it is of little consequence, in such a case as this, whether
the reason upon which either is founded be implied or not.
From the whole of this investigation, the following con¬
clusions may be deduced as sufficiently established : ls£,
That the relative pronoun contains in itself the united
powers of a connective and another pronoun. 2dly, That
of is the connective of which, together with another pro¬
noun, it contains the powers, as in every possible instance
it may be resolved into these constituent parts, and the
import of the sentence in which it has place remain un¬
altered. 3dly, That in the ancient languages the relative
clause of a sentence has the import of an abstract sub¬
stantive in the genitive case ; in English, with the particle
of prefixed, kthly, That the relative pronoun is of ne¬
cessary use only where there is a deficiency of adjectives
or substantives to denote some complex attribute, by
which we want to limit a general term or expression;
but that where such adjectives or substantives exist in
language, we may use the relative or not at pleasure. And,
bihly. That though, in cases where the relative clause does
not limit a general term, the relative pronoun may, with¬
out violating truth, be anatysed by and; yet such analysis
is never proper, as it gives two predicates to the same
subject, which, in the original proposition, had but one
predicate.
If the clause of the relative be equivalent to an adjective,
as in every instance it seems to be, it will naturally occur,
that in the ancient languages, the relative should agree
with its antecedent in gender, number, and case. They
do agree for the most part in gender and number; in case
they cannot often, because the very intention of introdu¬
cing a relative into language is to represent the antecedent
in a different case. Whenever we have occasion to use a
substantive or noun in a clause of a sentence, and after¬
wards to express by another clause, in which there is a
verb, an attribute of the object denoted by that substantive,
we then employ the relative pronoun. Now it seldom
happens that the two clauses admit of the same regimen;
and hence the case of the relative is often necessarily dif¬
ferent from that of the antecedent, as the case of each must
be accommodated to the clause in which it is found. Thus
we cannot say, “ Deus qui colimus bonus estbut, “ Deus
quem colimus bonus estbecause the regimen of the verb
colo is always the accusative.
This shows the necessity of introducing a relative into
• those languages which give inflexions to their nouns. Were
all the nouns of a language indeclinable, there would be
little occasion for a relative; and accordingly in English it
is often omitted. Examples are frequent in our best au¬
thors. Suffice it to quote the following.
For I have business would employ an age Rowe.
I had several men died in my ship of calentures.—Swift.
They affect to guess at the object they cannot see Rolingbroke.
We are not ignorant that our most eminent grammarians
consider such expressions as chargeable with impropriety;
and we are far from recommending them in any dignified
or solemn composition. But in the instances adduced there
is not the smallest degree of obscurity; at least there is
none occasioned by the omission of the relative. The rea¬
son seems to be, that the mind can easily, by an effort of
its own, make the antecedent unite, first with the one
clause, and then with the other. Thus, when it is said,
“ I have business would employ an age,” the mind can,
without any difficulty, as the word business has no inflex¬
ions, consider it first as the objective case after have, and
then as the nominative to would employ ; but this cannot
be so easily done in the ancient languages, where the ter¬
mination of the noun is changed by the variation of its cases.
Both in the learned and in the living languages the rela¬
tive has different forms, corresponding to the different gen¬
ders of nouns; and by these it gives notice w hether it is
applied to persons, or to things without life. Thus in the
English language we say, The man or the woman who went
to Rome ; The tree which stands on yonder plain. It ad¬
mits likewise, when applied to males or females, a variation
of cases similar to that of the personal pronouns. Thus we
say, The man whose book is now before me ; The man or
woman whom I saw yesterday; but the neuter admits of
no such distinction,1 as we say, The tree which I saw, as
well as The tree which stands on yonder plain. In modern
languages the relative admits not of any distinction to de¬
note number; for we say, The man or the men who came
yesterday; The man or the men of whom I speak.
In English, the word that, which by some has been call¬
ed a demonstrative pronoun, by others a pronominal arti¬
cle, and by us a definite article, is often used instead of the
relative, as in the following examples: “ He is the same
man that I saw yesterday; he was the ablest prince that
ever filled a throne.” With regard to the principle upon
which this acceptation of the word that depends, w e beg
to oft’er the following conjecture.
In English, from the phlegmatic arrangement of the
language, occasioned by the want of inflexions and conju¬
gations, the place of every part of a sentence is almost uni¬
formly determined, and very little variety is allowed in the
collocation of the w'ords. The adjective is almost always
placed in apposition with its substantive, and the nomina¬
tive with its verb. In consequence of this uniformity in
the collocation of the words, the mind acquires a habit of
connecting in idea any kind of word with the place in which
it is used to stand; and is naturally led to consider every
word which stands in such a place as belonging to such a
class. Hence it is, we imagine, that the definitive tjiat
passes into the nature of the relative pronoun; as in those
instances in which it occupies the place of the relative, it
was natural to consider it as having the same import. Yet
the word that has undoubtedly in itself no more the force
of the relative pronoun than the or this, or any other defi¬
nitive whatever. In such expressions as the foregoing, it
is not improbable that originally the clause of the definitive
that, which we now call the relative clause, was thrown in
as a kind of modifying circumstance, thus, “ The book (I
read that) is elegant,” where the speaker, finding the word P
book too general for his purpose, throws in a clause to qua-
lify and restrict it, or to confine his affirmation to that par' ^
ticular book which he is then reading. We can easily sup¬
pose that through time the definitive that in such an expres¬
sion might be transposed or removed from its own place to
that of the relative ; so that the expression would run thus
“ The book that I read is elegant;” which would be consi¬
dered as precisely equivalent to “ The book which I read
is elegant.” This opinion is not a little confirmed by a si¬
milar use of the article in Greek, which, though undoubt¬
edly a definitive like the English the, is often used instead
of the relative pronoun. Numberless examples may be
found in Homer and Herodotus, especially in the latter,
who seldom uses what is properly called the relative. We
shall produce one instance from each.
Eis'sa/ Aroiibnv Ayap'/ivova,, TON teji ■sranTwv
Zsu? tinnxt Troicmi 'cmuTipf.—Homer.
Ogxniiri yap fezyaXoin xarzeYoiTo {sell. A^nvaiot) dzxa
zna xonma6ai yoponri TOTS av tr<piri loXun/ 6nrai. Herodot.
We have said that the interrogative pronouns, as thev
are called, who, which, what, are intimately connected with
relatives; we now affirm, that the two first of these words
are nothing but relatives, and that the last contains in itself
the united powers of a relative and a definitive. With re¬
spect to cases, number, and gender, the words who and
which, when employed as interrogatives, differ not from the
same words when employed as relatives; and we hold it
as a maxim, without which science could not be applied to
the subject of language, that the same word has always the
same radical import, in whatever different situations it may
be placed. To understand this, it is necessary to observe,
that all men have a natural propensity to communicate
their thoughts in the fewest words possible: hence it fol¬
lows, that words are often omitted which are necessary to
complete the construction of the sentence; and this no¬
where happens more frequently than in the use of who and
which. In sentences where these words are confessedly re¬
latives, we often find them without an antecedent; as,
Who steals my purse steals trash Shakspeare.
Which who would learn, as soon may tell, &c Dryden.
Qui Bavium non edit, amet tua carmina, Mccvi Virg.
That is, “ He who steals my purse Which he who would
learn, as soon may tell;” and “ Ille qui Bavium non odit,"
Sec. Such abbreviations occasion no obscurity, because
from previous circumstances the hearer knows the mind of
the speaker and the persons to whom he refers. But it is
not with respect to the relative and antecedent only that
such abbreviations have place; in sentences of a different
form, whole clauses are sometimes omitted, whilst the
meaning of the speaker is made sufficiently plain. Thus,
when King Richard III. having lost his horse in battle, ex¬
claims,
A horse ! a horse ! my kingdom for a horse!
there is no complete thought expressed; but the circum¬
stances in which the king then was, enabled those about
him to understand that he ivanted a horse. Accordingly
Catesby answers him,
Withdraw, my lord; I’ll help you to a horse.
In like manner, wdien a person asks a question, his ex¬
pression is frequently incomplete ; but the tone of his voice,
or some other circumstance, enables us to ascertain hb
meaning, and to supply, if we please, the words that are
omitted. Thus when it is said, An fecisti ? nothing more
is expressed than If you did it, the Latin an being nothing
else but the Greek av, si; but some circumstance enables
the person who hears it to know that the meaning is, “ Sa\
Whose is by some authors made the possessive case of which, and applied to things as well as persons; I think, improperly.—
Lswth.
tfU c
■iiV!
anal’
ipletf
our I
e tin
licat(
1 frn
■bee
rrog£
ible
cede
K wi
).
e wit
out
e inf
^nati
ence
ation
in, w
iEdi
iat /
a pi
ation
on c
o mi
sdgi
shot
titivc
sup[
te, ii
JOUt
did i
for,
re in
eof
ted,
sh as
ation
(has
re th
sfore
is,
n tin
Toga
igati'
imst;
nts
i fine
r set
ns d
or
:ral,
ame
id at
sof
Pri'[
first,
. otln
hose
force
he w
Hen,
he int
hi am
ditioi
GRAMMAR.
655
c«l friend.” That this is indeed the case, every man
it f be convinced, by asking himself what he means by the
ir^rrogative ivho in such a sentence; for he will find it im-
pi ;ible to affix to it any meaning without supplying an
ai *cedent clause, by which that which is called an interro-
gatve wall be immediately converted into the relative pro-
n
if ou did it. Let us apply these observations to the monly called substantives primary or secondary, and de- Verbs.
w*ds who and which. If these words be relatives, and if finitives; because nouns are significant of substances;  •—
out analysis of the relative be just, it is obvious, that no pronouns are the substitutes of nouns; and the article
complete meaning can be contained in the clause, “ Vv ho serves to ascertain the extent of the noun, and to deter-
is our principal fiiend: for that clause contains nothing mine whether on any occasion it be significant of a whole
nye than the circumstance of being your principal friend class of substances, or only of one individual. But <mb-
pflicated of some unknown person ; “ of he is your prin- stances are of importance to mankind only on account of
their various qualities or attributes; for their internal tex¬
ture is a thing of which we are profoundly ignorant, and
with which we have no manner of concern. Thus, ex¬
perience teaches us that certain vegetables are pleasant
to the taste, and wholesome food; whilst others are un-
- pleasant and poisonous. The former kinds are valuable
I he custom, however, of language, and the tone of only for their qualities or attributes; and they are the
e with which the relative clause is uttered, intimates, qualities or attributes of the latter that make them worth-
out the help of the antecedent, the wish of the speaker less or hurtful. A horse is strong, and swift, and docile.
tc|e informed by the person addressed of the name and and may be trained to carry a man on a journey, or to dra°-
detignation of his principal friend ; and we know that the a plough. It is for his strength, swiftness, and docility, that
se ence when completed is, “ Tell me the name and de- he is the most valuable of all quadrupeds. One man is
si ation of the person who is your principal friend.” brave, another learned, and another eloquent; and by pos-
A0.in, when the prophet says, “ Who is this that cometh sessing these different qualities or attributes, each is fitted
fr i Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah ?” he utters for a different station in society. It is plain, therefore,
bi part of a sentence, which when completed will run that in contemplating substances, our attention must be
th “Describe the joersorc who cometh from Edom (this principally bestowed upon their qualities, and that the
is: hat person), with dyed garments frona Bozrah.” He words which serve to denote these qualities must be an
se a person coming from Edom, of whose name and de- essential part of language. Such words are in general
sigation he is ignorant; he calls upon some one for infor- called attributives, and are of three sorts, verbs, partici-
maon concerning these particulars; and that there may pies, and adjectives.
be to mistake, he describes the unknown person as having Of all the constituent parts of speech, none has given the
“ed garments from Bozrah ;” but lest even that descrip- grammarians greater trouble than the verb. The vast va-
should not be sufficiently accurate, he throws in the riety of circumstances which it blends together in one word
hi live clause, “ this is that person,” pointing at him, we throws very considerable difficulties in the way of him who
suppose, with his finger. Which, used as an interro- attempts to analyse it and ascertain its nature ; at the same
ve, indicates a wish of knowing a particular person or time that, by its eminent use in language, it is entitled to
thig out of more than one mentioned; as, “ Which of the all the attention which can be bestowed upon it. To the
tw'idid it?” that is, “ Tell me the one of the two which did discussion of the verb, Mr Harris, whose notions of this
it i for, in old English, which as a relative is often used, as of the other parts of speech have been generally adopted
wflre in modern English we should say who; and that by the subsequent writers on grammar, has dedicated a
ra^e of speech is still retained when the antecedent is large proportion of his book, in which he has thrown out
orrtted, and the relative clause employed to indicate such many excellent observations, mixed, as it appears to us,
alsh as that before us. What includes in itself the sig- with several errors. We have already observed, that no
nifation of a definitive and a relative pronoun ; as, “ from man is ignorant when he uses what is called a verb and
wfy has gone before, ivhat follows may easily be guessed j” when a noun. Every schoolboy knows that the words is,
wljre the word ichat is equivalent to that which. When loveth, walheth, standeth, in English, and est, amat, amatur,
tlflefore we say, “ What rude fellow is that ?” our mean- ambulat, stat, in Latin, are verbs ; he knows likewise that
is, “Describe that perso?i who is that rude fellow.” they are of different kinds, that some of them are said to
•n the whole, then, it is evident, that the words called be active, some passive, and some neuter. But it should
rrogatives are merely relative pronouns ; and that in- seem that the first object of our investigation ought to be
'gative sentences are relative clauses uttered in such the characteristic of the verb, or that which all these words
arpmstances as to enable the hearer to supply the ante- have in common, and which constitutes them verbs, dis-
ce^nts necessary to complete the meaning. tinguishing them from every other species of words. Now
i fine, we have seen that substantives are either prima- it is obvious to the slightest attention, that every verb,
whether active, passive, or neuter, may be resolved into
the substantive verb is, and another attributive; for loveth
is of the same import with is loving; walketh, with is
rfr secondary; or, in other words, nouns or pronouns.
N$ns denote substances, and those either natural, artifi-
cid or abstract. They moreover denote things either
gperal, or special, or particular; and a general or speci- walking ; and amat, with amans est. But loving, walking,
fiepame is made to denote an individual by means of words and amans, are not verbs; and hence it follows, that the
cjjpd articles or definitives. Pronouns are the substi- characteristic of the verb, that which constitutes it what
tuks of nouns, and are either prepositive or subjunctive, it is, and cannot be expressed by other words, must be
fh prepositive is distinguished into three orders, called that which is signified by the word is ; and to us that ap~
tin first, the second, and the third person. The subjunc- pears to be neither more nor less than assertion.
Ms otherwise called the relative, includes the powers of Assertion, therefore, or predication, is certainly the
ajHiose three, having superadded as of its own the pecu- very essence of the verb, as being that part of its office,
ha'force of a connective. and that part only, which cannot be discharged by other
TV Of V l kinds of words.1 Every other circumstance which the
UJ Verbs. verb inciudes, such as attribute, mode, time, it maybe
|fhe words which we have hitherto considered are com- possible to express by adjectives, participles, and adverbs ;
1
Hence a common noun, or even a proper name, may be converted into a verb by being rendered assertive or predicative. Thus,
‘♦j :>e indignant rebuke addressed by Hob Jtoy to Rashleigh Osbaldistone. “ Don’t Mr or Campbell me, sir ; my foot is on my native
iieUi, and my name is Macgregorthe proper name “ Campbell,'” being that which Rob usually assumed in his lowland and southern
eX 'ditions, is converted into a verb, and great force thereby given to the exclamation. {Dr Hunter.)
656
GRAMMAR.
Verbs, bat without a verb it is impossible to predicate, to affirm
or deny, any one thing of any other thing. The office of
the verb, then, when stript of all accidental circumstances,
seems to be merely this: “ To join together the subject
and predicate of a proposition.” Its powers are analogous
to those of the sign -f* in algebra, which does not affect
the separate value of the quantities between which it is
placed, but only indicates their union or coalescence. To
explain by an example: When we say, Cicero eloquens,
Cicero wise: these are imperfect sentences, though they
denote a substance and an attribute. The reason is, that
they want an assertion, to show that such an attribute ap¬
pertains to such a substance. But when we insert the
word was, we join the substance and attribute together;
we give notice that the wisdom and eloquence are applied
to Cicero, and we do nothing more; we neither increase
the wisdom nor diminish it, we neither make it real nor
imaginary; for it was supposed in all its extent when the
words Cicero and wise stood independent of each other.
We may indeed use the verb in a form which implies not
an assertion only, but likewise an attribute; as when we
say, George writeth, or George walketh. But as whiteness
or any other particular colour is not of the essence of a
horse, an animal which is found of all colours; so, in the
phrases quoted, the attribute, though implied, is not of the
essence of the verb ; for it may be equally well expressed
by other words, as George is writing, and George is walk¬
ing, which are phrases of the very same import with
George writeth and George walketh.
In resolving every verb, whether active, passive, or
neuter, into the substantive verb is and another attribu¬
tive, we have the honour to agree with all the gramma¬
rians ; but to the word is itself the learned author of
Hermes has given a meaning which, as a verb, it does not
admit. He observes, that before any thing can be the
subject of a proposition, it must exist; that all existence is
either absolute or qualified, mutable or immutable; that
the verb is can by itself express absolute existence, but
never the qualified, without subjoining the particular form;
and that it signifies both mutable and immutable exist¬
ence, having in these cases different meanings, although
the sentences which he gives as examples are evidently
constructed in the same manner, and consist of the same
parts of speech. His examples are: Of absolute exist¬
ence, B is : of qualified, B is an animal; of mutable, This
orange is ripe; of immutable, The diagonal of the square
is incommensurable with its sides. But if predication be
the essence of verb, all this is nothing to the purpose, and
part of it is not true. It is not true that the verb is ever
varies its signification; for it has as verb no connection
with existence of any kind. All such circumstances are
superadded to its verbal nature ; or, to speak more accu¬
rately, we infer such circumstances from our previous
knowledge of the objects concerning which the predica¬
tion is made. When we say, “ This orange is ripe,” we
do indeed mean, as Mr Harris observes, that it is so now
at this present in opposition to past and future time; but
it is not the verb is, but the definitive this, which fixes the
time of maturity, as well as the place, of the orange. If
we had said, Oranges are ripe, we might have been pro¬
perly asked, When and where are they ripe ? although
the same verb is used in both sentences. Even in the
sentence B is, absolute existence, the most simple of all,
is inferred, and not expressed, by the verb; and the infe¬
rence is made from this obvious principle, that when one V
utters a mark of predication, we naturally conclude that ^v!j
he means to predicate something of the subject. If he
adds no specific predication, as B is round, we apply to
B the most general that we can ; and what other species
is so general as existence?
That the idea of existence, considered as mutable or
immutable, is not contained in the verb is itself, but is de¬
rived from our knowledge of the objects concerning which
the predication is made, appears manifestly from this, that
if a person be supposed ignorant of the meaning of the
words God and man, whilst he knows that of is, the ut-
tering of the two propositions, God is happy, and This
man is happy, will give him no notice of existence con¬
sidered as mutable or immutable, temporary or eternal.1
His conclusion with respect to these modes of existence,
if any such conclusion be drawn at all, must be derived
entirely from his previous knowledge of the nature of God
and the nature of man.
Some of our readers may possibly think this notion of
verb too abstract and metaphysical; yet what other cir¬
cumstance than mere predication is essential to that spe¬
cies of words? WTe say essential; for we are inquiring,
not what is expressed by each individual verb, but ivhat
it is which is equally expressed by all verbs, and which
distinguishes them from the other parts of speech. And
if it be true, that every thing which the verb implies, pre¬
dication alone excepted, may be expressed by other parts
of speech, and that no other parts of speech can predicate,
then we think ourselves warranted to affirm, that simple
predication is the essential characteristic of verb; that
every word which predicates is a verb ; and that nothing
is so which does not predicate.
It must not, however, be concealed, that a doctrine
very different from this has been maintained by a writer of
distinguished abilities. “We have energy expressed,”
says Ur Gregory,2 “ and of course a verb constituted with¬
out affirmation, when we wish or command; without com¬
mand, when we affirm or wish ; without wish, when we
command or affirm ; yet in all these cases we have equal¬
ly and indisputably a verb.”
That in all these cases we have a verb, is indeed indis¬
putable ; but we hold it to be equally indisputable, that
in all these cases we have affirmation. The ingenious
author has given no direct example of a wish or command
uttered without affirmation ; and a feeling or sentiment
which is not uttered has nothing to do with language;
but he has given a sentence in which there are three
verbs, that in his opinion denote no affirmation, but a very
plain supposition. If a supposition can be expressed with¬
out affirmation, we shall very readily allow that a wish or
command may be so expressed likewise. The doctors
supposition is thus expressed: “ Had any punishment
ever overtaken you for your broken vows ; were but one
of your teeth growing black, or even were but one of your
nails growing less beautiful, I should believe you.” It is
almost superfluous to observe, that to every verb not in
the infinitive mode there must be a nominative, and to
every active verb an object, whatever be the arrangement
of the sentence in which such verbs are found. These
are truths known to every schoolboy; the reasons of them
shall be afterwards given. It is likewise undeniable, that
in the sentence before us the nominative to “ had” is “ any
punishment;” to the first, “ were one of yrour teeth; and
1 The truth of this observation may be proved by experiment, as, for instance, by uttering to a man of good common sense these
two propositions, taking care to express the words God and man in a language which he does not understand. Thus, Beus is happih
and hie homo is happy, uttered to a man totally unacquainted with the Latin tongue, will contain no notice of existence considered as
mutable or immutable.
2 Theory of the Moods of Verls, published in vol. ii. of the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
,(0
nf'
I he
!he
«P
liel
(ff
l;ii;
ill
«
rif?
;)ii!
jmt
!*'
lie
m
:iet
k
he
nen
p
iL
la
ipio
' er
igi
lb
■ )tn
i lit
l lit
itio
iete
ing
jjy
i ll<
»at
Sire
vidi
laci
i id
ingi
'fiat
mtD|
tltli
SI
a lag
rac
uce
he i
lie
■' hit
ies
• on
a ian
1 OH'i
cat
«ect
* Illy
’lilat
Hoc
f'erti
"is
Hod
»Of;
V
I
GRAMMAR.
657
tcthe second, “ one of your nails.” But the sentence ar-
/ rsged in grammatical order, with the several nominatives
bji'ore their respective verbs, is evidently elliptical; and
tl conjunction if must be supplied as well to complete
tlr construction as to make sense of the passage. “ If any
p iishment had ever overtaken you ; if but one of your
teth were growing black, or even if but one of your nails
w^e growing less beautiful, I should believe you.” Now
ifcias been proved, by such evidence as leaves no room
fee doubt, that if though called a conjunction, is in fact
a erb in the imperative mode, of the same import with
gne; so that we may substitute the one for the other
w'hout in the smallest degree altering the sense. The
setence will then run thus: “ Give any punishment had
e^r overtaken you; give but one of your teeth were growing
bll:k, &c. I should believe you.” It is therefore so far from
b«ng true, that had and were, when the sentence is com¬
piled, express no affirmation ; that it is onty upon grant-
im the truth of the affirmation which they denote that
tl speaker says, “ I should believe you,” “ Any punish-
mnt had ever overtaken you,” is plainly an affirmation;
if jive that affirmation, admit its truth, “ I should believe
yk” But it cannot be supposed that had and were
clmge their significations by a mere change of place, or
tkt by being removed from the middle to the beginning
ofla clause they lose their original import, and come to
daote something entirely different. Were this the case,
ewy attempt to ascertain and fix the general principles
ofijrammar would be as ridiculous as an attempt to arrest
tlr course of time. For what purpose, then, it may be
asied, if the verb always denotes affirmation, is it removed
frn the middle to the beginning of the clause, when sup-
pcition is implied, as in the present instance ? We an-
s»r, that supposition is neither more nor less than con-
diional affirmation; that when such affirmation is com-
pllely expressed, the verb is not removed to the begin-
niq of the clause; and that such removal takes place
oid,' when the clause is elliptical, being merely an artifi-
cii contrivance in language, to show the reader or hearer
tht some such word as if, demanding the truth of the
affrmation, is omitted for the sake of dispatch. This is
eident; for when the word requiring the affirmation to
begranted is supplied, the verb must be restored to its
plbe in the middle of the clause. Such abbreviations,
ar such contrivances to mark them, are frequent in all
laguages, as will be seen more clearly when we come to
tr it of modes or moods. Upon the whole, then, we are
ceipelled reluctantly to differ from this writer, and still
tcohink that simple predication is the essence of the verb.
Should we be required to exemplify our theory by lan-
gtuge, and to produce instances of this simplified verb in
pnetice, we might answer, that the not being able to pro-
due such instances would be no good argument against
tlfl truth of our principles. It is the nature of language
tcoxpress many circumstances by the same word, all of
wiich, however, are not essential to distinguish the spe-
ci i to which that word belongs from the other species of
wi ds ; and it is the nature of man to infer from discourse
miy things which are not actually expressed. Perhaps,
haever, something very nearly approaching to an exempli-
fittion of our idea of a simple verb will be found in the
proposition, “ The three angles of every plane triangle Verbs.
are equal to two right angles.” What other office the
verb are here performs than simply to join the subject
and predicate, it is difficult to perceive. It does not give
notice of time; or such notice, if given, is an imperfec¬
tion ; for the truth of the proposition is independent of
time. Neither ought it to imply existence ; for the pro¬
position would be true were there neither a triangle nor
a right angle in nature.
This idea of verb, when well considered, will be found
just; but should any of our readers suspect it of novelty,
and on that account be disposed to condemn it, we have
only to request that he will restrain his censure till he has
examined the writings of others, and nicely observed the
several states of his own mind in discourse; for medita¬
tion may perhaps show him that our theory is not false,
and inquiry will satisfy him that it is not novel.1
But although it is certain that assertion, and assertion
only, is essential to the verb, yet the greater part of that
species of words which grammarians call verbs are used
to denote an attribute as well as an assertion; or, in the
language of logic, they express both the copula and the
predicate of a proposition ; thus, he liveth, he writeth, he
ivalketh, are phrases equivalent in all respects to he is liv¬
ing, he is writing, he is ivalking. Now, of attributes, some
have their essence in motion, as walking; some in the
privation of motion, as resting', and others have nothing
to do with either motion or its privation, as white and
black. But all motion and all privation of motion imply
time as their concomitant; and a substance may have an
attribute to-day which it had not yesterday, and will not
have to-morrow. This is self-evident; for a man may be
at rest to-day who yesterday was walking, arid to-morrow
will be on horseback ; and a sheet of paper may have been
white yesterday which to-day is black, and at some future
time will be of a different colour. As, therefore, all mo¬
tions and their privations imply time; and as a proposi¬
tion may be true at one time which is not true at ano¬
ther, all verbs, as well those which denote both an attri¬
bute and an assertion, as those which denote an assertion
only, come to denote time also. Hence the origin and
use of tenses, which are so many different forms assigned
to each verb, to show, w ithout altering its principal signi¬
fication, the various times in which the assertion express¬
ed by it may be true. Whether these various forms of
the verb be essential to language, it is vain to dispute.
They have place in every language with which we are ac¬
quainted ; and as the use of the verb is to affirm one
thing of another, it is absolutely necessary that the time
when such or such an affirmation is true be marked by
tenses, or some other contrivance. Concerning tenses,
therefore, we shall throw together some observations,
which, mutatis mutandis, are applicable to every language,
premising only a general remark or two which seem ne¬
cessary in order to proceed with precision.
Time, although its essence consists in succession conti¬
nued and unbroken, may yet be considered by the mind
as divided into an infinite number of parts. There is, how¬
ever, one grand division which necessarily occurs, and to
which the different tenses of verbs are in all languages
adapted. Computing from some portion conceived to be
“ Besides words, which are names of ideas in the mind, there are a great many others that are made use of to signify the con-
ne ion that the mind gives to ideas or propositions one with another. The mind, in communicating its thoughts to others, does not
orr need signs of the ideas it has then before it, but others also to show or intimate some particular action of its own at that time
rating to those ideas. This it does several ways; as rs and is not are the general marks of the mind affirming or denying.”
(1 eke on Human Understanding.) “ Verbum est pars orationis variabilis, aliquid de re aliquadici seu affirmari significans. Vulgaris
ven definitio est, quod, sit pars orationis, quae agere, pati, aut esse significet. bed nostra accuratior, magisque ex ipsa verbi cujus-
vji natura petita videtur. Caeterum to affirmari laxiore hie sensu accipimus, pro eo quod praedicari dialectic! appellent, quo non
nmo affirmationes strictius sic dictae, sed negationes etiam interrogationesque includuntur.” (Ituddiman, Grammatica Institutions;
MSalso Beattie’s Theory of Language.)
OL. X. ^ °
658
GRAMMAR.
Verbs.
present, all time is either past or to come. Hence the tenses
of verbs are threefold; some denoting time present, some
time past, and others time future.
Again, from the very nature of time, it must be obvious
that all its parts are relative; or, in other words, that no
portion of it can be ascertained by any thing inherent in
itself, but only by referring it to some other portion, with
respect to which it is past, present, or to come. In this
respect time is perfectly analogous to space; for as the
space in which any object exists cannot be described but
by stating its relation to some other space, so neither can
the time of any attribute or action be determined, but by
stating its relation to some other time. When, therefore,
we would mark the time of any action or event, we must
previously fix upon some point to which we may refer it. If
this point be known, the time referred to it will also be
known ; but if the former be not known, neither will the
latter.
Lastly, in contemplating an action, we may have occa¬
sion to consider it as going on, or as finished. This dis¬
tinction is likewise denoted by the different tenses of verbs.
In treating, therefore, of the tenses, there are two things
to which attention ought principally to be turned;—the
relation which the several tenses have to one another in
respect of time; and the notice which they give of an
action’s being completed or not completed.
Having premised these remarks, we proceed now to the
tenses themselves ; of which Mr Harris has enumerated no
fewer than twelve. Of this enumeration we can by no
means approve ; for, without entering into a minute exa¬
mination of it, nothing can be more obvious, than that his
inceptive present, I am going to write, is a future tense;
and his completive present, I have written, a past tense.
But, as was before observed of the classification of words,
we cannot help being of opinion, that to take the tenses as
they are commonly received, and endeavour to ascertain
their nature and their differences, is a much more useful
exercise, as well as more proper for a work of this kind,
than to raise, as might easily be done, new and hypotheti¬
cal theories on the subject.
It has already been observed that all the tenses must
necessarily mark relative time. In one sense this ds ex¬
tremely obvious. The present tense is used in contradis¬
tinction to both the past and future, and marks an attri¬
bute or action as existing in neither. The past and the
future are in like manner used in contradistinction to the
present, and mark an attribute or action which exists not
now, but which in the one case has existed formerly, and in
the other will exist at some time coming. But besides this
relation of contradistinction subsisting among the tenses,
there is another of co-existence, as we may call it, to which
it is of great consequence to attend, especially in examin¬
ing the nature of the present.
The present tense refers not only to something which is
past or future, but also to something with which the attri¬
bute or action of the verb is contemporary. This refer¬
ence is necessarily implied in its very name; for we can¬
not say of any thing that it is present, without implying at
the same time that there is something else with which it is
present. Hence it appears with how little reason Mr Har¬
ris and others have given us an aorist of the present, as
marking present time indefinitely in contradistinction to
other presents, which have been called inceptive, extended,
and completive presents. For from what has been said, it
follows, that the present tense is necessarily and from its
very nature perfectly indefinite, and can of itself give no¬
tice of no precise or determinate portion or point of time
whatever. A thing may have been present fifty years ago,
may be present now, or at any future period. This tense
implies the relation of co-existence between two or more
things; but without some auxiliary circumstance, it can¬
not in any language mark the particular portion of time in \(\
which those things exist. The indefinite nature of this wT,
tense is indeed most clearly seen in that use of it in which
Mr Harris has styled it the aorist of the present; that is.
in cases where it is employed to denote the repetition of
an action which the agent is accustomed frequently to
perform, or to express propositions of which the truth is
evinced by general experience; as in the following ex¬
amples :—
Hypocrisy the only evil that tcalkt
Invisible, except to God alone.
Ad panitendum properat qui cito judicat.
In these instances it is plain that there is no particular time
pointed out; the propositions are true, or apprehended as
true, at all times. Although the actions, therefore, of
“ walking” and “ hastening” are expressed as present, it is
impossible from the expressions to determine any precise
point of time whenMrey are present.
But if the present tense be thus indefinite, how, it may
be asked, are we to ascertain the particular time which is
intended? We answer, it is to be ascertained, either by
stating the action of the verb as existing in some time al¬
ready known, or by inference. If, for example, we say,
“ Millions of spiritual creatures ivalh the earth unseen,”
the proposition is general, and the time of walking unde¬
termined. But if we add, “ both when we wake and when
we sleep f the time is by this addition ascertained and spe¬
cified ; for if the time when men wake and sleep be known,
the time when these spirits walk the earth is also known.
When no specifying clause is given by which to determine
the time of the present tense, it is very commonly deter¬
mined by inference. Thus, if one use such an expression
as “ He sleeps while I am speaking to him? the time of
his sleeping is ascertained by the subsequent clause of the
sentence; but if it be said simply, “ he sleeps,” without
assigning any data from which it may be concluded when
his sleeping is present, -we very naturally infer that it is at
the instant when we receive the information of his sleeping.
Such inferences as this are common in language. The
mind is desirous to obtain complete information on every
subject, and therefore frequently supplies to itself what is
not expressed in the speech of others.
Both these ways of ascertaining the precise time of the
present tense are excellently illustrated by the use of the
word present as applied to space. Take a familiar ex¬
ample : “ His brother and he were present when I read
the letter.” It is at first sight evident that this expression
is perfectly indefinite. But if it be said, “ His brother and
he were present at your house when I read the letter,” the
place of action is then determined by being referred to a
portion of space which is known. If no such reference be
made, the person who hears the speech uttered must either
remain ignorant of the place intended, or he must ascer¬
tain it to himself by inference ; and he will probably infer
it to be that in which the speaker is at the time of his ut¬
tering the indefinite sentence. This leads us to observe,
that such inferences are not often made without sufficient
foundation. Various circumstances may assist the reader
or hearer in making them, and prevent all danger of mis¬
take. He may have the evidence of sense, or of some¬
thing preceding in the discourse, and a number of other
particulars, to warrant his conclusion. Thus, if, when sit¬
ting by a large fire, any one pronounce the words “ 1 am
too warm,” those to whom he addresses his speech are au
thorized to conclude that he is too warm at the 0
speaking, unless he expressly prevent the drawing or t
conclusion by adding some such clause as “ when I wea
a great coat.”
It is strictly demonstrable, and has been in fact demo
strated by Mr Harris, that there is no such thing as Pre
sent time. Yet do we not only conceive time as presen
GRAMMAR.
JldeX
Hkree'
(tesenl
,resent
]eed 1°
Hinar
liall
I ar, a1
Eden'
ifesent
let pai
. tare.
ad existing, but frequently as extended to a very great
' dlgree. We speak not only of the present instant, or the
pssent day, but also of the present year, and even of the
p’sent century. This manner of conceiving time is in-
died loose and unphilosophical, but it is sufficient for the
alinary purposes of language. To express time as it
rwlly is, we ought to say, the passing day, the passing
yar, and the passing century; but in common discourse
w denominate any portion of time present, in which the
pesent now or instant is included, although it is obvious
tit part of that portion is past, and the remainder of it
fuure. From the very nature of time thus conceived to
b present, the tense now under consideration must repre-
stot the action of the verb as commenced, and not finish¬
es; for as time is in continued succession, and accompanies
e"?ry action, when any action is not commenced, it exists
n in any time, although it may exist hereafter in time
wich is now future; and when it is finished, it exists no
loger in time present, but in time past. Hence the absur-
d.y of introducing into a theory of the tenses an inceptive
p»sent and a completive present; for these terms imply
3:h a direct contradiction.
\fter having said so much respecting the present tense,
shall have but little to say of the proeter-imperfect. It
tes an action in regard to time as past; and in respect
ofprogress, as unfinished. Legebam, I. was reading at
sene time, but my reading was then incomplete; I had
nc finished the book or the letter. We must here ob-
se/e, however, as we did with respect to the present
tese, that although the prosier-imperfect represents the
adon as past, it does not inform us in what precise por-
tui of past time the unfinished action was going on ; this
cdumstance must either be given in separate words, or
bdnferred by the hearer. If one say simply, Legebam,
tb person to whom he addresses his speech will conclude
thjt the time of his reading is past with respect to the
pisent time of his speaking. But if he say Legebam an-
teuam venisti, he expressly states the action of reading
asmst with respect to the time in which his hearer came
tcdie place where they both are at the time of speaking.
'Ifle time of the praeter-imperfect is always past with re-
spet to the present instant when the imperfect is used,
ai of this the tense itself gives notice ; but it may also
fipast with respect to some other time, and of this it con-
vqs no information.
. if we join two prmter-imperfects together, the expres-
siu will state the co-existence of two progressive actions,
bdi of which were going on at a time past in respect of
stme determinate time given or supposed. Cum tu scri-
b&ts ego legebam; “ when you were writing I was read-
inij.” Hence the praeter-imperfect has by some gramma-
rias been called the relative present; a name which,
however, is by no means exclusively applicable to this
tefse. When the praeter-imperfect is by the conjunction
unjoined in the same sentence with a plusquam-perfect,
tl* two tenses express two actions, both prior to the time
ofspeaking; but the one as having continued after the
otler was finished. Thus .Tineas, speaking of the destruc-
tin of Troy, says, that after having escaped with his fa-
tkr and followers, he returned to the city in quest of his
we, and went directly to his own house ; but there, con¬
iines he, Irruerant Danai, et tectum omne tenebant, “ the
Geeks had rushed in” that action was over and com-
pited before his arrival; but the act of “ possessing the
wrble house,” tenebant, was not over, but still continuing.
3ut it is necessary that the verb should denote actions
wHch were complete or perfect in past time, as well as
tl se which were incomplete or imperfect. For this pur-
P<ie Greek and English verbs have an aorist, a praeter-
P»ffect, and a plusquam-perfect. Of these the Latin has
oity the two last. The praeter-perfect in that language
sustains a twofold character; it performs the office of the
Greek and English aorist, as well as that of the praeter-
perfect properly so called ; that is, it denotes a finished
action at some indefinite past time, as well as at some
time which is both past and definite.
In attempting to analyse the signification of complex
terms, by which we here mean words that include in their
signification a variety of particulars, it is of great advan¬
tage to have these particulars separately expressed by dif¬
ferent words in another language. Now the English has
resolved the tenses, which in the Greek and Latin lan¬
guages are denominated the aorist and the praeter-per-
fect, by means of what are commonly called auxiliary
verbs, expressing the former by the verb did, and the lat¬
ter by the verb have. In examining therefore the aorist
and prseter-perfect, it will be of use to inquire into the
import of these verbs.
Did is evidently the aorist of the verb to do ; a verb of
the most general signification, as it denotes action of every
kind. It expresses the finished performance of some ac¬
tion, the completion of which must of course have taken
place in some portion of past time: 111 did write, or I
wrote (these expressions being equivalent) yesterday, a
month, a year ago.” But the import of did being so very
general, it can convey no determinate meaning without
being limited by the addition of some particular action ;
and this addition, however expressed, is to be considered
in the same light as an accusative case, governed by the
active verb did; for it produces exactly the same effect.
’Eyga^u, scripsi, I did write ; that is, “ at some past
time I performed the action of writing, and finished it!'
The verb have, which is included in the praeter-perfect,
is plainly a verb of the present tense denoting possession,
But a man may possess one thing as well as another; and
therefore have requires limitation, for the very same rea¬
son that did requires it, namely, because its signification
is perfectly general. Now this limitation, whatever it is,
must be conceived as the thing possessed ; and in instances
where have is limited by a noun, this is obvious, and uni¬
versally acknowledged. “ I have a gold watch,” means “ I
possess a gold watch.” But to annex the same meaning
to the word have, when used as an auxiliary verb, is an
idea we believe not common, and which may perhaps be
thought whimsical; yet what other meaning can be af¬
fixed to it ? To suppose that words have not each a radi¬
cal and determinate signification, is to suppose language
a subject incapable of philosophical investigation; and to
suppose, with Mr Harris, that there are words entirely
devoid of signification, is at once to render all inquiries
into the principles of grammar nugatory and ridiculous.
We conceive, then, that each of the phrases, yiygu<pu
itfWroXriv, scripsi epistolam, I have written a letter, is equi¬
valent to the phrase, “ I possess at present the finished,
action of writing a letter.” Such an expression may sound
harsh to the ear, because it is not in use; but we often
employ expressions, to the precise and proper meaning of
which we do not attend ; and if the above be attentively
considered, however awkward it may at first appear, no¬
thing will be found in it either improper or absurd.
The aorist, then, we conceive to state an action as per¬
formed and finished in some past portion of time ; whilst
the praeter-perfect represents the past performance and
completion of that action as now possessed. And here
we may hazard a conjecture why have, when used as an
auxiliary verb, is always joined with a past participle;
whereas did is joined to a word expressing the simple ac¬
tion of the verb, or, as it is called, present infinitive. Of
the expression, “ I have written a letter/’ one part,
namely, the verb have, denotes present time; the other part,
viz. written, must denote past time, to give notice that
the action is performed and finished. Did, on the other
659
Verbs.
hand, implying past time, has no occasion for the past
part of another verb to give notice of this circumstance;
for “ I did write a letter,” is equivalent to, “ at some
past time I performed and finished the simple action of
writing a letter.”
The principal distinction in practice between the aorist
and praeter-perfect (for the difference seems little in their
real import) consists in the time by which the performance
of the action admits of being particularly specified. The
praeter-perfect is always joined with a portion of time
which includes the present now or instant; for otherwise
it could not signify, as it always does, the present posses¬
sion of the finishing of an action. But the aorist, which
signifies no such possession, is as constantly joined with a
portion of past time which excludes the present noiv or
instant. Thus we not only say, “ I have written a letter
this day, this week,” but “ I wrote a letter yesterday, last
week and to interchange these expressions of time in
Greek and English, where the aorist and praeter-perfect
have different forms, would be improper. In Latin, indeed,
where they have but one form, the impropriety does not
appear.
Besides the tenses already examined, which are ex¬
pressive of past time, in most languages the verb has an¬
other tense called the plusquam-perfect, in which, however,
no difficulty occurs to detain our attention. What the
praeter-imperfect is to the present tense, that the plusquam-
perfect is to the prater-perfect. The verb had, by which
it is resolved in English, being evidently the past time of
have, sufficiently explains its meaning and relation to the
other tenses. “ I written a letter,” is equivalent to the
phrase, “ I possessed at some past time the finished action
of writing a letter.” It is justly observed by Dr Beattie,
that the imperfect and plusquam-perfect are very useful,
and may be the sources of much elegant expression ; and
that if one were not taught to distinguish, in respect of
meaning as well as of form, these tenses from each other,
and the praeterite from both, one could not pretend to un¬
derstand, far less to translate, any good classic author.
Having considered the tenses which imply present and
past time, it now remains that we examine the import
of those which are expressive of time future. In Latin
and English there are two tenses for this purpose, of which
the first represents an action in point of time as not yet
existing, but as about to exist at some period to come;
but it does not bring the completion of the action into
view. The other asserts the futurity of an action together
with its completion. Scribam, “ I shall be writing,” de¬
notes future time and incomplete action; for it does not
say whether I am to write for a long or for a short time,
or whether I shall finish what I promise to begin. This
part of the verb, therefore, to which the Greek
corresponds, is an imperfect future, or, in other words, in¬
definite. The futurity of any action, it should seem, may
always be computed from the time of speaking ; for every
action must be future with respect to the time at which
its futurity is declared : but the time of its futurity may
be more precisely specified by fixing upon some other fu-
ture time to which to refer it: “I shall be writing after he
shall have departed.” Shall or ivill refers to future time
indefinitely ; and write or writing refers to an action which
is indeed to begin and so far to proceed, but of which no¬
thing is said concerning the completion.
On the other hand, scripsero, “ I shall have written,”
is a perfect future denoting complete action ; for shall fe.
notes future time; wri&erc, finished action; andfowe, pre.
sent possession. So that the meaning of the whole asser¬
tion is, that “ at some future period of time I shall pos¬
sess the finished action of writing.” The completion of
the action, together with the possession of it, is always
future with respect to the time of assertion; but, with
respect to some other time expressed or understood, the
completion of the action is to be past: Promittis te scrip-
turum si rogavero, “ you promise to write if I shall have
asked you.” In this sentence the action of asking is fu¬
ture with relation to the time of promising, but it is past
with relation to that of writing. This tense the Latin
grammarians call the future of the subjunctive mode, but
very improperly. The notice which it communicates re¬
spects not the power or liberty of acting, which, as will
be seen by and by, is the characteristic of that mode;
but only the action itself. It ought, therefore, to be ranked
among the tenses of the indicative mode ; for scripsero is,
in every sense, as really indicative as scribam. or scriptu-
rus ero.
These are all the tenses, essentially different from each
other, which have place in the indicative mode (or mood)
of any language with which we are acquainted;1 but as
there are tenses in the mode called subjunctive, which bear
the same names with those already examined, and which
have yet a different import, it will be necessary to consi¬
der them before we dismiss the subject of tenses. Of
modes in general something will be said hereafter; at
present we shall only observe, that the mode with which
we are now concerned is not very properly distinguish¬
ed by the name assigned to it by the Latin grammarians.
They call it the subjunctive, because it is often subjoined
to another verb, and forms the secondary clause of a sen¬
tence ; but the mode called indicative frequently appears
in the same circumstances. The difference between these
two modes appears to us to consist in this, that the indi¬
cative asserts something directly concerning the action,
and the subjunctive, something concerning the power or
liberty of the agent to perform it; for that the latter as¬
serts as well as the former, admits not of dispute.
The present tense of the subjunctive mode, in the learn¬
ed languages, answers to the English auxiliaries mayand
can. Let us consider these a little. May is evidently a
verb of the present tense denoting liberty. When I assert
that I may write, I give notice that I am under no compul¬
sion to abstain from writing ; that there is no impediment
from without by which I am restrained from writing. Can
is also a verb of the present tense, expressive of internal
power or skill. “ I can write” is equivalent to such an
1 “ It will perhaps occur,” says an elegant and ingenious writer, “ that there are two Greek tenses of which I have given no ac¬
count ; namely, the second aorist and the second future. The truth is, that I consider them as unnecessary. Their place, for any thing 1
know to the contrary, might at all times be supplied by the first aorist and the first future. Some grammarians are of opinion that the
first aorist signifies time past in general, and the second indefinite time past; and that the first future denotes a nearer, and the se¬
cond a more remote, futurity. But this, I apprehend, is mere conjecture, unsupported by proof; and therefore I incline rather to
the sentiments of those who teach that the second future and the second aorist have no meaning different from the first future an
the first aorist; and that they are the present and imperfect of some obsolete theme of the verb; and when the other theme came
into use, happened to be retained for the sake of variety perhaps, or by accident, with a preterite and future signification, fie tms as
it will, as these tenses are peculiar to the Greek, and have nothing corresponding to them in other tongues, we need not scruple »
overlook them as superfluous.” (Beattie on the Theory of Language, part ii. chap. 2.) To these judicious observations we have not mg
to add, except that they acquire no small degree of confirmation from the circumstance that there are many Greek verbs which
no second future, and which are yet employed to denote every possible modification of future time. Of the paulo.post-futurum o ^
Greeks we have taken no notice, because it is found only in the passive voice; to which, if it were necessary, it is obvious tna
would be necessary in all voices, as a man may be about to act as well as to suffer immediately.
fpresi
ia<
]liisvfl
^irer
jjrnifici
jbe^
faniili
icyffr
oransv
ijin at
iat lia
Igdet t
^eclai
I her tt
ipaciti
Thet
Igedu
1 ie libi
ipsentf
I inite
jer it
i fen fr
i fe fir
| re tli
; the ti
1 ich is
f irty.
3 as pr
s not
a :ause
:’rom
' tsmc
Ij d, in
i h the
a lance
i terial
i,“l
f obit”
!i pect
e irly t
i 1 ther
1’ txpre
secon
|e the
I can,
3 cons
easily
II fore;
i restr
Ofn pei
itnit.
Third
(ky c
! [the t
Ksnad
; tiding
Kan u
*ininan
1 taks h
tttion,
1 wefor
■ ation (
J itisA o
‘ ch a p
Oftlf
i;t-iinpe
*e latti
*ll:i) as
GRAMMAR.
661
apression as this: “ There is nothing in myself which
irapacitates me for performing the operation of writing.”
Tis verb seems originally to have denoted knowledge or
sill, and to have been afterwards extended to signify
ptver or ability of any kind. There is little doubt of its
btng the same with the old English verb to con, which
sirnifies to know. The difference between the import of
tlse two verbs, may and can, will be best perceived in
a amiliar example. Suppose we say to any one, “ You
mj write a treatise on grammar,” to which he returns
fc answer, “ I cannotour assertion evidently supposes
bln at liberty to write the treatise; his answer implies
tit he is unable or unskilled to do it. We may con-
dde, then, that the present tense of this mode contains
a eclaration of present liberty, ability, or skill; and its
oier tenses will be found to have reference to the same
Oitacities.
The observation is here to be repeated which was en-
Ipged upon when treating of the present of the indicative.
Te liberty or ability signified by this tense is always re¬
sented as present, but the time of this presence is in-
nite. If no particular time be specified, we generally
r it to the time of speaking; but another point may be
n from which we are to compute. “ When he shall
lif e finished, you may then proceed as you propose.”
lire the liberty of proceeding is stated as present, not
athe time of speaking, but at the time of his finishing,
wich is future to the time of speaking. But though the
lilrty, ability, or skill, denoted by this tense, be represent-
ecas present, the action itself is stated as contingentfor
it is not necessary that a man should perform an action
beause he has the capacity to perform it.
i’rom this idea of the present of the subjunctive some
ofits most peculiar uses seem capable of being explained.
M in the first place, it appears to have a near affinity
wtjh the future of the indicative, insomuch that in many
i»ances they may be used promiscuously. Without
mperially altering the effect of the expression, we may
sA “ Dico me facturum esse quae imperet,” or “ quae im-
ptabit.” The reason of this, perhaps, may be, that with
raped to us, futurity and contingency are in most cases
nerly the same, both being involved in equal obscurity;
ai therefore it is often of little consequence which mode
offxpression we employ.
Secondly, the present of the subjunctive is used to de-
nUe the right of which a person is possessed. “ I may,
ori can, sell this book.” This application, which Dr Priest-
le; considers as the primary signification of the tense,
is easily deduced, or rather it follows immediately from
tfo foregoing account of its import. For if one be under
lie restraint, either external or internal, to prevent him
lr«n performing an action, he has surely a right to per-
foitn it.
thirdly, the present of the subjunctive is often used to
stpify command or request; as when one says, “ You
mi give my compliments to such a person.” This use
orthe tense under consideration seems to have arisen
ii|!n a desire to soften the harshness of a command, by
abiding the appearance of claiming superiority. When
a nan utters the above sentence, he certainly utters no
otSamand, but only asserts that the person to whom he
speaks has liberty or power to do him a favour. This as-
setion, however, may contain no new information; and
threfore the person addressed, reflecting upon the in-
ttition of the speaker in making it, infers that it indicates
a yish or desire that his compliments should be made to
suli a person.
)f the subjunctive as well as of the indicative, the prae-
teiimperfect is evidently the past time of the present. As
th> latter asserts liberty or ability to perform some ac-
bt, as existing at present, the former asserts the same
liberty or ability to have existed in time past; but the Verbs,
precise portion of time past in which these capacities
existed must be specified by other words, or it will re¬
main unknown. Thus, in the following sentence, “ Dixi
me facturum esse quae imperaret,” the time of imperaret is
referred to that of dixi; the person having the right to
command is supposed to have had it at the time when
the other said that he would obey. This tense, as well
as the present, states the action as going on and incom¬
plete; and also as future with respect to the liberty or
ability to perform it. It is rendered into English by the
verbs could or might, of which the first is the past time of
can, and the second of may. From the near affinity which
the present of the subjunctive has to the future of the in¬
dicative, the tense now under consideration appears in
many instances as the past time of the latter as well as
the former. Thus, Dixi me facturum qua; imperaret, may
be rendered “ I said that I would do whatever he might,
or whatever he should, command.”
Of the praeter-perfect it is sufficient to observe, that as
the present states the agent as at liberty to be performing
an unfinished action, so this tense states him as at liberty
to perform the action considered as finished. “ I maybe writ¬
ing a letter when you comethat is, “ I am at liberty to be
writing a letter when you come.” “I may have written a let¬
ter when you come that is, “ I am at liberty to be in pos¬
session of the finished action of writing a letter’ when you
come.” It is a common mode of expression to say, “ I
may have done such or such a thing in my time,” when
he who speaks can have little doubt whether he has done
the thing or not. In that case, the words may have done,
cannot be considered as the praeter-perfect of the sub¬
junctive of the verb do ; for it is nonsense to talk of liber¬
ty with respect to the performance of an action, which
at the time of speaking is supposed to be past and com¬
pleted. What, then, is the import of the phrase ? We are
persuaded that it is elliptical, and that the word say or
affirm is understood : “ I may (say that I) have done such
or such a thing in my time ;” for liberty or contingency
can relate to actions only as they are conceived to be pre¬
sent or future.
Of all the tenses, the most complex is the plusquam-
perfect of this mode. It combines^ past and a future
time with a finished action. It may we considered as the
past time both of the perfect future and the prseter-per-
fect of the subjunctive ; for it represents an action, future
and contingent at some past time, as finished before another
period specified; which period, therefore, though past at
the time of speaking, was itself future with respect to the
time when the futurity or contingency of the action ex¬
isted. “ Promisisti te scripturum fuisse si rogassem
“ You promised that you would write, if I should have
asked you.” Here the futurity of the action of asking,
which is represented as complete and finished, is stated
as co-existing with the past promise ; but the action itself
must be posterior to that promise. It is however suppos¬
ed to be past with respect to the action of writing, which
is also posterior to the promise.
Before we dismiss the subject of tenses, it may not be
improper just to mention number and person; for these
have place in every tense of the verb in the learned lan¬
guages, and in many tenses even of the English verb.
They cannot, however, be deemed essential to the verb ;
for affirmation is the same, whether it be made by you,
by me, or by a third person, or whether it be made by
one man or by a thousand. The most that can be said js,
that verbs in the more elegant languages are provided
with a variety of terminations which respect the number
and person of every substantive, that we may know with
more precision, in a complex sentence, each particular
substance, with its attendant verbal attributes. The same
GRAMMAR.
662
Verbs, may be said of sex with respect to adjectives. They have
terminations which vary as they respect beings male or
female, though it is past dispute that substances alone are
susceptible of sex. We therefore pass over these mat¬
ters, and all of like kind, as being rather amongst the ele¬
gancies of particular languages, and therefore to be learn¬
ed from the particular grammar of each tongue, than
amongst the essentials of language ; which essentials alone
are the subject of inquiry in a treatise on universal gram¬
mar.
Besides tenses, number, and person, in every tongue
with which we are acquainted, verbs are subject to another
variation, which grammarians have agreed to call modes
or moods. Of modes, as of tenses, it has been warmly dis¬
puted whether or not they be essential to language. The
truth seems to be, that the only part of the verb abso¬
lutely necessary for the purpose of communicating thought
is the indicative mode; for all the others, as has been
well observed by Dr Gregory, are resolvable, by means of
additional verbs and a word denoting the action of the
primary verb, into circuitous expressions which fully con¬
vey their meaning.1 But such expressions continually
repeated would make language very prolix and wholly de¬
void of animation ; and for this reason the import of each
of the commonly received modes is a subject worthy of
the philologist’s investigation. About the number of
modes, whether necessary or only expedient, as well as
about the import of each, the writers on grammar have
differed in opinion. Mr Harris, one of the most cele¬
brated of those writers, has enumerated four modes of the
verb, besides the infinitive: viz. the indicative or declara¬
tive, to assert what we think certain ; the 'potential or sub¬
junctive, for the purposes of whatever we think contin¬
gent ; the interrogative, when we are doubtful, to procure
us information; and the requisitive, to assist us in the gra¬
tification of our volitions. The requisitive, too, according
to him, appears under two distinct species; either as it is
imperative to inferiors, or precative to superiors. For es¬
tablishing such a variety of modes as this, there appears
to be no sort of foundation whatever. The same reason¬
ing which induced the author to give us an interrogative
and requisitive mode, might have made him give us a
hortative, a dissuasive, a volitive, and innumerable other
modes, with which no language is acquainted. But be¬
sides perplexing his reader with useless distinctions, we
cannot help thinking that Mr Harris has fallen into some
mistakes with regard to the import of those modes which
are universally acknowledged. According to him, asser¬
tion is the characteristic of the indicative, and that which
distinguishes it from the subjunctive or potential; but
this is certainly not true, for, without an assertion, the
verb cannot be used in any mode. Of this the learned
author indeed seems to have been aware, when he ob¬
served respecting the subjunctive mode, that it is em. v
ployed “ when we do not strictly assert,” and that “ it im.
plies but a dubious and conjectural assertion.” The truth
is, that the assertion implied in this mode, though it is not
concerning the same thing, is equally positive and abso¬
lute with that conveyed by the indicative. An example
quoted by himself should have set him right as to this
matter:
Seel tacitus pasci si posset corvus, haberet
Plus dapis.
Who does not feel that the assertion contained in haheret
is as absolute and positive as any assertion whatever?
Perhaps we may be asked to define what we mean by
a mode. We know not that we can define it to the satis¬
faction of all. Thus much, however, seems to be obvious
that those variations which are called modes do not imply
different modifications of the action of the verb. Amo
Amem, Ama, do not signify modes of loving; for modes
of loving are, loving much, loving little, loving long, loving
short, and the like. Shall we then get over the difficulty
by saying, with Mr Harris, that “ modes exhibit some way
or other the soul and its affections ?” This is certainly
true, but it is nothing to the purpose; for it does not
distinguish the meaning of mode from the object of lan¬
guage in general, all languages being intended to exhibit
the soul and its affections.
Grammatical modes of verbs have been defined by Dr
Gregory to be “ concise modes of expressing some of
those combinations of thoughts which occur most fre¬
quently, and are most important and striking.” This is
a just observation; but perhaps he would have given a
more complete definition had he said, that grammatical
modes of verbs are concise modes of expressing some of
those combinations of thoughts which occur most fre¬
quently, and of which assertion is an essential part.2 This
indeed seems to be the real account of the matter, espe¬
cially if our notion of the nature of verb be well founded,
that its essence consists in affirmation. And in this opi¬
nion we are the more confirmed, from a conviction that no
man ever employs language on any occasion but for the
purpose of affirming something. The speaker may affirm
something directly of the action itself, something of the
agent’s power or capacity to perform it, or something of
his own desire that it should be performed, but still he
must affirm. If this be so, then are all the modes equally
indicative. Some may be indicative of perceptions, and
others of volitions; but still they all contain indications.
On this idea the three foregoing modes of amo will be
thus distinguished : When a man indicates his present
feeling of the passion of love, he uses the first; when he
indicates his present capacity of feeling it, he uses the
second ; and when he indicates his present cfesire that the
1 The imperative, for instance, may be resolved into a verb of commanding in the first person of the present of the indicative,
and a word denoting the action of the primary verb, commonly called the infinitive mode of that verb. Thus, I nunc et versus tecum
meditare canoros, and Jubeo tc nunc ire et tecum meditari, &c. are sentences of the very same import. The subjunctive may be resolved in
the same manner by means of a verb denoting power or capacity ; for credam, and possum credere, may often be used indifferently. The
indicative mode, however, is not thus convertible with another, verb of affirming in the first person of the present of the indicative,
and a word denoting the action of the primary verb ; for Titius scribit, “ Titius writes,” is not of the same import with dice Titium
scribere, quod Titius scribat, u I say that Titius writes.”'. The first of these sentences, as has already been shown, contains but one
assertion ; the second obviously contains two. Titius writes, is equivalent to Titius is writing; I say that Titius writes, is equivalent
to I am saying that Titius is writing. The reason why the imperative and subjunctive are resolvable into expressions into which the
indicative cannot be resolved, will be seen when the import of each of those modes is ascertained.
2 Every verb, except the simple verb am, art, is, &c. expresses without modes a combination of thoughts, namely, affirmation ana
an attribute. The affirmation, however, is alone essential to the verb, for the attribute may be expressed by other words. It u in‘
deed extremely probable, that in the earliest ages of the world, the affirmation and attribute were always expressed by different
words ; and that afterwards, for the sake of conciseness, one word, compounded perhaps of these two, was made to express both tne
affirmation and the attribute ; hence arose the various classes of verbs, active, passive, and neuter. Of a process of this kind there are
evident signs in the Greek and some other tongues. But the improvers of language stopped not here. The same love of conciseness
induced them to modify the compound verb itself, that it might express various combinations of thought still more complex; but in
all these-combinations assertion was of necessity included; for if the word had ceased to assert, it wuuld have ceased to be a verb o
any kind.
m
As
(jfcserv
as in
k
3 all nr
jtke a'
I fiagei
;iid in<
icch si
a;ate ti
usd coi
O
i
[Off r
ht.”
intei
|cur ii
I, “
I acc
J iced a
r?”
inployi
ii/suc
jpduce
t iuld 1
I tved,
• culiai
: equiv
I brma
l igres:
in of
juest
You
Have
In G
I ough
i nr to
I least
l :en.
i y eif
? /oud
fciimp
i«; ai
) lative
f the
t )ugh
i saui
' l,ho\
t tde, a
i iGre
And
| eeko
!iateve
•ferent
t t past
• tctive,
"bitabl
n iters.
J e to ri
111 illu
jbfyi
s fore 1'j
fnount
inai
t1 *stion
*plest
lusei
grammar.
prson to whom he is speaking would entertain that pas-
gan, he uses the third.
As to what Mr Harris calls the interrogative mode, he
aiserves that it has a near affinity to the indicative. It
ihs in fact not only a near affinity to it, but, as far as lan-
giage is concerned, there is not between the one and the
cher the slightest difference. For, in written language,
like away the mark of interrogation, and, in spoken lan-
jyage, the peculiar tone of voice, and the interrogative
ad indicative modes appear precisely the same. That
sch should be the case is extremely natural. To illus-
tite this, let us for once speak in the singular number,
ad conceive one of our readers to be present. “ I assert
athing, taking the truth of it for granted; but if you
kow, me to be wrong, I presume that you will set me
r;ht.” In this case, assertion produces the same effect
a interrogation. Instances of the same kind perpetually
o*:ur in common conversation. An acquaintance says to
*, “ You took a ride this morning.” I answer yes or
in, according to the case; and the same effect is pro-
diced as if he had said, “ Did you take a ride this morn-
«?” In this way simple assertions would at first be
e ployed to procure information wanted. Fecisti, you
dl such a thing ; fecisti ne, you did it not; either would
piduce the proper reply, and the information wanted
wuld be gained.1 This being observed as language im-
pived, men would accompany such a sentence with a
peuliar tone of voice, or other marks, to signify more
aequivocally that they wanted information, or that such
irbrmation was the only object of their speech. Further
p igress in refinement would lead them to alter the posi-
tin of the words of a sentence when they meant to ask
a juestion, as we do in English, saying, when we assert,
u You have read Euripides,” and when we interrogate,
“ Have you read Euripides ?”
rn Greek and Latin, questions are asked commonly
•ugh by the particles h and an. These particles we
>w to be exactly equivalent to the English particle if,
least to the sense in which that particle is commonly
ten. An fecisti, is “ If you did itand the sentence
either be an abbreviation for die an fecisti, “ tell me
ou did it;” or an may perhaps be, as zf certainly is,
imperative mode of some obsolete verb equivalent to
j" and in that case, an fecisti will be a complete inter-
_ tive sentence, signifying, “ you did it, give that." But
olthe interrogative mode of Mr Harris we have said
eitugh ; perhaps our readers will think too much, since
itis a useless distinction not found in any language. It
I, however, be proper to say something of his precative
le, as far as it is the same with the optative mode of
th Greek grammarians.
And nothing, we think, can be clearer, than that the
Gfeek optative constitutes no distinct mode of the verb,
wutever meaning be annexed to the word mode. The
diferent tenses of the optative are evidently nothing but
th past tenses of the corresponding tenses of the sub-
jinctive. Thus, pres. subj. rurru, I may strike ; pres, op-
tr: rwtrogu, I might strike, &c. This is proved to be in-
dnitably tire case by the uniform practice of the Greek
w ters. Examples might be found without number were
oil: to read in search of them. The following sentence
w 1 illustrate our meaning : ’Eg^ovra/ ’ASrivutoi iva (Sorjdooffi
Tn Agyt/o/g, “ The Athenians come that they may assist
663
the Argives.” Here the leading verb iffiovra/ being of the Verbs,
present tense, the dependent verb /Sojj^wu'/ is the present
subjunctive. But change the former to the past time, and
the latter must also be changed. ’Hgxovro ’Afymioi ha
(3orjdoiev roig ’A^/aoig, “ The Athenians came that they might
assist the Argives.” Here it is plain that fioridoiev, the pre¬
sent of the optative, is the past time of l3oz]6uei, the pre¬
sent of the subjunctive; and the same holds in other in¬
stances.
It is almost unnecessary to add, that when this mode
is employed to denote a wish, the wish is not expressed
by the verb, but is understood. Such abbreviated ex-
piessions to denote a wish are common in all languaeres.
Thus, in Greek,
'TftlV f/iZV $ZOl ^OlZV^ o\vfJLtfl(X, ^OfXOCT*
JLxvrtutrix,i TL^ictpoio iroXtVy x, <r. X.
signifies, “ The gods might give you (or, as we say in
English, changing the position of the verb, might the gods
give you) to destroy, &c. So in 'Latin, ZIt te omnes dii
deceque perdant, “ I hat all the gods and goddesses may
destroy you. Again, in English, “ O that my head were
waters, and my eyes a fountain of tears.” In all these,
and such like sentences, words equivalent to I wish, I
pray, are understood. In Greek a wish is sometimes in¬
troduced by the particle 1/ or \in, if; as in Homer,
E;^1 rayavo; rl/ttvai, uyuuo; r uvoXirfai.
“ Tjfit had been your fate not to be born, or to die unmar¬
ried.” The supplement is, “ It would have been fortunate
for your country, or some such thing. In like manner, a
poor person not uncommonly entreats a favour by saying,
“ Sir, if you would be so good.” Here he stops ; but the
completion of his sentence is, “ it would make me happy.”
In all these cases a wish is not formally expressed by the
speaker, but inferred by the hearer. They are therefore
instances of that tendency which mankind universally dis¬
cover to abbreviate their language, especially in cases
where the passions or feelings are interested.
The interrogative and optative modes being set aside
as superfluous, it would appear from our investigation,
that the real distinct modes of the verb, which are found
in the most copious and varied language, are only three;
the indicative, the subjunctive, and the imperative: And
these are all that can be considered as necessary ; the first
to indicate the speaker’s feeling or acting, the second to
indicate his capacity of feeling or acting, and the third to
indicate his desire that the person to whom he speaks
should feel or act.
Here again we have the misfortune to differ in opinion
from Dr Gregory, who seems to think that a greater num¬
ber of modes, if not absolutely necessary, would, at any
rate, be highly useful. His words are, “ All languages,
I believe, are defective in respect of that variety and ac¬
curacy of combination and of distinction, which we know
with infallible certainty take place in thought. Nor do I
know of any particular in which language is more deficient
than in the expressing of those energies or modifications
of thought; some of which always are, and all of which
might be, expressed by the grammatical moods of verbs.
Of this there cannot be a clearer proof than the well-
known fact, that we are obliged to express by the same
mood very different modifications or energies of thought.
As, for instance, in the case of the grammatical mood
Of a question put in the form of an assertion we have a remarkable instance in the gospel of St Matthew. When Christ stood
Djnre Pilate, the governor asked him, saying, 2y h b pariXivs rav huibaiav, “ Thou art the king of the Jews.” That this sentence was
ptiounced with a view to obtain some answer„is evident from the context; yet it is as plainly an affirmation, though uttered proba-
Okin a scoffing tone, as the serious confession of Nathaniel, 2y l, b /W/Xty; ™y I^x, “ Thou'art the king of Israel.” Had not the
qtshon been put in this form, which asserts Christ to be the king of the Jews, the reply could not have been 2y Xtyus, “ Thou
«tet; for without an assertion the governor would have said nothing. ,(See Dr Campbell’s Translation of the Gospels, where the
to i used in the original is with great propriety retained in the version.)
664 GRAMMAR.
Verbs, called the imperative, by which we express occasionally
prayer to God, command to a slave, request to a superior,
advice to an equal or to any one, order as from an officer to
his subaltern, supplication to one whom we cannot resist.”
If these be, as the author calls them, specific differences
of thought, he will not surely object to their being all
ranked under one genus, which may be called desire.
That the internal feelings which prompt us to pray to
God, to command a slave, to request a superior, to advise
an equal, to give an order to an inferior, and to supplicate
one whom we cannot resist, are all different in degree,
cannot be denied. Each of them, however, is desire ;
and the predication by which the desire is made known to
the person whom we address, is the same in all, when we
utter a prayer as when we utter a command, when we re¬
quest as when we supplicate. But predication alone is
that which constitutes the verb ; for desire by itself, how¬
ever modified, can be expressed only by an abstract noun ;
and the mere energy of desire, when not applied to a par¬
ticular agent, can be expressed only by a participle, or
by what is commonly, though improperly, called the in¬
finitive mode. Now it is certainly conceivable that a
few shades of meaning, or a few degrees of one general
energy, might be marked by corresponding variations of
such verbs as combine energy with predication ;l 2 and
there could be no great impropriety in calling those va¬
riations modes, or rather modes of modes; but that such
a multiplication of modes would be an improvement in
language, is by no means evident. The verb, with the
modes and tenses which it has in all languages, is already
a very complex part of speech, which few are able, and
still fewer inclined, to analyse; and it would surely be
of no advantage to make it more complex by the intro¬
duction of new modes, especially when those degrees of
energy which could be marked by them are with equal and
perhaps greater precision marked, in the living speech, by Verb,,
the different tones of voice adapted to them by nature; Wyv
and, in written language, by the reader’s general know¬
ledge of the subject, and of the persons who may be occa¬
sionally introduced. If there be any particular delicacy
of sentiment or energy which cannot thus be made known,
it is better to express it by a name appropriated to itself,
together with the simple and original verb of affirmation,
than to clog the compound verb with such a multiplicity
of variations as would render the acquisition of every lan¬
guage as difficult as is said to be that of the Chinese writ¬
ten characters. The indicative, subjunctive, and impera¬
tive, are therefore all the modes of the verb which to us
appear to be in any degree necessary or expedient; and
they are in fact all the modes that are really found in any
language with which we are acquainted.
For the infinitive, as has already been observed, seems
on every account to be improperly styled a mode. To that
name it has no title which we can perceive, except that its
termination sometimes (for even this is not universally
true) differs in the learned languages from the terminations
of the other parts of the verb. Nay, if affirmation be, as it
has been proved to be, the very essence of verb, it will fol¬
low that the infinitive is no part of the verb at all; for it
expresses no affirmation. It forms no complete sentence by
itself, nor even when joined to a noun, unless it be aided
by some real part of a verb either expressed or under¬
stood. Scribo, scribebam, scripsi, scripseram, scribam,
scripsero, “ I am writing, I was writing, I have written, I
had written, I shall write, I shall have written,” contain
each of them an affirmation, and constitute a complete
sentence; but scribere “ to write,” scripsisse “ to have
written,” affirm nothing, and are not more applicable to
any one person than to another. In a word, the infinitive is
nothing more than an abstract noting denoting the simple
1 Dr Gregory seems to think, that not merely a few, but a vast number, of these energies might be so marked. “ Affirming, deny,
mg, testifying, foretelling, asking, answering, •wishing, hoping, expecting, believing, knowing, doubting, supposing, stipulating, being
able, commanding, praying, requesting, supplicating, loving, hating, fearing, despairing, being accustomed, wondering, admiring, wa¬
vering, swearing, advising, refusing, exhorting, dissuading, encouraging, promising, threatening, &e.” says he, “ all admit very readily
of being combined with the general import of a verb.” And he adds, that “ it every one of them had been expressed in all languages
by variations as striking as those of ruTru, rvrrroigi, and tuitts, they must have been acknowledged as distinct moods of the verb.
If all these words denote different energies of thought, which, however, may be doubted, and it all those different energies, with
many others for which, as the author justly observes, it is not easy to find names, could, like capacity and desire, be combined with
the general, action or energy of one verb ; and if those combinations could be marked by corresponding variations of that verb; we
should indeed acknowledge such variations to be distinct modes, or modes of modes, of the verb. But we doubt much if all this be
possible. We are certain that it would be no improvement; for it seems to be evident, either that, in some of the modes, the radical
letters of the original verb must be changed, and then it would cease to be the same verb ; or that many of the modes must be ex-
pressed by words of very unmanageable length ; not to mention, that the additional complication introduced by so many minute dis¬
tinctions into a part of speech already exceedingly complex, would render the import of the verb absolutely unintelligible to nine
tenths even of those who are justly styled the learned.
2 In our idea of the infinitive, we have the good fortune to agree with the learned liuddiman, whose words are, “ Non inepte me
modus a veteribus quibusdam verhi nomen est appellatum. Est enim, si non vere ac semper, quod nonnulli volunt, nomen substanti-
vum, significatione certe ei maxime affinis ; ejusque vices sustinet per omnes casus. Et quidem manifeste substantivum videtur, cum
adjectivum ei additur neutri generis ; ut, Cic. Att. xiii. 28, Cum viverc ipsum turpe sit nobis. Pers. v. 53, Velle suum cuique at. Cic.
Fin. i. 1, Totum hoc displicct philosophari. Petron. c. 52, Mcum intelligere nulla pecunia vendo. Item, absque adjective, ut Ovid. Met. m
483, Posse ioqui eripitur, id est, potestas loquendi. Plaut. Bacch. i. 2. 50, Hie vereri perdidit, id est, verecundiam. Cic. Tusc. v. 38,
Loquor de docto homine et erudito, cui vivere est cogitare, id est, cujus vita est cogitatio." See Grammaticcc Latince Institutioncs, pars secunda,
lib. i. cap. 2, where the reader will find examples of the infinitive used by the best Roman writers as a substantive noun in every case.
This opinion of.Ruddiman and the ancient grammarians has been controverted with much ingenuity by Dr Gregory, who seems to
think that in the infinitive alone we should look for the essence of the verb divested of every accidental circumstance, time only ex¬
cepted. If this be indeed the case, almost every thing which we have said of the verb, its tenses, and its modes, is erroneous; aiu
he who takes his principles of grammar from the Encyclopaedia Britannica will fill his head with a farrago of absurdities. But d may
without much difficulty be shown, that the error does not attach to the doctrine respecting the infinitive, which has been stated an
illustrated in this article, but to the strange inversion of all recognised principle involved in the notion which Dr Gregory bases-
poused, apparently by reason of its novelty alone.
The Doctor acknowledges (Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, vol. ii. liter, class, p. 195), that the infinitive is most impro¬
perly called a mode, and on that account he thinks wre ought to turn our thoughts exclusively to it, “ when we endeavour to inves i-
gate the general import of the verb, with a view to ascertain the accident which it denotes, and be led, step by step, to form a dbtmc
notion of what is common in the accidents of all verbs, and w hat is peculiar in the accidents of the several classes of them, and there y
be enabled to give good definitions, specifying the essence of the verb,” &c. It may be true, that to the infinitive exclusively ^
should turn our attention when we wish to ascertain the accident denoted by a particular verb or class of verbs ; that is, the ?
action, passion, or state of being, of which, superadded to affirmation, that verb or class of verbs is expressive ; but in accidents o
kind it may be doubted if there be any thing that with propriety can be said to be common to all verbs. There seems indeed o
nothing common to all verbs but that which is essential to them, and by which they are distinguished from every other part ot speec^
but every kind of action, passion, and state of being, may be completely expressed by participles and abstract nouns, and there o
: in such
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itlierha
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: hferent
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3 rery re
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VOL,
GRAMMAR.
jiergy of the verb, in conjunction with time; and is not
i mode as far as we can conceive of any thing. Thus,
idre tuum nihil est, is the feame with Scientia tua nihil est;
fid “ Death is certain,” is identical with “ To die is cer-
lun.
Before we dismiss the subject of modes, it may not be
665
improper to take notice of the connection which Mr Har¬
ris, after Apollonius, has found between commanding and
futurity. “ Intreating and commanding,” he says, “ have
a necessary respect to the future only. For what have
they to do with the present and the past, the natures of
which are immutable and necessary ?” This is surely con-
Verbs.
3i such accidents we cannot find the essence of the verb, because such accidents distinguish it not from other parts of speech. Were
saian called upon to specify the essence of verse or metre, he would not say that it consists in the meaning of the words, or in the
ning oi these words according to the rules of syntax. In every kind of verse where words are used, they have indeed a meaning, and
ii all good verses they are grammatically constructed ; but this is likewise the case in prose, and therefore it cannot be the essence
averse. The essence of verse must consist in something which is not to be found in prose, namelv, a certain harmonic succession of
sands and number of syllables ; and the essence of the verb must likewise consist in something which is not to be found in any other
jpt of speech, and that is nothing but affirmation. But if affirmation be the very essence of the verb, it would surely be improper
wen we endeavour to ascertain the general import of that part of speech, to turn our thoughts exclusively to a word which implies
n affirmation ; for what does not affirm, cannot in strictness of truth be either a verb or the mode of a verb.
In the same page it is said that “ the infinitive denotes that kind of thought or combination of thoughts which is common to all the
ctier modes.” In what sense this is true we are unable to conceive; it denotes indeed the same accident, but certainly not the same
nought or combination of thoughts. In the examples quoted, Non est vivere, sed valere vita, the infinitives have evidently the
c'ect of abstract nouns, and not of verbs ; for though vivere and valere express the same states of being with vivo and valeo, they bv
r means express the same combination of thoughts. Vivo and valeo affirm that / am living, and that 1 am •well; and he who utters
fese words must think not of life and health in the abstract, but of life and health as belonging to himself. Vivere and valere, on the
<uer hand, affirm nothing; and he who utters them thinks only of the states of living and of being in health, without applying them
t any particular person. --
The learned author of The Origin and Progress of Language having said that the infinitive is used either as a noun, or that it serves
t.connect the verb with another verb or noun, and so is useful in syntax, the doctor combats this opinion, and infers that the infi-
r ive is truly a verb, because “ the thought expressed by means of it may be expressed in synonymous and convertible phrases, in
dferent languages, by means of other parts or moods of the verb.” Of these synonymous and convertible phrases he gives several
eamples, the first of which is taken from Hamlet’s soliloquy. “ To be or not to be, that is the question,” he thinks equivalent in
r-aning to, “ The question is, whether we shall be or shall not be.” But we are persuaded he is mistaken. “ Whether we shall be or
sill not be,” involves a question, whether we shall exist at some future and indefinite time; but the subject of Hamlet’s debate
lith himself was not, whether, if his conscious existence should be interrupted, it would be afterwards at some future and indefinite
t:ie restored, but whether it was to continue uninterrupted by his exit from this world. This, we think, must be self-evident to
eery reader of the soliloquy. It is likewise obvious that the word “ question” in this sentence does not signify interrogatory, but
njcct of debate, or matter to be examined; and that the word “ that” serves no other purpose than to complete the verse, and give addi-
tnal emphasis, perhaps, to an inquiry so important. “ To be or not to be, that is the question,” is therefore equivalent in all respects
1“ The continuance or non-continuance of my existence is the matter to be examined and the infinitive is here indisputably used
stan abstract noun in the nominative case. Should it be said that the doctor may have taken the sentence by itself, unconnected
i6th the subject of Hamlet’s soliloquy, we reply, that the supposition is impossible; for, independently of the circumstances with
fych they are connected, the words “ To be or not to be” have no perfect meaning. Were it not for the subject of the soliloquy,
fim which every reader supplies what is wanting to complete the sense, it might be asked, “ To be or not to be”—what ? A coward, a
xurderer, a king, or a corpse ? Questions all equally reasonable, and which in that case could not be answered.
With the same view, to prove that the infinitive is truly a verb, the doctor proceeds to remark upon the following phrases, Dico,
ado, puto, Titium existere, valere, jacere, cecidisse, procubuisse, projecisse Mannum, projectum fuisse a Mcevio ; which, he says, have the
T-y same meaning with dico, quod Titius existat, quod jaceat, quod ceciderit, &c. Hfe adds, that “ the infinitives, as thus used, acquire
rt any further meaning, in addition to the radical import of the verb with tense, like the proper moods; but the subjunctives after.
<pd lose their peculiar meaning as moods, and signify no more than bare infinitives.” In the sense in which this observation is
ride by the author, the very reverse of it seems to be the truth. The infinitives, as thus used, acquire, at least in the mind of the
rider, something like the power of affirmation, which they certainly have not when standing by themselves; whereas the subjunc-
t es neither lose nor acquire any meaning by being placed after quod. Dico, credo, puto, Titium existere, valere, jacere, &c. when trans¬
ited literally, signify, I say, believe, think, Titius to exist, to be well, to lie along; a mode of speaking which, though now not elegant,
vs common with the best writers in the days of Shakspeare, and is frequently to be found in the writings of Warburton at a much
kler period. Dico, credo, puto, quod Tithis existat, quod jaceat, &c. signifies literally, 7 say, believe, think, that Titius may exist, may lie along.
Is. Remove the verbs in the indicative mode from the former set of phrases, and it will be found that the infinitives had acquired
uneaning, when conjoined with them, which they have not when left by themselves ; for Titium existere, jacere, “ Titius to exist, to
Ii along,” have no complete meaning, because they affirm nothing. On the other hand, when the indicative verbs are removed, to-
flpher with the wonder-working quod, from the latter set of phrases, the meaning of the subjunctives remains in all respects as it was
1 fore the removal; for Titius existat, jaceat, &c. signify, Titius may exist, may lie along, as well when they stand by themselves as
ven they form the final clauses of a compound sentence. Every one knows that quod, though often called a conjunction, is always
rtfact the relative pronoun. Dico, credo, puto, quod Titius existat, must therefore be construed thus : Titius existat {est id) quod dico,
rdo, &c. “ Titius may exist—is that thing, that proposition, which I say, believe, think.” In the former set of phrases, the infi-
i'lives are used as abstract nouns in the accusative case, denoting, in conjunction with Titium, one complex conception, the existence,
of Titius: Dico, credo, puto, “ I say, believe, think and the object of my speech, belief, thought, is Titium existere, “ the existence
cjiTitus.”
; tn confirmation of the same idea, that the infinitive is truly a verb. Dr Gregory quotes from Horace a passage, which, had we
taught quotations necessary, we should have urged in support of our own opinion :
Nec quicquam tibi prodest
Aerias tentasse domos, animoque rotundum
Percurrisse polum, morituro.
rJ our apprehension, nothing can be clearer than that tentasse and percurrisse are here used as nouns; for if they be not, where
S311 we find a nominative to the verb prodest ? It was certainly what was signified by tentasse aerias domos, animoque rotundum
I'UcuRurssE polum, that is said to have been no advantage to Archytas at his death. This, indeed, if there could be any doubt
a mt it, would be made evident by the two prose versions which the professor subjoins to these beautiful lines. The first of them
has follows : Ncc quicquam tibi prodest quod aerias domos tentaveris, et animo percurrehis polum ; which must be thus constructed :
Tntaveris aerias domos, et PERCURRERis animo' polum {est id) quod ncc quicquam tibi prodest. This version, however, is not perfectly
a-urate ; for it contains two propositions, whereas Horace’s lines contain but one. The second, which, though it may be a crabbed
ad inelegant sentence, expresses the poet’s sense with more precision, is in these words: Ncc quicquam tibi prodest morituro tua ten-
ttio domuum aeriarum, et cursus tuns circa polum. Having observed, with truth, that this sentence has the very same meaning
T'h the lines of Horace, Dr Gregory asks, “ why are not tentatio and cursus reckoned verbs as well as tentasse and percurrisse ?” Let
Gse answer this question who believe that any of these words are truly verbs; for they are surely, as he adds, all very near akin ;
isieed so near, that the mind, when contemplating the import of each, cannot perceive the difference. Meanwhile, we beg leave in
POL. X. 4 P
666
GRAMMAR.
Vferbs. founding commands with the execution of commands.
But the learned writer proceeds to informs us, that “ it
is from the connection of futurity with commands that
the future of the indicative is sometimes used for the im¬
perative mode.” The connection of which he speaks ap¬
pears to us entirely imaginary; for futurity has nothing
to do with commands, though it may with the execution
of them. The present time is the time of commanding,
the future of obeying. But supposing the connection real,
it would not account for the future tenses being used im¬
peratively. For although it were true, as it is evidently
false, that commands are future, it would not follow that
the relation is convertible, or that employing the future
should imply a command. The principle upon which
such expressions as, Thou shalt not kill, come to have the
force of a command, seems to be this: When a person,
especially one possessed of authorit}', asserts that an ac¬
tion depending on the will of a free agent, and therefore
in its own nature contingent, shall or shall not actually
take place; what are we to conclude from such an asser¬
tion ? Why, surely it is natural to conclude that it is his
will, his command, that his assertion be verified. The
English word shall, if we be well informed, denoted ori¬
ginally obligation; a sense in which its past tense should
is still commonly employed. In English, therefore, the
foregoing process of inferring a command from an asser¬
tion of futurity seems to have been reversed; and the
word shall, from denoting a command or obligation, has
come to denote futurity simply.
Having considered the verb in its essence, its tenses, and
its modes, we might seem to have exhausted the subject;
but there is still something more to be done. Gramma¬
rians have distinguished verbs into several species ; and it
remains with us to inquire upon what principle in nature
this distinction is made, and how far it proceeds. Now it
must be obvious, that if predication be the essence of verbs,
all verbs as such must be of the same species ; for predica¬
tion is the same in every proposition, under every possible
circumstance, and by whomsoever it is made-. But the
greater part of verbs contain the predicate as well as the
predication of a proposition ; or, to speak in common lan¬
guage, they denote an attribute as well as an affirmation.
Thus, lego is “ I am reading? ambulo, “ I am walking?
sto, “ I am standing? verbero, “ I am striking? verberor,
“ I am stricken” But the attributes expressed by these
verbs are evidently of different kinds; some consisting in
action, some in suffering, and some in a state of being
which is neither active nor passive. Hence the distinction
of verbs, according to the attributes which they denote,
into active, passive, and neuter. Lego, which is an asser¬
tion that I am employed in the act of reading, is an active
verb; verberor, which is an assertion that I am suffering
under the rod, is a passive verb, because it denotes a pas¬
sion ; and sto, which is an assertion that I am standing
still, is said to be a neuter verb, because it denotes neither
action nor passion. But it is self-evident that there cannot
be action without an agent, nor passion without a passive
being; neither can we make a predication of any kind,
though it denote neither action nor passion, without predi¬
cating of something. All verbs, therefore, whether active,
passive, or neuter, have a necessary reference to some
noun expressive of the substance of which the attribute
denoted by the verb is predicated. This noun, which in
all languages must be in the nominative case, is said to be
the nominative of the verb; and in those languages inPanicii
which the verb has person and number, it must in these
respects agree with its nominative.
Of action, and consequently of verbs denoting action, there
are obviously two kinds. There is an action which passes
from the agent to some subject upon which he is employed,
and there is an action which respects no object beyond the
agent himself. Tims lego and ambulo are verbs which
equally denote action ; but the action of lego refers to some
external object as well as to the agent; for when a man is
reading, he must be reading something, a book, a news¬
paper, or a letter, whereas the action of ambulo is con¬
fined wholly to the agent; for when a man is walking he
is employed upon nothing beyond himself, his action pro¬
duces no effect upon any thing external. These two spe¬
cies of verbs have been denominated transitive and intran¬
sitive ; a designation extremely proper, as the distinction
which gave rise to it is philosophically just. Verbs of both
species are active ; but the action of those only wrhich are
called transitive respects an external object; and therefore
in those languages of which the nouns have cases, it is only
after verbs which are transitive as well as active, that the
noun denoting the subject of the action is put in the accu¬
sative or objective case. Verbs which are intransitive,
though they be really active, are in the structure of sen¬
tences considered as neuter, and govern no case.
So much, then, for that most important of all words, the
verb. We proceed now to the consideration of partici¬
ples, adjectives, and adverbs, which, as they have a near
relation to one another, we shall treat of under one head
or division.
V.— Of Participles, Adjectives, and Adverbs.
1. Of Participles.
The nature of verbs being understood, that of participles
is not of difficult comprehension. Every verb, except that
which is called the substantive verb, is expressive of an at¬
tribute, of time, and of an assertion. Now if we take away
the-assertion, and thus destroy the verb, there will remain
the attribute and the time ; and these combined make the
essence of that species of words called participles. Thus,
take away the assertion from the verb vriteth, and
there remains the participle yga^wv, writing, which, without
the assertion, denotes the same attribute and the same time.
In the same manner, by withdrawing the assertion, we dis¬
cover yga-\}/«s, ivritten, in wrote; about to^
ivrite, in shall be writing. This is the doctrine ot
Mr Harris respecting participles ; and, in our opinion, it is
equally elegant, perspicuous, and just. But as it has been
controverted by an author of some note in the republic of
letters, we should perhaps be wanting in duty to our readers
were we to pass his objections wholly unnoticed.
It is acknowledged by Dr Beattie, the writer to whom
we allude, that the view which we have taken is the most
convenient in which the participle can be considered in
universal grammar ; but he affirms that present participles
do not always express present time, nor preterite partici¬
ples past time ; nay, that participles have often no connec¬
tion with time at all. He thus exemplifies his assertion in
Greek, in Latin, and in English:
“ When Cebes says, ^ruy/jivo^ ttgirfarovmg h ry ro\i
Xpohjo hgcp, ‘ We were walking in the temple of Saturn,’ the
participle of the present walking is, by means of the verb
our turn to ask, Why are not tentassc and percurrisse reckoned abstract nouns as well as tentatio and cursus 9 To this question it is n°
easy to conceive what answer can be returned upon the doctor’s principles. In his theory there is nothing satisfactory; and w i
has not been done by himself, we need scarcely expect from any of his followers. On the other hand, our principles furnish a ve^
obvious reason for excluding tentatio and cursus from the class of verbs; it is, because these words express no predication. TVnhwr ^
percurrisse indeed denote predication no more than tentatio and cursus ; and therefore upon the same principle we exclude them i
wise from a class to which, if words are to be arranged according to their import, they certainly do not belong.
i! pres
inieth
GRAMMAR.
667
re, applied to time past, and therefore of itself cannot be
derstood to signify any sort of time.” Again, after ob-
rving, that in English we have but two simple participles,
gch as writing and written, of which the former is gene-
itlly considered as the present and the latter as the past,
He doctor atVls, but “ the participle writing, joined to a
.wb of different tenses, may denote either past or future
gtion ; for we may say not only, / am writing, but also, I
%vs writing yesterday, and I shall be ivriting to-morrow
fed hence he infers that no time whatever is denoted by
4e present participle. But this is obviously a hasty infe-
ince, drawn from the doctrine of absolute time and a defi-
rte present, which we have already shown to be ground-
Iss and contradictory. When we speak simply of an action
i present, we must mean that it is present with respect to
gmething besides itself, or we speak a jargon which is un-
itelligible; but we do not ascertain the time of its pre-
snce. From the very nature of time, an action may be
jesent now, it may have been present formerly, or it may
I present at some future period ; but the precise time of
iii presence cannot be ascertained even by the present of
ie indicative of the verb itself; yet who ever supposed
tat the present of the indicative denotes no time ? The
|.rticiple of the present represents the action of the verb
1 g0*nS on 5 but an action cannot be going on without
bing present in time with something. When, therefore,
febes says, “ We were walking in the temple of Saturn,”
I; represents the action of the verb walking as present with
smething ; but by using the verb expressive of his asser-
fim in a past tense, he gives us to understand that the ac-
fc>n was not present with any thing at the period of his
peaking, but at some portion of time prior to that period ;
sd what that portion of time was, must be collected from
te subsequent parts of his discourse. The same thing may
Iso be said of the phrases I was ivriting yesterday, and I
all he writing to-morrow. They indicate that the action
t| the verb write was present with me yesterday, and will
^ain be present with me to-morrow. The actibn and the
e of action are denoted by the participle ; that action
affirmed to belong to me by means of the verb ; and the
e at which it belonged to me is pointed out by the
ses of that verb, am, was, and shall he. All this is so
din, that it could not have escaped Dr Beattie’s penetra-
®n, if he had not hastily adopted the absurd and contra-
octory notion of a definite present.
. Of the truth of his assertion respecting past participles
.1 gives a Greek and a Latin example. The former is
ken from St Mark, viz. 6 mereugag GudritiiTui; and the lat-
tr is that which is commonly called the perfect future of
ie passive verb amor, amatus fuero. In the first instance,
I says that the participle, though belonging to the aorist
i the past time, must be rendered either by the indefinite
jesent, “ he who helievethor by the future, “ he who
nil believeand the reason which he gives for this ren-
ftring of the word is, that “ the believing here spoken of
.1 considered as posterior in time to the enunciation of the
jiomise.” This is indeed true, but it is not to the purpose ;
jr with the enunciation of the promise the time of the
Jtrticiple has no manner of concern. The time of Kiffreuaug
Spends entirely upon the time of gudritisrui, with respect
1 which it must undeniably be past. Our Lord is not
hre asserting, that he who shall believe at the day of final
itribution shall be saved, but that he who shall on that
nky be found to have believed in time past shall be saved ;
||d if the participle had not been expressive of a finished
«ition and a past time, the whole sentence would have con-
|'<yed a meaning not friendly to the interests of the gospel,
i like manner, the time of amatus is referred, not to the
me of speaking, but to the time offuero, with respect to
1nieh, who sees not that it is past ? The two words, taken
Ugether, contain a declaration, that he who utters them
shall, at some time posterior to that of speaking, have been Adjectives.
loved; the expression shall have been loved denotes two
times, both future with respect to the time of speaking;
but when the time denoted by shall have comeg to be
present, that of the participle loved must be past, for it is
declared that the action of it shall then be complete and
finished.
We conclude, then, that it is essential to a participle to
express both an attribute and time; and that such words
as denote no time, though they may be in the form of par¬
ticiples, as doctus, “ learned,” eloquens, “ eloquent,” &c. be¬
long to another part of speech, which we now proceed to
consider.
2. Of Adjectives.
The nature of verbs and participles being understood,
that of adjectives becomes easy. A verb implies, as we
have said, an attribute, time, and an assertion ; a participle
implies only an attribute and time ; and an adjective implies
only an attribute as belonging to some substance. In other
words, an adjective has no assertion, and it denotes only
such an attribute as has not its essence either in motion or
its privation. Thus, in general, the attributes of quantity,
quality, and relation, such as many, few, great, little, black,
white, good, had, double, treble, and the like, are all denot¬
ed by adjectives.
To understand the import and the use of this species of
words, it must be observed that every adjective is resolv¬
able into a substantive and an expression of connection
equivalent to of. Thus, a good man is a man of goodness;
where we see the attribute denoted by the adjective fully
expressed by an abstract noun. But it is evident that the
noun goodness does not express the whole meaning of the
adjective good; for every adjective expresses not only an
attribute, but also the connection between the attribute
and its substance ; whereas in the abstract noun, the attri¬
bute is considered as a substance unconnected with any
other substance.
In the next place, it is to be observed, that the connec¬
tion expressed by adjectives, like that expressed by of, is
of a nature so general and indefinite, that the particular
kind of connection must, in some languages, be inferred
from our previous knowledge of the objects between which
it subsists, or it will for ever remain unknown. This might
be proved by a variety of examples, but will perhaps be
sufficiently evident from the following : Color salubris sig¬
nifies colour that indicates health; exercitatio salubris, ex¬
ercise that preserves health ; victus salubris, food that im¬
proves health ; medicina salubris, medicine that restores
health. In all these examples the connection expressed by
the adjective form of salubris is different; and though it
may be known from previous experience, there is nothing
in any of the expressions themselves by which it can be
ascertained. Thus, adjectives are each significant of an
attribute and connection ; but the particular kind of con¬
nection is ascertained by experience. The usual effect of
adjectives in language, is to modify or particularize a ge¬
neral term, by adding some quality or circumstance which
may distinguish the object meant by that term, from the
other objects of the same species. I have occasion, for
example, to speak of a particular man, of whose name I am
ignorant. The word man is too general for my purpose, it
being applicable to every individual of the human species.
In what way then do I proceed, in order to particularize
it, so as to make it denote that very man wrhom I mean
to specify ? I annex or conjoin to it such words as are sig¬
nificant of objects and qualities with which he is connect¬
ed, and which are not equally applicable to others from
whom I mean to distinguish him. Thus I can say, a man
of prudence or a prudent man, a wise man, a good man, a
GRAMMAR.
668
Adjectives, brave man, and so on. By means of these additions the gene-
ral term man is limited or modified, and can be applied only
to certain men to whom belong the attributes expressed by
the adjectives prudent, wise, good, and brave. If it be still
too general for my purpose, I can add to it other qualities
and circumstances, till I make it so particular as to be ap¬
plicable to but one individual man in the universe.
This is the way in which adjectives are commonly used,
but this is not the only way. Instead of being employed
to modify a substantive, they sometimes appear as the
principal words in the sentence, when the sole use of the
substantive seems to be to modify the abstract noun, con¬
tained under the adjective to which that substantive is
joined. In order to understand this, it will be necessary
to attend to the following observations.
It may be laid down as a general proposition, that when
any term or any phrase is employed to denote a complex
conception, the mind has a power of considering, in what
order it pleases, the simple ideas of which the complex
conception is composed. To illustrate this observation by
an example : The word eques in Latin denotes a complex
conception, of which the constituent simple ideas are those
of a man and a horse ; with this connection subsisting be¬
tween them, that the man is conceived as on the back of
the horse. In the use of this word, it is well known that
the idea first in order, as being the principal subject of the
proposition, is commonly the man on the back of the horse;
but it is not always so, for the mind may consider the horse
as the principal object. Thus, when Virgil says,
Frasna Pelethronii Lapithae gyrosque dedere,
Impositi dorso ; atque equitem docuere sub armis
Insultare solo, et gressus glomerare superbos—
convey no meaning, but) from the building of the city to Ad'
its deliverance” Both the participles condita and libera- w-
tam are here used inversely ; that is, the abstract substan-
tives contained in condita and liberatam are modified or
restricted by the substantives urbe and urbem, with which
they unite. Again, Ovid, speaking of the contest between
Ajax and Ulysses for the arms of Achilles, has these lines-
Qui, licet eloquio fidum quoque Nestora vincat,
Haud tamen efficiet, descrtum ut Nestora crimen
Nullum esse rear 
Here also the adjective or participle desertum is taken in-
versely, and the general notion of desertion contained in it
is modified or rendered particular by being joined with the
substantive Nestora. The meaning of the passage is, “ I
will never be induced to believe that the desertion of Nes¬
tor was not a crime.” Were desertum to be taken directly
as an adjective modifying its substantive, the sentence must
be translated, “ I cannot believe that Nestor deserted was
not a crime.” But it is evident that this is nonsense; as
Nestor, whether deserted or not deserted, could not be a
crime.
It were easy to produce many more examples of adjec¬
tives taken inversely; but these may suffice to illustrate
the general principle, and to show, that without attend¬
ing to it, it is impossible to understand the ancient au¬
thors. We shall produce one instance of it from Shak-
speare, to evince that it is not confined to the ancient lan¬
guages, though in these it is certainly more frequent than
in the modern :
Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
Thou canst not bite so nigh
As benefits forgot;
Though thou the waters warp,
Thy sting is not so sharp
As friends remember'd not.
Here it is evident that the adjective forgot is taken in¬
versely ; for it is not a benefit, but the forgetting of a be¬
nefit, which bites more than the bitter sky; and there¬
fore, in this passage, the adjective serves not to modify
the noun, but the noun benefits is employed to modify the
abstract substantive contained in the adjective forgot,
which is the subject of the proposition, and the principal
word in the sentence.
Had Mr Harris attended to this principle, and reflected
upon what he could not but know, that all adjectives de¬
note substances ; not indeed subsisting by themselves, as
those expressed by nouns, but concretely, as the attri¬
butes of other substances ; he would not have classed ad¬
jectives with verbs, or have passed so severe a censure
upon the grammarians for classing them with nouns. It
matters very little how adjectives are classed, provided
their nature and effect be understood ; but they have at
least as good a title to be ranked with nouns as with verbs,
and in our opinion a better. To adopt Mr Harris’s lan¬
guage, they are homogeneous with respect to nouns, as
both denote substances ; they are heterogeneous with re¬
spect to verbs, as they never do denote assertion.
Besides original adjectives, there is another class, which
is formed from substantives. Thus, when we say, the party
of Pompey, the style of Cicero, the philosophy of Socrates;
in these cases the party, the style, and the philosophy
spoken of, receive a stamp and character from the per¬
sons whom they respect; and those persons, therefore,
perform the part of attributes. Hence they actually pass
into attributives, and assume as such the form of adjectives.
It is thus we say, the Pompeian party, the Ciceronian
style, and the Socraticphilosophy. In like manner, fora
trumpet of brass, we say a brazen trumpet, and for a crown
of gold, a golden crown, &c. Even pronominal substan¬
tives admit a similar mutation. Thus, instead of saying
the book of me, and of thee, we say my book, and thy book;
the energies attributed to the object signified by equitem
make it evident that the horse, and not the man, is meant;
for it is not. the property of a man, insultare solo, et gres¬
sus glomerare superbos.
The same observation holds true where the complex ob¬
ject is denoted by two or more words ; an adjective, for in¬
stance, and a substantive. Thus in the phrase summus
mons se inter nubila condit, the words summus mons re¬
present a complex conception, of which the constituent
ideas are those of height and mountain, connected together
by the adjective form of summus. Either of these ideas
may be the subject of the proposition ; and the expression
will accordingly admit of two different significations. If
mons be made the subject of the proposition, the meaning
will be, “ the highest mountain hides itself amongst the
clouds.” If the substantive included in the radical part of
summus be made the subject of the proposition, the expres¬
sion will signify, “ the summit, or highest part, of the
mountain, hides itself amongst the clouds.” The latter is
the true import of the sentence.
From these observations and examples, we shall be en¬
abled to understand the two uses of the adjective. It is
either employed, as has been already observed, to restrict
or modify a general term ; or the abstract substantive con¬
tained in the adjective is modified by the noun, with which,
in the concrete or adjective form, that abstract substantive
is joined. The first may be called the direct, the second
the inverse, acceptation of adjectives.
The inverse acceptation of adjectives and participles, for
both are used in the same manner, has scarcely been no¬
ticed by any grammarian excepting Dr Hunter of St An¬
drews ; yet the principle is of great extent in language.
In order to explain it, we shall produce a few examples,
which on any other principle it is impossible to understand.
Livy, speaking of the abolition of the regal authority at
Rome, says, Regnatum est Romce ab urbe condita ad li¬
bera tam annos ducentos quadraginta quatuor, “ Monarchy
subsisted at Rome (not from the city built, which would
s:h1
itsentu
) m
'Ari
’P'nlja
sgrei
' ^ Jttri
GRAMMAR.
669
bs, nd instead of saying the country of us and of you, we
ly our country and your country. These words, my,
^\iy, our, your, &c. have therefore been properly called
|ronominal adjectives.
It has been already observed, and must be obvious to
11, that substances alone are susceptible of sex ; and that
lierefore substantive nouns alone should have distinc-
ons respecting gender. The same is true with respect
b number and person. An attribute admits of no change
its nature, whether it belong to you or to me, to a man
»r a woman, to one man or to many; and therefore the
rords expressive of attributes ought on all occasions, and
i every situation, to be fixed and invariable. For as the
malities good and bad, black and white, are the same, whe-
iler they be applied to a man or a woman, to many or to
Hw ; so the word which expresses any one of these attri-
Bites ought in strictness to admit of no alteration, with
^oatever substantive it may be joined. Such is the or-
«;r of nature, and that order, on this as on other occa-
«)ns, the English language most strictly observes; for
ie say equally, a good man or a good woman; good men
a good women; a good house or good houses. In some
Ibguages, indeed, such as Greek and Latin, of which the
ijiuns admit of cases, and the sentences of an inverted
B'ucture, it has been found necessary to endow adjectives
vth the threefold distinction of gender, number, and
jjrson; but as this is only an accidental variation, occa-
siped by particular circumstances, and not in the least
asential to language, it belongs not to our subject, but to
He particular grammars of these tongues.
There is, however, one variation of the adjective, which
is place in all languages, is founded in the nature of
flings, and properly belongs to universal grammar. It is
ocasioned by comparing the attribute of one substance
Uh a similar attribute of another, and falls naturally to
i explained under the next section.
3. Of Adverbs, and the Comparison of Adjectives.
As adjectives denote the attributes of substances, so
flere is an inferior class of words which denote the mo-
crfications of these attributes. Thus, when we say,
,:Cicero and Pliny were both of them eloquent; Statius
ad Virgil both of them wrote the attributes expressed
1: the words eloquent and wrote are immediately referred
it Cicero, Virgil, &c.; and as denoting the attributes of
sibstances, these words, the one an adjective, and the
cher a verb, have been both called attributives of the first
cder. But when we say, “ Pliny was moderately elo-
cent, but Cicero exceedingly eloquent; Statius wrote in-
eferently, but Virgil wrote admirably;" the words mo-
drately, exceedingly, indifferently, and admirably, are not
inferrible to substantives, but to other attributes ; that is,
it the words eloquent and wrote, the signification of which
lley modify. Such words, therefore, having the same ef-
flct upon adjectives that adjectives have upon substan-
H es, have been called attributives of the second order.
jb grammarians they have been called adverbs ; and if we
ice the word verb in its most comprehensive signification,1
; including not only verbs properly so called, but also
< ery species of words which, whether essentially or acci-
i ntally, are significant of the attributes of substances, we
Stall find the name adverb to be a very just appellation, as
c noting a part of speech, the natural appendage of such
vbs. So great is this dependence in grammatical syntax,
lilt an adverb can no more subsist without its verb, that
is, without some word significant of an attribute, than a Adverbs,
verb or adjective can subsist without its substantive. It is v _&c~
the same here as in certain natural subjects. Every colour,
for its existence, as much requires a superficies, as the su¬
perficies for its existence requires a solid body.
Amongst the attributes of substance are reckoned quan¬
tity and quality ; thus we say a white garment, a high
mountain, and the like. Now some of these quantities and
qualities are capable of intension or remission ; or, in other
words, one substance may have them in a greater or less
degree than another. Thus we say, a garment exceed¬
ingly white, a mountain tolerably or moderately high.
Hence, then, one copious source of secondary attributes
or adverbs to denote these two, that is, intension and re¬
mission ; such as greatly, tolerably, vastly, extremely, indif¬
ferently.
But where there are different intensions of the same at¬
tribute, they may be compared together. Thus, if the
garment A be exceedingly white, and the garment B be
moderately white, we may say, the garment A is more
white than the garment B. This paper is white, and snow
is white; but snow is more white than this paper. In
these instances the adverb more not only denotes inten¬
sion, but relative intension ; nay, we stop not here, as we
not only denote intension merely relative, but relative in¬
tension than which there is none greater. Thus we say,
Sophocles was wise, Socrates was more wise than he, but
Solomon was the most wise of men. Even verbs, proper¬
ly so called, which denote an attribute as well as an asser¬
tion, must admit both of simple and of comparative in¬
tensions ; but the simple verb to be admits of neither the
one nor the other. Thus, in the following example, Fame
he loveth more than riches, but virtue of all things he
loveth most ; the words more and most denote the dif¬
ferent comparative intensions of the attribute included un¬
der the verb loveth; but the assertion itself, which is the
essential part of the verb, admits neither of intension nor
remission, and is the same in all possible propositions.
From this circumstance of quantities and qualities being
capable of intension and remission, arise the comparison of
adjectives, and its different degrees, which cannot well be
more than the two species above mentioned; one to de¬
note simple excess, and one to denote superlative. Were
we indeed to introduce more degrees than these, we ought
perhaps to introduce an infinite number, which is absurd.
For why stop at a limited number, when in all subjects sus¬
ceptible of intension, the intermediate excesses are in a
manner infinite ? Between the first simple white and the
superlative whitest there are infinite degrees of more white;
and the same may be said of more great, more strong, more
minute, and so on. The doctrine of grammarians about
three such degrees of comparison, which they call the posi¬
tive, the comparative, and the superlative, must be absurd;
both because in their positive there is no comparison at all,
and because their superlative is a comparative as much as
their comparative itself. Examples to evince this may be
met with everywhere. Socrates was the most wise of all
the Athenians ; Homer was the most sublime of all poets.
In this sentence Socrates is evidently compared with
the Athenians, and Homer with all other poets. Again,
if it be said that Socrates was more wise than any other
Athenian, but that Solomon was the most wise of men, is
not a comparison of Solomon with mankind in general, as
plainly implied in the last clause of the sentence, as a com¬
parison of Socrates with the other Athenians in the first ?
11 Aristotle and his followers called every word a verb which denotes the predicate of a proposition. This classification was cer-
tnly absurd; for it confounds not only adjectives and participles, but even substantives, with verbs; but the authority of Aristotle
f*s great; and hence the name of adverb, though that word attaches itself only to an adjective or participle, or a verb significant of
# attribute, and does not attach itself to the pure verb.
670
GRAMMAR.
Adverbs,
&c.
But if both imply comparison, it may be asked, in what
consists the difference between the comparative and super¬
lative ? Does the superlative always express a greater ex¬
cess than the comparative ? It does not; for though So¬
crates was the most wise of the Athenians, yet is Solomon
affirmed to have been more wise than he ; so that here a
higher superiority is denoted by the comparative more than
by the superlative most. Is this then the difference be¬
tween these two degrees, that the superlative implies a com¬
parison of one with many, whilst die comparative implies
only a comparison of one with one ? No, this is not always
the case neither. The Psalmist says, that “ he is reiser (or
more wise) than all his teachers;” where, though the com¬
parative is used, there is a comparison of one with many.
The real difference between these two degrees of com¬
parison may be explained thus :—When we use the super¬
lative, it is in consequence of having compared individuals
with the species to which they belong, or one or more spe¬
cies with the genus under which they are comprehended.
Thus Socrates was the most wise of the Athenians, and
the Athenians were the most enlightened of ancient na¬
tions. In the first clause of this sentence, Socrates, al¬
though compared with the Athenians, is at the same time
considered as one of them; and in the last the Athenians,
although compared with ancient nations, are yet consider¬
ed as one of those nations. Hence it is that in English
the superlative is followed by the preposition of, and in
Greek and Latin by the genitive case of the plural num¬
ber ; to show that the object which has the pre-eminence
is considered as belonging to that class of things with which
it is compared. But when we use the comparative degree,
the objects compared are set in direct opposition; and the
one is considered not as a part of the other, or as compre¬
hended under it, but as something altogether distinct and
belonging to a different class. Thus, were any one to say,
“ Cicero was more eloquent than the Romans,” he would
speak absurdly; because every body knows, that of the
class of men expressed by the word Homans, Cicero was
one, and such a sentence would affirm that orator to have
been more eloquent than himself. But when it is said
that “ Cicero was more eloquent than all the other Romans,
or than any other Roman,” the language is proper, and the
affirmation true ; for though the persons spoken of were
all of the same class or city, yet Cicero is here set in con¬
tradistinction to the rest of his countrymen, and is not con¬
sidered as one of the persons with whom he is compared.
It is for this reason that in English the comparative degree
is followed by a noun governed by the word of contradis¬
tinction than, and in Latin by a noun in the ablative case
governed by the preposition pree1 either expressed or un¬
derstood. We have already observed, that the ablative
case denotes concomitancy ; and therefore when an adjec¬
tive in the comparative degree is prefixed to a noun, that
noun is put in the ablative case, to denote that two things
are compared together in company ; but by means of the
preposition, expressed or understood, that which is denoted
by the comparative adjective is seen to be preferred be¬
fore that which is denoted by the noun.
We have hitherto considered the comparative as expressed
by the words more and most; but the authors or improvers
of language have contrived a method of retrenching the use A(iverliS'
of these adverbs, by expressing their force by an inflexion ^
of the adjective. Thus, instead of more fair, they say ^
fairer; instead of most fair, fairest; and the same method
of comparison takes place both in the Greek and Latin
languages ; with this difference, however, between the ge¬
nius of these languages and ours, that we are at liberty3to
form the comparison either in the one method or in the
other ; whereas in those languages the comparison is sel¬
dom or never formed by the assistance of the adverb, but al¬
ways by the inflexion of the adjective. Hence this inflex¬
ion is by the Greek and Latin grammarians considered as
a necessary accident of the adjective ; but it has reached
no further than to adjectives, and participles sharing the
nature of adjectives. The attributes expressed by verbs
are as susceptible of comparison as those expressed by ad¬
jectives; but they are always compared by means of ad¬
verbs, the verb being too much diversified already to admit
of more variations without perplexity.
It must be confessed, that comparatives, as well the sim¬
ple as the superlative, seem sometimes to part with their
relative nature, and to retain only their intensive. Thus
in the degree denoting simple excess,
Trutior, et lacrymis oculos suffusa nitentes Virg.
Tristior means nothing more than that Venus was very
sad. In the degree called the superlative this is more
usual. Phrases extremely common are, Vir doctissimus,
vir fortissimus, “ a most learned man, a most brave man;”
that is, not the bravest and most learned man that ever ex¬
isted, but a man possessing those qualities in an eminent
degree. In English, when we intimate that a certain qua¬
lity is possessed in an eminent degree, without making any
direct comparison between it and a similar quality, we do
it by the intensive word very, more commonly than by
most; as, Cicero wTas very eloquent, the mind of Johnson
was very vigorous. This mode of expression has been call¬
ed the superlative of eminence, to distinguish it from the
other superlative, which is superlative upon comparison.
Yet it may be said, that even in the superlative of emi¬
nence something of comparison must be remotely or indi¬
rectly intimated, as we cannot reasonably call a man very
eloquent, without comparing his eloquence with the elo¬
quence of other men. This is indeed true ; but we can¬
not therefore affirm that comparison is more clearly inti¬
mated in this superlative than in the simple adjective elo¬
quent ; for when we say that a man is eloquent, we mark
between his eloquence and that of other men a distinction
of the same kind, though not in the same degree, as when
we say that he is very eloquent.
In English we distinguish the two superlatives, by pre¬
fixing to the one the definite article the, to show that some¬
thing is predicated of the object expressed by it, which
cannot be predicated of any other object; and by subjoin¬
ing the preposition of, to show that the objects with which
it is compared are of the same class with itself; as, “ Solo¬
mon was the wisest of men ; Hector was the most valiant of
the Trojans.” To the other superlative2 we only prefix
1 See Ituddiman, Grammaticce Institutiones, pars secunda, lib. i. cap. 2. Although it is certainly true, that when we use the super-
lative, we ought in propriety to consider the things compared as of the same class ; and when we use the comparative, as of difieren
classes; yet this distinction is not always attended to by the best writers in any language. In Latin and Greek the comparative1*
sometimes used, where in English we should use the superlative ; as dextra estfortior manuum; and in the Gospel it is said, that a
grain of mustard-seed is the smaller (/tiK^rtoos) of all seeds, but wrhen grown up it is the greater (puguv) of herbs.” Even in Enghs ,
the custom of the language permits us not to say, “ he is the tallest of the two,” it must be the taller of the two; but we cannot say
“ he is the taller of the three," it must be the tallest. For these and other deviations from the general rule no reason is to be foun m
the nature of things ; they are errors made proper by use. , g
’ In English, the termination est is peculiar to the superlative of comparison, to which the definite article is prefixed. Tm13
may say, “ Homer was the sublimest of poetsbut we cannot say, “ Homer was a sublimest poet.” Again, we may say, “ HoDie
was a very sublime poet;” but not, “ Homer was the very sublime poet.”
injnsion or remission, and as there can be no intension or general description or definition. Many of them seem to
i etission in tilings always definite, therefore these attri- have been introduced into language in order to express by
es can admit of no comparison. By the same method one word the meaning of two or three, and are mere ab-
asoning, we discover the cause why no substantive is breviations of nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Thus, the im-
ptible of these degrees of comparison. A mountain port of the phrase, in what place, is expressed by the sin-
ot be said more to be or to exist than a mole-hill; but gle word where s to what place, by whither j from this place,
nore or less must be sought for in their quantities. In by hence; in a direction ascending, by upwards; at the
manner, when we refer many individuals to one spe- present time, by now; at what time, by when; at that
the lion A cannot be called more a lion than the lion time, by then ; many times, by often; not many times, by
but if more any thing, he is more fierce, more swift, or seldom ; and so of others.
eding in some such attribute. So, again, in referring Mr Horne Tooke has, with great industry and accuracy,
m#y species to one genus, a crocodile is not more an ani- traced many of the English adverbs from their origin in
mathan a lizard ; nor a tiger more than a cat; but, if any the ancient Saxon and other northern tongues, and shown
thiig, the crocodile and tiger are more bulky, more strong, them to be either corruptions of other words or abbrevia-
&4;han the animals with which they are compared; the tions of phrases and sentences. He observes, “ that all ad-
exflss, as before, being derived from their attributes. verbs ending in ly, the most prolific branch of the family,
the adverbs or secondary attributives already mention- are sufficiently understood ; the termination being only the
ed^lhose denoting intension and remission may be called word like corrupted, and the corruption so much the more
0j adtrbs of quantity continuous, as greatly, vastly, tolerably, easily and certainly discovered, as the termination remains
“ &<m once, twice, thrice, &c.2 are adverbs of quantity discrete, more pure and distinguishable in the other sister languages,
as|ore and most, less and least, to which may be added in which it is written lick, lyh, lig, ligen.” He might have
'I’iirn
pulyi
1 hose
Mnu
GRAMMAR.
:h indefinite article a; as, “ he was a very good man; he adverbs, though so called by the grammarians. The sim-
w#a most valiant soldier.’ _ pie affirmative and negative yes and no are called adverbs,
*.s there are some qualities which admit of comparison, though they surely do not signify that which we hold to be
sphere are others which admit of none ; such, for example, the very essence of the adverb, a modification of attributes,
afathose which denote that quality of bodies arising from “ Is he learned ? No.” ‘ “ Is he brave ? Yes.” Here
thar figure, as when we say, a circular table, a quadrangu
kmoxiYt, a conical piece of metal, and the like. The rea¬
sons, that a million of things participating the same figure,
ppicipate it equally, if they do it at all. To say, there-
f(§ that whilst A and B are both quadrangular, A is more
o|m quadrangular than B, is absurd. The same holds
tif in all attributives denoting definite quantities of what-
eqUhy, proportionally, &c. are adverbs of relation. There
ariitliers of quality ; as when we say, honestly industrious,
prltently brave; they fought bravely, he painted finely.
Jnd here it may be worth while to observe, how the
sai thing, participating the same essence, assumes differ-
entjgrammatical forms from its different relations. For
pie, suppose it should be asked, How differ honest,
added, that in Scotland the word like is, at this day, fre¬
quently used instead of the English termination ly ; as for
a goodly figure, the common people say a good-like figure.
Upon this principle the greater part of adverbs are resolv¬
ed into those parts of speech which we have already consi¬
dered, as honestly into honest-like, vastly, into vast-like, &c.;
so that when we say of a man he is honestly industrious, we
affirm that he is honest-like industrious, or that his industry
has the appearance of being honest. Adverbs of a differ¬
ent termination the same acute writer resolves thus; aghast
into the past participle agazed;
The French exclaimed, the Devil was in arms.
All the whole army stood agassed on him Shaksp.
Tie adverbs hitherto mentioned are common to verbs of Ago, into the past participle agone or gone. Asunder he
■ ey species; but there are some which are confined to derives from asundered, separated; the past participle of
honstly, and honesty ? The answer is, they are in essence
thiame; but they differ in as much as honest is the attri-
Imtte of a noun ; honestly, of a verb or adjective; and ho-
being divested of these its attributive relations, as-
siij|s the power of a noun or substantive, so as to stand
byJjself.
veift properly so called, that is, to such verbs as denote
mfpns or energies with their privations. All motion and
reimply time and place as a kind of necessary coinci-
flderr. Hence, when we would express the place or time
oi iiher, we have recourse to adverbs formed for this pur-
pos; of place, as when we say, he stood there, he went
hem, he came hither; of time, as when we say, he stood
he went afterwards, he travelled formerly. To these
'g he added the adverbs which denote the intensions
anWremissions peculiar to motion, such as speedily, hastily,
slowly, See.; as also adverbs of place made out of
, prepsitions, such as upwards and downwards, from up and
t ’  
the Anglo-Saxon verb asundrien, a word which, in all its
varieties, is to be found in all the northern tongues, and
comes originally from sond, that is, sand. To wit, from wit-
tan, to know; as videlicet and scilicet, in Latin, are abbrevia¬
tions of videre-licet and scire-licet. Needs, he resolves into
need is, used parenthetically; as, “I must needs do such a
thing.” “ I must (need is) do such a thing ;” that is, “ I
must do it, there is need of it.” Anon, which our old au¬
thors use for immediately, instantly, means, he says, in one,
that is, in one instant, moment, minute. As,
And right anon withouten more abode.
Anon in all the haste I can.
It may, however, be doubted whether some of Alone and only are resolved into all one, and one-like. In
wor]ds, as well as many others, which do not so pro- the Dutch, een is one ; and all een alone; and all-een-like,
idjpcn modify attributes, as mark some remote circumstance only, anciently alonely. Alive is on live, or in life. Thus,
atteding an attribute or our way of conceiving it, are truly in Chaucer,
-I      
meA’ “nd the ^ <* «■* «“ -i*
^Z\l%trr^UCiey7 Ttte;nre’S’ t]fe'S' an(lare merel>r the genitives of one, Uco, three, the substantive time or
e^g emitted. Thus, How often did you write? Answer, Once, that is, one's time. (See Horne Tooke’s Diversions of Purlcy).
671
Adverbs,
&c.
the two adverbs, as they are called, signify not any modi¬
fication of the attributes brave and learned, but a total
negation of the attribute in the one case, and in the other
a declaration that the attribute belongs to the person spo¬
ken of.
Adverbs are indeed applied to many purposes ; and their
_ . general nature may be better understood by reading a list
Gr nature; for as there can be no comparison without of them, and attending to their etymology, than by any
672 GRAMMAR.
Adverbs, Christ eterne on live. So that when it is asked whether a man be brave, if the an- P
&c- Aught or ought; a whit or o whit; o being formerly writ- swer be no, it is a declaration that he who makes it is averse tiomT
ten for the article a, or for the numeral one ; and whit or from or unwilling to admit that proposition. '
hwit, in Saxon, signifying a small thing, as a point ov jot. Most writers on grammar have mentioned a species of
Awhile, which is usually classed with adverbs, is evidently adverbs, which they call adverbs of interrogation, such as
a noun with the indefinite article prefixed; a while, that where, whence, whither, how, &c. But the truth is, that
is, a time. Whilst, anciently and more properly whiles, is there is no part of speech which, of itself, denotes interro-
plainly the Saxon hwilees, time that. Aloft was formerly gation. A question is never asked otherwise than by ab-
written on-loft. As, in Chaucer, breviation, by a single word, whether that word be a noun,
And ye, my mother, my soveregne pleasance a pronoun, a verb, or an adverb. The wordwViere isequi-
Over al thing, out take Christ on lofte, valent to in what place ; whence, to from what place; and
Now, says Mr Horne Tooke, lyft, in the Anglo-Saxon, is hoiv, to in what manner, &c. In these phrases, in what
the air or the clouds, as, in lyfte cummende, coming in the place,/row* what place, and in what manner, the only word
clouds (St Luke). In the Danish, luft is air; and “ at that can be supposed to have the force of an interrogative,
spronge i luften,” to blow up into the air, or aloft. So in is what, which is resolvable into that which. But we have
the Dutch, de loef hebben, to sail before the wind ; loeven, already explained, under the head of Pronouns, the princi-
to ply to windward; loef, the weather gage, &c. From pies upon which the relative is made to denote interrogation;
the same root are our other words, Loft, lofty, to luff, lee, and the same reasoning will account for the adverbs when,
leeward, lift, &c. It would be needless, as the ingenious whence, whither, how, &c. being employed as interrogatives.
author observes, to notice such adverbs as, afoot, adays, When we say, “ Where were you yesterday ? whence have
ashore, astray, aslope, aright, abed, aback, abreast, afloat, you come ? whither are you going ? how do you perform
aloud, aside, afield, aground, aland, &c. These are at first your journey ?” we merely use so many abbreviations for
view seen for what they are. Nor shall we follow him the following sentences: “ Tell us, or describe to us, Me
through the analysis which he has given of many other place where (or in which) you were yesterday; the place
adverbs, of which the origin is not so obvious as of these, whence (or from which) you have come ; the place to
Of the truth of his principles we are satisfied; and have which you are going; the manner in which you perform
not a doubt, but that upon those principles a man conver- your journey ? And so much for adverbs. We nowpro-
sant with our earliest writers, and thoroughly skilled in ceed to those parts of speech which are usually called pre-
the present languages, may trace every English adverb1 to positions and conjunctions, and of which the use is to con¬
its source, and show that it is no part of speech separate nect the other words of a sentence, and to combine two or
from those which we have already considered. The ad- more simple sentences into one compound sentence,
verbs, however, of affirmation and negation, are of too
much importance to be thus passed over; and as we have VI.— Of Prepositions, Conjunctions, and Interjections.
never seen an account of them at all satisfactory, except
that whieh has been given by Mr Horne Tooke, we shall It has been observed, that a man whilst awake is con-
transcribe the substance of what he says concerning aye, yea, scious of a continued train of perceptions and ideas passing
yes, and no. To us these words have always appeared im- in his mind, which depends little upon his own will; that
properly classed with adverbs, upon every definition which he cannot to the train add a new idea ; and that he can
has been given of that part of speech. Accordingly, our but very seldom break its connection. To the slightest
author says, that aye or yea is the imperative of a verb of reflection these truths must be apparent. Our first ideas
northern extraction ; and means have, possess, enjoy. And are those which we derive from external objects making
yes is a contraction of ay-es, have, possess, enjoy, that, impressions on the senses; but all the external objects
Thus, when it is asked whether a man be learned, if the which fall under our observation are linked together in
answer be by the word yes, it is equivalent to have that, such a manner as indicates them to be parts of one great
enjoy that belief or that proposition. and regular system. When we take a view of the things
The northern verb of which yea is the imperative, is in by which we are surrounded, and which are the arche-
Danish ejer, to possess, have, enjoy. Eja, aye or yea; eje, types of our ideas, their inherent qualities are not more
possession ; ejer, possessor. In Swedish it is ega, to possess, remarkable than the various relations by which they
of which the imperative is ja, aye, yea; egare, possessor, are connected. Cause and effect, contiguity in time or
In German, ja signifies aye or yea; eigener, possessor, place, high and low, prior and posterior, resemblance an
owner ; eigen, own. In Dutch, eigenen is to possess ’,ja, yea. contrariety, with a thousand other relations, connect things
Greenwrood derives not and its abbreviate no from the La- together without end. There is not a single thing w ici
tin; Minshow, from the Hebrew; and Junius, from the appears solitary and altogether devoid of connection.
Greek. Our author very properly observes, that the inha- The only difference is, that some are intimately an some
bitants of the north could not wait for a word expressive of slightly connected, some nearly and some at a distance,
dissent till the establishment of those nations and languages; That the relations by which external objects are us
and adds, that we need not be inquisitive nor doubtful con- linked together must have great influence in directing
cerning the origin and signification of not and no ; since we train of human thought, so that not one perception or i e
find that, in the Danish nodig, in the Swedish nodig, and can appear to the mind wholly unconnected with allot ^
in the Dutch, noode, node, and no, mean averse, unwilling, perceptions or ideas, will be admitted by every man wi
1 The same resolution might probably be made of the Greek and Latin adverbs, were we as intimately acquainted with the sources
of those tongues as Mr Horne Tooke is with the sources of the English language. “ Many of the Latin adverbs, says '
“ are nothing else but adjective nouns or pronouns, having the preposition and substantive understood ; as quo, eo, eodem, o ’
ea, eadem (loco) or cui, ei, eidem {loco) ; for of old these datives ended in o. Thus, qua, hac, iliac, &c. are plainly adjectives in m(t-
tive singular feminine, the word via, “ a way,” and the preposition in, being understood. Many of them are compounds, a ,
do, i. e. quo niodo ; qucmadmodum, i. e. ad qucm modum; quamcibrem, i. e. ob quam rem ; quare, i. e. (pro) qua re ; quorsum, ' flj_
quem {locum) ; scilicet, i. e. scire licet ; videlicet, i. e. viderc licet ; ilicet, i. e. ire licet ; illico, i. e. in loco ; magnopcre, i. e. magnopp > ^
minim, i. e. ni {est) mirum ; hodie, i. e. hoc die ; postridie, i. e. postero die ; pridie, i. e. pra die. Perfecto, certe, sane, mae, t ^ ^n.
are obviously adjectives. Forte is the ablative offors ; and if we had leisure to pursue the subject, and were masters o a
guages from which the Latin is derived, we doubt not but we should be able to resolve every adverb into a substantive or j
Heve
leyar
This
|giiaj
nish'
ibslan
it ah
id to
nnect
par
e cli
iclr s
ever,
nect
adj<
'mm
meet
tiveei
attri
ids, t
natui
jreov
itigui
iffor
Ilya
aid
tone.
wall
difies
Iks s.
er w
ribut
as of
ient
ibsoli
;hma
uisitf
ate«
;lre si
;le ai
finis
*n o
ins, i
:ges i
ttion
ted
ying
glislr,
!, “Ij
Iked
igibl
at of
lelroo'
| sage,
cant
as an
1 gh, fl
flsel
tied
junct
iLati
ge Vi
snot
e ierve
fhe s
S' 1 thei
fiver b(
* upor
k
GRAMMAR.
673
blieves that his senses and intellect represent things as
tfey are.
This being the case, it is necessary, if the purpose of
Ifaguage be to communicate thought, that the speaker be
finished with words, not only to express the ideas of
siostances and attributes which he may have in his mind,
bt also to indicate the order in which he views them,
ad to point out the various relations by which they are
oanected. In many instances all this may be done by
tfe parts of speech which we have already considered.
Jse closest connection which w7e can conceive, is that
wich subsists between a substance and its qualities ; and
ir every language with which we are acquainted, that
collection is indicated by the immediate coalescence of
tl; adjective with the substantive ; as we say, a good man,
(teamed man; vir bonus, vir docius. Again, there is a
CHinection equally intimate, though not so permanent,
beween an agent and his action ; for the action is really
(attribute of the agent; and therefore we say, the boy
ids, the man writes ; the noun coalescing with the verb
laturally, that no other word is requisite to unite them,
breover, an action and that which is acted upon being
itiguous in nature, and mutually affecting each other,
words which denote them should in language be mu-
Uly attractive, and capable of coalescing without exter-
aid; as, he reads a book, he builds a house, he breaks
tone. Further, because an attribute and its modifica-
tins are inseparably united, an adjective or a verb is
niurally connected with the adverb which illustrates or
qjjdifies its signification; and therefore, when we say, he
utlks slowly, he is prudently brave, it is plain that no
of er word is necessary to promote the coalescence of the
afributes “ walking” and “ bravery” with their modifica-
tr is of “ slowness” and “ prudence.” The agreement be-
tyien the terms of any proposition which constitutes truth
bsolutely perfect; but as either of the terms may agree
h many other things besides its correlate, some word is
uisitein every proposition to connect the particular pre-
te with the particular subject; and that is the office
he simple verb to be ; as, the three angles of every tri-
le are equal to two right angles.
Thus we see that many of the relations subsisting be¬
en our ideas may be clearly expressed by means of
ns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs; and in those lan-
ges of which the nouns have cases, there is perhaps no
tion of much importance which might not be thus
ted out, without being under the necessity of em-
p|jying the aid of any additional part of speech. In
fish, however, the case is otherwise; for were we to
sii, “ He rode Edinburgh, went the parliament-house,
w ked his counsel the court met,” we should speak unin-
tejigibly; as in these expressions there is either a total
wat of connection, or such a connection as produces
fsfehoodand nonsense. In order to give meaning to the
pasage, the several gaps must be filled up by words sig-
njjcant of the various relations by which the different
id|is are connected in the mind; as, “ He rode to Edin-
bjjgh, went to the parliament-house, and walked with his
ccnsel till the court met.” Of these connecting words,
&ind with are called jwepositions, and and till are usually
cied conjunctions. Although these prepositions and
exjunctions are not so absolutely necessary in Greek
ar. Latin as they are in English, yet as there is no lan-
guge wholly without them, nor any language in which
it s not of importance to understand their force, they well
deerve a place in universal grammar.
T.'he sole use of conjunctions and prepositions in lan¬
guage is to connect either sentences or other words; but
tw theory of these connectives themselves has certainly
nkr been understood, unless Mr Horne Tooke has at last
hit upon the truth. Mr Harris writes about them and
ot. x.
about them, quoting passages from Greek and Latin au- Conjunc-
thors, and produces at last no information. His defini- tions.
tions of both, as parts of speech void of signification, are
highly absurd; and even the principal distinction which
he makes between them seems not to be well founded.
Prepositions and conjunctions denote the relations sub¬
sisting between the ideas expressed by those words or
sentences which they serve to connect; and as relations
are contemplated by the mind as well as positive ideas
themselves, the words which denote these relations can¬
not be insignificant. The essential difference between
the conjunction and preposition, according to the same
author, consists in this, that the former connects sen¬
tences, and the latter words; but the fact is often other¬
wise. An obvious example occurs where the conjunction
and connects not sentences but words. “ A man of wis¬
dom and virtue is a perfect character.” Here it is not
meant to be asserted, “ that the man of wisdom is a per¬
fect character, and that the man of virtue is a perfect cha¬
racter;” for both these assertions would be false. This
sentence therefore (and many such will occur) is not re¬
solvable into two ; whence it follows, that the conjunction
and does not always connect sentences; and the same is
frequently the case with other conjunctions.
Mr Horne Tooke’s idea of prepositions and conjunctions
is, that they do not form distinct classes of words, but are
merely abbreviations of nouns and verbs; and, with respect
to the English language, he has been remarkably success¬
ful in proving his position. But though such be undenia¬
bly the case in English, it would be rash to conclude a
priori that it is so in all other tongues. To establish this
general conclusion would require a long and tedious de¬
duction in each particular language; and how much lan¬
guage, leisure, industry, and acuteness, such an under¬
taking would require, even in one tongue, it is not easy
to determine. In the languages with which we are best
acquainted, many conjunctions, and most prepositions,
have the appearance at least of original words; and
though this most acute grammarian, from his knowledge
of the northern tongues, has been able to trace the most
important of those in English to very plausible sources,
the same thing would be difficult in other languages of
which the sources are obscure, and absolutely impossible
in those of which they are wholly unknown. It is, how¬
ever, a strong presumption in favour of his opinion, that
grammarians have never been able to assign any general
characteristic of those species of words, which, did they
constitute distinct parts of speech, one would think could
not have so long remained undiscovered. It is a further
presumption in his favour, that many words in Greek and
Latin, as well as in English, which have been called con¬
junctions, are obviously resolvable upon his principles,
and indeed discover their meaning and origin upon mere
inspection. We shall therefore content ourselves with
retailing the common doctrine respecting these parts of
speech so far as it is intelligible, subjoining at the bottom
of the page the analysis given by Mr Horne Tooke, of the
most important English conjunctions and prepositions;
and requesting our readers, who would understand the
subject, to attend more to the relations between their va¬
rious ideas, than to the frivolous distinctions which, in
compliance with custom, we are compelled to lay before
them. We shall treat first of the conjunction.
1. Of Conjunctions.
A conjunction is a part of speech of which, as its name
indicates, the use is to connect either two or more words
in a sentence, or to make of two simple sentences one com¬
pound sentence. It is usually said that conjunctions never
connect words, but sentences only, and that this is the cir¬
cumstance which distinguishes them from prepositions. We
4
GRAMMAR
674
Conjunc- have already given one example which proves this distinc¬
tions. t;ion t0 be hi founded; we shall now give from Mr Horne
Tooke one or two more, which will place its absurdity in
a still clearer light: Two a?id two are four; John and Jane
are a handsome couple; AB a?id BC and CA form a tri¬
angle. Are two four ? Is John a couple and Jane a couple ?
Does one straight line form a triangle ? It appears indeed
that and may connect any two things which can be con¬
nected, as it signifies addition.1 2 3
Conjunctions connecting sentences sometimes connect
their meaning, and sometimes not. For example, let us
take these two sentences, “ Rome was enslaved, Caesar was
ambitious,” and connect them together by the conjunction
because; “ Rome was enslaved because Caesar was ambi¬
tious.” Here the meanings, as well as the sentences, ap¬
pear to be connected by that natural relation which sub¬
sists between an effect and its cause; for the enslaving of
Rome was the effect of Caesar’s ambition. That particular
relation therefore is that which is denoted by the conjunc¬
tion because? which would be improperly used to connect
two sentences between which the relation of an effect to
its cause exists not. But if it be said, “ manners must be
reformed, or liberty will be lost;” here the conjunction or,
though it joins the sentences, yet as to their meaning is a
perfect disjunctive. Between the reformation of manners
and the loss of liberty there is certainly a natural relation ;
but it is not the relation of contiguity or similitude, or of
cause and effect, but of contrariety. The relation of con¬
trariety therefore is the signification of the word or? And
thus it appears, that though all conjunctions may combine
sentences, yet, with respect to the sense, some are conjunc¬
tive and others disjunctive.
Those conjunctions which conjoin both sentences and
their meanings are either copulatives or continuatives. The
principal copulative in English is and, which we have al¬
ready considered. The continuatives are much more nu- c '
merous; if, an, because, therefore, wherefore, hence, &c. 2“C'
The difference between them is this: The copulative does Wv
no more than barely couple words or sentences, and ig
therefore applicable to all subjects of which the natures
are not incompatible.4 The relation which it denotes is
that of juxtaposition, or of one thing added to another
Continuatives, on the contrary, by a more intimate con¬
nection, consolidate sentences into one continuous whole •
and are therefore applicable only to subjects which have
an essential relation to each other, such as that of an effect to
its cause, or of a cause to its effect. For example, it is no
way improper to say, “ Lysippus was a statuary, and Pfis-
cian a grammarian ; the sun shineth, and the sky is dear •”
because these are things that can co-exist, and yet imply no
absurdity. But it would be absurd to say, “ Lysippus was
a statuary because Priscian was a grammarian though not
to say, “ the sun shineth because the sky is clear.” With
respect to the first, the reason is, that the word because de¬
notes the relation which an effect bears to its cause; but
the skill of Priscian in grammar could not possibly be the
cause of Lysippus’s skill in statuary ; the coincidence be¬
tween the skill of the one and that of the other, in arts so
very different, was merely accidental. With respect to the
shining of the sun and the clearness of the sky, the case is
widely different; for the clearness of the sky is the cam
of the sun’s shining, at least so as to be seen by us.
As to the continuatives, they are either suppositive, such
as if, an; or positive, such as because, therefore, as, &c.
Take examples of each: “ You will live happily you live
honestly; you live happily because you live honestly; you
live honestly, therefore you live happily.” The difference
between these continuatives is this: The suppositives de¬
note connection, but do not assert actual existence; the
positives imply both the one and the other.5
1 And is a Saxon word, being, according to Mr Horne Tooke, an abbreviation of anad, the imperative of the verb ananad, to add
to or heap up. So that w'hen we say tzvo axd two are four, we only declare that two added to two are four.
2 Because is compounded of the Saxon be, ly, and cause ; and by some of our most ancient authors it was written by cause. “ Rome
was enslaved because Ccesar was ambitious,” is therefore equivalent to, “ Rome was enslaved by the cause Caesar was ambitious taking
the phrase, “ CaEsar w’as ambitious,” as an abstract noun in concord with the other noun cause.
3 Or seems to be a mere contraction of the Saxon Oder, which signifies other, that is, something different and often contrary. So
that the conjunction or must always denote diversity, and very often contrariety.
4 As day and night, heat and cold ; for we cannot say of the same portion of time, it is day and it is night; or of the same body, it is
both hot and cold.
5 The reason of all this will be apparent from the analysis given by Mr Horne Tooke of those words which we have called suppo¬
sitive conjunctions. If and an may be used mutually and indifferently to supply each other’s- place ; for they are both verbs, and
of the same import. If is merely the imperative of the Gothic and Anglo-Saxon verb gifan, to give; and in those languages, as
well as in the English formerly, this supposed conjunction was pronounced and written as the common imperative gif. Thus,
My largesse
Hath lotted her to be your brother’s mistresse,
Gi/shee can be reclaimed ; g-j/not, his prey. Sad Shepherd.
Gawin Douglass almost always uses gif for if, as the common people in some counties of Scotland do even at this day ; and it is ob¬
vious, that our i/has always the signification of the English imperative give, and no other. So that the resolution of the construction
in the sentence, “ If you live honestly you will live happily,” is simply this, “ Give you live honestly (taking you live honestly as an ab-
stract noun) you will live happily.” Your living happily is declared to depend upon your living honestly as the condition; hoi give that,
and your happiness is positively asserted. In like manner may such sentences be resolved as,
I wonder he can move ! that he’s not fixed !
If that his feelings be the same with mine.
Thus, “ His feelings be the same with mine, give that, I wonder he can move,” &c. And here we cannot forbear giving our assent to
the truth of Mr Horne Tooke’s observation, that when the datum upon which any conclusion depends is a sentence, the article t/iflt, b
not expressed, may always be inserted. We do not, however, think the insertion at all times absolutely necessary to complete the syn¬
tax ; for active verbs govern whole sentences and clauses of sentences as well as substantive nouns. Instances of this occur so fre¬
quently in the Latin classics, that they can have escaped no man’s notice who has ever read Horace or Virgil with attention. V\e
agree likewise with this most ingenious author, that where the datum is not a sentence, but some noun governed by the verb if «r
give, the article that can never be inserted. For example, if we be asked how the weather will dispose of us to-morrow, we cannot
say : If that fair, it will send us abroad ; if that foul, it will keep us at home but “ if fair, it will send us abroad,” &c. The reason
is obvious. The verb in this case directly governs the noun ; and the resolved construction is, “ give fair weather, it will send us
abroad ; give foul weather, it will keep us at home.”
An, the other suppositive conjunction mentioned, is nothing else than the imperative of the Anglo-Saxon verb anan, which like¬
wise means to give or to grant. As, “ An you had an eye behind you, you might see more detraction at your heels than fortune be¬
fore you that is, “ Grant you had an eye behind you, you might see,” &c. This account of the two conditional conjunctions in
English is so rational and satisfactory, that we are strongly inclined to believe that all those words which are so called, are in al
languages to be accounted for in the same manner. Not indeed that they must all mean precisely to give or grant, but somewnru
equivalent 5 such as, be it, suppose, allow, permit; which meaning is to be sought for in the particular etymology of each respective
language.
»
The
^ikcf
r^refy
\ Lai"
in;
Oft
) won
'erent
seen
ised f
as al
teein
ions.
Eng
|ward,
aeon
11, reig
t factioi
i in, th:
(m all
• t the i
f re a f<
th
0 pie:
E lat i:
[ lal sig
i or so,
As
nlire pn
' rds th
the &
some
We
linds (:
ijverne(
Mr
^etwo
them
I perati
imps
;oft
t abot
E ;the
thisd
T) BU'
%ositi
D Mure
htati.
GRAMMAR.
675
The positives above mentioned are either causal, such
a because, since, as, &c. ;l or collective, such as therefore,
therefore, &c. The difference between them is this: The
cusals subjoin causes to effects ; as, “ the sun is in eclipse,
Kcause the moon intervenesthe collectives subjoin ef-
fets to causes; as, “ the moon intervenes, therefore2 the
im is in eclipse.” We therefore use causals in those in-
sinces where, the effect being conspicuous, we seek for its
Iase; and collectives, in demonstration and science, pro-
rly so called, where the cause being first known, by its
Ip we discern effects.
As to causal conjunctions, we may further observe, that
2re is not one of the four species of causes which they
a; not capable of denoting. For example, the material
case ; “ The trumpet sounds because it is made of metal.”
lie formal; “ The trumpet sounds because it is long and
hllow.” The efficient; “ The trumpet sounds because an
a ist blows it.” The final; “ The trumpet sounds that it
my raise our courage.” It is worth observing, that the
$;t three causes are expressed by the strongest affirma-
an ; because if the effect actually be, these must be also,
fit this is not the case with respect to the last, which is
otly affirmed as a thing that may happen. The reason is
ojvious ; for whatever may be the end which set the artist
fist to work, that end it may still be beyond his power to
oitain ; as, like all other contingents, it may either hap¬
pen or not. Hence also it is connected by a particular Conjunc-
conjunction, that,* absolutely confined to this cause. tions.
We come now to the disjunctive conjunctions, a species
of words which bear this contradictory name, because whilst
they conjoin the sentences, they disjoin the sense ; or, to
speak a language more intelligible, they denote relations
of diversity or opposition.
That there should be such words, whether called con¬
junctions or not, is extremely natural. For as there is a
principle of union diffused throughout all things, by which
this whole is kept together and preserved from dissipation ;
so is there in like manner a principle of diversity diffused
throughout all, the source of distinction, of number, and of
order. Now it is to express in some degree the modifica¬
tions of this diversity, that those words called disjunctive
conjunctions are employed.
Of these disjunctives some are simple and some adversa¬
tive : Simple, as when we say, “ either it is day or it is
night;” adversative, as when we say, “ it is not day, but it
is night.” The difference between these is, that the sim¬
ple express nothing more than a relation of diversity ; the
adversative express a relation not barely of diversity, but
also of opposition. Add to this, that the adversatives are
definite, the simple indefinite. Thus, w hen we say, “ the
number three is not an even number, buft an odd,” w^e not
only disjoin two opposite attributes, but we definitely af-
Of the causal conjunctions mentioned in the text, "because has been already considered; and some account must be given of the
i) words since and as. The former of these, according to Mr Horne Tooke, is a very corrupt abbreviation, confounding together
'erent words and different combinations of words. To us it appears to be compounded of seand, seeing, and es, that or it; or of
, seen, and es. Seand and sin are the present and past participles of the Anglo-Saxon verb seon, to see. In modern English since
ised four ways; two as a preposition affecting words, and two as a conjunction affecting sentences. When used as a preposition,
itias always the signification of the past participle seen joined to thence (that is, seen and thenceforward), or else the significa-
tfi of the past participle seen only. When used as a conjunction, it has sometimes the signification of the present participle seeing,
oisecing that; and sometimes the signification of the past participle seen, or seen that. We shall give examples of all these signifi-
qlions. 1 st. As a preposition signifying seen and thenceforward: “ A more amiable sovereign than George III. has not swayed
English sceptre since the conquest." That is, “ The conquest seen (or at the completion of the sight of the conquest), and thence-
vard, a more amiable sovereign than George III. has not swayed the English sceptre.” Since, taken in this sense, seems rather to
a corruption of siththan or sithcnce, than a compound of seand and es. 2dly, As a preposition signifying seen simply : “ Did George
'. reign before or since that example ?” 3<%, As a conjunction, since means seeing that: as, “ If I should labour for any other sa-
action but that of my own mind, it would be an effect of frenzy in me, not of hope ; since (or seeing that) it is not truth, but opi-
ntn, that can travel through the world without a passport.” Ithly, It means seen that or that seen; as, “ Since death in the end takes
f|(m all whatsoever fortune or force takes from any one, it were a foolish madness in the shipwreck of worldly things, when all sinks
bt the sorrow, to save that;” that is, “ Death in the end takes from all whatsoever fortune or force takes from any one; that seen, it
Vi|re a foolish madness,’’ &c.
is, the other causal conjunction mentioned in the text, is an article meaning always it, or that, or which. Take the following ex-
* pie:
She glides away under the foamy seas
As swift as darts or feather’d arrows fly.
1 at is, “ She glides away (with) that swiftness (with) which darts or feathered arrows fly.” In German, where as still retains its ori-
gial signification and use, it is written es. So is another conjunction of the same import with as, being evidently the Gothic article
a ir so, which signifies it or that.
1 As Mr Harris has called therefore, wherefore, &c. collective conjunctions, we have retained the denomination, though perhaps a
nre proper one might be found. It is indeed of little consequence what name any class of words be called, provided the import of the
wrds themselves be understood. Wherefore and therefore evidently denote the relation of a cause to its effects. They are compounds
( the Saxon words hwver and th^ek. with fob. or voon; and signify/or which, for those, or for that. It is worthy of remark, that
iisome parts of Scotland the common people even at this day use this for these.
* We have already considered the word that, and seen that it is never a conjunction, but uniformly a definite article. “ The trumpet
# inds (for) that it may raise our couragetaking the clause “ it may raise our courage” as an abstract noun in concord with that and
grerned hy for. Or the sentence may be resolved thus : “ The trumpet may raise our courage (for) that (purpose) it sounds.”
jp Mr Horne Tooke has favoured us with some ingenious remarks on the two different derivations of the word hut, when used in
Ife two acceptations which are usually annexed to it, viz. that which it bears in the beginning of a sentence, and that which it has
ijithe middle. He has given it as his opinion, that this word, when employed in the former way, is corruptly put for hot, the
iiiperative of the Saxon verb botan, to boot, to superadd, to supply, &c. and that when used in the latter it is a contraction of be-utan,
tji imperative of beon-utan, to be out. Our ancient writers made the proper distinction between the orthography of the one word and
tit of the other. Gawin Douglass, in particular, although he frequently confounds the two words, and uses them improperly, does
vt abound with many instances of their proper use ; and so contrasted, as to awaken, says our author, the most inattentive reader.
Cl the many examples quoted by him, we shall content ourselves with the two following:
Bot thy worke shall endure in laude and glorie,
But spot or fault condigne eterne memorie.
Bot gif the fates, bu t pleid,
At my pleasure suffer it me life to leid.
J this derivation of the word but from botan, to superadd, be just, the sentence in the text, “ the number three is not an even num-
Vi but an odd,” will be equivalent to “ the number three is not an even number, superadd (it is) an odd numberand if so, the
^position is not marked (at least directly) by the word but, but by the adjectives even and odd, which denote attributes in their own
^ture opposite. It is only when but has this sense that it answers to sed in Latin, or to maism French. In the second line of the
fetation from Gawin Douglass’s Preface the word but is evidently a contraction of be-utan, and has a sense very different from
676
GRAMMAR.
Conjunc- firm the one to belong to the subject, and deny the other,
tions. But when we say, “ the number of the stars is either1 even
or odd,” though we assert one attribute to be, and the
other not to be, yet the alternative is notwithstanding left
indefinite.
As to adversative disjunctives, it has been already said,
after Mr Harris, that they imply opposition ; but the truth
seems to be, that they only unite in the same sentence
words or phrases of opposite meanings. Now it is obvious,
that opposite attributes cannot belong to the same subject;
as when we say, “ Nereus was beautiful,” we cannot super¬
add to this sentence that he was ugly ; we cannot say, “ he
was beautiful but ugly.” When there is opposition, it must
be either of the same attribute in different subjects; as
when we say, “ Brutus was a patriot, but Caesar was not;”
or of different attributes in the same subject, as when we
say, “ Georgius was a sophist, but not a philosopher or
of different attributes in different subjects, as when we
say, “ Plato was a philosopher, but Hippias was a sophist.”
The conjunctions used for all these purposes have been
called absolute adversatives, we think improperly, as the
opposition is not marked by the conjunctions, but by the
words or sentences which they serve to connect. Mr
Locke, speaking of the word but, says, that “ it sometimes
intimates a stop of the mind, in the course it was going,
before it came to the end of it;” to which Mr Horne
Tooke replies with truth, that but itself is the farthest of
any word in the language from intimating a stop. On the
contrary, it always intimates something to follow; inso¬
much that when any man in discourse finishes his words
with but, instead of supposing him to have stopped, we al¬
ways ask, but what ?
Besides the adversatives already mentioned, there are
two other species, of which the most important are unless
and although. For example, “ Troy will be taken, unless
the palladium be preserved ; Troy w ill be taken, although
Hector defend it.” The nature of these adversatives may
thus be explained. As every event is naturally allied to
its cause, so by parity of reason it is opposed to its prevent¬
ive ; and as every cause is either adequate or inadequate r •
(inadequate when it endeavours without being effectual) tJC
so in like manner is every preventive. Now adequate pre-
ventives are expressed by such adversatives as unless • *
“ Troy will be taken, unless the palladium be preserved •”
that is, this alone is sufficient to prevent it. The inade¬
quate are expressed by such adversatives as although:
“ Troy will be taken, although Hector defend it;” that is
Hector’s defence will prove ineffectual. These may be
called adversatives adequate and inadequate.
Such is the doctrine of Mr Harris, which, although we
can discover in it no determinate meaning, we have ven¬
tured with others to retail, from respect to our readers
wdio may be more perspicacious than ourselves. The au¬
thor was a man of great learning, and the subject, as he
has treated it, appears to be intricate. But whatever sense
or nonsense there may be in what he says of causes and
preventives, adequate and inadequate, we have no hesita¬
tion in affirming that he has totally mistaken the import of
the words unless and although. From these being called
both preventives, the one adequate and the other inade¬
quate, an unwary reader might be led to infer that they
denote the same idea or the same relation ; and that the
whole difference between them is, that the expression of
the one is more forcible than that of the other. Nothing,
however, can be further than this from the truth. The
meaning of unless is directly opposite to that of although.
Unless2 and though are both verbs in the imperative mode;
the former signifying take away or dismiss, the latter al-
loiv, permit, grant, yield, assent. This being the case,
“ Troy will be taken unless the palladium be preserved,”
is a sentence equivalent to “ Remove the palladium be
preserved (taking the palladium be preserved as an abstract
noun, the preservation of the palladium) Troy will be
taken.” Again, “ Troy will be taken, although Hector
defend it,” is the same as “ Troy will be taken allow Hec¬
tor (to) defend it.” The idea, therefore, expressed by un¬
less is that of the removal of one thing to make way for
another; the idea expressed by although? is that of allow-
that of hot in the preceding line. The meaning of the couplet is, “ Superadd (to something said or supposed to be said before) thy
worke shall endure in laude and glorie, be out (id est, without) spot or fault.” In the following passage from Donne, the word but,
although written in the same manner, is used in both its meanings : “ You must answer that she was brought very near the fire, and
as good as thrown in ; or else, that she was provoked to it by a divine inspiration. But that another divine inspiration moved the be¬
holders to believe that she did therein a noble act, this act of her’s might have been calumniated.” That is, “ You must answer that
she was brought very near the fire,” &c. “ Superadd (to that answer) be ou t (or unless or without, for, as will be seen by and by, all
those words are of the same import) that another divine inspiration moved,” &c. To these remarks and examples it may be worth
while to add, that even now but is often used by the illiterate Scotch for without ; as nothing is more common than to hear a clown
say, “ He came from home but his breakfast.”
Having mentioned without as a word of the same import with but when distinguished from bot, it may not be improper to consider
that word here; for though in modern .English it is entirely confined to the office of a preposition, it was formerly used indiffer-
ently either as a preposition or a conjunction. Without, then, is nothing but the imperative wyrthan-utax, from the Anglo-Saxon
and Gothic verb weorthax, withan, which in the Anglo-Saxon language is incorporated with the verb beon, esse. According to
this derivation, which is Mr Horne looke’s, the word without, whether called conjunction or preposition, is the sdme as be out; and
such will be its import, should it after all be nothing more than a compound of with, which signifies to join, and sometimes to be, and
ute, out.
^ Either is nothing more than a distributive pronoun which every body understands, and or we have already explained.
So low down as in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, says Mr Horne Tooke, this conjunction was sometimes written oneles or onelessc;
but more anciently it was written antes and sometimes onlesse. Thus, in the trial of Sir John Oldcastle in 1413, “ It was not impossible
for them to make whole Christes cote without seme, onlcsse certeyn great men were brought out of the way.” So, in “ The image of
governance,” by Sir T. Elliot, 1451, “ Men do fere to approache unto their sovereigne Lord oneles they be called.” So again, in “ A
necessary doctrine and erudition for any Christian man, set furthe by the king’s majestie of England,” 1543, “ Onles ye believe, ye
shall not understande. “ No man shall bo crowned, onles he lawfully fight.” “ The soul waxeth feeble, onlesse the same be die-
rished.” “ It cannot begynne, onelcssc by the grace of God.” Now onles is the imperative of the Anglo-Saxon verb onlesan, to
dismiss or remove.
Les, the imperative of lesan, which has the same meaning as onlesan, is likewise used sometimes by old writers instead oiun¬
less. Instances might be given in abundance from Gawin Douglass and Ben Jonson ; but perhaps it may be of more importance to
remark, that it is this same imperative les which, placed at the end of nouns, and coalescing with them, has given to our language
such adjectives as hopeless, restless, deathless, motionless, &c. that is, dismiss hope, rest, death, motion, &c.
Mr Horne 1 ooke observes, that all the languages which have a conjunction corresponding to less or unless, as well as the manner fa
which the place of these words is supplied in the languages which have not a conjunction correspondent to them, strongly justify bis
derivation which we have adopted. The Greek the Latin nisi, the Italian se non, the Spanish sino, the French si non, all mean
be it not. And in the same manner do we sometimes supply its place in English by but, without, be it not, but if, &c. It may be pro-
per just to add, that, according to the same author, the conjunction lest is a contraction of lesed, the past participle of lesen ; and
that lest with the article that, either expressed or understood, means no more than hoc dimisso or quo dimisso.
Although is compounded of al or all, and tho', though, that, or, as the vulgar more purely pronounce it, thaf thauf, and thof. Now
i one
■gutty
)efi4
ersh
is of
,divisi
(jre o
tracin
hue;
i las
i ike in
j a rat:
ofsj
of
inctii
ative
to v
hat-J
:onju
;our
orize
ampt:
first c
i out
i t rel
evid
i com
ever;
fe cai
ier p
■es
hers
Latir
n beei
(| f par'
ly tl^d
si e plu:
j( ion,
of e
r thautha
| ig be
and a’
used
4 and
i w<
tijon:
o
iction
furtj
HESS
E
:t
he
iSE
OUGE
^HOO
0
GRAMMAR.
in one thing to co-exist with another, with which it is ap-
paently incompatible.
before we take leave of this subject, we might treat, as
otfcrs have treated, of adverbial conjunctions, andconjunc-
ti|ss of various other denominations.1 But of multiplying
sjidivisions there is no end ; and systems in which they
at md convey for the most part no information. The
njttire of conjunctions can be thoroughly understood only
by racing each to its original in some parent or cognate
t<l:ue; and when that shall be done in other languages
wl as much success as it has been done by Mr Horne
loke in English, then, and not till then, may we hope to
<.:i rational, comprehensive, and consistent theory of this
pi of speech. Then too shall we get rid of all that far-
r^f use^ess distioctions into conjunctive, adjunctive,
dipnctive, subjunctive, copulative, continuative, subcon-
tiaative, positive, suppositive, causal, collective, prevent¬
ive adequate and inadequate, adversative, conditional, illa¬
tive and the like, which explain nothing, and which serve
oni to veil ignorance and perplex sagacity.
^hat-Mr Horne looke’s principles will apply exactly to
thftonjunctions of every language both dead and living, is
our limited knowledge of these languages does not
irize us positively to affirm. It is, however, a strong
imption in favour of his opinion, that illiterate savages,
irst cultivators of language, are little likely to have
out their faculties in quest of words to denote the ab-
t relations subsisting among their ideas, when we have
sui evidence as his book affords, that the names of the
common substances and qualities could answer that
3very other purpose, which in the ordinary intercourse
e can be answered by the faculty of speech. It is a
Jiirier presumption in his favour, that in the rudest lan-
t'lgules there are few if any conjunctions; and that even
in chers which are the most highly polished, such as Greek
annLatin, as well as English, many of those words which
haw been called conjunctions are obviously resolvable into
■l|ot|: parts of speech. Thus aXXa, translated but, is evi-
eiy the neuter gender of either the nominative or accu-
sati j plural of aXXog, another ; and when used as a con-
jUIfiion> it intimates that you are going to add something
qtilT]
iecl
sati
r thauf is evidently the imperative thaf or thafig of the verb thafiax or txiafigan, to allow,permit, grant, yield, assent; and
Iig becomes ihah, though, thong, and thoch, as Gawin Douglass and other Scottish authors write it, by a transition of the same
juid at least as easy as that by which hafuc becomes hawk. It is no small confirmation of this etymology, that anciently they
used all he, alheit, all had, all were, all give, instead of although ; and that as the Latin si (if) means be it, and nisi and sine
and without, mean he not, so etsi, although, means and he it.
i a work of this kind, which professes to treat of universal grammar, it would be impertinent to waste our own and our reader’s
>n a minute analysis of each conjunction which may occur in any one particular language. We shall therefore pursue the sub-
) further; but shall subjoin Mr Horne looke’s table of the inglish conjunctions, referring those who are desirous of fuller
iction to his ingenious work entitled The Diversions of Parley.
BLESS
ii:
Sill
use
Jough
i oi-
io’
Sit
St
G-hout
4H
- Are the Imperatives \
f Gif
An
Onles
Eac
Get
Stell
Ales
Thafig
- Of their respective verbs -
Thaf
Bot
Be-utan
Wyrth-utan
^An ad j
Lest is the participle lesed, of lesan, to dismiss.
Siththan'1
f Gif
" Anan
Onlesan
Eakan
Get an
Stellan
Alesan
Thafigan
or
Thafian
Botan
Beon-utan
i
To give.
To grant.
To dismiss.
To add.
To get.
To put.
To diminish.
To allow.
To boot, or superadd.
To be out.
Wyrthan-utan To be out.
Anan ad Dare congeriem.
Syne
Since \ SEAND-Es
SITHTHE
- is the participle of Seon, to see.
or
.Sin-es
That is the article or pronoun that.
As is es, a German article, meaning it, that, or which. And
So is sa or so, a Gothic article of the same import with as.
677
to what you have already said. Cceterum has the same
meaning, and is nothing but xocz hrigov. Mais, but, in French,
is the Latin majus; ut, uti, on, quod, is the relative pro¬
noun. Of quocirca, quia, praterea, antequam, quenquam,
quemvis, quantumvis, quanilibet, &c. the resolution is too
obvious to require being mentioned. Where such resolu¬
tions as these can be made, or when the conjunctions of
any particular tongue can be traced to their origin in any
other, there needs be no dispute about their true import;
but when the case is otherwise, and the conjunction either
appears to be an original word, or is derived from a source
to which it cannot be traced, we would advise such of our
readers as wish to speak or write correctly, to dismiss from
their minds all consideration of copulatives, continuatives,
causals, and disjunctives, with the rest of that jargon which
we have already mentioned; and to inquire diligently in
what manner and for what purpose the conjunction in
question is used by the best writers, both ancient and mo ¬
dern, of the particular language which they are studying.
This will indeed be found a work of labour ; but it appears
to us to be the only means left of discovering the precise
relations which such conjunctions were intended to ex¬
press ; and, by consequence, of knowing what words or
sentences they are fitted to connect, so as to produce a
style at once accurate and perspicuous.
2. Of Prepositions.
By Mr Harris and his followers, a preposition is defined
to be a part of speech devoid itself of signification, but so
formed as to unite two words that are significant, and that
refuse to coalesce or unite of themselves. We have al¬
ready expressed our opinion of that theory which holds
certain words to be devoid of signification ; but its absur¬
dity, in the present instance, is more than ever glaring.
Concerning the number of prepositions, it is well known
that hitherto authors have never been agreed. The ancient
Greek grammarians admitted only eighteen, the ancient
Latin grammarians above fifty ; though the moderns, Sanc-
tius, Sciopius, Perizonius, Vossius, and Ruddiman, have
endeavoured to lessen the number w ithout fixing it. Bishop
Preposi¬
tions.
678
GRAMMAR,
Preposi- Wilkins thinks that thirty-six are sufScient; and Girard
tiona. says that the French language has done the business eft’ec-
tually with thirty-two. But if prepositions be words de¬
void of signification, why should there be disputes respecting
their numbers? or why in any language should there be more
than one preposition, since a single unmeaning mark of con¬
nection would certainly answer the purpose as well as a thou¬
sand ? The cipher, which has no value of itself, and only
serves, if we may use the language of grammarians, to con¬
note and consignify,and to change the value of figures, is not
several and various, but uniformly one and the same. That
“ the preposition is so formed as to unite two words which
refuse to coalesce or unite of themselves,” is indeed true ;
and this union it effects, not by having no signification of
its own, but by signifying the relation by which the things
expressed by the united words are connected in nature.
Prepositions are to be accounted for in much the same
manner as the cases of nouns. The necessity of this spe¬
cies of words, or of some equivalent invention, follows
from the impossibility of having in language a distinct com¬
plex term for each distinct collection of ideas which we
may have occasion to put together in discourse. The ad¬
dition or subtraction of any one idea to or from a collec¬
tion of ideas, makes it a different collection ; and if, after
either of these operations, it were to be expressed by the
same word as before, nothing could ensue but misrepresen¬
tation and falsehood. Now, to use in language a different
and distinct complex term for each different and distinct
collection of ideas, is equally impossible as to use a dis¬
tinct particular term for each particular and individual idea.
To supply, therefore, the place of the complex terms which
are wanting in a language, are the cases of nouns and pre¬
positions employed; by the aid of which, complex and ge¬
neral terms are prevented from being infinite or too nume¬
rous, and are used only for those collections of ideas which
we have most frequent occasion to mention in discourse.
By means of prepositions this end is obtained in the most
simple manner. For, having occasion to mention a collec¬
tion of ideas, for which there is no single complex term in
the language, we either take that complex term which in¬
cludes the greatest number, though not all, of the ideas we
would communicate; or else we take that complex term
which includes all and the fewest ideas more than those
we would communicate ; and then, by the help of the pre¬
position, we either make up the deficiency in the one case,
or retrench the superfluity in the other. For instance,
having occasion to mention a house of a particular descrip¬
tion, and knowing that the term house is too general for
our purpose, and that the building we have in view has no be
appropriate name, we say, perhaps, “ a house with a party- ti%'
wall,” or a “ house without a roof.” In the first instance, ^"yv
the complex term house is deficient, and the preposition
directs to add what is wanting; in the second instance,
the complex term is redundant, as it denotes a complete
house. The preposition, therefore, directs to take away
what is superfluous.
Now, considering prepositions in this the most simple
light, as serving only to limit or modify general terms, it
is absolutely necessary that they should have meanings of
their owm ; for otherwise, how could we, in the instance
before us, make known by them our intention, whether of
adding to, or retrenching from, the same general term
house. If, to a disciple of Mr Harris, we should say, a
house join ; he would reply join what ? But he would not
contend that join is an indeclinable word which has no
meaning of its own, because he knows that it is the impe¬
rative of a verb, of which the other parts are still in use;
and its own meaning is clear, though the sentence is not
completed. If, instead of join, we should say to him, a
house with, he would still ask the same question, with
what ? But if we were to discourse with him concerning
the word with, he would probably tell us that with is a
preposition, an indeclinable word, which is itself devoid of
signification, but so formed as to unite two words that are
significant. And yet it would be evident by his question,
that he felt it had a meaning of its own ; which is in reality
the same as join.1 Indeed, so far has always been plainly
perceived, that with and ivithout are directly opposite and
contradictory; and it would puzzle the most acute philo¬
sopher to discover opposition and contradiction in two
words where neither of them had any signification. Wil¬
kins, therefore, has well expressed their meaning, where
he says, that icith is a preposition “ relating to the notion
of social, or circumstance of society affirmed; and that
without is a preposition relating to the same notion of so¬
cial, or circumstance of society denied.”
But to denote the relations of adding and taking away,
is not the only purpose for which prepositions are em¬
ployed. They all indeed serve to modify some general
term or general affirmation, but not precisely in the same
way as with and icithout. It has already been observed,
that words significant of those things which coincide in
nature, coalesce with one another in syntax, without being
beholden to any auxiliary tie. For instance, an adjective
coalesces with its substantive, a verb with its nominative;
a noun expressing an object acted upon, with a verb de-
i This account of prepositions is taken from Mr Horne Tooke, who adds, that the only difference between the two words with id
join, is, that the other parts of the Gothic and Anglo-Saxon verb withan, to join (of which with is the imperative), have ceased to w:
employed in the language. As with means join, so the corresponding French preposition avec means, and have that, or '
But though with, as the imperative of withan, means join, it has sometimes a very different signification. Mr Tyrwhit ^ ^ -
sary has truly observed, that with and by are often synonymous. They certainly are so ; but then with seems to be an abb
of the imperative of wyrthan, to be; as without is of wyrthan-utan, to be out. This being the case, our two instances in tbe
will stand thus : a house join a party-wall; a house be-out a roof. Nor let any one be surprised that we make no difference betue
the conjunction without and the preposition without. The word is the same, whether it be employed to unite wor s or -
Prepositions were originally, and for a long time, classed with conjunctions ; and when first separated from t em, e\ .'
distinguished by the name of prepositive conjunctions. They are generally used to unite words, but not always; m j •.
differently, “ I came after hi, departure;' or “ I came after he departed." By the greater part of grammarians indeed, w _
employed as in the first sentence, is classed with the prepositions; when employed as in the second, it is classe wi nnlvcir-
tions. The word, however, is the same in both sentences ; its meaning is the same, and its effect precisely the same. ine " /,oa
cumstance of discrimination is, that in the first example it is prefixed to a noun, his departure; in the secont, i is Pr .»■
nominative and a verb, “ he departed.” But even the nominative and the verb, thus applied, express no more than a speu i i,
circumstance annexed to the other proposition, “ I cameand whenever they are rightly apprehended by the mint, ie> a
of their prepositionary form, and considered abstractedly under a new phasis, his departure.’ 1 hus then the two sen en „ an(j
nonymous in every respect, excepting the apparent grammatical nature of the words “ his departure, and . ( ePal i ’ n(]e(].
even these are reduced to one grammatical form in the mind, whenever the import of the propositions is right y aPP .j^
Without, and many other prepositions, especially in the learned languages, are used exactly as after is used in the two instance
we have given. Sir Horne Tooke quotes Lord Mansfield for saying, “ It cannot be read without the attorney-general cons?ni iveanlj
This, in modern English, is not the common phraseology; but it offends not against any principle of grammar, the nomi ^
the verb are here, as in the former instance, considered as an abstract noun. “ It cannot be read without the consent o
ney-general.”
;|ing
loffi*1
inst
it oth<
jiildtl:
iesto(
«t n
k w
I Jities
j ir su
won
mus'
|y°nl
air
Engl:
dally
tencf
srec
ther
iort
(e th(
oper
opei
and
it dei
notio
positi
alter
Ir H;
i e ori;
opin
Idsuj
iave
t cted
t >e wh
sistin
ch tl
h oui
J ies o
ther
E it tht
i: trary
i ycon
ibstrt
Thort,
! tonic
\ is, sta
6 fertile
it
it; ft
It Don
1 reas t
*,”is
then
B
’ g’s Or
Asth
^ is ni
'rench
:onver'
te,
Vp,t
kn
I Mativ
Ts) tin
%/tCI
%,«cc
11'stand
seethe
GRAMMAR.
679
Dicing action ; and an adverb with its verb. Take the
fdowing example: “ T/te splendid sun genialhj warmeth
th fertile earthy But suppose we were desirous to modify
tls affirmation by the addition of other substantives, air,
ib instance, and beams ; how would these coincide with
th other words of the sentence, or under what character
cold they be introduced ? Not as nominatives or accusa-
ttes to the verb, for both these places are already filled ; the
nminative by the substance sun, which is certainly the
ag:nt in this operation ; the accusative by the substance
eath, which is as certainly the object acted upon. Not as
qiilities of the sun and earth; for qualities inhering in
thir substances can only be expressed by adjectives, and
th words air and beams are both substantives. Here then
wii must have recourse to prepositions; but we can em-
ply only such prepositions as point out the relations which
th air and the beams have to the sun warming the earth.
InE nglish we should say, “ the splendid sun with his beams
geially warmeth through the air the fertile earth.” The
setence, as before, remains entire and one ; the substan-
ts required are both introduced; and not a word which
there before is detruded from its proper place. The
krt of with we have already discovered ; it directs to
fee the beams to the sun, as jointly with him performing
operation. But the air has no other connection with
operation, than as the medium ov passage between the
and the earth ; and therefore the preposition through^
Hit denote that relation which subsists between an object
ijnotion and the medium in which it moves ; nor could a
((position of a different import have been employed, with-
ou altering the meaning of the whole sentence.2
!!r Harris is of opinion that most, if not all, prepositions
Wfe originally formed to denote the relations of place. For
thi opinion we see not sufficient evidence. If indeed we
cojld suppose the inventors or earliest improvers of language
to iiave at all concerned themselves with relations as ab-
st^cted from the objects related, we must believe that
thfee which first attracted their attention were the relations
fisting among themselves, and the various bodies with
Ich they were .surrounded. We must likewise agree
our author, that place is the grand relation which
btjies or natural substances maintain at all times to one
anther ; but we do not therefore think that it would at-
ttict the earliest notice of untaught barbarians. On the
cdtrary, we are of opinion that mankind must have made
vCy considerable progress in science before they attempted
tokbstract place from body; an attempt which, according
to some of the most profound philosophers,3 is not only
difficult, but absolutely impracticable. But whatever be
in this, the relations of cause and effect, of duration and
motion, are in themselves as obvious, and as likely to
arrest the attention and obtain names, as those of place.
Amongst men totally illiterate they are evidently more so ;
for pain and pleasure would suggest some idea of cause
and effect as matters of importance. There is, however,
no probability that the inventors of any language had the
least idea of abstract relations. They doubtless expressed
complex conceptions by nouns and verbs, significant at
once of the particular ideas and of the various relations by
which they viewed those ideas as combined together in a
complex conception. Afterwards, when men’s minds be¬
came enlarged, and when, from the fluctuation insepara¬
ble from a living language, objects or ideas received new
names, the old words, whether nouns or verbs, which were
originally employed to express a particular complex con¬
ception, of which certain particular relations made a part,
might be retained for the purpose of denoting those and
all similar relations ; and thus verbs and nouns would de¬
generate into particles bearing the names of prepositions
and conjunctions. For instance, one Anglo-Saxon being
desirous to communicate to another his own conception of
a house with a party-wall, and having, we shall suppose,
no such word in his tongue as a preposition, would natu-
I'ally utter the word house, desiring his friend, at the same
time, to add to that well-known sound another sound (ut¬
tering it) significant of the particular circumstance want¬
ing to complete his complex conception, viz. a house with
(that is join) a party-wall. The word ivith, as the impera¬
tive of a verb, denotes of course three ideas combined
together, namely, a command or wish, an affirmation, and
the idea of junction. But when the verb withan was dis¬
missed from the English language, the imperative with was
still retained; but losing its verbal and modal nature, it
was thenceforth employed to denote only one of the three
ideas for which it originally stood, viz. the idea of junc¬
tion. And thus it is that verbs, and also nouns and adjec¬
tives, in passing from one language to another, may be¬
come prepositions4 and conjunctions. Thus too it is that
some of those prepositions comt to denote the contiguous,
and some the detached, relation of body. The conti¬
guous, as when we say, “ Caius walked with a stalfthat
is, “ Caius jom a staff’, walked“ the statue stood upon5
a pedestalthat is, “ the statue stood (the place of its
standing) the higher part of a pedestal“ the river ran
Thorough, thourough, thorow, through, or thro', is no other, says Mr Horne Tooke, than the Gothic substantive dauro, or the
il tonic substantive thuruh, and, like them, means door, gate, passage. So that the sentence in the text, resolved upon his prin-
ops, stands thus : “ The splendid sun—join his beams—genially warmeth—passage the air (or, the air being the passage or medium)—
! Infertile earth.” And in the same manner may we translate the preposition through in every instance where through is used in
hsh, or its equivalent preposition in any language; as from the Latin and Italian word porta, in Spanish puerta, and in French
,i' , ve come tlle Latin and Italian preposition^/-, the French par, and the Spanishpor.
i If, for instance, we were to substitute ■with or o/instead of through, we should in the one case alter the meaning, and in the other
spBk nonsense. “ The sun warmeth ■with the air the fertile earth,” is an affirmation that “ the sun w'armeth loth the air and the earth
wifreas the original sentence affirmed nothing more than that “ he warmeth the earth." “ The sun warmeth of the air the fertile
c_a||i,” is nonsense, as it makes the earth a part, or a consequence, of the air. So necessary is it that prepositions have a meaning, and
thd
the meaning of each be attended to.
llBishops Berkeley and Law, with Principal Campbell of Aberdeen. See The Principles of Human Knowledge, Law’s Notes
s Origin of Evil, and The Philosophy of Rhetoric.
As the Italian substantive casa, a house, race, family, nation, &c. in passing to the French, becomes the preposition chcz, to which
tn#e is not, so far as we know, a preposition of precisely the same import in any language. Scnza or senze, in Italian, becomes sans
in i'rench, and means absence. Nor is it necessary that verbs and nouns should always pass from one language to another, in order to
lie inverted into prepositions. The Greek preposition x^‘s is evidently the corrupted imperative of to sever, to ’disjoin, to sr-
pUUc. The Latin sine is sit ne, he not. The German sondcr is the imperative of sondern, which has the same meaning as XupZ,ut.
'Up, upon, over, 'hove, above, have all, says Mr Horne Tooke, one common origin and signification. In the Anglo-Saxon, ufa,
ujira, ufem.est, are the adjectives altus, altior, altissimus. Ufa or ufan, up; comparative ufera, ofere, or ofer, over or upper •
sb rlative ufem-SEst, utmost or uppermost. BeuFan, bufan, on bufan, 'love, above. If this be a just account of the origin of these
wGs, the sentences in the text, where upon, over, and above, occur, will run thus: “ The statue stood on high a pedestal“ the river
mhigher a sand “ the sun is risen on high the hills.” And here we may observe, that the mere relation between standing, run-
nir, &c. and place, is rather inferred from the verb itself, than expressed by a separate word. The reason is obvious. For if a stn-
lu<stand, every one knows that it must stand on some thing as well as at some time. There is therefore no necessity, whatever ele-
ga-e there may be in it, for employing any word to denote that relation, which is commonly believed to be signified by on ; but it is
Preposi¬
tions.
GRAMMAR.
6R0
Preposi- over a sand,” that is, “ the river ran (the place of its run-
tions. ning) the higher part of a sand.” The detached relation,
as when we say, “ He is going to1 Italy,” that is, “ He is
going, the end (of his journey) Italy “ the sun is risen
above the hills,” that is, “ the sun is risen (the place) the
top of the hills;” “ these figs came from Turkey,” that is
“ these figs came beginning (their journey at) Turkey.”
Besides the detached relation of body, Mr Harris is of
opinion that the preposition from denotes two other rela¬
tions not less different than those of motion and rest. Thus,
if we say, “ That lamp hangs from the ceiling,” the prepo¬
sition/rom assumes a character of quiescence. But if we
say, “ That lamp is falling from the ceiling,” the preposi¬
tion in such case assumes a character of motion. But this Pr
is evidently a mistake. The detached relation in the for- tw”
mer instance of the figs, as well as the motion and rest in ''■'"vv
the present instances, are expressed not by the preposition
but by the verbs, came, falls, hangs. The word from has
as clear, as precise, and at all times as uniform and une-
quivocal a meaning, as any word in the language. From
means merely beginning, and nothing else. It is simply
the Anglo-Saxon and Gothic noun frum, beginning, origin,
source, fountain, author? Now if this meaning be applied
to Mr Harris’s instances, from will speak clearly for itself,
without the assistance of the interpreting verbs, which are
supposed by him to vary its character.
necessary to insert, between the verb and pedestal, a word significant of place, that pedestal may not be mistaken, by an ignorant per-
son, for a portion of time, or any thing else connected with the standing of the statue.
1 That to is significant of detached relation, is the language of Mr Harris, which, though it may bp allowed in a loose and vulgar
sense, is certainly not philosophically just. The preposition to, in Dutch written toe and tot, is the Gothic substantive taui or tauhts,
signifying act, effect, result, or consummation ; which Gothic substantive is itselt no other than the past participle tauid or tauids of
tlfe verb^tadjan, agere. And it is obvious that what is done is terminated, ended, finished. In the Teutonic this verb is written
tuax or tuon ; whence the modern German thun, and its preposition tu. In the Anglo-Saxon, the verb is teogan, and the pre¬
position to. Do, the auxiliary verb, as it has been called, is derived from the same root, and is indeed the same word as to. The dif¬
ference between a t and a d is so very small, that an etymologist knows by the practice of languages, and an anatomist by the reason
of that practice, that in the derivation of words it is scarcely worth regarding. To support this etymon of to, Mr Horne Tooke gives
a similar instance in the Latin tongue. The preposition ad, he says, is merely the past participle of agere, which past participle is
likewise employed as a Latin substantive. He exhibits the derivation of ad thus :
I AGDUM AGD AD
Agitum—agtum -! or or or
(actum ACT AT.
The most superficial reader of Latin verse, he observes, knows how readily the Romans dropped their final iim. And a little considera¬
tion of the organs and practice of speech will convince him how easily agd or act would become ad or at; as indeed this preposition was
indifferently written either way by the ancients. By the later writers of Rome, the preposition was written ad with d only, in order
to distinguish it from the other corrupt word called the conjunction at; which for the same reason was written with the t only,
though that likewise had anciently been written, as the preposition, either ad or at. The preposition to and the conjunction too in
English, are both in syntax and in meaning used exactly as the preposition ad and the conjunction at in Latin. From the specimens
prefixed to Johnson’s Dictionary, as a history of our language, it appears that, as late as the reign of Elizabeth, the preposition and
conjunction were both written with one o. And it has been shown in the first volume of the Transactions of the Royal Society of
Edinburgh, that to and too, as well as ad and at, are precisely of the same import. The only difference, in either language, between
the preposition and the conjunction, is, that the former directs, as a modification of some previous proposition, the addition of some
substantive or noun ; the latter, sometimes a sentence or clause of a sentence considered abstractedly as a noun ; and that, when the
former is used, the preposition to which the modifying circumstance is to be added, is formally expressed, but omitted when the lat¬
ter is employed. Thus Denham says,
Wisdom he has, and to his wisdom courage ;
Temper to that, and unto all success.
In this example, every succeeding circumstance is by the preposition to marked as an addition to the preceding. “ \V isdom he has,
and courage additional to his wisdom.” But Denham might with equal propriety have omitted the object which to governs, or to
which it directs something to be added, though he must then, from the custom of the language, have employed the conjunction in-
stead of the preposition. As,
Wisdom he has, and courage-foo.
That this mode of expression would have been more concise than, and as intelligible as, the other, “ YV isdom he has, and courage to
his wisdom,” must be evident to every one. . . . . ,
Not only is the object governed by to omitted, when it is represented by a substantive in the context, but also when it is involve
in a preposition ; anil then the conjunction, as it is called, is always used. Thus,
Let those eyes that view
The daring crime, behold the vengeance too.
So, “ He made him prisoner, and killed him too." In the one example, the circumstance of beholding the vengeance is stated as an
addition to the viewing of the crime; and in the other, the killing him is stated as an addition to the making him a prisoner- 11 n,,0
examples, the object governed by too is the amount of the preceding proposition taken abstractedly as a noun or substantive. 1
then it appears, that to and too, though classed the one with the prepositions, and the other with the conjunctions, are rea y 0.neA
the same word. The same is true of ad and at. Thus, “ Ad hoc, promissa barba et capilli eff’eraverant speciem °rls> *'8"
“ Additional to this, his long beard and hair had given a wildness to his aspect.” But when the object governed by ad is not torm
stated, ad itself is classed with the conjunctions, and written differently, at. Thus Terence, “ Ph. Fac ita ut jussi, dei ucan u
Pa. Faciam. Ph. At diligenter. Pa. Fiet. Ph. At mature.” By the means of at, the circumstances of dihgence anu
are superadded to the action commanded. “ Ph. It is not enough that you do it; you must do it carefully foo. Pa- ^ > .
be carefully done. Ph. In good time too." At, taken in this sense, is most commonly employed, like the English «, ^
the unexpected union of incongruous objects; as, “ Aulam tyranni frequentabat, at patriam amabat;” literally, He rfl .n
the court of the ty'rant; joined even to that he loved his country.” “ He was a courtier and a patriot too." But it ad an a in ’
and to and too in English, be derived from verbs which signify to do or act, it may be asked how they come themselves to en° ^
lion. The answer is obvious. If a man should utter a sentence, and to the end of it subjoin the very general word do, t e p ^
whom he spoke would naturally ask, do what ? and this question would, of course, produce an additional sentence or clause o
tence. Besides, it is to be observed, that agere, from which the Latin preposition is derived, as well as the Gothic verb, w j1L „ ff£
source of the English partMes, means not only to do, but also to adduce or bring; so that when we say, “ he is going o a>,
do nothing more than affix m that “ he is going,” and desire the person to whom we speak, “ to add Italy to the journey. ffl0(je_
From this derivation of the preposition to, it will be seen at once upon what principle it is employed to mark the in ni i ^ ^
In the learned languages that mode is generally known by its termination ; but in English it would be impossible, wit iou
to, or of some other word significant of action, to distinguish the verb love from the noun or substantive. y-orhte h‘
2 This derivation is Mr Horne Tooke’s; and he supports it by the following sentence: Ne rirdd ge se the on frumman ^
•worhte woepman and le-ifmen; which is the Anglo-Saxon of St Matthew, xix. 4, “ Annon legistis, quod qui eos in principle c ’
avit eos marem et feminam ?”
COffll
COffll
ion
nnw
the
iplex
ibl
esira
i
nami
T
T
T
T
C
C
as b(
from
the
wing
hat
jeing
ifro
ite
in th(
only
ight,:
b
Engl;
m (
tl de
Thest
J ienot
Unie'i
mpp
•unci
GRAMMAR.
681
These figs came from Turkey.
That lamp falls from the ceiling.
That lamp hangs from the ceiling.
■ame is a complex term for one species of motion •, falls
complex term for another species of motion ; and hangs
complex1 term for a species of attachment. Have we
o( ision to communicate or mention the commencement or
be nnitig of these motions, and of this attachment, and
al the place where they commence or begin ? To have
cc plex terms for each occasion of this sort is absolutely
nlbssible ; and therefore nothing can be more natural or
simple than to add the signs of those ideas, viz. the
beginning, which will remain always the same, and
th|NAME of the place, which will perpetually vary. Thus,
These figs came—beginning Turkey.
That lamp falls—beginning ceiling.
That lamp hangs—beginning ceiling.
That is,
Turkey the jo/ace of beginning to come.
Ceiling the jo/ace of beginning to fall.
Ceiling the place of beginning to hang,
as been said by no less a man than Bishop Wilkins,
from refers primarily to place, and secondarily to time,
the truth is, that from relates to every thing to which
be< ming relates, and to nothing else.
From morn till night the eternal larum rang.
!hat is, the “ larum rang beginning morning,” or morn-
3eing the time of its beginning, till night,
s from always denotes beginning, so to and till always
ite the end. There is, however, this difference be-
twlm them, that to denotes the end of any thing ; till the
entjonly of time. We may say indifferently, “ From morn
to ight,” or “ from morn till night, the eternal larum
ra but we cannot say, “ These figs came from Turkey
til England.” That till can, with propriety, be opposed
toj ’•om only w'hen we are talking of time, is evident; for
it a word compounded of to and while, that is, time.
A as the coalescence of these two words to-while took
pi e in the language long before the present superfluous
us of the article the, the phrase, “ From morn till night”
is lither more nor less than “ From morn to time night.”
\\ m we say, “ from morn to night,” the word time is
or ted as unnecessary.
esides from, Mr Harris mentions over as significant
so Rimes of motion and sometimes of rest; and quotes as
in tnces the two following passages from Milton :
 To support uneasy steps
Over the burning marl.
H o, sa s he, over denotes motion. Again,
 He with looks of cordial love
Hung over her enamoured.
H j or r denotes rest. But the truth is, that over de¬
ne 3 nc ther motion nor rest in either of these passages,
hi te first quotation, indeed, motion is implied ; but it is
in ied in the word steps, and not in over, which denotes
or that the place of the steps was the top of the burn-
inglmarl. In the second quotation, rest is implied, and
tliil too a particular species of rest; but it is implied, or
:r expressed, by the verb hung, and over denotes the
plae of that species of rest.
But though the original use of prepositions was to de- Preposi
note the relations of body, they could not be confined to tions.
this office only. They by degrees extended themselves to
subjects incorporeal, and came to denote relations, as well
intellectual as local. Thus, because in point of place he who
is above has commonly the advantage of him who is below;
hence we transfer over and under1 to dominion and obe¬
dience. Of a king we say, “ he ruled over his peopleand
of a soldier, “ he served under his general.” So too we say,
with thought; without attention ; thinking over a subject;
under anxiety ; from fear; through jealousy, and the like.
All which instances, with many others of a similar kind,
show that the first words of men, like their first ideas, had
an immediate reference to sensible objects; and that in
after days, when they began to discern with their intellect,
they took those words which they found already made, and
transferred them by metaphor to intellectual conceptions.
Amongst the relations which may be considered rather as
intellectual than corporeal, are those of cause and conse¬
quence ; and for the denoting of these we have two pre¬
positions, which sometimes appear in direct opposition to
one another, and at other times may exchange places with¬
out injury to the sense.
“ Well! ’tis e’en so! I have the London disease they
call love. I am sick of my husband, and for my gallant.”
(Wycherley’s Country Wife.)
Here of and for seem almost placed in opposition; at
least their effects in the sentence appear to be very differ¬
ent ; for, by the help of these two prepositions alone, and
without the assistance of any other words, she expresses
the two contrary affections of loathing and desire. The
truth, however, is, that the author, if it had pleased him,
might have used of where he has employed for, and for
where he has put of. This is evident from the following
quotation from the Sad Shepherd:
Marian. Come, Amie, you’ll go with us.
Amie. I am not well.
Lionel. She’s sick o/the young shepherd that bekist her.
In the same manner we may, with equal propriety, say,
“ We are sick of hunger or, “ We are sick/or hunger.”
And in both cases we shall have expressed precisely the
same thing, with only this difference, that, in the former
sentence, we declare sickness to be a consequence; in the
latter we declare hunger to be a cause. But to return to the
Country Wife, that poor lady seems to have had a com¬
plication of distempers; she had at least two disorders ; a
sickness of loathing, and a sickness of love. She was sick
for disgust, and sick for love. She was
Sick of disgust/>r her husband.
Sick of love for her gallant.
Sick for disgust of her Husband.
Sick for love of her gallant.
In the first sentence, as thus stated, sickness is declared to
be the consequence of disgust, of which her husband is de¬
clared to be the cause. In the second, sickness is declared
to be the consequence of love, of which her gallant is declar¬
ed to be the cause. In the third sentence, disgust is de¬
clared to be the cause of her sickness, and the consequence
or offspring of her husband. In the fourth, love is declar¬
ed to be the cause of her sickness, and the consequence or
offspring of her gallant.
hese are complex terms because they are verbs. Each denotes an affirmation and time; and, combined with these, came and
^.ienote motion, and hangs denotes rest,
and hfncaihi though by the sound they seem to have little connection, are yet in fact almost the same word, and may very
P upp y each other s place. Under is nothing but on-neder, and beneath is compounded of the imperative be and the noun neath.
» uncompounded having slipped away from our language, would perhaps be unintelligible, had not the nouns nether and nether-
itill continued in common use. Neath, Anglo-Saxon, ncothan, neothe; Hutch, neden ; Danish, ned; German, niedre ; and Swedish,
a!ld liecUr ’ 18 undoubtedly as much a substantive, and has the same meaning, as the word nadir. In common language it de-
noli the bottom. s>
Is1" X- 1 E
682
GRAMMAR.
Preposi- Thus, then, it appears, that though the first two of these
tions. sentences, taken entire, convey the very same meaning
' with the last two, yet the import of the preposition for is
as different from that of of, as cause is from consequence}
When two words or sentences are linked together by the
former of these prepositions, the object expressed by the
last word or sentence is declared to be the cause of that
which is expressed by the preceding; when two words or
sentences are linked together by the latter preposition, the
object expressed by the first word or sentence is declared
to be the consequence of or to proceed from, the object ex¬
pressed by the second. It is therefore a matter of perfect
indifference to the sense whether we say “ sickness o/"hun¬
ger,” or “ sicknessybr hunger“ the man, of he speaks little,
is wise,” or “ the man is wise, for he speaks little.” By means
of the preposition of we declare sickness to be the conse¬
quence proceeding from hunger, and wisdom to be the con¬
sequence we infer from the man’s speaking little ; by means
offor, we declare hunger to be the cause of sickness, and
the circumstance of speaking little to be the cause from
which we infer the man’s wisdom. In the one sentence,
of is to be considered as a noun in apposition to sickness ;
in the other, as a noun in apposition to the man is wise
taken abstractedly as a noun. In the one sentence (id
est, cause) is to be considered as a noun in apposition to
hunger; in the other, as the same noun in apposition to he
speaks little taken abstractedly as a noun.
In the foregoing use of prepositions, we have seen how
they are applied by way of juxtaposition ; that is to say,
where they are prefixed to a word without becoming a part
of it. But they are used also by way of composition ; that
is, they are prefixed to other words so as to become real
parts of them. Thus in Greek we have iffufrcufOoci; in La¬
tin, intelligere; and in English, uNDERstand. So also, to
FOREtell, or ovERact, to unde Rvalue, to ourgo; and in
Greek and Latin other instances innumerable. In this
case the prepositions commonly transfuse something of their
own peculiar meaning into the word with which they are com¬
pounded. For example, if we suppose some given space,
e and ex signify out of that space ; per, through it; in,
within it; sub, under it. Hence, E and per, in composi¬
tion, augment: Enormis is something not simply big, but
big in excess; something got out of the rule, and beyond
the measure. Dico, “ to speak udico, “ to speak out
whence sdictum, “ an edict,” something so effectually spo¬
ken that all are supposed to hear and to obey. On the
contrary, in and sub diminish and lessen. Injustus, im-
quus, “ uxjust, iNequitablesomething that lies within
justice and equity, that reaches not so far, that falls short
of them. SuRniger, “ blackish suBrubicundus, “ red¬
dish ; tending to black, and tending to red ; but yet under
the standard, and below perfection.
Before we dismiss this part of our subject, wre shall
make the same general remark upon prepositions which we
formerly made on conjunctions, viz. that the precise im¬
port of each can with certainty be known only by tracing
it to its source in some word of known and determinate
meaning, either in the language where the preposition it¬
self has place, or in some parent or cognate tongue. And Im •
it may be laid down as an infallible rule, that where differ- timT'
ent languages use the same or a similar particle, that lan- v**Vv
guage ought to be considered as its legitimate parent, in
which the true meaning of the word can be found, and
where its use is as common and familiar as that of any
other verbs and substantives. When prepositions can be
traced to such sources as these, no room can be left for
disputes concerning their meaning. In carrying on this
etymological pursuit, we find advantages in the nature of
prepositions which conjunctions do not afford us. With and
without, from and to, with many other words belonging to
this class, have meanings directly opposite and contradic¬
tory to each other. If, then, by the total or partial ex¬
tinction of an original language, the root of any one pre¬
position be lost, whilst that off its opposite remains, the phi¬
losopher ought to be satisfied with reasoning from contra¬
riety, as nothing is more evident than that the meaning of
a word is known when we know with precision the mean¬
ing of its opposite. When we meet, however, with a luck¬
less preposition of which no root is left to be dug up, and
which has itself no direct opposite in the language, nothing
remains but that we inquire for what purpose it is used by
the best writers both ancient and modern ; and if we can
fix upon one meaning which will apply, however awkward¬
ly, to all the places where it occurs, or to the greater part
of them, the probability is, that we have discovered the
true and original meaning of the preposition f and by keep¬
ing that meaning constantly in view, we shall ourselves be
enabled to use the word with perspicuity and precision.
3. Of Interjections.
Besides the above parts of speech, there is another ac¬
knowledged in all the languages of Europe, called the in-
terjection ; a word which cannot be comprehended under
any of the foregoing classes. The genuine interjections
are very few in number, and of very little importance, as
they are thrown into a sentence without altering its form
either in syntax or in signification. In the words of Mr
Horne Tooke, the brutish inarticulate interjection has no¬
thing to do with speech, and is only the miserable refuge
of the speechless. The dominion of speech, according to
the same author, is erected on the downfall of interjections.
Without the artful contrivances off language, mankind
would have nothing but interjections with which to com¬
municate orally any of their feelings. “ The neighing of
a horse, the lowing of a cow, the barking of a dog, the
purring of a cat, sneezing, coughing, groaning, shrieking,
and every other involuntary convulsion with oral sound,
have almost as good a title to be called parts of speech as
interjections. In the intercourse of language, interjections
are employed only when the suddenness or vehemence of
some affection or passion returns men to their natural state,
and makes them for a moment forget the use of speech;
or when, from some circumstance, the shortness of speech
will not permit them to exercise it.” The genuine inter¬
jection, which is always expressive of some very strong
sensation, such as ah ! when we feel pain, does not owe
1 Junius derivesybr from the Greek ; Skinner from the Latin pro; but I believe, says Mr Horne Tooke, that rt is no
than the Gothic substantive fairin a, cause. He imagines also that of, in the Gothic and Anglo-Saxon af, is a fragment o ie
and Saxon words afara and afora, postcritas, proles. In a word, he considersybr and offas nouns or substantives; the °.rmei > we
meaning cause, the latter always meaning consequence, offspring, successor, follower, &c.. If this account of these words be jus ’ s
have no doubt of it, the prepositions ybr and of are in syntax to be considered as nouns in apposition with other nouns, or vu is
taken abstractedly as nouns. _ _ . „ .f, an(j jn
2 For instance, let us suppose that Mr Horne Tooke’s derivation of for, from the Gothic substantive fairina, is tanci . t
founded: yet there can be little doubt but cause is its true and original meaning, when it is found, that of sixteen examp es .
bv Greenwood and forty-six by Johnson, of different significations of the word/or, there is not one where the noun cause may
substituted instead of the preposition for; sometimes indeed awkwardly enough, but always without injury to the sense.
where/or seems to be loco alterius, which Lowth asserts to be its primary sense, it will be found to be cause, and nothing ea1 2 * * * 6,’erorc he
“ He made considerable progress in the study of the law before be quitted that profession for this of poetry that is,
quitted that profession, this of poetry” being the cause of his quitting it.
P't.
'H'liW11,
nice ^
jnseq1
ini
ikv1,11
(»od b;
ooks01
motior
(tally
cow'
id si
jbongs
^fopriel
anyL
ifsed al
•rut
|irb,
Intenc
suclv
no d
lythe
Stenin
buld i
ijectii
tie see
mnge
ite nc
ire not
lotions
t nces;
1 otnant
1 lie sty
k ridii
Hav
|enec
is ackr
|uainti
ibstrai
tndsu
iding
Ince 0
|d oui
nay tl
iubjoii
intellij
Tooke
noun,
tuptio
Mil
m,
sin
be de:
Thesi
name
I.
ate e;
exist,
°f an
via, '
1.
GRAMMA R.
683
i* characteristical expression to the arbitrary form ofar-
tiulation, but derives its whole force from the tone of
vuce and modification of countenance and gesture. Of
ctosequence, these tones and gestures express the same
maning, without any relation whatever to the articulation
tly may assume ; and are therefore universally under-
stlod by all mankind. Voluntary interjections are used in
boks only for embellishment, and to mark forcibly a strong
enotion. But where speech can be employed, they are
tolly useless, and are always insufficient for the purpose
o1 communicating thought. Dr Beattie ranks strange,
p)digious, amazing, wonderful, O dear, dear me, &c. when
oed alone, and without apparent grammatical syntax,
aongst the interjections; but he might with as much
pnpriety have considered hardly, truly, really, and even
ntny Latin verbs, as interjections ; for these too are often
ued alone to supply the place of whole sentences. I he
tnth is, that all men, when suddenly and violently agitat-
e, have a strong tendency to shorten their discourse by
eiploying a single word to express a sentiment. In such
eses, the word employed, whether noun, adjective, or
v,rb, would be the principal word of the sentence, if that
aitence were completed ; and the agitation of the speaker
ijsuch, and the cause of it so obvious, that the hearer is
i no danger of mistaking the sense, and can himself sup-
jy the words which are wanting. 1 hus, if a person, after
1 tening to a romantic narrative, were to exclaim, strange !
rnuld any man of common sense suppose, that the word
range, because uttered alone, had lost the power of an
tjective and become an interjection ? No, surely; every
ae sees that the exclamation is equivalent to, “ that is
range,” or “ that is a strange story.” Real interjections
ie never employed to convey truth of any kind.
not to be found amongst laws, in books of civil insti-
ttions, in history, or in any treatise of useful arts or sci-
mccs ; but in rhetoric and poetry, in novels, plays, and
amances, where in English, so far from giving pathos to
(ie style, they have generally an effect that is disgusting
l* ridiculous.
Having now analysed every part of speech which can
fe necessary for the communication of thought, or which
■ acknowledged in any language with which we are ac-
ipainted, we shall dismiss the subject, after annexing an
(Dstract, which may present at one view the several classes
md subdivisions of words. Of the different modes of di-
iding the parts of speech, as well as of the little import-
nce of systematic classifications, we have already declar-
d our decided opinion; but for the sake of those who
nay think differently from us, we shall in the abstract
ubjoined adopt Mr Harris’s classification as far as it is
htelligible; after informing our readers that Mr Horne
nooke admits only three parts of speech, the article, the
ioun, and the verb, and considers all other words as cor-
mptions or abbreviations of the two last of these.
GRAMMATICAL ABSTRACT,
[Exhibiting a Systematic View of Words, as they are com-
I monly arranged into distinct Classes, with the Subdivi¬
sions under each Class.
All language is composed of words, each of which may
je defined, a sound significant of some idea or relation.
These wmrds may be arranged into four general divisions,
lamely,
I. SUBSTANTIVES ; which are all those words that
ire expressive of things which exist, or are conceived to
J ixist, of themselves, and not as the energies or qualities
if any thing else. These may be divided into two orders,
dz.
I. Nouns, properly so called, being the names of all
those things which exist, or are conceived to exist. These Abstract,
may be divided into three kinds, each of which admits of ^v^/’
the subdivisions after mentioned, viz.
Natural, or those which are used as the names of natu¬
ral substances ; such are (genus) animal; (species) man,
dog; (individual) Alexander, Cyrus, Cerberus, Argus.
Artificial, or the several names of artificial objects ; such
as, (genus) edifice; (species) house, church ; (individual)
Vatican, St Peter s, St Paul's.
Abstract, or those which are the names of qualities con¬
sidered as abstracted from their substances; such as,
(genus) fwoft'orc,• (species) flight, course; (individual) the
falcons flight, the greghound's course.
Nouns of all kinds admit of the following accidents, viz.
Gender, which is a certain affection of nouns denoting
the sex of those substances of which they are the names.
For as in nature every object is either male or female, or
neither the one nor the other, grammarians, following this
idea, have divided the names of beings into three classes.
Those which denote males are said to be of the masculine
gender ; those which denote females, of the feminine gen¬
der ; and those which denote neither the one nor the
other, of the neuter gender. The English is the only lan¬
guage of which the nouns are, with respect to sex, an ex¬
act copy of nature.
Number. As there is no object in nature single and
alone, and as by far the greater part of nouns are the
names of whole classes of objects, it is evident that every
such noun ought to have some variation, to denote whether
it is one individual of the class which is meant, or more
than one. Accordingly we find, that in every language
nouns have some method of expressing this. If one be
mentioned, the noun is used in that form which is called
the singular number; if more than one, it is used in a dif¬
ferent form, which is called the plural number.
Cases. All nouns, excepting proper names, are general
terms; but it is often necessary to use those general
terms for the purpose of expressing particular ideas. This
can be done only by connecting the general term with
some word significant of a quality or circumstance pecu¬
liar to the individual intended. When that quality or
circumstance is not expressed by an adjective, it is in
English and most modern languages commonly connected
with the noun by the intervention of a preposition; but
in the Greek and Latin languages the noun has cases to
answer the same, and even in English the noun has, be¬
sides the nominative, one case to denote possession.
2. Pronouns, which are a species of word invented to
supply the place of nouns in certain circumstances. They
are of two kinds, viz.
First, the prepositive; so called because they are capable
of leading a sentence. These are divided into three or¬
ders, called the pronouns of the
First person. The pronoun of this person, in English
I, denotes the speaker as characterized by the present act
of speaking, in contradistinction to every other character
which he may bear. It is said to be of the first person,
because there must necessarily be a speaker before there
can be a hearer ; and the speaker and hearer are the only
persons employed in discourse.
Second person. The pronoun of this person, in English
thou, denotes the person addressed as characterized by
the present circumstance of being addressed. It is said
to be of the second person, because in discourse there can¬
not be a hearer till there be a speaker. The pronouns
of the first and second persons have number and cases,
for the same reason that nouns have these accidents; but
in no language have they any variation denoting gender.
The reason is, that sex, and all other properties and
attributes whatever, excepting those just mentioned as de¬
scriptive of the nature of these pronouns, are foreign from
GRAMMAR.
684
Abstract* the mind of the speaker when he utters I or thou in dis-
' course.
Third person. The pronouns of this person, he, she,
it, are employed to denote any object which may be the
subject of discourse different from the speaker and the
hearer. They are improperly said to be of any person;
for there can be but two persons employed in discourse,
the speaker and the party addressed. They are, how¬
ever, pronouns ; since they stand by themselves, and are
the substitutes of nouns. He is the substitute of a noun
denoting a male animal; she, of a noun denoting a female
animal; and it, of a noun denoting an object which has
no sex. All these, like the pronouns personal, admit of
number and cases ; but there is this peculiarity attending
them, that though in every case of the singular number
the distinction of gender is carefully preserved, in the
plural it is totally lost; they, theirs, and them, being the
nominative, possessive, and accusative cases of he, of she,
and of it.
Secondly, the subjunctive ; so called, because they cannot
lead a sentence, but only serve to subjoin a clause to
another previously enunciated. Of this kind are
Which and who. This subjunctive pronoun may be sub¬
stituted in the place of any noun whatever, whether it be
expressive of a genus, a species, or an individual; as, the
animal which, the man who, Alexander icho, &c. Nay, it
may even become the substitute of the personal pronouns
themselves; as when we say, I who now write, you who
now read, thou zvho readest, he who wrote, she tvho spoke ;
where it is observable, that the subjunctive who adopts
the person of that prepositive pronoun which it represents,
and affects the verb accordingly. Who and which, there¬
fore, are real pronouns, from substitution ; and they have
this peculiarity besides, that they have not only the power
of a pronoun, but also of a connective of the same import
with that which in English is expressed by the preposi¬
tion of. The word that is now used indifferently for who
or which, as a subjunctive pronoun ; but it was originally
used only as a definitive, and as such it ought still to be
considered in philosophical grammar.
II. ATTRIBUTIVES ; which are those words that are
expressive of all such things as are conceived to exist, not
of themselves, but as the attributes of other things. These
are divided into,
1. Verbs, or those words which are expressive of an
attribute and an assertion ; as, 1 wrote.
The attributes expressed by verbs have their essence
in motion or its privation ; and as motion is always accom¬
panied by time, therefore verbs are liable to certain varia¬
tions called tenses, viz.
The present, which represents the action of the verb as
going on, and as contemporary with something else ; as, I
write, or lam writing, either just now, or when you are read¬
ing. The prater-imperfect, which represents the action of
the verb as having been going on but not finished in some
portion of past time; as, / was writing, no matter when,
yesterday, last week, or last year. The aorist of the past,
which represents the action of the verb as finished in some
indefinite portion of past time ; as, I wrote, or did write, yes¬
terday, or last week. The prater-perfect, which represents
the action of the verb as just now finished, or as finished
in some portion of time within which the present instant is
comprehended ; as, I have ivritten this day or this week.
The plusquam-perfect, which represents the action of the
verb as having been finished in some portion of time with¬
in which a determinate past instant was comprehended;
as, I had written last week before I saw you. The first
future, which represents the action of the verb as to be go¬
ing on at some indefinite future time ; as, I shall ivrite or
be writing to-morrow, or next week. The second future,
which represents the action of the verb as to be completed
at some definite future time ; as, I shall have written w]le
you come to-morrow, next week, next month, or next year1 wf
Affirmation is the essence of every verb, insomuch that ^
all verbs may be resolved into the substantive verb is, and
another attributive. But a man may affirm something of
the action of the verb directly, something of his libertv
or capacity to perform that action, or something of his
wish that another should perform it. To denote these se¬
veral kinds of affirmation, all verbs have what grammarians
call modes, viz. the indicative, to denote the first kind of
affirmation ; as, I write : the subjunctive, to denote the se¬
cond ; as, I may or can write : the imperative, to denote the
third ; as, write thou, or do thou write. Besides these, gram¬
marians have given to every verb a mode, called the infi-
nitive ; as, to write. But this seems on every account to be
improperly styled a mode. Nay, if affirmation be the es¬
sence of verb, the infinitive cannot be considered as any
part of the verb at all, for it expresses no affirmation. It
is indeed nothing more than an abstract noun denoting the
simple energy of the verb in conjunction with time.
Verbs have likewise been distinguished into the follow¬
ing kinds, according to the nature of the attribute of which
they are expressive, namely, Lsf, Active-transitive, or those
which denote an action that passes from the agent to some
external object; as Caesar conquered Pompey: 2d, Active-
intransitive, or those which express that kind of action
which has no effect upon any thing beyond the agent him¬
self ; as, Caesar walked: 3d, Passive, or those which ex¬
press not action but passion, whether pleasing or painful;
as, Portia was loved, Pompey was conquered: \th. Neu¬
ter, or those which express an attribute that consists nei¬
ther in action nor in passion ; as, Caesar stood.
2. Participles, or those words which are expressive of
an attribute combined with time. In English there are
only two participles; the present, as writing, which ex¬
presses the action of the verb to write, as going on; and
the past, as written, which expresses the action of the same
verb as finished, and therefore past in time. In Greek
and Latin there is a future participle, by which the attri¬
bute is represented as being in a state of exertion at some
future time ; as, yaafim, scripturus, about to write.
8. Adjectives, or those words which express as inhe¬
ring in their substances the several qualities of things, of
which the essence consists not in motion or its privation;
as, good, bad, black, white, large, small, and the like. As
attributes are the same whether they belong to males or
females, to one object or to many, adjectives ought in strict¬
ness to admit of no variation respecting sex or number;
and in English they actually admit of none. Some qualities,
however, are of such a nature, that one substance may have
them in a greater degree than another ; and therefore the
adjectives denoting these qualities admit in most languages
of a variation which grammarians call the degrees of com¬
parison. Thus Plato was wise, Socrates w7as wiser than
he, but Solomon was the wisest of men. There is a spe¬
cies of adjectives derived from nouns, and even from pro¬
nouns ; for we say, the Pompeian party, a brazen trumpet,
and my book, which are phrases equivalent to “ the party
of Pompey, a trumpet of brass, and the book of me.”
4. Adverbs, or those words which, as they denote the
attributes of attributes, have been called attributives of the
second order, to distinguish them from verbs, participles,
and adjectives, which denote the attributes of substances,
and are therefore called attributives of the first order. Ad¬
verbs are divided into two kinds, viz.
First, Those which are common to all attributives of
the first order, that is, which coalesce equally with verbs,
with participles, and with adjectives. These may be di¬
vided into adverbs of intension and remission, or of qiMn-
tity continuous; as moderately, vastly, exceedingly, &c‘
These, like adiectives of a similar nature, admit of the dit-
<rgen
< f that
3 ame,
uite
(le wl
i idivic
iithe
I le tn
sup
1 ition
i umbe
I leant,
egrj
2. I
ote o
redici
'hus,
■easoi
ie sai
lusic
noun
| resen
'efixt
idivic
i ian in
Besi
i id im
IV.
oyed
)rts t
II intc
I.C
lose
I 'in sei
nil
hich,
. inthi
'iontini
' trsati'
•id tin
'in tin
Ilian tc
1 Th
!Co;
part:
act
GRAMMAR.
685
erent degrees of comparison. Of quantity discrete ; as, compound sentence. If those simple sentences be of op- Abstract.
me, twlc^ thrice, &c. These are not, in strictness of posite meanings before their combination, they will con-
,peech, adverbs, being in reality the possessive cases of tinue so after it, whatever conjunction be employed to
me, two, three, &c. Ox relation ; as more, most, less, unite them. In nature, different truths are connected, if
east, equally, proportionally, &c. they be connected at all, by different relations; and there-
Second I hose winch are confined to verbs properly so fore, when the sentences expressive of those truths are
ailed, and which are of the following kinds : Of time; as, connected in language, it must be by words significant of
lien, when, afterward, now, &c.: of place ; as, here, there, those natural relations. Thus, accidental addition is ex-
mere, .nee, whence, ixc.; and also adverbs derived from pressed by the conjunction and; as when we say, “ Ly-
renositions r as. wnward. downward. Rro. • nf intfinsirms einn.ic    i n • J
repositions; as, upward, downward, &c.: of intensions
nd remissions peculiar to motion; as, speedily, hastily, slow-
/, &c. We have given adverbs a place amongst the parts
f speech necessary for the communication of thought;
ut it may be doubted whether they be entitled to this
sippus was a statuary, and Priscian was a grammarian.
I he unexpected junction of contrary truths is expressed
by but; as, “ Brutus wras a patriot, but Caesar was not.”
Ihe relation of an 'effect to its cause is expressed by be¬
cause ; as, “ Rome was enslaved because Caesar wras am-
istinction. English adverbs at least seem to be nothing bilious.” The relation of an effect to a cause of which
jiore than corruj»tion^of nouns, adjectives, and verbs. the existence is doubtful, is expressed by if; as, “you
those words that will live happily if you live honestlythe relation of a
III. DEFINITIVES; which are all
erve to define and ascertain any particular object or ob
lets as separated from others of the same class. These
re commonly called Articles, which are divided into
vo kinds, viz.
1. Indefinite, as a or an, which is prefixed to a noun
ir general term, to denote that but one individual is meant
jf that genus or species of wdiich the noun is the common     ^ ^ ^ ^
jame. This article, however, leaves the individual itself of two affirmations apparently contrary to each other is
mite indeterminate. Thus, man is the general name of expressed by although; as, “ Troy will be taken although
lie whole human race ; a man is one individual, but that Hector defend it.”
tdividual is unknown. Any is prefixed to a noun either
in the singular or plural number, when it is indifferent as to
cause to its effect, by therefore-, as, “ Caesar was ambiti¬
ous, therefore Rome was enslaved.” The idea of simple
diversity is expressed by either and or ; “ either it is day
or it is night. Contrariety between two affirmations,
which, though each may be true by itself, cannot both be
true at once, is expressed by unless ; as, “ Troy will be
taken unless the Palladium be preserved.” Coincidence
2. Prepositions, or those connectives of which the
_ _ . ... common office is to conjoin words which refuse to coa-
|i6 truth of the pioposition what individual or individuals Ioscg ; and this they can do only by signifying those rela-
e supposed ; thus, “ any man will be virtuous when temp- tions by which the things expressed by the united words
ition is away.” Some is prefixed to nouns in the plural are connected in nature. The first words of men, like
: umber, to denote that only part of the species or genus is their first ideas, had an immediate reference to sensible
)ieant, leaving that part undetermined; thus, “ some men objects ; and therefore there can be no doubt but that the
•e great cowards.” original use of prepositions was to denote the various re-
2. Definite, as they which is prefixed to a noun, to de- lations of body. Afterwards, when meti began to discern
i ote one individual of the species of-which something is wdth their intellect, they took those words which they
edicated that distinguishes it from every other individual, found already made, prepositions as well as others, and
hus, “ the man that hath not music in himself is fit for transferred them by metaphor to intellectual conceptions,
easons.” It is used before nouns in both numbers, and for Prepositions viewed in this light are
ie same purpose ; for we may say, “ the men who have not Either proper, or those which literally denote the re-
insic in themselves are fit for treasons.” This, prefixed to lations subsisting amongst the objects of sense, such as
i noun in the singular number, denotes an individual as
resent and near at hand ; as, “ this, man beside me.” That,
■efixed to a noun in the singular number, denotes an
^dividual as present but at a little distance; as, “ that
rfan in the corner.”1
I Besides these, there are many other articles both definite
ind indefinite.
IV. CONNECTIVES, or those words which are em-
j oyed to connect other words, and of several distinct
arts to make one complete whole. These may be divid-
I into two kinds, viz.
1. Conjunctions, by which name are distinguished all
i lose connectives which are commonly employed to con-
tin sentences. These have been divided into two kinds,
.lied conjunctives, or those words which conjoin sentences
td their meanings also ; and disjunctives, or those words
iich, at the same time that they conjoin sentences, dis-
|in their meanings. Each of these general divisions has
Sscn again subdivided ; the former into copulatives and
ion tin natives, the latter into simple disjunctives and ad-
jlrsative disjunctives. But the general division is absurd,
ud the subdivisions are useless. Conjunctions never dis-
the accidental junction of two things between which there
is no necessary connection; as, “ a house with a party
wall.” The separation of two things which we should
expect to find united; as, “ a house without a roof, a
man ivithout hands.” The relation subsisting between
any thing and that which supports it; as, “ the statue
stands upon a pedestal.” The relation of higher and low¬
er ; as, “ the sun is above the hills,” “ to support uneasy
steps over the burning marl,” “ the sun is set below the
horizon,” “ the shepherd reclines under the shade of a
beech tree.” The relation between any thing in motion
and that in which it moves; as, “ the rays of light pass
through the air. I he relation between any thing con¬
tinued, whether motion or rest, and the point of its be¬
ginning; as, “ the rays of light proceed/twtc the sun,”
“ these figs came from Turkey,” “ that lamp hangs/row
the ceiling.” The relation between any thing continued
and the point to which it tends ; as, “ he is going to Italy,”
“ he slept till morning.” The relation between an effect
and its cause; as, “ I am sick of my husband and/or my
gallant.”2
Or metaphorical, for as those who are above others in
Jin the meaning of sentences, nor have any other effect place have generally the advantage over them, the pre-
Han to combine two or more simple sentences into one positions which denote the one kind of superiority or in-
1 These two articles have plurals; these is the plural of this, and those the plural of that.
I - Conjunctions and prepositions are indeed employed only to connect sentences and words ; but it may be doubted whether they
a parts of speech distinct from nouns, verbs, and adjectives.
GRAMMAR.
686
Relative feriority, are likewise employed to denote the other. Thus
Pronoun. We say of a king, “ he ruled over his people and of a
SQ](|ier> « he served under such a general."
Interjections are a species of words which are found
perhaps in all languages on earth, but which cannot be
included in any of the classes above mentioned; for they
are not subject to the rules or principles of grammar, as
they contribute nothing to the communication of thought.
They may be called a part of that natural language with
which man is endowed, in common with other animals, to
express or allay some very strong sensation ; such as, ah !
when he feels pain. In this view the interjection does
not owe its characteristical expression to the arbitrary
form of articulation, but to the tone of voice, and the mo¬
difications of countenance and of gesture, with which it is
uttered ; it is therefore universally understood by all man¬
kind. In discourse interjections are employed only when
the suddenness or vehemence of some affection returns
men to their natural state, and makes them for a moment
forget the use of speech. In books they are thrown into
sentences without altering their form either in syntax or
in signification ; and in English this is generally done with
a very bad effect, though the writer no doubt employs
them with a view to pathos or embellishment.
Unwilling to interrupt the continuity of the foregoing
article, or to interpolate any additions, however necessary
in themselves, which might have the effect of disturbing
the logical sequence of the compiler’s expositions and il¬
lustrations, we have thought it in many respects prefer¬
able to annex, under separate heads, such further expla¬
nations on several points as may appear to be requisite for
their more complete elucidation, and also to supply some
defects, particularly on the subjects of the relative pro¬
noun, of comparison, and of the verb, which the learned
reader will scarcely fail to detect in this elaborate treatise,
notwithstanding its great and acknowledged merits. And,
1. Of the Relative Pronoun.
This subject has been pretty fully treated in the pre¬
ceding article, and the general principles there stated are
clearly and correctly unfolded. But whilst these princi¬
ples are not always pursued to their consequences, and
some important views have been omitted, there are also
not a few points which seem to require a more ample de¬
velopment, and which may probably be rendered more
distinct by a little diversity of illustration. In endeavour¬
ing to accomplish these objects, however, we shall freely
avail ourselves of the ingenious speculations of one who
has done more than any other philologist of this age, or
even of the last, excepting perhaps Mr Horne Tooke, to
introduce the principles of a sound philosophy into gram¬
matical investigations; and to ourselves it is a source of
no ordinary gratification to think that we are enabled to
do so with his own entire consent and approbation, though
of course without any responsibility upon his part for errors
which may be committed by us in attempting an exposi¬
tion of his views.1
In the learned languages the antecedent is not unfre- Relat
quently repeated along with the relative. In such expres- Pronci-'
sions as, ‘* Erant omnino itinera duo fjuibus itineribus dom0 V—Yv
exire possent,”2 “ Urbem quam statuo vestra est,”3 “'OT2 6’
iVTuvokipu) 2TMMAXOT2 hrri<tofM8u, ii^rivrfi ovffrjg, dvro/.w-
Xtxaffiv cairo/,”4 the antecedent is repeated along with the
relative, which agrees with it in the same manner as any
adjective agrees with its substantive. The relative, there¬
fore, must be an adjective, expressing an attribute of its
antecedent, and representing it in some way or other.
Again, the application of the relative is universal. There
is no object whatsoever to which, in use, the relative may
not refer, and which it may not represent. We may say,
the animal which, the man who ; the thing which, wisdom
which ; George who, I who, thou who, he that; and so in
innumerable other instances. The attribute expressed by
the relative is therefore extremely general, such indeed
as may belong to any object whatsoever. The first mat¬
ter for inquiry, then, is to endeavour to ascertain what
the attribute in question really is, or, in other words, to de¬
termine the signification of the relative pronoun.
On this branch of the subject, however, it is not neces¬
sary to enlarge, after what has already been said respect¬
ing it. The analytical solution proposed by Mr Harris, on
the authority of Apollonius De Syntaxi,5 namely, into the
prepositive pronoun and the conjunction and, has already
been noticed and refuted. The equation, as stated by him,
and also by Dr Beattie, who adopts his view, does not con¬
sist of equivalents, either logical or grammatical. The so¬
lution is not, therefore, as it ought to be, of universal ap¬
plication. In some instances, indeed, it may appear to
have the same effect in a sentence as the copulative con¬
junction and prepositive pronoun ; but in others, and by
far the greater number, it will be found that the effect
produced by the substitution of the alleged equivalents is
altogether different. Thus, if the sentence, “Light is a
body which moves with great celerity,” be resolved into,
“ Light is a body, and it moves with great celerity,” as
proposed by Mr Harris, the result is two distinct predica¬
tions respecting light, viz. first, that “ it is a body,” and,
secondly, that “ it moves with great celerity whereas, in
the original sentence, “ Light is a body which moves with
great celerity,” there is but one predication made con¬
cerning “ light,” namely, that “ it is a body of great or as¬
tonishing velocity!' It is also to be observed, that the
prepositive pronoun in the one sentence, and the relative
pronoun in the other, refer to different antecedents. Thus,
in the sentence, “ The magnet is a stone, and it attracts
iron,” magnet is the antecedent to it; but in the sentence,
“ The magnet is a stone which attracts iron,” stow, and not
magnet, is the antecedent to which. Nor is this all. There
are many instances where the resolution proposed, by in¬
troducing a double instead of a single predication, would
produce either nonsense or falsehood. We can say with
perfect truth, that “ Legendre was the first mathemati¬
cian who remarked the coincidence of symmetrical magni¬
tudes ;” but if this be converted into “ Legendre was the
first mathematician, and he remarked the coincidence of
symmetrical magnitudes,” we obtain two propositions, the
1 Fateamur profecto oportet, simulque nos delectat fateri, quod nihil est hocce tentamen nisi prolatio, exigua quidem, pne ec io-
num doctissimi atque •xoXv^uXknTou Joannis Hunter, LL. 13. in Academia Andreapolitana Litterarum Humaniorum Prof'essoris.
2 Caesar. Comment- lib. i. c. 6. 3 Virgil. JEn. lib. i. 1. 573. _ _ 4 Demosth. Olynth-f.
5 From his extensive acquaintance with classical literature, and the philosophical bent of his mind, Mr Harris was certainly a rn
eminently capable of making important philological discoveries, had he chosen, like Mr Horne Tooke and Dr Hunter, to think o
for himself, instead of esteeming it a sort of heresy to differ from the opinions of the ancient grammarians. Of these, Apollonius was
doubt one of the most learned and acute, as we shall have occasion afterwards to show ; and in a question of fact, his authority is110 ,
be disputed. Rut the case is very different in regard to a theory, the truth or falsehood of which must be established by e
rived not from the dicta of grammarians, but from the principles and usages of language. It is an excessive and misplaced de or
to authority, however, which has led Mr Harris to crowd his Hermes with a multiplicity of uncouth terms and unnecessary ms,
tions, which, though they give an air of learned precision to many of his propositions, have an obvious tendency to darken rather
elucidate the subject which he professes to explain.
Jimer
fat
d|t
jpolvei
|
j ion «
.(sition
i th of
i ieciou1
- e
j its c
i e, in
^laligei
r iat6vi
i jve t
nctive
If, hf
l jitra'
i n bet
j, itv
I:rely
|un. '
finot
red i
, n of
i icier
i jduct
i' k/fl
jve be
il TO
|s ma
wool
3 itead
C iglish
IIUS, V
leexf
:aven
'llactici
I xon,
0 rnstr:
ea, i
But
onoui
t omer
i onouj
Vther
any:
itly tl
He:
But
erelal
• ttubilii
t lird pe
ifalitv
Thi
f* also
1 ;tle eli
f il adje.
.1 Wicip
* it thei
fie.
j 1, <inal
s ltd, bv
! fleeted
GRAMMAR.
687
firmer of which contains an affirmation erroneous in point
olfact. In like manner, if the expression, “ Solomon was
i>: the son of David w/to rebelled against his father,” be
r*olved into “ Solomon was not the son of David, and he
raielled against his father,” we have one negative propo-
gion which is historically true, converted into two pro-
psitions, the one negative and the other affirmative, but
bdi of them historically false. Mr Harris subjoins as a
gecious confirmation of his theory, “ that the Latins in
tli: structure of the relative seem to have well represent-
en its compound nature, of part pronoun and part connec-
tie, in forming their qui and quis from que and is, or, as
Siliger would have it, from xa/ and hi, xa/ and 6:” But,
watever there may be in this, the foregoing examples
pive that the relative has often an effect very different
icleed from that which is produced by combining a con-
netive with the prepositive pronoun.
If, however, the connective (which is nothing but an
ainitrary interpolation) be kept out of view, and the rela-
tin between the different pronouns be carefully consider-
e, it will, on examination, be found that the relative is
n:rely a particular explanation of the demonstrative pro-
pun. That the article is really a demonstrative pronoun,
cjinot be denied by any one who has attentively consi-
dired its true nature and import. The common applica-
tin of 6 [mv, o ds, and to [mv, to h, in Greek, renders this
sificiently obvious ; and, besides, direct evidence may be
abduced to establish the fact. In the expression TOI
a baiihoMi hov,1 “ Mi quidem sunt dmmones,” o-jtoi might
tye been used instead of toi ; and again, in the sentence,
fiTO xai TO ewoirjitev avdguiroi ourog oux an avtOciviv,' “ It
tls man had done that and that (such and such things),
h would not have been dead,” rouro might have been used
ii tead of to. Nor is this confined to Greek alone. In
jiglish also the article is used as a demonstrative pronoun,
lius, when Nathan said unto David, “Thouart ^Aeman,”
expression is the same as if the warning minister of
iven had said, “ Thou art that man.” And the same
ictice likewise obtains in the Gothic and in the Anglo-
sxon, where, according to Manning, the article put de-
bnstratively has the same signification as hie, heec, hoc ;
) ea, id ; Me, Ma, Mud.3
iBut not only is the article employed as a demonstrative
moun ; in the more ancient Greek writers, particularly in
jmer and Herodotus, it is frequently used as a relative
■onoun. This has already been shown, and need not be
ether illustrated by examples, which might be produced
ijany number required. 0so; TOI Q'k-jutov Ij/o-jov4 is mani-
fstly the same as 0so/ ’OI OXv/akov s^ouov. And, conversely,
the relative is sometimes used as an article. “ Imo, inquit Relative
Vigerus, absolute '02 pro 'O nonnunquam usurpatur. Pronoun.
(Xoyou xa/ -rXeurou) Ty [itv og6us as/ ^oufLivog, u<p 'OX 5s TOig
biofisvoig hiragyuv ‘ quorum altero recte semper utens, altero
indigentibus abunde subveniens ubi cap’ 'OT pro uto
TOT.”5 Anciently the article was used as the relative pro¬
noun in English as well as in Greek. The Lord’s Prayer,
in its older form, commenced thus : “ Our father the art in
heaven,” where the is obviously used as a relative pronoun.
And the same thing obtains in the Gothic and Anglo-Sax¬
on, in which last, according to Manning, the put after pro¬
nouns of all the persons signifies qui, who ; as Ic the, Ego
qui, I who. The same author adds, “ Apud Gothos simi¬
liter articulus, per omnes casus, vicem gerit pronominis re-
lativi; ut sa in himinam, ‘ qui in ccelis.’ ” Again, the
demonstrative pronoun that, in English, is used indiscrimi¬
nately with the relative. Thus we say indifferently, “ The
man that endureth to the end,” or, “ The man who endur-
eth to the end“ The messenger that Alexander sent to
Darius,” or, “ The messenger whom Alexander sent to Da¬
rius “ The mountain that overhangs the lake,” or, “ The
mountain which overhangs the lake ;” and so universally.
Upon the whole, therefore, it may be concluded that the
relative is merely a particular application of the demon¬
strative pronoun; or, in other words, that the signification
of the relative is radically the same with that of the demon¬
strative pronoun.
But what, it may be asked, is the precise signification of
the demonstrative pronoun ? When it is said, “ Caesar
Dumnorigem cepit atque interfecit cum” it is evident that
the eum refers to and represents Dumnorix. A question
however arises, namely, under what character does it re¬
present him ? Caesar took Dumnorix ; but eum does not
represent him as a prisoner, and there is no other circum¬
stance connected with Dumnorix which the pronoun can
suggest to the mind, except the previous mention of his
name. From the reason of the thing, therefore, indepen¬
dently of any induction, it may be concluded that eum can
only be equivalent to the said or before-mentioned; and,
accordingly, it will upon trial be found that, wherever the
demonstrative pronoun occurs, some such expression as
said or before-mentioned may be substituted in its stead.
And this view is confirmed by the etymology of the de¬
monstrative pronoun in as far as it can be traced either
in Greek or in any other language.
For example, the Greek pronoun abrog, corresponding to
the Latin ipse or idem, and often to hie, appears to be the
past participle of the old verb auw, clamo or dico, formed
upon the same analogy with the Latin past participle ;6 so
Hesiod. 4 Demosthenes. 3 Manning, Grammat. Anglo-Sax. et Maso-Goth. * Odyss. S.
But Vigerus, though aware of the fact that is sometimes used for «, does not seem to have observed that the article o is merely
& relative pronoun aj, the ancient form of which was ras (whence ra, rou, rov, rw, &c.), with the final; elided. In Xenophon y L,m
irabilia, cap. 4) we find this expression : '02 x&v vfuv, 1$*, r* aur^v, where os, though it may be called a. pi-onoun ot the
ird person, is plainly nothing but the article, and where, also, it appears that the demonstrative, used in a particular way, is in
^Th^urdveSf maTucTof the Latins in terminating their past participle in TUS, creates a strong presumption that such formerly
us also the practice of the Greeks ; seeing that, at a remote period, the Latin language was unquestionably a dialect, or, at least,
itle else than a dialect, of the Greek. And this presumption, joined with the actual existence in Greek of a numerous class of ver-
tl adjectives in TOS, having a passive signification, puts it almost beyond a doubt that these verbals m to2 are just the old past
krticiples of the verbs to which they respectively belonged. Several of these may indeed have undergone some change of signification,
lit their consequent or secondary meaning may easily be traced to their primary import, in other words, to that of the past parti¬
ble. Thus eI„, amo, forms the old past participle i^ros, amatus, “ that hath been loved,” and consequently that wiay ^
amahilh; r.Xocoo, video, forms the past participle yi>>*<,Tos, visas, “ that hath been laughed at,” consequently “ that way be laughed at,
id, bv inference, “ that is capable of exciting laughter,” or, in other words, ridiculus ; and so of the rest. The following examples,
Elected from many which might be produced, will be sufficient to indicate the analogy upon which these verbals are formed, and
1 show the propriety of regarding them as the past participles of their respective verbs:
VERBS.
‘Ayacraa/, DiligO,
‘AXsiv, Capio,
' Kamai, Exerceo,
Ba-XTaJ, Tillgo,
PAST PARTICIPLES.
AyaxuTOX, dilectus.
aX<yT02, captUS.
a<r*)jT02, exercitatus.
jSaxTOS, tinctus.
VERBS.
Asjai, Excorio,
AiScarxiu, Doceo,
rxvQu, Sculpo,
Ziuyu, Jungo,
PAST PARTICIPLES.
SaaTOX, excoriatus.
2<$axT02, doctus.
yXt/xT02, SClllptUS.
junctus.
688
GRAMMAR.
Relative that avro;, the Greek demonstrative pronoun, is in fact no-
Pronoun. thing but dictus or said. Another familiar instance is the
use 0f t]ie word ditto in book-keeping ; as when it is said
“ paid ditto in full.” Ditto, as everybody knows, is the Ita¬
lian detto, formed from the Latin dictus, in the same man¬
ner as fatto from factus, rilto from rectus ; and hence the
expression, “ paid ditto in full,” is “ paid said person in
full,” or, more simply, “ paid him in full.” Again, in our
own language, Mr Horne Tooke has satisfactorily traced
the pronoun it, anciently written hit, and still so pronoun¬
ced in many parts of the country, to the past participle of
the Anglo-Saxon verb haitan, dicere, nominare; whence
it follows that it or hit signifies said or named} It may,
therefore, with some confidence be concluded that said
was the original import of the demonstrative pronoun ; and,
as the relative pronoun has been shown to be only a parti¬
cular application of the demonstrative, the signification of
the former must, ex paritate rationis, be identical or syno¬
nymous with that of the latter, and, consequently, equiva¬
lent to said or named.
In a learned essay, to which Dr Gray’s prize was adjudg¬
ed, on the import and application of the relative pronoun,
the author, Mr H. Carmichael, shows that the apparent
etymology of this pronoun, in the Gothic language, affords
the strongest possible corroboration of the truth of the
above conclusion; inasmuch as the Gothic relative is mere¬
ly, with a slight change of the aspirate into sigma,2 the
past participle of the verb signifying dicere, to say. And
the admitted connection traceable between the Gothic
and the ancient dialects of the Greek language suggests
another conjecture, which serves to strengthen the proba¬
bility of the preceding etymology, and also to confirm the
truth of the general proposition above enunciated. The
observation of Mr Horne Tooke, that Anglo-Saxon verbs,
having i as their characteristic letter, change that letter,
in the formation of their past tense, into a broad, is equally
applicable to Mseso-Gothic verbs; thus cjuiman makes
GUAM, quithan quath, and so on. But as different
persons pronounced differently, and also used different
written characters as representatives of their sounds, this
change of the characteristic letter was exhibited either by
a broad, or by o, or by u; and hence it may be infer¬
red from analogy that uuath would also be pronounced
auoTH, which accordingly is still met with in the collo¬
quial dialect of several districts in Scotland. It would
also appear that quoth was sometimes pronounced and
written quod ; thus, in Chaucer, “ Sir Knight (guod he),
my maister and my lord.” Quod and quoth have there¬
fore been in use. But, in Anglo-Saxon, quid, dictum,
frequently occurs; and from the same analogy we may
infer that quith was also in use at one period. It fol¬
lows, then, that quoth and quith are in reality the past Itek'
tense or past participle of the verb quithan, dicere. But PnSl
as the old form of the Greek relative pronoun was xo; dif- Wv
ferent parts of which, as xou, xjj, xwg, occur frequently in
Herodotus, it may not unreasonably be conjectured that
the Gothic quoth formed the Greek xog (the th becom¬
ing g in the same manner as hodt, in the imperative of the
second aorist, becomes first ho&, and then &>s), and that
quid formed the Greek x/s, afterwards written ng, and
the Latin quis. Further, it has been observed, that in the
Maeso-Gothic, saei, qui, and the article sa corresponding
sometimes to the Greek 6, and sometimes to ouro$, bear
the strongest appearance of having formed part of a Goth¬
ic verb corresponding to the Anglo-Saxon saehan, dicere •
a circumstance which serves to confirm the truth of the
position, that the real signification of the relative pronoun
is said or named.
From this induction, which appears to be conclusive, we
now proceed to consider the uses of this pronoun in lan¬
guage, and at the same time to inquire whether, in the
different examples produced, the relative corresponds, in
effect, to the signification which we have assigned to it.
The principal uses of the relative are, first, when it ren¬
ders the clause in which it stands, in some respect or
other, descriptive of its antecedent, or, in other words,
when the relative is equivalent to an adjective noun; and,
secondly, when it intimates that the amount of the clause
to which it is prefixed is to be taken as & substantive mm.
1. With regard to the first of these uses; namely, when
the relative clause can be expressed by a single term,
every one must perceive that it describes or qualifies the
antecedent, and is therefore equivalent to an adjective
noun. Thus, in the sentence “ vir sapit qui pauca loquitur,”
the relative clause, qui pauca loquitur, may be expressed
by the term pauciloquus, and “ vir pauciloquus sapit” is
therefore exactly the same as “ vir sapit qui pauca loqui¬
tur that is, qui pauca loquitur is precisely equivalent to
pauciloquus, or, in other words, the relative clause is equi¬
valent to an adjective noun. But the relative is by no
means restricted, in its application, to those cases where
the clause which it introduces may be expressed by a
single term ; on the contrary, the latter may be as long and
as complex as the writer or speaker may chuse, although
there be no single term in the language expressive of the
same combination of ideas. When, for instance, we say,
“ He is the happy man, who, at any moment of his exis¬
tence, can reflect on a life which has been spent in the
conscientious discharge of his dutythe clauses, “ who
can reflect on a life,” and “ which has been spent in the
conscientious discharge of his duty,” may not be expres¬
sible by single terms ; but if they were, these terms would
VERBS.
Oji/AA&i, Susurro,
KeeXsa, ■ VoCO,
, ( Celebro,
tClaudo,
Kocr/auu Orno,
Aiyu, Lego,
A *<ropcu Supplico,
M/y&i, Misceo,
Muza, Nuptias ambio,
Ogtya, Porrigo,
TUpva, MittO,
Pango,
Hufeiu, Opto,
Plev, Dico,
Paw, Roboro,
PAST PARTICIPLES.
xXjjTOS,
xAs/TOX,
xAs/fl’TOS,
xorpvTOX,
AsxTOX,
‘Tf/-A<9,T02,
fuxTOX,
(Kvjjo-TOS,
o^sxTOX,
!TSiUTTOS,
tryxTOX,
rgi-noffnTO'S,
/»! TO 2,
iw-gsjorTOS,
multum celebratus.
vocatus.
celebratus.
clausus.
ornatus.
lectus.
ter-supplicatus.
mistus.
desponsatus.
porrectus.
missus.
pactus.
ter-optatus.
dictus.
robustus.
VERBS.
'Sxt-ra^eo, Tego,
Pungo,
Taffa-M, Ordino,
Tiyyu, TingO,
Tgsa, Perforo,
Tfaivu, Texo,
n 'tiof/Mi, Emo,
nnyu>, SufFoco,
PUiuu, Facio,
Vaivu, Aspergo,
<r>^uyu, Torreo,
Xf/4<, Ungo,
'Vaua, Tango,
A’’TH, Dico,
PAST PARTICIPLES.
<rxSoracrT02, tCCtUS.
«rr/xT02, punctUS.
t«*to2, ordinatus.
T-syxTOS, tinctus.
rgjjTOS, perforatus.
y^avTOS, textUS.
&vj!T02, emptus.
ithxTOX, suffocatus.
to/»t.02, factus.
pa»T02, aspersus.
(pjuxTOX, tostus.
XprTOZ, unctus.
Vaua-TOS, taCtUS.
*AT TO 2, DlCTUS.
) 111 legal phraseology said is itself used as a demonstrative pronoun ; as “ said city” and “ said seisin” for “ t/iat city” and “ that
seism.”
Ibis change, natural in itself, is of frequent occurrence; thus hai/i becomes ha.?, seeth becomes sees, doeth becomes doej, speakeM
becomes speakm and speaks, and sendet/< becomes sendth, send#.
iiltf
woi
inivi,r
lativ
live1
ie sei
leciei
The
'ueltj
i exp
isteac
:USt t
j the
’scrip
trfwe
ling
juld
li saj
use
wha
it th
ed
TP1/
,ve n(
ruple
A rm
stitu:
uival
in, “ i
/
I iss ot
srela
ice o
e woi
ed in
emu
Jt,id^
3 sub
mg w
lusto
'l have
2. T1
imati
E ;arde
e itenc
t ere t
f the n
a entt
J ative
i itomt
< mor<
dlesi
.ngu
< fies o
e itenci
i misy
r einv
e tfully
i nal e
> m et
e mine
s ved ]
know
prefix
e ace th
‘e non,
*>'04
E ‘St, th
\ :*«/
I1; am
ingle t
vol,
t la:
GRAMMAR.
689
niversally be denominated adjective nouns. And this
ads us to observe that there are two ways by which the
dative qualifies the antecedent; the first, when the re¬
live clause is merely descriptive of the antecedent; and
ie second, when it ascertains to what particular class or
iccies the antecedent belongs. Thus, in the sentence,
The emperors, glorying in nothing but oppression and
uelty, issued many tyrannical edicts, which, as might
! expected, fomented discontent and excited rebellion,
stead of enforcing submission to their authorityit
ust be obvious that the whole of the clause introduced
r the relative is equivalent to a compound adjective
fscriptive of “ tyrannical edictsand that if the word
id were substituted instead of which (the noun “ edicts”
ring understood), the sense and effect of the sentence
Duld remain unaltered. Again, in the sentence, “ homo,
li sapientia caret, nil profuit hominibus,” the relative
luse qui sapientia caret, qualifies homo by ascertaining
what particular class or species this “ homo” belongs,
at though, in the former examples, it will readily be al-
wed that the word said may, with perfect propriety,
ipply the place of the relative pronoun, yet they who
ve not been accustomed to make the substitution may
ruple to admit it in others, or to agree that the sentence
A man, who is destitute of wisdom, is a cipher in so-
<S;ty,” is exactly equivalent to “ A man, said (man) is
dstitute of wisdom, is a cipher in society.” Still the
euivalence is undoubted ; for the subject of the proposi-
tin, “ a man,” is, in both cases, qualified by words which
1 ve precisely the same effect in ascertaining to what
c iss of men he belongs ; and although, in the latter case,
12 relative clause assumes the form of a parenthetical sen-
t ice or interjected affirmation, yet if, in pronunciation,
I 3 word said be slurred over unemphatically, or articu-
II ed in the very same manner as the relative who, every
j e must be sensible that these two sentences are, in ef-
f :t, identical. To prevent the appearance of violence in
tlb substitution, it is necessary to repeat the antecedent
1 ng with said; but this arises solely from our not being
fustomed to use said disjoined from its substantive, as
have long been accustomed to use the relative pronoun.
2. I he second use of the relative pronoun is, when it
kimates that the clause to which it is prefixed is to be
n yarded as the equation of a substantive noun ; as in the
aptence, “ That you are disappointed, gives me pain,”
ipere the clause “ that you are disappointed” is evident-
(l‘he nominative to the verb “gives,” and perfectly equi-
vient to “ your disappointment? It is true that when the
native occupies this position, grammarians have been ac-
a itomed to call it a conjunction; but nothing, surely, can
b more unphilosophical, or better calculated to produce
landless perplexity and destroy the primitive simplicity
oe language, than to class the same word in different cate-
§ ies of speech according to its position and effect in a
slitence. Such a mode of procedure, whilst it is but a
msy method of screening ignorance, tends to retard a
e investigation into the real meaning of words, by de-
tfully substituting a technical name instead of a ra¬
ti bal explanation; and it insidiously attempts to wrest
tnm etymology the right of stamping upon terms their
gtauine signification. In opposition to the commonly re¬
caved notion, however, it may safely be affirmed that, in
allknown languages, the neuter of the relative pronoun
isarefixed to a nominative and a verb, and that the sen-
te ce thus formed is, in amount, equivalent to a substan-
noun. Ihus., when Homer says, Asucrem yag Toys ffew-
O 1101 ysgag aWy, “ for you all perceive this at
bust, that my prize is going away to another” 'O goi ytpag
tyercu uXX'/j is evidently the olject or thing perceived by
kl; and hence, if this sentence could be expressed by a
sigle term, it would be universally denominated a noun
yon. x.
substantive, and would be in the accusative case governed
by Asyffom. The same observations are, mutatis mutandis,
applicable to the following sentence :
 iuofitilns
TiyvutrKu'i 'O 0! uvros vvugi%t xuqu; ’AtoXXuv.
where 'O ci avrog b'jfsqtya •/iigug ’AflroAXwy is a complete
substantive governed in the accusative by y/yvw<rxwi/. Again,
on, the neuter of the relative pronoun oeng (compounded of
og, quis, and ng'), is universally employed in the same man¬
ner. Ihus, in the sentence, ’Agxsi goi fiiadog, Itpri, rovro xu/
/JjOvov, OTI sx Xvxov drou/ccrog xai odovruv st'flgsg xagav a wav,
“ even this alone, that you have taken your head safe and
sound out of the mouth of a wolf, is sufficient reward for
you, if OTI Jx Xvxov Grogiurog xai odovruv h^r/Ptg xcogav cuav
could be represented by a single word, every one would
regard it as a substantive noun, and as the nominative to
the verb agxj/.
In the Latin language, quod, the neuter of the relative,
and ut, which is just the Greek on, are used in precisely
the same manner. Thus, in the passage, “ Haec nunci-
antes orabant, ut opem ferret, hostemque baud dubium
Romanis terra aut maritimis viribus arceret; qui ob nul-
lam aliam causam, nisi quod imminerent Italirn, peteren-
tur:” it is obvious that “ ut opem ferret” and “ ut hostem
arceret” are compound substantives governed in the accu¬
sative by “ orabant,” and also that “ quod imminerent”
may be considered as a substantive under the regimen of
oh, and expressed thus : “ Qui (scilicet Oricini) ob nullam
aliam causam, nisi (ob) imminentiam Italim, peterentur.”
It is evident, therefore, that quod, when thus prefixed to
a nominative and a verb, is not a conjunction, but only
the neuter of the relative pronoun ; that when so used,
the sentence is, in amount, equivalent to a substantive
noun ; that no real assertion is intended to be made by
the relative clause; and that, on the contrary, the nomi¬
native and verb are merely an explanation of the relative
which precedes them. In the expression, “ I know that
you are disappointed,” that enunciates indefinitely the ob¬
ject known, and may apply to any object of knowledge
whatsoever ; but when the clause “you are disappointed”
is subjoined, it limits the knowledge to a particular ob¬
ject, namely, your disappointment. It hence appears that,
in making the words which explain that contain a real as¬
sertion, Mr Horne Tooke has admitted a fallacy into his
ingenious resolution of the relative pronoun when thus
employed ; for, in such expressions as “ I do not assert
that you are disappointed,” or, “ I do not believe that you
are disappointed,” it would surely be absurd to maintain
that I assert your disappointment, when I expressly say
that I do not assert it, and do not even believe it. Upon
the whole, then, it seems evident that, in this use of the
relative, the pronoun itself is merely a general enuncialive
of the proposition which follows ; and that this proposi¬
tion being the equation of a substantive noun, or an ex¬
planation of the pronoun, is to be taken abstractedly, or, in
other words, to be considered not as containing a formal
assertion, but merely as something said or enunciated.
2. Of Comparison.
Comparison, comparatio, is derived from comparo, to put
together, a word literally intimating the mode in which
one thing is compared with another, namely, by colloca¬
tion or juxtaposition; and hence, in all languages, this
process is expressed in nearly the same manner. The
degrees of comparison are commonly said to be three;
the positive, comparative, and superlative. But the posi¬
tive can scarcely be denominated a degree, as it simply
states the epithet, and employs no comparison whatever;
thus, albus, white, pidcher, fair. The comparative states
4 s
Compa¬
rison.
690 GRAMMAR
Conipa- a comparison between two objects only; the superlative
rison. between more than two. It is impossible, however, to
express by different terms, or single words, the gradations
or shades of difference which may exist between objects,
as, for instance, in colours; and hence necessity obliged
the framers of language to invent means by which these
various gradations or qualities might be generally express¬
ed. With respect to those words which admit of compari¬
son, two things seem to be necessary; first, that they re¬
present general ideas ; and, secondly, that they represent
objects which are capable of increase or decrease. In this
view even nouns substantive, or generic terms, may be
compared. Thus it may be said of a person possessing
in an eminent degree those qualities which constitute a
hero, that he is more a hero than another less liberally en¬
dowed in this respect; and, upon the same principle, we
find in Greek jBaaiXsvg, fSaa'/Xivrsoog, fiartXsvrccrog. But the
names of individuals, or, in other words, proper names, do
not admit of comparison, because no individual can be an¬
other, and consequently no man can be more himself than
another. The same observation extends to the personal
pronouns, which, although in themselves general, do not
admit of comparison, because they are particular in their
application. Numbers, too, are the most general of all
words; yet, as they do not admit of any addition or di¬
minution, they are not susceptible of comparison ; for, if
we suppose two sets of any thing, each consisting of six,
the one set cannot be more six than the other. Verbs,
however, may admit of comparison, thus, amat magis, he
loves wore / and so also may participles as partaking of the
nature of verbs. It is commonly objected, indeed, that
the latter then become adjectives ; but this is extremely
incorrect; for, in such words as servans, servantior; amans,
amantior; the meaning is not “ loving,” “more observant
of love,” but “ loving at present” “ more observant of
* love at present'.' Adverbs may also be compared ; thus,
convenienter, convenientius, convenientissime; eleganter, ele-
gantius, elegantissime. Prepositions, being a species of ad¬
jectives, and oblique cases of nouns, are likewise susceptible
of comparison; thus we have in Greek ffgw, Tgwraros now
‘irgwros, and, in English, before, further, foremost; hind,
hindmost. Interjections, if they be signs significant of
ideas or emotions of the mind, may, in like manner, be
used in degrees of comparison. The repetition of the
same word denotes a comparison, as alas, alas; and the
expression ter quaterque beati, indicates a degree of compa¬
rison, perhaps the highest. Among the Hebrews the re¬
petition of the same word, as good good, is employed to
express the superlative, and hence becomes synonymous
with optimus, very good or best; and children make use of
the same method to express the degrees of comparison.
Of conjunctions nothing positive can be said in this re¬
spect, as their nature has not yet been satisfactorily as¬
certained.
But there is a much more refined and less obvious view
of the subject of comparison, namely, that the comparative
may be recompared, and so also may the superlative; in
other words, if language wTere fitted to express it, there
may be an ascending or descending series of successive
comparisons of comparatives and superlatives. Without
attempting any thing of this sort, however, it may be shown
that from one comparative another may be formed, and from
one superlative another comparative and superlative, and
so on to almost any extent whatever. Suppose three per¬
sons, John, James, and Peter : John is tall, James is taller,
and Peter is tallest; but, instituting a second comparison,
Peter is more taller than John than James is ; that is, as
Peter is the tallest of the three, and as James is taller than
John, Peter, with reference to John, the common object,
must be taller to a greater extent or degree than James, the
intermediate subject of comparison, is. But this, which it
is difficult to state intelligibly in words, may be better com- Co
prehended by the following simple diagram. ri50^’
A Here D is tall, and C is taller than D,
B but B is more taller than D than C is;
C  and of the three, A, B, C, it is obvious
D  that A is most the taller than D. In
the first case, when we said that B is more taller than D
than C is, we formed a new comparative of which the for¬
mer comparative C is the positive ; and, in the second case,
we formed a new superlative, of which the former compa¬
rative was the positive. This may be visibly represented
in the following manner :
Here we have three distinct groups or classes of objects,
and A, B, and C are each the tallest of its respective class
or group ; yet these three in their relative excess may
again be recompared. Thus B may be more the tallest of
its group than A is of its group, and of the three, A, B, and
C, C may be most the tallest of its group. This process,
it is obvious, might be carried to any length, and we might
form a triple, quadruple, quintuple, sextuple, &c. compari¬
son ; nor is there any logical incongruity in the expressions
which we have employed, when these are properly applied
and understood.
No limit is set to comparison in nature ; the only boun¬
dary fixed is by our confined faculties. If we were to ad¬
vance beyond the first, or at most the second step, we
would become involved in relations so complicated that it
would be impossible to conceive them ; and convenience,
therefore, obliges us to stop short. In English, we gene¬
rally express such comparison by circumlocution. Thus, in¬
stead of saying that B is rnwe greater than D than C is,
we commonly say, that B exceeds D more than C does.
But instances of the former are sometimes met with even
in that language, and not unfrequently in Latin. “ The
Romans,” says Mr Hume, in his History of England, “ were
more inferior to the Greeks in eloquence than in military
glory that is, the Romans were inferior to the Greeks
both in eloquence and in military glory; but they were
more inferior in eloquence than they were inferior in mi¬
litary glory. The language of the historian, therefore, is
both logically and grammatically correct, though its accu¬
racy has been impeached by persons ignorant of the princi¬
ple on which the comparison is made. Priscian the gram¬
marian appears to have perfectly understood the rationale
of such expressions; but Ruddiman, with all his ingenui¬
ty and erudition, seems to have been altogether in the dark
respecting it, as is evident from the manner in which he
speaks, in his Grammatica Major, of the instances of dou¬
ble comparisons quoted from Priscian. The resolution of
all such examples, however, is, according to the principle
here stated, equally certain and obvious. Thus, “ Achilles
iEnea magis fortior quam justior fuitthat is, Achilles
was more braver than /Eneas, than he was juster than
/Eneas ; in other words, Achilles exceeded /Eneas both in
bravery and in justice, but he exceeded him more in the
one (bravery) than in the other (justice). The expression,
therefore, is perfectly classical, and consistent with itself-
Again, “ Ajax est magis fortior Ulysse quam Diomede;
that is, Achilles is braver than Ulysses, and he is also
braver than Diomede, but he is more braver than Ulysses,
than he is braver than Diomede, or, in other words, he ex¬
ceeds Ulysses more in bravery than he does Diomede. There
is a passage in the historian Florus, a writer of a vigorous
imagination, and whose writings accordingly exemplify that
■ 0 w
r lit)'
mi)
edi
apt
lias
jusl
froi
out
wh'
ris<
cut
ate
loci
fflUl
net
]iec
H
the
ord
led
mir
lyi
fd
con]
no
isst
thn
G R A M M A R.
691
omjM characteristic, which, by reason of a double comparison,
-isim. has been completely misunderstood. It is to be found in
lib. iv. c. 46, of his history, and is as follows : “ Bed nec
minus admirabilior fuit illius exitus belli.” In none of the
editions of Florus is any notice taken of this passage ; and
upon consulting Clarke’s translation it will be found that he
has simply rendered minus admirabilior “ less admirable,”
just as if it had been minus admirabilis. But it is not
from the words themselves that we are enabled to make
out the passage ; it is from the context. Throughout the
whole of it there is a train of closely-connected compa¬
risons going on in the mind, and, in particular, three cir¬
cumstances are mentioned, each having a tendency to cre¬
ate wonder in a greater degree, viz. Ltf, “ Nunquam ullo
loco tantum virium populus Romanus vidit,” the forces were
more numerous than at other times ; 2d, “ Nunquam immi-
nentis ruinm manifestiora prodigia,” the presages of im¬
pending ruin were more striking than at other times; and,
3d, “ Nunquam acrior neque alacrior exercitus Caesaris,”
the army was keener, and evinced greater alacrity, than on
ordinary occasions. The circumstance, therefore, which
led the author to use the expression “ Bed nec minus ad¬
mirabilior fuit illius exitus belli,” was his having previous¬
ly mentioned the three things first stated as more wonder¬
ful than at any other time. There is therefore a double
comparison here, Sed nec minus admirabilior, &c. “ But
no less (or, in no less a degree) more wonderful was the
issue of this war,” viz. than the issue of other wars. The
three particulars above stated were more wonderful than
at any other time, and this was no less more wonderful.
Without the double comparatives the real meaning of the
author could not have been expressed. But for the same
reason that it was “ minus admirabilior,” it might have
been “ magis admirabilior,” more more wonderful. Magis,
however, though used as a comparative, is in truth only a
positive of which major is the comparative, and magissi-
mus, i. e. maximus, the superlative ; it is derived from the
Greek giyo-i, and literally signifies greatly; thus, “ more
elegant,” was originally “ greatly elegant.” The compa¬
rative, therefore, produces a different effect in language
from that which it did originally, when its import was not
“ more,” but “ greatly.”
The intrepid apostle of the Gentiles, speaking of him¬
self, in one of his epistles, says, s/mi ru nravruv
rw dyiuv, which is translated “ less than the least,” proba¬
bly because “ more the least” would have made but an awk¬
ward appearance in English. The superlative here is form¬
ed into a new comparative. But the Greek comparative
ends in -regos, which, when fully traced, seems to be srsgos,
the comparative of dj, one, joined to the word denoting the
subject or thing compared, and signifies not wore of one,
but one of two ; for we find the termination -rsgos very fre¬
quently without any augment or increase of qualities, as
-rwf, iruTigot, which of the two ; dj, one, engog, not more of
one, or more of unity, but one of two ; aXKog, another,
aXXorsgof, not more of another, but another of two ; cj,
who, brsgof, which of the two, in Latin uterus, abridged
into uter ; and, in the same manner, xa\og, fair, xccborego;,
the fair of the two. We may add, that whether, in English,
means which of the two. Agreeably to this notion, then,
the comparative being used as a partitive, major fratrum
means the elder of the two brothers, or the one selected
(on account of age) to the exclusion of the other.
Of the termination of the superlative no certain account
can be given ; it is a part of the subject on which all is
conjectural; and although it could be traced, this would be
attended with no practical advantage. Its Greek termi¬
nation is in -rog, and there is some coincidence between
this termination and that of the ordinal numbers rgirog,
nragrof, m/jnrrog, &c. which do not mean the aggregate
numbers three, four, five, but express each an ordinal unity ;
thus rgircg signifies the third, and often one of the three. Verbs.
The same coincidence between the superlative and the
numerals is observable in Latin; thus, optimus, &c. primus,
quintus. See. the first, the fifth, always denoting unity, that
is, unity in a numerical series or order. Now, since in
these two languages there is such a coincidence between
the superlative and the numerals, let us for a moment sup¬
pose the superlative to be made up of unity, or to contain
in it unity ; then doctissimus Romanorum, resolved on this
assumed principle, will be doctus unus Romanorum, “ the one
learned or learned one of the Romans,” making thus a se¬
lection of one to the exclusion of all others. Unus is taken
two ways, either definitely or indefinitely; either as one
only to the exclusion of all others, or as one of any num¬
ber. Horace has an example which seems to favour this
view, and in which for unus potes, one that is powerful, we
might substitute potissimus, the most powerful. And
Quintilian says, “ Demosthenes eminens unus in omni ge-
nere loquendi est,” in which expression eminens unus is the
equation of eminentissimus. The superlative, like unus, is
used both definitely and indefinitely; definitely when op¬
timus, for instance, means the best; and indefinitely when
it is rendered very good. Horace, when inviting Mecae-
nas to a feast, desires him to write back word, “ Tu, quotus
esse velis, rescribe,” w'here quot, combined with unity, sig¬
nifies “ of how many you wish to be one ;” and so perhaps
the superlative is composed of unity and the wrord expres¬
sive of that which is susceptible of comparison, namely,
the positive.
Lastly, the comparative is often expressed by quam, as
“ Virtus est praestantior quam aurum.” But tarn and quam
correspond to each other as antecedent and relative, and are
really such themselves; tarn being the accusative of the
Greek article rov, rriv, and quam the accusative of the rela¬
tive, and their effect being tam, to the degree, quam, to
which degree. Hence the expression may be resolved,
“ Virtue is generally excellent to the degree to which gold
is,” and more. According to the idiom of the French lan¬
guage, it would have been “ quam aurum non est,” to
which degree gold is not. In certain cases of apparent
comparison, it is said by many that potius and magis are
understood, as “ Res autem admonet cavere quam consul-
tare,” wdiere it is commonly said that potius ought to be
supplied ; but surely this wrould be a very violent supple¬
ment, and the more natural one, undoubtedly, would be the
antecedent of quam. Thus, “ Res autem admonet tam ca¬
vere quam consultare,” “ Circumstances warn us to be on
our guard to the degree to which they warn us to consult”
or consider what is best to be done. The import of than
in English, however, is not so easily ascertained as that of
quam in Latin. Where potius and magis are used they
seem to be of the same import wfith the Greek prepositions
■raga and ‘ittog, and significant of apposition or juxtaposi¬
tion. To in English denotes apposition and likewise com¬
parison. “ These blunders are nothing to what we find in
Grenada,” that is, compared with “ what we find in Gre¬
nada.”
Such is an abridged, and, we fear, very imperfect, view
of the ingenious and original speculations of Dr Hunter on
the subject of comparison ; speculations w ith which all his
pupils must be familiar, but which, notwithstanding their
extreme refinement, have not hitherto, so far as we know,
been submitted to the public, even in an intelligible ab¬
stract.
3. Analytical Resolution of the Moods and Tenses in the
Greek and Latin Verbs.
The subject of the verb, and of verbal forms, has al¬
ready been treated of at considerable length, but chiefly, as
the reader will have perceived, with reference to the Eng-
GRAMMAR.
692
Verbs. Hsh language. It may not be improper therefore to extend
the application of the same principles to the resolution of
the moods and tenses of the Greek and Latin verbs, and to
establish, both analytically and inductively, their universal¬
ity as laws of human speech, or rather of the human mind
adapting language to the expression of its thoughts.
It occurred to Dr Hunter, early in life, that by separat¬
ing the time from the other circumstances involved in those
forms of the Latin verb called the tenses of the indicative
and subjunctive moods, the explanations of the tenses, and
also of these moods themselves, would be much simplified.
The view which then occurred to him he continued to give
annually, in his grammatical prelections, during a period of
about half a century; and though, without calling in the
aid of other principles, it is insufficient for the explanation
of certain uses of the moods and tenses, yet, as far as it
goes, it has contributed to the elucidation of a subject re¬
specting which grammarians had, with a few exceptions,
being long accustomed to wander in the dark. Mr Dawes,
in his Miscellanea Critica, first published in 1745, reached
the very verge of Dr Hunter’s opinion ;l and Matthiae, in his
copious grammar of the Greek language,2 published in 1809,
explained some passages of the Greek authors conformably
to a general principle found exemplified in the structure of
every language. But as he does not seem to have been at
all aware of the principle itself, and of the universality of
its application, Dr Hunter was induced, several years ago,
to publish an introductory view of the moods and tenses of
the Greek and Latin verbs, in which both the principle
and its application are most clearly and beautifully unfold¬
ed, and which, with his consent and approbation, we are
enabled to subjoin. Before entering on the discussion
of the particular verbal forms, however*, this venerable pa¬
triarch of philology premises some general observations
connected with the subject, and necessary to a just view
of it.
And, in the polished and refined state in which the
Latin language has come down to us, it is perhaps impos¬
sible to decompose the various moods and tenses of its
verbs, so as to exhibit with certainty the elements, or the
generic verbs, by the coalescence or combination of which
those moods and tenses have been originally formed. The
surest, perhaps the only, guide, to which wre can have re¬
course, is furnished by the decomposed state in which these
moods and tenses are represented in our own or other mo¬
dern languages, by means of those generic verbs termed
auxiliary. Thus, scripsero, when decomposed into its simple
elements, we represent, by recombining these elements in
in this manner, I shall—have—written.
Secondly, wdiosoever, therefore, shall attempt a com¬
plete and satisfactory explanation of the moods and tenses
of the learned languages, which is still a desideratum in
our grammars, must attend particularly to the literal im¬
port and meaning of those auxiliary verbs. But even this
will not always be sufficient. He will often find that more
is meant than meets the ear; and that it is further neces¬
sary to call to his aid our modes and habits of thinking,
and the inferences which mankind naturally and habitually
draw from the verbal statements given. In the expression
I will write, all that is stated is my present will, inclination,
or intention to write. There is nothing in it expressive of
& future action ; yet every person understands it as a de¬
claration, or assertion, of future writing. Now, as this is
not the amount of the statement literally taken, the effect
must be the consequence of an inference drawn from the
present volition to the future action. From the present vo¬
lition the future action is inferred.
Thirdly, Ihe verbs which our grammarians have term¬
ed auxiliary are chiefly these: am, do, have, shall, will, verk
may, can. One or ocher of these we employ, or may em-
ploy, in rendering literally into English the moods and T
tenses of the Greek and Latin verb. These verbs, how¬
ever, when combined with a noun or subject, constitute
each of them, the predicate of a proposition. They all of
them express an assertion, affirmative or negative, and con¬
sequently they are all verbs in the indicative mood: as /
am, I am not; Ido, I do not; I have, I have not; I shall,
I shall not; I will, I will not; I may, I may not; I can,
I cannot. From this view of the subject, some important
consequences seem deducible.
L These auxiliaries, being thus all verbs in the indica¬
tive mood, and all of them, when combined with a noun or
subject, expressing an assertion, it follows that the tenses
of the Latin subjunctive, or potential, or optative, as in cer¬
tain instances it has been called, as well as the subjunctive
and optative of the Greek verb, which involve those auxi¬
liaries, and are literally rendered into English by means of
them, are also indicative. To consider certain of those
forms or tenses as exclusively indicative or assertive, and
others as not so, seems to be founded completely in mis¬
apprehension, and tends to perplex and mislead. “ I may
write,” “ I might w rite,” are as much assertions, as “ I do
write,” and “ I did write.” The thing indicated or assert¬
ed is different; but, in as far as assertion is concerned,
they are completely similar, and stand upon precisely the
same footing.
2. Such expressions as, “ I may read,” “ I may write,”
“ I might read,” “ I might write,” “ I may have read,” “ I
may have written,” “ I might have read,” “ I might have
written,” are incorrectly and improperly considered as
moods, or modes, of reading and of writing. It is the
verb may that is generic, or the term to be modified, and
the other verbs annexed to it contain the modification.
The verb may predicates liberty in general of its nomina¬
tive or subject; may read, may write, predicate liberty to
read and to write. They express not liberty in general, but
liberty modified or particularized. They ought therefore to
be considered as modes or moods of the verb may, not of
the verbs read and write. The same observations are ap¬
plicable to all our other auxiliaries. The verb can predi¬
cates power or ability ; “ can read,” “ can write,” predicate
particular power, the power or ability to perform those parti¬
cular actions ; and so of the rest. What has now been said
of the English auxiliaries is applicable to the moods and
tenses of the learned languages. If the generic verb be pre¬
fixed, as it is in our own language, it remains a separate
word; and has been termed an auxiliary verb. If it be sub¬
joined, or annexed at the end, being unemphatical, it be¬
comes enclitic ; and, adhering to the verbs to which it is
thus annexed, comes at last to be considered as a flexion, or
termination. The French future Tai a or de porter, is an
instance of the one process, and Je porter-ai is an instance
of the other. And, in the progress of elision or abbreviation,
the auxiliary may be so disguised as to be no longer dis¬
tinguishable. It may even be doubted if Je porter-ois will
now be recognised as a compound, or be believed to be
the abbreviated form of Je porter-avois, “ I had to carry.”
Similar to these last examples appear to be the moods and
tenses of the Greek and Latin verb. The auxiliaries,
being annexed at the end, have come to adhere to the
verbs to which they were annexed, and to be considered as
merely changes of termination ; and they are with difficul¬
ty, if at all, distinguishable as having been separate verbs.
Yet the foregoing considerations and examples render it
extremely probable that they were originally separate verbs,
not prefixed, like the English auxiliaries, but subjoined,
3 Matthiae’s Greek Grammar, sect. 522.
,ii and
I
iliai
the
vert
r
■0
ffhii
of»c
the
the
3,
oftl
beei
the}
pk
the)
equi
The
indh
orti
priai
T
lang
ther
orfe
mini
aatk
will
have
bute
we s
in t
moo
tend
the^
seen
jixei
idea
The
fere:
T
pare
sesi
furtl
the
the
Indi
is,h
amp
ever
»rof
!
tiom
gres;
fOfi
the i
1 See Miscellanea Critica, p. 85, Dr Burgess’ edition.
id
ivlii
l
orbs-
enK
iliar
(lie
vert
■01
whi(
f
Of if
the
the
3.
beei
they
pote.
they
equ£
The
indii
ortf
prial
T
lang
ther
ork
mini
mtk
will
have
bute
wes
in t
mot
tend
thej
seen
jixei
idea
The
ferei
T
pare
the
the
Indi
Sub
GRAMMAR.
and at last attached to and incorporated with the words to
which they were subjoined.
But, whatever opinion may be adopted as to the origin
and history of these flexions, no doubt whatever can be
entertained that they are similar in their nature to our aux¬
iliaries ; that the terminations contain the generic part of
the expression, and are modified by the radical part of the
verbs combined with them. The forms scrib-am, leg-am,
teg-am, are therefore improperly considered as moods, or
modes, of the verbs scribo, lego, tego. It is the termination
-am, the common part, that represents I may, or I can, and
which receives modification from scrib-, leg-, teg-. The
general notion of liberty or power is modified by the notion
of writing, reading, and covering, with which it is combined ;
the termination -am, by the radical part of the verbs, not
the radical part by the termination.
3. As the English auxiliary verbs determine the nature
of the moods of the learned languages, and, as has already
been seen, lead us to conclude, that, by whatever name
they may have been distinguished, subjunctive, optative, or
potential, they are all equally indicative or assertive ; so
they also, if we listen to their suggestions, will be found
equally decisive as to the tenses or times of those moods.
These auxiliaries are all verbs. They are all verbs of the
indicative mood ; and they are all verbs of the present time
or tense, each of them having a corresponding form appro¬
priated to past time. Thus,
Pres. Am, do, have, shall, will, may, can.
Past. TVas, did, had, should, would, might, could.
The terminations or flexions of the verbs of the learned
languages, which contain or involve those auxiliaries, should
therefore also be either of the present or of the past time
or tense. Whatever they predicate of their subject or no¬
minative, whether existence, action, possession, duty or obli¬
gation, volition, liberty or possibility, ability or power, they
will be found, like the auxiliaries which they involve, to
have two corresponding forms, one predicating those attri¬
butes of the present time, the other of the past. If then
we separate the time from the other circumstances involved
in those forms of the Greek and Latin verb called the
moods and tenses, the time thus separated, or separately at¬
tended to, will, in every one of them, be found to be either
the present or {he past. One primary object of these forms
seems to have been to give the present and the past as two
fixed points of time, with a reference to which all the other
ideas involved in them are to be estimated and determined.
They are all past, present, future, contingent, &c. with re¬
ference to one or other of these two fixed points.
These preliminary observations seemed necessary to pre¬
pare the way for the proposed elementary view of the ten¬
ses of the Latin verb; and in the sequel that view will be
further illustrated and confirmed by the application of it to
the moods and tenses of the Greek verb. The tenses of
the Latin verb, arranged as present and past, are as follow:
Present. Corresponding Past.
Indie. Pres. Scribo, Sm'&EBAM, Indie. Imperf.
Perf. Scripsi, SmpsERAM, Pluperf.
Put. Scrib KM, 1 c -r ci u- t c
Subj. Pres. Scrib am, / 5cnjEEEM> Subj. Imperf.
Present. Corresponding Past.
Subj. Perf. aScWoserim, 1 c . t>i c
Put. Scrips*™, ) ScnpsissEM, Pluperf.
Let us adopt the words noiv and then, as short and con¬
venient expressions to indicate the present and the past.
Scribo, the present, then, represents my writing as now
doing, as now in progress; scrilmexu, the corresponding
past, as then doing, then in progress. Scrips\,x the perfect,
represents it as now done, or past; scW/iseram2 as then
done or past. Scrib\M, whether considered as the future
indicative, or as the present subjunctive, represents my writ¬
ing in the one case as now future, as a thing that is to be;
in the other as a thing that may be. Although there may
appear to be a marked difference between these two when
they are uttered separately, and not combined with another
verb, yet, when they are found in combination, as generally
happens, the effect of them is in most cases precisely the
same. They equally present the verbal state as future, and
equally present it as contingent ox possible. Thus, Sijubebis
or jubeas faciam, “ If you order me, I will do it.” Both
forms represent my doing it as depending on your ordering
me; and both, at the same time, mark the relation of that
order to the present time; the one as an event now future,
the other as an event now contingent or possible. Jubebis,
howrever, in this combination, leaves it uncertain whether
you shall order me or not; and jubeas leads to the infer¬
ence, that, if you order me at all, that order is future.
What the one states as future, is at the same time stated
by si as uncertain ; what the other states as uncertain, is at
the same time perceived to be future. The two modes of
conceiving the event are so blended together, that it is
often a matter of indifference whether we employ the one
tense or the other; and in numerous instances the present
subjunctive may be rendered by shall. It is from this af¬
finity or similarity between these two modes of conceiving
the action or verbal state, that the terms expressing them
often coincide in form. Thus scribxw, legxxi, audix.u, are,
in all our elementary books, set down both as futures of
the indicative, and rendered shall or will, and as presents
of the subjunctive, and rendered may or can ; and, whilst
rmEMUs is rendered may or can love, sch^emus of the
same termination is rendered shall or will write. It is
from the same affinity of signification that both these ten¬
ses always unite, in one past form, the imperfect of the
subjunctive ; as scr^EREM, which, as the past time of the fu¬
ture indicative, represents my writing as then future ; and, as
the past time of the present subjunctive, represents it as then
contingent or possible, as a thing that might (may-ed) be.
There is, in like manner, so great a similarity of mean¬
ing in the forms scnjosERiM and scnpsERO, that, excepting
the first person singular, they coincide completely, and al¬
ways unite in one past form, seripsissEM. <S'cr«josERiM re¬
presents, not my writing, but my having written (the act
of writing being conceived, not as doing, but as done), as
now contingent or possible, as a thing that may be, or,
which amounts to the same thing, it states my writing as a
thing that may have been. iScWpsERo states my having
xvritten, the completion of my writing, as now future, or as
a thing that shall be, or it states my writing as a thing that
shall have been. The former is accordingly rendered by
‘mt
s
gres
fopl
tlie:
1 This tense Dr Clarke has, with great correctness of thought, called prccscus perfectuni, the time being really the present. There
is, however, no incongruity in combining with this form an expression of t\\e past time at which the action was performed ; as, for ex¬
ample, in stating an action as now past, and at the same time as having taken place last year, or even last century; or in stating an
event of tot year as now past. The usage of the English language does not admit of combining with the perfect, expressed by have,
any expression of time that excludes the present; at least we do not commonly say, “ I have written the letter last week," but “ I
wrote the letter last week.”
2 This form ought to be called preeteritum perfectum, in conformity with the view on which the tenses have received their denomina¬
tions, the time being really past {preeteritum), and the action or verbal state represented as then finished {perfectum), and not in pro¬
gress. Helvctii jam per angustias ct fries Scquanorum suas capias transduxekant, et in Asduorum fines peb.veneb.ant, eorumquc agros
: pofularentur. (Caesar in Bell. Gall. lib. i. c. 11.) The time of these three verbs is a past time, and in this instance they refer to
the same point of past time; but the first two express what was then done or past, the third what was then doing.
Verbs. Mr Ruddiman, I may have written; the latter, I shall
have written} ScripsissEM. expresses precisely the same
conception with the two last, differing from them in no cir¬
cumstance whatever but the time, and expressing the same
thing with reference to past time which they express with
reference to the present. It is the past time of smjosERiM
and scripsKRO. It states my having written as then con¬
tingent or possible, I might {may-ed) have written ; or as
then future, I should (,vceo//-ED, Saxon) have written.
Let us apply this view to the various forms in combina¬
tion with another verb.
And, first, of those which have respect to present time.
Quae imperat,
imperav it,
imperasiT,
imper tt,
imperavYMvr (perf.)
imperavTRiT (fut.)
se facturos pollice'STtm.
This set of examples are all presents, each of them contain¬
ing in itself an expression of present time with reference
to which all the other ideas involved in it are to be esti¬
mated. “ They promise now, that they will do
what
he now commands;
he now hath commander/;
J he shall command ;
j he may command ;
(he may have commander?;
( he shall have commander?.”
In this combination, imperat states the act of commanding
as now present, at the time when they promise; imperavit
states it as now past, imperabit as now future ; imperet as
now contingent or possible, as an event that may take place;
imperaverit (perf.) states the having commanded as now
contingent or possible ; imperaverit (fut.) states the having
commanded as now future.
It is necessary further to observe, that all these forms
contain only the reference or relation of the command to
the present time, and that all of them, excepting the first,
leave the time of commanding, the time when the com¬
mand is actually given, completely indefinite. Imperavit,
for example, merely states the act of commanding as now
past, but leaves the time of giving the command unascer¬
tained. The command may have been given last moment,
last week, last month, last year, or last century. In the
same manner, imperabit states the act of commanding as
wow future. It expresses barely the relation of the com¬
mand to the present time, but leaves the time of command¬
ing completely indefinite. It may be next moment, next
day, next week, next year, next age. If the time of the
command be necessary to be ascertained, an expression of
future time, or the statement of a future event, with which
it shall be contemporaneous, is required for the purpose ;
as to-morrow morning, next week, at sunset, or at sunrise,
&c.; or it may be obvious from other circumstances in the
context or narrative. In like manner, imperaverit states
the having commanded as an event 7iow possible, or now
future; but of itself it indicates neither the time of giving
the command, nor any time or event to which the com¬
mand shall be prior, or before which it may or shall have
taken place. From the desire, however, which we have to
obtain precise rather than vague information, we naturally
avail ourselves of the circumstances in the context or in
the combination in which it stands, to ascertain what the
form itself leaves undefined. In the example given above
imperaverit may be considered as standing in a twofold con¬
nection, and as having a double reference ; one to the pre¬
sent time, the time of the promise (pollicentur), with re¬
spect to which the act of commanding is stated as contin¬
gent or f uture ; the other to the future time of performing
the promise (facturos), with respect to which the act of
commanding shall be past. The whole statement may be
fully brought into view by a paraphrastical or periphrasti-
cal development, thus : “ They promise that they will ex¬
ecute his commands, when the act of commanding, now
contingent, or now future, shall once be past, or when the
command shall once have been given.”
Secondly, Of those tenses which have reference to past
time.
Quce imper an at, )
 *m»eravER.AT, [ r
. r > se facturos polucev,axtur.
  imperaRTrr, \ J ^
  imperaw&%wr, J
This second set of examples are all past tenses, each of
them containing in itself an expression of past time, with
reference to which all the other ideas contained in it are
to be estimated. “ They promised then, that they would do
f he then commanded;
| he had then commander?;
what J ^ sh°uld command ;
j ) he might command ;
I J he might have commander?;
( I he should have commander?.”
In this combination imperabat exhibits the act of com¬
manding, as then doing, having the same reference topast
time that imperat (commands) has to the present; and
therefore may justly be considered as the past time of im¬
perat. Imperaverat represents the act of commanding as
then past, and is therefore the past time of imperavit,
which represents it as now past. Imperaret represents the
act of commanding either as then future, or as then contin¬
gent or possible. In the former case it may be considered
as the past time of imperabit: imperabit stating the act of
commanding as now future, or future at the present time;
imperaret as then future, future at a past time, which in this
instance is the time of the promise. They are therefore
related to each other as present and past. On the other
hand, if imperaret be considered as representing the act ot
commanding as then contingent or possible, a thing that
might be, it will be the past time of imperet; the latter ex¬
hibiting the conception in reference to the present time,
and the former exhibiting the same conception in relation
to past time. The affinity of signification between the fu¬
ture indicative and the present subjunctive, as formerly ob¬
served, is so great, that their terminations often coincide;
and hence they always unite in one past form, the imper¬
fect of the subjunctive.
What increases the difficulty of this part of the subject
1 These two, like the present subjunctive and the future indicative, approximate so nearly in signification, that it is often a matter
of indifference which of the two be employed.
Si sensero hodie quicquam in his te nuptiis
Fallaciae conari, quo fiant minus;
 te, Dave, in pistrinum dedam usque ad necem.
Ea lege atque omine, ut, si te inde exemerim, ego pro te molam.
Ter. And. I. ii. 25.
In this passage the future and perfect subjunctive may change places without in the least varying the ultimate effect. My percep¬
tion of your attempting deception is stated as now future, but to be past or to have taken place when I commit you to the grinding-
house ; and my releasing you from thence is stated as now contingent or possible, and consequently now future, but to be past "'hen 1
grind in your stead. My perception is conceived to stand here in a double relation : one to the present time, with respect to which it
is future, and the other to the commitment, with respect to which it is to be past. Both events are represented as future with respect
to the present time, but the one as past with respect to the other. The same observation is applicable to exemerim and molam.
'4'
jo inC
tlieE
pne •
priori
This 1
to out
areap
went
jhatg
■ 1(1
juncti
iperfec
no cir
thing
refere
consk
respoi
jiavinj
risset
ajoasi
thea(
to be
wpe\
in the
teivei
prorai
pand
cutiot
and v
raised
actol
kpa
ui
jneatl
SU'
the!
valua
scare
iangu
of evi
princ
pears
for,
subse
to SOI
langn
Ti
quire
«OUJ
perfe
lovin
fornii
toest
1.
futnr
versa
WgOj
the o
of til
W
cedin
tlief,
he ci
m a
tvitli
GRAMMAR.
695
!5) that we have in English no auxiliary verb so generalized,
s, like the terminations of the Latin imperfect subjunctive,
o include the particular meanings expressed by should and
tight, so as to be equally applicable to both. Neither does
lie English idiom always mark the relation of events to
ne another in respect of time, as contemporaneous, or
trior, or posterior, with the same minuteness as the Latin,
rhis last circumstance also increases the difficulty, and adds
,o our embarrassment in our inquiries on this subject, as we
re apt to consider the different and often more vague state-
nent of the English language as an exact counterpart of
hat given by the Latin.
It has already been observed, that the pluperfect sub-
lanctive expresses precisely the same conception as the
icrfect and the future subjunctive, differing from these in
io circumstance but that of time, and expressing the same
hing with reference to past time which they express with
eference to the present. These two ought therefore to be
considered as present forms, and the pluperfect as the cor¬
esponding past form. Imperaverit, for instance, states the
mving commanded as now contingent or future; impera-
nsset as then contingent or future, contingent or future at
jt past time; but of itself it indicates neither the time of
.he actual command, nor any time or event to which it was
o be prior, or before which it was to have taken place.
Imperavisset, however, in the connection in which it stands
n the example given, is naturally, if not necessarily, con¬
ceived to have a double reference ; one to the time of the
promise (pollicehantur), with respect to which the com-
nanding was future or contingent; the other to the exe¬
cution of the command { facturos) which it was to precede,
md with respect to which it was to be past. “ They pro-
nised that they would execute his commands, when the
ict of commanding, then contingent or future, should once
3e past.” This clumsy circumlocution is in some degree
requisite to bring fully into view what is so concisely and
neatly expressed in the Latin.
Such are the views respecting the moods and tenses of
the Latin verb which Dr Hunter has unfolded in his in¬
valuable disquisition on that subject, and which, we need
scarcely add, are expressed in his own clear and concise
language; views which might be illustrated by the usage
of every known language, and which, in fact, are based on
principles of universal application. In a matter which ap¬
pears so clear, a wide range of induction was not called
for, and might have proved tedious; and hence, in the
subsequent part of his disquisition, he has confined himself
to some illustrations drawn from the practice of the Greek
language.
The indicative forms of the Greek verb, rvrfroj, irvrrov,
ru\j/w, Twrw, sroNj/a, iriitfov, rirupa, irtrupav, &c. seem to re¬
quire no particular discussion, except whether the aorist in
a ought to be considered as a different form of the preter-
perfect, as a learned professor seems to suspect. The fol¬
lowing observations shall therefore be restricted to those
forms called the optative and subjunctive, and are intended
to establish and illustrate these two positions:
1. That in all the tenses of the Greek verb (except the
future, which has no subjunctive), the subjunctive is uni¬
versally of the present time or tense, and the correspond¬
ing optative is the corresponding time. And, 2. That
the optative of the future is the'past time of the indicative
of the future, which itself is of the present time.
Wc shall begin with the second position. In the pre¬
ceding observations we have endeavoured to show that all
the forms of the Latin subjunctive are really indicative;
that / may ivrite is as much an assertion as I do write, al¬
though the thing asserted be different. It will surely not
be controverted, then, that I will write, I shall write, or 1
am to write, have an equal title to be called subjunctive
with I may write, or I can write. Asys/ on yga^s/, “ He
says that he will write,” is incontrovertibly classical Greek, Verbs,
the expression having a reference to the present time. Let
Xsys/ be changed into IXs/s the past, yga-v^s/, the indicative,
must be changed into the corresponding optative
EXsyiv oti ypct-^oi, “ He said that he would write.” The
conception in both examples is exactly the same, except as
to time ; the former expressing it wuth reference to the
present time, the latter with reference to the past. Should
any doubt be entertained as to what has now been stated,
the following passage from the second book of Xenophon’s
Hellenica will be found to contain as many examples of the
optative of the future as may perhaps establish the point
by induction. It is part of the defence made by Thera-
menes, one of the Thirty Tyrants, when he was impeached
by Critias, another of them, because he would not concur
in all their measures of cruelty and rapine.
. . . . “ Eire/ ds ojtoi rjgi'avro avdeag xaXovg re xmi dyudovg
evXkocpZdveiv, ex rovrov xdyu rf^dthr^ rclvavria rovroig yr/vuit-
xeiv j^cSEIN ydo on, d~odr/j6xovT(jg pev Aeovrog rou 'SaA.apivlou,
dvdjog xal hrog xai box.oZvrog htca/ou eimi, ddixovvrog d’ ovde ev, oi
opoioi roltruj poS^ffOINTO" (poQo'jpevoi be evavr/oi rfje rfj rrbkireia
gCOINTO- EriENilSKON be bn, tyWafiZoaiopevov N/Z))sarou
rou N/z/ou, xai rrXoueiov, xai oudev ‘ruivore br)porixbv ours aiirov
oure rou irccr^bg wgdi'avrog, oi rourtn bpoiot huepen7g up7v ye-
i^ffOINTO’ dXKd pr\v xai, Avrttp&vrog u<p‘ vpuv drroKkvpewu,
og ev ruj rroXepu) duo rprjgeig euvXeouffag ‘rcc^e'ryero, ’HITISTA-
MHN brt xai oi vgoOupoi rfj rroXei yeyevr\pe\oi, rrdvreg wrorrrwg
up7v g^OIEN' hvrelrrov be xai ore rtiv peroixuv eva exccffrov Xa-
Ce7v epcKfav yjr,var evdrjXov yd» ’HN, bn, r our on drrbkoptvoiv,
xai oi peroixoi anavreg rroXepioi rfj oro'kireia gVOINTO.
In this passage every one of the indicatives is of the
past time, and all the verbs subjoined are optatives of the
future, “ lldeiv yap bn, &c. I had seen, and consequently I
knew, that when Leon of Salamis was put to death, the
persons similar to him (pofyeoivro would be afraid, and
being afraid, emvro would be hostile to this establishment
of ours. 1 judged too (sytyvoiexov be) that when Niceratus,
the son of Nicias, was apprehended, the persons in a similar
situation with him would become (yevrpoi'jro) ill-affected
to you. And likewise, when Antiphon was put to death
by you, who during the war furnished two swift-sailing
triremes, I knew (rvri(>rugri f that those who had been
prompt and eager to serve the state would be suspicious
of you (uroorrojg e^otev). And when they said that each of
us must seize one of the peroixoi, I opposed the measure.
For it was manifest {fubrfKov 7]v) that, if these were put to
death, all the peroixoi would be hostile froXepioi ieoivrb) to
the establishment.”
Let us now imagine that, instead of this narrative recital
of his conduct and sentiments, Theramenes deems it proper
to urge the same considerations to his colleagues in the di¬
rect or dramatic form. Every one of his statements must
now be made by verbs, not of the past, but of the present
time ; and the indicatives of the past being changed into
indicatives of the present, the verbs subjoined must also
be changed from optatives of the future to indicatives of the
future, that is, from the past to the present, so as no longer
to express what was then future, but what is future.
Change ribeiv the past into oiba the present (I have seen,
consequently) “ I knoiv that if Leon of Salamis be put to
death, the persons similar to him poZr^ovrai will be afraid,
and being afraid eeovrai will be hostile,” &c. In like man¬
ner, if eyiyvoisxov, frtwrapr^v, euhp/.ov y\v, be changed into
yiyvonsxo), i~u>rapat, ebbrfhov eenv, the optatives yevyGonro,
ei^oev, effoivro, must also be changed into the corresponding
indicatives, yevr^ovrai e^ovtf/, and edovrai, which state these
events as now future. The forms stating the events as
future at a past time, will necessarily pass into those stat¬
ing them as f uture now or at the present time.
The first of the two positions may be illustrated from the
same part of Xenophon’s narrative, in which he relates in,
696 GRAMMA R.
Verbs, detail the proceedings of the Thirty, and the measures
which they adopted to gratify their hatred and establish
their power.
“ Toi/ruv ds yevo/^'svuv, ug e^bv rjdri ironrj abroTg b, n /SoiAOINTO,
rroWoug fisv e^dgug evena ’AI1EKTEINON, TroXXoig ds y^prifLa-
ruv EAOSE o’ avroTg, offug e^/OIEN %«/' roTg (peovgoTg -yof,(La¬
ra didevai, zai ruv (jjcro'r/.on ha sxaffrov /.aZsTv, xai aiiroug ;lsv
anoKriTvai, ra os yjyr^yara abrojv a-TroSrjir^afjtiat sxsXsvov 6s y.ai
rbv Origa/Lsv/jv XaQsTv h riva (SojXOITO' 6 5’ amxgtvaro' AXX’
cv Soy.sT (Mi, s<pr,, yaXbv zfoai, (pdffxovrag (SzXrigroug shat ddixu-
rzga ruv g-jxotpdvruv <irotuv' systvoi (lsv ydo, crag’ uv y^/Lara
Xa/L^dvOIEN, El’flN^ TjfisTg Os ’AIIOKTENOTMEN
firidh dbr/jyjvrag, ha yoiyLara /.a/LQdvtlM EN” ....
Here the whole texture of the narrative shows that the
author is relating past events, the verbs being all of the past
time, dmxrum, sdo^e, hsXsuov, &c. The ends proposed to
be accomplished should therefore, agreeably to the first
position, be subjoined in the optative. “ There being no¬
thing to prevent their doing whatever they might choose
(PovXonro), they put many to death out of hatred, and many
on account of their money. And, that they might have
(eyoizv) money to give to the guards, they thought it pro¬
per that each of them should seize one of the gsroi-
jco/,1 and put them to death; and they ordered (sxsXsvm)
Theramenes likewise to seize whichever of them he might
choose (fBooXoiro),” &c.
If the narrative be given in the present tense, the
leading verbs will then be dmxrsniovai, doxsi, xsXsvovdi, and
all the optatives subjoined in dependence on them must be
changed into the corresponding subjunctives; thus: “ There
being notv nothing to prevent their doing whatever they may
choose (b, n dv (SovXwvrai), they put to death (aKoxrzmovi) many
out of hatred, and many for the sake of their money. And,
that they may have (syam) money likewise to give to the
guards, they think it proper (boxsi avroig) that each of them
shall seize one of the gsroixoi and put him to death. And
they order (xzXsvovai) Theramenes likewise to seize which¬
ever of them he may choose (bv, rim dv f3ouXr,rai').
In giving the reply of Theramenes to this requisition of
his colleagues, the author makes a transition from the indi¬
rect or narrative form, to the direct or dramatic. He per¬
sonates the speaker (Theramenes), and gives the ipsa
verba supposed #to have t>een spoken by him on the occa¬
sion. “ It does not appear to me,” said he, “ to be honour¬
able for those who profess themselves the best men of the
state, to act more unjustly than the sycophants. For they
(the sycophants) generally sufferED those to live (siuv Zy\v)
from whom they might receive money (yra» dv yjyyiaru.
XagZavoizv) ; but we are going to put to death (ji[Lsig ds dxox.-
rsvo-ogsv) persons guilty of no injustice, that we may receive
their money (jva yorigara /.a/ACavw/xs';).”
This reply of Theramenes deserves to be particularly at¬
tended to, on account of the transition from the past to the
present which it contains, and the corresponding transition
from the optative to the subjunctive. Had the author in¬
tended to exemplify the first of the above positions, he
could not have expressed himself in terms more appropri¬
ate, or more completely adapted to the purpose.
From what has been stated, it is easy to perceive why
those statements, which, in the direct or dramatic form,
are given in the subjunctive or in the future indicative, are
in the indirect form, or narrative recital of them, expressed
by the optative, precisely in the same manner as in our own
language we employ, in direct statements, the present forms
may and shall, and in the narrative recital of those state¬
ments the past forms might and should. Thus, the direct
or dramatic statements, “ I may perhaps go to London next
week,” and “ I shall perhaps go to London next week ”
become in the narrative recital of them, I said that I mig ’ Veri*
perhaps go to London next week,” and “ I said th ft
should perhaps go to London next week.” So, when Ae 1
memnon had retired wounded from the field of battle, He
tor, in addressing the Trojans and Lycians, employs the
subjunctive, a present form : J
 iXavvin fAuiivg^at hrrov;
Itydifiav Aavauv, 'IN* ivx«S ajH20E.
“ Drive (now) your horses straight against the valiant
Greeks, that you may bear away still greater glory.” But
when the statement is given in the narrative form, as a past
event, the subjunctive d^rai is changed into the optative
dcoiro, the corresponding form of the past time :
EvP aZ TAs/Sjj HaXXaf Kinvri
AOKE Ka.) Metros, TN" ex'SuXc; pira vrart,
K^yuomt yhOITO, fit xXzo; z<r0\ov a^OITO.
“ Then Minerva gave strength and courage to Diomede,
that he might (may-ed) become eminently conspicuous
and might bear away distinguished glory.”
It is to be noticed, however, that Homer does not always
observe this, the usual and strictly grammatical, sequence
of these moods. In the speech of Minerva to Diomede, we
find a past tense followed by the subjunctive, “ I removed
the mist from your eyes that you may distinguish (bpga yi-
w«x.r\g) a deity from a man in the field of battle.” But, in
the indirect form, or narrative recital, of this speech of
Minerva, given by Plato,2 it is opga yivugxoi. His words
are, “ Homer says that Minerva removed the mist from
the eyes of Diomede, that he might distinguish.” But even
in Homer the expression might have been, b<pga ymsmg.
’ApsXov b<pgu yivusxoig, I removed that you might distin¬
guish. Wherein, it will be said, consists the difference?
There is none in the ultimate effect. Tivusxoig would be used
in reference to the time of removal, expressed by dtpsXov, a
verb of the past time, to which it would correctly correspond.
Homer has chosen, how ever, to change the reference, and
to substitute the subjunctive, a form of the present time,
thereby marking a reference to the time of Minerva’s
speaking, not to that of the removal. I (just now) remov¬
ed that you may (now, or hereafter) distinguish. ’AyXm
states the removing as past, and may be used with equal
propriety, whether the removal took place a moment or a
century before. This appears to be a more correct view of
the passage than that given by Dawes, who, to preserve a
correspondence in the times, is obliged to make dpsXov a
preterperfect. Such changes of reference are, we believe,
to be found in every language, and they are strikingly fre¬
quent in the Greek. A person speaking of himself might
say in English, “ I laboured hard in my youth, that I may
enjoy ease and repose in the evening of life.” These chan¬
ges of reference too are often alternate, as, in historical
narrative, a transition is often made from the past to the
present time, and from the present to the past.
In the course of this discussion, it has been stated that
all the tenses of the subjunctive mood are indicative or as¬
sertive. If that observation be admitted to be just, it will
supersede the controversy, whether the futures in -ro be¬
long to the indicative or the subjunctive mood. It has also
been suggested, that what have been considered as the
modes or moods of the Latin verb are incorrectly so con¬
ceived ; that these flexions are either generic verbs them¬
selves, or equivalent to generic verbs, indicating liberty,
poiver, &c.; and that, instead of modifying the radical part
1 It is foreign to the object of these observations to enter on any discussion of the meaning of the word [/.iruxoi. It seems to mean
domiciliated strangers.
-* In Alcibiad. II. prope finem. These passages are quoted both by Dawes and by Matthiae.
GRAMMAR.
697
, of4
} difiei
fifths
mflV ^
one0
the0,1
andtf
vast <
other
ct ten
are to
trith
Th
give
as we
aeon
their
as °s
decid
ampl‘
ed ed
me!
that,
these
ithat
nitive
jof es
that l
to be
stand
conte
trane
any f
Thus
progi
when
mt,
ed b
binet
fesc?
the i;
the v
in et
equa'
the
mik
abovs
minei
comb
)f the verbs to which they are annexed, they are really mo-
1 '^'lified by it. It has been shown, that all the tenses, both
>f the indicative and of the subjunctive mood, whatever they
nay further involve, are every one of them either of the
wesent or of the past time ; that they express of themselves
me or other of these times, and may be classed in hvo sets,
he one containing those forms which are of the present time,
nd the other those of the past time ; that the present and
mst are two fixed points, with reference to which all the
ither ideas contained in those complex forms, called moods
ir tenses, are to be estimated ; and that these other ideas
ire to be estimated as past, present, future, contingent, &c.
vith reference to these two fixed points.
This is the elementary view which it was proposed to
give of the tenses of the Latin verb. It contains, as far
ts we are competent to judge, the only ground on which
i complete and satisfactory account of these tenses, in all
heir various occurrences and applications, can be raised
is a superstructure; and, if admitted, it will enable us to
lecide several grammatical controversies ; as that, for ex¬
ample, between the acute and bold Sanctius and his learn¬
ed editor Perizonius, concerning the tenses of the infini-
:ive and the participles, in which the former maintained,
chat, strictly speaking, time or tense does not belong to
chese, and that they are found of all times. It is obvious
chat the infinitive and participles do not, like the defi¬
nitive forms, contain in themselves the two fixed points
of estimation above mentioned ; but, on the contrary,
chat their statements, when they are estimated at all, are
to be estimated either from the verb with which they
stand connected, or from some circumstance given in the
context. They are always estimated from something ex¬
traneous, and not, like those of the definitive forms, from
any fixed point of time which they themselves express.
Thus scribere represents the act of writing as doing or in
progress, but contains in itself no expression of the time
when doing. The time may be any whatsoever,past, pre¬
sent, or future. It is generally, but not always, determin¬
ed by that of the verb with which the infinitive is com¬
bined. Thus, in dico te scribere, dixi te scribere, dicam
te scribere, the time of the writing is determined, not by
the infinitive itself, but by that of dico, dixi, and dicam,
the verbs with which it is here combined, and is different
in each of these examples. The same observation is
equally applicable to the participles, as is manifest from
the following examples: video te scribentem, vidi te
scribentem, eras videbo te scribentem. It has been said
above, that the time of the infinitive is not always deter¬
mined by that of the verb with which the infinitive stands
combined. Dico te scribere may equally signify, 1 say
that you were then writing, as that you are now writ-
wj; ing ; and dico te scripsisse may equally signify, I say that
pui you had then written, as I say that you have now writ-
i, il ten, if any circumstance in the context require it to be so
unde understood.
In further illustration of the subject, it has been stated,
that through the whole of the Greek verb except the
future, the subjunctive and corresponding optative differ
only as present and past; consequently, if the subjunctive
be rendered by may, or may have, the optative will be ren¬
dered by might, or might have ; and when the subjunctive
is rendered by shall, or shall have, as frequently happens,
the optative will be rendered by should, or should have. It
also appears that the future of the Greek verb may be con¬
sidered as itself subjunctive, and of the present time, and
the optative of the future as the corresponding past time.
These views the very learned and ingenious author has
sought to establish by facts; and if the inductive conclu¬
sion appear to be founded on too limited a number of ex¬
amples, the number of these may be increased by any
person ad libitum. He proceeds :
The celebrated Matthiae has attempted to explain the
common use of the subjunctive mood, when combined
with certain particles of time, by the hypothesis, that it
then expresses an action frequently repeated at the present
time. But meeting in Homer with these words, address¬
ed by Andromache to Hector,
Verbs.
  «y ya^ It aWn
'Eirru.i icru av ervyi worf/.civ ivntrrriQi,
he is obliged to admit, that the subjunctive with these
particles does not always express an action frequently re¬
peated ; and for this good reason, that a person can die
but once. Yet that learned author does not seem to per¬
ceive that this single instance in Homer is fatal to his
hypothesis.
Mr Seyer of the university of Oxford, in his work on
the syntax of the Latin verb, has assumed, that, in cer¬
tain cases, the subjunctive is strictly synonymous with the
indicative, and has proposed to distinguish it in such
cases by the appropriate name of the False Suljunctive.
Nothing could have been devised more unphilosophical
than this proposal, which, had it been successful, and ge¬
nerally adopted, would have effectually dashed all spirit
of inquiry, and prevented all further investigation of the
subject. Can it for a moment be supposed that an en¬
lightened people, provided with two forms of the verb for
the expression of two different and distinct conceptions,
should reject the form appropriate to one of them, and
employ in preference the other form, wLich did not cor¬
rectly and adequately express the conception? If the
learned author had seen the following example, of autho¬
rity that will not be questioned, “ I regret that it should
have been found necessary to add to the burdens of the
people,”1 he might perhaps have been induced to pause a
little, and to ask himself whether delicacy of feeling, aris¬
ing from some peculiarity in the circumstances of the
speaker, or in those of the party addressed, or in the oc¬
casion, may not have led him to employ the subjunctive
form, should have been found, in preference to the indica¬
tive forms, has been found, and was found."1
'1
M
Lang'
^Jii;
passai
ed.
This
some
verbs
Lm
eiai/i
•
Gree
appe;
as 11
Vo
1 The Prince Regent’s speech in proroguing the Parliament in July 1819.
1 We subjoin here Dr Hunter’s conclusive reply to the objections stated by Professor Dunbar in his work on the Greek and Latin
Languages. It is reprinted from the postscript to Dr H’s. Disquisition on the Latin and Greek Verbs.
“ Mr Dunbar, the learned professor of Greek in the university of Edinburgh, in a work entitled An Inquiry into the Structure and
Affinity of the Greek and Latin Languages (p. 250), has made some animadversions on one part of the foregoing essay. I subjoin the
passage in his own words:—‘ I must here state that Dr Hunter’s ideas respecting the subjunctive mood appear to me not well found-
ed. He has derived his notions of it from the English auxiliary verbs may, can, &c. which he says are all indicative or assertive.
This is no doubt true of these verbs when taken by themselves; but when joined with others, they evidently convey the notion of
some condition or contingency, arising either from ability, inclination, duty, or obligation, in the same manner as those parts of Latin
verbs that are subjoined to the tenses of the indicative, and give them a conditional meaning. It is surely not the same thing to say,
I am writing, and I may or can write. The one implies the present act unconditionally; the other, a future act, and conditional. I
may write if I please. I can write to him, (/you wish it,’ &c.
“ I must observe, that there is nothing in language more subtle than the use of our auxiliary verbs, and of the verbal forms of the
Greek and Latin which contain or involve them. They require more depth of thought, and more patient investigation, than yet
appears to have been bestowed upon them. I cannot, therefore, at present enter on the subject further than to observe, that, as far
as I am competent to judge, the strictures of my learned critic are founded in misapprehension, and completely erroneous. Thesen-
VOL. X. 4 T
698
GRAMMAR*
Verbs. 4.
On the Analogy observed in the Formation of some
Tenses of the Greek Verb.
Of all the philological speculations of Dr Hunter, one
of the most beautiful, perhaps, is that concerning the ana¬
logy observed in the formation of some of the tenses of the
Greek verb, of which, under the modest title of “ Con¬
jectures,” he published an outline in the ninth volume of
the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
The importance of this speculation, which, notwithstand¬
ing the heading given to it, is very far indeed from being
merely “ conjectural,” consists in the advance it makes
towards establishing juster rules for the formation of the
tenses in some instances, and particularly in accounting
for certain forms of the verb in Homer and Hesiod, which,
being apparent violations of the usual analogy, have per¬
plexed grammarians, and reduced them to the necessity
of imagining new presents, without authority, and for no
other reason but to account for such anomalous forms.
The following is the clear and concise statement of his
views on this matter, given by Dr Hunter himself.
“ 1. The perfect middle has not a middle signification.
(See Kuster De Voce Media, sect, i.) Its form, too, is
active ; and therefore it probably belongs to the active
voice, which, on this supposition, becomes more regular
and uniform, having a double preterite, as well as a double
future and aorist. Thus,
_ f srv^a rsrvipa 1. Pret.
rvTTM iruffwv rirvira 2. Pret.
“ It is no objection to this account, that the second pre¬
terite may sometimes be found in a middle signification ;
for active verbs in all languages are sometimes used as
middle, the reciprocal pronoun being conceived, though not
expressed. Thus /xsra/SaXXw in Greek, accingo in Latin,
prepare in English : ‘ omnes accingunt operi,’ they all pre¬
pare (themselves) for the work.
“ 2. O in the second preterite, or preterite middle, uni¬
formly arises from g in the present, and from nothing else.
Xsyw, '/S/Mya—(SsS/.o^a.
}.si~oj, XsXoitfu—‘TTzvoiOa.
That pfaigu, gjzigu, ayngu, and other such verbs having a
liquid before w, make spdota, ryoca, and not /xs/xo/ga.
riyoiga, is no exception from the rule. For all v
such verbs probably had of old not ei, but z only, in the v!
penult. Thus tpOzigcu seems to have been of old pfatfa
whence the old or iEolic future pdzgirui. So /xs/gw was /uipt^
whence /xsgo?, pars ; and the old or vEolic form ayzbhw is st}]j
to be found. In like manner, (3sf3oAa seems, as Dr Moor
has observed, to be formed, not from (3aXXu, but from the
old verb Sz/.).oj, whence fSz/.og, jaculum.
“ 3. Although the first preterite, or perfect active, gene¬
rally follows the analogy of the first future, yet it some¬
times, too, observes that of the second. Thus,
makes $ not lffr£Xxa> from 1- Put.
( but scsraXxa, from eraXu, 2. Put.
In the same manner, tzivm, xrzivu, xzigu, emigu, Sec.
“ 4. On the other hand, although the second preterite, or
perfect middle, generally follows the analogy of the second
future, yet it sometimes, too, observes that of the first.
Thus,
makes [ ?•
( but zdroXa, from <srz\u, 1. Fut.
In the same manner, rzivw, xrzivu, xzipm, g-ttziqu, &c.
Nay, from s in the penult, there often arises o in the first
preterite, or perfect active. Thus, vz^ofitpa, Kz'ooya, xix-
Xopa, dzdoixa. from ‘Ts/x-tsj, "kzyn, xXzrrru, bziboj, &c. And
this seems of old to have been still more frequent, and to
have extended also to the passive voice. Thus, /xz/io^ai,
‘TTz-rryflui, in the old or xEolic dialect, from (i. e. /asipu)
and rtzgOo).
“ 5. In the same manner, although the first aorist ge¬
nerally follows the analogy of the first future, yet it also
seems, particularly in the more early periods of the lan¬
guage, to have sometimes followred that of the second fu¬
ture. Thus, yzu, zyza ; so zina, fivzyxa, or rjvzixa, aXtua-
/Jjzvog, zxria, &c.
“ Since, then, there are in the Greek verb tw o futures, and
two preterites, each of which preterites follows the analogy
of either future, and since there are two aorists, and that
the first aorist also follows the analogy of either future;
would it not, from these facts, be rather probable than
otherwise, that the second aorist should also follow the
analogy of either future ; that, as from rvwui there is formed
stvttov, so from there should be formed zru-^ov ? And,
tence, I may •write, states my present liberty to write. It states that there is at present no external hindrance to prevent my writing.
The words contain a proposition true and complete in itself, without further addition ; and my learned critic is obliged to annex to
it the conditional clause, if I please, to make it suit his purpose; not aware, it should seem, that it is the actual writing that is depen¬
dent on my pleasure, not the present liberty to write. In like manner, / can write, states my present power or ability to write; and
this capacity exists independently of your wishes. My actual writing may depend on your wish, but not my ability to write. / can
write wrhether you wish it or not. The freedom from external preventive and the inherent power or capacity frequently exist toge¬
ther ; but either may exist without the other. ’gm yeatpitv, tkxx' lv 'hway.ai hn mv There is from without no hind¬
rance to my writing, but I am unable to do it because of the gout in my hand. ’Egso-r/, se"d non iviim; I have the t%ovirix, but not
the SvvafAi;.
“ My learned critic, under a misapprehension for which it is difficult to account, has found fault with my calling the future in -ro
the future of the subjunctive, imagining, from my employing that designation of it, that I intended to exclude that future from the
indicative mood. I must observe, however, that although, to prevent being misunderstood, I was obliged to call the future in -ru
by the name by which it was generally known, and by which it is distinguished in our elementary books ; yet the general tenor of
my essay, and even the following paragraph of it alone, ought to have prevented all possibility of misapprehension on the subject:
‘ In the course of this discussion it has been stated that all the tenses of the subjunctive mood are indicative or assertive. If that ob¬
servation be admitted to be just, it will supersede the controversy, whether the futures in -ro belong to the indicative or to the wi-
junctive mood.' P. 14.
“ I have stated (p. 4) that ‘ one primary object of these forms called the moods and tenses seems to have been to give the present
and the past as two fixed points of time, with reference to which all the other ideas involved in them are to be estimated and deter¬
mined. They are a.\\past, present, future, contingent, &c. with reference to one or other of these two fixed points.’ And I have there
given a scheme of the tenses of the Latin verb arranged, agreeably to that principle, as present and past. This unfortunate future
in -ro, however. Professor Dunbar has, in exhibiting that scheme, studiously transferred from the class of presents to that of pasts, and
has thereby marred instead of mending the consistency of the scheme of arrangement. For it is quite evident that, as scrib-am states
my wrii-ing as now future, and therefore, as he admits, is properly arranged as a present; so, for the same reason, scrips-ero, which
states my having written, or the completion of my writing, as now future, must also be arranged in the class oipresents ; the completion of
my writing being future relatively not to the past, but to the present time.”
We have only to add, that when Professor Dunbar savs, “ It is surely not the same thing to say, I am writing, and 1 may or can
write," he not only misunderstands Dr Hunter, but confounds two things not very difficult to distinguish; namely, assertion generally,
and the thing asserted or indicated in particular vei’bal forms. Dr Hunter never said or imagined that, “ I am writing,” and “ I may
or can write,” are identical propositions. What he really stated, and has always maintained, is, that “ I may write,” “ I might
write,” are equally assertions as “ I do write,” “ I did write.” The thing asserted or indicated is different ; but, in as far as aj.
tertian is concerned, these expressions are completely similar, and stand upon precisely the same footing.
•K3S *.
ifhic
(see
wore
ifflag
ginar
as^
redui
4
irell
is th
taker
poun
Soi;
both
'fy (
acqui
fum
catioi
by w
is th
edy/1
mary
birth
;iil
WM
and (
Tt
terioi
Tran
son's
Subs
propi
brate
ed b
whic
abovi
tratii
cal r
plac
ubi,
It
serva
the
well
poerr
ly es
ofth
hire,
that
same
prov(
nans
and!
It '
these
they
coun
these
solet
GRAMMAR.
699
if this were admitted, would it not account for such words
,'^as xarafiritfio, sdvffsro, ogcso, digs, oigsru, dt's-ru, &c.
which have so much perplexed the celebrated Dr Clarke
(see Notes on Iliad, B. 35. E. 109 ; I. 613), in a manner
more satisfactory than is done by the arbitrary method of
imagining new presents in -gu, from which these forms
may be deduced ? For it is only to account for such ano¬
malous forms that these new presents have been imagined ;
and the grammarians would no doubt have assumed ima¬
ginary new presents also, to account for such first aorists
as expa, if, by so doing, these aorists could have been
reduced to the usual analogy.
“ Now this supposition, namely, that the second aorist, as
well as the first, follows the analogy of either future, which
is thus rendered in some degree probable, has actually
taken place, at least in some instances. Thus the com¬
pounds of rsfim,
( from the first future dvors/xco has in
vots/jjvu ' the second aorist part, dmrsftuv, as well
(as from the second fut. drroraf/yu, dgrora/jyuv.
So i%ov, they came, II. 23, v. 38 ; xarsfirigsro, II. 24, v. 191,
both of which follow the analogy of the first futures, viz.
,i^u (from /jcw, venid) and xarafirigofJMi. And every person
acquainted with the elements of Greek is aware, that, as
iMvu is the primary form, whence, by the common redupli¬
cation, arises, first, m^sm, and then, dropping the short s,
by what the grammarians call syncope, and as
is the primary form, whence, in like manner, is deriv¬
ed yvym (Latin gignd) and yiyvofiat; so warw is the pri¬
mary form, which, by like reduplication and syncope, gave
birth to grigrru, cado, from which primary form rtsrw, mak¬
ing in the first future Ktgcd, there is formed the second aorist
sirsgov, in common use ; which, in so far, both illustrates
and confirms the foregoing hypothesis.”
These observations were written about thirty years an¬
terior to the date of their publication in the Edinburgh
Transactions (1823), and, of course, before either Villoi-
son*s or Heyne’s editions of the Iliad were published.
Subsequently to their appearance, Dr Hunter judged it
proper to subjoin some facts contained in these two cele¬
brated editions, together with a few observations suggest¬
ed by these facts, and tending to confirm the opinion
which he had been led to form of the anomalous flexions
above mentioned of the Greek verb. The additional illus¬
trations, derived from these sources, together with the criti¬
cal remarks by which they are accompanied, we shall now
place before our readers. (See Edinburgh Transactions,
ubi supraf)
“ From the ancient scholia, quoted by Heyne in his ob¬
servations on the various readings of the Iliad, and from
the large volume of scholia published by Villoison (as
well as from those contained in Barnes’s edition of the
poems of Homer, published in 1711), it seems to be clear¬
ly established, that, in the days of the Ptolemys, this form
of the second aorist, following the analogy of the first fu¬
ture, was more frequent in the writings of Homer than
that of the first aorist, formed upon the analogy of the
same future ; and that it was the reading received and ap¬
proved by the most eminent of the Alexandrian gramma¬
rians, by Zenodotus, the keeper of the Alexandrian library,
and by Aristarchus himself.
“ Whilst, however, the Greek scholiasts have recorded
these as the ancient and genuine forms used by Homer,
they have, I suspect, greatly erred in their manner of ac¬
counting for them. After the lapse of so many centuries,
these Homeric forms had, in a great measure, become ob¬
solete,1 * and the other form, that of the first aorist, had
come into general use ; and those grammarians could de- Verbs,
vise no other method of accounting for these old and now V“T''"
obsolete forms, but by imagining new presents in -<ra, of
which they supposed these forms to be the regular im¬
perfects. This manner of solving the difficulty has been
implicitly followed by Eustathius, in his Greek Commen¬
tary on the Poems of Homer, and (lam sorry to be obli¬
ged to add) by my late invaluable friend Lord Monboddo ;
of whom, and of the dies Attici, now long gone by, in
which I enjoyed his learned and elegant society, I never
can think but with an indescribable feeling of satisfaction
and regret.
“ If, however, we acquiesce in this solution of the diffi¬
culty, we must be content to abate somewhat of our admi¬
ration of the Greek language, which has been heretofore
held to express, with the utmost clearness and precision,
all the various and diversified conceptions of the human
mind, even to their minutest shades of difference. Indeed,
that the Greeks, or any enlightened people, should employ
those forms of their verbs as presents, which were familiar
to every ear as appropriate expressions of fhe future, or, as
Eustathius often expresses it, should draw back xhe future
to express the present, is, when duly considered, a suppo¬
sition in itself so unreasonable, not to say absurd, that it
would require better and more conclusive evidence to sup¬
port it, than has yet been produced. Besides, where was
the necessity of such an innovation ? what advantage was
to be gained by it ? The original presents remained in
common use. Why then employ the fidures, bvgoyat and
i^oyai, for example, as presents, when cLw and h-Myai, and
hew and 'ixoilcu, present forms in common use, would an¬
swer the same purpose ?
“ There is still another consideration, to which, in a
question like this, due weight ought to be given. There
is no evidence whatever that those present-futures, or fu¬
ture-presents, in -gtn and -gayai, ever existed. They are
not to be found in the poems of Homer or Hesiod. They
are not to be found in the Greek authors posterior to Ho¬
mer and Hesiod ; and of Greek authors prior to the age of
Homer and Hesiod we know absolutely nothing.
“ From these considerations, it seems to be evident that
the existence of these future-presents is merely a gratuitous
assumption of grammarians, to account for the Homeric
forms firigsro, dugsro, &c. which they could in no other way
reduce to any known analogy of formation.
“ This, however, the learned Dr Clarke had too much
acuteness and good sense to admit; and, accordingly, we
find him regarding these presents as altogether fictitious.
His words on the passage 'fig dga (pmrjgag, awsfinguro, are
these : ‘ Editi plurimi habent dKs(3r,gsro, a verbo ficto dm-
firigo/uai.’ And, to obviate the difficulty, he changes dxs-
(3r,gsro here into dwsjSrigaro ; and, when firjgsro, or any of its
compounds, occurs, his general practice is to substitute the
form of the first aorist, j3r)gccro. But, even if it would re¬
move the difficulty, this change is unauthorized. The other
form in -sro is attested as genuine by the Alexandrian
grammarians, is supported by the Greek scholiasts, by the
ancient manuscripts of the highest authority, and by the
early editions. In Villoison’s edition of the Iliad, which
bears to be an exact transcript of a manuscript of the tenth
century, in the library of St Mark at Venice, the form is
uniformly -sro, except in a single instance, and in that one
instance I suspect -aro to be an error of the press.
“ Dr Clarke, however, soon finds that this change of -sro
into -aro, violent and unauthorized as it is, will not re¬
move the difficulty. In the address of Diomede to Sthe-
nelus, he meets with the imperative, xarufSrigso,
1 “ One instance, however, of this ancient Homeric second aorist occurs in Theocritus, and another in Callimachus; and perhaps by
an attentive observer more might be found.”
700 GRAMMAR.
Verbs. ’Ogra, srnr'ac Ka^avtii'a^n, xara/htitno Iliad, v. 109.
which he attempts to account for in this manner : £ Vide-
tur mihi imperativus ex futuro deductus, licet id non agnos-
cant grammatici; errareque eos, qui verbum hie in prae-
senti fingunt za,raf3ri<fo/iai. Quanquam, analogia hand dis-
simili persaepe usurpare visus est Homerus verbum ovgo/mi,
dvdeo, sdvdsro/ &c. Nothing can show more strongly the
difficulty which Dr Clarke must have felt in accounting for
these forms, than that he is here obliged to have recourse
to another gratuitous assumption of an imperative of the
future, a thing unheard of before ; and almost to admit
dvdo/xai as a present, from which to deduce sduasro as an im¬
perfect. The fact is, that he found the authorities in fa¬
vour of cSutrsro and Iduezro to be so numerous, and of such
weight, that he did not venture, in these examples, to
change -sro into -aro.
“ Afterwards, however, he found himself obliged to aban¬
don *this hypothesis of an imperative of the future, as well
as his original position, that these new presents in -su
and -eoficu are imaginary; and he appears at last (he or
his son, it is uncertain which) to adopt, in its full extent,
the explanation given by Eustathius. That commentator,
whose remarks would have been invaluable had his taste
and judgment been equal to his means of information, if I
rightly understand him, has this observation on v. 154 of
the 20th book of the Odyssey: £ ’Otszrz is sanctioned by
a poetic rule of formation (‘ro/jjwws xatw/^sT-a/) as the im¬
perfect of the verb o/<rco, the future having retrograded into
present. For, of 6/<r«, the imperfect is hm, the third per¬
son bide, the imperative the same in sound, also bide, of
which the plural is hidzre! Dr Clarke or his son adds in
continuation : £ Atque analogia quidem baud dissimili saepe
usurpare videtur poeta verba budG>j>ui, [Bridegat, [Br,dero, &c.
Vide autem ad II. e. 109’ (where, however, he reprobates
the hypothesis of these new presents in -dogai). £ Oc-
currit eadem vox (viz. bidere) II. y. 103, 6. 718, et apud
Theocritum, Idyll, xxiv. 48. Porro fuerunt, teste Barne-
sio, qui bidare ubique legendum statuerunt, sed nullo pro-
fectu. Nam, uti ipse annotat, occurrit apud Homerum
hide in imperative, numero singular!, ubi isti emendation!
locus nullus est, &c. et apud Callimachum, fsgs draypv, bide
Oeydgov. Hymn, in Cer. v. 137.’
“ All the attempts, however, to account for these forms
in particular verbs are partial and unsatisfactory. As the
facts to be accounted for are all similar, the true solution
must be general, and such as will embrace them all. Whe¬
ther the method which I have ventured to suggest be of
this description, does not belong to me to determine. It
possesses at least this indispensable requisite, that it ac¬
counts for all the phenomena in question.
“It would be tiresome to enter upon a particular examina¬
tion of every individual verb of the kind which we are con¬
sidering. It may not be improper, however, to select one
example for the purpose of illustration.
“ There are not many verbs of more frequent occurrence
in Homer than /xw, venio, in one or other of its parts. It
is found in the present:
Ev^sv (e Cypro) vw 'bivori tA’ 'iko, ■mganx. <rci(T%ajv. Odyss. p. 444.
and the future, i^ogai, occurs once in Hesiod, and ten or
twelve times in Homer ; and, in not one of these instances,
can it by any sophistry be tortured into a present, or forced
into an expression of present time, in the sense in which
present time is generally understood. I shall note the
places of occurrence, that any person may, if he chuses,
examine them, and judge for himself. They are these:
Hesiod. Op. et Dies, u. 477. II. a. 240; 363, 502;
X. 182; o. 505; 47; w. 728. Od. d. 515; D. 198;
x. 276.
“ 'l^ogai, the future of hou, then, must be decidedly ex¬
cluded from the catalogue of new presents, devised by the
Greek scholiasts to account for the supposed imperfects v
so frequent in Homer. And yet a new present, i%u} is
equally necessary in this, as in any other verb of the kind
to account for ii'ov, they came, the past tense, formed upon
the analogy of the first future ; which, though not noticed
either by Dr Clarke or by Heyne, is no less frequent in
Homer than the future itself. Thus,
’AW' on S»7 T^i>jv’I30N, vroru.y.u n ptovn. II. t. 773.
At quandojam Trojam V'EirE.u.v81, fluviosque. lalentes.
See also 11. %. 470 ; 433 ; tp. 1 ; u. 692. Od. y. 5, 3l;
495 ; <5. 1; s. 194. Hymn, in Apoll. 411, 438, 230, 278.'
“ Nor is there a single unequivocal example of the first
aorist of this verb to be found in the poems either of Ho¬
mer or of Hesiod, except one, viz. ih,aq, which occurs in
the Hymn to Apollo, v. 223. In that same hymn, how¬
ever, there are no fewer than four examples of the form in
-on (ifa), and another still in the Hymn to Mercurv
y. 398.
“ This instance of tfv, so frequent in Homer, may there¬
fore be fairly admitted to be, in the language of the cele¬
brated Bacon, an instantia crucis, clearly pointing out the
true method of accounting for all the other Homeric forms
of the same description. If so, there will no longer be any
necessity for the gratuitous assumption of new presents in
-dM and -dogai, to account for these forms ; nor for suppos¬
ing, with Dr Clarke, that %ara(3rideo is an imperative of the
future; nor for changing, as he has generally done, the
second aorists fir\dero, y.ara^ridero, &c. into regular first
aorists in -aro. We ought rather to restore the Home¬
ric second aorists in -ero, recognised as the genuine read¬
ings by the grammarians of Alexandria, and the Greek
scholiasts, and confirmed by the ancient manuscripts of
highest authority, and the early editions.
“ If the view which I have ventured to give of these
Homeric forms in -ero be well founded, it will hardly be
necessary to notice the canon of criticism attempted to be
established by the learned Heyne, in his voluminous edi¬
tion of the Iliad, as to -ero and -aro, and the reasons for
preferring the one to the other in particular passages. Of
the futility of that attempt every classical scholar who will
read with sufficient attention the last seventeen verses of
the third book of the Odyssey, will be fully convinced.
The learned German has adopted, without scruple or hesi¬
tation, the explanation of these Homeric forms given by
the Greek scholiasts ; and, in allusion, I presume, to the
difficulty felt by Dr Clarke, in admitting the existence of
new presents in -du and -dogat, he states his opinion, and
the grounds of it, with decisive confidence, in the follow¬
ing words : “Esse autem talem formam praesentis [Bridogai
dubitari nequit; nam est v. c. 0. 105. KXk dy, egm byem
evifiridEQ,’ p. 506, v. 4. And on B. v. 35, he makes the
following remark, not quite consistent with itself: £ Quid
hoc loco intersit, non video ; nisi quod drrefBrfiero antiquio-
ris vocis speciem habet: nova forma subnata, ut hudogat,
idudogry, et alia.’ How the nova forma should have anti-
quioris vocis speciem, I do not clearly comprehend. But a
gleam of truth will sometimes burst through the darkness
of inveterate prejudice.”
These views, which to most persons will probably ap¬
pear to carry their own evidence along with them, have,
however, had the misfortune to incur the disapprobation
and censure of Professor Dunbar, who, in his very meri¬
torious work on the Greek and Latin languages (p. 188,
et seqq. Edinburgh, 1827, in 8vo), has treated “ one of
the most acute scholars and grammarians of the present
day” (these are his own words) with far less consideration
than might have been expected from such an admission,
and who contradicts speculations which it is impossible to
refute, in a peremptory tone, neither called for by the
subject itself nor much in keeping with the courtesy
GRAMMAR.
701
beH
are
press
respe
attair
of his
1
ofth
serve
poum
lie, ci
iforn
occur
very
or at
when
the
the
.uu «
|^«i
whicl
transl
treat!
in tin
Bi
N
prose
from
positi
it. ’
fies t
more
be g<
m'
empi
only
2.
Dun!
cond
given
the 1<
‘ass
nious
ingg
is di;
whor
Mrt
autln
Synt
fflarii
bJ hat usually obtains amongst men of letters. It may not
-w'je improper or unnecessary, therefore, to show, by a few
jxamples, that the critical strictures of Professor Dunbar
ire as deficient in point of accuracy, as his mode of ex¬
pressing himself is, we are sorry to say, wanting in that
espect which is due to the venerable age and to the great
ittainments of “ the most acute scholar and grammarian”
pf his time.
1. After citing the greater part of the fifth paragraph
pf the first quotation above introduced, Mr Dunbar ob¬
serves, “ Dr Hunter then gives as an example the com¬
pound verb avortfivu, from the first future of which, says
pe, comes the second aorist participle amn/j-uv, as well as
rom the second future avora/jju, amra/iuv. Where Dr
Hunter found the second aorist participle dnors/Auv, I do not
know, as I never observed it; the other form, anorap.M,
pccurs often in the Greek authors.” Now, it will not be
very difficult to show where Dr Hunter found atforipw,
pr at least sufficient authority for employing it, and
vhere Mr Dunbar might have made the discovery. In
he Cyropcedia of Xenophon (lib, v. c. 2, 1. 29), there is
he following passage :—'AKKcc roug /asv dti&mvvrag 6ia
U3g/^«/, n di? Xiyziv; hog di dvdgog croXu duvarunpov, fj syu, ii/ov
wi ixsmj era/pov ovra, utiveg rov ifjjov, Uu/joinvovru wag zavru) Gv\-
Ka/Suv ESETEMEN, ug /mv nvzg ztpaffav, r. X. For a reason
vhich will be obvious to every scholar, we abstain from
ranslating this passage, in which Gobryas describes the
vreatment to which a certain ancient lover of surgery was
n the habit of subjecting some of his boon companions.
But as we have here l^ers/xs, the participle of which is
ifyrzpwv, it is difficult to conceive why Mr Dunbar should
proscribe dmn/u, or at least dtfort,uwv, which only differs
from the word employed by Xenophon in having the pre¬
position aero instead of the preposition lx or l| prefixed to
it. ’ Amripziv means to cut away or cut off; s^srs/j.ziv signi¬
fies to cut out, or, in other words, indicates a somewhat
more radical and complete form of the operation. If it
be good Greek to use such a form of the verb as l^srs-
uitv, it can scarcely, we should imagine, be bad Greek to
employ dvonpziv, the same verb, in the same tense, varied
only in its sense by the preposition prefixed.
2. “ I am, however, decidedly of opinion,” continues Mr
Dunbar, “ that no first aorist was ever formed from a se¬
cond future; and in the examples which the doctor has
sgiven, he has assumed what never existed.” Here again
the learned professor cuts a little before the point; for the
“ assumption” on which Dr Hunter has grounded his inge¬
nious solution of these apparent anomalies, so far from be¬
ing gratuitous and unauthorized, as Mr Dunbar asserts,
is distinctly countenanced by Apollonius of Alexandria,
whom Priscian calls summus auctor artis grammaticce, and
Mr Harris, in his Hermes, describes as “ the most acute
author that ever wrote on grammar.” In his treatise De
Syntaxi (lib. i. c. 36, p. 76), this learned and acute gram¬
marian, speaking of imperatives, says,
“ Quid est igitur cur non ridiculi existimentur, qui ne-
gant esse verba imperativa futuri temporis, cum omnia
cogaij cogantur ad futuri sensum ? nam ea imperamus, quae aut
non non fiunt, aut non facta sunt. Quae autem non fiunt,
ant J aut non facta sunt, et tamen ut fiant apta nata sunt, ea
futuri temporis sunt: siquidem etea quae imperata non fiunt, Verbs,
enunciantur cum negante particula, et sensu futuri; 6u dv-
vwopai, 6v sroiTitrci}. Nam etsi dicimus etiam illo modo ov dv-
miiai j3aarcr.(fa.i idem tamen valet atque du dovriaopui. Ergo
ex futuri sensu imperamus ut fiat aliquid, aut non fiat, ad-
dita negante particula ; imperfecte quidem, ut ffxarrsrw rag
dy^rsXoug; perfecte vero, ut uxa^aroj rag u/j.vzXoug. Quid
autem decepit eos qid admiserunt futuri imperativa ? Fga-v}/-
srai tantum, et 6/ffs dseiov ygrji;; quae quanquam absolutius a
nobis in libro De Imperativis diluuntur, tamen quia locus
etiam hie idem exigit, pauca quaedam adjungemus. Ni-
mirum illud yga^eru et bids poetica licentia per enallagen
fuisse usurpata pro voce yga^ara et <psge; non diverso tem¬
pore, sed dilectu verbi, quod, utra voce velis, recteprofertur :
quemadmodum in indicative modo quaestio ejusmodi ante
orta est; in hygu-^ag, inquam, vel zygu-^eg, quandoquidem
in istis nullum temporis discrimen est, sed tantum in scrip-
tura ; quae assumi potest non sine ratione probabili, sicut
demonstramus in capite De Verbis.”1
From what is here stated by Apollonius, particularly
if it be taken in connection with other parts of his work,
to which reference is expressly made by him, and in
which his views are more fully explained, it appears that,
according to this learned grammarian, the circumstance
which has misled those who admit imperatives of the fu¬
ture is the occurrence of such forms as yga^zru and bids;
that yga-vj/srw and 6/0's, though used, poetica licentia per
enallagen, for yga^arw and psgs, are not to be considered
as thereby undergoing any change in point of time, but
merely as variations in the form of expression, and per¬
fectly equivalent in their effect (non diverso tempore, sed
dilectu verbi, quod, utraque voce velis, recte profertur') ; that,
in short, between ygu^erco and yga^aru, 6yga\]/sgand lyga^-
ag, there is no ditference whatever in point of time {nul¬
lum discrimen temporis), but only in the writing ; and
that those verbal forms which Mr Dunbar has arbitrarily
denominated imperfects, are truly aorists in the strictest
acceptation of the term. With regard to the ratio proba-
bilis here alluded to as explained in the chapter on Verbs,
though it is not very clearly developed by the Alexandrian
grammarian, it seems, in effect, to be nearly the same
with the principle so distinctly brought out by Dr Hunter;
namely, that the second aorist, as well as the first, follows
the analogy of either future, and that, in some instances at
least, second aorists have been formed upon the analogy
of the first future, as stated by Dr Hunter. Mr Dunbar,
however, is “ decidedly of opinion” that no second aorist
was ever formed from the first future, and conversely; in
other words, he is at issue with Apollonius, who states
facts to the contrary, as well as with Dr Hunter, who un¬
folds the only principle on which these facts can be ac¬
counted for, consistently with the genius and idiom of the
Greek language.
3. Professor Dunbar proceeds thus: “ The whole mis¬
take has arisen from not considering, or not knowing, the
genuine form of the second future. But, says Dr Hun¬
ter, how are we to account for such forms as xara&riGza,
sdvdiro, o£dzo, bide, i%ov, and some others, if these are not
to be considered as second aorists derived from first fu¬
tures ; because no person can show that the futures of
*1
'.Vii
nym
0!/
ypiii,
^ $
ir,%
mam
1 To prevent mistakes, and obviate cavils, we shall subjoin the original of the passage translated from Apollonius : Um; cuv ob yiXolot
ijVjh oi [,«„] vToXafiovris pn/tara ■>rt>o<rru.x.rtx,ii fjuXXcvcro; x?l,vov’ °*ou Xs <rvvt»§i7rcu us rnv tou puXXovros hvetav ; Itfi yct£ pin yivopiivas n /in
yiyovocriv n tf£o<rra%is' ra <Ss /in yivo/isva n /in yiyovcrx, isr/rnh/ernm Si i^avra: u’s ro ‘iaieScu, /iiXXovros hmv, tl ys kcu tw» ^so’ra^'S-ivr&iv ru. /in
yivo/nva. Xoyov /isra axoQoicriu; kcu rns rou [liXXovros inoms, ob luvno-o/icu, ob ‘Xoineu- *«v ya^ outoj (fw/isv, ob Zwa/iat (bcurraffai, sv ‘hrep itrn
ob Ivvntro/iou. tl$ ro yivarS-cei ouv n yivzir9-oii n <r^o<rTa%is yivirat, a.no$oi<rKO[isvn aoro rns rou fiiXXovro; ivvotus, u’s /uv ora.QOi7a.cnv, saarmru rxs a/im.
Xaus, us Si avvriXuutrtv, trxavj/arco ras a/iorsXovs- T; Si ro <7raQa\av rous oraQabi\a/isvous [iiXXovros orQoaraxnxa ; Mavav 70 yQa^i7u nat 70 o\m 9-u/av
y^nu, utiq aoroXut7ai iv7sXsa7iQov Iv rw oriQi orQ077ax7ixuv, aorai7ouv7os Si nai vuv 70Z Xoyou oXiya craQaS-nao/i&a, on oroinrixeoaiQov fiiv 70 o’effs xasc’
\vaXXaynv uQnrat <puvns rns Qioi, 7ns y^a^ira xai 7a ofiota, ob xa7a ZiapoQiv fiiv xqovov, xx7x Ss txXoynv bvo/iaros, ooro7iQov un xarufta/uvov, xa9-a-
Tsa non c7Qo‘fiiXi7nS-n rocaurn Xn7n<ns h rrp OQtarixy \yxXisu, syga^oos n tyga-^es, ob ZiaQooxs oihrns ubro Si piovov ygaipns, Zvva/iivys obx
uoriQavcjg arxQxXa/ifbavzo'Qat, u>s sort^stxvu/isv iv 7m ‘x'zqi pn/ix7uv. (Apollomi Alexandiiiu itc CoTistructtOTic Orotioius, lib. iv. ex lecens. Im—
manuelis Bekkeri, p. 70, 7b Berlin, 1817, in 8vo.)
02
GRAMMAR.
Verbs.
such verbs were ever employed as presents ? I hope to
* be able to prove, both from examples and analogy, that
the old established opinion, viz. that the futures of certain
verbs, whose original presents had become obsolete, were
sometimes used as presents, and that those forms which
the doctor supposes to be second aorists, were imperfects,
used, however, as aorists, i.e. with indefinite timer We shall
have occasion immediately to examine some of the “ ex¬
amples” and “ analogies” by means of which the learned
professor labours to establish his position. It will be suf¬
ficient here to advert to the confusion of ideas which
reigns in the passage we have just cited. How, says
Dr Hunter, can you account for such forms as xara[3r}dso,
iduasro, dgdso, otai, )%ov, and the like, if they are not to be
considered as second aorists formed on the analogy of
the first futures of the verbs to which they belong ? Per¬
fectly, responds Mr Dunbar; they are neither first nor se¬
cond aorists (Apollonius, as we have just seen, thought
otherwise), but only imperfects, “ used, however, as an-
rists,” and performing all the functions of these parti¬
cular verbal forms; that is, they are not aorists, but im¬
perfects, which imperfects, however, are in reality ao¬
rists. Nor is even this all. The learned professor, misled
apparently by the literal meaning of the term, is betray¬
ed into an entire misconception in regard to the time
indicated by the aorist, which he considers as “ indefinite.”
He could not easily have committed a greater mistake, as
has already been shown in treating of the verb. The time
of the aorist, strictly considered, is absolute past, and if it
ever appear to be “ indefinite,” as it unquestionably in some
instances does, that arises, not from any vagueness or
uncertainty in the tense itself, but from an inference drawn
by the mind from those particular predications which it is
employed to express. Thus, oXtyog %govog rag ruv pauXuv
dunjOi/ag S/iXuds, “ A short time dissolved (or did dissolve)
the associations of bad men.” This is all that the words
actually express. But, as we know from experience that
the laws of nature, moral as well as physical, are uniform,
we infer that what occurred formerly, happens now, and
will take place hereafter; and hence, by an easy and gra¬
dual coalition of the secondary inference with the primary
and invariable signification of the verb, we come at length
to say that “ a short time ahvays dissolves the associations
of the wicked.” The expression in Scripture, 'Ovrog sen 6
iiog (mov ayunqrog sv ui svdoxr/ea, rightly translated in our ver¬
sion, “ This is my beloved Son, in whom I am always well
pleased," and all others of a similar description, are to be
resolved and explained upon precisely the same principle.
4. In rejecting Dr Hunter's solution, which proceeds
upon ascertained and determinate data, Professor Dunbar
adopts one which he admits to be purely imaginary. “ I
believe,” says he, “ the present of hen is noivhere to be
found in the language, because it must have been the same
in appearance and sound as e/w, puto: f>eg.a> is commonly
used instead of it. But Pindar, in his fourth Pythian
Ode (v. 181), employs oiet/v as a present.
    tpaiju 'biba.ffaa.Xiav
Xiigcavos oltriiv. viopai
n«£ 'x.u.ft'iKXols.
I say that I obtain instruction from Chiron," &c. In this
passage Professor Dunbar appears to have committed se¬
veral mistakes. Without adverting to his contradictory
expressions in regard to o/Vw, we may observe, in the first
place, that if Pindar had really employed oiesiv here “ as
a present,” the language which he puts into the mouth of
Jason would, upon that supposition, have conveyed a state¬
ment contrary to the fact. Jason, it is true, was educat¬
ed by Chiron ; but long before the period referred to in
this passage, his education had been concluded; and there v
is nothing said to warrant the assumption that, on his re- wT!'
turn from the Argonautic expedition, which is celebrated
in this ode, he had resumed his studies under the Cen¬
taur, and was, at the time of speaking, actually “ obtain¬
ing” or receiving “ instruction from Chiron.” He had no
doubt, according to his own statement, been to visit that
famous personage; but his object, as we shall presently
show, was not for the purpose of being taught, instructed,
or educated by Chiron (that had been accomplished long
before), but to obtain information from the Centaur to
enable him to make good his claims, which, it seems, had
been disputed. Adjured to speak the truth, Jason ac¬
cordingly says, “ I ivill relate what I have learned (htbas-
TtaXtav) from Chiron ; for I have just come from the cave
near Chariclo and Philyree and, in conformity with this
declaration, he proceeds to state the substance of the in¬
formation he had obtained from the Centaur respecting
his rights. In what follows there is not a word said re¬
specting “ instruction” or education. The narrative of
Jason relates to a subject of more immediate interest to
him, one indeed in regard to which he had engaged that
he would produce (biesu) what he had learned (dibaemXm)
from Chiron during the visit to his cave, and tell nothing
except on the authority of his old master, or in accor¬
dance with the information which he had received from
him. In our view, therefore, the common interpretation
of this passage, Institutus sum a Chirone, is erroneous,
notwithstanding it has been adopted by so distinguished
a scholar as Heyne, who conceives hibae-/.aXiav Xs/gwvog
oleav equivalent to bibayfr^ai iraga Xsiguvog. But, however
this may be, it is evident from the words here quoted,
that the celebrated German scholar does not consider
biesiv “ as a present” tense; and that, whether our inter¬
pretation of the passage be right or wrong, Heyne, in adopt¬
ing the ordinary one, has distinctly corroborated the view
which we have taken of biesiv.
But, not to dwell longer on this, other examples of the
nature of instantice crucis may be produced to disprove
Mr Dunbar’s assertion that oiesi is used “ as a present.”
In the ninth Pythian Ode of Pindar (1.104) we meet with
the following passage:—
To&/ •ra7'Scc riZsrixi, ov xXuros, 'Eg(t(cc
Ev^amois ’ilguiffi y.a,i Taia, anXa/y
iiXas isro pungo;, ’012EI.
In this sentence, if cues/ be a present, as Mr Dunbar con¬
tends, how is its time to be reconciled with that of rsgsra/?
If the learned professor be right, Pindar has, in this case
at least, been guilty of a gross anachronism. Again, in
the seventh book of the Iliad (1. 81), Hector says,
’EjSs k lyu rov Si (mi tv%os 'XftoXkuy,
Tiv^ia avXrnras, ’01212 srar/’lX;av
Kxi von VJJOV 'AvoWavo; Ixarom.
“ Sin ego ilium interfecero, dederitque mihi gloriam Apollo,
arma detracta feram ad Ilium sacrum, et suspendam ad
templum Apollinis longe jaculantis“ But if I shall be
fortunate enough to slay him, and Apollo give me the glory
of such a victory, then, having stripped him of his arms, I
will carry them to sacred Ilium, and will hang them up at
the temple of the far-darting Apollo.” By no sophistry can
the verb oien in this passage be tortured into a present;
and the same observation equally applies to oiesi in the
foregoing extract from Pindar. But if olen be a first fu¬
ture, as it undoubtedly is, can it for a moment be doubted
that oies is an aorist formed upon the analogy of that fu¬
ture ; and if so, is it not clear that, in some instances at least,
the second aorist follows the analogy of the first future ?
(A.)
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by 5!
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plain
great
mam
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rangi
Mont
were
be, ft
t’eet.
petal
indee
it ne
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is as
thes
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with
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tains
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danc
titles
worn
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expri
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habit
plain
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thick
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Mont
peak
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tions
these
G R A
ma GRAMMARIAN, one who is skilled in or teaches
an grammar. Anciently the name grammarian was a title of
ii honour in literature and erudition, being given to persons
onadmaccounted learned in any art or faculty whatsoever. But
; ■'"it is otherwise now, being frequently used as a term of re¬
proach, to signify a dry plodding person, employed about
words and phrases, but inattentive to the true beauties of
expression, and also to delicacy of sentiment. The ancient
grammarians, called also philologers, must not, however, be
confounded with grammatists, whose sole business was to
teach children the first elements of language. Varro, Cice¬
ro, Messala, and even Julius Caesar, thought it no dishonour
to be ranked as grammarians, who in fact had many privi¬
leges granted to them by the Roman emperors.
GRAMPIANS, a mountain chain in Scotland, so called
from two Celtic terms, grans and bein, signifying “ rugged
mountains.” It runs from east to west almost the whole
breadth of the kingdom. See Scotland.
GRANADA, a portion of Andalusia, in Spain, being one
of those four districts denominated kingdoms, into which
that rich province is divided. It is bounded on the west
by Seville, on the north by Jaen and Murcia, on the east
by Murcia, and on the south by the Mediterranean Sea.
Its extent is 805 square leagues, and the number of its in¬
habitants 1,097,098. The density of the population on the
plains is greater than in any other part of Spain; but as a
great proportion of the country is covered with lofty, and in
many parts uninhabitable mountains, it is not much more
thickly peopled than the general average of the kingdom.
The mountains of Granada are much higher than any other
range in Europe; for though the extreme summit of
Mont Blanc is somewhat higher than the most elevated
peak of the Sierra Nevada, yet none of the other points in
the Alps attains the same altitude. The ridge called, from
its being perpetually covered with snow, the Sierra Nevada,
runs from north-east to south-west. Geometrical levels
were taken in 1804, and the highest peaks were found to
be, Mulahacen, 12,762 feet, and Picacho de Veleta, 12,459
feet, above the level of the sea. The height at which per¬
petual snow is to be found is 9915 feet. In the winter
indeed it descends considerably lower, but above that line
it never wholly melts so as to discover the surface. This
range of mountains declines gradually towards the south
till it approaches Almeria, where it again rises to the
height of 7800 feet on the Sierra de Gador. This sierra
is a solid rock of marble, without any other covering than
the snow, which lies on the higher parts of it three quarters
of the year, and only totally melts in the hottest months of
summer. Near it is the singular rock called Filabres,
which appears to be an enormous pyramid of white marble,
2000 feet in height, and four miles in circumference at the
base; and has no mixture of any other stones or earth
with it. To the eastward of the range of the Sierra Ne¬
vada the mountains called the Apuxarras extend to the sea,
and stretch from Almeria to Motril on the coast of the Me¬
diterranean, about seventeen leagues. This range of moun¬
tains may be considered as a very sterile tract of country
j in general, but on it are mixed plains and valleys which
are highly fruitful, and nourish considerable herds of cattle
and flocks of sheep and goats, and besides feed great abun-
1 dance of pigs, which furnish hams in considerable quan¬
tities. The plains interspersed in this mountain range
afford great quantities of mulberry trees, on which silk
worms are reared, and their produce is one of the founda¬
tions of the silk manufactories of the capital. It was to
these mountains that the Moorish race was removed on the
| final subjection of their capital to Ferdinand; and the in¬
dustry they displayed seems to have been continued by the
other inhabitants, after the remains of that singular race were
most most impoliticly and wickedly banished from these moun¬
tain tain retreats to the shores of Africa.
G R A 703
Besides these mountains on the eastern division, there Granada,
are many ranges between the capital and Gibraltar, which,
though they do not equal them in height, exhibit a gran¬
deur and sublimity both pleasing and awful. Amongst these
may be classed the Sierra Venneja and the Sierra de Ar-
boto, which approach the coast near Marvella, and the Si¬
erra Junquilla on the road to Ronda. These, though slight¬
ly sprinkled with snow, have no permanent covering of that
substance, except during the winter months.
The rivers of Granada are the Xenil and the Darro, issuing
from the Sierra Nevada; the Guadalhora, which rises in
the mountains near Antequera, and waters the most fertile
of its valleys; and the Guadiaro, which issues from the
mountains near Ronda.
The valleys of Granada deserve attention, from being
perhaps the most fertile spots in Europe, and yielding with
but little labour the richest productions of nature in the
greatest abundance. Amongst these is prominent the Vega
or plain of Granada, if that can be called a valley which is
2400 feet above the level of the sea. This plain, how¬
ever, is so surrounded by the loftiest mountains, that it is
in eftect, and has in appearance, all the properties of a rich
valley. The melted snow from the Sierra Nevada is perpe¬
tually descending in the form of transparent rivulets; and
the industry of the inhabitants has been constantly direct¬
ed to conducting these into such channels as can most
effectually irrigate the lands. As the melting of the ice
and snow proceeds most rapidly in the warmest weather,
the summer months, the parched land, which most requires
moisture, is thus provided with it most copiously. The de¬
composition of the rocks which surround the plain is con¬
stantly proceeding, and the rapid torrents derived from the
melting of the snow bring into the plain a constant succes¬
sion of newr soil, which in spreading itself over the land by
the process of irrigation, refreshes the earth, and invigo¬
rates vegetation. The highest enjoyment a practical agri
culturist of good observation can have, is in riding over
this plain, and viewing the rapid progress of vegetation,
the rich productions of the soil, and the admirable skill
displayed in dispensing the refreshing streams which de¬
scend from the lofty mountains.
In the midst of this plain, and in the most fruitful and
delightful part of it, is that estate which, by the gratitude
of the Spanish nation, has been conferred on the Duke of
Wellington. The Sota de Roma is a fine tract of land,
about five miles in length and two miles in breadth. It
was retained by Ferdinand at the conquest of Granada, and
made an appendage to the crown ; and several successive
monarchs used it as a retreat from the cares of a throne.
Having been granted to Wall when prime minister of Spain,
he rebuilt the mansion in part, and fitted it up in the best
taste. He improved the grounds, laid out gardens, and
made roads through the woods, which he stocked with game
of all kinds, but especially pheasants, a species of bird which
does not generally thrive in other parts of Spain. At his
decease it reverted to the crown, and was afterwards grant¬
ed to Godoy, prince of the peace ; but on his forfeiture it
came again into the possession of the government, when it
was granted in perpetuity to the Duke of Wellington. More
than four thousand acres are woodland, and abound with
good elm trees, the right of cutting which used to be re¬
served by the crown. The other part of this domain is
excellent cultivated land, with great facilities of irrigation,
and produces most extraordinary crops of wheat, barley,
hemp, flax, and fruits of all kinds.
The parts of the plain near Alhama yield prodigious
crops of wheat and barley. They are cultivated in open
fields at a distance from towns or even villages. At seed
time the proprietors with their labourers pitch tents on the
ground, and remain at the fields till the seed is deposited.
At the harvest, tents are again pitched ; the inhabitants of
704 G R A
Granada, the town fill them, and continue in the fields till the whole
''’"■'■“v**-' of the produce is cut and thrashed out. This last opera¬
tion is performed on a thrashing floor in the open air. In
each large division of corn-land there is a circular portion,
very level, paved with large stones ; on these thrashing
floors the corn is piled in the straw, and a number of un¬
broken horses, or more commonly mares, are held by long
reins, and driven round the circle. By their treading the
corn is separated from the straw with great facility. The
dry state which the straw is brought to by the time it is
cut makes it separate with but little labour ; and from this
dryness of the straw, it is so broken in the operation of
thrashing, that it becomes like our chopped straw, and is
carefully preserved in that condition as food for cattle in
those dry months when no vegetation is visible in the mea¬
dows. This plan of thrashing the corn on floors in the
fields where it grew is derived from high antiquity, and its
practice may be seen in the sacred writings at the time of
the patriarch Abraham. So dry is the climate of Spain,
that the corn could not be carried to a distance, even if
the roads were good and wheel carriages were used, with¬
out shaking out the greater part of the grain. After this
description of the mode of harvesting the grain, it need
not be added that barns are not necessary appendages to a
corn farm. The straw in the broken state here described
is formed into stacks, and the grain, when separated from
the straw, and by a flapping wheel from the chaff, is depo¬
sited in paniers, and conveyed on the backs of asses to the
granaries of the proprietors in the towns, where, for the
most part, and not on their farms, they reside. In some
parts of Granada there is a mode of preserving wheat for
many years without its sustaining any injury. In caves
hewn in the granite rocks they carefully line the bottom
and sides with chaff or the finest of the broken straw ; the
caverns are then filled with the grain in bulk, and the top
covered with chaff to the thickness of about eighteen inch¬
es. In this state no humidity can reach it from without;
and the heat of the climate having perfectly dried it in the
process of harvesting, it may remain secure for almost any
period. Some repositories of this kind made by the Moors
three centuries ago have been discovered within recent
periods, and the grain was as good as when first deposited.
It was the practice of the Moors, on the birth of a child, to
lay up its future portion in grain, concealed in these caves,
which, from the turbulent state of the country, were usually
in as secret spots as they could select. When the child
reached maturity his property was pointed out and his pro¬
vision appropriated ; but sometimes those who knew of the
secret deposit were cut off, and the grain remained buried
without discovery.
Many practices in the husbandry of Granada which dif¬
fer from those in the other parts of Spain may be traced to
the circumstances in which the Moors were placed, when,
having been subdued in the other parts of the peninsula,
their sole dominion for three hundred years was contracted
to the small but rich kingdom of Granada.
The cultivation of mulberry trees, and the breeding of
silk worms which depend upon them, is an important portion
of the agriculture of Granada. Long practice and atten¬
tion has led the cultivators to know the species of mulber¬
ries which yield the most leaves, and the greatest quantity
of silk from the worms that feed on them. The white mul¬
berry, when grafted on the stock of the wild mulberry, is
now almost universally preferred, as those leaves produce
not only the greatest proportionate quantity of silk, but it
is also of a much finer quality than that yielded by either the
white or the black mulberry leaves. As the trees are culti¬
vated not for the sake of the fruit, but solely for the food
which the leaves supply, it is customary to cut oft' the tops,
which, they find, diminishes the quantity of the fruit and
increases that of the leaves. The worms suffer much by
G R A
any great humidity in the leaves on which they feed ; and Gr
hence the cultivators are careful not to gather any as long
as the dew remains on them, or after a shower of rain; and ^
if the weather appears lowering, it is the practice to gather
as many leaves as will suffice for three or four days’ con¬
sumption ; but care is taken that they neither become shri¬
velled nor mildewed, in either of which cases they would in¬
jure the worm. There is perhaps no animal whose vora¬
city compared with its size equals that of the silk worm,
especially during the eight or ten days which precede their
beginning to spin. It is estimated that the leaves of a
tree of ten years growth are devoured in three days by as
many worms as will yield seven pounds of silk. The silk
produced by the worms here is calculated as one pound
from 2500 worms. The quantity of silk produced on the
plains of Granada, on an average of years, is 100,000
pounds, and there must consequently be two hundred and
fifty millions of worms, and near three millions five hundred
thousand mulberry trees in full bearing, besides those de¬
cayed, and those not arrived at maturity.
If the vegetable productions of Granada were enumerat¬
ed, they would be found to include almost every gift of
every climate ; for as the variation in temperature descends
from that of the coldest to that of almost the hottest regions
of the globe, so the different productions are all to be met
with here within a very narrow compass. On the high
levels the apples, pears, and plums of the colder parts of
Europe grow to perfection. In the middle regions they
have wheat, barley, wine, hemp, flax, grapes, olives, peach¬
es, apricots, pomegranates, and other similar fruits; whilst
in the hotter regions in the low valleys, on a level with the
sea, coffee, cotton, sugar cane, and indigo, are cultivated
with success; and those more rare fruits, the pine-apple,
the chircmaya, the guava, and the banana, are brought to
perfection in the open air. The agriculture of the level
parts from Manvella to Velez Malaga, except that the la¬
bourers are not negro slaves, exactly resembles that of the
islands in the West Indies ; and the face of the country and
its different productions recal to the mind of the traveller
the scenery, the odours, and all the sensations experienced
in the finest districts of the tropical regions.
From the agriculture we turn next to the mineral riches
which this province affords in return for the labour of man.
In former times mines of gold and silver were wrought,
and the sands of the river Darro were found to be enrich¬
ed with grains of the former precious metal. The veins
still exist; but since the discovery of the mines of Mexico
and Peru, and the value of the precious metals has been
reduced, they have ceased to yield sufficient to pay the la¬
bourers’ wages that must be employed in them. Copper,
iron, and lead are found in the mountains of secondary for¬
mation ; and though from the scarcity of fuel they are not
worked to the extent which they might be if that com¬
modity were more abundant, yet it is ascertained that
they are as rich in ore now as at the former periods when
their produce formed the foundation of an extensive com¬
merce with Egypt, Greece, and the borders of Asia. No
part of the world abounds with more beautiful marbles
than the province of Granada. The public buildings, the
fountains, the statues, and the ornaments made from them
on the spot, strike the beholder with surprise, by their
beauty, their variety, and their cheapness; but from
their bulky and weighty character, the difficulty of trans¬
porting them over mountains and precipices where no
roads have been formed, is such as to preclude their
removal with any chance of being repaid for the labour
bestowed on it. Alabaster, jasper, and most beautiful
serpentine, are in some degree articles of commerce; and
the fluates of lime, called in England Derbyshire spar,
are worked into various fanciful and ornamental pieces of
furniture.
n
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and
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vc
G R A
edat The manufactories of this province are considerable for
^‘the extent of the population, and consist of silks, linens,
woollens, sail-cloth, leather, and other articles, the parti¬
culars of which will be found under the names of the dif¬
ferent places in which they are carried on.
The foreign commerce almost wholly passes through
the port of Malagaj and will be found under that article;
but the domestic trade is the most considerable and most
beneficial. The part to the north of the mountains sup¬
plies the sea coast with corn, cattle, and some manufac¬
tures, and receives in return coftee, sugar, cotton, and
the other productions of the warmer climate. It sends to
Castille corn, oil, and dried figs, and receives in return
some wine and manufactured articles.
The salubrity of the climate of Granada varies with the
various elevations. On the sea coast the valleys are ex¬
cessively hot; and, though not uniformly, are frequently
subject to those visitations which have thinned the popu¬
lation of several cities in the western hemisphere. In the
year 1804 an epidemic fever which passed along the shores
of Spain visited this province with most fearful destruction
to human life; and, though not to the same extent, yet
before and since, such fevers have prevailed. On the more
elevated plains, and on the mountains, such pestilential
dispensations have not been experienced, and the inhabi¬
tants enjoy as much health, strength, activity, and lon¬
gevity as in any part of the world.
The interesting events of the history of Granada, its
prosperity under the Moorish government, its final subju¬
gation, and the subsequent extirpation of the remainder
of the Arabian race, will fall more naturally under our
notice of the history of the whole kingdom of Spain.
Granada, a city of Spain, and capital of the province
or kingdom of that name, in Andalusia. It is situated
partly in the celebrated plain called the Vega de Grana¬
da, and partly on the declivity of a hill whose summit is
covered with that massive pile of buildings called the Al¬
hambra, of which a description may be seen under that
article. The rivers Xenil and Darro have their rise in
the mountains, and pass through the city; the former is
a clear, and at times a small stream, but the latter is a
mountain torrent, at some periods almost destitute of
water, and at others overflowing its banks, and produ¬
cing extensive inundations. After traversing the plain,
both streams unite and force their way into the Guadal¬
quivir. Many of the streets of Granada are steep, most
of them are narrow, and all of them are ill paved. No
object can be more strikingly beautiful at a few miles dis¬
tance than this city, but the appearance on entering it by
no means corresponds to the distant impressions.
The market-place or great square is spacious and well
proportioned. The houses have piazzas, which afford
shelter from the heat of the sun; but the want of glass
windows, and the substitution of red shutters, give them
a mean appearance. The cathedral is a very large and
splendid but irregular building, having been formed by
throwing into one edifice three contiguous churches. The
I high altar, the pulpits, and the choir, are fine groups, and
beautifully adorned with some of the finest specimens of
variegated and highly polished marble that has been found
in this vicinity. It has within it two fine monuments, one
to the memory of Philip L, the other to that of Ferdinand
and Isabella; and it is adorned with some pictures from
the pencil of that celebrated artist Alonzo Cano, which,
though disgusting to Protestants from the sacred objects
they represent, yet possess exquisite merit as paintings.
There are some fine statues executed by the same artist,
who was a sculptor as well as a painter. The vice-regal
palace, in which is the supreme court of justice for the
province, is an extensive and splendid building; but its
effect is destroyed by having houses so close as to prevent
VOL. x.
G R A
705
a proper view of it. The palace of the archbishop is a
very large pile, but of no particular beauty, though, as
having been the scene of the adventures of Gil Bias, in
the work of Le Sage, which every one has read, it is ge¬
nerally inquired for and noticed by travellers.
The city of Granada contains at present 66,660 inha¬
bitants, who are generally a more industrious people than
the other natives of Spain. The activity of the Moors, if not
their blood, has been left behind them; and, in spite of the
bad maxims of the court of Madrid, this city displays con¬
siderable industry in many arts and manufactures. The
woollen manufactories employ about 7000 persons of the
two sexes, and afford cloths, serges, baizes, and stuffs, but
not in sufficient quantities for the consumption of the sur¬
rounding district, the deficiency being supplied by importa¬
tion through the port of Malaga. The whole of the silk
which the plain yields is made in this city into taffetas,
satins, ribbons, and similar goods; and, besides their own
produce, silk in some years is brought from Valencia to
be used in this place. There are manufactories of linen,
sail-cloth, and a very small one of cotton. The sail-cloths
are estimated as of most excellent quality, and are but
little subject to the mildew in the most humid climate.
Iron and steel are made here into the various smaller ar¬
ticles required for domestic and agricultural purposes.
The Carthusian convent is an extensive establishment;
and the fathers possess several farms, which they cultivate
themselves; and some other of the religious foundations
are very rich. Institutions for education are upon a low
scale; and most of those destined for the learned profes¬
sion receive their instruction either in the universities of
Seville or Alcala. From the locality of this city, it is re¬
markably healthy. The vicinity of the Sierra Nevada,
from which cool breezes blow in the midst of summer,
tends to give a freshness to the atmosphere, even in the
dog-days; and, considering the productions, the climate,
and the beautiful streams, it is not wonderful that the
Moors long looked back with fond regret to the delightful
spot from which, after an obstinate resistance, they were
at length most reluctantly driven.
Granada, or Grenada, one of the Caribbee Islands.
See Grenada.
Granada, a town of Mexico, in America, in the inten¬
dancy of Nicaragua, and in the republic of Guatimala,
seated on the Lake Nicaragua. It contains a handsome
church and four convents, one of which, belonging to the
Franciscans, is amongst the most ancient of these establish¬
ments in the kingdom. There is here some commerce ;
but the place would appear to have declined. Long. 86.
21. W. Lat. 11. 30. N.
Granada, New, a province of South America. See
Venezuela.
Granada
ll
Granado.
GRANADIER, or Grenadier, originally a soldier
armed with a sword, a firelock, a bayonet, and a pouch full
of hand grenades; whence the name. Grenadiers now
differ from the rest of the battalion only in their superior
size and stature, and in certain distinctive peculiarities of
uniform. They are always composed of the tallest and
stoutest men, and employed on services where strength and
courage united are necessary to ensure success; and, in
some armies, they have more pay than the common sol¬
diers. Every battalion of infantry has generally attached
to it a company of grenadiers, who take the right of the bat¬
talion, the left being occupied by the light company. Gre¬
nadiers were first instituted in France in 1667, when four
or five were attached to each company; but in the year
1670 they were formed into companies, and, in 1685, in¬
troduced into the British service.
GRANADO, or Grenade (so called from being filled
with grains of powder, as a pomegranate is with kernels), is,
in war, a hollow ball or shell of iron or other metal, of about
4 u
706 G R A
Granard two inches and a half diameter, which being filled with fine
(I powder, is set on fire by means of a small fuse made of
well-seasoned beech-wood driven into the fuse-hole, and
is thrown by the grenadiers into places where men stand
thick, particularly into the trenches and other lodgments
effected by the enemy. As soon as the composition within
the fuse gets to the powder in the grenade, it bursts into
pieces, greatly to the damage of all who happen to be in
its way. Grenades were first made about the time when
shells were invented, and first used in 1594. They have
now unaccountably sunk into disuse ; but, in the opinion of
some, there is nothing more proper than to have grenades
to throw amongst the enemy who have jumped into the
ditch. During the siege of Cassel under the Count de la
Lippe, in the campaign of 1762, a young engineer under¬
took to carry one of the outworks with a smaller detach¬
ment than that which had been repulsed, and succeeded
with ease from the use of grenades ; which is a proof that
they should not be neglected, either in the attack or de¬
fence of posts. There are two sorts of grenades, viz. gre¬
nades de rempart and grenades d main. Grenades de rem-
part are those which are rolled from the top of the para¬
pet into the ditch, and which in calibre are equal to an
eighteen, and sometimes to a thirty-two pounder. Gre¬
nades d main are thrown by the hand into the covered¬
way and trenches ; their calibre is that of a four-pounder,
and they weigh about two pounds. The ordinary thick¬
ness of grenades is four lines, (Jr one third of an inch,
throughout. There is also a sort of grenade which is
thrown out of a mortar, and which is used for the purpose
of annoying the besieging enemy,
GRANARD, a borough, market, fair, and post town, in
the county of Longford, and province of Leinster, situated
fifty-two miles from Dublin, and about sixteen north-east
of Longford. Here is a remarkable hill or mount, called
the Moat of Granard, supposed to be artificial, and the
site of a Danish castle or fort, which commands from its
summit a most extensive prospect.
GRANARY, a building to lay up or store corn in, es¬
pecially that which is designed to be kept for a consider¬
able time.
Sir Henry Wotton recommends that a granary should
be made to look towards the north, because that quarter is
the coolest and most temperate. Mr Worlidge observes,
that the best granaries are built of brick, with quarters of
timber wrought in the inside, to which the boards, with
which the inside of the granary must be lined, must be
nailed so close to the bricks that there may not be any
room left for vermin to shelter themselves. There may be
many storeys one above another, but these should be near
the one to the other, because the shallower the corn lies,
it is the better, and the more easily turned.
The two great cautions to be observed in the erecting
of granaries are, to make them sufficiently strong, and to
expose them to the most drying winds. In many parts of
England, particularly in Kent, corn is ordered in this man¬
ner. To separate it from dust and other impurities after
it is thrashed, it is tossed with shovels from one end to the
other of a long and large room ; the lighter substances fall
down in the middle of the room, and the corn only is car¬
ried from side to side or from end to end of it. After this the
corn is screened, and being then brought into the granaries,
it is spread about half a foot thick, and turned from time
to time about twice in a week; the screening of it is also
repeated once a week. This sort of management is conti¬
nued about two months, after which it is laid a foot thick
for two months more; and during this time it is turned
once a week, or twice if the season be damp, and now and
then screened again. After about five or six months, it is
raised to two feet thickness in the heaps, and then turned
once or twice in a month, and screened now and then.
G R A
After a year, it is laid two and a half or three feet deep, Gra
and turned once in three weeks or a month, and screened w
proportionally. When it has lain two years or more, it V
is turned once in two months, and screened once a quar¬
ter ; and how long soever it be kept, the oftener the turning
and screening are repeated, the better the grain will be
found to be preserved. It is proper to leave an area of a
yard wide on every side of the heap of corn, and other
empty spaces, into which the corn may be turned and
tossed as often as required. In Kent two square holes are
made at each end of the floor, and a round one in the
middle, by means of which the corn is thrown out of the
upper into the lower rooms, and so up again, that it may
be the better turned and aired. Their screens are made
with two partitions, to separate the dust from the corn,
which:falls into a bag; and when sufficiently full this is
thrown away, whilst the pure and good corn remains be¬
hind. Corn has by these means been kept in our grana¬
ries thirty years; and it is observed, that the longer it is
kept the more flour it yields in proportion to the corn, and
the purer and whiter the bread is, the superfluous humi¬
dity only evaporating in the keeping. At Zurich in
Switzerland, corn has been kept eighty years, or longer, by
methods of a similar description.
The public granaries at Dantzick are seven, eight, or
nine storeys in height, having a funnel in the midst of each
floor, to let down the corn from one to another. They are
built so securely, that though every way surrounded with
water, the corn contracts no damp, and the vessels have
the convenience of coming up to the walls to be loaded.
The Russians preserve their corn in subterranean grana¬
ries of the figure of a sugar-loaf, wide below and narrow
at the top, the sides being well plastered, and the top co¬
vered with stones. They are careful to have the corn well
dried before it be laid into these storehouses, and often dry
it by means of ovens, the summer dry weather being too
short to effect this sufficiently. Dantzick is the grand
storehouse or repository of the fruitful kingdom of Poland.
The wheat, barley, and rye, of a great part of the country,
are there laid up in parcels of twenty, thirty, or sixty lasts
in a chamber, according to the size of the room ; and this
is turned every day or two, to keep it sweet and fit for
shipping.
According to the rules of Vitruvius, a granary should
always be at the top of a house, and have its openings only
to the north or east, that the corn may not be exposed to
the damp winds from the south and west, which are very
destructive to it; but the contrary winds are very neces¬
sary and wholesome, serving to cool it and absorb all ex¬
ternal humidity. There must also be openings in the roof,
to be set open in dry weather, partly to let in fresh air,
and partly to let out the warm effluvia which are often
emitted by the corn. The covering of the roofs should
always be of tiles, because in the worst seasons, when the
other openings cannot be safe, there will always be a con¬
siderable inlet for fresh air, and an issue for the vapours
by their joinings, which are never close. If there happen
to be any windows to the south, great care must be taken
to shut them in moist weather, and in the time of the hot
southern winds. There must not be a cellar or any other
damp place under a granary, nor should it ever be built
over stables ; for in either of these cases the corn will cer¬
tainly suffer by the vapours, and be rendered damp in one,
and ill tasted in the other.
M. Duhamel and Dr Hailes recommend various contri¬
vances for ventilating or blowing fresh air through corn
laid up in granaries or ships, in order to preserve it sweet
and dry, and to prevent its being devoured by weevils or
other insects. This may be done by nailing wooden bars
or laths on the floor of the granary, about an inch distant
from each other, when they are covered with hair-cloth
wire'
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G R A
iary,Dnly, or at the distance of two or three inches, when coarse
'^’wire-work, or basket-work of osiers, is laid under the hair¬
cloth, or when an iron plate full of holes is laid upon them.
These laths may be laid across other laths, nailed at the
distance of fifteen inches, and two or more inches deep,
that there may be a free passage for the air under them.
The under laths must come about six inches short of the
wall of the granary at one end, on which a board is to be
set edgewise, sloping against the wall; for, by this dispo¬
sition, a large air-pipe is formed, which having an open
communication with all the interstices between and un¬
der the bars, will admit the passage of air below forcibly
chrough a hole at the extremity, and consequently carry
iff the moist exhalations of the corn. The ventilators for
mpplying fresh air may be fixed against the wall, on the
nside or outside of the granary, or under the floor, or in
die ceiling; but wherever they are fixed, the handle of
he lever that works them must be out of the granary,
itherwise the person who works them would be in danger
if suffocation when the corn is fumigated with burning
irimstone, as is sometimes done for destroying weevils.
Small moveable ventilators will answer the purpose for
ventilating corn in large bins in granaries, and may easily
be moved from one bin to another. If the granary or
corn ship be very long, the main air-pipe may pass length¬
wise along the middle of it, and convey air on both sides
under the corn. In large granaries, double ventilators laid
upon each other may be fixed at the middle and near the
top of the granary, that they may be worked by a wind¬
mill fixed on the roof of the building, or by a water-mill.
The air is conveyed from the ventilators through a large
trunk or trunks, reaching down through the several doors
to the bottom of the granary, with branching trunks to
each floor, by means of which it may be made to pass into
a large trunk along the adjoining cross walls; and from
these trunks several lesser trunks, about four inches wide,
branch off, at the distance of three or four feet from one
another, and reach through the whole length of the gra-
aary, their farther ends being closed. Seams of one tenth
Lfir one twelfth of an inch should also be left open at the
bur joinings of the boards, where they are nailed together,
'hat the air may pass through them into the corn. In some
if these lesser trunks there may be sliding shutters, to stop
he passage of the air through those trunks which are not
covered with iron, or to ventilate one part of the granary
more briskly than others, as there may be occasion. There
should also be wooden shutters, hung on hinges at their
ipper part, so as to shut close of themselves ; and these
should be fixed to openings in the walls of the granary on
heir outside; by which means they will readily open to
*ive a free passage for the ventilating air, which ascends
through the corn, but will instantly shut when the venti¬
lation ceases, and thereby prevent any dampness of the
external air from entering. The ventilation should be
made only in the middle of dry days, unless the corn, when
; j first put in, be cold and damp.
In In lesser granaries, where the ventilators must be worked
byth by the hand, if these granaries stand on straddles, so as to
have have their lowest floor at some distance from the ground,
the v the ventilators may be fixed under the lowest floor, be-
tweei tween the straddles, so as to be worked by men standing
onth on the ground without or within the granary. A very
comn commodious and cheap ventilator may be made for small
grana granaries, by constructing a ventilator of the door of the
grans * [granary, which may be easily effected by making a
circu circular screen, of the size of a quarter of a circle, be¬
hind the door; but in order to this, the door should open,
not i not inwards, but outwards, so that when it falls back,
it ni; it may be worked to and fro in the screen, which must
ej be exactly adapted to it in all parts of the circular side
of tl) of the screen, as well as at the top and bottom. But
G R A
707
there must be a stop at about eight or ten inches distance Granate
from the wall, to prevent the door falling farther back, il
and that there may be room for a valve in the screen to ^antleui-;
supply it with air, which will be driven in by the door, f
through a hole made in the wall near the floor, into the
main air-trunk, in which also there should be another
valve over the hole in the wall, to prevent the return of
the air.
GRANATE, or Granite, a species of mineral belong¬
ing to the siliceous genus. See Mineralogy.
GRAND, a term rather French than English, though
used on many occasions in our language. It has the same
import with great, being formed from the Latin grandis.
In this sense we say, the grand-master of an order, as the
grand-master of Malta and of the free-masons ; the grand-
signior and the grand-visier; grandfather, grandmother,
and the like. Amongst the French there were formerly
several officers thus denominated; as grand almoner,grand-
ecuyer, grand chambellan, grand voyer, and the like.
Grand Distress (districtio magna), in English Law, a
writ of distress, so called on account of its extent, which
reaches to all the goods and chattels of the party within
the county.
Grand Gusto, amongst painters, a term used to inti¬
mate that there is something in the picture calculated to
surprise, please, and instruct.
GRANDEE is a term applied to a lord of the first rank
or highest quality. In Spain the name grandees is used
absolutely to denote the great lords of the court, to whom
the king has granted permission to remain covered in his
presence. There are some grandees for life only, who are
made by the king’s saying simply, “ Be covered others
are grandees by descent, and made by the king’s saying,
“ Be covered for thyself and heirs.” The latter are of
course the higher and nobler grade.
GRANDEUR and Sublimity. These terms have a
double import, commonly signifying the quality or circum¬
stance in objects by which the emotions of grandeur and
sublimity are produced, and sometimes also the emotions
themselves.
In treating this subject, it is necessary that the impres¬
sion made on the mind by the magnitude of an object,
abstracting from its other qualities, should be ascertained ;
and because abstraction is a mental operation of some
difficulty, the safest method of judging is, to choose an ob¬
ject which is neither beautiful nor deformed, if such an one
can be found. The plainest that occurs is a huge mass
of rubbish, the ruins perhaps of some extensive building;
or a large heap of stones, such as are collected together
for keeping in memory a battle or other remarkable event.
Such an object, which in miniature would be perfectly
indifferent, makes an impression by its magnitude, and even
appears agreeable. And supposing it large enough to fill
the eye, and prevent the attention from wandering to
other objects, the impression it makes will be so much
the deeper.
But though a plain object of this kind be agreeable, it
is not termed grand ; nor is it entitled to that character,
unless, together with its size, it be possessed of other
qualities which contribute to beauty, such as regularity,
proportion, order, or colour; but, according to the num¬
ber of such qualities combined with magnitude, it will be
more or less grand. Thus St Peter’s church at Rome,
the great pyramid of Egypt, the Alps towering above the
clouds, an arm of the sea, and, above all, a clear and se¬
rene sky, are grand, because, besides their dimensions, they
are beautiful in an eminent degree. On the other hand, an
overgrown whale, having a disagreeable appearance, is by
no means grand. A large building, remarkable for its regu¬
larity and proportions, is grand; and yet a much larger
building, if destitute of regularity, has not the least tincture
708 GRAN
Grandeur, of grandeur. A single regiment in battle-array makes a
grand appearance, which the surrounding crowd' does not,
though perhaps ten times the number; and a regiment
where the men are all in one uniform, and the horses of one
colour, makes a grander appearance, and consequently
strikes more terror, than where there is confusion of co¬
lour and dress. Thus greatness or magnitude is the cir¬
cumstance which distinguishes grandeur from beauty ; in
other words, agreeableness is the genus, of which beauty
and grandeur are species.
The emotion of grandeur, if duly examined, will be found
to furnish additional proof of the truth of our doctrine.
That this emotion is pleasant in a high degree, requires
no other evidence than an appeal to the feelings, produced
by the view of a grand object; and if an emotion of gran¬
deur be pleasant, its cause or object, as already observed,
must infallibly be agreeable in proportion.
The qualities of grandeur and beauty are not more dis¬
tinct than the emotions which these qualities produce in
a spectator. All the various emotions of beauty have one
common character; that of sweetness and gaiety. The
emotion of grandeur has a different character. A large
object that is agreeable, occupies the whole attention, and
swells the heart with a vivid emotion, which, though ex¬
tremely pleasant, is rather serious than gay. And this
affords a good reason for distinguishing in language these
different emotions. The emotions raised by colour, re¬
gularity, proportion, and order, have such a resemblance
to each other, as readily to come under one general term,
the emotion of beauty ; but the emotion of grandeur is so
different from these, that it deserves to have a peculiar
name applied to it.
Though regularity, proportion, order, and colour, con¬
tribute to grandeur as well as to beauty, yet these quali¬
ties are not by any means so essential to the former as to
the latter. To establish this proposition, some preliminary
remarks are necessary. In the first place, the mind, not
being totally occupied with a small object, can give its
attention at the same time to every minute part; but in
a great or extensive object, the mind, being totally occu¬
pied with the capital and striking parts, has no attention
left for those which are little or indifferent. In the next
place, two similar objects appear not to be similar when
viewed at different distances; the similar parts of a very
large object cannot be seen except at different distances;
and for this reason its regularity, and the proportion of
its parts, are in some measure lost to the eye; neither
are the irregularities of a very large object so conspicu¬
ous as those of one which is small. Hence it is that a
large object is not so agreeable by its regularity as a
small object, nor so disagreeable by its irregularities.
These considerations render it evident that grandeur is
satisfied with a less degree of regularity, and of the other
qualities mentioned, than is requisite for beauty. This
may be illustrated by an experiment. Suppose that, ap¬
proaching a small conical hill, we take an accurate survey
of every part, and are sensible of the slightest deviation
from regularity and proportion. If the hill were to be consi¬
derably enlarged, so as to make us less sensible of its regu¬
larity, it would upon that account appear less beautiful. It
would not, however, appear less agreeable, because some
slight emotion of grandeur would come instead of that
which it had lost in beauty. Lastly, suppose the hill en¬
larged to a great mountain ; then the small degree of beauty
which is left would be merged in its grandeur. Hence it
is that a towering hill is delightful, if it have but the slight¬
est resemblance of a cone ; and a chain of mountains is not
less so, though deficient in the accuracy of order and pro¬
portion. We require a small surface to be smooth; but in
an extensive plain, considerable inequalities are overlook¬
ed. In a word, regularity, proportion, order, and colour,
D E U R.
contribute to grandeur as well as to beauty; but with this Gra
remarkable difference, that in passing from small to great
they are not required in the same degree of perfection. '
This remark serves to explain the extreme delight we feel
in viewing the face of nature, when sufficiently enriched
and diversified with objects. The bulk of the objects in a
natural landscape are beautiful, and some of them grand;
a flowing river, a spreading oak, a round hill, an extended
plain, are delightful; and even a rugged rock, or barren
heath, though in themselves disagreeable, contribute by
contrast to the beauty of the whole ; but if to these we
add the verdure of the fields, the mixture of light and
shadow, and the sublime canopy spread over all, it will not
appear wonderful that so extensive a group of splendid
objects should swell the heart to the utmost, and raise the
strongest emotion of grandeur. The spectator becomes
conscious of an enthusiasm which cannot bear confinement,
or the strictness of regularity and order; he loves to range
at large, and is so enchanted with magnificent objects as to
overlook slight beauties or deformities.
The same observation is applicable in some measure to
works of art. In a small building, the slightest irregula¬
rity is disagreeable; but in a magnificent palace, or in a
large Gothic church, irregularities are less regarded. In
an epic poem, we pardon many negligences which wmuld
not be permitted in a sonnet or an epigram. But notwith¬
standing such exceptions, it may justly be laid down as a
rule, that in works of art, order and regularity ought to be
governing principles ; and hence the justice of the observa¬
tion of Longinus, that “ in wmrks of art we have regard to
exact proportion, and in those of nature, to grandeur and
magnificence.”
The same reflections are in a great measure applicable
to sublimity, particularly that, like grandeur, it is a species
of agreeableness ; that a beautiful object placed on an ele¬
vated position appears more agreeable than formerly, and
produces in the spectator a new emotion, termed the emotion
of sublimity; and that the perfection of order, regularity,
and proportion, is less required in objects elevated or placed
at a distance, than in those which are at hand.
But though a grand object is agreeable, we must not
thence infer that a little object is disagreeable; which would
be unfortunate for man, considering that he is surrounded
with so many objects of that description. The same thing
holds true with respect to place. A body placed high is
agreeable; but the same body placed low is not by that
circumstance rendered disagreeable. Littleness and low¬
ness of place are precisely similar in this, that of themselves
they produce neither pleasure nor pain. And in this may
be discovered a peculiar adaptation in fitting the internal
constitution of man to his external circumstances. Were
littleness and lowness of place agreeable, greatness and
elevation could not be so; were littleness and lowness of
place disagreeable, they w ould occasion uninterrupted un¬
easiness.
The difference between great and little with respect to
agreeableness is remarkably felt in a series when we pass
gradually from one extreme to the other. A mental pro¬
gress from the capital to the kingdom, and from that to
Europe, to the whole earth, to the planetary system, to the
universe, is extremely pleasant; the heart swells, and the
mind is dilated at every step. Nor is the returning in an
opposite direction positively painful, though our pleasure
lessens at every step, till it vanish into indifference. Such
a progress may sometimes produce pleasure of a different
sort, arising from our taking a narrower and narrower in¬
spection. The same observation holds good in a progress
upwards and downwards. Ascent is pleasant because it ele¬
vates us: but descent is never painful; on the contrary, it
is for the most part pleasant from a different cause, that it
is according to the order of nature. The fall of a stone
11ron1
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GRANDEUR.
709
leur rom any height is extremely agreeable by its accelerated
* notion. We feel it pleasant to descend from a mountain,
>ecause the descent is natural and easy. Neither is looki¬
ng downwards painful; whilst, on the contrary, looking
[own upon objects forms part of the pleasure of elevation,
cooking down becomes painful only when the object is so
ar below as to create dizziness.
It has been remarked, that the emotions of grandeur and
ublimity are nearly allied; and hence it is, that the one
erm is frequently put for the other. An increasing series
>f numbers, for example, producing an emotion similar to
hat of mounting upwards, is commonly termed an ascend-
ng series ; a series of numbers gradually decreasing, pro-
lucing an emotion similar to that of going downwards, is
commonly termed a descending series. We talk familiarly
)f going up to the capital, and of going down to the coun-
ry; and from a lesser kingdom we talk of going up to a
greater, as in the anabasis of the Greek language, when
me travelled from Greece to Persia. We discover the
;ame mode of expression in the language even of Japan;
md its universality proves that it is the offspring of a na-
ural feeling.
1 This leads us to consider next grandeur and sublimity in
a figurative sense, and as applicable to the fine arts. Hi-
herto these terms have been taken in their proper sense
is applicable to objects of sight only; and it is of import¬
ance to bestow some pains upon this, because, generally
peaking, the figurative sense of a word is derived from its
iroper sense, and particularly so in the present instance,
deauty, in its original signification, is confined to objects
)f sight; but as many other objects, intellectual as well as
noral, raise emotions resembling that of beauty, the re¬
semblance of the effects prompts us to extend the term
ieauty to these objects. The same principle serves equally
;o explain the terms grandeur and sublimity, when employ¬
ed in a figurative sense. Every emotion, from whatever
eause it proceeds, which resembles an emotion of gran¬
deur or elevation, is called by the same name. Thus ge¬
nerosity is said to be an elevated emotion, as well as
great courage ; and that firmness of soul which is superior
to misfortunes obtains the peculiar name of magnanimity.
On the other hand, every emotion which contracts the
nind, and fixes it upon things trivial or of no importance,
s termed low, by its resemblance to an emotion produced
)y a little or low object of sight. Thus an appetite for
trifling amusements is called a low taste. The same terms
ire applied to characters and actions. We talk familiarly
)f an elevated genius, of a great man, and equally so of Id¬
leness of mind. Some actions are great and elevated, and
ithers are little and grovelling. Sentiments, and even ex-
iressions, are characterised in the same manner. An ex¬
pression or sentiment which raises the mind is denomi-
lated great or elevated; and hence the sublime in poetry,
[n such figurative terms, we lose the distinction between
great and elevated in their proper sense; for the resem-
plance is not so entire as to preserve these terms distinct
n their figurative application. And we carry this figure
still further. Elevation, in its proper sense, imports supe-
•iority of place, and lowness inferiority of place; hence
sve say a man of superior talents, of superior rank, of infe¬
rior parts, of inferior taste, and such like. The veneration
tve have for our ancestors, and for the ancients in general,
ipeing similar to the emotion produced by an elevated ob¬
ject of sight, justifies the figurative expression of the an¬
cients being raised above us, or possessing a superior place.
The notes of the gamut, proceeding regularly from the
blunter or grosser sounds to the more acute and piercing, Grandeur,
produce in the hearer a feeling somewhat similar to that
which is produced by mounting upwards; and this gives
occasion to the figurative expressions, a high note, a low note.
Such indeed is the resemblance in feeling between real
and figurative grandeur, that amongst the nations on the
eastern coast of Africa, who are directed purely by nature,
the officers of state are, with respect to rank, distinguished
by the length of the batoon each carries in his hand; and
in Japan, princes and great lords exhibit their rank by the
length and size of their sedan poles. Again, it is a rule in
painting, that figures of a small size are most proper for
grotesque pieces; but that an historical subject generally
requires figures as large as the life, or nearly so. The re¬
semblance of these feelings is in reality so strong, that ele¬
vation in a figurative sense is observed to have the same
effect, even externally, with real elevation.
The resemblance in feeling between real and figurative
grandeur is humorously illustrated by Addison in criticising
English tragedy. “ The ordinary method of making a hero
is to clap a huge plume of feathers upon his head, which
rises so high, that there is often a greater length from his
chin to the top of his head than to the sole of his foot.
One would believe that we thought a great man and a tall
man the same thing. As these superfluous ornaments upon
the head make a great man, a princess generally receives
her grandeur from those additional incumbrances that fall
into her tail. I mean the broad sweeping train that fol¬
lows her in all her motions, and finds constant employment
for a boy who stands behind her to open and spread it to
advantage.” On the same principle, the Scythians, im¬
pressed with the fame of Alexander, were astonished when
they found him a little man.
The gradual progress from small to great is not less re¬
markable in figurative than in real grandeur or elevation.
Every one must have observed the delightful effect of a
number of thoughts or sentiments, artfully disposed like an
ascending series, and making impressions deeper and deep¬
er as they proceed. Such a disposition of members or
clauses in a period is termed a climax.
Within certain limits grandeur and sublimity produce
their strongest effects; which, however, lessen by excess as
well as by defect. This is remarkable in grandeur and su¬
blimity taken in their proper sense. The grandest emo¬
tion which can be excited by a visible object is where the
object can be taken in at one view; but if so immense as
to be comprehended only in parts, it tends rather to dis¬
tract than to satisfy the mind.1 In like manner, the strong¬
est emotion produced by elevation is where the object is
seen distinctly; a greater elevation lessens in appearance
the object, till it vanishes out of sight with its pleasant emo¬
tions. The same thing is equally remarkable in figurative
grandeur and elevation. Sentiments may be so strained as
to become obscure, or to exceed the capacity of the human
mind; but against such license of imagination every good
writer will be upon his guard ; and it is therefore of im¬
portance to observe, that even the true sublime may be
carried beyond that pitch which produces the strongest
impression. We are undoubtedly susceptible of a greater
elevation than can be inspired by human actions the most
heroic and magnanimous: this is evident fi'om the feelings
produced by Milton’s description of superior beings: yet
every man must be sensible of a more constant and agree¬
able elevation when the history of his own species is the
subject. He enjoys an elevation equal to that of the great¬
est hero, of an Alexander or a Caesar, of a Brutus or an
1 It is justly observed by Addison, that perhaps a man would have been more astonished with the majestic air which appeared in
one of Lysippus’s statues of Alexander, though no bigger than the life, than he might have been with Mount Athos had it been
cut into the figure of the hero, according to the proposal of Phidias, with a river in one hand and a city in the other.
G R A
• Epaminondas ; he accompanies these heroes in their most
sublime sentiments and hazardous exploits, with a magna¬
nimity equal to theirs; and he finds it no stretch to pre¬
serve the same tone of mind for hours together without
sinking. The case is not the same in describing the ac¬
tions or qualities of superior beings. The reader’s imagi¬
nation cannot keep pace with that of the poet; the mind,
unable to support itself in a strained elevation, falls as from
a height, and the fall is immoderate like the elevation; or
w'here that effect is not felt, it must be prevented by some
obscurity in the conception, which frequently attends the
descriptions of unknown objects. A mind unable to raise
itself to the full contemplation of the Supreme Being self-
existent and eternal, or to support itself in a strained ele¬
vation, finds itself more at ease in using the intercession of
some saint whose piety and penances whilst on earth are
supposed to have rendered him a favourite in heaven; and
hence the part assigned to tutelary saints, such as St Fran¬
cis and St Dominic, amongst the Roman Catholics.
Objects of sight which are not remarkably great nor
elevated scarcely raise any emotion of grandeur or subli¬
mity ; and the same things hold respecting other objects;
for we often find the mind roused and animated, without
being carried to that height. This difference may be dis¬
cerned in many sorts of music, as well as in some musical
instruments. A kettle-drum rouses, and a hautboy is ani¬
mating ; but neither of them inspires an emotion of subli¬
mity. Revenge animates the mind in a considerable de¬
gree ; but it never produces an emotion which can be term¬
ed grand or sublime ; and perhaps no disagreeable passion
ever has that effect.
No desire is more universal than that of being exalted
and honoured; and upon this account chiefly are we am¬
bitious of power, riches, titles, fame, which would suddenly
lose their relish did they not elevate us above others, and
command submission and deference; indeed it may be
thought that our attachment to things grand and lofty pro¬
ceeds from their connection with our favourite passion.
This connection has undoubtedly its effect; but that the
preference given to things grand and lofty must have a
deeper root in human nature, will appear from considering
that many bestow their time upon low and trifling amuse¬
ments, without having the least tincture of such a noble
passion; yet these very persons talk the same language
with the rest of mankind, and prefer the more elevated
pleasures; they acknowledge a more refined taste, and are
ashamed of their own as low and grovelling. This senti¬
ment, constant and universal, must be the work of nature ;
and it plainly indicates an original attachment in human
nature to every object which tends to elevate the mind.
Some men may have a greater relish for an object not of the
highest rank; but they are conscious of the preference
given by mankind in general to things grand and sublime,
and they are sensible that their own peculiar taste ought to
yield to the general inclination.
What is said above suggests a rule for attaining the su¬
blime in such works of art as are susceptible of it; and that
is, to present those parts or circumstances only which make
the greatest figure, keeping out of view every thing low or
trivial; for the mind, elevated by an important object, can¬
not, without reluctance, be forced down to bestow any
share of its attention upon trifles. Such a judicious selection
of capital circumstances is by an eminent critic styled
grandeur of manner. In none of the fine arts is there so
great scope for that rule as in poetry, which thus enjoys a
remarkable power of bestowing upon objects and events an
air of grandeur. When we are spectators, every minute
object presents itself in its order ; but in describing at se¬
cond hand, these are laid aside, and the capital objects are
brought close together. A judicious taste in thus selecting
the most interesting incidents, to give them an united force,
G R A
accounts for a fact which may appear surprising ; namely, Gran™,
that we are more moved by spirited narrative at second ^
hand, than by being spectators of the event itself, in all its Granger,
circumstances. ^Yv
There is another rule which chiefly regards the sublime,
though it is applicable to every sort of literary performance
intended for amusement; namely, to avoid as much as pos¬
sible abstract and general terms. Such terms, like mathe¬
matical signs, are contrived to express our thoughts in a
concise manner; but images, which are the life of poetry,
cannot be raised in any perfection except by introducing
particular objects. General terms, which comprehend a
number of individuals, must however be excepted from
this rule. Our kindred, our clan, our country, and words
of the like import, though they scarcely raise any distinct
image, have a wonderful power over the passions; the
greatness of the complex object overbalances the obscurity
of the image ; and the associations, of which it is the mne¬
monic type, fill the mind with exalted emotions.
Grandeur being an extremely vivid emotion, is not rea¬
dily produced in perfection, except by reiterated impres¬
sions. The effect of a single impression can be but mo¬
mentary ; and if one feel suddenly something like a swel¬
ling or exaltation of mind, the emotion vanishes as soon
as felt. Single thoughts or sentiments are often cited as
examples of the sublime; but their effect is far inferior to
that of a grand subject displayed in its capital parts.
The straining of an elevated subject beyond due bounds,
or beyond the reach of ordinary conception, is not a vice
so frequent as to require the correction of criticism. But
the false sublime is a rock which writers of more fire than
judgmentcommonly split upon. One species of false sublime,
known by the name of bombast, is common amongst wri¬
ters of a mean genius ; it is a serious endeavour, by strain¬
ed description, to exalt a low or familiar subject, which, in¬
stead of becoming sublime, fails nnt to become ridiculous.
The mind, indeed, under the influence of some animating
passions, is extremely prone to magnify its objects beyond na¬
tural bounds ; but such hyperbolical description has its limits,
and when carried beyond the impulse of the propensity, it
degenerates into burlesque. Another species of false su¬
blime, which is still more faulty than bombast, is that of for¬
cing elevation by introducing imaginary beings without pre¬
serving any propriety in their actions; as if it were lawful
to ascribe every extravagance and inconsistency to beings
of the poet’s creation. In a word, exaggeration of every
kind, with a view to produce a great effect, is not only con¬
trary to the principles of good taste, but becomes disgust¬
ing or ludicrous, very probably both.
GRANGE, an ancient term for a barn or place in which
to lay up and thrash corn. The word is formed from
the Latin granea or granum, grain or corn. Hence also
granger or grangier, a grange-keeper or farmer. Grange
is also used, in a more extensive sense, to signify a whole
farm, with all the appendages of stables for horses, stalls
for cattle, and the like.
GRANGER, James, a well-known biographer, who has
himself been left without any memorial. The time and
place of his birth, and the condition of his parents, are
equally unknown. He studied, however, at Christ Church,
Oxford, which he probably left without taking a degree;
and having entered into holy orders, was presented to the
vicarage of Shiplake in Oxfordshire, which appears to
have been his only preferment. In the dedication of his
Biographical Dictionary, which was published in 1769, he in¬
forms us that his name and person were at that time known
to few persons, as he had the good fortune to retire early
to independence, obscurity, and contentment. In 1772 he
published a sermon, entitled An Apology for the Brute Cre¬
ation, in which he strongly censured cruelty to animals; but
which, owing to the mention made in it of horses and dogs,
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711
inif seems to have excited disgust amongst the purists of that
time. In 1773 he presented to the public another sermon
• on the Nature and Extent of Industry, which, notwith-
"^standing a strange dedication, was more favourably re¬
ceived. But his principal work, indeed that by which alone
he is now known, is his Biographical History of England,
from the time of Egbert the Great to the Revolution, a
production of very considerable merit, which occupied him
for many years, and of which he lived to see two editions
sold. In this work he has only given biographies of those
versons of whom some engraved portrait had been exe¬
cuted ; and this circumstance, joined to the success which
t met with, seems to have had the effect contemplated
ly the author, namely, to create a taste for collections of
portraits. The Biographical History was first published in
1769, in four thin vols. quarto; but the second and sub¬
sequent editions have been published in octavo. On the
[4th April 1776, whilst at the communion table in the act
)f administering the sacrament, Granger was seized with
m apoplectic fit, and, notwithstanding he had the benefit
)f immediate medical assistance, died next morning. This
iffecting circumstance is alluded to in the following verses,
fvritten by a friend:
More happy end what saint e’er knew ?
To whom like mercy shown ?
His Saviour’s death in rapturous view,
And unperceived his own.
GRANI, in our ancient writers, moustaches or whiskers
nf a beard. The word seems to have been formed from
!he ancient British or Irish greann, a beard. It is stated
i s a reason why the cup is refused to the laity, Quia bar-
\<ati, et prolixos habent granos, dum poculum inter epulas
fUmunt, prius liquore pilos inficiunt, quam ori infundunt.
GRANICUS, a small river near the Hellespont, in Asia
Idinor, remarkable for the first victory gained by Alexan-
er the Great over the armies of Darius.
GRANITE, one of the primitive rocks. See Minera¬
logy.
GRANITILLO, or Granitel, a name given by some
pineralogists to a particular species or variety of granite,
khich sometimes contains hornblende.
GRANIVOROUS, an appellation given to animals
dwell feed on corn or seeds, and which are principally of
he bird kind.
i GRANT, dn Law, a conveyance in writing of such
kings,as cannot pass or be conveyed by word only.
Grant, Francis, an eminent Scottish lawyer and judge,
nown in the latter capacity under the title of Lord Cul-
m, was descended from a younger branch of the family
f the Grants of Grant, and was born about the year 1660.
Wien he commenced advocate, he made a distinguished
gure at the Revolution, by opposing the opinions of the old
iwyers, who warmly maintained the inability of the conven-
on of estates to make any disposition of the crown. The
bilities which he discovered in favour of the Revolution
btroduced him to extensive practice. When the union
etween the two kingdoms was in agitation, Queen Anne
reated him a baronet, with the view of securing his inte-
est in favour of that measure ; and she soon afterwards
Appointed him a judge, or one of the Lords of Session. He
lied on the 16th March 1726. His character is drawn at
(reat length, in the style of an eloge, in the Biographia
aritannica, from which we shall only extract the follow¬
ing notice of his literary labours : “ He was so true a
bver of learning, and was so much addicted to his studies,
hat, notwithstanding the multiplicity of his business while
t the bar, and his great attention to his charge when a
(idge, he nevertheless found time to write various trea-
:ses on very different and important subjects ; some po-
Itical, which were remarkably well timed, and highly ser-
iceable to the government; others of a most extensive
Grape-
shot.
nature, such as his essays on law, religion, and education, Grantham
which were dedicated to George II. when prince of Wales,
by whose command his then secretary, Mr Samuel Moly-
neaux, wrote him a letter of thanks, in which were many
gracious expressions, as well in relation to the piece as to
its author. He composed, besides these, many discourses
on literary subjects, for the exercise of his own thoughts,
and for the better discovery of truth ; which went no far¬
ther than his own closet, and, from a principle of modesty,
were not communicated even to his most intimate friends.”
The Essays above mentioned were published at Edin¬
burgh, in one volume octavo, in 1715.
GRANTHAM, a borough-town of the county of Lin¬
coln, in the liberties of Grantham Soke, and parts of Kes-
teven. It is on the great north road, distant from Lon¬
don 112 miles, on the river Witham, in a healthy and fer¬
tile district. It is a corporate town, with a mayor and
alderman, and returns two members to parliament. The
church is a fine object, with a tower, one of the loftiest in
the kingdom, being 246 feet in height. There are two
charity schools in the town, at one of which Sir Isaac
Newton received his first lessons. It is a place of very lit¬
tle trade, but has a good market on Saturday. The popu¬
lation amounted in 1801 to 3301, in 1811 to 3646, in 1821
to 4148, and in 1831 to 4590.
GRANVILLE, George, Lord Lansdowne, was de¬
scended from a very ancient family, derived from Rollo
the first duke of Normandy. At the age of eleven he
was sent to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he re¬
mained five years; but at thirteen he was admitted to the
degree of master of arts, having, before he w'as twelve,
spoken a copy of verses of his own composition before
the Duchess of York, at his college, when she paid a vi¬
sit to the University of Cambridge. In 1696 his comedy
called the She-Gallants was acted at the theatre-royal in
Lincoln’s-inn Fields, as his tragedy called Heroic Love was
in the year 1698. In 1702 he translated into English the
second Olynthiac of Demosthenes. He was member for
the county of Cornwall in the parliament which met in
1710; and afterwards became secretary of war, comptrol¬
ler of the household, then treasurer, and a member of the
privy council. In the year following he was created Ba¬
ron Lansdowne. On the accession of King George I. in
1714, he was removed from the office of treasurer; and
the next year he entered his protest against the bills for
attainting Lord Bolingbroke and the Duke of Ormond.
He entered deeply into the scheme for raising an insurrec¬
tion in the west of England; and being seized as a sus¬
pected person, was committed to the Tower, where he
continued two years. In 1719 he delivered a speech in
the House of Lords against the bill to prevent occasional
conformity. In 1722 he withdrew to France, and con¬
tinued abroad nearly ten years. At his return in 1732 he
published a fine edition of his works in two vols. quarto,
and died in 1735, leaving no male issue.
Granville, a sea-port town of France, in Lower Nor¬
mandy, partly situated on a rock and partly on a plain.
Long. 1. 32. W. Lat. 48. 50. N.
GRANULATED, something which has undergone gra¬
nulation, or has been reduced to grains.
GRANULATION, in Chemistry, an operation by
which metallic substances are reduced into small grains,
for the purpose of facilitating their combination with other
substances.
GRAPE, the fruit of the vine. See Vine and Wine.
GnAPE-Shot, in artillery, is a combination of small shot,
put into a thick canvass bag, and corded strongly together,
so as to form a kind of cylinder, the diameter of which is
equal to that of the ball adapted to the cannon. The num¬
ber of shot in a bag varies according to the service or size
of the guns. In the naval service, for instance, nine is al-
Grapho- ways the number; but by land it is increased to any num-
mctcr [jg,. or s;ze from an ounce and a quarter in weight to three
Grathn or ^our Poun^s> the naval service the bottoms and pins
v are made of iron, whereas those used by land are of wood.
GRAPHOMETER, a mathematical instrument, other¬
wise called a semicircle, the use of which is to observe
any angle, the vertex of which is at the centre of the
instrument in any plane (though it is most commonly ho¬
rizontal, or nearly so), and to find how many degrees it
contains.
GRAPNEL, or Grapling, a sort of small anchor, fit¬
ted with four or five flukes or claws, and commonly used
to ride a boat or other small vessel.
Fire-Grappling, an instrument nearly resembling the
former, but differing in the construction of its flukes,
which are furnished with strong barbs at their points.
These machines are usually fixed on the yard-arms of a
ship, in order to grapple an adversary whom it is intended
to board. '
GRASS, in Botany, a plant having simple leaves, a stem
generally jointed and tubular, a husky calyx called gluma,
and the seed single.
GRASSE, La, an arrondissement of the department
of the Var, in France, extending over 506 square miles.
It is divided into seven cantons, and sixty-three communes,
and contains 56,818 inhabitants. The capital is a city of
the same name, situated on the declivity of a hill, in a dis¬
trict which abounds in citrons, oranges, lemons, figs, and
pomegranates, and in flowers used by the perfumers. It
contains 2000 houses, and 12,620 inhabitants, who are
much occupied in preparing liqueurs, perfumery, scented
soaps, and confectionery. Near it much marble and ala¬
baster is found. Long. 6. 50. 40. E. Lat. 43. 39. 19. N.
GRATES for Fires are composed of ribs of iron
placed at small distances from one another, so that the air
may have sufficient access to the fuel, and the accumula¬
tion of the ashes, which would choke the fire, may be pre¬
vented. Grates seem peculiarly adapted to the use of pit-
coal, which requires a greater quantity of air to make it
burn freely than other kinds of fuel.
The hearths of the Britons seem to have been fixed in
the centre of their halls, as is yet practised in some parts
of Scotland, where the fire is nearly in the middle of the
house, and the family all sit around it. Their fire-place
was perhaps nothing more than a large stone, depressed
a little below the level of the ground, and thereby adapt¬
ed to receive the ashes. About a century ago, the fire¬
place was on the floor of the room, with the addition of
a bank or hob of clay. But amongst gentlemen this was
changed for a portable fire-pan, raised upon low support¬
ers, and fitted with a circular grating of bars.
GRATIAN, the son of Valentinian the First by his
first wife, was declared Augustus by his father at the city
of Amiens in 365, and succeeded him in 367. This prince
was equally extolled for his wit, eloquence, modesty, chas¬
tity, and zeal against heretics. He associated Theodo¬
sius with him in the empire, and advanced the poet Au-
sonius to the consulate. He made a great slaughter of
the Germans near Strasburg; and was hence surnamed
Alemannicus. Fie was the first emperor who refused the
title of Pontifex Maximus, upon the score of its being a
pagan dignity. He was assassinated by Andragathius in
375, in the twenty-fourth year of his age.
Gratian, a famous Benedictine monk of the twelfth
century, was born at Chiusi in Tuscany. He employed
above twenty-four years in composing a work entitled
Decretum, vel Concordantia Discordantium Canonum, be¬
cause he there endeavoured to reconcile the canons which
seemed contradictory to each other. This work was first
printed at Mentz in 1472. But as the learned Benedic¬
tine has frequently fallen into mistakes, both in regard to
the canons and the fathers, and has often cited false de- Grat
cretals, several authors have endeavoured to correct his ll”^
errors; particularly Anthony Augustin, in his excellent Grattan
work entitled De Emendatione Gratiani. To the decre- ''■'‘rv
tals of Gratian the popes principally owed the great au¬
thority which they exercised in the thirteenth and suc¬
ceeding centuries.
GRATINGS, in a ship, are small edges of sawed plank,
framed one into another like a lattice or prison grate,
placed on the upper deck, between the main-mast and
fore-mast, and serving as- a defence in a close fight, as
well as contributing to the convenience of the ship’s com¬
pany.
GRATITUDE, a virtue disposing the mind to an in¬
ward sense and outward acknowledgment of benefits re¬
ceived. See Moral Philosophy.
GRATIUS, Faliscus, a Roman poet, the contemporary
of Ovid, and from his name probably a slave or freedman,
but respecting whose life we have no particulars. A poem
of his on hunting has been preserved, entitled Cynegeti-
con, in 540 hexameters; but its conclusion has been lost.
The language is pure, and worthy of the age in which he
lived, though in some passages he is obscure. Gratius
seems to have imitated the work of Xenophon on the
same subject, though it also contains much which can be
found nowhere else. (Burmann, Poet. Lat. Min. tom. i.;
Wernsdorf, Poet. Lat. Min. tom. i., in the preface “ De
Gratio et Nemesiano et utriusque Cynegetico Procemium.’’
Gratius Faliscus, Cynegeticon, &c. Mitau, 1775.)
GRATTAN, FIenry, an illustrious Irish orator and
statesman, was born at Dublin in the year 1750. His fa¬
ther followed the profession of barrister, and, though not
remarkable for shining qualities, was industrious and pru¬
dent. Being a Protestant, the corporation of Dublin ex¬
tended to him its patronage, in consequence of which he
was elected as representative of the city in parliament, and
made recorder. After passing through the usual course of
scholastic discipline, which he did with much reputation,
young Grattan was entered as a fellow-commoner in Trini¬
ty College, Dublin. Here he also greatly distinguished
himself amongst contemporaries who afterwards became
the chief ornaments of the senate and the bar. His origi¬
nal intention was to have studied for a fellowship, but the
persuasions of his relatives induced him to remove to Eng¬
land, where he entered himself as a student of the Middle
Temple. When the requisite number of terms had expired,
he returned to his native country, and in the year 1772 was
called to the Irish bar. His practice seems to have been
small; but that his talents had already begun to make an
impression, is proved by the fact, that in 1775 he was
brought into the Irish parliament under the auspices of
Lord Charlemont. From this period the life of Grattan be¬
came a portion, and a very conspicuous one, of the history
of his country. He joined the ranks of the opposition,
and the accession of strength which it thereby acquir¬
ed soon became apparent. The effect of his command¬
ing eloquence was not confined to those who listened to
it in the house. He infused the patriotic spirit, with
which he was himself actuated, into the country at large.
It is allowed, indeed, that the volunteer bands who had
begun to assemble in various parts of Ireland, acquired
new confidence from the bold, uncompromising tone as¬
sumed by the young speaker ; and in the course of a few
years, their ranks swelled to the number of eighty thou¬
sand men, armed, disciplined, and prepared for the field.
The menacing attitude which Ireland assumed at this cri¬
tical period, and the boldness with which the members of
the Irish opposition, particularly Grattan, contested the
supremacy of the sister kingdom, induced the British le¬
gislature, in the year 1782, to repeal the statute of the 6th
of George I. By this law it had been enacted that the
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G R A
frown of Ireland should be inseparably annexed to that of
Treat Britain; that Ireland should be bound by British acts
/parliament, if named therein; that the Irish House of
lords should have no appellate jurisdiction ; and that the’
list appeal, in all cases of law and equity, should lie to the
ritish House of Peers. For Grattan’s exertions in getting
nis statute rescinded, his country was profuse in laudatory
iddresses to him ; and the parliament rewarded his ser-
nces by a grant of L.50,000. A more magnificent donation
"as intended, but Grattan declined to accept it. That be-
uowed was large enough to inspire envy and provoke mis-
Kinstruction. The following sessions of parliament were
sonny; and the young patriot had to contend, amongst
thers, with Mr Flood, an antagonist formidable alike by
Its acknowledged talents and the unscrupulous virulence
fhis attacks. The latter maintained that the act of re-
pal did not involve a renunciation of the British claims,
i;id that therefore they might be resumed and exercised
it any time. This sophistry found supporters in both
[buses of parliament, and the reputation of Grattan ac-
aally began to wane. But the energy and success with
thich he opposed Mr Ord’s celebrated propositions,
■ought forward in 1785, fully re-established his fame,
ne of these was, that the Irish legislature should, from
me to time, adopt and re-enact such statutes of the Bri-
sh parliament as related to the regulation of commerce,
n opposing this proposal Grattan put forth all his powers,
itad from this period he began to be acknowledged as the
nader of the country party, and as the head of the Irish
l/hig Club. The members of this association were reci-
irocally bound not to accept office under any adminis-
•ation which had not for its avowed principle the conced-
ig of certain popular measures. These consisted of a bill
;) make the great officers of the crown responsible for
teir proceedings ; a bill to prevent revenue officers from
oting at elections ; and a place and pension bill. Several
ther important subjects engaged the attention of Grat-
m at this period; and'amongst these was the establish-
icnt of a provision for the clergy independently of tithes,
le also brought in a bill to encourage the improvement
f barren lands, by exempting reclaimed wastes from pay¬
ing ecclesiastical dues during the space of seven years,
iut both these measures were rejected by the legislature,
rincipally through the influence of the established church.
LAbout the same period Grattan strenuously advocated
extension of civil rights to his Boman Catholic country-
icn. That a Protestant statesman should exert himself
i behalf of those who professed a religious creed different
•om his own, was, at the time when Catholic emancipa-
| on was at length conceded by the British parliament, a
latter of such frequent occurrence, that no personal claim
i distinction could be raised upon that ground. To en-
srtain such sentiments was not considered as sufficient to
abject the person entertaining them to public suspicion as
ne infected with pernicious opinions. But during the
arly career of Grattan, the subject was viewed in another
spect, and through a different medium. In Ireland, whilst
he heads of the Protestant church, with the majority of the
’rotestants, were arrayed in opposition to any concession
|o the Catholics, in England the tide of vulgar prejudice
1 an so strongly in the same direction, that a great civil con-
ulsion had nearly arisen out of it. When these facts and
ircumstances are taken into consideration, the conduct of
Grattan will appear in its true light, as that of a wise
talesman, and a fearless patriot. His principal object
ras to obtain the elective franchise for the Catholics; but
I he administration of that day indignantly rejected the
’ >rayer of their petitions.
On the arrival of Earl Fitzwilliam, as lord-lieutenant, in
| .795, Mr Grattan attached himself to that highly popular
tobleman, and under his auspices originated many plans
I VOL. X.
G R A
713
which had for their object to promote the peace and pros- Grattan,
perity of his native land. But the recall of his lordship put
a stop to all amelioration, and at the same time generated
universal discontent, which was increased by the creation of
new sinecures and the lavish profusion of titles. The con¬
sequences were memorable and instructive. The society
of United Irishmen, whose ostensible object was reform,
but who really aimed at the independence of Ireland, ac¬
quired new courage from these dissensions, and some even
proposed to establish a republic in that country. The tri¬
umph of the French Revolution had no doubt inspired these
daring projectors with hopes of success. A large portion
of the people adopted their principles ; military associations
were formed, and numbers disciplined and armed; whilst
an intercourse was opened with France, by which succours
and assistance were liberally promised. From the com¬
mencement of the rebellion which ensued, Mr Grattan
advised measures of conciliation ; and when he saw that
there was no hope of stemming the general movement, he
withdrew from parliament, and retired to his country resi¬
dence.
But the grand project of Mr Pitt for effecting a union
between Great Britain and Ireland summoned him from his
retirement. He obtained a seat in parliament for the ex¬
press purpose of opposing that measure, which, he main¬
tained, would prove fatal to the best interests of Ireland.
Its success did not, however, prevent him from accepting a
seat in the imperial parliament, and there employing his
talents and eloquence for the benefit of both countries. He
was chosen, in 1805, to represent the small borough of Mal-
ton ; and in the year following he was returned as one of the
members for Dublin. Throughout the remainder of his
career, his public conduct continued to evince the purest
patriotism and the most undeviating consistency, illustrat¬
ed by an eloquence fraught with the finest inspirations of
genius and liberty. Notwithstanding the uniform and ve¬
hement opposition of the corporation of the city which he
represented, he continued to advocate the Catholic claims
with equal zeal and ability. Accordingly, towards the close
of his life, we find him complying with an unanimous re¬
quisition on the part of the Catholics of Ireland, to pre¬
sent their petition to the British parliament, and to give it
his support. Some of his friends represented the fulfilment
of this duty as incompatible wfith his health, which had now
begun to decline; but he nobly replied, that “ he would
be happy to die in the discharge of his duty.” This event
did actually take place ; for he expired on the 14th of May
1820, soon after his arrival in London; and his remains
were interred in Westminster Abbey.
It is comparatively easy for posterity to judge for them¬
selves of the moral and political qualities of a statesman’s
character, because these can be dispassionately determin¬
ed from the information afforded by history as to the course
of conduct which he had pursued, and the measures which
he had supported. If Mr Grattan be thus estimated, he
must ever be accounted one of the most ardent, consis¬
tent, and patriotic of modern statesmen. Viewing him as
an orator, we can only judge of his excellence by the re¬
port of contemporaries, who but rarely agree in such mat¬
ters. We are informed that he had to contend with an
indifferent voice, which was thin, and, considered simply
as an organ of sound, unequal to the expression of impas¬
sioned feelings. His action, too, was seldom elegant or
graceful, but it possessed a far higher character; it was
forcible and energetic. Animation and ardour predomi¬
nated in his manner ; and his pronunciation was distinct
and articulate. These are the qualities which are calcu¬
lated most powerfully to impress a mixed assembly; and
the effects which he accordingly produced on several oc¬
casions were not surpassed by those of any orator of mo¬
dern times. “ With much of national peculiarity, but
4 x
714
G R A
Grattan, chiefly in the manner,” says a very able writer;1 “ with
much, too, of individual mannerism, his eloquence is, be¬
yond all doubt, of a very high order. Perhaps, after mak¬
ing every deduction for obvious defects, he may even be ac¬
counted an orator of the first class. For he possesses an
originality, and a force, rising far above any excellencies
of mere composition. Fervid, vehement thoughts, cloth¬
ed in language singularly pointed and terse ; an extraor¬
dinary power of invective, so remarkable indeed, that he
may be ranked among the greatest masters of the sarcas¬
tic style; and, above all, and it is the distinguishing cha¬
racter of his oratory, a copious stream of the most saga¬
cious and original observations, or the most acute and
close arguments, flowing, though not continuous and un¬
broken, yet with an ease the more surprising, because
they almost all are in the shape of epigrams;—these are
the high and rare merits which strike the reader of Mr
Grattan s speeches, and must have produced a still deeper
impression upon those who heard him in his prime.”—“ He
had deep, and warm, and generous feelings, and, when
roused to enthusiasm, they sometimes found vent in sim¬
ple language ; but his accustomed style of epigram is far
more prejudicial to the expression of passion than to the
conduct of an argument; and accordingly, his declama¬
tion was by no means equal to his reasoning, if we except
the vituperative parts of it, which were among the finest
of all his performances. He had a lively and playful
fancy, which he seldom permitted to break loose ; and his
habits of labour were such that he abounded in all the
information, ancient and recent, which his subject requir¬
ed, and could finish his composition with a degree of care
seldom bestowed upon speeches in modern times. Final¬
ly, he was a person of undaunted spirit, and always rose
with the difficulties of his situation. He was ready, be¬
yond any man, perhaps, who ever laboured his speeches
so habitually. No one ever took him off his guard. Who¬
ever dreamt that he had caught him unawares, was spee¬
dily roused to a bitter sense of his mistake ; and it is a
remarkable circumstance, that, of all his speeches now
preserved, the two most striking in point of execution are
those personal attacks upon Mr Flood and Mr Corry,
which, from the nature of the occasions that called them
forth, must, of necessity, have been the production of the
moment. The epigrammatic form in which he delighted
to throw all his ideas, and the diction adapted to it, had
become so habitual to him, that, upon such emergencies,
they obeyed his call with the readiness of a natural style;
and he could thus pour forth his indignation in antithesis
and point, as easily as the bulk of mankind, when strong¬
ly excited, give vent to their feelings in the sort of lan¬
guage which, from this circumstance, we are accustomed
to term the eloquence of nature or of passion.
“ In the more glaring defects of what has been called
the Irish School of Orators, he certainly did not abound.
Extravagance of passion; strained pictures of feeling;
exuberance of metaphor, and of forced metaphor; and,
worse than all, excess of passion expressed by unnatural
and far-fetched imagery, in language quite wide of nature,
and often wholly incorrect;—from these characteristic
vices of his country’s fanciful and ingenious and ready
orators, he was exempted beyond all his contemporaries,
by the chastening effects of classical discipline. Occa¬
sionally, indeed, they do break out in his compositions ;
but, generally speaking, it is rather in the style than in
the ideas that he departs from nature ; or if in the ideas,
it is in his love of point, rather than in his proneness to
metaphor. In one great quality he not only stands single
among his countrymen, but may be pronounced eminent-'
G R A
ly superior to our own greatest orators ; and it is that in
which all modern compositions, those of Dante and per i
haps of Milton alone excepted, fall so far short of the an C
cient, and especially the Greek exemplars ; we mean the Sv
dignified abstemiousness, which selects one leading and
effective idea, suddenly presents it in a few words, and
relies upon its producing the impression desired, without
saying all that can be said, and, as it were, running dawn
the topic. In Mr Grattan’s speeches we constantly meet
with opinions delivered, or illustrations flung out, in a
single sentence, or limb of a sentence, and never a^ain
recurred to, although the opinion may have been so saga¬
cious, and the illustration so happy, that a copious mo¬
dern, or even an ancient of the school of Cicero, would
have worked the one into a dissertation, and the other
into an allegory. This is a merit of the very highest or-
der, subject to the remarks already made upon the diffi¬
culty of making things thus lightly touched at once per¬
ceived by an audience, and the aggravation of that diffi¬
culty by the obscurity incident to the epigrammatic style.”
Mr Grattan’s speeches were collected and published by
his son, at London, in 1822, in 4 vols. 8vo. •
GKAIZ, a circle of the Austrian province of Steyer-
mark. It extends over 2134 square miles, and contains
six cities, thirty market-towns, 976 villages, with 56,362
houses, and 286,442 inhabitants. The capital, of the same
name, is also the capital of the province. It stands on the
river Mur, in a valley of great fertility and beauty. It is
foi tified, and contains 2621 houses ; but the greater num¬
ber of them are in the suburbs. The inhabitants are now
about 40,000, having rapidly increased within the last
twenty years. There are several religious houses, many
churches and chapels, and a lyceum, with twenty-six pro¬
fessors of the various branches of science, a library of
70,000 volumes, and an observatory. There are manufac¬
tures of silk and cotton goods, and of fine articles in steel
and iron, as well as of paper and hats. Long. 15.20. 40. E
Lat. 47. 49. N.
GRAUDENZ, a city of the province of West Prussia,
and government of Dantzic. It is strongly fortified, and
stands on the Vistula, where there is a bridge of boats.
It contains 575 houses, and, including the military in the
citadel, 75/2 inhabitants. It has establishments of various
kinds of a charitable nature and for education, and some
trade in brewing, in distilling, and in corn. Long. 18. 33.
25. E. Lat. 33. 27. 30. N.
GRAUNT, John, the author of Observations on the
Bills of Mortality, and the founder of Political Arithmetic,
was born at London on the 24th of April 1620, bred up in
all the strictness of puritan principles, and, being designed
for trade, received no more education than was barely neces¬
sary for that purpose. At an early age he was put as appren¬
tice to a haberdasher in the city, whose trade he afterwards
followed ; and when he entered into business on his own ac¬
count, he gained the esteem and confidence of his fellow-
citizens, passed with reputation through all the offices of
his ward, and w as first captain and then major of the train¬
ed bands. But his genius at length prompted Rim to seek
distinctions of a higher kind, and enabled him to overcome
all the disadvantages of a confined education, to form a new
and noble design, and to execute it with a degree of ability
equal to the sagacity he had displayed in forming it. It
is not known at what precise time he first began to collect
and digest the Bills of Mortality; but it appears, from his
own statement, that he had directed his attention to the
subject several years before he had any design of publish¬
ing the discoveries which rewarded his researches. His
book, entitled Observations on the Bills of Mortality, was
1 Edinburgh Review, vol. xxxviii. p. 58.
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G R A
ublished in 1661, 4to, and met with so favourable a re-
eption that a second edition was called for the succeeding
ear, and others followed. Immediately after its publica-
on, Louis XIV., by a royal ordonnance, provided that a
' lore exact register of births and burials should be kept in
’aris; and Charles II. conceived so high an opinion of his
bilities, that, at the institution of the Royal Society, he
ecommended Graunt to the choice of the members, with
iliis additional charge, that if they found any more such
-adesmen, they should be sure to admit them. Graunt
ppears to have changed his religion, and become Roman
latholic, some time before his death, which took place on
ie 18th of April 1674. He left his papers in charge to
ir William Petty, who had all along befriended him, and
rho took care to adjust and insert them in a fifth edition of
is work published in 1676, 8vo. The observations of
Iraunt may be considered as having formed the elements
f that useful science afterwards styled Political Arithme-
ic, which, therefore, he is entitled to the honour of having
junded ; and whatever merit may be ascribed to Sir Wil-
am Petty, Mr Daniel King, Dr Davenant, and others,
here can be no doubt that the Observations on the Bills
f Mortality served as the model, if not as the basis, of all
iheir investigations. (a.)
GRAVE, in Grammar, a species of accent opposed to
cute. The grave accent is expressed thus('); and shows
hat the voice is to be depressed, and the syllable over
vhich it is placed to be pronounced in a low deep tone.
Grave, in Music, is applied to a sound which is in a
ow or deep tone. The thicker the chord or string, the
raver the tone or note will be, and the smaller the more
cute. Notes are supposed to be grave in proportion as
he vibrations of the chord are less frequent.
: Grave, in the Italian music, serves to denote the slow-
st movement.
Grave is also used to signify a tomb, in which a per-
lon defunct is interred. Graves, amongst the Jews, were
generally without the city, though we meet with instances
»f their interring the dead in towns. Frequent mention is
nade of graves upon mountains, in highways, in gardens,
md even in private houses ; so that nothing on this head
:;eems to have been fixed by any invariable usage. The
,iame thing may be observed with respect to the Greeks,
ifhe Thebans had a law that every person who built a
jiouse should provide a burial ground. Men who haddis-
anguished themselves were frequently buried in the pub¬
ic forum. The most general custom, however, was to
bury without the city, chiefly by the side of the highway.
The Romans were forbidden by the law of the Twelve
fables to bury or burn the dead in the city ; but some, we
ind, had their sepulchres in Rome, though they paid a
fine for this indulgence.
i GRAVER, in the art of engraving, a tool by which all
pie lines, scratches, and shades are cut in copper, &e.
Bee Engraving.
, GRAVESANDE, William Jacob, was descended of
in ancient and honourable family, and born at Delft, in
Holland, on the 27th of September 1688. The name of
lis family was properly Storm van s’Gravesande. He stu-
lied the civil law at Leyden ; but the mathematics, for
vhich he had evinced an early inclination, were his favour-
te pursuit. When he had taken his doctor’s degree in
1707, he settled at the Hague, where he practised at the
iar, and cultivated the acquaintance of learned men. In
he month of May 1713, he, in conjunction with a society
if young men distinguished for their acquirements, under¬
took the composition of a periodical review entitled Le
Journal Litttruire, which was continued without interrup¬
tion until the year 1722. In 1715, ’sGravesande, in the
capacity of secretary of legation, accompanied the depu¬
tes of the states-general, sent to London to compliment
G R A 715
George I. on his accession to the throne; and having there Gravesend
formed a connection with Dr Burnet, bishop of Salisbury, H
he was admitted a member of the Royal Society. He re- Gravina.
turned the following year to the Hague, and, in 1715, was
appointed ordinary professor of mathematics and astrono¬
my in the academy of Leyden. During the vacations of
1721 and 1722, ’sGravesande made two journeys to Cassel
to visit the landgrave of Hesse, a prince who showed an
enlightened taste for experimental philosophy, and gene¬
rously promoted its advancement. In 1724, he resigned
the rectorship of the academy, to which he had previous¬
ly been promoted, and on this occasion pronounced a dis¬
course De Evidentia, which has been prefixed to the
third edition of his Elements of Physics. In 1730, he
added to his ordinary course civil and military architec¬
ture, which he taught in Dutch; and, in 1734, he was
also appointed to teach philosophy, including logic, meta¬
physics, and ethics. ’sGravesande died on the 28th of Feb¬
ruary 1742, at the age of fifty-five, after a period of pro¬
tracted suffering, during which he preserved unimpaired
all his characteristic vivacity. His principal works are as
follow, viz. 1. Essai de Perspective, Hague, 1711; 2. Phy-
sices Elementa Mathematica, experimentis confirmata,
sive Introductio ad Philosophiam Newtonianam, Hague, in
two vols. 4to ; 3. Philosophise Newtonianae Institutiones in
usus academicos, an abridgment of the preceding, Ley¬
den, 1723, 1728, and 1744; 4. Matheseos Universalis
Elementa, quibus accedunt, specimen commentarii in
Arithmeticam universalem Newtoni, et de determinanda
forma seriei infinitse adsumtae Nova Regula, Leyden, 1727,
in 8vo ; 5. Introductio ad Philosophiam, Metaphysicam et
Logicam continens, Leyden, 1736, 1737. In the Dictio-
naire Historique of Prosper Marchand may be found a
detailed biography of ’sGravesande by Allemand, the edi¬
tor of the work, who was intimately connected with
’sGravesande and his family.
GRAVESEND, a market-town of the county of Kent,
in the hundred of Toltingtrough, of the lathe of Aylesford,
twenty-three miles from London. It is situated on the south
bank of the river Thames, from which the principal street
ascends up a gentle hill. It depends chiefly on the ships
which resort to the port of London, as at the custom¬
house all vessels report their arrival, and outward bound
ships receive their clearances. There are strong batteries
above and below the town, which defend the passage, in
conjunction with Tilbury Fort, opposite the town, on the
Essex shore. There is a constant, almost hourly, inter¬
course with the metropolis by steam, and other passage
boats, which find ample employment in conveying the nu¬
merous pilots, custom-house officers, masters of vessels,
merchants, and seamen, backwards and forwards. The
soil round the town is favourable for gardens, and the sup¬
ply of vegetables to ships departing is amply furnished;
and this, with the sale of poultry, fresh butter, eggs, and
meal, is a source of profit to the inhabitants. A little be¬
low the town, establishments have been formed of late
years for bathing, as the river, with the flood tide, is per¬
fectly salt. The great road to Dover passes the end of
the town, and contributes in some degree to its prosperity.
It is a corporate borough, governed by a mayor, twelve
jurats, and twenty-four common councilmen, who have an
elegant town-hall, but return no members to parliament.
The church is a modern building, erected, under the act
of’Queen Anne, for building fifty churches, in 1731. There
is a good market on Saturday. The population amounted
in 1801 to 2483, in 1811 to 3119, in 1821 to 3814, and in
1831 to 5097.
GRAVINA, John Vincent, one of the most distinguish¬
ed men of letters that the kingdom of Naples ever produced,
was born at Rogiano, a small town near Cosenza, in Calabria-
Ulteriore, on the 20th of January 1664. His parents, who,
716 G R A
Gravina. by their station and their fortune, held the first rank in the
s—’’V'*"' place, neglected nothing to promote his early education;
but the precocity of mind, the vivacity of imagination, and
the ardour to instruct himself evinced by their son, soon
made them sensible that he required other cares at their
hands, and needed to be restrained rather than stimulated.
Gregorio Caloprese, his uncle, after having cultivated, with
success, at Naples, poetry and philosophy, had retired to
his native place, Scalea, a maritime city in that part of Ca¬
labria. The education of a nephew, who inspired so high
hopes, appeared to him an agreeable task, and he willing¬
ly undertook it. Under the auspices of his uncle, young
Gravina learned Latin, rhetoric, history, and the princi¬
ples of geometry; acquisitions well calculated to pave the
way for the study of philosophy, which wa.s then beginning
to cast off the yoke under which it had languished in the
schools. Thus occupied, Gravina attained his sixteenth
year, when Caloprese, finding that the education of his ne¬
phew, on which he had bestowed so great care, required
his removal to another and wider field, desired to conduct
him to Naples; but some domestic embarrassments ob¬
structed the proposed arrangement, and the young student
might have been left to his fate, had not his generous re¬
lation taken on himself the expense of carrying this propo¬
sal into effect, and sent him to the capital, with a strong
recommendation to Seraphino Biscardi of Cosenza, then
considered as the head of the Neapolitan bar. Charmed
with the dispositions evinced by Gravina, Biscardi divided
his attentions between him and Cajetano Argentio, parti¬
cularly directing the application of the former towards
Greek, in which he had only received a few lessons from
his uncle, but of which he soon acquired a perfect know¬
ledge under Gregorio Massere, then regarded as the first
Hellenist of Naples. In the mean time Biscardi taught
them all the secrets of the art of oratory, not forgetting that
of declamation ; but Gravina, who at the same time culti¬
vated poetry, did not so far abandon this pursuit as to
devote himself exclusively to the study of eloquence. It
was about this time in fact that he composed, on the sub¬
ject of the Passion, a drama, entitled Tragedia di Cristo ;
a piece which has not been printed, but which he most
probably translated, with some additions, from the Greek
drama of the same name attributed to Gregory of Nazi-
anzen. Of another drama also composed by Gravina, there
remains only the title, San? Atanasio. As the relations
of Gravina had destined him for the profession of the
law, the time was now approaching when it would be
necessary to make jurisprudence a serious study; but for
that science he had conceived an aversion which appear¬
ed to be insurmountable. The barbarous language of
chicane, as he considered the technical nomenclature of
the law, appeared to him an offence committed against
the worship of the muses, and the riches which the bar
often produces, a sordid means of existence. Biscardi had
much difficulty in convincing him of the difference which
exists between the science of laws, and the mere conduct
of processes, or ordinary practice. He repeated, for some
time in vain, that this science rests on a profound know¬
ledge of the classics ; and that, if modern jurisconsults had
corrupted the Latinity of the schools, it might still be
brought back to the standard of the purer ages of Alciat
and Cujas. The prejudices of Gravina at length vanished ;
he applied himself vigorously to the study of the civil and
canon law, and at the same time extended his knowledge
of theology by an attentive perusal of the works of the Fa¬
thers. He sought the conversation of the learned, and
continually studied the five books which he regarded as
the sources of the knowledge to which he aspired ; we
mean the Holy Scriptures, the body of the civil law, the
works of Plato, those of Cicero, and the poems of Homer.
Gravina had long desired to visit Rome ; but his uncle,
G R A
Caloprese, who still superintended his education, opposed Gnv' . »
his wish until he should have completed his course of study. Wv
When this was accomplished, he repaired to the ancient ca¬
pital of the world in 1689. Paolo Coardo, of Turin, after¬
wards chamberlain to Clement XL received him into his
house, where he remained several years, and also procured
him the acquaintance of the most celebrated men of their
time, Ciampini, Fabretti, Bianchini, Buonaroti, Emmanuel
Martino, and Father Miro. In conversation, they were ac¬
customed to discuss the most important questions ; and as
it often turned upon the relaxation of morals, Gravina un¬
dertook to treat this subject,.applying to it the theological
knowledge which he had acquired in the course of his stu¬
dies. Accordingly, in 1691, he published, under the suppo¬
sititious name of Priscus Censorinus, a dialogue, entitled Z)e
corrupta Morali Doctrina, Naples, 4to, the object of which
was to prove that the corrupters of morals do more injury
to the church than the boldest heresiarchs. Gravina was
then only twenty-six years of age. But the eloquence of the
style and the solidity of the reasonings ensured the success
of the book, wdiich at the same time excited lively dissatis¬
faction amongst the numerous partisans of convenient doc¬
trines and loose practice. Father Concilia has inserted this
dialogue almost entire in his treatise De Incredulis. Nor
did poetry escape the contamination which had so deeply in¬
fected morals. A single writer, Alessandro Guidi, a friend
of Gravina, struggled at Rome against the prevailing de¬
basement of taste, and, at the request of Christina, queen of
Sweden, had, under the Arcadian name of Erillo Cleoneo,
written a comedy, entitled Endimione. As this piece be¬
came the object of the most virulent attacks, Gravina, under
the name of Bione Crateo, undertook the defence of his
friend, which he read in a literary assembly, and which was
afterwards printed under the title of Discorso sopra Endi¬
mione, Rome, 1692. This little work, in which he laid down
excellent principles, drew upon the author new adversaries,
who considered it equally strange and unpardonable that
Gravina should attempt to constitute himself at once the
censor of morals and the reformer of taste. A jealousy,
almost amounting to fury, was excited against the young
Neapolitan ; whilst his disposition to censure the works of
others, and the confidence which he appeared to repose in
his own opinions, were but little calculated to calm the spi¬
rits of his enemies. Gravina sometimes commended, but
he more frequently censured, and his decisions were often
• expressed in contemptuous terms. This tendency made
him a host of enemies. Flis least actions were watched
in order to calumniate him, and he was assailed with the
most malignant invectives. Then appeared in succession,
under the name of Quintio Settano, the Arcadian alias of
Ludovico Sergardi, sixteen satires against Philodemus, the
name under which Gravina was therein designated. These
satires, which were equally spirited and bitter, obtained
great success, and were circulated in profusion. Gravina
at first affected indifference. It is a fault of the age, said
he, to take pleasure in outraging merit. But as this tran¬
quillity did not reduce his enemies to silence, he could no
longer restrain his resentment, and composed some decla¬
mations of the nature of verrine, and also some iambics;
but he has not published these retaliatory effusions, probably
because he thought them inferior to the satires of Settano.
The malignity of the enemies of Gravina did not lessen the
esteem which he had inspired, nor abate his zeal for use¬
ful and wholesome pursuits. He united with several other
literary men who had associated together for the purpose
of cultivating poetry in silence. There were only fifteen
of them, but their number soon increased, and Gravina
assembled them for the first time, in November 1695, at
a house which he had provided for the purpose on Mount
Janiculum. They framed for the association a democra¬
tic constitution, and took the name of Arcadi, or Area-
G R, A
iwE dians. In summer, they were to assemble in the gardens,
>ji and there invoke the Muses ; and, by their manner of liv¬
ing and the simplicity of their writings, they were to en¬
deavour to imitate the ancient shepherds, without distinc¬
tion of rank or fortune. Each assumed a pastoral name.
As the number of members increased, it became ne¬
cessary to give laws to the association, and decemvirs
were named for the purpose of preparing them. Called
to discharge this duty, Gravina reviewed the numerous
and incoherent regulations adopted by the Arcadians, and
reduced them into a single code. These laws, written in
Latin, with an elegant conciseness, and rare propriety in
the selection of terms, in imitation of those of the Twelve
Tables, soon spread throughout Europe, and were uni¬
versally admired. Lastly, on the 20th of May 1696, the
Arcadi held a general assembly on the Palatine Hill. Gra¬
vina, after an eloquent discourse, presented the marble
tablets containing the laws, which he established with the
expressions consecrated in the Roman jurisprudence, and
on this occasion also he assumed the name of Opizio Eri-
manteo. During this period, Gravina had composed se¬
veral dissertations, which he collected under the title of
j Opuscula, Rome, 1696, and in which are included, 1. Spe-
i cimen prisci Juris ; 2. De Lingua Latina dialogus ; 3. Epis-
tola ad Gabrielem Reignerium a Galium; 4. De contemptu
Mortis; 5. Epistola ad Trojanum Mirabellam; and, 6.
Delle Favole Antiche, which has been translated into
French by Joseph Regnauld. After the death of Alex¬
ander VIII. Antonio Pignatelli, having obtained the pon¬
tifical throne under the name of Innocent XII. wished to
raise Gravina to the highest ecclesiastical honours; but
the latter refused to embrace the clerical profession, as
all his ambition was confined to teaching the law's, and
: his taste led him towards profane erudition. Nor was his
ambition disappointed. In 1699, he obtained the chair of
civil law, and in his opening discourse traced the history
of that science ; whilst, in order to make his system of in¬
struction better known, he composed the treatise De In-
stauratione Studiorum, which he dedicated to the new pon¬
tiff. The discourse De Sapientia, which he delivered in
1700, also relates to the same subject. In that one which
is entitled Pro Legibus ad magnum Moschorum regem,
after speaking of the pre-eminence and dignity of the Ro¬
man laws, he considers them in reference to the influence
which they were likely to have in the civilization of the
states of the czar, Peter the Great. The subjects of the
other dissertations of Gravina we need not indicate, as
they have been collected in his works. We shall merely
refer to that one on the internal rule, because it makes
known the religious sentiments with which the mind of this
great civilian was deeply imbued. In 1703, Gravina passed
from the chair of civil to that of canon law. From the com¬
mencement of his career as a public instructor he had abo¬
lished the usage of scholastic argumentation; and each
succeeding year brought some useful change. He thought
that the only means of establishing sound doctrine was to
ascend to the sources or fountain-head of the laws; and this
j accordingly is the object of his treatise De repetendis Doc-
trinarum Fontibus. But these little treatises, which he
composed with extreme facility, did not prevent him from
i continuing his great work, De Ortu et Progressu Juris Ci-
vilis, the first book of which appeared at Naples in 1701, and
the whole was completed in three books, and printed in
1713. Europe resounded with the praises bestowed on this
great work; the celebrated Maffei made an abridgment
of it; and it was reprinted several times in different
places. The writings of Gravina attest the extent of his
knowledge, and his ardour in the cause of education ; but
the greatest proof of his general zeal and discrimination
consists in giving to literature Metastasio, who owed to him
his education and his fortune, and who, in his writings,
G R A 717
particularly in his poetry, takes pleasure in acknowledging Gravina
the gratitude he owed, not only to the beneficence, but !l
still more to the instructions of his adoptive father. Dur- f^ray
ing the period which elapsed from 1711 to 1714, Gravina
completed and published several works, particularly his
Discourses, his book De Romano Imperio, Naples, 1712,
in 12mo; his tragedies, Palamede, Andromede, Appius
Claudius, Papinianus, and Servius Tullius, Naples, 1712,
in 12mo ; and his treatises, Della Ragione Poetica, Rome,
1708, and Della, Tragedia, Naples, 1714, in 4to. Grego¬
rio Caloprese died at Scalea in the summer of 1714. As
soon as Gravina heard of his illness, he hastened to pay
his last duties to a relation to whom he lay under so
many obligations. He passed nearly two years in Cala¬
bria, and it was not until 1716 that he returned to Rome,
where he died on the 6th of January 1718, leaving to his
mother, Anna Lombarda, the property which he possessed
in Calabria, and to Metastasio all that he had acquired at
Rome, excepting some legacies to his other pupils, Giu-
liano Pier-Santi, Lorenzo Gori, and Horazio Bianchi, all
men of reputation in letters. The works of Gravina have
been collected in three volumes, under the title of Opere
del Gravina, Leipsic, 1737, in 4to, and Naples, 1756, with
notes by Mascovius the editor. (a.)
Gravina, a city of the province of Bari, in the king¬
dom of Naples. It is a rocky height, watered at its foot
by the rivers Casale and Gravina. It contains 8693 inha¬
bitants, who are employed in cultivating wheat and anise-
seed, and in preparing saltpetre.
GRAVITATION, in Natural Philosophy, signifies ei¬
ther the force by which bodies are pressed towards the
surface of the earth, or the manifest effect of that force;
in which last sense the word has the same signification
with weight or heaviness.
GRAVITY, Specific, denotes the weight belonging to
an equal bulk of every different substance. Thus the ex¬
act weight of a cubic inch of gold, compared with a cubic
inch of water, tin, lead, or any other substance, is called
its specific gravity.
GRAY, or Grey, a mixed colour partaking of the two
extremes of black and wdiite. See Dyeing.
Gray, Lady Jane. See Grey.
Gray, Thomas, an eminent English poet, was the young¬
est and only surviving son of Philip Gray, a citizen and
money-scrivener of London, and w^as born in Cornhill, on
the 20th of December 1716. He was educated at Eton,
wdiere he contracted a friendship wdth Horace Walpole,
afterwards Earl of Orford, and with Mr Richard West,
son of the I.ord Chancellor of Ireland. Mr West and Mi-
Gray were both intended for the bar ; but the former died
earl}' in life, and the latter was diverted from that pursuit
by an invitation to accompany Mr Walpole in his travels,
which he accepted, without any fixed plan for his future
life. During his travels, which included the customary
tour through France and Italy, he wrote a variety of let¬
ters to Mr West and to his parents, which are printed
with his poems, and full of interest. Architecture, Go¬
thic as well as Grecian, painting and music, with the man¬
ners and customs of the people, were all studied by him
with success. But, whilst at Reggio, an unfortunate dif¬
ference took place between him and Walpole, and they
parted in mutual displeasure. A great deal has been said
of this quarrel, but the real cause of it has never been
sufficiently explained. Walpole, however, affected to take
the blame on himself, and in doing so he was very proba¬
bly right. On his return, Gray finding himself in narrow
circumstances, yet with a mind indisposed to active em¬
ployment, retired to Cambridge, where he devoted him¬
self to study; and soon afterwards his friend West died.
The melancholy impressed on him by this event may be
traced in his admired Elegy written in a Country Church-
718 G R A G R A
Gray, yard; which is believed to have been begun, if notfinish-
    ed, about this time, though the conclusion, as it stands at
present, is certainly different from what it was in the ori¬
ginal manuscript copy. The first impulse of his sorrow
for the death of his friend gave birth to a tender sonnet
in English, written on the model of Petrarch ; and also to
a sublime apostrophe in hexameter verse, with which he
intended to commence one of his books De Principiis
Cogitandi.
From the winter of the year 1742 till the day of his
death, his principal residence was at Cambridge, whence
he seldom was absent for any considerable time, except
between the years 1759 and 1762, when, on the opening
of the British Museum, he took lodgings in Southampton
Row, in order to have access to the Harleian and other
manuscripts there deposited, from which he made several
curious extracts, amounting in all to a tolerably sized fo¬
lio volume.
About the year 1747, Mason, afterwards the editor of
his poems, was introduced to Gray. The former had writ¬
ten, a year or two before, some imitations of Milton’s
juvenile poems, particularly a Monody on the Death of
Pope, and two pieces entitled II Bellicoso and II Pacifico,
on the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle ; and the latter had re¬
vised them at the request of a friend. This laid the foun¬
dation of an intimacy which continued without interrup¬
tion until the death of Gray.
About the year 1750, Mr Gray having put the last
touches to his Elegy written in a Country Churchyard,
communicated it to Walpole, who was too much charmed
with it to withhold it from his acquaintance. Accordingly
it was shown about for some time in manuscript, and
received with all the applause which it so justly merited.
At last the publisher of one of the magazines having sur¬
reptitiously obtained a copy, Gray wrote to Walpole, de¬
siring that he would put the manuscript into the hands
of Mr Dodsley, and order him to print it immediately.
This proved the most popular of all our author’s publica¬
tions. It passed through eleven editions in a very short
space of time, and was translated into Latin, first by
Ansty and Roberts, and afterwards by Lloyd.
From July 1759 till the year 1762, Gray resided gene¬
rally in London, with the view, as we have already men¬
tioned, of having more ready access to the British Museum.
In the summer of 1765 he undertook a journey to Scotland
for the benefit of his health, which was then in a precari¬
ous state, and having passed through Edinburgh and Perth,
he proceeded to Glammis Castle, the seat of Lord Strath¬
more, where he resided for some time ; after which he visit¬
ed the north, where he formed an acquaintance with Dr
Beattie, then but little known beyond the immediate circle
of his friends at Aberdeen. Gray’s account of this journey is
praised by Dr Johnson as curious and elegant; “ for,” says
the doctor, “ as his comprehension was ample, his curiosity
extended to all the works of art, all the appearances of na¬
ture, and all the monuments of past events.” Part of the
summers of 1766 and 1767 he passed in journeys in Eng¬
land ; and he had intended to make a second tour in Scot¬
land, but returned to London without accomplishing his
design. In July 1768 his grace the Duke of Grafton wrote
him a polite letter, informing him that his majesty had been
graciously pleased to offer to him the professorship of mo¬
dern history in the university of Cambridge, then vacant by
the accidental death of Mr Brocket. This place was valu¬
able in itself, as the salary amounted to L.400 a year ; but
what rendered it particularly acceptable to Mr Gray was its
being given him without solicitation. He was indeed re¬
markably disinterested or indifferent about money in all his
pursuits. Though his income, before this addition, was but
small, he never read oi wrote with a view of rendering his
labours useful to himself. He may be said to have been one
of the few personages connected with literature, especially Qra
the poetical department, who are devoid of selfishness, and
at the same time attentive to economy ; and he was also
amongst mankind in general one of those rare economists,
who possess that talent, untinctured with the slightest stain
of avarice. When his circumstances were at the lowest,
he gave away such sums in private charity as would have
done credit to an ampler purse. But what chiefly deterred
him from seeking any advantage by his literary pursuits,
was a certain degree of pride, which led him to despise the
idea of being thought an author by profession.
It is probable, however, that early in life he had an in¬
tention of publishing an edition of Strabo; for his papers
contain a great number of notes and geographical disquisi¬
tions on that author, particularly respecting that part of Asia
which comprehends Persia and India. The indefatigable
pains which he had bestowed on the writings of Plato,
and the quantity of critical as well as explanatory observa¬
tions which he left upon almost every part of that ancient
philosopher’s works, plainly indicate that no man in Eu¬
rope was better prepared to republish and illustrate them
than Mr Gray. Another work, on which he had bestowed
uncommon labour, was the Anthologia. In an interleaved
copy of that collection of Greek epigrams, he has tran¬
scribed several additional ones, which he selected in his
extensive reading, inserted a great number of critical notes
and emendations, and also subjoined a copious index. But
whether he intended this performance for the press or not,
has not been ascertained. The only work which he meditat¬
ed with a direct view to publication from the beginning, was
a history of English Poetry, upon a plan sketched out by
Pope. He has mentioned this himself in an advertisement
to the three fine imitations of Norse and Welsh poetry which
he gave the world in the last edition of his poems. But after
he had made considerable preparations for the execution
of this design, and Mason had proffered his assistance, he
was informed that Mr Wharton, of Trinity College, Ox¬
ford, was engaged in a work of the same kind. The un¬
dertaking was therefore relinquished by mutual consent;
and soon afterwards, upon that gentleman desiring a sight
of the plan, Gray readily sent him a copy of it.
Amongst other sciences which he cultivated, Gray had
acquired a great knowledge of Gothic architecture. He had
seen and accurately studied on the spot, whilst abroad, the
Roman proportions, both in ancient times, and in the works
of Palladio. In his later years he applied himself to study
those stupendous structures of more modern date which
adorn our own country, and which, if they have not the
same grace, undoubtedly possess at least equal dignity, with
those of ancient times. He endeavoured to trace this mode
of building from its commencement through the various
changes it underwent, until it arrived at its perfection in the
reign of Henry VIII. and ended in that of Elizabeth. For
this purpose, he did not so much rely upon written accounts,
as on that internal evidence which the buildings themselves
exhibit of their respective antiquity ; since they constantly
furnish to the well-informed eye, arms, ornaments, and other
marks, by which their several ages may be ascertained. On
this account he applied himself to the study of heraldry as
a preparatory science ; and he has left behind him a num¬
ber of genealogical papers, more than sufficient to prove him
a complete master of that subject. By these means he at¬
tained such prompt sagacity in architectural matters, as to
be enabled to pronounce, at first sight, the precise time when
every particular part of any of our cathedrals was erected.
But the favourite study of Gray for the last ten years of
his life was natural history, which he then rather resumed
than commenced ; for, by the instructions of his uncle An-
trobus, he was a considerable botanist at the age of fifteen.
The marginal notes which he has left on Linnaeus and other
writers on the vegetable, animal, and fossil kingdoms, are
vefJray.
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G R A
very numerous; but the most considerable are those on
Hudson’s Flora Anglica, and the tenth edition of the Sys-
tema Naturm, which he interleaved and filled almost en¬
tirely. Whilst employed on zoology, he read with great
care Aristotle’s treatise on that subject, and explained
many difficult passages of that obscure ancient, by the lights
he had received from modern naturalists. In a word, ex¬
cepting pure mathematics, and the studies dependent on
that science, there was hardly any branch of human learn¬
ing in which he had not acquired a competent skill, and in
most of them a consummate mastery. To this account of
his literary character we may add, that he had a fine taste in
painting, prints, gardening, and music ; and was moreover
a man of good breeding, as well as of virtue and humanity.
Gray died in 1771; and an edition of his poems, with
memoirs of his life and writings, were published by Mr
Mason in 1775, 4to. This gentleman, however, instead of
employing his own pen in delineating the character of Gray,
has adopted one drawn by the Reverend Mr Temple, rector
of Mamhead in Devonshire, and communicated in a letter to
Mr Boswell. “ Perhaps,” says Mr Temple, “ he (Gray) was
the most learned man in Europe. He was equally acquaint¬
ed with the elegant and profound parts of science, and that
not superficially, but thoroughly. He knew every branch
of history, both natural and civil; had read all the original
historians of England, France, and Italy ; and was a great
antiquarian. Criticism, metaphysics, morals, politics, made
a principal part of his plan of study; voyages and travels
of all sorts were his favourite amusement; and he had a
fine taste in painting, prints, architecture, and gardening.
With such a fund of knowledge, his conversation must have
been equally instructing and entertaining ; but he was also
a good man, a well-bred man, a man of virtue and huma¬
nity. There is no character without some speck, some im¬
perfection ; and I think the greatest defect in his was an
affectation in delicacy, or rather effeminacy, and a visible
fastidiousness, or contempt and disdain of his inferiors in
science. He also had, in some degree, that weakness
which disgusted Voltaire so much in Mr Congreve : though
he seemed to value others chiefly according to the progress
they had made in knowledge, yet he could not bear to be
considered himself merely as a man of letters ; and though
without birth, or fortune, or station, his desire was to be
looked upon as a private independent gentleman, who read
for his amusement. Perhaps it may be said, what signifies
so much knowledge, when it produces so little ? Is it worth
taking so much pains to leave no memorial but a few poems ?
But let it be considered that Mr Gray was, to others, at
least innocently employed ; to himself, certainly beneficial¬
ly. His time passed agreeably ; he was every day making
some new acquisition in science ; his mind was enlarged,
his heart softened, and his virtue strengthened ; the world
and mankind were shown "to him without a mask ; and he
was taught to consider every thing as trifling, and unwor¬
thy the attention of a wise man, except the pursuit of
knowledge, and the practice of virtue in that state wherein
God hath placed us.”
The more recent, and perhaps also the more valuable
editions of the collected works of Gray, are, 1. That by
Thomas James Mathias, London, 1814, in 4to ; and, 2.
That by the Rev. John Mitford, London, 1816, in two
vols. 4to. The edition of Mathias, besides the poetical
works of Gray, contains Memoirs of his Life and Writings,
including his correspondence, by Mason, together with ex¬
tracts, philological, poetical, and critical, from the author’s
original manuscripts. In the edition of Mitford the poems
are accompanied and illustrated with critical notes, and to
G R E 719
them are prefixed a Life of the author, and an Essay on his Grazalema
Poetry. ||
GRAZALEMA, a city of Spain, in the province of Gra- <Greaves-
nada. It is a romantic place, of Moorish building, partly
on the side and partly on the summit of a lofty hill in
the Sierra de Ronda, and contains 5000 inhabitants, who
are occupied in making coarse woollens.
GREAT, a term of comparison, denoting that one thing
has more extension than some other to which it is refer¬
red. Thus we say, a great space, a great distance, a great
figure, a great body, and the like.
Great is likewise used figuratively in matters of mora¬
lity, &c. to signify ample, noble, elevated, extraordinary,
important, and the like. Thus we say, Shakspeare was a
great genius, Da Vinci a great painter, Galileo a great phi¬
losopher, Bossu a great critic, and so on.
Great is also a title or quality appropriated to certain
princes and other illustrious personages. Thus we say, the
great Turk, the great Mogul, the great Khan of Tartary,
the great Duke of Florence.
GREAVES, John, an eminent mathematician and an¬
tiquary, was the eldest son of John Greaves, rector of Cole-
more, near Alresford in Hampshire, and born in 1602.
He was educated at Baliol College, Oxford, from which he
removed to Merton. He was afterwards, on the ground of
merit, chosen professor of geometry in Gresham College.
His ardent thirst of knowledge soon led him to visit seve¬
ral parts of Europe, where he eagerly availed himself of
every opportunity to improve it. His travels were next
into the countries of the East, where nothing remarkable
seems to have escaped his observation. With indefatiga¬
ble industry, and even at the peril of his life, he collected
for Archbishop Laud a considerable number of Arabic,
Persic, and Greek manuscripts, of which he well knew the
value, as he was a master of the languages in wdiich they
were written. He also collected for that prelate many
oriental gems and coins. He made a more accurate sur¬
vey of the pyramids of Egypt than any traveller who
had preceded him, and afterwards digested his observations
in a work on that subject. On his return from the East,
he visited a second time several parts of Italy ; and during
his stay at Rome instituted inquiries into the ancient
weights and measures. Soon after his return he was ap¬
pointed to the Savilian professorship of astronomy at Ox¬
ford ; an office for which he was eminently qualified, as the
works of the ancient and modern astronomers were alike
familiar to him. But, after enjoying this preferment for
some time, Greaves was deprived of it by the parliamen¬
tary visitors, on account of his strong royalist predilections,
and died on the 8th of October 1652, of a fatal disorder,
which appears to have been brought on by excessive ap¬
plication. Besides his papers in the Philosophical Trans¬
actions, the works of Greaves printed separately are, 1.
Pyramidologia, or a description of the Pyramids in Egypt,
London, 1646, in 8vo ; 2. A Discourse of the Roman Foot
and Denarius, ibid. 1649, in 4to; 3. Elementa Linguae Per-
sicae, ibid. 1649, in 4to ; 4. Epochae celebriores Astronomis,
Historicis, Chronologis Chataiorum, Syro-Graecorum, Ara-
bum, Persarum, &c. usitatae, ex traditione Ulug Beig, Arab,
et Lat. London, 1650, in 4to ; 5. Chorasmiae et Mawarnal-
nabrae, hoc est, Regionum extra fluvium Oxum, descrip-
tio, ibid. 1650; 6. Astronomicae quaedam, ex traditione
Shah Cholgii Persae, una cum hypothesibus Planetarum,
ibid. 1652, in 4to. In 1737, Dr Birch published the Mis¬
cellaneous Works of Greaves, in two vols. 8vo, containing
some of those above mentioned, with additions, and a bio¬
graphical notice of the author.
720
.
GREECE.
Greece.
Introduc¬
tory obser¬
vations.
Greece and its inhabitants, after a long period of obli¬
vion, have at length become objects of profound and gene¬
ral interest to the most enlightened nations of Europe. It
was singular, indeed, that whilst classical scholars were im¬
mersed "in the study of its poets, orators, and historians, the
country that gave birth to so many literary treasures, though
neither distant nor inaccessible, seemed to have been as
completely forgotten, as if it had been blotted from the
map of Europe. The learned contented themselves with
supposing that the modern country was inhabited by rude
and unknown tribes, governed by fanatical Turks, whose
barbarous rule exposed travellers to continual insults and
pillage, and had swept away all traces and memorials of the
ancient glory of Greece. Besides, the country was not
known to be distinguished by its natural beauties; and
being confounded with the torpid mass of the Ottoman
empire, its political importance was reduced to nothing.
Till a very late period, the only intelligible accounts we
had of the country were drawn from Strabo and Pausanias.
The inquiries of Spon and Wheler, Le Roy, and Stuart,
which at length brought some of its precious antiquities to
light, were chiefly addressed to artists and scholars. Chan¬
dler’s Travels were not much better adapted for general
use. But the work which, more than any other, contributed
to render all subjects connected with Greece and its anti¬
quities popular, was the Travels of Anacharsis. Previous
to the appearance of this work, however, various circum¬
stances had contributed to bring the Greeks more conspi¬
cuously forward on the theatre of European affairs. While
the general diffusion of education was increasing the num¬
ber of those who felt an interest in classical subjects, the
rise of the power of Russia, the connection she endeavour¬
ed to form with the Greeks, and her projects against Tur¬
key, held out a probability that Greece might speedily re¬
gain some share of political importance. The Greeks them¬
selves, by the desperate efforts they made in 1770, and again
in 1790, gave a proof to the world, that their existence as
a people, and their national feelings, had survived those
destructive revolutions which were supposed to have over¬
whelmed them. When the political enthusiasm created
by the French Revolution made the most gigantic plans of
political change appear easy, the emancipation of this long
neglected country from the Turkish yoke was looked to as
one of the most certain and gratifying triumphs of the new
principles. Before the interest arising from this state of
things had expired, circumstances of a different kind di¬
rected public attention more immediately to Greece. The
host of English travellers who had been accustomed to roam
over the Continent, shut out from their usual routes by an
extraordinary combination of events, were forced into less
frequented tracts, and numbers of them visited Greece. By
these, and by a few individuals from other parts of Europe,
a great part of the country has been explored, and a vast
mass of information given to the public. Its topography
and statistics are now better known than those of many of the
nearer and more accessible parts of Europe; the classical
interest of the country has been augmented tenfold, by vi¬
vid descriptions of its monuments and its scenery ; and the
stirring events of the revolution lately completed, have great¬
ly strengthened its claims to the attention and the sympa¬
thies of western Europe. It is now found that the modern
Greeks, instead of being the mixed progeny of obscure and
barbarous tribes, possess a respectable degree of civilization,
and great capacities of improvement; that they have pre¬
served the features and national character of their ances- qreec(
tors with surprising distinctness ; and that their dialect ^
does not deviate much farther from the language of Plato
and Demosthenes, than that of Chaucer does from the Eng¬
lish of the present day. Independently, too, of its other
attractions, Greece surpasses Italy, and perhaps every other
country in the world, in the beauty of its scenery. Its an¬
tiquities are not, like those of the latter country, accumu¬
lated chiefly upon a single spot. They are scattered over a
wide surface, associated with a variety of scenery, and pre¬
sent memorials of many separate communities, distinguish¬
ed by differences of character, habits, and civilization. Its
monuments, compared with those of Rome, breathe a purer
taste, a finer moral spirit, and bespeak a sublimer genius;
they tell of brighter and better times, of characters and
actions more surprising, generous, and romantic. Some
of them transport the mind back to those remote times
where truth and fable are blended,—to those delightful
fictions which bear the impress of the genius of the people
more distinctly than the real events of their history. No
country, in short, presents greater attractions to a well-in¬
formed traveller ; and as, in future, it will certainly be in¬
cluded in every classical tour, we may reasonably expect
that, in a short time, every part of it will be completely ex¬
plored.
In this article we shall first describe Greece in its full
extent, according to the boundaries recognised in ancient
times by the Greeks and Romans. We shall then give a
brief sketch of the history of the late revolution ; and con¬
clude by a statistical view of the new state, which forms
only a portion of ancient Greece.
The reader is therefore to understand, that this article
consists of two parts. The first applies to the portion of
Greece still ruled by the Turks, but alludes occasionally to
the' districts forming the new state, as they existed before
the revolution. The second relates exclusively to the lat¬
ter districts, that is, to Independent Greece, of which
Otho is mw king. The arrangement is inconvenient, but
unavoidable, as the new state comprises only one third of
the country, and the condition of the people is so much
alike in both parts, that in the description of arts, manners,
&c. they could not be properly separated. The history of
the several ancient states will be found in other parts of
this work, under their respective heads.
The name of Greece was originally restricted to a small Name,
territory northward of the Gulf of Corinth, called also Hel¬
las. Afterwards it included Attica, Euboea, Peloponnesus,
Epirus, and Thessaly; and ultimately Macedonia and Crete.
In the brilliant periods of Grecian history, the extent of
the country might be considered as coincident with the li¬
mits of those states which sent deputies to the Amphyctio-
nic Council, and in this sense iEtolia and Acarnania, as
well as Epirus, Macedonia, and Crete, ought to be ex¬
cluded.1 But, though we shall notice these divisions, our
object at present is rather to take the appellation in its most
extensive sense, and to follow what may be considered the
natural limits of the country; because the territories in¬
cluded within these limits are associated by certain politi¬
cal relations; and because many of the most interesting
subjects of inquiry and discussion relating to the ancient,
and still more to the modern state of Greece, connect
themselves most naturally with this arrangement. ^
The continent of Greece, including Albania and Mace-Es—^
1 Cellarii Geog. Antiq. lib. ii. cap. 18 ; Strabo, lib. viii.; Potter’s Antiq. b. i. chap. 16.
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GRE
j, e. 'lonia, is nearly shut in on the north by a chain of moun-
ftins known anciently by the names of Rhodope, Scomius,
nd Orbelus j1 2 it is bounded on the west by the Adriatic
nd Ionian Seas, on the south by the Mediterranean, and
n the east by the iEgean Sea, or Archipelago. It extends
rom 36. 10. to 42. 40. of north latitude; and from 19. 45.
[) 24. 40. of east longitude from London. Its length, from
>pe Matapan to Mount Orbelus, or Argentaro, is 450
English miles; its greatest breadth, from Durazzo to Ca-
ale, at the foot of Mount Pangoeus (a branch of Rhodope),
35 miles ; and it embraces an area of 57,750 square miles,
xclusive of all its islands except Euboea. But, as our
leas of the extent of the country have always a reference
) those ancient states which comprised but very minute
ortions of its surface, it is necessary that its dimensions
hould be described more in detail.
The country recognised as Greece before the rise of
11 le Macedonian power, comprehended the Morea or Pelo-
ls' pnnesus, Attica, Euboea, Boeotia, Phocis, Doris, JUtolia,
k.carnania, Thessaly, and Magnesia; and even several of
le states included within these limits had little or no share
ja those splendid actions which have shed so much glory
jver the country. The surface of Peloponnesus, which
ficluded seven different states, is about 8950 square Eng-
l^h miles in Danville’s map | that of the countries just
amed, without the peninsula, including Euboea, is 14,800 ;
ind both together amount to 23,750 square miles; an ex-
pnt of surface not exceeding two fifths of England, or
me fifth of the British isles. If to this we add 16,000
ijuare miles for Albania or Epirus (including the basin of
lie Drino), 18,000 for Macedonia, and 1000 for the Cy-
ilades, the whole surface of Greece and its islands will be
8,750 square miles, which is almost exactly the area of
England. While Greece preserved its independence, how-
iver, all these territories were never united into one body
olitic, nor was their confederated force ever applied to the
rosecution of any common enterprise. The communities
hose warlike achievements and brilliant career in arts
nd philosophy raised the Grecian name so high, occupied
ut very minute portions of the country; as the follow-
pg table, deduced from measurements on D’Anville’s map,
I ill show.
Eng. Sq. Miles.
.ttica, including Megaris and Salamis, but not
Euboea41 1190
f oeotia 1530
.aconia (without Messenia) 1720
.chaia (the twelve cities with their territories) 1140
These states, therefore, were in general about equal in
xtent to middle-sized English counties. None of them
as so large as Norfolk or Devonshire; and the two ad-
lining counties of York and Lancaster were nearly equal
) the whole seven states of the ancient Peloponnesus,
i-ttica, indeed, besides possessing at one period Euboea,
ad many colonies in the Cyclades, Thrace, and other
arts; and Sparta held Messenia long in subjection; but,
i great struggles, these colonies and dependencies often
look off their allegiance, and the parent state was obliged
> rely on its own resources. Such was the energy of
lese small communities, that Attica, which scarcely sup-
orts, at present, a miserable population of 20,000 souls,
ent out sometimes colonies of 10,000 men at once (Diod.
ic. lib. ii.); and Sparta furnished 50,000 soldiers to fight the
ersians at Plataea. The territories of Corinth, when she
-
E C K ' 721
formed a separate state, were much smaller than any of these; Greece,
her wealth and power depending chiefly on commerce.
Greece forms a long and rather narrow peninsula, sin- Gulfs and
gularly indented on three sides by arms of the sea, andmountains*
having a greater proportion of its surface occupied by
mountains than any other country in Europe of equal ex¬
tent, except Switzerland. It has been justly observed,
that those physical features which distinguish Europe from
the other quarters of the world belong in a peculiar man¬
ner to Greece, and distinguish it in the same proportion
from the other parts of Europe. Of these arms of the sea,
the most considerable are the Gulfs of Contessa, Salonica,
Yolo, iEgina, and Nauplia, on the east; those of Kolokythia
and Coron on the south; and those of Lepanto and Arta
on the west. Of the mountains, the first in order are those
which pass along the northern frontier. Mount Argentaro,
the ancient Orbelus, placed at the northern extremity of
Greece, near the forty-third degree of latitude, may be
considered as the centre of the whole system of mountains
in European Turkey. From this nucleus an elevated
chain, bearing the names of Scomius and Rhodope an¬
ciently, passes south-eastward, and sends off branches on
both sides, one of which, Pangeus, advances southward to
the TEgean Sea, nearly opposite to the Isle of Thasus, and
shuts in Greece on the east. From the same central
nucleus another great chain passes south and south-east¬
ward, under the ancient names of Scardus, Pindus, Cithae-
ron, and Parnes, and terminates at Cape Colonna, the
southmost point of Attica. This chain, which includes the
celebrated mountains of Parnassus and Helicon, divides
the northern continent of Greece into two parts of nearly
equal breadth, and gives birth to all the most considerable
rivers, which flow off on its opposite sides, but in no in¬
stance cross it. On the east side, besides many small late¬
ral ridges, it sends off two principal branches, which enclose
Thessaly on the north and south ; these are the Cambunian
Mountains, which, connecting the central ridge of Pindus
with the lofty group of Olympus, separate Macedonia from
Thessaly; and Mount Oita, which, running eastward to
the Maliac Gulf, forms, at its termination, the famed pass
of Thermopylae. Mount Othrys, a little farther north,
may be considered as a subordinate chain to CEta. Mount
Olympus is separated only by a narrow ravine from Ossa
and Pelion, which enclose Thessaly on the east. On the
western side of the central chain, the whole country to the
Ionian Sea, northward of the Gulf of Arta, is covered by a
series of ridges, not running off laterally, but disposed in
lines nearly parallel to the central chain, and separated by
deep valleys. One of these ridges, nearest the coast, and
terminating in a promontory, in latitude 40. 30., was known
anciently by the name of Acroceraunus; another farther
north, and more inland, was Mount Tomarus. A long and
narrow ridge occupies the Island of Euboea, and is evidently
continued in the outermost chain of islands included under
the name of the Cyclades. Another chain of these islands
may be considered as a prolongation of the great central
ridge from the promontory of Sunium or Colonna.
The mountains in the Morea or Peloponnesus, which
are as numerous as in the north of Greece, present rather
a singular configuration. A long ridge, bent into a circu¬
lar form, encloses the central plateau or basin of Arcadia;
and five spurs, or subordinate ridges, run off from the dif¬
ferent sides of this circular chain to the five prominent
points of the peninsula.
iTt
. i gen(
1 le PU!
. ! In
■ ut »e
1 Me thi
^ V0L,
1 Throughout this article we use the ancient or the modern names, according as either happen to be better known than the other.
Ji general, the ancient divisions of the country, being more minute and more accurately defined than the modern, serve better for
lie purposes of description. The greater number of modern travellers have felt it necessary to adopt this practice.
2 In the maps of Barbie du Bocage, Laconia is considerably larger, and Attica and Achaia considerably smaller, than here stated.
)ut we have followed D’Anville, as his maps are pronounced, by a very competent judge (Sir William Gell), to be much more accu-
.'te than any others since constructed.
VOL. X. 4, Y
722 ' G R E
Greece. The elevation of some of the Grecian mountains has
|)ccn estimated, but not accurately measured. Mount Or-
l.ievation ^elUS) tfie northern boundary of the country, has its sum-
tG™0L1U" m't covered with snow all the year,1 and must therefore
exceed 8000 feet in height; but none of the other moun¬
tains seems to reach the circle of perpetual congelation.
The elevation of the great central chain of Pindus is loose¬
ly estimated by Dr Holland at 7000 feet.2 That of Olym¬
pus, one of the loftiest summits in Greece, was computed
by the ancient philosopher Xenagoras to be ten stadia and
a plethrum, an elevation not materially difterent from that
of 1017 toises, or 6500 feet, assigned to it by Bernoulli.
The famed Parnassus seems to be considered by Dr Clarke
and Dr Holland as rising above most of the other Grecian
mountains ; but as its summit is destitute of snow during
a part of the year, its height cannot exceed 9500 feet, and
is probably much less. This mountain is still called Par-
nassu by the peasants residing on it, but in the low coun¬
try of Livadia it bears the name of Lakura.3 The cele¬
brated Athos, which is now the seat of twenty-two mo¬
nasteries, rises to the height of 713 toises, or 4350 feet.
(Walpole, p. 204.) Several of the Albanian mountains
are estimated by Dr Holland to be from 3000 to 4000 feet
high. The mean height of the mountains of the Morea is
estimated at 1200 feet; on the west side they attain a
height of fi'om 3000 to 4500 feet; Mount Cyllene rises to
the height of 4500 feet, and Mount Oleno to 6000 ; Mount
Taygetus, in its range from Cape Matapan to Arcadia, va¬
ries from 3000 to 7200 feet. The plain of Tripolizza, in
* Arcadia, is about 2000 feet above the sea, and the insulat¬
ed rock of the Acro-Corinthus about 1900. (Boblaye, An-
nahs des Sciences Naturelles, Feb. 1831.)
Geology. A great part of the surface of Greece is occupied by a
formation of compact limestone, of a whitish or bluish grey
colour, approaching at times to the nature of chalk. It
forms in some places long sharp continuous ridges, in others
round or craggy summits, and it presents strata highly
inclined. It contains a few organic remains, with many
flint nodules, and some beds of gypsum on the western
side ; and occasionally masses or beds of a calcareous con¬
glomerate. The Acropolis of Athens consists of the last-
mentioned rock. The compact limestone, which forms the
entire mass of Parnassus and Helicon, rests on mica slate
near Athens. The hills of Attica consist generally of pri¬
mitive limestone ; and the same species of rock, with clay
slate, serpentine, sienite, porphyry, abound in Negropont,
the central parts of Pindus, Olympus, and Athos, and all
round the Gulf of Salonica. Farther north, in Mounts
Sccmius and Rhodope, granite and gneiss are found. In
general, primitive rocks are most abundant on the east side
of Greece, and the secondary on the west. Tertiary de¬
posits are found in Elis, Laconia, and Argolis; and tra¬
chytes and other igneous rocks exist in AUgina, Milo, San-
torin, and on the continent at Methana in Argolis. M. Bo-
blaye states that four, and in some cases five, successive ter¬
races of shingle are seen at many parts on the shores of the
Morea, each of which had once formed the sea beach, in¬
dicating that the land had been elevated by a correspond¬
ing number of sudden movements upwards. (Boblaye,
Annales des Sciences Naturelles, Feb. 1831 ; Holland’s
Travels, p. 89, 319, &c.) It is to the peculiar constitu¬
tion of the great limestone formation that Greece owes
those physical features which so remarkably distinguish the
country ; the numerous caverns, fountains, subterraneous
river courses, hot springs, and gaseous exhalations, which
E C Ea
gave birth to so many of the popular superstitions of the Gret
ancients.
The rivers of Greece, flowing within a narrow territory, pj.,
are much inferior in size even to the larger branches of die r
Danube. They may be fitly compared with those of Great
Britain for the length of their courses and the quantity of
water they convey. The classical rivers, however, which
are chiefly in the south, are generally mere brooks, such
as would find a place only in a county map. The largest
rivers in Greece are the Axius, now the Vardar, in Mace¬
donia; the Drinius, now the Drino, in North Albania;
the Peneus, now the Salympria, in Thessaly ; the Ache-
lous, now the Aspropotamo, in iEtolia ; the Alpheus, now
the Roufia, and Eurotas, now Vasilipotamo, in the Morea.
These and some others have permanent streams ; but the
greater number are mere mountain torrents, short, but
rapid in their courses, and dry in summer.
The general aspect of Greece is characterized by a very General
singular distribution of its mountains. These are usually aspect,
neither placed in parallel chains nor in massive groups,
but are so disposed as to enclose extensive tracts of land,
which assume the appearance of large basins or circular
hollow's. The bottom of these basins consists of an allu¬
vial plain of the richest soil, and level as the ocean, through
which sometimes rise steep insulated rocks, like the sum¬
mits of vast natural columns. Nature had thus marked out
the country into a number of distinct districts, admirably
calculated to become the seats of small communities. The
plain, with its rich alluvial soil, furnished subsistence for a
dense population ; the insulated rock became the Acropo¬
lis or citadel of the chief town, a place of refuge in war;
and the surrounding mountains were barriers against inva¬
sion. In proportion as access from without was difficult,
internal communication was rapid and easy. A crowded
population, dispersed over the sides and the area of this
natural amphitheatre, lived as it were in the continual pre¬
sence of one another. Their country, a word of unde¬
fined import in large empires, conveyed to them as distinct
an idea as that of their own homes. Its whole landscape,
with its trophies, temples, monuments, and fields of re¬
nown, were constantly under their eyes. Their patriotism,
concentrated within this narrow sphere,—attached to visi¬
ble objects by early and habitual associations,—kept alive
by frequent struggles with neighbouring communities, for
independence or glory, and still more by the proud sense
of individual importance, inspired by their republican in¬
stitutions,—was not, as in larger empires, a vague and lan¬
guid feeling, but an ardent and steady passion, of wdiich
nothing in the modern world can give us an adequate idea.
The same circumstances had an influence on their political
condition. Conquest, which forces nations of different
habits, characters, and languages, into combination, is the
great parent of slavery. In such heterogeneous masses
union becomes impossible. The despot, glittering in bar¬
baric pomp, and surrounded by foreign guards, appears in
his subject provinces like a being of another order, not to
collect the sentiments or redress the wrongs of the people,
but to silence all complaints, and enforce obedience to his
own lordly will. Though hated by all his subjects, he can
still employ the wealth and the physical force of one nation
to trample on the rights of another, and is thus able to hold
the w'hole in slavery. But the small Greek communities,
protected by the barriers of their gulfs and mountains,
escaped this evil destiny. The people, united by identity
of manners and language, by common interests and con-
1 Travels in the Morea, Albania, and other parts of the Ottoman Empire. Bv F. C. Pouqueville, M. D. (translation), London, 1313, J»-
443.
2 Travels in the Ionian Isles, Albania, Thessaly, Macedonia, &c. during 1312 and 1813. By Henry Holland, M. D. 1815, p. 207-
y Memoirs relating to European and Asiatic Turkey, edited by the Reverend Robert. "Walpole, A. M. 1817, p. 72; Clarke’s Travels,
4th edition, 8vo, 1818, vol, vii. p. 2S0 ; Holland’s Travels, p. 304. Article Climate in this work.
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G R E
eecc, tinual comnudnication, could combine with the utmost fa-
cility to resist the first encroachments of their rulers. They
were able to apply freely the lights of reason to all their
common concerns, to model their government according
to their circumstances and their views of common interest,
and to make the end for which it existed the measure of
the powers bestowed upon it. The forms of government
they adopted, though not contrived by absolute wisdom,
were probably in principle better adapted to their situation
than any other that could have been suggested. And never
did the powers of the human mind display themselves with
such energy and grandeur under any other system in the
history of the human race.
Of the plains we have mentioned, some terminate in the
ocean, and seem to owe their existence to the retiring of
the waters. Such are those of Macedonia, Athens, Argos,
Laconia, Messenia, and Ambracia. Others are completely
surrounded by a rampart of mountains or high grounds,
except at a single point where the waters have found or
forced a passage. Of this description are the three re¬
markable valleys of Thessaly, Bceotia, and Arcadia. Each
I of these forcibly suggests the idea of a vast inland lake,
where the waters, accumulating for a long period, had at
length burst through the barrier that confined them, and
left the bottom dry. There is also an analogy between
these valleys and some of the inland seas of Greece, such
• as the Gulfs of Corinth, Arta, Volo, and the channel of Ne-
gropont, wdiich are marine lakes completely land-locked,
and communicating with the Mediterranean by a single
passage, which may at one period have been closed. It
jmay even be conceived that the Archipelago itself, at one
period, was completely shut in by a barrier of high lands,
of which Cerigo, Creto, Scar panto, and Rhodes, are por¬
tions or fragments ; and that its numerous isles are either
the summits of mountains which then diversified its sur¬
face, or of detached rocks like those of Meteora in Thes¬
saly, which have resisted the incessant action of the waters.
The valley of Macedonia, which extends in a semicircle
round the head of the Gulf of Salonica, is the largest and
most fertile district in Greece. Its produce has been
supposed to be nearly equal to that of all the rest of the
country. The rivers in the lower parts, which overflow
annually, render the country marshy, and subject to the
malaria. It contains a considerable number of ancient re¬
mains, but they have only been partially examined. A
large tumulus still marks the site of the battle of Pydna,
w'hich reduced Macedonia to a Roman province. Thes¬
saly, separated from Macedonia by Olympus and the
Cambunian Mountains, is a vast circular basin, of fifty
or sixty miles diameter, enclosed on all sides by moun¬
tains, and next in fertility to Macedonia. The wdiole
of its waters flow off by the river Peneus. I he cele¬
brated Vale of Tempe, a deep ravine, formed by precipi¬
tous cliffs six or eight hundred feet high, and separat¬
ing Mount Olympus from Ossa, affords a passage for this
river to the sea on the east. The vale is about five
miles long, and so narrow, that the river in some parts
occupies the whole breadth of its bottom ; the scenery
is more striking by its grandeur than its beauty. I he rocks,
which are of bluish-grey marble, have a shattered appear¬
ance, and, wherever the surface admits of it, are covered
with trees and shrubs. Some of the ancients believed
that this defile was formed by an earthquake. Were any
natural convulsion to close it up, Thessaly would again be
converted into a lake; and Xerxes, when he invaded Greece,
threatened the Thessalians with this catastrophe if they
opposed him. The rocks of Meteora, at the upper side
of the Thessalian plain, are objects of a very remarkable
kind. They rise from the level surface of the country
near the Peneus, and cover a triangular space of two miles
each way. They consist of a great collection of lofty rocks,
E C E. 723
in the various shapes of cones, pillars, rhomboids, and ir- Greece,
regular masses, all standing detached from one another,
with faces generally as perpendicular as a wall. Their
height varies from one to three or four hundred feet, and
the deep winding intervals between them are filled with
trees and brushwood. On the summits of some of these
rocks monasteries are suspended in mid air, as it were on
the tops of very tall pillars. Some of the monasteries oc¬
cupy the whole surface of the rock they rest on, and per¬
sons ascending to them are swung in a basket or net, and
dragged up by a rope passing over a pulley. The rocks
are composed of a conglomerate, consisting of fragments
of granite, gneiss, and other primitive substances, dispos¬
ed in horizontal strata. The narrow district on the east¬
ern side of Mounts Ossa and Pelion is the ancient Mag¬
nesia, and is now called Zagora. At the south extremity
of Thessaly lies the famed Pass of Thermopylm, which is
merely the narrow space between the flank of Mount Gita
and the sea. The part of this space nearest the sea is
occupied by a marsh, between which and the cliffs the
breadth of firm land is still about sixty paces, as stated
by Livy. The hot springs mentioned by Herodotus, the
remains of the wall built by the Phoceans, and a tumulus,
believed with good reason to be that of the Spartans, are
all yet to be seen. The length of the pass is about five
miles. The country of Phocis, which lies immediately
south of the pass, is one of the most rugged in Greece,
being occupied almost entirely by the branches and decli¬
vities of Mounts Gita, Parnassus, and Helicon. Bceotia
is a large circular valley, enclosed by Parnassus on the
west, Helicon on the south, Cithaeron on the east, and a
range of high lands on the north. A low ridge running
north and south divides it in two. The lake Copais, which
occupies the bottom of the western and larger division,
and receives all its rivers, sends off its waters by subter¬
raneous passages to the sea on the north-east. In summer
this lake has the appearance of a green meadow covered
with reeds. Boeotia has more than once been inundated
by obstructions in these subterraneous channels. The
country is very fertile, but is higher and colder than At¬
tica. It is often covered with thick fogs, as described by
the ancients ; and, from the abundance of its mai'shes, is
very subject to malaria. Attica, which adjoins to Bceotia
on the east, is comparatively arid and barren, hilly rather
than mountainous, but distinguished peculiarly by the
dryness and elasticity of its atmosphere, and the beauty
and serenity of its climate. The isthmus of Corinth,
which connects Attica with the Morea, is occupied to¬
wards the north by high rocky hills, which render it strong
as a military post; but in the south, where its breadth is
about four miles, the surface is low, seldom exceeding a
hundred and fifty feet. The remains of the ancient wall,
and of the canal begun by Nero, are yet visible. The
Morea consists of an elevated central plateau or valley,
namely, Arcadia, and of five separate districts, formed by
the exterior declivities of the mountains which surround
the central plateau, and by spurs or branches which run
off from these mountains. The central valley of Arcadia,
so famed for its pastoral character by the ancients, is, like
the inland districts of Thessaly and Bceotia, high and
cold, often covered with fogs, arising from the moisture
of its soil, and hence also subject to malaria. All its run¬
ning waters escape by the single channel of the Alpheus ;
and it has sometimes suffered from partial inundations. Its
scenery, in the opinion of Lord Byron, is by no means de¬
serving of its ancient celebrity. Argolis, lying in a semi¬
circle round the Gulf of Nauplia, embraces but a small
portion of level country, which, however, is remarkably
rich, but very unhealthy. . The city of Argos still exists
in its ancient plain, and, till ruined by the revolution, was
one of the best built towns in the Morea. The ancient
724
GREECE.
G reece.
Scenenr.
Laconia, consisting of the long open valley of the Eurotas,
is very thinly peopled. The ruins of Sparta, four miles
south-west from the village of Mistra, are extensive, but
afford no fine specimens of architecture; the spot is en¬
tirely deserted. Messenia, which lies round the head of a
gulf, has a pretty large plain, of a very rich soil. Elis, on
the west, and Achaia, on the north of the Morea, are in
general hilly, and rather dry. In general, the west of
Greece has a different physical character from the east.
/Etolia, Acarnania, and Epirus (the modern Albania), pre¬
sent none of those circular basins so characteristic of the
east and south sides of the country, except the valley sur¬
rounding the Gulf ot Arta. Altolia and Acarnania consist
of long valleys open to the south, and rising into mountains
in the north. Albania has the same features on a larger
scale. Its mountains, which are more numerous than those
of any other district of Greece, cover the country in long
parallel ridges, and are separated by deep valleys, some of
which open to the south, and others to the west, but none
to the north. The Cyclades, and other islands in the
Aegean Sea, are almost all steep and rocky.1
1 he mountains of Greece, which cover so large a pro¬
portion ot its area, are partly wooded and partly naked,
and the woods abound more on the west side than the east.
The low country susceptible of tillage probably does not
amount to more than two fifths of the whole surface, and
of these two fifths, judging from the corn, olives, cotton,
tobacco, &c. required for the population, one twelfth or
fifteenth part may be actually in cultivation. It is gene¬
rally bare of wood, and, from the want of enclosures, the
profusion of weeds and brushwood, the thinness of the po¬
pulation, and the ruinous condition of the few cottages,
combined with the crumbling remains of the noble struc¬
tures of the ancients, has a desolate, melancholy, and de¬
serted aspect, which harmonizes well with the fallen for¬
tunes of the country. In the end of summer, from the
excessive heat which dries up the streams, the hills and
fields appear parched. In many quarters of the country,
however, there are copious perennial springs, which gush
out suddenly from the limestone rock. Greece combines
in the highest degree every feature essential to the finest
beauties of landscape, except large rivers, which are per¬
haps incompatible with the general character of its scenery.
Travellers of taste have wanted words to describe the mag¬
nificence of the views it affords. Its mountains encircled
with zones of wood, and capped with snow, though much
below the Alps in absolute height, perhaps are as imposing
from the suddenness of their elevation. Rich sheltered
plains lie at their feet, which want nothing but an indus¬
trious population to fill the mind with images of prosperity,
tranquillity, and happiness. But it is in the combination
of these more common features, with so many spacious and
beautiful inland bays and seas, broken by headlands, en¬
closed by mountains, and specked and studded with islands,
in every variety of magnitude, form, and distance, that
Greece surpasses every other country in Europe, and per¬
haps in the world. The effect of such scenery, aided by a
serene sky and delicious climate, on the character of the
Greeks, cannot be doubted. “ Under the influence of so
many sublime objects, the human mind becomes gifted as
by inspiration, and is by nature filled with poetical ideas.”
Greece became the birth-place of taste, science, and elo¬
quence, the chosen sanctuary of the muses, the prototype
of all that is graceful, dignified, and grand, in sentiment or
action. The poetry of the north, nursed amidst bleak
mountains, amidst oceans covered with fogs and ao-itated r
by storms, is austere and gloomy; but the muses of Greece w**
awakened into life in a rich and beautiful land, amidst
bright and tranquil seas, are gay, joyous, and luxuriant.
You almost conceive (says Chateaubriand), as it were bv
intuition, why the architecture of the Parthenon has such
fine proportions, why ancient sculpture is so unaffected, so
simple, so tranquil, when you behold the pure sky and de¬
licious scenery of Athens, of Corinth, and of Ionia. In
this native land of the muses, nature suggests no wild de¬
viations : she tends, on the contrary, to dispose the mind
to the love of the uniform and the harmonious.2
1 he climate of Greece seems to be distinguished from Clin-
that of Spain and Italy in the corresponding latitudes
chiefly by having the characteristics of an inland region in
a higher degree ; that is, the extremes of summer and win¬
ter are more severe. In Attica, which has a drier atmo¬
sphere and more uniform temperature than the rest of the
country, the average rain is about twenty-one or twenty-
two inches, and the greatest heat, in each of the four years
ending with 1807, was 104, 99, 93, 94. The greatest cold
was from 28 to 32 of Fahrenheit. The mean deduced
from all these extremes is 63'5. This agrees very nearly
with the temperature of a spring in the isthmus of Corinth
observed by Dr Clarke to be 64, and with the temperature
given in Professor Leslie’s table, which is 64-4. At the
southern extremity the annual temperature, according to
the same authority, is 65‘3, and at the northern extremity
about 60. But local diversities have a greater effect than
mere difference of latitude, on the distribution of the sea¬
sons. In Attica, which, being freely exposed to the sea,
has in some measure an insular climate, the winter sets
in about the beginning of January. About the middle of
that month snow falls, but is seldom seen for more than
a few days, though it lies for a month on the summits'
of the mountains. . Gentle rains fall about the middle of
February, after which spring commences ; and the corn,
which is a considerable height in March, is cut in May.
In the beginning of March, the vines and olives bud, and
the almonds are in blossom. In the great interior plains
and valleys, which are girt with mountains, and cut off
from the direct influence of the sea, the winters are much
colder, and the summers, making allowance for the dif¬
ference ot height, are warmer. At Tripolizza, in Ar¬
cadia, the snow has been found eighteen inches thick in
January, with the thermometer at sixteen degrees Fahren¬
heit ; and it sometimes lies on the ground six weeks. Dr
Clarke w as informed, that in the winter preceding his visit,
the peasants at the foot of Mount Cithaeron in Bocotia were
confined to their houses for several weeks by the snow.
At Yanina, situated in an inland plain, 1000 or 1200 feet
above the sea, the snow lies to a considerable depth in the
winter, and sometimes falls as late as April. The neigh¬
bouring lake was so firmly frozen over in 1813, that it
was everywhere crossed on the ice. The summits of the
central chain of Pindus, and most of the Albanian moun¬
tains, are covered w'ith snow from the beginning of Novem¬
ber to the end of March. These various facts show that
the winter in Albania, though shorter than in England, is
as severe; but that the summer is a vast deal hotter, the
extreme summer temperature being fifteen or eighteen de¬
grees higher at Athens than London; while Boeotia and
Thessaly are probably still hotter than Attica. Though
w e have no accurate data to establish a comparison between
the climate of Greece and those of Spain and Italy, yet the
it#
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(trans-
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If tkes
GREECE.
725
act of cotton being successfully cultivated, on a large
, cale, in Macedonia, as far north as the latitude of Rome
>nd Yaladolid, where it does not succeed in the two last
■ountries, is a proof that the summer temperature in Greece
s higher than either in Spain or Italy. The coldest wea-
her in all parts of Greece is accompanied with a north-east
rind. The north and north-west winds are distinguished
>y their serenity and dryness. The zephyr or west wind
,s famed for its balmy softness; the south-east, south, and
outh-west winds are all humid, and the east wind still re¬
ams the character of a morning breeze, as described by
Vristotle. The sirocco is felt in Greece. It blows from
he south-east, and produces its usual effects on the human
Constitution; a sense of oppression, a dull headach, with
bssitude and uneasiness in the limbs. Earthquakes are
ery frequent in Greece, but they are seldom very destruc-
tve.1
Modern travellers afford us but scanty information re-
pecting the mines of Greece; but, from its geological
tructure, we may conclude that it is, like Italy, rather poor
n metals. The working of the veins which do exist is ne-
Ilected by the Turks, from want of skill, or abandoned in
onsequence of the oppressive exactions of the government,
t is chiefly on the east side of Greece, where the older
ocks protrude through the superincumbent limestone,
hat metalliferous veins have been found. The silver mines
f Laurium, in Attica, which were extensive enough to
mploy 10,000 slaves, and supported the Athenian navy at
ine period, are now entirely abandoned. Copper also was
nciently found in Attica. Ores of iron, gold, silver, lead,
r alum, were wrought in Euboea and Melos, Naxos, Siph-
i os, and others of the Cyclades. The gold and silver mines
f Macedonia yielded Philip 1000 talents a year. At Nis-
;oro, in this country, there is still worked a silver mine,
|/hich affords a scanty produce of from fifty to 400 okes2 of
ilver, and 4000 or 5000 okes of lead annually. Marbles
f many varieties are abundant in Greece. Those of Paros
, nd Mount Pentelicus, which are both highly crystalline,
! ^ere employed in the finest works of sculpture and archi-
i ecture. At Selinizza, in North Albania, there is a very
xtensive mine of asphaltum, or compact mineral pitch,
die bed, seventy or eighty feet thick, and near the surface,
i supposed to extend over a span of four miles in circum-
(brence. Carburetted hydrogen gas issues from several
revices of the ground near it, and inflames spontaneous-
7; a phenomenon distinctly alluded to by ancient authors,
nd connected in this and other instances with the super-
titions of the Greek mythology.3
I There are few or no diseases peculiar to Greece. Like
11 the countries on the shores of the Mediterranean, it
uffers greatly from malaria. This prevails chiefly in the
lonths of August and September, and produces remittent
r intermittent fevers, which attack those who reside in
)w situations, near the mouths of rivers, or in the neigh-
ourhood of lakes, marshes, or rice grounds. The ancients
rere aware that fevers of this description affected certain
istricts; but, undoubtedly, the sphere of their influence
as been vastly extended by the neglected state of the
ountry. Attica, though one of the driest districts of
xreece, is not entirely exempted from them. These fe-
fers, recurring frequently, vitiate the system, and produce
,oitres and scrofulous complaints. Coughs, catarrhs, and
apoplexies, are prevalent in some districts; and elephanti- Greece,
asis, and leprous affections, arising probably from deficient
and unwholesome nourishment, are more common than in
other countries. The plague occurs at irregular periods,
and makes great ravages, but is generally believed to be
imported from Constantinople, Smyrna, or Egypt. The
first appearance of this dreadful scourge spreads alarm and
terror through the whole community. The affrighted ima¬
ginations of the people represent to them nocturnal con¬
certs of music, voices murmuring amidst the silence of night,
spectres wandering about on the roofs of houses, covered
with funereal rags, and calling out the names of those who
are to be cut off' from the number of the living.4
A rapacious and tyrannical government, like the Turk-r Agrieul-
ish, depresses every species of industry, but is particularlytuie-
fatal to agriculture, which requires the investment of large
capitals, with the prospect of only distant returns, and which
yields products that cannot be concealed. The Turkish
landlords and farmers are too sluggish and ignorant to at¬
tempt the smallest improvement; the other classes are too
much exposed to pillage ; and all must be affected by the
insecure tenure of their lands. In Greece, as in other
parts of Turkey, all lands hold immediately of the sultan,
and on the demise of the incumbent, vest anew in him.
When the Turks conquered the territories they now oc¬
cupy, the lands were taken from the native proprietors,
and a part of them distributed among Turkish colonists in
zaims and timars5 (the one exceeding 500 acres in ex¬
tent, the other from 300 to 500), on condition that the pos¬
sessors, with a stipulated number of followers, should serve
in the armies during war. Any of these properties which
fell vacant during active service were bestowed upon the
volunteers who had signalized their valour in the hope of
obtaining such rewards ; and there are instances of the
same lordship having been eight times disposed of in the
course of one campaign. Another part of the land was ap¬
propriated for the support of mosques, or as appanages to
the great officers of state, the mother and mistresses of the
sultan, and the children of the imperial family. The re¬
sidue, burdened with a territorial impost or land-tax, was
left, by an undefined tenure, to the ancient inhabitants.
(Thornton, 164.) In general, both Greeks and Turks pay
a quit rent to the aga or local governor, besides the land-
tax of one tenth to the sultan. We do not find it any¬
where stated what proportions these different species of
property bear to one another ; but it is obvious that a great
part of the land is held by persons who have but a liferent
interest in it; and though custom may temper a rule so
pernicious, and the right of resumption may not be rigor¬
ously exercised at the demise of each incumbent, it will
still be made a ground for vexatious demands, and render
the transmission of property dependent on the caprices of
provincial governors. To this must be added the farther
insecurity arising from bad laws badly administered ; from
the extortions practised by every class of public func¬
tionaries, civil and religious ; and, last of all, from the de¬
predations of bands of robbers, who descend from the
mountains, sometimes in parties of five or six hundred, to
dispute with the local rulers the right of plundering the
unhappy husbandman. Ali, the late pasha of Albania, per¬
mitted no sale or transfer of lands within his dominions
without his special consent. He held great quantities of
1 Holland, 47, 137, 411, 426; Hobhouse, let. 24. ; Pouqueville, p. 29, chap. xv.; Clarke, vi. 585, vii. 102 ; Arist. Meteor. 1. 2, c. 2.
1 s The oke is equal to 2| pounds avoirdupois; Dr Holland says 2|; but Beaujour, the best authority on this subject, makes the
ke equal to 40 Paris ounces, which are equal to 43-3 English ounces. The cantaar or quintal is generally 44 okes — 121 pounds,
'he kilo or quilot of corn is 22 okes, or 60 pounds. (Beaujour, let. 24.)
3 Travels of Anacharsis, Eng. edition, 1791, ii. 424, v. 34; Holland, 416, 518 ; Walpole, 228; Clarke, vi. 348, vii. 4G2 ; Tourne-
prt, let. 4. 5.
4 Pouqueville, chap. xvi.; Clarke, vii. 470; Walpole, p. 13.
s The number of these feudal lordships is variously stated. Olivier says there are 914 zaims, and 8356 timars, in European Turkey.
If these are estimated at 500 acres each, they will not amount to more than l-20th or l-25thof the whole lands, including mountains.
720 ' G U E
Greece, land himself; and, not content with buying it from those
who were disposed to sell, he compelled others, by quarter¬
ing soldiers on them, and harassing them by vexatious
demands, to part with their lands for an inadequate price.
He was believed to be the proprietor of one third of the
whole cultivated country under his government. In such
circumstances, it need not surprise us that cultivation is
badly conducted, the peasants poor and wretched, and the
country a wide waste, affording a miserable subsistence to
two millions and a half of inhabitants, where three or four
times as many lived in comfort and prosperity in the days
of Xenophon.1
Corn. The most considerable proprietors, both Turks and
Greeks, live generally in towns, and the land is let to the
peasants on a system resembling that of the metayers in
France. The farms are let from year to year ; the land¬
lord furnishes cottages, cattle, and seed; the tenant la¬
bours the ground ; and after a tenth of the produce is set
aside for the public tax, the remainder is divided into three
parts, of which the tenant gets one and the proprietor two.
When the tenant has cattle and a house of his own, he
gets one half. In the chiflicks or farms belonging to Ali,
who was a rigorous landlord, two thirds were taken when
the peasant found stock and seed, and five sixths, it is said,
when he furnished nothing but labour. Enclosures are ex¬
tremely uncommon, and scattered hamlets or cottages are
scarcely anywhere seen, the peasants living in villages for
the sake of security. Both the husbandman and shepherd,
when employed in the fields, has always a musket slung
over his back, besides a pistol and sword at his side. Their
cottages are hovels built of mud, straw, and boards, gene¬
rally without an opening to let the smoke escape. Some¬
times they are without walls, and consist merely of wooden
poles laid together in the form of a tent, and covered with
turf, like the huts of savages. Women are employed in
the labours of the field in Albania and Maina, but rarely
in ocher parts. The cultivation of corn land is generally
rude and slovenly ; but in some districts, where, from local
circumstances, the people are well protected, it is neat and
clean, though not skilful. Cotton and olive grounds and
vineyards, which are laboured chiefly with the hands, are
managed with more care ; and, in general, that part of the
cultivati'on.which depends on manual labour, and requires
neither capital nor good implements, is best executed.
The management of sheep and goats is also better conduct¬
ed than that of arable land, doubtless because store farms
are generally in situations more capable of defence, and
their stock is easily removed. In gardening, the Greeks
turn up the soil wirh a mattock, being unacquainted with
so common an instrument as a spade. The implements
of agriculture are few and simple. In light lands like those
of Messenia, the plough consists merely of a share pointed
with iron, without any other parts attached to it. It is
dragged by one horse or two asses. In stronger soils the
share is fixed into a plough with one handle and two mould
boards, and in some cases with block wheels. In Albania
the plough consists of a pole, a share, and one handle, all
of wood except the share, which is pointed with iron. In
Bceotia, Thessaly, and Albania, and in Greece generally,
the plough is drawn by tw'o oxen, sometimes by asses or
buffaloes, very seldom by horses. A hundred stremata of
land require four oxen if the soil is light, or eight oxen
if heavy. The strema is stated to be forty square paces ;
if yards are meant, it will be very nearly one third of an
acre. The corn, cut with a sickle, is separated from the
E C E.
straw in the ancient mode, by treading it under the feet Greff(
of oxen or horses. Fallowing is practised, and manures
are used, though the small quantity of ground in tillage
will, of course, render it unnecessary to cultivate poor soils
which require much artificial nourishment. In some few
parts of Macedonia and Thessaly a sort of clumsy car
with solid wooden wheels is used, but everywhere else
wdieel-carriages seem to be unknown, produce and goods
of all kinds being carried on the backs of horses, mules, or
camels.
The most common crops are wheat, barley, maize, and
rye ; besides these, oats in very small quantity; rice in
marshy spots, millet, peas, beans, tares, sesamum, and
anise, with cotton and tobacco. Turnips, if raised at all,
are confined to gardens, and potatoes seem to be entirely
unknown. The corn, sown in November or February, is
high in the beginning of March, and is cut in May. It is
sometimes sown as late as April, and reaped in two months.
After a crop of barley, cotton is sometimes sown and reap¬
ed the same season. The soil of Attica is too light for
wheat; and hence barley, as in ancient times, is still the
prevailing crop. In the Ionian Isles, and probably in the
moister parts of Greece, wheat is protected from the effects
of heavy dews by two persons dragging a long rope over
the field, so as to shake the husks. In the rich soils of
Macedon, to save the wheat from being injured by super¬
abundant nourishment, it is usual to let it be eaten by
sheep early in the season, a practice familiar to the ancient
Greeks. Notwithstanding the wretched system of culture,
the produce is large. The most fertile parts are the plains
of Thessaly, Bceotia, Sicyon, Argos, Messenia, Arcadia,
and Macedonia. The soil of the latter, in the opinion of
Beaujour, is superior even to that of Sicily. An arpent2 of
this soil usually produces from twTenty-five to thirty quin¬
tals (hundredweights) of wheat. In the Arcadian plains
wheat of several kinds yields twelve for one; in those of
Argos ten for one ; in Eleusis, the primitive seat of agri¬
culture, and in Thessaly, twelve for one. The produce
of good soils, generally in favourable seasons, is estimated
by Mr Hawkins at ten or twelve for one ; and of the best
soils, in very favourable seasons, at from fifteen to eighteen
for one. If these estimates are well founded, considering
the rude system of cultivation, they are proofs of a very
great degree of fertility. In England, the average return
from the seed, notwithstanding its highly improved agri¬
culture, is believed not to exceed nine for one. The very
best soils yield from six to seven quarters of wheat per acre,
weighing from twenty-four to twenty-eight hundredweight;
but from ordinary soils, the average produce per acre is
only about twenty or twenty-one bushels, weighing from
ten to eleven hundredweight. Greece exports corn to a
considerable extent.3
Greece, abounding in mountains covered with herbage, fas!ari'
is eminently a pastoral country; and the management of
sheep is better understood than the other branches of rural
economy. The modern breeds, however, have declined
much from the ancient in beauty and value. The flesh is
but indifferent, the wool of inferior quality, and the weight
of the sheep is only from thirty to fifty pounds. The flocks
of Arcadia and Livadia, especially those which feed upon
Parnassus, are considered superior to the others. A black-
woolled breed is very common. In Greece, as in Spain, the
flocks migrate from the inland mountains to the low valleys
near the sea at the approach of winter. Attended by the
owners, with their servants, they come down in October in
1 Thornton, chap. iii. v.; Beaujour, i. p. 3 ; Travels in Sicily, Greece, and Albania, by the Itev. T. H> Hughes, 1820, p. 82-
2 An arpem is nearly equal to l-‘ English acre.
3 Beaujour, let. 1, 5; PouqueviUe, chap. xvii. p. 45; Walpole, p. GO, 290, 226, 150, 146; Holland, 36, 504, 248, 482; Hobhouse,
p. 138, 135, 227, 354 ; Eton’s Survey, p. 220 ; Williams, ii. p. 354, 411 ; Clarke, vi. 546, vii. 339 ; Hughes, ii. 81; Wheler (eel
p. 330 ; Travels of Anach. chap. lix.
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GREECE.
nst numbers to the low country, where they enjoy the
ight of pasture under the laws or customs of the empire,
fid they return to the hills in April. The goats, which
te also numerous, are shorn along with the sheep, and
leir.hair is made into sacks, bags, and carpets. The flocks
ie guarded from the wolves by very large and strong dogs,
gpposed to be descended from the ancient Molossian breed.
Atica, which forms only the fiftieth part of Greece, was
fated before the revolution to possess 100,000 goats and
f),000 sheep, about one tenth part of which are killed year-
1. And yet it is not so much a pastoral country as Alba-
la, Phocis, or Arcadia. The oxen, which are chiefly used
ir labouring, amounted to about 3000 in Attica: the cows,
rincipally kept for breeding, were rather less numerous,
^lie oxen of the Morea are low in stature, have long white
Jiir, and weigh from three to four hundred pounds. The
®ws there give little milk, and are exposed to jackals,
ihich tear away the teats, and to serpents, which are said
t suck the milk. About 6000 head of cattle were consum-
d annually in the Morea ; but as both Turks and Greeks
fefer mutton, the number of sheep killed was incom-
lirably greater. A very fine breed of oxen is found in
iat district of Albania which corresponds to the ancient
(haonia, and which has probably derived its beauty from
te ancient breed of the country, celebrated by Aristotle,
iilian, and others. In all parts of the Morea, buffaloes,
fliich are handsome animals, with fine skins, are used in
lisbandry, and when unfit for labour are killed and eaten,
jhe horses of the Morea are little to be admired for their
liauty, but are active, vigorous, and sure footed. The
ises, which are numerous, but small and mean, are used
s. beasts of burden ; mules and camels are employed in the
|me capacity, but the latter are brought from Asia, and
|je not numerous. The annual produce of Macedonia, in
lool, is estimated by Beaujour at 700,000 okes (2,000,000
jpunds); of the Morea, by Pouqueville, at 12,800 quintals
1,500,000 pounds) : and it sells at about fifteen piastres1
(8s. 9d.) the quintal. The Morea produces annually about
|p,500 quintals of cheese (chiefly from the milk of sheep
jjid goats), which sells at seven piastres the quintal, or about
lie penny per pound.
I Cotton is cultivated from one extremity of Greece to the
Iher, but on the greatest scale in the district of Seres in
tacedonia, a rich and populous plain watered by the an¬
ient Strymon, and containing three hundred villages, so
Kar one another as to present the appearance of one large
iraggling town. Cotton is a more profitable, but more
•ecarious crop than corn; requiring clear sunshine, co-
ous dews, and light rains, to make it succeed. An ar-
;nt of good soil produces from tv/o hundred to three hun-
i -ed okes (550 to 825 lbs.) of cotton. The plain of Seres
sone produced 70,000 bales, or seven millions of okes, of
• itton, of which 50,000 bales were exported. Consider-
nle quantities are also raised in the ancient Chalcidice
| mother district of Macedonia), in Thessaly, Boeotia, and
| e Morea. The annual produce of the last, according
> Pouqueville, was only 59,000 okes, exclusive of two
I irgoes exported.2
Tobacco, though introduced into Turkey only about the Greece,
middle of the seventeenth century, is now a luxury in uni-
versal use. It is cultivated on a very narrow scale in the I'obacco'
south of Greece, but to a considerable extent in Albania
and Macedonia, and of a quality much esteemed. The
Turkish plant is not however so pungent as that of Ame¬
rica, and latterly the produce seems to be diminishing.
The quantity annually raised in Macedonia was estimated
by Beaujour (between 1787 and 1797) at 100,000 bales,
or 10,000,000 okes, valued at 4,000,000 piastres. It oc¬
cupied about one eighth of the cultivated soil, and afforded
support to 20,000 Turkish families. One half of the quan¬
tity raised was exported to Egypt, Barbary, and Italy. In
1812, the annual produce, as stated to Dr Holland, was
only from 35,000 to 40,000 bales. (Beaujour, let. 3 ;
Holland, 329; Hobhouse, 15.)
The olive is cultivated throughout Greece generally, but Olives,
that of Attica is still distinguished, as in ancient times, by
its superior excellence. It requires a dry soil, a sheltered
situation, and a warm exposure ; and is therefore not adapt¬
ed to the rich, moist plains of Bceotia and Thessaly. The
tree gives fruit the twelfth year, arrives at full vigour about
the twentieth, and, when not exposed to frost, is so dur¬
able, that the present olives of Palestine are believed to
date from the Crusades. An arpent of ordinary olive ground
will nourish a hundred and twenty trees, each of which yields
in good years twenty, but in average years ten, French
pounds3 of oil, and as this sells at six or eight paras the
pound, the whole value of the produce is about L.12 ster¬
ling. Before the revolution, Attica yielded annually of this
oil 2,400,000 pounds, of which three fourths were export¬
ed. It is at present, as it was in ancient times, the staple
produce of the country; the tree was indeed considered as
a special gift from the gods; and its cultivation was fa¬
voured by peculiar protection and encouragement, as far
back as the reign of Cecrops. The Morea, according to
Pouqueville, yielded 5,570,000 pounds of oil. The amount
of the produce of Albania and other districts is not knov/n.
If the opinion of the ancients is well founded, that the olive
does not thrive at a great distance from the sea, it may be
presumed that the plantations in the interior of the coun¬
try are less numerous than on the coast.4
Vines are cultivated on a small scale in Attica, Albania, Vines.
Thessaly, and in most of the districts of Greece, but with¬
out the skill and refinement which the ancients had intro¬
duced into this branch of rural economy. Dr Clarke, how¬
ever, observed some vineyards on Parnassus, which were
managed with much care and neatness., and afforded ex¬
cellent wines. In general, the Greek wine, owing to the
resin and lime mixed with it, has an unpalatable harshness.
Pouqueville estimated the produce of the Morea, in wine
and brandy, at 32,300 barrels, of fifty okes each, or about
550,000 gallons. If the vineyards are not more extensive
in other quarters, the whole produce of the country must
be* inconsiderable.5
The species of grape called the Corinthian grape, or the Cummta.
currants of commerce, is almost peculiar to the Morea and the
Ionian Isles, though believed not to be indigenous in these
1 The piastre is equal to 40 paras, and the para is equal to 3 aspres. The value of the piastre, from the progressive debasement
('the Turkish coin, has been continually sinking ; and it is besides liable to fluctuations from variations in the rate of exchange. Dr
handler, in his time (17G4), reckoned the piastre worth 2s. Gd. English. Beaujour says, that in his time (1787 to 1797), its intrin-
c value was 2f? sous (Is. 2d.), but its value in exchange was, on an average, about 37 sous (Is. G|d.). Dr Clarke (1800) represents it
| worth Is. 4d. Mr Hobhouse (1809) says, that when the exchange is at par, 17* piastres are equal to one pound, which gives Is.
Igd. for its value. Dr Holland (1812) generally reckons the piastre about Is. Id. Mr Williams (1817) makes it worth 8d. in ex-
Jpange; and in 1832 Mr Urquhart estimates the piastre at the 75th part of a pound, or 3(d. {Turkey and its Resources, 1833.) In
me calculations in this article, the piastres are generally turned into English money, at the value assigned them by the author from
hom the facts are taken.
2 Beaujour, let. 2 ; Pouqueville, 4G2; Holland, 227, 248.
3 The French pound is to the E.nglish pound avoirdupois as 100 to 92.
' 4 Beaujour, let. 7 ; Pouqueville, 462 ; Tmv. of Attach, chap. lix. ; Theophr. Hist. Plant, vi.
* Clarke, vu. 234 ; Holland, 212; Hobhouse, 91; Pouqueville, 4G2; Trav. of Anach. chap. lix.
728
GREECE.
Madder.
Silk.
Honey.
Fruit
trees.
Greece, countries. It is found in the greatest perfection along the
southern shores of the Corinthian Gulf, on some points of
the opposite coast, and in Cephalonia, Ithaca, and Zante.
Beaujour thinks it was brought from Naxos about 1580 ;
and it must therefore have been unknown to the ancients
on the continent. It succeeds best in plains near the sea,
with a western exposure, and prefers a dry, light soil. The
mean annual produce of the Morea before the revolution
was estimated at 10,000,000 pounds, of which 8,000,000
were exported to the western parts of Europe, chiefly to
Britain. They were sold at eighty piastres the thousand
pounds, including duties and expenses, which add sixty or
seventy per cent, to the first cost. Patras is the centre of
this trade. (Beaujour, let. 8.)
Madder grows wild in abundance, but is an object of cul¬
tivation in the moist plains of Boeotia, where 1200 sacks (of
275 lbs. each) are raised, ot which 700 are consumed in
Greece in dyeing spun cotton, and the other 500 are ex¬
ported. The produce of vermilion from the kermes in¬
sect is considerable. The canton of Livadia furnished 6000
okes, and the Morea' 22,000 okes, valued at from six to
eight piastres the oke. A part is exported.1
ihe mulberry tree is becoming an object of increasing
importance in Greece, and the produce of silk is consider¬
able. The districts that take the lead in this branch of in¬
dustry are Elis, Thessaly, and Magnesia, now Zagora. It
is chiefly conducted by the women. The annual produce of
the Morea in silk was about 79,000 okes, that of Zagora
25,000 okes ; which sold at fifteen or eighteen piastres the
oke. A part of the silk of Thessaly is sent across the
mountains to Albania.2 *
The management of bees is an object of considerable at¬
tention. This branch of industry is even so far favoured
by the Turks, that hives, under a regulation of Soliman II.
are not seizable in payment of taxes. Honey is abundant
in every part of Greece and Albania, but that of Mount
Hymettus still maintains its ancient pre-eminence. It is
remarkably transparent, and, in the opinion of Beaujour, is
superior to the best honey in France. There were about
3000 hives on this mountain, and 12,000 in the whole of
Attica, which yielded 360,000 pounds of honey and 24,000
pounds of wax. About one tenth was consumed within the
country, the rest was exported. The honey sold before the
revolution at eight or ten paras the pound, the wax at a
piastre. The produce ot the Morea in honey, judging from
Pouqueville’s table, does not much exceed one half of that
of Attica.3
The fruit trees which grow in the fields or gardens of
Greece, besides the vine and the olive, are, the almond,
pomegranate, orange, lemon, citron, banana, fig, with the
peach, apricot, quince, plum, and others of a more common
kind. The date grows, but does not bear fruit. The pro¬
cess of caprification, or exposing the fig to be punctured
by insects, which is minutely described by Pliny, is still in
use, and is thought to improve the fruit greatly. The gar¬
dening of the Greeks is badly conducted, and many of their
fruits want the rich flavour which might be given them by
the art of engrafting. Their melons, water melons, and
gourds, are excellent, and form a considerable part of the
subsistence of the inhabitants. Their culinary vegetables,
of which they have no great variety, are spinage, artichokes,
cabbages, cauliflowers, carrots, beans, lettuce, celery. The
forests produce the oak, kermes-oak, cork-tree, pine, larch,
ash, plane, aloe, wild olive, the sweet chestnut, whose fruit
is the temporary food of the people in many parts, the r
Fraxinus ornus, or ash which yields manna, the turpentine w '
pine, various trees and plants which yield dyes; and a vast ^
variety of flowers and aromatics.4
The wild animals of Greece are, the bear, wolf, lynx wn
wild cat, wild boar, stag, roebuck, wild goat, badger, mar-’nHs
ten, fox, hare, jackal, weasel, and hedgehog. The bears are
rarely seen; but the wolves are numerous; and to guard
the flocks and cattle from their ravages, great numbers of
dogs, of a powerful and fierce breed, are kept all over the
country. The peasant who kills a wolf is rewarded, not, as
in the time of Solon, out of the public funds, but by a small
voluntary contribution. Hares are very abundant, but they
are not much hunted, except by the Greeks. The method
of calling hares, or causing them approach the hunter by a
particular cry, and then shooting them, is practised.
Of birds, there are very large vultures, various species
of falcons and owls, the cuckoo, roller, king’s fisher, ducks of
several kinds, the domestic goose and turkey, the stork,
which arrives at Athens in March and departs in August’
partridges numerous, wild pigeons, quails, snipes, teal, black¬
birds, the goldfinch, nightingale, the beccafica, a very small
bird, the swallow, martin, &c.
The seas, lakes, and rivers, abound with a variety offish,
and the phoca is found on the coast.5
The mechanic arts are necessarily in a rude state in Arts and
Greece, though the vices of the government do not operate manufac.
so injuriously upon them as upon agriculture. Numberstures'
and union give a certain degree of security to the artisans
of towns, which the rural inhabitants cannot possess. But,
on the other hand, these arts can only flourish when they
are bottomed on knowledge generally diffused; and when
entirely separated from scientific principles, they unavoid¬
ably degenerate into empirical processes, which are conti¬
nued by servile imitation. Accidental circumstances may
improve some, and prevent others from retrograding; but
they are not so connected as to advance equally, or carry
forward each other. This is obviously the case in Greece.
Some of the ruder mechanic arts have been created or pre¬
served by the indispensable wants of society ; others have
been imported to minister to the luxury of the great; and
a few seem to be fragments saved from the wreck of for¬
mer knowledge. Hence trades and professions equally
necessary are exercised with very different degrees of
skill, and seem to belong to different stages of social life.
On the other hand, travellers sometimes mislead us, by not
sufficiently attending to the fact, that the household furni¬
ture of the 1 urks or Greeks, and the implements and ac¬
commodations required for every situation and employment,
are few and simple compared with ours. Works, however,
are executed requiring much more skill than many others,
the want of which is sometimes referred to as a mark of
barbarism. Ihe agents of the British ambassador could
not procure a wheeled cart or a ladder in Athens; but it
ought to be recollected, that the Greeks, who inhabit a
mountainous country, with steep unpaved roads, have some
reason for employing pack-horses instead of wheel carriages,
as we did in Scotland sixty or seventy years ago; and if
the tradesmen who construct the mosques, the baths, and
the palaces of the pashas, would not or could not make a
cart or a ladder, it was certainly not from want of skill, but
want of practice.
It would be absurd to compare the manufactures and
mechanic arts of Greece with those of England or France;
1 Beaujour, let. 9, 10; Pouqueville, 462.
^ Beaujour, let. 11; Pouqueville, 200, 462; Holland, 245. 3 Beaujour, let. 6; Pouqueville, 203, 462 ; Holland, 510.
Pouqueville, chap. xvn.; Hobhouse, 69, 227- For an account of the plants of Greece, see a paper by Dr Sibthorpe in Walpole’s
Memoirs relating to European and Asiatic Turkey, p. 235. r i' J u 1
s Walpole, 73-77 ; Chandler, 126; Pouqueville, chap. xvii.
penti
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GRE
>ect. but they are probably little, if at all, inferior to those of
.^—Hungary or Poland. In the villages and small towns, car¬
penters use no other instruments than a saw, a hammer,
and a hatchet; and it is only in large cities that gouges and
chisels for making mortices are employed. Artists, how¬
ever, and tradesmen, are found capable of constructing
water and wind mills, and building bridges. The churches
and mosques are often substantially built and well finish¬
ed, though designed in bad taste. The palaces of the pa¬
shas are generally executed in a very sumptuous style;
they are beautifully wainscotted, have marble floors some¬
times inlaid, are adorned with good carved work and gild¬
ing, with paintings not at all despicable, and with va¬
rious decorations, which would be thought handsome even
in the west of Europe. The baths, fountains, and sepul¬
chral monuments, also display some good architecture.
In some few cases it is probable these works are execut¬
ed by foreign artists. Ships of considerable burden are
built at Hydra and Spezzia. There are goldsmiths among
the Greeks and Turks, who can combine the metals, and
execute devices neatly enough upon sword-belts and scab¬
bards, though their workmanship is inferior, in taste of
plesign and delicacy of execution, to that of English and
•French artists. Knives and forks are made at Athens,
daggers and other articles of armoury at Mistra. Good
pottery, resembling the ancient in purity, brightness, and
elegance, is made at Larissa. The saddles, bridles, and
housings of the Turks, are well made, according to their
ashion, and elegantly embroidered. The Greeks paint in
resco, by a peculiar process, and are possessed of a method
)f painting in wax, and fixing the colours with heat, which
las been thought to be substantially the same with the
mcient encaustic painting. The fabrication of images of
saints is a considerable branch of manufacture. They are
brmed mechanically from a model or prototype, which is
landed down from father to son ; and hence the remark-
lible uniformity of feature in these images. The Greeks
iif Yanina and other places embroider well on stuffs of va¬
rious kinds ; and the artisans of Larissa, Yanina, and Salo-
nica, have long excelled in the preparation of Turkey
leather. Soap is made at Tripolizza ; the art of dyeing is
practised in many places with much skill, and in particu-
ar the secret of giving a fast red colour to cotton was long
lonfined to the Greeks of Thessaly, though now known
loth in France and England. The cloth manufactures of
Greece are chiefly of a coarse kind, for home consumption ;
iut they embrace also some articles of a finer description
or exportation. A silken robe, of very delicate net-work,
made in Greece, is believed by Beaujour to be the same
tort of fabric as the ancient gauze of Cos, or cloth of air,
ixcept that the latter was made of linen. Ten thousand
if these are annually exported from Salonica to other parts
if Turkey. Shawls for turbans, serges, velvets, satins,
ind various silk and cotton stuffs, are made at Tornavos
n Thessaly, at Tripolizza in the Morea, or other places.
The carpets of Salonica, though inferior to those of Smyr-
la in brilliance of colour, are equal in quality, and are
much esteemed in the west of Europe. Of woollens, the
irincipal manufactures consist of coarse fabrics, called abats,
ised for clothing by the peasantry, and of carpets or cloaks,
m article in universal use among the Albanians, and also
n great demand among the mariners of the Levant. These
ire chiefly made by the Wallachians, and other inhabitants
if the mountainous parts of Albania, Thessaly, and Mace-
lonia. But the species of manufacture which probably
employs the greatest number of hands is the spinning and
E C E. 729
dyeing of cotton yarn. In Thessaly and Macedonia, 20,000 Greece,
bales, or 5,500,000 pounds, of cotton were spun annually, '
The large village of Ampelakia, which overhangs the defile
of Tempe, containing 4000 inhabitants, was entirely sup¬
ported by this manufacture ; and it forms the most consi¬
derable branch of industry in Tornavos, Larissa, Pharsalus,
and in all the villages on the declivities of Ossa and Pelion.
Of the yarn, a large proportion is sent to Germany. In
general, the manufactures of Greece are carried on by
mere manual labour, without combination, and without the
aid of machinery ; and, considering the disadvantages they
labour under from these circumstances, it is rather matter
of surprise that they are so extensive. The most indus¬
trious provinces are Thessaly, Macedonia, Albania, the
Morea, Attica, and Livadia. The western part of Bceotia,
with Phocis, Locris, Aftolia, and Acarnania, are totally des¬
titute of manufactures.1
Physic is practised partly by Greeks who have received
some education in Italy, and partly by Italians. Many of
them, however, have received no education at all, but are
adventurers, who, having failed in trade, put on the Frank
habit, which all the physicians wear, and commence prac¬
titioners. With a few exceptions, they are extremely ig¬
norant and prejudiced ; and their practice is limited to the
use of bleeding, and a very few remedies. If the disease
does not yield to these, the papas is called in, and recourse
is had to exorcism. Surgery is chiefly in the hands of the
Albanians, who have skill enough to reduce fractures and
dislocations, but never attempt amputations, or other ope¬
rations of any difficulty.2
Greece, deeply indented on three sides by arms of the Commerce,
sea, encircled by numerous islands, and having its inland
communications obstructed by mountains, has a natural
tendency to become a commercial country; and, from va¬
rious causes, its foreign trade has suffered less from the
wretched policy of its government than either its agricul¬
ture or manufactures. The foreign merchant always as¬
sumes, in a certain degree, the character of a citizen of the
world: Having his capital scattered over many countries,
only a small part is within the grasp of tyrannical rulers at
one spot; and, when oppressed or disturbed, he can, with
greater ease than any other person, transfer his wealth and
industry to some other place where they will be more se¬
cure. Originally, the commerce of Greece was carried on
almost entirely by foreigners, whom the Turkish govern¬
ment found itself compelled to treat with some degree of
respect; and the Greeks, who latterly engaged in it, part¬
ly by procuring protections from foreign powers, and part¬
ly from the force of custom, insensibly acquired a share of
the consideration and the privileges enjoyed by the class to
which they belong. What contributed perhaps still more to
their security was, that they were exempted from any imme¬
diate collision of interest with the Turks, who, from their
aversion to foreigners, arising out of their religious bigotry,
almost entirely abandoned commercial pursuits. The only
exception to this was, that the beys and pashas, with the
usual short-sighted cupidity of despotic power, monopolized
in many cases the sale of the most considerable articles of
export, such as corn and oil; and they of course greatly
cramped the growth of these branches of trade. The
Greeks are gifted in a peculiar degree with the practical
sagacity and address required for conducting mercantile
transactions ; and finding the paths to distinction, and the
pursuit of national objects, closed against them, their acti¬
vity and enterprise flowed more abundantly into the chan¬
nel of commerce. The ruin brought upon many foreign
'}
vo
1 Beaujour, let. 1,2, 14, 15, 16; Thornton, 16-28; Clarke, vi. 273, 280, vii. 344; Hobhouse, 75, 69; Eton, 232; Holland,
123, 133, 265, 288 ; Pouqueville, chap. xvii.
* Pouqueville, 194 ; Hobhouse, 535 ; Holland, 164.
VOL. X. 4 z
730 G R E
Greece- houses engaged in the trade of Greece, by the fluctuations
and revolutions in the west of Europe during the last thir¬
ty years, threw a great portion of it into the hands of the
Greeks themselves. And the annihilation of the commerce
of France, Spain, and Italy, for a long period, by the as¬
cendency of the British marine, gave the Greek traders a
new and extraordinary importance as neutrals. Before the
revolution, there were individual houses of this nation who
had branches established in three or four of the chief com¬
mercial towns of Europe, and their ships made voyages as
far as America. Within this period, too, the small barren
rocks of Hydra and Spezzia, olf the coast of Argolis, be¬
came the seats of an extensive and flourishing commerce,
and rose suddenly to extraordinary wealth. In 1812, the
former had 25,000 inhabitants entirely supported by trade,
with about three hundred trading vessels, some of them as
large as 500 tons.1 The larger vessels were generally built
at Fiume. Funds were supplied for fitting them out by
capitalists residing in the island, who had acquired fortunes
in trade, and lent out their money at ten, fifteen, or twen¬
ty per cent. The captain was generally a principal owner,
and every person on board, down to the cabin boy, had
a share in the speculation. (Holland, 424.) The Hy¬
driotes purchased the right of electing their own magis¬
trates from the porte, and they some years ago expended
ten thousand pounds in building their town-house. (Hob-
house, p. 599.) Spezzia approached to Hydra in commer¬
cial importance, and Psyra had also acquired consideration
by trade. The same cause which raised these places to
consequence created a new trade of a very singular kind
at the port of Salonica. Colonial goods, when the usual
channels by which they were admitted to the Continent
were closed in 1810, 1811, and 1812, were sent to Saloni¬
ca by sea, and thence forwarded overland to Vienna by a
route of 700 miles in length. The goods were transported
on horseback ; the journey generally occupied thirty-five
days, and the expense was supposed to add about 100 per
cent, to the import price of the articles at Salonica. In
1812, thirty cargoes came direct from England to Saloni¬
ca, besides a still greater number from Malta and Gibral¬
tar, and cavalcades of a thousand horses sometimes set out
at once for Germany. (Holland, p. 323.) The Greek
vessels were found trading in Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, the
Black Sea, and the Sea of Marmora; and a yast number
of small craft plied among the islands of the Archipelago,
and between these islands and the Continent. Thiersch
estimates, that the internal and coasting trade of Greece
employs 2000 small vessels, and 40,000 mules and asses.
(Etat actuel de la Grece, 1833, ii. p. 72.)
The commerce of Greece with the other parts of the
world is chiefly carried on by sea; but with Germany a
considerable traffic is maintained by land. The town of
Salonica, which is situated in the centre of the most fertile,
populous, and industrious districts, Macedonia and Thes¬
saly, is the principal seat of this commerce. As a trading
city it rivals Smyrna, and is probably inferior only to the
capital. The other most considerable ports in Greece are
Orphano, at the head of the Gulf of Contessa, Volo in
Thessaly, Athens, Nauplia in Argolis, Calamata, Coron,
and Patras in the south and west sides of the Morea, Sa-
lona on the north side of the Corinthian Gulf, Arta, Bu-
trinto, Avlona, and Durazzo in Albania. The exports,
which consist principally of raw produce, are corn, cotton,
tobacco, olive oil, timber, wool, silk, honey, currants, figs,
hides, dyestuffs, drugs, with some wine, cheese, butter,
live cattle, spun and dyed cotton, some capots or cloaks,
carpets, coarse woollens, and a few slight fabrics of silk
and cotton. The manufactured articles go chiefly to the
E C E.
other provinces of Turkey. The imports from western Grew
Europe consist of manufactured goods, colonial produce s— °
and peltry ; those from other parts of Turkey, of coffee
flax, timber, rice, drugs, and some manufactured articles •
those from Barbary, bonnets and slaves. Both imports
and exports pay a duty of three per cent, if the merchant
is a foreigner; but by a strange inversion of ordinary
rules, the duty is from five to ten per cent, if he is a native.
The goods imported are circulated through the country
by fairs held in the great towns, and are transported from
place to place on the backs of horses, mules, and sometimes
camels. The prices are of course greatly enhanced by the
risks attending carriage, and by the high rate of interest
paid on capital, which is generally twelve per cent, in com¬
mercial transactions, and twenty per cent, in other cases.
(Beaujour, let. 23, 24; Holland, 227, 326.)
In the ten years from 1787 to 1797, about one half of
the foreign trade of Greece was with Germany. It was
chiefly conducted by Greeks, and Vienna and Salonica
were the principal entrepots. The Germans took cotton,
raw and spun, from Greece, and returned light woollens,
linens, muslins, glass, cutlery, &c. to the value of one third
of their imports, and the other two thirds in specie. The
Italian commerce, which is next in importance to the Ger¬
man, is carried on chiefly with the ports of Leghorn and
Venice. It supplied Greece with fire-arms, glass, paper,
silks, &c.; Russia sent silks and peltry ; France, woollens,
bonnets, gold lace, sugar, coffee, and indigo; Holland,
cloth and spiceries ; and England, woollens, muslins, linens,
metal wrought and unwrought, watches, trinkets, jewel¬
lery, and colonial produce. (Beaujour, let. 17, 23.) Ex¬
cept Russia and England, all those states make a part
of their returns in specie. The late long wars, however,
have made a considerable change in the distribution of
this trade. The new establishments of Britain in Malta
and the Ionian Islands must have transferred to her a part
of what was formerly in the hands of the French and Ita¬
lians.
Cotton, according to Beaujour, ranks first among theCotton.
staple exports of Greece, and four fifths of the trade in this
article is conducted at Salonica. On an average of the ten
years ending 1797, the district of Seres in Macedonia,
where the most extensive cotton plantations in Greece are,
furnished 50,000 bales, or 5,000,000 okes, for exportation,
of which three fifths went to Germany. The price varied
from 80 to 160 aspres the oke, or averaged about a piastre.
But in 1809 the export of cotton from Salonica amounted
to 110,000 bales, or 11,000,000 okes, and the price having
risen to sixty, eighty-five, and even ninety paras, must have
averaged nearly two piastres the oke. The export of the
Morea, which, according to Pouqueville, consisted, about
1800, of two cargoes, probably 400,000 okes, must have in¬
creased from the same causes, and might be estimated at
600,000 okes. About 72,000 okes were shipped from Sa-
lona in 1805. Considerable quantities of cotton are raised
in Albania, and more in Thessaly; and though a great
proportion of these is consumed within the country, a part
is exported by the ports of Volo, Arta, and probably also
by Butrinto and Avlona. If we add for the exportation
of these districts a quantity double of that of the Morea, or
1,200,000 okes, we may form a loose estimate of the whole
export of cotton from Greece, which would thus amount,
about 1809, to 12,872,000 okes, or 35,398,000 pounds,—
a quantity nearly equal to what was exported by the Unit¬
ed States in 1805. The value of this, estimated at one
and three fourth piastre the oke, would be 22,526,000 pi¬
astres, or about L.1,200,000 sterling (taking the piastre at
Is. Id., the value given by Dr Holland, from whom most
1 Holland, 424. Mr Hobhouse, who travelled in 1809, says, that Hydra could furnish men for 80 vessels of 300 tons, Spezzia fur
60 (p. 600). With a small allowance for increase in the intervening period, perhaps the two statements are not inconsistent.
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GREECE.
731
r the statements are taken). The opening of the Conti-
Ent, however, in 1813, for the admission of West Indian
gid American cottons, produced a great diminution in this
tanch of trade ; but the details are interesting, as showing
ue commercial spirit of the people, and indicating the
itrides their trade may be expected to make under more
ivourable circumstances.1
, The trade in tobacco, of which Salonica is also the chief
pat, seems to have latterly declined. Beaujour estimates
fie annual export of this article, between 1787 and 1797,
,t 60,000 bales, which went chiefly to Egypt, Barbary,
^taly, and Germany ; but Dr Holland, who travelled in
812, estimates it only at 30,000 bales, or 3,000,000 of okes.
Tie Morea, and the southern parts of Greece, generally
aise little tobacco, but import a great part of what they
ise from Macedonia and Anatolia. Albania and Thessaly,
owever, yield a large produce, and export to some extent.
Ve have no account of the precise quantity, but if we sup-
ose it to be one fifth of what is shipped at Salonica, the
diole export of this article would amount to 3,600,000
kes, which, valued at thirty-six aspres the oke (about Ifd.
;he pound), including custom-house duties, would amount
p 1,080,000 piastres, or L.67,500.2
I The exportation of corn to foreign countries is prohibit-
:d in Turkey, but is carried on to a great extent clandes-
inely, by the beys and pashas themselves, or by merchants,
b whom they sell, for a large sum, the privilege of violating
jbe law. During the unsettled state of the west of Europe
lie trade of Greece in corn seems to have increased ra-
lidly. According to Beaujour, the export from the fertile
jrovinces of Thessaly and Macedonia, by the ports of Sa-
-pnica, Orphano, and Volo, consisted annually of eighty
argoes to other parts of Turkey, and forty to France and
Italy, making in all 1,200,000 kilos. In 1809 Dr Holland
.istimates the export from Salonica alone at 1,000,000 kilos
if wheat, 500,000 barley, and 100,000 maize, altogether
iqual to about 200,000 quarters. About fifty cargoes of
dieat and maize were sent from Arta to Sicily, Malta, and
Tie Ionian Isles ; 100,000 kilos from Salona, and 250,000
rom Livadia. The Morea, according to Pouqueville, sent
ut eight cargoes, or, according to Scrofani, about 240,000
ilos. If we put these quantities together, taking the car-
0, according to Beaujour’s valuation, at 10,000 kilos, and
flow for the exports of Thessaly by the Gulf of Yolo
l which are not included in Dr Holland’s statement), and
■ fi North Albania by Avlona, Durazzo, and other ports, a
■ uantity equal to what is shipped at Arta, we shall have
\ ar the whole export of continental Greece in corn before
he revolution 3,190,000 kilos, or 400,000 quarters. The
l ;reater part of this consisted of wheat, the price of which
ras latterly from five and a half to six and a half piastres
he kilo. Beaujour states the value of bread corn in his
ime at two and a half piastres ; and Scrofani reckons the
;rain of all kinds exported from the Gulf of Arta worth
hree piastres the kilo. If we assume the average in 1809
I o be four and a half piastres, the value of the whole ex-
ortation would be about 14,950,000 piastres, or L.809,700
[terling.3 This may be considered as the true value of the
rain, only a small share of which, however, goes into the
ocket of the grower, imposts and exactions by the public
ifficers absorbing the greater part. Considered in refer-
nce to the extent and circumstances of the country, the
ixportation now stated is very large. Estimating the whole
opulation at 2,500,000, and allowing a septier of corn
(about four and a half bushels) to each, according to Beau- Greece,
jour’s calculation,4 the whole consumption will only amount
to 1,400,000 quarters ; and the corn exported will form
nearly one fourth of the entire produce.
It has been stated that only a small proportion of the Wool,
wool of Greece is wrought up in the country ; but the
amount of the export does not seem to warrant this asser¬
tion. From Salonica, according to Beaujour, the quantity
exported is about 500,000 okes annually; from Salona,
in 1805, it was 140,000 okes; from the Morea, according
to Pouqueville, two cargoes, or, according to Scrofani,
340,000 okes. As sheep-farming is a leading occupation
in Thessaly, and still more in Albania, the quantity export¬
ed from these countries (independently of what is carried
inland to Salonica), and from TEtolia and Attica, cannot
be less than from Macedonia and the Morea together; and,
on these data, the whole export of wool may be loosely es¬
timated at 1,800,000 okes (4,950,000 pounds), which, at
the average price of twenty paras the oke, is worth about
L.56,000 sterling. Considering the reputed number of
flocks in Greece, and the small proportion of the wool said
to be used in domestic manufactures, this estimate is pro¬
bably below the truth. The Jews of Salonica, who were
refugees from Spain two centuries ago, obtained from the
Ottoman government the privilege of buying up one fifth
of the wools grown in Macedonia, at four paras the pound ;
and this oppressive privilege they were permitted to retain
and abuse to a late period.5
The exports of Attica in olive oil, according to Beau- Oil.
jour, were 150,000 measures (of twelve pounds each), or
about 14,000 barrels, at forty-eight okes to the barrel.
Those of the Morea, according to Scrofani, were 21,000
barrels ; Salona, in 1815, shipped 5000 barrels ; and large
quantities were sent out from the Gulfs of Yolo and Arta,
from Avlona, and probably from Salonica and Orphano.
Considering the extent to which this tree is cultivated
over all Greece, the annual produce for exportation would
certainly be moderately estimated at twice the amount
of the quantities above enumerated, or 80,000 barrels. The
value of this, at twenty piastres the barrel, is L.100,000
sterling.6
The commerce in currants centres chiefly in Patras, Currants,
from which, according to Beaujour, 8,000,000 pounds were
annually exported, the total value of which, at eighty pi¬
astres the thousand pounds, is LAO,000 sterling. Dr Hol¬
land states the export from Patras at 5,000,000 pounds,
Scrofani at 6,000,000. (Beaujour, let. 8 ; Holland, 433.)
The only exportable commodity worth naming possessed Miscella-
by Attica, besides oil, is its honey, which is famed over all neous ar-
Turkey. Of this article and wax it exported to the valuetlcle3,
of 100,000 piastres. Twenty or thirty cargoes of timber
were sent from the Gulf of Arta, besides large quantities
from Macedonia and Thessaly; and from one or other of
these districts were also exported silk, wine, hare-skins,
honey, opium, drugs, bees-wax, carpets, and some capots,
and other coarse woollen cloths. Vermilion and madder
are exported from Livadia. Of the nature and extent of
this trade we can only form a judgment by referring to
that of the Morea. Besides the produce of corn, oil, cur¬
rants, cotton, and wool, formerly mentioned, the Morea
exported on an average, according to Scrofani, silk, to the
value of 407,000 piastres ; cheese, 459,000 piastres ; cat¬
tle, 240,000 ; fruits, 139,000 ; dye-stuffs, 202,000 ; wax
and honey, 140,000. These, with smaller articles, to the
1 Beaujour, let. 2 ; Holland, p. 84, 389; Pouqueville, p. 206. 2 Beaujour, let. 3 ; Holland, 84, 151, 349 ; Pouqueville, 411.
3 Beaujour, let. 4 and 23; Holland, p. 84, 389, 395, 517; Pouqueville, 206; Walpole, p. 226.
* The consumption of each individual in England is computed to be about 1 or H quarter of grain ; and though the inhabitants of' ’
Greece live much on gourds, melons, chestnuts, and other substances of that kind, the estimate of Beaujour is certainly rather low.
8 Beaujour, let. 5 ; Holland, 389, 84, 517, 499; Pouqueville, 206.
9 Beaujour, let. 6; Holland, p. 84, 349, 389, 517 ; Pouqueville, 411.
732
Greece, value of 238,000 piastres, make a total of 1,725,000 pias-
tres. From this must be deducted the value of goods sent
to other parts of Greece, supposing it to equal the imports
of the same description, viz. 316,000 piastres, which leaves
1,409,000 piastres. If we suppose the trade of the north
of Greece in these miscellaneous articles to be three times
as great as that of the Morea (the ratio of the population is
about five to one), or 4,227,000 piastres, we have a sum of
5,950,000 piastres, or L.377,000, to add to the value of the
exports of Greece, in the great articles formerly enume¬
rated,1 and the whole will stand thus :—
Cotton, raw and spun L.1,200,000
Tobacco  56,000
Corn  809,700
Wool  67,000
Olive oil  100,000
Currants  40,000
Miscellaneous articles  377,000
E c E.
bottoms. In this and other particulars the commerce of Gr
Greece bore a general analogy to that of America, both
countries exporting raw produce of the same kind, and im- ^
porting manufactures, and both acting in the character of
neutrals. On the ground of this resemblance, we will suppose
the coasting trade of Greece and its islands to employ about
half the tonnage of its other trade. In 1810 we find the
whole tonnage of the United States (foreign and coasting)
was, to its exports, in the proportion nearly of one ton to
forty-eight dollars; but, allowing for the inferior efficiency of
Greek shipping, and the difference in the value of money,
although their voyages are shorter, we may assign one ton
to thirty-six dollars, as the proportion in the latter. This
gives about 340,000 tons of shipping, of all sizes; and
since the danger from pirates, as well as their own want
of nautical skill, oblige the Greeks to employ an extra
number of hands in their vessels, we may allow one man
to ten or twelve tons, which will give 30,000 seamen. If
we add half as many more for the Greek mariners employed
at Constantinople, Smyrna, and other ports beyond the li¬
mits of Greece, the whole number of mariners of this na¬
tion, in 1809, may be estimated at 45,000, which does not
fall greatly short of the number mentioned by Mr Hob-
house. More than one half of this commercial marine must
have disappeared during the troubles of the revolution;
but more prosperous times may recal it to existence.
The proportion between the rate of wages and the price Wages of
of commodities in Greece affords an illustration of the de-labour,
pendence of the former on the habits of the population.
The numerous fasts of the Greek church keep the peasant
idle a great part of the year; and the consequence is, that,
as he must have the means of subsistence, his wages, dur¬
ing the time he labours, are so much higher. Thus, Beau-
jour tells us, that, in his time (from 1787 to 1797), the
wages of a peasant were from twenty to twenty-five paras
a day, and of an artisan, thirty to forty paras; and, at the
same period, beef was sold at six, mutton at twelve, and
bread at four paras the oke (two and three-fourth pounds);
and corn was two and a half piastres the kilo or bushel.
Supposing a full-aged labourer to consume six or seven
kilos of corn in the year, he observes, that such a person
could earn bread for himself, for a whole year, in thirty-six
or forty days, and food of all kinds in eighty; that he could
provide subsistence for himself and his wife in a hundred
and sixty days; and for a child besides in forty days more.
The vast number of fasts, as he remarks, are the chief
cause of these high wages, which do not enable the labourer
to live wrell, but to live idle, and indulge his superstitious
feelings. (Beaujour, ii. 168.)
The provincial governments of Greece bear the different Provincisl
denominations of pashalik, mousselimlik, agalik, voivodalik, goveri:'
according as they are administered by pashas, mousselims,men,s
agas, or voivodes. The pashas are the first of these
functionaries in rank, and govern the largest districts; the
others follow in the order in which they are named. The
agas often take the title of Bey, though that belongs pro¬
perly to military commanders one degree higher. The
most essential distinction between them regards the extent
of the districts they govern ; for they are all independent
of one another, and accountable separately to the general
government. Each, as vicegerent of the sultan, exercises
the full powers of sovereignty within his own district.
This seems to be the theory of the government; but as
theory and practice seldom coincide in Turkey, we find
that in some districts the beys or agas are, to a certain ex¬
tent, dependent on the pashas. The limits and the num¬
bers of these provincial governments are often in a state
of fluctuation, in consequence of the hostilities which the
beys and pashas carry on against one another. The enter-
Total exports of continental Greece before! T - r.n
the revolution  / ^^649,70i)
We are sensible that so many uncertain elements enter
into this table as to detract greatly from its authority; but
the reader is aware of the data from which it is compiled,
and can judge for himself. The multitude of particular
facts, given by different travellers, seem to be of little value,
except as materials for some such general estimate; and
the writer of an article of this kind is evidently in a better
situation to form such an estimate than an ordinary reader.
With regard to this amount, it is proper to observe, that
it refers to the period of 1809, when the commerce of
Greece was forced up to an unnatural magnitude by the
singular state of w estern Europe. The peace of 1814 re¬
duced both the quantity and value of the cotton and grain
exported, probably to the extent of a third or more, and
the trade of Southern Greece wTas almost annihilated by the
revolution. We may remark farther, that the sum ex¬
presses the value of the articles to the foreign purchaser at
the place of export, which includes duties and charges,
amounting, in some cases, to one third of the value; and,
with regard to the article of corn, a considerable part is
carried away without payment, as the produce of a tax;
another part is forced from the grower, at a fifth or sixth
part of its value, for the supply of the capital; while the
sale of the remainder is either monopolized by the beys,
or subjected to an arbitrary impost, paid as a bribe for per¬
mitting the exportation, in violation of the law. (Beau¬
jour, vol. i. p. 119.) So great a proportion of the value
is diverted into the pockets of the various classes of public
functionaries, that the effect of the exportation, in stimu¬
lating domestic industry and production, is infinitely less
than the aggregate amount would lead us to suppose.
But when the extent and population of the country is con¬
sidered, and the multiplied discouragements to industry,
arising out of the government and state of society, the
trade was surprisingly great, and shows what a high rank
Greece may attain, as a commercial state, when her indus¬
try is unfettered, and enjoys security under a good govern¬
ment.
Shipping Though still proceeding on conjectural grounds, we may
and sea- venture a step farther, in order to get at some idea of the
naval resources of the Greeks. If we take the imports of
the Morea (given by Scrofani) as a basis for the whole
country, we should conclude that the trade of Greece, with
other parts of Turkey and Barbary, is to her trade with fo¬
reign nations nearly as five to four. And, in a period of
war (1809), when the Greeks appeared in the character of
neutrals, it is probable that the whole of the former trade,
and twm thirds of the latter, would be carried on in Grecian
G R E
1 Boaujour, let. 6, Q-ll; Holland, 84, 389 ; Clarke, vii. 465-8 ; Pouqueville, 411.
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G U E
ce.) orising ambition of Ali, the late pasha of Albania, nearly
^’obliterated all the ancient political divisions of Northern
Greece. In 1812, the provincial governments consisted
i>f five pashaliks, two voivodaliks, and a number of smaller
districts, governed by beys, or officers of inferior rank.
These were, 1. The pashalik of Albania, comprehending
the territories which formerly constituted the pashaliks
of Lepanto, Arta, Yanina, Delvino, Ocrida, Avlona, with the
mousselimlik of Larissa, and several towns and small dis-
ftricts governed by beys, agas, or voivodes; the whole com¬
prehending the ancient Epirus, Acarnania, Aitolia, Phocis,
the greater part of Thessaly, the southern division of Uly-
•icum, and the western divisions of Macedonia and Bceotia.
-■ The pashalik of Scutari, consisting of the country wa¬
tered by the Drino, a part of the ancient Illyricum. 3.
The pashalik of Salonica, including all the lower part of
Macedonia, except the districts belonging to the pasha
of Albania. 4. The pashalik of Negropont, consisting of
the eastern part of Boeotia, and the island of Eubcea or
Negropont. 5. The pashalik of Tripolizza, comprehend-
ng all the Morea, except some maritime towns and dis¬
tricts. The pasha had under him twenty-four officers, go-
I mrning the different cantons, some named beys, and others
todjia-bashees or elders. 6. Attica and Livadia were each
governed by a voivode. 7. The high country of Macedo-
lia is divided among a number of beys or agas. 8. The
Imall territory of Zagora, the ancient Magnesia, was under
fhe government of the Greek primate of the country.
). The district of Maina, in the Morea, was disjoined from
he pashalik of Tripolizza, and though nominally subject
j o the capitan pasha, actually enjoyed a great degree of
ndependence under the sway of its own beys, who are
twelve in number, and live much in the condition of feudal
Iparons. 10. All the Greek islands, with some maritime
districts on the mainland, were under the authority of the
papitan pasha. Tins enumeration of the provincial go¬
vernments is not very complete, but may give an idea of
its interior government before the revolution.1
' The civil polity of the Turks is in substance the dis-
L’ipline and arrangements of a Tartar camp applied to
[the government of a nation. The pasha, like the com¬
mander-in-chief, determines every matter, civil, military,
jmd judicial, with summary dispatch, and without refer-
j mce to any other rule than his own untutored concep-
i ions of right and wrong. Questions not of a criminal
Nature, however, between subject and subject, are decid-
I :d by the mollah or judge, whose jurisdiction extends
j iver both Turks and Christians. In the tribunals of these
unctionaries, bribery is almost open and avowed, and
alse witnesses form something like a regular profession.
The gainer of a suit pays the whole expenses. The
Turks themselves, aware of the notorious corruption of
he courts, rather submit to injustice than seek legal
edress. Avanies, or vexatious prosecutions instituted
gainst Christians, for the purpose of compelling them to
>ay a sum of money as the price of abandoning the suit,
ire a regular source of revenue to the Turkish inhabitants
j if towns. The police of the Turks is as rude as their ju-
licial system. An officer accompanied by soldiers tra-
ierses the markets in the great towns, and if he detects
ny person selling with false weights, the defaulter re-
eives the bastinado for the first offence, is nailed by the
ear to the door of his own shop for the second, and hang¬
ed for the third. Their attempts to correct evils often
produce others of much worse description. If a complaint
is made by some person of consequence, of a robbery com-
i nitted, an enormous fine is levied on the district where it
ihappened; or, what is still worse, a party of soldiers is
E c E. 733
sent out, who, under the pretext of searching for the rob- Greece,
bers, oppress and plunder the peasants without mercy.
An officer, named dervendji-pasha, charged with the in¬
spection of the roads and bridges, makes an annual tour
through the country, accompanied by a party of soldiers ;
but his inspection serves no other purpose than to extract
money, under the name of fines, from the people, to fill
his own pockets, while the roads and bridges are utterly
neglected. Indeed all classes of public officers practise
extortion, and Turks, Greeks, and Jews, are almost equal¬
ly sufferers. Public offices are regularly sold to the high¬
est bidder, and those who buy them of course reimburse
themselves by one means or another. As the appoint¬
ments are annual, the price is paid over again every year;
and the only method of redress which is open to a city or
district that is oppressed, is to offer a greater sum for the
removal of its governor than he gives to obtain the renewal
of his office. Very often, after an aga has amassed great
riches, the Porte allures him into some large town, by the
bait of a splendid employment, and there strips him of his
wealth, and perhaps awards him the bowstring. The pa¬
shas live surrounded with a degree of pomp and splen¬
dour, which contrasts strangely with the squalid wretch¬
edness of the people they govern. They are approached
with prostrations, like eastern monarchs. Their places
of residence are vast buildings, forts without, and palaces
within, capable of containing a thousand or twelve hun¬
dred men. Besides a strong body of soldiers, they are
filled with an immense retinue of servants, including me¬
nials, tradesmen, and artists ; such as coffeemakers, sher-
betmakers, confectioners, bathers, tailors, barbers, dwarf
pages, black slaves, buffoons, musicians, puppet-showmen,
wrestlers, conjurors, dancers, an imam (or priest), and,
lastly, the executioner, the pasha’s confidential servant,
without whom he never stirs abroad, and who is the only
person privileged to sit in his presence. In addition to
all this, the harem, or women’s apartments, forms a sepa¬
rate establishment, with its own train of servants. A pa¬
sha of Salonica, not peculiarly profuse in his habits, has
been known to expend L.24,000 per annum on his domes¬
tic establishment. The mousselims, agas, and beys, sup¬
port the same state in proportion to their circumstances.
Wars are as common among these petty rulers as among
the old feudal barons, and as destructive in their effects.
The Porte, by a miserable policy, foments their quarrels,
to weaken them individually, and increase their depen¬
dence on itself. The people, ruined by exactions, or the
ravages of the military, abandon their homes, and fly to the
mountains and forests, where they commence robbers. In
some places the rural inhabitants live in houses which are
built like small forts with draw-bridges and battlements.
In addition to all the evils common to them with the Turks,
the Greeks have many peculiar to themselves. They are
made to feel their degradation by the most opprobrious
distinctions. They are marked out by a peculiar costume,
and are not allowed to wear certain articles of dress, or
clothes or slippers of a light colour, or to paint their
houses of those colours which the Turks use. It is death
for a Greek to marry a Turkish woman, or to strike a Ma-
hommedan even in self-defence. One of the lowest Turks
will dismount from his horse, force a Greek from his shop,
load him with his baggage, and compel him to follow him,
without the poor Greek daring to utter a complaint. The
wealthiest individuals of this nation are exposed to the
most galling insults in their own houses. Dr Holland
mentions, that while he was sitting with the Archbishop
of Larissa, the most considerable Greek in Thessaly, a
Turk of a surly and forbidding aspect, and evidently of
1 Beaujour, let. 1 ; Pouqueville, chap. x.; Thornton, p. 122 ; Hobhouse, let. 14, l?.
734 G R E
Greece, the lowest class, entered the room, seated himself unce~
remoniously on the sofa, filled his pipe, and took coffee
from the attendants. The archbishop was evidently em¬
barrassed, but made no comment. After a short interval,
he took a coin from his purse, and put it silently into the
hand of the Turk, who immediately disappeared. In ge¬
neral, the inhabitants of the districts which are appanages
of the great officers of state, of the timars or fiefs held
under the sultan, and of the lands belonging to the church,
are less oppressed than the others. The islands of the
Archipelago, where Turkish governors do not reside, are
also less disturbed; and mountainous districts, such as
Maina, which are capable of being defended, are sometimes
nearly in a state of independence. Local differences, in¬
deed, in the political condition of the people, are nume¬
rous in Greece. Where the Christian inhabitants have
wrested certain privileges from the Turks, they generally
enjoy them undisturbed, from the mechanical adherence
of the latter to habits once formed. Very often the de¬
gree of freedom and security which the Greeks enjoy de¬
pends on their numbers. In towns where they form a
large part of the population, as in Athens, their numbers
and union give them consequence, and their superior
knowledge and address enables them successfully to elude
or oppose the sluggish tyranny of the Turks.
The redeeming feature in the civil polity of the Turks
was their municipal institutions, which, growing out of
the anarchy of the government, proved to some extent a
compensation for its oppressions. The conquering na¬
tion, too proud and indolent to concern itself much about
the local and domestic concerns of the subject race, or to
resort to disguised and indirect taxation, was content to
fix the amount of tribute which each district should pay,
leaving the rayahs to raise it in what manner they pleased,
and to adjust such disputes as arose among them by the
laws or usages to which they were accustomed. Hence
every considerable Greek village, or every three or four
where they were small, form a municipality, the inhabi¬
tants of which meet and choose, by open suffrage, magi¬
strates under the name of primates or elders. They con¬
sist generally of the richest men in the district; sometimes
they are chosen annually; sometimes for no definite pe¬
riod ; but if they misbehave, they are deposed by the
votes of the people, without regard to any term. Their
functions are numerous and important. They apportion
the tax imposed upon the whole community to each indi¬
vidual according to his property, and for this purpose they
make it their business to ascertain each man’s means of
living, his industry and profits. It is their duty, by ad¬
monition or reproof, to prevent the negligence or miscon¬
duct of any individual from adding to the burdens of the
rest. They assess and collect the poll-tax, house-tax,
land-tax, and other imposts, which, in their mode of col¬
lection and repartition, vary in almost every village, but
always depend on a scale of property. They manage the
municipal funds raised for indemnifying families upon
whom Turks have been billeted, for supplying provisions
to troops passing through the place, and for defraying the
expenses of the local administration. They borrow mo¬
ney on their own responsibility to discharge occasional
demands of the government, or unexpected emergencies.
They distribute lands left uncultivated or without heirs ;
they legalise contracts by affixing their signatures to them;
and, jointly with the priests (also popularly chosen), they
adjust quarrels, settle civil disputes, and exercise in some
degree the powers of police judges. The village commu¬
nities in Turkey, in short, resemble those in India. They
are small associations framed on a republican model, pay-
E c E.
ing a fixed annual tribute to a superior ruler, but possess- r
ing the power of regulating their internal affairs, almost
uncontrolled. Such institutions, as they unite the people,
by a sense of common interest, in furthering the good of
each other, operate strongly to secure property and deve-
lope industry; and such was no doubt the secret of the
wonderful prosperity exhibited by Hydra, Spezzia, Am-
pelakia in Thessaly, Seres in Macedonia, and other villa¬
ges in Greece. Though Mr Urquhart, who first brought
the nature of these municipalities fully to light, has per¬
haps overrated their advantages, there is no doubt that
they contributed greatly to counteract the evils springing
from the ignorance and rapacity of the Turkish govern¬
ment.1
The Turkish government being purely military, the pri-Military
vilege of carrying arms is considered a mark of distinction,for^
and is reserved entirely to the Turks. Nearly the whole
of this part of the population belongs either to the top-
rakli (feudal militia) or to the corps of janizaries. A
Mahommedan unconnected with any military corps is,
equally with Christians, liable to capitation-tax and other
imposts; and this law, though not rigorously enforced, in¬
duced most of the Turks to enrol their children in their
infancy. Hence in the cities every Turk was a janizary.
But only a very small number of these were embodied;
the whole corps of janizaries in actual pay in the empire
having been only about forty thousand, according to Mr
Thornton. They served in garrisons, and generally follow¬
ed some trade. Their pay was originally about one shilling
a day, and, though it continued nominally the same, was
ultimately, from the depreciation of the coin, reduced to
a fractional part of this sum. Small companies of topgb,
or artillerymen were also placed in the garrisons, but they
were totally ignorant of gunnery ; and very often the guns
were without carriages. T\\e yamachs or unembodied ja¬
nizaries, and spahis, served merely to fill vacancies in the
standing corps, and furnish extraordinary levies in time
of war. These levies were made at the rate of one man
out of ten persons of the families attached to the military
bodies. When called upon for active service, they march¬
ed without uniforms, armed with fowling-pieces, pistols,
lances, or such weapons as they could find. The Alba¬
nians, from greater practice in war, were better organized,
though destitute of what would be considered discipline
in regular armies. Many of the pashas, indeed, keep in
their service a corps of Albanians, who have become the
principal and far the most efficient part of the Turkish
military in Greece. We do not find any accurate account
of the amount of the military force actually kept on foot
in Greece, or of the contingent furnished, by it for the
general service of the empire. But the pashalik of Sa-
lonica, with the mousselimlik of Larissa, which have a po¬
pulation of 500,000 souls, Greeks, Jews, and Turks, sup¬
plied, in time of foreign war, 15,000 men; and as the pro¬
portion of Mahommedans is much greater in these districts
than anywhere else, perhaps the contingent for the whole
country, including Albania, would not exceed three times
this number. But so inefficient was the military administra¬
tion, that generally not more that one half of the indivi¬
duals called upon actually joined the army. The late
pasha of Albania, the most formidable military power in
Greece, had seldom more than 8000 men in pay, accord¬
ing to Mr Hobhouse. But Dr Holland, who wrote at a
later period, when Ali’s dominions were much more ex¬
tended, estimates his standing army at 15,000, and thinks
he could, for a short time, maintain 30,000 men in arms.
As nearly one half of the peninsula of Greece was, at the
latter period, subject to Ali, containing a population of
1 Turkey and its Resources, by D. Urquhart, chap. ii. 1833.
},200
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iear
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1-82.
G R E
,200,000 or 1,300,000 souls, the estimate seems extreme-
' y moderate ; and the whole military force of the country
ipplicable to any emergency, calculated on the same scale,
vx>uld be 60,000 men, or one tenth of the males able to
rear arms. The Albanians of all classes possess arms.
Those in active service use a sabre in addition to the gun,
ristols, and poniard which the peasantry carry. Pouque-
idlle speaks of them as being formed in chiliads or bodies
if a thousand men each, which are subdivided into com-
ranies ; but these companies do not consist of a fixed num-
ier. They have few cavalry ; and their infantry is with-
lut tactics, discipline, or regular order. But they have
he military virtues in a degree not surpassed by any na-
ion in Europe ; and their impetuous courage has often
matched victory from an enemy superior in numbers and
echnical skill. They are strong, hardy, active, and en-
erprising; they delight in combats; are daring in action,
ven to rashness, and firm in the midst of dangers.1
Such was the composition of the Turkish military force
a Greece previous to 1826, when the reigning sultan sup-
ressed the formidable corps of janizaries, and organized
n army on the principles adopted in Western Europe.
| The public revenues of Greece, like those of other
•ude countries, consist of a number of imports, raised
n a very simple plan, and often so much the more op-
ressive for this simplicity. The expedients adopted in
ther states to lighten and equalize the pressure of taxes,
md to mitigate their injurious effects on industry, are
utally unknown in Turkey. Most of the taxes were
Inposed in rude times by men skilled in nothing but
he use of the sword ; and the paramount authority of
ustom, which in Turkey controls equally subject and so-
ereign, will not allow of any material alteration. There
re, however, local variations, both in the amount of the
axes, and in the mode of their imposition. 1. The first
;f the Turkish taxes is the miri or land-tax, which affects
Kjually Turks and Greeks, and consists of one tenth of
jie gross produce of the soil. Beaujour estimates its ac-
ual amount at one twelfth. Vineyards and gardens, with
round under cotton, madder, and mulberries, generally
ay a composition. 2. A tax on moveables, that is, shops,
ouses, furniture, &c. affecting all other classes but Turks ;
is assessed in a very arbitrary manner, varying much in
ifferent towns, and is estimated by the Greeks to absorb
\ fourth part of their gains. 3. A tax on consumable com-
mdities, cattle, provisions, fire-wood, liquors, &c. levied at
ie gates of towns, at rates probably not uniform. Sheep
nd goats pay one para, an ox one piastre, wine two, and
randy four paras the oke; compositions are accepted for
ther articles. 4. The karatch or capitation-tax, imposed
n all males not Mahommedans, who are above twelve
ears of age according to some, above five or eight ac-
ording to others. The rate varies from two to ten pias-
*es, according to the supposed wealth of the person, and
lay vary to a still greater extent, as it is levied on the
asis of an ancient roll or census, and, when the popula-
on of a district diminishes, the rate is raised in order
Ip afford the same annual amount. The officers judge of
ij child’s age by putting a cord round its head. The per-
bn paying receives a ticket, which he is obliged to pro-
luce at the gates of towns, and if he fails, he is compelled
b pay anew, perhaps with the addition of the bastinado.
!. A duty on exports and imports, amounting generally
b three per cent, when the merchant is a foreigner, and
Ive or six per cent, when he is a native subject. 6. The
iroperty of all public officers at their death, and of all
E C E.
persons who die without heirs, devolves to the pasha, on
behalf of the grand seignior. By a composition, however,
the heirs of a public officer are sometimes allowed to re¬
tain his property. 7. Each pasha has generally a number
of farms and villages attached to his place, of which he
draws the rents. Ali, pasha of Albania, was reported to
be the proprietor of four hundred villages, which yielded
him L.200,000 per annum. Mr Hughes thinks that one
third of the whole cultivated territory belonged to him. 8.
The arbitrary requisitions made of horses, forage, and pro¬
visions, for the public service, are a productive source of
revenue. 9. Large sums are drawn from the sale of pub¬
lic offices, including those of the dignitaries of the Greek
church. The inferior clergy are also compelled to pay a
sum at their installation. 10. In some provinces, perhaps
in all, there is a duty on legal proceedings, amounting to
one tenth of the value of the disputed property. 11. Ava-
nies, or vexatious prosecutions, and fines levied on districts
for crimes committed within their bounds, on the ground
that they might have prevented them. This last practice
is made a pretext for many grievous acts cf extortion and
cruelty, the inhabitants being subjected to military exe¬
cution when they are unable to pay. 12. Sums are wrung
from the tributary classes as a composition for working at
the highways and fortifications; but the money passes
wholly into the pockets of the public officers. 13. A consi¬
derable revenue is derived from escheats, forfeitures, and
confiscations ; and a trifling amount from the produce of
the mines, all mines being regarded as the grand seignior’s
property. Lastly, the istira, or regulation by which the
cultivators are compelled to furnish corn for the supply
of the capital, at one fourth or one fifth of its market va¬
lue, operates as a tax on the husbandman, though it bring
little into the treasury of the prince. Many of these taxes
are farmed; but certain districts, as Maina, and certain
bodies of men, as the Jews of Salonica, are allowed to
make a composition with the government, under which
they assess or collect taxes, wholly or in part, themselves.
Were we to judge of these taxes by the amount paid in
to the government, we should pronounce them extreme¬
ly light. But the unequal and often arbitrary mode of
apportioning and collecting them is sufficient to render
the lightest impost oppressive; and the numberless frau¬
dulent demands for which they afford a cover on the part
of the revenue officers greatly aggravate their pressure.
From isolated facts stated by various writers, we are war¬
ranted to believe that the gross revenue, or the money
drawn from the people, is generally double, sometimes
triple, of what is paid even to the provincial governments.2
To the credit of the present sultan it must be said, that
since 1824 he has done a great deal to regulate the finan¬
ces, and remedy the evils of the old system.
We have no account on which the smallest reliance can
be placed, of the whole produce of the taxes of Greece;
and the statements with regard to those of particular dis¬
tricts are too contradictory to be received without suspi¬
cion. Mr Hobhouse heard the revenues of Ali estimated
at six millions of piastres, exclusively of casual levies, a
very comprehensive head. Attica has been said to re¬
mit annually to Constantinople 700 or 750 purses, of 500
piastres each. According to Pouqueville, two millions
of piastres were raised in the Morea, of which only one
half was paid in to the pasha. There is very little consist¬
ency in these statements. If we take the first as a basis,
and assume that Ali’s territories comprehended one third
of Greece at the period alluded to, the revenue of the
1 Thornton, chap. v.; Beaujour, let. 4 ; Hobhouse, let. 12, 13 ; Pouqueville, chap. x. xxxiii.; Holland, p. 111.
* Thornton, chap. vi.; Beaujour, let. 1 ; Pouqueville, chap. x.; Holland, p. 115; Hobhouse, p. 296; Hughes’s TVarek, vol. ii.
735
Greece.
Greece, whole peninsula might be estimated at eighteen millions scarcely anywhere to be seen. The inhabitants are al
of piastres, or L.l,100,000 sterling, exclusive of what are ways collected into villages or cities; and those who arl
called casual levies. But, from the vigour of All’s go- engaged in husbandry waste a great part of their tim
vernment, his revenue was probably greater in proportional and labour in travelling to and from their lands Henc
amount, and collected at a less expense, than that of any in the agricultural districts, the proportion of the inhahi
other provincial ruler. A different mode of calculation tants who live in towns seems unusually large consider
would conduct us to a similar result. In the least ad- ing the small resources that trade and manufactures af
vanced countries of Europe, such as Spain, Portugal, Aus- ford. Of 500,000 persons inhabiting the pashalik of Sa*
tria, Russia, and Sweden, the public revenue, compared lonica, and the mousselimlik of Larissa, one third accord*
with the population, is generally at a rate varying from ing to Beaujour, live in the large towns. The most fer*
8s. to 15s. sterling per annum for each inhabitant; and as tile districts are not uniformly the most populous. A bar*
Greece is certainly near the bottom of the scale in point ren soil in mountainous parts, which afford the means of
of productive industry, her revenue can scarcely exceed defence, is often laboriously cultivated, while the rich
the lowest of these rates. Calculating on this principle, and plains below are neglected.2
supposing the population to be two millions and a half, the It would be interesting to compare the modern with
net revenue before the revolution would be L.1,000,000 the ancient population of Greece in point of numbers
sterling, and this sum doubled may represent the gross But inquiries with regard to the latter seem to lead into
amount extracted from the pockets of the people.1 a labyrinth of difficulties, partly from the want of sufficient
Population. Of the various estimates given of the population of data, partly from the multitude of errors that have crept
Greece, that of Beaujour has been most generally fol- into the numerical expressions in the text of ancient au-
lowed. This writer assigned a population of 700,000 thors, and partly from the civil distinctions of citizens
souls to Macedonia, 300,000 to Ihessaly, 400,000 to slaves, and strangers, which render the application of par-
Lpirus, 200,000 to iEtolia, Phocis, and Boeotia, 300,000 ticular statements uncertain. It would baffle human sa-
i°no G ^orea’ ant^ 20,000 to Attica, making a total of gacity to build any satisfactory conclusion on the mass of
1,920,000. We speak of the country as it existed before discordant details collected by Hume. We shall proceed
the revolution. Hie population of the new kingdom of more securely, if we ground our reasonings on some sin-
Greece will be afterwards given. In two particulars this gle statement that is pretty well established. From a va*
statement seems to require correction. The population riety of circumstances which elucidate and fortify each
of the Morea, since the desultory war of 1770, appears to other, Hume deduces that Athens contained at one pe-
have been gradually increasing. Scrofani and Pouque- riod 284,000 inhabitants.3 Let us suppose this to include
ville, who had good means of information, estimate it at also the rural population. Attica was comparatively a
400,000 Greeks, 15,000 lurks, and 4000 Jews. Again, barren district; and, exclusively of Eleusis, Megara, and
Beaujour appears not to have included under the name of Salamis, did not occupy more than one sixtieth part of
Epiius the district watered by the Drino, or even North- the countries to which our statements apply in this arti-
®in Adiania; and the researches of Mr Hobhouse and Dr cle. Its commerce and colonies, however, more than com*
Holland have shown that the parts of this country he did pensated for the inferiority of its soil. Now, if we sup-
include are more populous than he imagined. Perhaps pose the other and more fertile, but less improved parts
on these grounds we may raise the entire population to of Greece, to have been peopled only to one fourth of the
2,400,000. Probably the number of inhabitants was not density of Attica, this would give a population of eight
greater in Strabo’s time, if we may judge from the account millions and a half for the whole country. Mannert, a
beglves of the deserted state of the country (lib. vii. p. German writer, whose opinion is entitled to great weight,
322); and the government of the Turks, with all its train estimates the entire population of Attica at 550,000,
of abuses, is probably not more destructive to Greece chiefly on the authority of Athemeus.4 Without relying
i lan that of the Romans was. This population is very much on these calculations, we may observe, that if one
unequally distributed. It is densest in the southern parts amidst a multitude of small states had such a mass of po¬
of Macedonia, in the eastern parts of Thessaly, and in the pulation, her neighbours and rivals must have possessed
central and northern districts of Albania. Acarnania is something like a proportionate strength to preserve their
almost a desert; ADtolia is thinly peopled ; Attica, includ- independence. And, considering the strong feeling of
ing the city, has not more than twenty-five or thirty inha- emulation which pervaded these small republics, we may
bitants to the square mile. The plain of Argos, and the be certain that, before the arts of industry could be so far
lilly region of Maina, are the most populous parts of the advanced in Attica as to enable such a mass of people to
Morea. As might be expected from the insecure state subsist on so small a surface, the neighbouring states
of the country, single cottages or scattered hamlets are must have been considerably improved.
The hncient Athenian revenues consisted of, 1. Contributions from the allies, which amounted to 600 talents in the time of Al-
cibiades; 2. Customs at the rate of two per cent, on imports and exports, which yielded about thirty-six talents; 3. Confiscations
of the property of individuals ; 4. Rents and produce of mines and marble quarries; 5. Capitation tax on the or strangers per¬
manently ^resident m the city. Xenophon estimates the whole at 1000 talents, or L.250,000. (Walpole’s Memoirs relating to Tur-
key,
2 Jie3uj°ur> 1 * Holland, p. 113, 251, 280; Hobhouse, p. 176, 201, 487 ; Pouqueville, chap. x.
conc^US40n n°f without its difficulties. But if it involves any errors, they are errors of defect, and not of excess; for
any different construction of the text of Athenseus would give a larger number. (See Hume’s £ssay on the Populousness of Ancient
Nations.) We may adopt another mode of calculation. The Spartans were the only power who regularly employed their slaves (helots)
in their armies, and whose military force may therefore be taken as a criterion of their whole population. Thev sent, of Lacedae¬
monians and helots together, 50,000 to fight the Persians at Plataea. The men were collected and sent off within the space of a day
or two, and as the Messenians were shortly after in a state of revolt, it may be presumed that none of that nation were in the army.
(Herodotus, lib. ix.). If we suppose that this army contained one half of the males of a military age (and probably no country ever
sent a larger proportion beyond its own confines), the whole population of Laconia would be 400,000; and that of Peloponnesus, in
the same ratio, would be 2,000,000. Supposing the parts beyond the isthmus to be peopled only to three fifths of the density of Pe¬
loponnesus, the whole population of Greece would be 8,300,000, an amount not materially different from the other. After all, it must
be confessed that so general a conclusion, built on so narrow a basis, is scarcely better than a confession of total ignorance. It may
be observed, that the greatest army which England ever sent beyond her own frontier, previous to the present times, was that with
which Edward II. invaded Scotland, consisting of 100,000 men.
4 Geographic der Griechen und Roemer, achter Thiel, p. 294.
^ \Ve
t(0! 't
^antso,
#1lis ci
owns
I iat tf
i ibjoir
I ith
GREECE.
We have stated that a small proportion of the inhabi-
mts of Greece live scattered through the country. Were
mis circumstance not attended to, the number of large
towns mentioned by travellers would lead us to conclude
mat the country is more populous than it really is. We
mbjoin the names of some of the most considerable towns,
nith the estimated population :
737
ALBANIA.
Yanina 35,000
Argyro Castro 20,000
Berat 15,000
Scutari 12,000
Hobhouse.
do.
Holland.
Hobhouse.
MACEDONIA.
Salonica.  -W
( 60,000 Beaujour.
Seres 30,000
THESSALY.
Larissa 20,000
Vodina 12,000
Trikala 11,000
ATTICA AND BCEOTIA.
»115,000
AthenS  { 12,000
Livadia1   10,000
Patras 10,000
Argos 8,000
Tripolizza 15,000
Misitra 16,000
Hydra (Island) 25,000
do.
do.
do.
Holland.
Clarke.
Hobbouse.
Holland.
Holland.
do.
do.
Pouqueville.
Holland.
The towns of Greece contrast strikingly with those of
lestern Europe in their general appearance. Founded
rjther as places of security, than with a view to commer-
cd advantage, their sites are generally elevated and pic-
tresque. Instead of the long and uniform lines of build-
*?8 seen in our cities, the houses often stand detached,
s»d appear irregularly scattered over the ground. The
tl, airy minarets also, which break the outline in an
ajreeable and fanciful manner, and the groups of cypresses
■ rrounding the mosques, which are seen blended with
tfe buildings, give them a character of repose and soft-
qss, combined with richness, and even magnificence,
vjiich has a fine effect in the landscape. On a near in-
section, however, their beauty vanishes. The mean
kildings, the streets narrow and dark, seldom paved,
ad covered with offal and filth of every kind, grievously
cend both the senses of sight and smell. The houses of
1.2 poorer classes are miserable hovels, built of mud and
saw; those of the peasants in the country are often
firmed, like the huts of savages, of wooden poles rudely
flt together in the shape of a tent, and covered with
Iff. The houses of the better classes in towns are of
vttod, sometimes with a foundation of stone. They are
petty generally of two storeys ; the upper storey some-
tnes projecting beyond the lower, in the manner of the
el wooden buildings in Edinburgh, and the roof again ex-
tiding far beyond the face of the upper wall, apparently
fir the purpose of giving shade and shelter to the streets
Wow. The style of building is extremely uniform. The
Ifiiger houses are built round a square area; the under
s irey, used as stables and warehouses, has seldom any
Endows on the side towards the street, or it is shut in on
tit side by a wall, so as to give the house the appear¬
ance of a jail. The upper storey presents in front an open Greece,
gallery, with small windows, latticed with cross bars of '
wood, and serves chiefly to communicate with the apart¬
ments behind. The furniture consists of a very few arti¬
cles, of a rich, or rather gaudy description: a divan or
raised seat, from ten to fifteen inches in height, stuffed and
covered with silk, and cushioned behind for the back, ex¬
tends round three sides of the room. A handsome car¬
pet covers.the rest of the floor. These, with a table of
very plain construction, and two or three large mirrors in
the corners, are generally all that a well-furnished Turk¬
ish room contains. The walls are sometimes wainscotted,
and adorned with landscapes, or purely ornamental paint-
ings. The roofs exhibit gilding and carved work. Many
of the houses of the rich have gardens attached to them,
inclosing fountains. The dwellings of the wealthy Greeks
are in no respect different from those of the Turks. There
is a total absence, in the Greek towns, of that noise, bus¬
tle, and activity which give such an animated character
to our cities. There are no wheel-carriages of any kind
seen, but loaded camels or horses are passing to and fro,
through the dust or mud. Hawks and storks are flying
about the trees, mosques, and houses ; and great numbers
of gaunt and half-wild dogs, which have no owners, are
prowling about, picking up the offal thrown into the
streets. One of the most interesting objects in a Greek
town is always the bazar or market. This consists of
one, two, or more streets, filled entirely with shops or
wooden booths. The dealers in the same class of articles
are all ranged together. One street is occupied by those
who deal in jewellery; another by those who deal in pe¬
lisses and shawls; a third by the retailers of common cot¬
ton goods; a fourth by the dealers in groceries, tobacco,
&c.; a fifth by those who sell pipes, amber, mouth-pieces,
&c.; and so on. These bazars are often shaded by wooden
trelisses interlaced with vines, or by branches of trees
laid across from the roofs of the opposite shops or booths.
The population of Greece is composed chiefly of three Different
different races, not more distinct in their origin than in races,
their manners and character. These are the Turks, the
Greeks, and the Albanians, with whom are intermixed a
smaller number of Jews, Armenians, and Wallachians.
It is extremely difficult to estimate, with any accuracy,
in what proportions these different races are combined.
The scanty information given by travellers on this subject
is often rendered ambiguous by the indiscriminate appli¬
cation of the name of Greeks to persons attached to the
Greek church, whether they are of that nation or Alba¬
nians. Except in some towns and very limited districts, Turks,
the Turks nowhere appear to constitute the majority of
the population. They are most numerous in Thessaly,
Macedonia, and Negropont, are thinly diffused through
the rest of Greece and Albania, and are scarcely seen at
all in the islands. In the districts of Salonica and Laris¬
sa, where they most abound, they scarcely exceed, ac¬
cording to Beaujour, one third of the inhabitants (180,000
out of 500,000); in Athens, according to Dr Holland,
they amounted to one fifth before the revolution; in the
Morea, they formed one twenty-eighth part by Pouque-
ville’s enumeration; in Livadia, there were few of them ;
in Acarnania and ^Etolia, still fewer. In Yanina, they are
less numerous than the Greeks; and throughout Greece
generally, except in Thessaly and Macedonia, there were
very few Turks among the rural population. Since the
revolution, the Turkish inhabitants have almost disap¬
peared from the country south of Mount Gita. If there
are any exceptions, they must be trifling. Without pre¬
tending to accuracy on a point where accuracy is unat-
r
VOL
VOL. X.
The population of Livadia is computed from the number of houses, reckoning five persona to a house.
O A
Greece, tainable, we may perhaps estimate the Turks on these
>—grounds at one fourth of the inhabitants in Thessaly and
Macedonia, and at one tenth in the other parts of Greece
and Albania, on an average. The whole number of Turks
computed on this principle would be 450,000, which is be¬
tween one fifth and one sixth of the entire population.1
Albanians It is more difficult to form any satisfactory conclusions
undGreeks. as to the respective numbers of the Greeks and Albanians.
Colonies or parties of the latter people have, from time to
time, settled in various districts of Greece. Nearly all of
these belong to the Greek church ; and they have, with
very few exceptions, preserved their native manners,
dress, and language, though many of them are also able
to express themselves in Greek. Colonel Gordon informs
us that Attica, Bceotia, Phocis, Argolis, with the isles of
Hydra, Spezzia, Salamis, and Andros, are inhabited by
Albanians. They have also several villages in Arcadia,
Achaia, and Messenia. In the rest of the Peloponnesus,
in all the other islands, in yEtolia, Acarnania, a great part
of Thessaly, and Lower Macedonia, the population is ex¬
clusively Greek.2 Mr Urquhart gives an estimate of the
different races inhabiting European Turkey, which we
subjoin, though his rash and precipitate mode of judging
divests it of any high claims to authority.3
Osmanlis, Turkish race and language, all Mus-
sulmen  700,000
Greeks, Hellenic race and language, all Chris¬
tians  2,050,000
Albanians, Skipetar race and language, two
thirds Mussulmen  1,600,000
Sclavonic race and dialects (Bosniacs, Tule-
mans, Servians, Bulgarians, Mirdites, and
Croats), one third Mussulmen, two thirds
Christians  6,000,000
Vlachi, or Wallachians, Greek church  600,000
Gypsies 200,000, Jews 250,000, Armenians
100,000, Franks 50,000  600,000
Wallachia and Moldavia.
11,550,000
. 1,500,000
13,050,000
We are satisfied that the entire population of European
Turkey does not exceed nine or ten millions; and in the
above table the proportional number of the Sclavonic race
seems to be much exaggerated.
Wallach- The Vlaki, or Wallachians, are next in numbers to the
bins. Greeks, Albanians, and Turks. Like the Albanians, they
first appear in the history of Greece about the eleventh
century. They are a tribe of mountaineers, chiefly em¬
ployed as shepherds, living permanently on the great
ridges of Pindus and Olympus, and their branches; but,
like the Albanians, descending into the plains of Thessa¬
ly, Macedonia, and Southern Greece, during the winter,
with their flocks. They have a language of their own,
which, from the great proportion of Latin words it con¬
tains, has led to a belief that they are the descendants of
the Roman colonies planted in Mcesia and Dacia by the
emperor Trajan and his successors. The rugged country
they inhabit has kept them unmixed with other tribes,
and enabled them to maintain a considerable degree of
independence. They are hardy, but less ferocious than
the Albanians, sober, industrious, cleanly, and in high re¬
pute as shepherds throughout Greece, both for their fide¬
lity and skill. Some of the higher classes go abroad as
merchants ; and the lower classes furnish some of the best
artisans in Greece and Turkey at large; but wherever Gree>
their occupations carry them, a strong national spirit re-
cals them ultimately to their native mountains. Within
their own country they have considerable manufactures
of coarse woollens. They are of the Greek church, and
the men generally speak Romaic, or modern Greek, be¬
sides their own language; but the women know only the
latter.4
The mountainous districts in the north of MacedoniaBulm,
are inhabited by Bulgarians, who occupy the whole re- “
gion, from these parts to the Danube, and the neighbour¬
hood of Constantinople. They are a people of Sclavonic
origin, profess the Christian religion, and have a language
distinct from that of the other people settled in Greece.
They live chiefly by their flocks, are rude and ignorant,
but brave. They possess only a small portion of the
country at present; but for a considerable period between
the eighth and eleventh centuries, they were masters of
nearly the whole of Greece, and have left traces of their
establishment there in the language, and in the names of
places.6
Small bodies of Jews are found in most of the consider-Jews,
able trading towns of Greece, engaged as usual in the
lower branches of commerce. There are none in Athens,
and this fact is accounted for, as in some other places, by
the supposition that the native Athenians outdo them in
their favourite profession of usury'. There is a considera¬
ble number in Yanina ; but they are nowhere so numerous
as in Salonica, where they have been settled for some cen¬
turies. Their number in this city is estimated at 12,000;
the peculiar privileges they enjoy, however, have not rais¬
ed their character ; for they are proverbially distinguish¬
ed throughout Greece for chicanery, dishonesty, and im¬
morality. Considered as a branch of the general popula¬
tion of the country, they are too inconsiderable to be of
the least importance. Armenians are also found in some
of the towns, but in a still smaller proportion than the
Jews.6
Bands of Tchinganies, Zinganees, or gipsies, distinguish-Gipsies,
ed by the habits and occupations peculiar to them in other
countries, wander over Greece. They are subjected, how¬
ever, to the capitation tax. Some of them make a pro¬
fession of Mahommedanism, but they are held in great
contempt by the Turks. Some of the more wealthy Turks
keep negro slaves, who are imported from Barbary and
Egypt.7
The Greek church appears at the present day covered Greek
with the accumulated abuses of ten or twelve centuries.church.
It was founded in an age of theological casuistry and dog¬
matism ; it has never felt the benign influence of general
knowledge, or the salutary control of rival sects; but the
bigotry or crooked policy of Christian princes, the bar¬
barism of Mahommedan conquerors, the pious frauds ot
monks or fanatical priests, the credulity and superstition
of an ignorant populace operating uncontrolled, have been
continually loading it with new errors, new absurdities,
and new corruptions. Though its priests are more nume¬
rous than in any other church, its rites and forms inh-
nitely complicated, and its fasts absorb about two thirds
of the year, it is scarcely possible to trace one genuine
idea of Christianity in the minds either of the clergy or
laity, or one trait of its influence in their conduct. f|ie
subtlety of understanding by which the Greeks are distin¬
guished, and still more their proneness to superstition,
have made them hold fast by their national faith amidst
all the calamities they have suffered. And their barba-
1 Beaujour, let. 1, 4 ; Holland, p. 343, 395, 412 ; Pouqueville, p. 119 ; Hothouse, p. 206 ; Leake’s Researches, p. 375.
8 Gordon’s History of the Greek Revolution, vol. i. p. 34. 6 Leake, p. 375-381 ; Pouqueville, chap, xxxviii.
* Turkey and its Resources, p. 272. 6 Beaujour, let. 25 ; Holland, p. 320 ; Chandler, chap.
* Leake’s Researches, chap. ill.; Holland, p. 226, &c. ’ Holland, p. 266, 509 ; Pouqueville, p. 323.
* les
idoc,s.
ie tw
mt tl
id er
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rayer
ithoi
ant c
supi
gon
c is
i to
geni
arate
lies
gem
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Ices i
Sees
alky.
’ stril
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ifore
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irved
's, or
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ie foi
the
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«Ch
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that
id th
t
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'od is
an
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dry.
ions,
m
dude
GREECE.
'39
i:sm has never yet been carried so far as to reduce the
.umbrous machinery of their religion to any degree of
Simplicity.
The Greek church agrees so closely with the Roman in
is doctrines, and even in its forms, that it is rather diffi-
cilt to discriminate them by any intelligible distinctions.
Tie Greek church holds the doctrine of the Trinity, with
ome unimportant peculiarities. In the number of its sa-
iraments, the invocation of saints, the belief of the real
■resence, the practice of auricular confession, and in ad-
litting masses and services for the dead, it agrees per-
uctly with that of Rome. The sacrament of the Lord’s
upper is administered to infants newly born, and, in the
ijiace of confirmation, they substitute the chrism or sacred
tiction, being a part or appendage of the baptismal cere-
aony. The sacrament of the Holy Oil, or Euchelaion, is not
confined, like the extreme unction of the Roman Catholic
Tiurch, to the sick and dying, but is given to devout per-
uns upon the slightest malady, or even in perfect health,
'♦n Holy Thursday the Greek archbishop, like the pope,
rashes the feet of twelve priests or monks. It is rather
oubtful whether the Greek church admits a purgatory,
11 least in the same sense as the Roman Catholics; and
ley themselves, at the present day, are too ignorant to
e able to tell. The most palpable distinction between
"lie two churches, in the eyes of the common people, is,
hat the Greeks abhor the images used by the Catholics,
ijid employ only paintings in their churches. They have
Jtur liturgies; and the service, which consists chiefly of
rayers, hymns, recitative chants, and frequent crossings,
nithout any sermon, often occupies five or six hours. The
riant of seats in their churches, during the long service,
i supplied by staves or crutches, which are used forlean-
S|ig on, and form part of the church furniture. Their mu-
tic is without instrumental accompaniments, but is allow¬
ed to have considerable beauty. The floor of the church
i« generally of earth, the altar of stone, the sanctuary se-
rated from the nave by deal boards, and an enclosure of
les set off at the other end for the women. The church
generally in the form of a Greek cross. The choir is
ways placed towards the east, and the people turn their
ces in that direction when they pray. The books of
"ces include biographies of saints, and are numerous and
Iky. The clergy are distinguished by a great variety
'striking vestments, to which many mystical virtues are
cribed. The Panagia, or Holy Virgin, has succeeded
the worship formerly paid to Minerva. There is scarce-
I a cottage in which her picture, with a lamp burning
ITore it, is not seen in a wooden case or a niche of the
) all. The secular Greeks have four Lents, which are ob-
tirved with various degrees of strictness; and the caloy-
,i s, or monks, have two more. The first of the secular
i sts lasts two months, the second forty days, the third,
'hich depends on moveable feasts, varies in its length,
1 ie fourth endures from the 1st of August to the festival
T the Assumption. Every Wednesday is a fast, because
i was on that day Judas received the money for betray-
flg Christ; and every Friday in remembrance of the cru-
♦ifixion. A vast number of saints’ days are also observed,
J> that of the whole year there are only about a hundred
^id thirty days free of fasts or festivals. During these
4sts the women are employed in gathering snails, and
arching for herbs of different kinds. The change of
nod is enforced, without exception, on infants, old peo-
I e, and the sick. Some of the festivals are celebrated in
lie open air during several days, with the firing of guns,
»ngs, dancing, banqueting, and the most extravagant re-
^Iry. As confession generally takes place on these occa-
fons, as a preparation, they are a harvest to the papades,
iho make a charge for absolution proportioned to the mag-
jtude of the sin, and the supposed wealth of the sinner.
The Greek clergy are of two classes, the caloyers or Greece,
monks, and the papas or priests. Monasteries, which are
very numerous throughout Greece, are generally builtMonks'
in rocky and inaccessible situations for the sake of de¬
fence. They are supported partly by farms cultivated by
lay brothers, partly by donations and perquisites received
from the pious, partly by the exercise of mechanical trades,
and the fabrication and sale of crosses, pictures of saints,
psalters, &c. Their cells and prisons are universally di^Jy,
as their minds are overrun with ignorance and supersti¬
tion. In the vast establishment of Mount Athos, however,
where before the revolution five or six thousand monks
were assembled, and in the monastery of the Apocalypse,
in Patmos, there are seminaries where some slight theo¬
logical studies are pursued. The Patriarch of Constanti¬
nople, and all the superior Greek clergy, are generally
taken from these places. Novices are admitted into mo¬
nasteries as early as ten or twelve years of age. The
noviciate lasts two years, in the most regular monasteries ;
after which the novice changes his habit, and becomes
one of the professed. The monks who distinguish them¬
selves by superior sanctity may be advanced to a still
higher class, called Megaloschemoi, who are thought
worthy of being compared to angels. Their general diet
is fish, pulse, roots, olives, and wine; during their fasts,
which occupy nearly the whole year, pulse, ro-ots, and wa¬
ter only. But, notwithstanding this mortified style of liv¬
ing, they are the sleekest and best fed people among the
Greeks. Convents for women are rare. There are some
anchorets, who live three or four together, in houses de¬
pending on convents; and a few ascetics, who live soli¬
tarily in caves in the mountains. Convents of all kinds
are under the superintendence of the bishop of the dio¬
cese. The expectations, long indulged, of finding some
of the lost classics in the libraries of these establishments,
have been at last entirely dissipated. Professor Carlyle ex¬
amined the libraries of the whole twenty-two monasteries
on Mount Athos, containing altogether 13,000 manuscripts,
a greater number, certainly, than exists in all the other
monasteries in Greece, and found not a single unedited
fragment of any classical author. (Walpole, p. 196, 220).
The officiating clergy consist of two classes, the patri- Secular
arch, archbishops, and bishops, and papades or parish clergy,
priests. All those of the first class are taken from the mo¬
nasteries, and are not allowed to marry. The papades are
allowed to marry once only previous to their consecration,
but not afterwards. Hence, before entering into orders,
they are generally careful to choose healthy partners, who
are likely to live many years. The superior clergy have
some little learning, are generally decent in their charac¬
ters, and attentive to the duties of their stations, which are
numerous and difficult; as, besides having to control the
licentious and fanatical priests, they are umpires in all dis¬
putes among those of their communion, and exercise an
extensive civil authority under the Turks. They enjoy
the title of dsavorris, or lord, and are treated with extraor¬
dinary reverence. They are, in fact, the princes of the
Greeks at the present day ; and hence the first families
send their children to the monasteries of Athos or Patmos,
on purpose to qualify them for these dignities. The Turks
having reserved to themselves the investiture of the pre¬
lates, openly put the offices to sale, and hence the most in¬
decent broils arise among the candidates. The Patriarch
of Constantinople, who rifled the whole Greek church in
European Turkey, and nominated all its inferior dignita¬
ries, was said to pay sixty thousand crowns for his office.
His income does not exceed L.3000 per annum ; and that
of bishops in general L.300. Dr Holland, however, was
informed that the Archbishop of Larissa had a revenue of
L.9000, but he doubts whether the amount was not exagge¬
rated. The patriarch draws his revenue from contributions
7 JO „ GREECE.
Greece, upon the archbishops and bishops, who are supported by a sites, and bear their ancient names with little alteration r
tax on each house within the dioceses inhabited by Greeks, may be mentioned, Athens, Thebes, Livadia, Larissa, Phar- s-I”"
The inferior clergy are appointed papas, or parish salia, Salonica, Corinth, Argos, Nauplia, Patrae; and a ^
priests, by a species of parochial election ; and before ar- great number of others of less note, might be added. The
riving at this office, they pass successively through the ancient buildings of which remains now exist belong to
subordinate stations of reader, chanter, subdeacon, and three different eras: 1. The very ancient structures to
deacon. No farther promotion, however, awaits them, which the name of Cyclopian has been given, consisting of
Their means of living depend as much on their knavery as vast masses of unhewn stone, put together without cement,
oix .their diligence in pastoral duty. They are supported They are not numerous. The ruins of the citadels of Ty-
chiefly by perquisites derived from absolutions, benedic- rins and Mycenae, which are of this description, have ra¬
tions, exorcisms, sanctifying water, administering sacra- mained in their present state for 3000 years, and present
ments, selling amulets, sprinkling the streets and tombs, the most perfect specimen in existence of the military ar-
blessing the sea, granting divorces, for most of which a chitecture of the heroic ages.2 2. The works of the clas-
certain price is fixed. The profits of excommunications, sical ages, consisting of temples, baths, porticoes, theatres,
which are large in proportion to the terror they inspire columns, stadia, fountains, which are extremely numerous'
among all classes, belong to the superior clergy, who alone and executed in a great variety of styles, exemplifying the
have the power to issue them. By a shocking abuse of infancy, progress, perfection, and decline of the arts. Of
religious functions, the priests, when well paid, grant di- the two or three hundred temples enumerated by Bausa-
vorces at the instance of one party on the slightest pre- nias, many of which were models of the most exquisite
tence, and break the most sacred ties for a paltry bribe, beauty and symmetry, that of Theseus at Athens was
Nearly all authors who have alluded to the Greek priests the only one tolerably entire; and it was destroyed by
agree in describing them as the most depraved part of the the Turks in 1827. Others are found in various stages
population. They are coarse in their manners and dirty of dilapidation; and the far greater part have vanished
in their persons, ignorant, greedy, and corrupt, and instead from their sites, and only left traces of their existence in
of cherishing virtuous habits in the people, they enervate their innumerable fragments of inscribed and sculptured
and debase them, by practising on their credulity, and fill- marbles scattered over the fields, or stuck into the walls
ing their minds with wretched superstitions, and perverted of forts, churches, and Clay-built cottages. 3. A number
ideas of duty. It is not uncommon for them to lay aside of square towers, of a rude construction, built on the tops
the sacerdotal character, and become menial servants or of hills, for military purposes, are the only memorials left
public dancers, or to join bands of pirates or robbers. They by the Latin princes who ruled Greece for two or three
are besides excessively numerous ; and the people, who are centuries before the Mahommedan conquest. 4. Next in
extremely credulous and superstitious, are entirely under importance to the remains of ancient edifices we may rank
their influence. Athens, with 7000 or 8000 Christian in- the statues, bas-reliefs, and inscribed marbles; a great
habitants, had formerly 200 churches, of which about fifty number of which, generally somewhat mutilated, have
were used every Sunday, and the rest occasionally. (Whe- been brought from Greece to enrich the museums of
ler, p. 350.) In Albania the priests are much less numerous, Western Europe ; and a much greater number, no doubt,
and much less respected. In a word, the swarm of worth- lie buried under the soil. 5. Vessels of terra cotta, or
less priests is the moral pest of the country, and contributes ancient pottery, consisting of vases, amphorae, lamps, &c.
more, perhaps, to keep the people in a state of ignorance of exquisite workmanship, adorned with coloured designs
and degradation than all the other evils in their condition.1 illustrative of the arts, habits, and mythology of the an-
Antiqui- The antiquities of Greece open so wide a field, that, in cients, and often in high preservation. The quantity of
fies' an article of this kind, we can do nothing more than allude these found among the ruins of ancient cities is incredibly
to the various classes of objects comprised under the title, great. 6. Coins of gold, silver, and copper, which are
Among these wre may, without much impropriety, rank great in number and variety, every considerable town hav-
many of the cities themselves, which not only exist on the ing its separate coinage. 7. Amongst the most interesting
very spots they anciently occupied, and bear the same remains are the tumuli, erected to commemorate great
names, but, deriving their most striking characters from victories. These simple but expressive monuments, tbrm-
natural objects, which remain unchanged, they still present ed of conical mounds of earth, but long since divested of
to the eye, at a distance, the same general aspect and out- their sculptured ornaments, still mark the fields of Mara-
lines. With regard to the interior of the cities, also, though thon, Leuctra, Plataea, Cheronaea, Thermopylae, Pharsalia,
the august temples of the gods have disappeared, and filth and Pydna. 8. We ought also to class among the antiqui-
and meanness meet the eye everywhere, little doubt will ties of Greece a vast number of fountains, caves, rocks,
remain with those who have read what the ancients have and other natural objects, which owe their interest, not to
left us on the subject of their private houses, and what any beauty or importance they possess in themselves, but
modern travellers have told us respecting the disinterred to the legends associated with them in the history and my-
buildings of Pompeii, that the houses at the present day, thology of the ancient Greeks. With regard to the anti-
with their square enclosed courts, their projecting roofs, quities of Greece in general, it may be observed, that
and dead walls, and all that is most peculiar in their plan the finest, the best preserved, and the most numerous spe-
and interior arrangements, are copies, though miserable cimens of ancient art are found at Athens. Salonica, it is
copies, of those of the ancient Greeks; and it is probable said, ranks next to it in this respect: but its monuments
that some of the modern dark and narrow streets of Athens are deficient in the interest derived from classical associa-
come much nearer in appearance to what they were in the tions. In general the southern and eastern parts of Greece,
age of Pericles than the admirers of antiquity are willing and the islands, abound most in antiquities. Albania and
to allow. Among the cities which occupy their ancient TEtolia contain but few, and these not of much interest.3
1 Tournefort, let. 3 ; Constantinople, Ancient and Modern, by James Dallaway, sect. xxiv.; Pouqueville, chap. xii.; Hobhouse,
let. 32.
2 In Sir William GelPs Itinerary of Argolis, a good account of these remarkable ruins is given, illustrated by excellent drawings.
3 On the subject of the Antiquities of Greece, the reader may consult the following works : Les Rnines des plus beaux Monument de
k Crete, par M. Le Roy, fol. 1758 ; The Antiquities of Athens, by Stuart and lievett, 4 vols. fol. 1762-1816 ; The Ionian Antiquities,
Ti
,-1 sent
fitf,
n.,
■id the
Bulg
Bulg
3.T
the l
certa
some
then
peop
andt
the a
porti
vonit
modt
Turl
givei
PW((4'
tabli
slant
The
lenic
infoi
Eure
dent
diale
from
man;
most
rates
The
defin
disci
alter
prep
and
are f
time:
mucl
subsl
the
and
have
man¬
ed fi
form
have
sub:
Rom
taug'
the j
th in
and
Itali
P^y
othei
ingt
word
sity
Rom
into
ideas
Pren
ofth
by ci
t-'haiii
4to, 1
Buda
GREECE.
741
ece. There are five languages spoken in Greece at the pre-
vr^sent day: 1. The Turkish, which is in use among a few of
iage*the Turks, but the great majority speak Romaic. 2. The
Bulgarian, a dialect of Sclavonic, spoken by the tribes of
Bulgarians who inhabit the northern parts of Macedonia.
3. The Wallachian, in use amongst the Ylaki, who occupy
the branches of Pindus and Olympus ; a language of un¬
certain root, but containing a large mixture of Latin, and
some Italian. 4. The Albanian or Skipetaric, spoken by
the natives of Albania, and by some of the colonies of this
people in the south of Greece. It is an unwritten tongue,
and abounds in nasal sounds. Its basis is supposed to be
the ancient Illyrian, with which is intermixed a large pro¬
portion of Latin, and smaller proportions of Romaic, Scla¬
vonic, Italian, and Turkish. 5. The Romaic (Vufixixr)) or
modern Greek, spoken by all the Greeks, by most of the
Turks, and by a part of the Albanians. This is the name
given to the language by the Greeks, who call themselves
Pupaioi, or Romans, a denomination derived from the es¬
tablishment of the Roman empire for so many ages at Con¬
stantinople, which they consider as the capital of Greece.
I The Romaic bears a much closer resemblance to the Hel¬
lenic than the Italian to the Latin. Indeed we have been
informed by one of the best modern Greek scholars in
Europe, that if we take the Attic as a standard, the an¬
cient Doric differs as much from it as the present living
dialect. The peculiarities which distinguish the Romaic
from the ancient Greek cannot be fully explained without
many details; we shall, therefore, only notice some of the
most prominent. These are, 1. The disuse of the aspi¬
rates in speaking, though they are retained in writing. 2.
The adoption of the first numeral tvae [ua, tvee, for an in¬
definite article, as in the French. 3. In substantives it
discards the dual number, and the dative case ; makes some
alterations in the oblique cases; marks cases sometimes by
prepositions; and often changes the Hellenic masculine
and feminine into neuter. 4. The degrees of comparison
are formed as of old, by adding -noof and -raros, but some¬
times by arXiov, plus, as in the French. 5. Diminutives are
much used, as in the Italian. 6. Considerable changes and
substitutions have been made in the tenses of the verbs;
the infinitive and the middle voice have been suppressed,
and two auxiliary verbs introduced, OiXu, I will, and I
have. 7. The Hellenic pronouns are retained, but with
many modifications. 8. Some new words have been adopt¬
ed from the Turkish, Latin, and Italian ; others have been
formed from Hellenic roots ; and many old Hellenic words
have changed their meaning, attributives being used as
substantives, and vice versa. The pronunciation of the
Romaic deviates widely from that of the ancient Greek as
taught in our schools. The B is sounded like our V, whilst
the place of B is supplied by pv. The A is sounded like
th in that, and 6 like our th in think. The vowels n,
and the diphthongs «, o/, vi, are all pronounced like the
Italian i. Great liberties are also taken with the orthogra¬
phy of the Romaic. Vowels are substituted for one an¬
other, and letters or syllables suppressed or added, accord¬
ing to the fancy of the writer, at the beginning or end of
words. In addition to all this, there is a perplexing diver¬
sity in the style and construction. Those who write in
Romaic, having no good models before them, readily fall
into provincial vulgarisms ; and as they often derive their
ideas of composition from works in Hellenic, Italian, or
French, they adopt, to a greater or less extent, the idioms
of these languages. It is said, however, that the dialects
of the spoken Romaic in Greece have not so marked a Greece,
difference as those of the distant provinces of France or
England. The purest dialects, or those which approach
nearest to the Hellenic, are found in some of the least fre¬
quented islands of the Archipelago, in the mountainous
parts of Greece, at Yanina, and among the well-educated
Greeks of Constantinople. The Romaic of Athens is full
of corruptions derived from the Italian and French; and
the Athenians of modern times, though still distinguished
for quickness and subtlety of understanding, are reproach¬
ed by their countrymen with an indifference or want of ca¬
pacity for literary pursuits. A great number of books,
chiefly translations, have been printed in Romaic within
the last fifty years; and even previously to the revolution
there was not a Greek community, in a moderate state of
opulence, which did not support a school for instructing
their children in the ancient Greek, and often in other
branches of polite education.1 Since tranquillity was re¬
stored, the cultivation of the modern tongue has not been
overlooked; and the object of their best scholars now is
to bring it back as near to the standard of the ancient as may
be practicable. The name of Romaic is going into disuse ;
the modern language being denominated Greek, and the
ancient, for the sake of distinction, Hellenic.
There is a national likeness observable in all the Greeks, Physiog-
though, upon the whole, the islanders are darker and of anomyi
stronger make than those on the mainland. They have a
larger facial angle than the other nations in the south of
Europe, to whom they are manifestly superior both in
countenance and form. Their faces are just such as
served for models to the ancient sculptors, and their young
men, in particular, are of that perfect beauty, which we
should perhaps consider as too soft and effeminate in those
of the same age in our northern climate. Their eyes
are large and dark, their eye-brows arched ; their com¬
plexions are rather brown, but quite clear; and their
cheeks and lips are tinged with a bright vermilion. The
oval of their faces is regular, and all their features in per¬
fect proportion. Their hair, which is dark and long, is
shaven off on the fore part of the crown and side of the
face, and they wear a thin long mustachio on the upper
lip. Beards are worn by the clergy, the codjia-bashees,
and other men in authority. Their necks are long, but
broad and firmly set, their chests wide and expanded,
and their waists rather slender. Their legs are strong and
well made; their stature above the middling size; and
they are muscular, but not brawny, nor inclined to corpu¬
lency. Both the face and form of the women are very
inferior to those of the men. Though they have the same
kind of features, their eyes are too languid, and their
complexions too pale, and, even from the age of twelve,
they have a flaccidity and looseness of person which is far
fropi agreeable. They are generally rather below the
middle size, and when between twenty-five and thirty,
are commonly rather fat and unwieldy.
The dress of Greeks of the wealthier classes closely re-Dress,
sembles that of the Turks. A cotton shirt made like a
woman’s chemise, cotton drawers, a vest and jacket of
silk or stuff, a pair of large loose trousers drawn up a
little above the ankle, and a short sock, make the inner
part of their dress. Next above this is a long shawl
wrapped in wide folds round the loins; and a large gown
or pelisse, with loose sleeves, forms the outer garment.
The head is covered with a calpac instead of a turban.
They wear slippers or quarter boots, which the privileged
by Chandler, Revett, and Pars, 2 vols. fol. 1769-1797 ; The Unedited Antiquities of Attica, by the Society of Dilettanti, fol. 1817;
Chandler and Clarke’s Travels, already referred to; and Mr Edward Dodwell’s Classical and Topographical Tour in Greece, 2 vols.
4t0i’ Leake’s Researches, chap. i. The works published in Romaic have been chiefly printed at Vienna and Venice ; a few at Moscow,
Buda, Paris, and other towns. See a list of these works in llobhouse’s Travels, chap, xxxiii. and Leake s Researches, p. 77-
'42
GREECE.
Greece.
Women.
ureeKs may nave or a yellow colour, but even they are
not permitted to wear robes of green, the favourite co¬
lour of Mahommed. The common people have their
trousers descending but a little below the knee, with
bare legs, and a slipper pointed and turned up at the toe.
Above this they have a jacket, and on their heads the
little red Albanian scull-cap.
The dress of the females approaches much nearer to
that of the Frank ladies, and need not here be particular¬
ly described. That of the richer females is profusely or¬
namented with gold and silver trimmings. They wear
bracelets of precious stones, and strings of gold coins
round their arms and necks. They colour the inside of
the eye-lashes with a composition, and use washes and
paints to improve their complexion. With the young
women it is a prevailing fashion to dye the hair of an au¬
burn colour. When abroad, the Greek ladies are muffled
up in a wrapping cloak, and wear a long veil, which, how¬
ever, they frequently throw aside when not in the pre¬
sence of the Turks. They live almost as much secluded
as the 1 urkish ladies. Indeed before marriage they are
rarely seen by any male, except of their own family ; and
even the lover rarely sees his mistress till she become his
bride. But afterwards the ladies enjoy the privilege of
being introduced to people of their own nation, and to
travellers. When in the interior apartments, a young
woman divests herself of her outer robes; and, in the
summer season, may sometimes be surprised reclined on a
rich carpet or sofa, with her feet bare, and her whole form
rather shaded than concealed by trousers of gauze, and a
muslin cymar.
The women can seldom read or write, but are all of
them able to embroider very tastefully ; and they can ge¬
nerally play on the Greek lute or rebeck. Their dancing
they learn without a master, from their companions ; and
their favourite national dance, the Romaika, is thought to
bear a striking resemblance to the ancient Cretan dance,
invented in the time of Theseus. Most of them are ac¬
quainted with a great number of songs or recitatives, ac¬
companied with tales, which are combined and taken up
by different individuals in succession for hours together.
The Greek women evince a great quickness of under¬
standing, and much aptitude for the acquisition of lan¬
guages and other branches of education, when an oppor¬
tunity offers. But their early marriages (for they are some¬
times married at thirteen or fourteen) are prejudicial to
their mental improvement. They are, however, assiduous
housewives and tender mothers, and, notwithstanding the
scandalous imputations of some travellers, generally chaste.
The state of bondage and seclusion in which they are kept
naturally enfeebles their characters, and they are exces¬
sively credulous, weak, and superstitious, slaves to a thou¬
sand vain apprehensions, believing in sorcery and witch¬
craft, and receiving implicitly the dogmas and fables of
their church. They are much guided by ominous dreams
and celestial revelations; and at births, marriages, and
other memorable domestic events, they have recourse to
many spells and superstitious rites, to guard against fairies
or wicked spirits. The evil eye is particularly dreaded;
and the herb garlic is in high repute as a charm against
this and other imaginary misfortunes. At funerals, wo¬
men hired for the purpose accompany the bier, howling in
a manner rather ludicrous than mournful, proclaiming the
virtues of the deceased, and calling aloud to the corpse,
“ Why did you die ? You had money, you had friends,
you had a fair wife and children ; why did you die ?” On
the ninth day after the funeral, the nearest relation gives
a feast, with music, dancing, and every other sort of mer¬
riment. Many of the rites and ceremonies now in use
and not a few of the observances connected with relio-ion'
have evidently been transmitted unaltered from paean an’
tiquity. (Hobhouse, let. 31.) 1 b
The Greeks affect a great deal of parade in their style
of living. Those who are in office are addressed by pom¬
pous titles, keep great numbers of servants, dignified with
the names of secretaries, physicians, couriers, &c. and have
large houses, which are in general shabbily furnished, and
very dirty. Both Greeks and Turks contrive to support
a respectable appearance by very slender means. The
Greeks, like the Turks also, are all smokers, and addicted
to the use of the hot bath. The men generally bathe once
a wmek, the women at least once a month. Their diet
when not restricted by their fasts, consists, amongst the
poorer classes, of bread made of barley, wheat, or Indian
corn, pilau, or boiled rice mixed with butter, eggs, sheep’s
milk curdled, cheese made of sheep or goat’s milk, dried
fish, olives, gourds, melons, and various other vegetables.
On holidays, lamb, mutton, kids flesh, or fowls, are served
up. Ihe rich have a greater variety in their dishes and
cookery. The mutton, which is the kind of animal food
most in use, is seldom good, and is generally roasted or
stewed, rarely boiled. Pastry is common, but is very in¬
digestible, being sweetened with honey, and not well
baked. Boutaraga, caviar, and macaroni, are generally
met with on the table, and a dish of snails is not uncom¬
mon. 1 he bread is coarse and under baked. Salted olives
are a standing dish, and gourds and melons in their sea¬
son. Great quantities of vegetables are consumed, such
as cabbages, cauliflowers, spinach, artichokes, &c. which
are generally prepared with oil or butter, and seasoned
with pepper, mint, marjoram. Oranges, pears, olives, ci¬
trons, medlars, pomegranates, are served up as a dessert.
During dinner the Greeks drink wine, and a spirit made
from barley, resembling whisky; but they rarely indulge
to excess. Coffee is much in use, but is taken rather as a
refreshment than as a part of diet. In general, says Dr
Holland, the Greeks have an appearance of comfort in
their dwellings, clothing, and in the various habits of life,
not much inferior to that of other nations in the south of
Europe.1
Iravellers seem now to be nearly agreed as to the intel¬
lectual and moral qualities of the Greeks. It is allowed
that they have much acuteness of understanding, polished
and agreeable manners, a sprightly wit, and great natural
eloquence ; but, on the other hand, their apologists cannot
deny that, though strict in their fasts, they are lax in their
morals ; that their vanity forms a lamentable contrast with
their humbled condition; and that they have more than
an ordinary share of duplicity, meanness, and bigotry.
A great proportion of the Greeks are engaged in foreign
or domestic trade ; and as merchants they are reported to
be vigilant and dexterous, but overreaching and deceitful.
Those who get into power, as archons or codjia-bashees,
are as rapacious and tyrannical as the Turks. All classes
are devoutly attached to the doctrines of the church, and
hold other sects in such contempt that they regard them¬
selves and the Russians as the only Christians. The few
well-informed men among them are generally sceptical, as
will always happen where religion is debased by absurdi¬
ties which shock the understanding. One of the best fea¬
tures in their character is the strong national spirit which
animates them, and the lively interest they take in the
fate of their country. The Greeks settled in Russia and
Italy, and some of those at Constantinople, have expended
a considerable part of their fortunes in supporting schools,
and in printing works designed to enlighten their country-
1 Hobhouse, 226; Pouqueville, chap. xv.; Holland, 268.
GREECE.
743
men
men
and:
in tin
a vei
They
rith
rith
oule
;han
mte ■
asy'
nen
ight
,he nr
ither’
xcef
|They
iheir
ircho
if off
ibii
less,
or tli
ndeei
ies.
ather
it tab
md t<
mper
ippell
ively
lastir
acilit
mriet
en b
n thi
if a
vhicl
Hie
most
lame
ilngii
iloits
:he \)
nam
Th
nuch
;hy tl
:er, d
inctl
lelief
)e fol
CreeCf1'"''ice/nen; and the sacrifices made during the revolution, by
^ men 0f all classes, proves that their patriotism is strong
J ^ and ardent. Though the deeds of the ancient Greeks live
n their memories, and are often in their mouths, they have
a very confused and erroneous idea of their character.
They associate the glory of their ancestors much more
ivith the empire of Constantiiae and his successors, than
nth the Greek republics. And their bigotry has so far
icrverted their ambition, that the overthrow of the Turks
. ould gratify them more as the triumph of their church
han as the establishment of their independence. In pri¬
vate life the Greeks have much social feeling ; and, though
jeasv in their manners, are strict observers of forms. Two
jnen in saluting first touch their foreheads, then place their
right hand on their hearts, and kiss each other. 1 hey make
ihe most ceremonious and particular inquiries after each
other’s families. It is rare to find a Greek living single,
nxcept as a widower, for they seldom marry a second time.
They are fond of titles and distinctions, in proportion to
their want of real strength and dignity of character. Every
trchon and codjia-bashee, though he has but the shadow
of official dignity, is “ most illustrious,” or “ most noble.”
\ bishop is styled “ your beatitude,” a priest “ your holi-
iess.” They are avaricious; but they desire money only
for the purpose of ostentation. Their veneration for wealth
ndeed supersedes, in some measure, the strongest natural
ies. Children who. get rich sometimes employ their own
fathers as menial servants, and are waited upon by them
it table. Parents teach their children to kiss their hands,
tnd to address them by the title of signor, which implies
uperiority, and is therefore preferred to more endearing
tppellations. All classes, but especially the lower, are
ively and gay, excessively fond of dancing, music, and
bastimes. They delight in poetry, and have a remarkable
acility in versifying. Of popular songs they have a great
variety relating to love and drinking ; some of them writ-
en by living authors who have distinguished themselves
n this species of composition. They have also some pieces
>f a greater length, and of a dramatic form. Their music,
vhich is plaintive but monotonous, is sung with a nasal tone.
Te fiddle and three-stringed guitar are the instruments
most in use. Strolling bards, still bearing the ancient
^ame of rhapsodists, frequent the houses of the wealthy,
iinging love songs, or celebrating in rude verse the ex-
doits of some warrior, and accompanying their voices with
he lyre. Foot races, wrestling, and the disc, are still, as
n ancient times, favourite amusements.
The Greeks of the present day, though unquestionably
nuch debased, are rather objects of compassionate sympa-
,hy than indignation. The cardinal vices of their charac-
;er, dissimulation, meanness, and superstition, are so dis-
Inctly referrible to their political situation, as to warrant a
jelief that a favourable change in the one would speedily
je followed by an improvement in the other. Experience
ells us that misery and persecution increase men’s attach-
nent nent to their religion ; and that, among a people so at¬
tache ached to their religion, possessing lively imaginations, but
'rossl grossly ignorant, and where the only pittance of knowledge
o be ;o be found is in the hands of priests, superstition must
ake i ■ ake root and flourish ; and when we recollect that the na¬
tional 1 ional faith of the Greeks, rendered venerable in their eyes
)y its i >y its antiquity, has descended through a period oi fiiteen
entu 1 centuries, exposed to the continual action ol all the causes
that c hat could corrupt it, without one lucid interval ot free in-
juiry i juiry and diffused knowledge, we cannot be surprised that
the \ the vital principles of religion have totally disappeared
itnids amidst the rubbish of senseless forms, mystical rites, and
fain j k’ain pageantry. Again, with regard to the civil condition
)f thi >f the Greeks, it may be observed, that the slavery in
tvhicl tvhich they are held is of the most demoralizing kind.
Unin Uninstructed though they be, they are enlightened com¬
pared with the Turks. But knowledge, when doomed to
dependence on ignorance and rudeness, unavoidably dege¬
nerates into craft and duplicity. Instead of raising the
character of the individual, it furnishes him with new
powers of servility and deceit, and makes him more deeply
conscious of the ignominy of his condition. A human
being can never feel his self-degradation so complete as
when he is the slave of another whom he despises. What
is still worse in the state of the Greeks, the lord and vas¬
sal are separated by difference of faith; and the rancour
of religious bigotry inflames the contempt and hatred na¬
turally generated between the oppressor and the oppressed.
Human nature, in such painful circumstances, has but two
resources ; resistance at the hazard of extermination, or
entire submission. The suffering party must either bend
to its hardy destiny, and endeavour, by flattery, duplicity,
and management, to molify the violence of the oppressor,
and- by cunning and dissimulation to elude his tyranny;
or it must assume a courage from despair, and extort bet¬
ter terms by the obstinacy of its resistance. The Jews,
the most degraded portion of European society, illustrate
the one case ; the Albanians the other. Though too many
of the Greeks chose the less honourable alternative, and
sunk to a state of abasement resembling that of the Jews,
they have also shown themselves capable of acting the
more rugged and difficult part when favoured by circum¬
stances. The inhabitants of the hilly country have every¬
where forced the Turks to respect their privileges ; and
the firm and unconquerable spirit displayed by the Mainotes
of the Morea, and the Suliote Greeks, in defence of their
rights, is worthy of the most brilliant days of Sparta or
Rome.
Greece.
NARRATIVE OF THE GREEK REVOLUTION.
In the course of last century, the Greeks made two un¬
successful attempts to liberate themselves. The first was
in 1770, during a war between Russia and the Porte. The
Russians, in pursuance of a plan previously concerted,
landed a small force of 2000 men at various points in the
Morea. The Mainotes and other Greeks instantaneously
rose in arms, and got possession of the open towns, butcher¬
ing the Turks with every circumstance oi cruelty. Be¬
fore they had mastered any of the fortified places, however,
a great force of Albanians pouring in, defeated them, and
retaliated, with dreadful severity, the cruelties committed
on the Turks. The inhabitants of some entire towns and
villages were massacred, and the country was almost deso¬
lated. Though the Greeks acted with much vigour at the
outset, it was observed that their spirits sank at the first
check they received. But it is impossible to reprobate too
strongly the cruelty and perfidy of the Russian govern¬
ment, which, by sending such an inadequate force, expos¬
ed the Greeks to certain destruction, for the sake of ope¬
rating a paltry diversion in its own favour ; and, at the
conclusion of a peace, took no effectual means to protect
them from the rage of their enemies.
In 1790, the Greeks of Suli, in Albania, rose in arms,
upon an understanding that assistance was to be received
from Russia. A deputation went to Petersburg to offer
the crown of Greece to Prince Constantine, brother of the
present emperor, whom they saluted (Su.a'ksug ruv 'Eaawmv.
They were to collect their various troops from Suli, Li-
vadia, Attica, and the Morea; to march through Thessaly
and Macedonia, where they were to be joined by other re¬
inforcements ; and to meet the Russians at Adrianople with
300,000 men (as they gave out), after whicffi the combined
army was to proceed to Constantinople, and drive the
Turks out of Europe. But in the end little was done. The
Russians sent a trifling sum of money, which was chiefly
embezzled by their own agents, and soon made peace,,
744 GREECE.
Greece, without concerning themselves about the peril into which one of their brother members who should be ffuiltv nf r
they had brought the Greeks. The Suliotes defeated the treachery. The grand arch had its seat at Moscow from
Pashaof Yanina; and, aided by their rocks, defended them- which it corresponded with persons in all parts of Eurone
selves, performing prodigies of valour against the Albanian The society spread its ramifications through the southern
Turks. A squadron of twelve small vessels, which they parts of Russia, had numerous members in Odessa Yassv
had fitted out at Trieste, signalized itself in the Archipelago, Bucharest, and in Greece Proper, and some at Vienna
and after spreading terror amongst the Turks, was over- Paris, and Leghorn. Most of the primates of the More-
powered and destroyed by a greatly superior force. This joined it in 1819. This conspiracy had been spreading its
second enterprise, in short, ended like the first, without roots through European Turkey for five years before8the
any other effect than that of exposing the Greeks to re- Ottoman government knew of its existence; and when at
newed outrages from the Turks. The brave tribe of the length apprised of the fact by an accidental circumstance
Suhotes, on whom the Greeks placed great reliance, as the its usual apathy, and its contempt of the Greeks, prevent-
best soldiers of their faith, were reduced to a remnant by ed it from taking any precautions to avert the threatened
Ali in 1803, after a contest of many years. danger. It has been said that the Hetairists had fixed
Though the hopes of the Greeks were cast down for a upon the year 1825 for beginning the revolution ; but the
time by this event, various causes were silently operating statement rests on no good authority. Whatever might
a change in their situation, and preparing the way for a be their intentions, the rebellion of Ali Pasha, by embar-
more successful effort. Amidst all the hardships of their rassing the Porte, and neutralizing one who would have
lot, knowledge had been steadily increasing. The influence been a formidable enemy, presented an opportunity too
of Russia over the Porte was visibly extending, and pro- favourable to be lost, and precipitated the commencement
mised them sooner or later the means of exchanging Ma- of hostilities.
hommedan for Christian rulers. But what was of more In the autumn of 1820 a Turkish army advanced into
immediate importance, the establishment of Russian ports Albania. Most of Ali’s officers and armies having deserted
on the Black Sea, and the destruction of the French ship- his standard and joined the enemy, he shut himself up in a
ping by the wars of the revolution, created a trade in fortress at Y’anina, after destroying the town, and prepared
corn between Odessa, Marseilles, Leghorn, and Trieste, to stand a vigorous siege. Aware of the designs of the
which falling into the hands of the Greeks, had raised up Hetairists, he stimulated them to take up arms, by a pro-
a class of capitalists amongst them, and given them posses- mise of money and assistance ; and though they did not
sion of a commercial navy. From a few small barks en- confide in it, they resolved to embrace the advantage which
gaged in coasting traffic, a short period saw them in pos- the position of affairs held out. The first movement was
session of some hundred large well-rigged merchantmen, in a distant quarter. By previous concert a number of
making long voyages. Greek houses were established at Greeks assembled at Yassy in Moldavia in the endof Feb-
the ports mentioned, as well as at Smyrna, Salonica, and ruary 1821, and on the 6th of March Prince Ipsilanti,
Constantinople. As patriotic feelings were universally dif- who held the rank of major-general in the Russian service,’
fused, a part of the wealth thus acquired was expended in crossed the Pruth, and joined them. After proclaiming
founding schools and libraries, and the number of Greek the independence of Greece, he left that town on the 13th,
youths sent to the universities of Western Europe was with eight hundred horsemen, proceeding towards Bucha-
greatly increased. The ancient classic writers of the coun- rest, but lost time foolishly on the road, and did not enter
try were studied with new ardour, and lessons of freedom, the capital of Wallachia till the 9th of April. Dissensions
magnanimity, and patriotic devotion, eagerly imbibed from in the mean time broke out in his small army ; and though
their pages. Amongst the^ educated Greeks, those espe- the spirit of the people was good, and the lethargy of the
cially who had studied in France, Russia, and Germany, a Turks left him a clear space for action, his incapacity
more just idea was acquired of the relative weakness of the and indecision rendered him unable to improve these ad-
I orte, and the advantages which any people contending vantages; and a proclamation issued by the Russian con-
with it might derive from those arts and improvements, sul, in which the insurrection was strongly condemned by
the growth of an advanced civilization, which the Turks the emperor, on whose assistance they had relied, corn-
despised. I he conviction thus gained strength, that no- pletely disheartened the insurgents. About the end of
thing more was necessary to accomplish the liberation of April, a body of Turks put themselves in motion from Silis-
the Greeks, than a combined and organized effort by them- tria, occupied Bucharest, and followed the insurgents north-
selves, aided if possible by the countenance of some great ward. Some trifling skirmishes took place in the neigh-
Christian power. This idea gave birth to the Hetairia, a bourhood of Tergoivisht, rather to the disadvantage of the
seciet association, which is supposed to have originated Greeks; and a rash and unsuccessful attack made by one
about the beginning of the present century, but remained of their officers at Piteshti caused a panic in the army, fol-
obscure and feeble till 1815. About that time Count Capo lowed by a disastrous retreat. In this action the greater
dlstrias, a Greek by birth, who enjoyed a considerable rank part of the Sacred Battalion, composed of Greek youths
in the Russian service,^ established a Philomuse Society, from various parts of Europe, was destroyed, after a brave
ostensibly to promote Greek literature, but really to serve resistance. Ipsilanti shortly afterwards stole away from his
as a cloak for the Hetairia. In a little time he withdrew troops, and sought refuge within the Austrian boundary,
from its apparent guidance, but without ceasing to pro- A partisan warfare was continued a little longer. One small
mote its objects privately. The Hetairia had a complex corps retreated to Yassy, and thence to Skuleni on the
and artful organization. It was divided into five orders: Pruth, where, under Athanasius of Agrapha, they sustained
those of the first or lowest receiving merely a general inti- an attack from a body of Turks six times more numerous,
mation that a scheme was in contemplation to regenerate refusing to fly, though the means of retreat were open to
Greece ; and the information communicated of the society’s them, till three fourths of their number w ere destroyed,
designs becoming morespecial and distinct through the other Another small party under Yorgaki, or George the Olym-
or. h'ghest, called the Grand Arch, pian, shut themselves up in the monastery of Secka, where
which was composed of sixteen members, and alone pos- they resisted the Turks for six and thirty hours. At length,
sessed a full knowledge of the society’s plans, the power of when the enemy got into their rear, and success w'as hope¬
issuing general orders, and fixing the time and mode of less, the gallant chief, having refused the safe retreat which
execution. All the members were sworn to secrecy on the Turks offered him, called his followers together, and
theii knees, at the dead of night, and bound to kill any exhorted them to seek a glorious death sword in hand.
G R E
landing that instead of seconding his heroic resolution,
bey were preparing to fly, he retired to the chamber where
(s powder was deposited, and uttering a short prayer,
|ew himself up, with four of his attendants. George was
(native of Mount Olympus, and in his conduct during
(is short campaign showed a prudence and courage which
mid have fitted him admirably for heading the insurrec-
but the Greeks are slaves to titles and family names,
id George, who had no pretensions to rank, held only a
^bordinate situation. Quiet, modest, averse to intrigue,
seems, says Mr Gordon, to have been a real hero, inspir-
with sincere devotion, sublime courage, and an enthu-
astic love of his country. With his death, on the 26th
T'August, all resistance ceased in the principalities. The
jtention of the insurgents was to erect European Turkey
iito a province for Prince Ipsilanti.
I From the beginning of 1821 secret conferences were
Ibid by the more zealous Hetairists of the Morea, and a
®irit of insubordination began to appear amongst the peo-
|e. At length, on the 2d of April, the standard of inde-
rndence was hoisted at Kalavrita, a town about thirty
files south-east from Patras, by Germanos, archbishop of
Iripolizza, and Andreas Londos. Two days afterwards the
thting began at Patras, where the Christian inhabitants
se on the Turks, and, during a bloody struggle of some
tys, a part of the town was burned. The Turks, however,
Itained the citadel, from which the Greeks had no means
' expelling them; and Yusuf Pasha crossing the straits
' Lepanto, the armed insurgents suddenly fled, leaving
ieir brethren in the town to be butchered by the Turks,
he insurrection spread with such rapidity over the Morea,
lat seven days after the first shot was fired, a Greek se-
jite assembled at Calamata in Messina, under the presi-
i|incy of Petras Mavromichalis, bey ofMaina. A partisan
jjarfare was carried on for some time against the small bo¬
les of Mahommedan settlers living in the country, most of
ihom ultimately sought refuge in Tripolizza, the capital of
ie Morea. Meanwhile three thousand Albanians coming
jom the north, victualled the Acrocorinthus, and advan-
Ing to Argos, routed a body of Greeks posted there, killing
:ven hundred of them, and afterwards burned the town,
he Kihaya Bey then proceeded to Tripolizza, and seemed
tsolved to act with vigour. The Greeks, who had now
Isembled a considerable force, were divided as to the
ode of acting ; but it was finally determined to fight, and
icy accordingly posted themselves at Valtezza, near the
hemy. The Kihaya Bey, leaving Tripolizza with five thou-
iind troops, attacked them on the 27th of May, but was
■ (pulsed in several attacks made on the village in that and
ne following day, and finally fled to Tripolizza, with the
! ss of two pieces of cannon and four hundred men. This
j ctory, though small, had a great moral effect in raising
i ie courage of the Greeks. The three great seats of Greek
ommerce, Hydra, Spezzia, and Psyra, entered into the
I volutionary cause about the same time with the towns
i the mainland. A small fleet of Hydriot and Spezziot ves-
:1s visited the other isles of the Algean, proclaiming the
| dependence of Greece, and was everywhere received
■ ith enthusiasm ; whilst light-armed ships scoured the seas,
d captured every Ottoman trader.
In Ilumelia the insurrection broke out a few days later,
he Armatolis, a sort of stationary Christian militia, in
e mountains of Acarnania, TEtolia, and Thessaly, kept up
the Turkish government for the purposes of police,
ere unwilling to risk the loss of their pay. The peasants
Attica and Bceotia, however, took the field in the be-
jinning of May ; and on the 7th of that month, scaling the
iw wall which surrounds Athens, took possession of the
Jpwn, and drove the Turkish inhabitants into the citadel.
|h Epirus, the remnant of the brave Suliotes, reinforced by
jther Greeks, and encouraged by Ali Pasha, harassed the
1 VOL. X.
E C 15. 745
Seraskier Kourschid Pasha, by cutting off his convoys of Greece,
provisions. The scene of these hostilities was chiefly in v«—
the ancient Thesprotia, and it was carried on with great
activity in May by Marco Bozzaris. From this district it
spread into Acarnania and /Etolia ; the independent flag
was hoisted in Messalonghi in June, by several of the Ar-
matoli chiefs ; Vrakhori, a Mahommedan town twenty
miles north of Messalonghi, was carried very gallantly, and
some weeks afterwards Zarpandi in the same district; Sa-
lona was next taken; and the Turks in three months were
deprived of a large proportion of the posts which they had
occupied south of Mount Gita. Kourschid Pasha, however,
made a vigorous opposition, and success often changed sides.
In this desultory warfare the summer passed away. The Ru-
meliots, in the various actions fought, showed themselves
much better soldiers than the Moreots, and this reputa¬
tion they continued to maintain during the war. Whilst
these events were passing, Mavrocordato arrived at Messa¬
longhi from Leghorn, and, after conferring with the pri¬
mates, went to Tripolizza, where the Moreot leaders were
assembled for the siege. Finding he was an object of
jealousy to Demetrius Ipsilanti, he returned to Messa-
longhi in September, and laboured to organize the insur¬
rection in liumelia. In the mean time the Pasha Omar,
with a body of four thousand Turkish troops, marched
from Thessaly, routed a party of seven hundred Greeks at
Thermopylae, a second larger party under Odysseus at
Scripu, and destroyed Livadia, the most flourishing town
of Rumelia. He then advanced to Athens, and on the
30th of July relieved the citadel, in which sixteen hundred
Turks had been blockaded for eighty-three days, by a mot¬
ley army consisting of Attic peasants, 7Eginetans,and other
islanders. The armed Greeks retired to Salamis and ZEgi-
na, and the Albanians of the pasha’s army plundered and
wasted the country. The Greeks now collected in small
corps in the hilly districts of Bceotia and Phocis, straiten¬
ing the communications of the Turks, and cutting off their
supplies. A strong reinforcement coming to the latter
from Thessaly, was routed at Thermopylae by Odysseus,
with the loss of eight hundred men. The pasha shortly
afterwards withdrew from Attica and Bceotia, and the
Athenians from Salamis re-occupied the town, and re¬
sumed the blockade of the citadel in November. In the
extreme north the insurrection had been unfortunate.
The Macedonian Greeks, who had taken refuge in the
peninsula of Pallene, had their line of defence at Isthmus
forced by Aboulaboud, and, except a portion who escaped
by sea, were either killed or made prisoners. The monks of
Athos capitulated to the same pasha, after two thousand
of them had left the mountain. The people of Magnesia,
when dividing the booty they had taken from the Mahom-
medans, were surprised and routed by the Pasha of Drama.
A part sought shelter in the forests of Pelion, and part for¬
tified themselves in the peninsula of Trikeri, or fled to the
neighbouring isles of Scopelos and Skiathos. The thirty-
five neat and flourishing villages of the district were most¬
ly burned by the Turks. The Olympians, or Greeks of
Pieria, also rose in arms, but at too late a period. The
Pasha Aboulaboud had previously subdued the Christians
of Athos and Macedonia, and being able to bring his
whole force against them, routed them, and burned the
120 villages they possessed in the valleys of Olympus.
The Greeks of Macedonia, cruelly used by the Pasha of
Salonica, were driven by despair to take up arms. Un¬
able, however, to make head in the plain country against
the Ottoman cavalry, they retreated to the peninsula of
Cassandra, abandoning seventy villages, which the Turks
burned. We must explain, however, that the rage of the
Turks was excited to fury by the discovery of a plot form¬
ed by a Hydriot captain, to fire the arsenal at Constan¬
tinople, kill the sultan, and raise the Greek population.
746 GREECE.
Greece. The government, alarmed by this event, seized and exe-
cuted the leading individuals of the Fanariot families,
whilst some thousands of the other Christian inhabitants
were massacred in their houses, without the least regard
to legal forms. The death of the patriarch, a very old
man, much esteemed for his virtues, and of a number of
the other high clergy, created a great sensation. Saloni-
ca, Adrianople, and Smyrna, were the scene of similar bar¬
barities. The last of these towns, in particular, was con¬
signed to a general sack, like a city stormed. Kydonia, a
Greek town with thirty thousand inhabitants, which had
grown up in a few years, and was renowned for its college,
where three hundred students received a superior educa¬
tion, falling under the suspicion of the Turks, was burned
to the ground, and its people were forced to seek refuge
in Psyra and other isles. The Greek ships, which were
merely merchant vessels, carrying from twelve to twenty-
four guns, would have been impotent against any navy but
the Turkish : but by their superior seamanship, and a
bold and skilful use of brulots or fire-ships, they often
baffled or defeated strong squadrons of large men of war.
Their first exploit of this kind was the burning of a Turk¬
ish seventy-four on the coast of Mytelene in June. This
paralysed the operations of the capitan-bey for a little;
but setting forward again, he arrived at Samos, the poor
but brave inhabitants of which, forty thousand in number,
had slain their Ottoman rulers, and now harassed the
Turks of the neighbouring continent by frequent descents
upon the coast. A large land force was collected to sub¬
due them, and the capitan-bey attended with the fleet to
co-operate. But the Turks were defeated with great loss
in an attempt to land a thousand men, and a second arma¬
ment was intercepted by the Greek fleet, who burned ten
transports, whilst the soldiers escaped to the shore. The
troops after this refused to embark. The Greek and Turk¬
ish fleets manoeuvred in presence of each other, but part¬
ed without fighting, after the former had burned several
fire-ships without effect.
Demetrius Ipsilanti, second brother of Alexander, tra¬
velling in disguise from Russia, landed at Hydra in June,
and thence sailed over to the continent, where he was
welcomed with extraordinary demonstrations of joy. He
brought a small supply of money and arms, and a commis¬
sion from his brother, investing him with the supreme com¬
mand of the army. Patriotic, upright, brave, and accom¬
plished, he unfortunately wanted the energy necessary for
the post he assumed, and soon found himself thwarted in
his views, and rendered incapable of effecting any thing, by
the jealousy of the bishops and military chiefs. Prince
Mavrocordato, another Greek of noble descent and consi¬
derable talents, arrived in the Moreaa few weeks later. The
Turks at this time were driven out of the open country,
but held nine fortresses in the Morea, Patras, the castle
at the adjoining straits, Navarin, Coron, Modon, Nauplia,
Acrocorinthus, Monemvasia, and Tripolizza. The Greeks
wanted both materials and skill for conducting regular
sieges, and merely kept most of these places blockaded
less or more strictly. Monemvasia, and afterwards Nava¬
rin, surrendered in August, in consequence of famine.
The one capitulation was pretty faithfully kept; the other
was most disgracefully violated by the massacre of the
Turks, to whom a safe retreat had been guaranteed. The
siege of Tripolizza was pressed with a little more vigour,
as it was the capital of the peninsula, and contained a
number of wealthy Turks, whose property was looked to as
the prize of conquest. The city was defended by a wall
fourteen feet high and two miles in circuit, flanked by a
few towers with cannon, and its population was increased
by refugees to 25,000 souls. The besieging army amounted
to about 4500 men, which was less than the number of
adults within the walls; it gradually swelled, however, as
the increasing scarcity in the town multiplied the chances G
of a surrender. The contest was carried on by trifling W"
skirmishes, till the Turkish cavalry, which was the only ^
force dreaded by the Greeks, being entirely ruined, the
besiegers were enabled to invest the place more closely.
Famine was now doing its work upon the unhappy Mosle-
mins, who were negotiating for a capitulation on the 5th
of October, when some Greeks mounting a part of the
wall which had been neglected (there was no truce), enter¬
ed the town, and were immediately followed by the rest of
the army. The place was completely sacked, and of ten
or twelve thousand inhabitants, young and old, of both
sexes, still remaining in it, about eight thousand are sup.
posed to have been slain. A number of women were carried
off as captives, and a few officers were spared for the sake
of the ransom expected for them. Some Turks sold their
lives dearly, and a party of forty cut their way through
the Greeks, and escaped to Naupjia. The booty in mo¬
ney, shawls, jewels, dresses, pistols, sabres, and other ar¬
ticles, was very great, and led to petty contests amongst
the victors. The town presented the aspect of a ruin.
As a small counterpoise to this loss, the capitan-bey de¬
stroyed the village of Galixidi, near Salona, and carried
off thirty-four small trading vessels, the property of its
industrious inhabitants. The Ottoman fleet at the same
time revictualled Modon, Coron, and Patras. The Greeks
made an attempt to surprise Nauplia, which would have
succeeded but for the cowardice of the Moreots; and a
large body blockading the castle of Patras were, owing
to their gross carelessness, surprised and routed by a
party of Turks who crossed at Lepanto. Thus terminat¬
ed the year 1821.
The Turks of Crete, inspired with alarm by the appear¬
ance of Greek cruisers in the adjacent seas, began to strip
the Christian inhabitants of their arms, and to butcher
many of them in cold blood. A number of the latter, com¬
prehending the brave and hardy mountaineers of Sphakia,
were driven by this cruel usage to fight for their lives.
In July, August, and September 1821, the insurgents,
about twelve hundred in number, repeatedly defeated
large bodies of Turks; but the pasha at length collecting
an army of ten thousand men, overpowered them, and
burned most of their villages.
A national assembly convoked by Prince Ipsilanti had
met at Argos about the end of 1821, but finding that po¬
sition insecure, it removed to Piada, near the ancient Epi-
daurus, in January 1822. The assembly chose Mavrocor¬
dato president, and adopted an organic law or constitution,
framed on republican principles. The government was to
consist of a senate of seventy members elected annually
by the people, and an executive council of five persons.
The constitution enacted equality of rights, the freedom of
the press, and toleration in religion. The government was
then organized. The executive council consisted of Mav¬
rocordato, president; Kanakaris, Logotheti, Delhyani, and
Orlando, members; and Theodore Negris, secretary. Seven
ministers were also appointed for finance, foreign affairs,
war, &c., whose names it is unnecessary to give. After
passing a decree for a loan of 5,000,000 of piastres, the
assembly closed its session on the 20th of January. The
government thus erected proved a mere phantom. It had
no means of coercing the military chiefs, who set its powers
at defiance, and disdained even to pay it marks of outward
respect.
The citadel of Corinth, a post of great importance, sur¬
rendered on the 26th of January 1822, when the Turks were
inhumanly slaughtered, in violation of a compact to convey
them awray in safety. The Greek government fixed itself
here for some months, and issued a variety of decrees, which
were very little attended to. The death of Ali, pasha of
Yanina, who was shot by the Turks in February, after
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G R E
Diving himself up on a promise of personal safety, made a
ensiderable change in the position of the Greeks. Kour-
ghid Pasha shortly after sent an army of 17,000 men to
itack the Suliotes, who, though numbering only 4000 war-
K>rs, including Epirots, made so obstinate a resistance with
|e aid of their rocks and woods, that the Turks were finally
©mpelled to retreat with a heavy loss, and the pasha had
d resource but to turn his active hostilities into a blockade,
lavrocordato arrived at Messalonghi in June, commissioned
i act as captain-general of Western Greece. Anxious to
gccour the Suliotes, he marched northward with 3000 men
I Petta near Arta. Here he was attacked by 10,000 Turks,
lid in consequence of the treachery of Gogos, one of the
i^rmatoli chiefs, his little army was overpowered, and lost
fur hundred men, including two thirds of the small corps of
tsciplined Philhellenes. He made his way back to Mes-
ilonghi; and the Suliotes, reduced to extremity, signed a
(ipitulation with the pasha, by which the existing remnant
t three hundred and twenty men, and nine hundred women
nd children, were transported to Cephalonia, with their arms
nd baggage, at the pasha’s expense, with a douceur of two
undred thousand piastres superadded. Released from this
oublesome enemy, Omar Pasha approached Messalonghi
l October with ten thousand men. The town had scarce-
r any defences, and the garrison being under four hun-
red men, he might have carried it by a coup-de-main.
lie spent some weeks, however, in a state of inaction, or
t trifling negotiations, and this interval Mavrocordato di-
I gently improved, by raising new works, whilst a reinforce-
icnt of men from the Morea increased the garrison to up-
ards of 2000 men, and the Greek fleet brought supplies of
nmunition and arms. The rainy season too having set in,
i iread sickness through the Turkish camp ; and the pasha,
ow aware of his error, and anxious to retrieve it, attempt-
:1 to carry the works by escalade before daylight on Christ-
las morning, when he supposed the Greeks would be at
leir devotions. They had previous information, however,
nd beat back the Albanians at every point, with the loss
f six hundred men. The pasha now began his retreat, ob-
tructed by the swoln rivers, and harassed at every step
y the Acarnanians, who where up in arms ; he reached
revisa with the wrecks of his army in February 1823.
In the lEgean Sea the spring of 1823 was marked by
le most unfortunate and tragical event which distinguish-
d the revolution ; the entire destruction of the happy and
rosperous Greek community of Scio. This island con¬
fined 100,000 Christian inhabitants, whose peaceful ba¬
its, intelligence, industry, and wealth, exhibited a picture
f civilization unrivalled in the other parts of the Turkish
mpire. They were unwarlike, but being mildly govern-
d, they desired no change. When the Hydriot fleet ap-
i eared, they entreated the admiral to leave their coast, and
ot compromise them with the Porte. Two adventurers,
owever, one of them a Sciot by birth, who had spent
is life abroad, the other a Samian, in an evil hour, plan¬
ed an expedition to dislodge the Turks, which was too
?eble and ill supported to accomplish its object, but strong
nough to alarm the Porte, and bring ruin on the unhappy
slanders. Leaving Samos in March 1822, with a flotilla
f eight brigs and thirty launches, filled with one or two
lousand men, the two adventurers, Bournia and Logo-
leti, disembarked near Scio, and entered the town without
xperiencing any resistance. They were coolly received
{ y the inhabitants, who dreaded the vengeance of the
urks; but the citadel with a stout garrison held out
j|gainst them, and disturbed them by frequent sallies. A
onth passed away thus, when the Ottoman fleet sudden-
appeared before the town, and driving off the few Greek
lips stationed there, conveyed over a part of an army of
irty thousand men collected on the opposite Asiatic
oast, which is only ten miles distant. The Turks carried
E C E. 747
the town by assault on the 15th of April, putting to death Greece,
the men, young and old, without mercy, and not even ''—'-y-w'
sparing women and children. A part of the town was
burned, and what escaped the fire was destroyed other¬
wise. For a month crowds of armed barbarians wan¬
dered over the island, wasting and plundering. It was cal¬
culated that 25,000 of the Sciots were slaughtered, and
45,000 dragged into slavery; 15,000 were saved at first
in the Mastic villages, the property of the sultan, but
were afterwards massacred; the rest escaped, or were absent
when the catastrophe occurred ; but those who saved their
lives lost every thing else, and the most opulent families of
which Greece could boast were thus reduced in an instant
to beggary. In August the island did not contain above
1800 Greeks, out of the 100,000 who peopled it in March.
If the Hydriot fleet had appeared in proper time, the Turks
could have been prevented from disembarking, and, with
moderate diligence, the town might have been secured
against a sudden assault. But the insurrection was no less
rashly planned than ill conducted, and the horrors in which
it terminated filled all Greece with unavailing lamenta¬
tions. A strong fleet sailed from Hydra when it was too
late; but it achieved nothing except burning the Turkish
admiral’s ship, in wjhich more than 2000 men perished.
This exploit was accomplished in a very gallant manner, by
Canaris, a high-spirited patriot, whose name, and that of
Miaulis, are associated with the most brilliant achieve¬
ments of the Greek navy in the history of the war.
In Eastern Greece a desultory warfare was carried on in
the spring of 1822. The Greeks of Mount Gita, Othrys,
and Felion, harassed the Turks in the south-eastern plains
of Thessaly, but without gaining any advantage. An at¬
tempt was made to dispossess the Mahommedans of Euboea,
but it miscarried. The Athenians had tried to bombard
their citadel, but they wanted skill and an adequate supply
of projectiles; they then mined parts of the wall, but could
not produce a practicable breach. At length, however,
famine did their work. The Turks capitulated on the
22d of June, and though their personal safety was guaran¬
teed, a large number of them were, as usual, massacred in
cold blood, and the rest were saved with difficulty by the
Frank consuls.
Kourschid Pasha had been collecting a large force in
Thessaly, but the Greeks, with their usual negligence and
want of foresight, though apprised of the fact, made no de¬
fensive arrangements till the enemy was in the heart of
their country. The Turkish army, twenty or thirty thou¬
sand strong, chiefly cavalry, with a small body of infantry
and artillery, crossed the Sperchius, seized the defiles of
Mount Gita, and entered Boeotia in the beginning of July.
Odysseus, who had charge of the Pass of Thermopylae with
4000 men, either from weakness or treachery, offered no
resistance. The Pasha Dramali, the commander of this
army, burned Thebes, passed Cythaeron and the Dervend
of the isthmus unopposed ; and the impregnable castle of
Corinth, though victualled for three months, fell into his
hands by the pusillanimity of the garrison, without firing
a shot. From Corinth he pushed on to Nauplia, the
Greeks everywhere leaving their houses and flying in the
utmost consternation at his approach. No one thought of
fighting, till Demetrius Ipsilanti threw himself with a small
party into the ruined castle of Argos, not with the hope of
making an effectual resistance, but in order to gain time,
and induce the fugitives to rally. The manceuvre succeed¬
ed. A pause took place in Dramali’s operations, during
which Colocotroni arrived from the interior with a consi¬
derable force, which he drew up between the mountains
and the sea near Lerna, strengthening his position with
some hasty works calculated to render useless the cavalry,
which was the pasha’s right arm. After skirmishing for
one day, with little success, the Greeks wisely resolved to
748 G II E
Greece, wait the effect of scarcity upon their enemies, having pre-
viously burned all the standing corn. The Turks soon
exhausted their stock of provisions by their wasteful ha¬
bits, and Dramali had neglected to secure his communica¬
tions with Corinth and Northern Greece, by guarding the
passes. The insalubrity of the soil, and the inconsiderate
use of unripe fruit at the same time, gave birth to fevers,
which cut off numbers of his men ; whilst the cattle brought
for food, and the cavalry horses, died in thousands from want
of fodder. Pressed by these evils, and unable to force the
entrenchments in his front, he began his retreat on the 5th
of August. The Greeks, however, who had divined his
purpose, stationed some thousand men in the mountainous
defiles, who assailed him in his flight, and, besides killing
2000 of his soldiers, captured all his treasure and baggage,
with a vast number of horses, mules, and camels. Many
more of the Turks died at Corinth, where marsh fevers
prevailed, and amongst these the commander, Mahmoud
Dramali. A great number of the survivors were destroy¬
ed in an attempt to reach Patras by land; and at the
commencement of winter only a small remnant was in
existence of the formidable army which, three months be¬
fore, seemed powerful enough to overwhelm Greece.
The Palamede, or castle of Nauplia, pressed by famine,
capitulated in the end of December; and for once the
Turkish prisoners were allowed to depart in safety. The
Greeks who held the citadel of Athens gave up the com¬
mand of it to the crafty and treacherous Odysseus, a choice
of which they had reason to repent. The Turkish fleet,
instead of supporting the army, sailed round the Morea to
Patras, and on its way back to the Hellespont a ship of
the line was burned by the intrepid Canaris.
In February 1823 a second Greek congress assembled
at Astros in Argolis, and was attended by 260 deputies.
Feuds ran so high between the parties that it was difficult
to prevent bloodshed. It broke up at the end of April,
having appointed Petro Bey president of the executive
council, and fixed Tripolizza as the seat of the government.
Its decrees, however, were treated with contempt by the
military chiefs, who soon compelled the executive to seek
refuge in Salamis. The transient gleam of prosperity
caused by the retreat of the Turks had kindled a violent
spirit of disunion ; and the nation was now rent into fac¬
tions, headed by men like Colocotroni, Petro Bey, Londos,
Delhyani, Odysseus, Ghouras, and Panourias, who, having
been originally klephts or robbers, retained the craft, fero¬
city, and rapacious habits of their primitive vocation, and,
when the enemy was no longer present, thought of nothing
but plundering the people, and assassinating one another.
The men of better principles, Mavrocordato, Ipsilanti, and
Conduriotti, armed only with resolutions of the national
congress, had no power to awe these ruffians and their
military bands into obedience. The country, in fact, was
everywhere a prey to anarchy, and as early as 1823 the
wiser part of the people began to broach the scheme of in¬
viting a foreign prince to accept the sovereignty of Greece.
In the early part of the year 1823 the Turks of Euboea
made predatory incursions into Attica and Boeotia; whilst
the Greek mariners of Psyra and Samos made descents on
the coasts of Asia Minor, plundering the towns, and carrying
off wealthy Mahommedans prisoners for the sake of the ran¬
som obtained for their liberation. In June, however, a
I urkish army of 6000 men broke into Phocis and Doris,
and advanced to the neighbourhood of Athens. The Greeks,
as before, avoided battles, but encamping on the heights,
cut off detachments and foraging parties ; and ultimately
this force melted away by casualties or desertion, without
accomplishing any thing of importance. An expedition
undertaken by Odysseus to drive the Turks from Euboea
miscarried ; and the Christians of that isle having risen in
arms, were vanquished, and compelled to seek refuge in
E C E.
the isles of the Aegean, after witnessing the destruction of Gr.
the 150 villages they possessed. The prindpal effort of '—T"
the Turks, however, wTas made in Western Greece. The V
Pasha of Scodra led an army of 5000 Mirdites or Albanian
Christians into Acarnania. Messalonghi at that time was
without men or arms, and almost defenceless. Marco Bozzaris
a brave Suliote, with a small corps of his countrymen, finch
ing himself unable to arrest the pasha in his march, con¬
ceived the bold idea of surprising him in his camp. The
attack was made in the night time ; but of the three par¬
ties of Souliotes, two slunk back ; and the third, led by
Bozzaris, consisting of only 350 men, after storming se¬
veral tambourias, and making a horrible slaughter of the
enemy, finding itself unsupported, retired with the loss of
one third of its number, including its intrepid command¬
er. The Pasha of Scodra now joined Omar Vrioni, and
the two approached Messalonghi; but the town was by
this time garrisoned and provisioned ; and the Ottoman
commanders having an extravagant idea of its strength,
turned aside to besiege Anatolico, a paltry village a few
miles distant. They bombarded it for some weeks, till
the rains setting in, and spreading sickness amongst their
troops, forced them to retire in November. No solicita¬
tions could induce the Pasha of Scodra to engage in the
invasion of Greece a second time.
In Crete the insurrection opened in 1823 with a pro¬
mise of success, which was not realized. Affendouli, the
former chief of the insurgents, having lost his influence,
resigned ; and Tombazi, a Hydriot, and an able but rapa¬
cious man, was elected leader in his place, and dignified
with the Lacedemonian title of Harmost. He arrived in
Crete with 1200 Rumeliots and Moreots, and a few
small armed vessels, early in the summer, and being join¬
ed by the Sphakiots, gained several advantages over the
Turks. Kissamos, a fortified post, fell into his hands by
capitulation, but his troops were routed at Khadeno, and
failed in an attack upon the Mahommedans of Selino. The
sea being in the mean time open, the Pasha of Egypt
disembarked two successive bodies of disciplined troops.
The last of these, which landed at Canea in September,
routed the insurgents in the neighbourhood of that town,
and carrying fire and sword throughout Sphakia and the
other disaftected districts, completely extinguished the
insurrection. In the course of the year the capitan-pasha
sailed as far as Patras, and afterwards paraded his fleet
about the fEgean ; but the whole extent of his achieve¬
ments consisted in relieving Carysto, and reducing the Mag-
nesians of Trikeri; whilst some of his smaller vessels were
run ashore and destroyed by the Greeks. The citadel of
Corinth, after a blockade of nine months, surrendered in
November to Nikitas, who, in terms of the contract, faith¬
fully secured the unmolested retreat of the Mahommedans.
Whilst the Greeks thus prospered externally, there was
nothing but dissensions among themselves. “ The mem¬
bers of the executive,” says Mr Gordon, “ with the ex¬
ception of Zaimis, were no better than public robbers....
Every corner of the Morea was torn to pieces by ob¬
scure civil contests, and hardly any revenue came into the
treasury.”
The efforts of the Greeks to liberate themselves from
the Turkish yoke had from the first excited the sympa¬
thies of Western Europe ; and in 1823, when their resist¬
ance began to rise above the character of a transient re¬
bellion, these sympathies produced small succours in men
and money. In England, France, Germany, and Swit¬
zerland, subscriptions were raised, the value of which was
generally sent out in ammunition or military stores. Small
corps ot volunteers, actuated by a fine enthusiasm, also
went from Western Europe, and though universally disgust¬
ed with the treatment which they received, they always
fought bravely, and often rendered very important ser-
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ORE
ce. Amongst these foreigners, who received the appro-
iate name of Philhellenes, no one was the object of such
iversal interest as Lord Byron. His lordship disem-
rked at Messalonghi with 8000 dollars in specie, on the
h of January 1824, and was received with the most extra-
gant marks of joy. Shortly afterwards Lieutenant Parry
rived with some small field-pieces, supplies of powder,
ot, and tools, sent by the Greek committee in London,
is lordship took into his pay a corps of 500 Suliotes,
ihose insolence and rapacity rendered it soon necessary
expel them from the town, or rather to purchase their
sence with a sum of money. The Rumeliots who
placed them were not much better; and Byron found
mself so incessantly teased for money, so distracted by
ic turbulence of the military, the intrigues and dissen-
ons of the different parties, that his mental anxiety prey-
g on his frame, produced a shock of apoplexy, by which
s health was seriously injured. A fever followed some
me afterwards, and carried off this gifted man, on the
)th of April, amidst the lamentations of the Greeks, who
oned in some degree for the vexation they had caused
m, by the sincere homage which they paid, and still pay,
his memory. After his death the mutual jealousies of
le chiefs became more violent than ever, and the summer
issed away in a state of comparative inaction. Mavro-
>rdato advanced with 2000 men to the Gulf of Arta in
ugust, and skirmished with the Turks, till the rains in
ovember forced him to retire. In the east a body of
urks, who penetrated into Bceotia and threatened Athens,
tired without effecting any thing. Ghouras, who held
ie citadel of that town for Odysseus, having quarrelled
ith the latter, got him into his power, and put him to
jpath.
fi The naval campaign of 1824 was signalized by two un-
Irtunate events. The small and prosperous isle of Ka¬
lis, of which Savary gives so interesting a description,
fcas invaded by an Egyptian force, and entirely ruined,
i()00 of its inhabitants being sold into slavery. The Porte,
reatly exasperated by the active hostilities of the Psy-
jots, whose ships preyed on the Ottoman trading vessels,
jbd insulted the coasts of Asia Minor, sent a powerful
jeet against them under the capitan-pasha, with 14,000
ops on board. The island of Psyra is small and bar-
n ; its rocky coasts render disembarkation difficult; and
inhabitants, whose numbers had been increased to fif-
en or twenty thousand by emigration from Scio, trust-
g to their courage and the natural strength of their ter-
ory, had taken no pains to secure themselves by arti-
jfcial works. The small Greek fleet stationed off the har-
l)ur fled at the approach of the Moslemins, who, under
liver of a false attack, landed a strong force at the north
Ktremity of the isle, and gained possession of the hill
'Inch rises above the town. This unexpected success
foduced a panic among the timid refugees, which spread
lorn them to the Psyriots ; men and women threw them-
| Ives into the boats and attempted to escape, whilst the
furks entered the town unresisted, and laid it w’aste with
j-e and sword. In the midst of this miserable rout, a
nd of 600 refugees from Mount Olympus and other
rts of Macedonia distinguished themselves by a feat of
roism worthy of ancient Greece. Throwing themselves
to the convent of St Nicholas, where they had placed
eir wives and children, they resisted the attacks of the
'hole Turkish army, till two thirds of their number were
■lied. All hopes of relief being at an end, they resolved
V blow up the convent. Their fire having accordingly
fased, the Turks scaled the walls on every side, when
■ddenly, says Gordon, the Hellenic flag was lowered, a
iiite banner inscribed with the words Liberty or Death
tived in the air, a single gun gave the signal, and a
fcmendous explosion, shaking the isle, and felt far out at
E C E. 749
sea, buried in the ruins of St Nicholas thousands of the Greece,
conquerors and the remnant of the conquered. This
happened on the 5th of July. Only two of the Greeks were
taken alive. The loss of life was great in Psyra ; and the
island, which might have been saved by a little foresight
and exertion, was completely ruined. After the deed
was done the Greek fleet appeared, took some Turkish
vessels, and destroyed a small corps of Janizaries left on
the island. From Psyra the capitan-pasha proceeded to
Samos, but here all his movements were watched by the
Greek fleet; and his attempts to convey over an army
from the mainland were not only defeated, but he lost
three ships of war and a thousand men, and at last retired
from the shores of Samos completely baffled.
The sultan, made sensible, by the failure of three cam¬
paigns, of the inefficiency of his own fleets and armies,
delegated the task of re-conquering Greece to the Pasha
of Egypt, whose ambitious views made him listen readily
to the request of his nominal superior. In the beginning
of August, Ibrahim, the pasha’s adopted son, sailed from
Alexandria with a powerful fleet of ships of war and trans¬
ports, amounting altogether to 400 sail, with 17,000 men
on board, 2000 horses, and a strong train of artillery. He
put into the bay of Macri, the ancient Telmessus, to wa¬
ter, and shortly afterwards was met by the Greek fleet of
seventy sail, carrying 700 guns. For more than three
months Ibrahim manoeuvred amongst the gulfs and isles on
the coast of Caria, endeavouring to beat off the Greeks,
and proceed on his voyage; but though he counted six
guns and six men for every one his enemies could muster,
his mariners were so wretchedly deficient in skill, that he
was continually baffled, and at last thought himself for¬
tunate in escaping to Crete in the beginning of Decem¬
ber, with the loss of two fine frigates and four brigs of war
blown up, fifty transports taken or sunk, and 4000 soldiers
and seamen slain or drowned, exclusively of some thou¬
sands who died of disease.
The first Greek loan was negotiated in London in Fe¬
bruary 1824. The nominal amount was L.800,000, of
which all that was available, after deducting interest, com¬
mission, sinking fund, &c. was L.280,000. It served to
quicken the operations of the government, and no doubt
contributed materially to the success of the fleet, and the
defeat of Ibrahim. In the Morea fierce civil war raged,
Colocotroni, Londos, Sisini, and other robber chiefs, set¬
ting the government at defiance. They were crushed,
however, by the vigorous efforts of Colletti, the secretary ;
but the Rumeliots, by whose agency he put them down,
proved a scourge to the country by their rapacity.
Ibrahim having procured reinforcements from Egypt
during the winter, set sail from Suda in February 1825,
and landed with 4000 men at Modon on the 24th, a day
pregnant with sorrow to the Greeks. The success of
their naval efforts in the preceding year showed that,
with common activity, they might have prevented the dis¬
embarkation ; but no precautions were thought of, partly
from want of foresight, partly from a feeling of false secu¬
rity, which led them to think that the Egyptians would
be as feeble adversaries as the Turks. Ibrahim attempt¬
ed nothing till he had brought over additional corps, and
raised his army to 11,000, and afterwards to 15,000 men.
He then commenced the siege of Navarin, defeated 7000
palikars who tried to relieve it, breached the walls, car¬
ried some outworks after hard fighting, and gained pos¬
session of the place by capitulation on the 18th of May.
Thence he advanced into the interior, burning the villages,
which the Greeks deserted on his approach. Colocotroni
endeavoured to arrest his progress in the mountainous
defiles, but without success; Tripolizza was burned by
its inhabitants ; and Argos shared the same fate at the
hands of the Egyptians. Nauplia was threatened, but
GREECE.
750
Greece. Ibrahim had no battering artillery; and dreading the
want of provisions, he retreated towards Messenia. The
Greeks, who had assembled to the number of 7000, at¬
tacked him near Tripolizza, but were beaten so com¬
pletely that they gave up all further thoughts of resist¬
ance in the open field. In August and September the
pasha ravaged the valleys of the Alpheus and the Euro-
tas, destroying the town of Misitra and a number of villa¬
ges, and then returned to Modon. One or two gallant
feats were performed by the Greeks during this unfortu¬
nate campaign. A small body of 300 men under Papa
Flessas, surrounded by many thousand Egyptians, defend¬
ed themselves with the bayonet and the but-ends of their
muskets, till the whole perished except two, who lay hid
under the slain : and at the Mills of Lerna, Ipsilanti,
with a few hundred men, baffled the main body of the
pasha’s army.
In Northern Greece, Redschid Pasha, the most energe¬
tic of all the sultan’s officers, had been intrusted with the
conduct of the war. Leaving Yanina, he arrived in May
before Messalonghi, which contained about 5000 of the
bravest Greek soldiers, and opened trenches. The works
were carried on with vigour, in the face of a most deter¬
mined resistance. Elevated mounds were raised to com¬
mand the batteries of the besieged, and mines were sunk ;
the Franklin bastion, the most exposed part of the defences,
wras laid open by breaching, and repeated attempts were
made by the Turks to take it by assault, in one of which
they at length succeeded ; but the Greeks, no way daunt¬
ed, sprung a small mine, and rushing upon their enemies
sword in hand, dispossessed them, and following the
Turks into their lines, destroyed some of their batteries.
Fresh efforts were made by the pasha, and still frustrated
by the courage of the Greeks, till the winter rains in Oc¬
tober compelled Redschid to suspend his operations, and
coop himself up within a fortified camp near the town.
Ibrahim, who had received a great accession of force in
November, now determined to try a winter campaign, and
gratify the Porte by conquering Messalonghi. March¬
ing northward, he burned the villages of Elis, and cross¬
ing the Straits of Lepanto, encamped before Messalonghi
in January 1826. He began by offering terms to the be¬
sieged, which were proudly rejected. His batteries were
more skilfully constructed than those of the Turks, and
his artillery better served ; but after he had ruined part
of the town’s defences, his attempts to storm were con¬
stantly defeated by the Greeks, who, in fighting hand to
hand, with sword or bayonet, were vastly superior both to
the Turks and Egyptians. The siege would indeed have
ended in total failure, if he had not succeeded, at a great
expense of life, in reducing various outworks commanding
the channels of the lagoon by which the besieged commu¬
nicated with the sea, and received supplies of provisions.
Starvation now accomplished what arms could notachieve.
After every thing edible, whether wholesome or unwhole¬
some, was consumed, the remainder of the gallant garrison
adopted the resolution of cutting their way through the
enemy’s lines. A deserter betrayed their plan to the
pasha, who was fuily prepared to receive them. Formed
into two bodies, they issued from the town by moon-light on
the 22d of April; a false alarm induced the one to return :
the other, raising a simultaneous shout, “ On, on, death
to the barbarians,” rushed forward with their muskets in
their hands, and their sabres slung to their wrists. “ Nei¬
ther ditch nor breastwork,” says Gordon, “neither the
flashing peals of cannon and small arms, nor the bayonets
of the Arabs, could arrest the tremendous shock; in a
few minutes the trenches were cleared, the infantry bro¬
ken, the batteries silenced, and the artillerymen slaugh¬
tered at their guns.” Of the other body which returned
to the town, some escaped in boats, some by wading through
the lagoon, some voluntarily blew themselves up with a Greer
number of the enemy, when the latter entered the powder vC,
magazine, and not a few of the survivors died of fati<me
and exhaustion before they reached Salona. The heavy
loss of the Turks and Egyptians during the siege attested
the superior valour of their enemies ; and the heroic de¬
fence of Messalonghi may well vie with the proudest
achievements of ancient Greece.
In Eastern Greece, Colonel Fabvier, a brave and zealous
French officer, formed a corps of regulars or tacticos, and
carrying them over to Eubcea, made an attempt on Ca-
rysto, which failed. No drilling, in fact, could induce
the palikars, or Greek irregulars, who had been accus¬
tomed to rely entirely upon their strength, agility, and
adroitness, to meet a steady fire when drawn up in line.
Another national assembly was held at Piada in Argolis,
but it effected nothing. After the fall of Messalonghi,
Redschid Pasha invaded Attica, and took Athens, but fail¬
ed in his attempts upon the citadel, into which, when its
garrison was greatly reduced, Colonel Fabvier introduced
600 men, with a supply of powder. The glorious fall of
Messalonghi had awakened an enthusiasm in Western Eu¬
rope in favour of the Greek cause, and contributions to
the amount of not less than LAO,000 were raised in
1826. The royal families of Bavaria, Prussia, and Swe¬
den, and the present king of France, were amongst the
contributors.
In May 1827 Ibrahim invaded the country of the Mai-
nots, but was defeated in all his attempts to penetrate
their mountain fastnesses. The rest of the summer was
spent in ravaging the open country, and burning the vil¬
lages, the inhabitants of which took refuge in woods and
caverns. To his great mortification, none of the people
made their submission, and parties of irregulars watched
his movements, cutting off stragglers, and intercepting
convoys. Lord Cochrane arrived in Greece in March
1827 with a steam-frigate. A very splendid frigate, built
in America, also reached ^Egina this year, but proved of
no great use, the Hydriot mariners being unaccustomed
to manage vessels of such a size. These two frigates were
nearly all that the Greeks derived from a second loan of
L.2,000,000 negotiated in London in February 1825.
General Church, an Englishman who had served in a
Greek corps formerly kept in English pay in the Ionian
Isles, arrived by invitation about the same time. They
found the Greeks rent into factions furiously hostile to
each other. It is a memorable fact, that whilst Ibrahim
was wasting the Morea, there were no less than seven
petty civil contests raging in different parts of Greece!
By the influence of Church, Cochrane, and Captain Ha¬
milton of the Cambrian, a temporary reconciliation was
effected between the adverse parties, and the necessity
of having a foreign chief being generally acknowledged,
a congress assembled at Trcezene in April, and elected
Count Capo d’lstrias president for seven years. Church
was appointed general of the land forces, and Coch¬
rane admiral of the fleet. The fortunes of Greece were
now at a very low ebb ; but what power remained in the
country was summoned up in an expiring effort. From the
Morea, the isles, and Western Greece, a force of nearly
10,000 men was collected at Salamis and the Piraeus. Af¬
ter carrying on a war of posts, chiefly at Port Phalerus, for
some time, General Church was persuaded to risk a battle
with the Turks in the plain of Athens, the object being to
relieve the citadel. The result was a disastrous defeat on
the 5th May, in which the Greeks lost 1500 men. The
remaining troops dispersed, and the citadel capitulated.
The only fortified posts now in the hands of the insurgents
were Nauplia and the Acrocorinthus.
Relief was, however, approaching from another quar¬
ter. From circumstances which it would be tedious
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G R E
t explain here, the policy of the great Christian powers
bd undergone a change. A protocol had been signed at
iitersburg in April 1826, by the Russian and British
cinisters, the object of which was to effect an accommo-
dtion between the Porte and the insurgents, by erecting
Creece into a dependency of the Porte, paying a fixed tri-
bte, but having the entire regulation of its own affairs.
<n the 6th July 1827 a treaty of intervention was signed
fetween France, Russia, and Britain, on the same basis.
The sultan firmly denied their right of interference, for
*iich, however, the piracy practised by the Greeks gave
fern a good pretext. A naval force was sent into the
diterranean to inforce the provisions of the treaty, and
belligerent parties in Greece were enjoined to sus-
nd hostilities. The Greeks joyfully agreed ; but Ibra-
hesitated, as the measure was not sanctioned by the
titan ; and the capitan pasha, who was lying in the har-
tur of Navarin with a strong Turkish fleet, having similar
^Tuples, the warlike movements were partially continued,
fie combined fleets of England, France, and Russia, stood
ilto the Bay of Navarin in order of battle on the 20th Octo-
Ir. Though the intention of the admirals was to treat,
3 Turks believed they came to fight, and were anchored
smooth water to receive them, and supported by batte¬
ns on shore. Who began the battle is uncertain ; but it
»is obstinate and bloody, and most destructive to the van-
qiished party. About 6000 Turks were slain, and of 120
isn of war and transports, all were sunk or destroyed ex-
flpt twenty or thirty .brigs and corvettes. The killed and
fiunded on the side of the allies amounted to 626. The
|3tory produced unbounded joy among the Greeks, and
fi cited them to make a new attempt upon Scio, by an ex-
t:dition under Colonel Fabvier, which, though conducted
<ith great courage and skill, ultimately failed. Ibrahim, see-
jlg his communications with Egypt now cut off, obtained
Is father’s authority, and agreed to evacuate the Morea.
|e sailed in the beginning of October 1828, leaving, ac-
©rding to stipulation, about 8000 troops in Patras, Modon,
fcron, Navarin, and Castle Tornese, of whom 1200 were
Jgyptians. To avoid renewed hostilities between the
I reeks and Turks, a French army was sent to the Morea
the autumn, and took possession of these five fortresses,
e last being the only one that offered any resistance.
Count Capo d’Istrias passed from Petersburg to London
Mid Paris in the end of 1827, and after conferring with the
Iritish and French ministers, he set sail from Toulon, and
I nded at Nauplia on the 18th of January 1828. The peo-
| e received him with great joy, hoping to find repose and
i icurity under his government; and his authority was ac-
f lowledged at once by the military chiefs and other func-
! anaries of all descriptions. He was a clever and dexte-
i'us diplomatist, but his conduct as president seems not
I have been judicious. Anxious to copy the centralising
i stem which prevails in absolute monarchies, he dissolved
I e municipalities, and nominated prefects, judges, and
| her officers, deriving their authority entirely from him-
f If. Many of his appointments also gave offence : among
I hers, the nomination of his brother Augustin, a person of
n|> ability, to the command of Western Greece, led to the
isignation of General Church in 1829, after that officer
lid recovered all the country south of the Gulf of Arta
lim the Turks. The French troops, it is to be observed,
nfined themselves to the Morea, such being their instruc-
Lns, and left the Greeks to carry on hostilities in the
forth with their own means.
ij| The Porte obstinately rejected the arrangement proposed
w the three powers in 1827, till it was humbled by numerous
jsfeats in 1828 and 1829, and saw the Russian army with-
j i a few leagues of its capital. The stipulations in behalf
11 Greece made by Nicholas were, however, set aside by
jie governments of France and Britain, and it was settled
E C E.
751
that the affairs of that country should be discussed in Lon¬
don. The conference held there, after much deliberation
finally resolved that Greece should be erected into a mo¬
narchy entirely independent of the sultan, and ruled by a
Christian prince. The crown was offered, in the end o‘f
1829, to Prince John of Saxony, who refused it; and then
to Prince Leopold of Saxe-Cobourg, who agreed to accept
it; but having corresponded with Capo dTstrias, the latter
artfully infused so many doubts and apprehensions into the
prince’s mind, that he resiled from his engagement. This
was in May 1830. Other princes, it is said, were propos¬
ed, but nothing was decided; and in the mean time Greece
was again falling into a state of anarchy. The popularity
of Capo d’Istrias’ government was of short duration. Visibly
the partisan of Russia, he showed a devotion to her inte¬
rests which offended all the more independent Greeks. Fie
extinguished the freedom of the press, which the people
were perhaps more eager to possess than fitted to enjoy ;
established a council, called the Panhellenion, which was
intended to supersede the elective senate ; refused to pub¬
lish any account of the national finances, and threw many
popular leaders into prison. These and other measures
produced violent discontents, which at last broke out into
open rebellion. The Mainots, whose prince he had placed
in durance, were the first to throw off his authority. They
were followed by the people of Hydra, who established a
provisional government, at the head of which were Miaulis
and Condouriotti, assisted by Mavrocordato. The French
and English ships of war in the Archipelago stood neuter ;
but the Russian admiral, Ricord, eagerly took a part in the
contest, on the side of the president, With this aid he at¬
tacked Poros, where the Greek fleet lay ; but the islanders
had anticipated his design, and, when the loss of their
ships of war became inevitable, blew them up to prevent
them falling into his hands. Whilst this contest was go¬
ing on, the son and brother of Mavromichaeli, the captive
bey of Maina, instigated by a feeling of revenge, came to
Nauplia and assassinated the president at the door of a
church, on the 9th of October 1831. One of the assassins
was seized, tried, and executed, but the other escaped.
A new commission of government was then appointed,
consisting of Augustin Capo dTstrias, with Coletti and
Colocotroni, who thought it prudent to convoke a national
assembly. Loud complaints were made that the free
choice of the people was defeated by force and fraud;
and when the assembly met in December, it speedily sepa¬
rated into two hostile bodies, one of which remained at Ar¬
gos, while the other seated itself at Megara, and thence
fulminated decrees against Augustin and his associates.
The Moreots generally adhered to the former, the Rume-
liots to the latter. Civil war now raged furiously in the
country, and the peaceful cultivators were driven, as in the
time of the revolutionary struggle, to desert their homes,
and seek refuge in the woods and caverns. This lament¬
able state of things probably quickened the languid pro¬
ceedings of the conference in London, who in May 1832
fixed upon Otho, second son of the king of Bavaria, as the
sovereign of Greece. The prince was born in 1815, and
was of course a minor; but the defect was supplied as far
as possible by a council of regency. The three powers,
parties to the conference, obtained an extension of territo¬
ry and a better frontier for the new state, including the
province of Acarnania, for which, however, a price was to
be paid to the sultan ; and, in order to put Otho in a con¬
dition to meet initiatory difficulties, they guaranteed a loan
of L.2,4f00,000 for him, to be paid in three equal annual
instalments. Otho landed at Nauplia on the 31st Ja¬
nuary 1833, attended by 3600 Bavarian soldiers, and was
warmly welcomed by the people. The French troops had
been gradually reduced, and were now entirely withdrawn.
The regency commenced the work of organizing the go-
G reece.
752 G R E
Greece, vernment, made a new division of the country, disbanded
''■-’■'v'-*-'' the palikars, formed a small body of Greek regulars, and
took some steps towards the establishment of tribunals. As
might have been expected, its endeavours to introduce or¬
der soon awakened the factious spirit of the klephts or mi¬
litary chiefs, some of whom, including the arch-anarchist
Colocotroni, were tried for plotting the1 2 overthrow of the
government, convicted, and sentenced to imprisonment or
exile. These are only the beginning of troubles, spring¬
ing from the natural levity and turbulence of the people,
and which it will require a firm government to control.
The last act of the regency of which accounts have reach¬
ed us was the removal of the government to Athens, which
took place in December ISST1
In the whole course of the war, the Greeks never had
any regular army; for the attempts to form a corps of dis¬
ciplined troops, and keep them in pay, always failed. Their
soldiers, with the exception of some small bands of Arma-
toles, consisted of peasants who took up arms for a few
months, when the enemy made an irruption, and fought
till he was expelled, or driven into the fortresses. They
made war as irregulars, seldom encountering the Turks in
the field, but posting themselves in defiles, and on moun¬
tains, taking advantage of rocks, inequalities of the ground,
villages, or ruined buildings; and where these were want¬
ing, covering themselves by small temporary parapets of
earth or stones, called Tambourias. The Rumeliots were
excellent marksmen, and admirable at defending a post.
A hundred of them planted in a ruined monastery, seldom
failed to beat olf one or two thousand Turks. Their de¬
feats were chiefly owing to three circumstances : first, their
entire want of cavalry, for as infantry they were superior
to their enemies; secondly, their deficiency in artillery, both
for service in the field, and for battering fortified posts;
thirdly, their incorrigible neglect of order and discipline,
in consequence of which they were often surprised and
routed by a contemptibly inferior force. As obstacles to
their success, we must also mention their mutual animosi¬
ties, the rapacity and selfishness of their chiefs, and their
habit of neglecting all advantages for the acquisition of spoil.
Their fleet was better managed than their army, but its
operations failed on many occasions, from the mutinous
spirit of the sailors, and the habit, which they could scarcely
ever be persuaded to abandon, of returning to port to see
their families at the end of every month, however pressing
might be the occasion for their services. With all their
faults and errors, it is impossible to read the history of the
revolution without feeling respect for their courage, and
for the unconquerable spirit which bore them up under the
most dreadful privations and reverses.
STATISTICAL VIEW OF INDEPENDENT GREECE.
It was settled by the conference of London in March
1829, that the northern or inland frontier of Greece should
extend from the Gulf of Arta to the Gulf of Malia; but
this was coupled with two conditions, that the sultan should
be acknowledged as sovereign, and receive an annual tri¬
bute. In the following year it was resolved that Greece
E C E.
should enjoy entire independence ; and, as an indemnity Or
to the sultan for the loss of the tribute and titular sove- WA
reignty, the limits of the new state were contracted, so as
to extend from Thermopylae to the mouth of the Achelous
excluding Acarnania and part of iEtolia. By a later ar¬
rangement, made after Otho received the crown, the ori¬
ginal boundary was again restored, with the consent of the
Porte, which agreed to accept a sum of money for the
ceded districts. This boundary commences at the north¬
east angle of the Gulf of Arta, passes eastward to the
sources of the Sperchius, and thence follows the line of
Mount Othrys to the Maliac Gulf at Zeitouni. The isle of
Euboea, the Northern Sporades, viz. Skiathos, Scopelos,
Helidromia, and Skyros ; the Cyclades ; and the isles in the
Gulfs of iEgina and Nauplia, also belong to Greece. There
are four provinces, Eastern Hellas, Western Hellas, the
Morea, and the Isles; and each of these is divided into
eparchias or departments. Thiersch gives the following
estimate of the population, which is chiefly founded on an
enumeration of towns and villages, which are assumed to
have a certain mean number of inhabitants each.
Eastern Hellas? comprehending eleven eparchias or deport¬
ments, which contain eleven towns and 585 villages.
Eparchias. Towns. Villages.
Megara 1  12
Attica 1 118
Thebes 1 150
Livadia 1  72
Taianti 1  66
Boudenizza (at Thermopylae) 1  34
Zeitouni (at the Maliac Gulf) 1  29
Neapatras (on the Sperchius) 1  66
Malandrinos 1  16
Lidoriki (ancient Doris) 1  60
Salona (Locri-Ozolae) 1  32
The towns are assumed to have 300, the villages fifty
houses or families each ; and reckoning four persons to a
family, the population of Eastern Greece is computed to
consist of 32,550 families, or 130,000 individuals.
Eastern Hellas contains 1,886,000 stremas3 of cultivated
soil, of which 720,000 belong to the nation, and 1,166,000
to individuals. Of this, 75,000 stremas are in vines, and
3700 in gardens. In 1829, there were computed to be
210,000 olive trees in the eparchias of Attica, Megara, and
Salona, and a very few in other places. The cultivated
soil, according to the above account, seems to form about
one fifth of the whole surface, a result which we suspect
contains some considerable error in excess.
Western Hellas.
This province comprehends iEtolia, Acarnania, and a
part of the country of the Locri-Ozolae. It forms twelve
eparchias,4 containing nineteen towns and 265 villages.
Eparchias. Towns. Villages.
Messalonghi  1  2
Anatolico  1  2
Zygos  1 20
Lepanto, with Galixidi  1 —
Beneticon  1 18
1 The preceding narrative, as far as the end of 1827. is abridged from Mr Gordon’s History of the Greek Revolution, Edinburgh,
1832, an able, impartial, and instructive work, which should he read by all who wish to understand the moral and social condition
of the Greeks. The part of the narrative subsequent to 1827 is derived from various sources.
2 The terms most in use among English and French writers are Eastern Greece and Western Greece; but these, when applied
exclusively to the districts beyond the Morea, are evidently improper, and we have therefore preferred the denominations which, as
we find from Thiersch, the Greeks themselves use. In the preceding part of the article we have followed Gordon in employing the
more usual terms.
? The cultivated land is measured by the strema, which, according to Thiersch, is a square of forty paces (pas). By the pace he
seems to mean a full step of three feet; and the strema, on this supposition, will be a fraction under one third of an English acre,
which agrees pretty well with the statements of other writers.
4 Thiersch says there a^e eleven eparchias, but enumerates twelve, and his aggregate numbers seldom agree with his details.
]
Bal/
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GREECE.
753
Eparchias. Towns. Villages.
Baltas  1 28
Vonizza1  1 11
Vlochos, with Vrachori  1 20
Xeromeros  4 23
Krabara  2 53
Apocoura  1 26
Carponisi  4 62
The population, estimated hypothetically as before,
at >unts, he says, to 19,000 families, and 76,000 indivi-
d Is.
The cultivated land in Western Hellas amounts to
91 ,000 stremas, of which 179,000 belong to the nation,
ar 818,000 to individuals. Of these lands, 65,000 stremas
ar in vines, and 3650 in Corinthian grapes.
1 le Morea or Peloponnesus, comprehending thirty-five
eparchias.
,, '
Eparclnas. Towns. Villages.
Nauplia  2.
Low Nachare  3.
Argos    3.
St Petros  9.
Prastos  3.
Corinth 10.
Tripolizza  1.
Leontari  1.
Kalavrita 15.
Carytene 11.
Phanari  2.
Androuzza    2.
Vostizza  2.,
Patras  1.,
Gastouni  7..
  2.,
  1.
  1.
  1.
  1..
  1.,
  1..
  1..
  1..
. 64
. 3
. 15
. 4
. 2
. 8
. 61
. 53
. 97
.119
. 52
. 48
. 26
.112
.172
. 8
. 90
. 14
. 28
. 56
. 2
. 17
. 10
. 35
.108
. 30
Pyrgos 
New Arcadia 
Navarin 
Modon 
Coron 
Nisi 
Calamata 
Micromani 
Embelakia 
Lacedemon 21.
I Monemvasia  3.
hy the Eastern Spartiates,
MalemhrU*" T or Mainots> numbering from 8000 to
Phoucas . .:) 10,000 families.
Stauropygos 1
7v»ros ^ i Western Spartiates,2 or Mainots, num-
MvIea.V.| bering 6700 families.
Maina J
le Morea has eighty-six towns and boroughs (villes
ct urgs), 1335 villages, and 92,550 families, exclusive
e country of the Spartiates. Adding 15,400 families
artiates, the population will consist of 107,900 fami¬
lies, or 429,000 inhabitants. The statistical commission
employed under Otho’s government had received more
correct returns for nine eparchias; and, taking these as a
basis, the population should be 308,800 inhabitants, ex¬
clusive of the Mainots, an estimate which falls short of
the former by 61,000 persons.
The returns of land in cultivation are extremely incor¬
rect as to the Morea, exhibiting only a total of 1,776,000
stremas, of which rather more than two thirds are na¬
tional property. “ In general,” says Thiersch, “ we may
reckon fifty stremas of cultivated soil for each family,
which gives an aggregate of ten millions of stremas for
the 400,000 inhabitants of the Morea.” The real quan¬
tity of laboured land is thus presumed to exceed sixfold
the returns made to the government, a circumstance prov¬
ing that little authority is due to the other statements.
The Greek Islands.
The inhabited isles are thirty-three in number, exclu¬
sive of Euboea. No eparchias are named in reference to
these.
Inhabitants.
Hydra 20,000
Spezzia  8,000
Poros  4,464
iEgina  5,572
Augistra....  1,552
Salamis    1,124
Scopelos  6,515
Helidromia  240
Skiathos  1,532
Skyros    1,578
Syra 30,000
Tinos 22,000
Miconos  4,012
Andros  5,000
Cea  3,112
Inhabitants.
Thermia  2,050
Naxos 10,800
Paros and Antiparos 4,751
Siphnos  4,431
Seriphos  3,200
Cimolos  420
Milo  1,458
Palycandros   1,200
Sicinos    1,100
los  2,177
Amorgos  2,067
Santorin  9,656
Anaphe  643
Astypalcea   951
Eubeea 20,000
The entire number of inhabitants in the islands amounts
to 176,000 ; and adding 429,000 for the Morea, and 206,000
for Eastern and Western Hellas, we have 811,000 for the
population of the kingdom of Greece.3 Thiersch thinks,
that prior to the revolution the number of inhabitants iii
Continental Greece was nearly double of what it now is;
but though this may be true as regards the more exposed
districts, namely, Eastern and Western Hellas, the accounts
given by Pouqueville would lead us to believe that the
Morea is nearly as populous at present as before the war.
The islands have suffered much less in the struggle than
the continental districts, except Euboea and Hydra, the
latter from the decline of its trade, the former from the ex¬
pulsion, first of the Christians, and latterly of the Turks,
who composed a larger proportion of the population here
than anywTiere south of Mount Gita.
Independent Greece comprises, including the islands,
according to our measurements, an area of 20,000 or 21,000
square English miles. Thiersch’s estimate is 1100 square
German, w hich is equal to 23,000 English miles; but this
appears to us an exaggeration. Otho’s kingdom is therefore
phese tables are taken from Thiersch, but much confusion arises from the practice in use among the Greeks, of scundin<T the B
| Thiersch invariably puts the English B for the Greek beta, and hence has Bonizza, Blochos, Blachori, where others write
zza, Vlochos, Vrachori. We could not venture to exclude B entirely from the map of Greece, and were unwilling to disguise
° pretty familiar, such as Vonizza, by writing it Bonizza; and we have therefore allowed Beneticon, Baltas, and various
previously unknown to us, to stand as we found them, and changed a few w here usage had already fixed the spelling. We be-
fhowever the reader may pretty safely substitute V wherever B occurs in these names.
pli
(n, and that the name in use among the people themselves is Spartiates.
’hese statistical details are taken from Thiersch, tom. i. sect. 6. We have preferred stremas in the English form to the Greek
1 stromata.
5 c
Greece.
754
GREECE.
Greece, nearly of the same extent with Denmark, or Belgium and
Holland united. But in the nature of its surface it resem¬
bles Switzerland or Bavaria more than any other country
in Europe ; and if we suppose its population, favoured by
peace and good institutions, to multiply till it rivals the
most densely peopled of these states, Greece might then
support about three millions of inhabitants. Commerce
and manufactures, however, which enable a small spot to
draw subsistence from the whole globe, may extend its ca¬
pacity to nourish a large population much beyond the li¬
mits which circumscribe the powers of inland countries.
The revenues of the present kingdom of Greece under
the grand seignior were supposed, says Thiersch, to yield
15,000,000 of francs, or L.600,000, of which more than a
half remained in the hands of the local authorities. The
imposts consisted of the caratch or capitation tax, the tithe
or land-tax, the customs, the duties on salines, fisheries,
mills, olives, See. The first of these was abolished as a
badge of slavery, and the productiveness of the others has
in general greatly declined. The financial statements pub¬
lished by Capo dTstrias were delusive, and offered no infor¬
mation worthy of confidence. Thiersch gives the follow¬
ing approximate amount of receipts and disbursements for
the fourteen months ending 30th April 1831, from esti¬
mates published in October 1830, for the accuracy of
which, however, he does not vouch.
Phoenix.
Land-tax (dimes) 2,500,000
Customs 1,200,000
Tax on vines and currants  36,000
Tax on pasturage  300,000
Local imposts  50,000
Tax on olives  110,000
4,196,000
The phoenix was a coin introduced by Capo dTstrias, and
was meant to be equal to one sixth part of the crown of
commerce (ecu de convention). It has been replaced by
the drachma, which is nearly of the same value, or about
equal to the French franc. The 4,000,000 phoenixes, reck¬
oned at 9d. each, would be equal to L. 150,000. The ex¬
penditure for the same period was estimated at 8,500,000
phoenixes. Thiersch thinks that the revenue may be rais¬
ed to 8,200,000 phoenixes, assuming the land-tax to yield
5,000,000 and the customs 2,200,000. It would serve no
purpose to indulge in general speculations on statements
like these, which are almost purely hypothetical.
Of the actual expenditure, the same author gives the
following estimate.
Drachmas.
Council of state  300,000
Public instruction and churches  900,000
Interior  809,000
Finances and public works 1,300,000
Justice  200,000
Army 3,500,000
Marine 1,200,000
King and court 1,000,000
9,209,000
Probable receipts 8,000,000
Deficit 1,209,000
No provision is made here for the interest of the loan of
L.2,400,000 guaranteed by the three powers, or the sink¬
ing fund to be established for its liquidation. But a re¬
source applicable to these objects may probably be found
in the sale of the national lands, which are expected to Gr
yield L.12,000,000 in thirty years.
Mr Urquhart gives an estimate of the national domains of
independent Greece, which makes their value L.l 1,833,000.
The population, according to his table, is 868,000, viz. the
Morea 400,000, Eastern Greece 150,000, Western Greece
100,000, and the islands 218,000.1
Thiersch has gone into great detail upon the subject of
primary and normal schools, academies, and a Greek uni¬
versity ; but the whole are merely as yet plans on paper,
and do not require particular notice here.
As a European power, the Greek state, though it should
even by and by embrace Thessaly, Macedonia, and Al¬
bania, must remain insignificant. Its chief value lies in
the basis it offers for spreading civilization over the East,
a work for which the people are eminently fitted, by their
enterprising spirit of commerce, and extraordinary mental
activity. “ Now that Greece,” says Mr Urquhart, “ has
assumed a definite and substantial form, she can afford
to discard the sympathies and the classical associations
that have contributed so much to her importance. It is
no longer her soil, her costume, her language, and her
ruins, that interest; it is not even the emancipation of
the clusters of the JEgean or the mountains of Pelopon¬
nesus, that is the reward of one of the most noble and
disinterested of diplomatic achievements ; it is the politi¬
cal regeneration of the East that we have commenced—
it is the emancipation of eastern commerce that we have
effected. Greece owes herself to the furtherance of these
two grand and philanthropic objects.
“ The political independence of the Greeks will elevate
the raya of Turkey, and force the re-organization of that
country. The light craft of Greece will frequent every
creek of the Levant and the Euxine ; her merchants,
combining local experience and information with Europe¬
an connection and knowledge, and endowed now with po¬
litical independence, will spread themselves over the whole
surface of Turkey, supply their wants, excite their taste,
take off their surplus produce, and, in-creasing their pros¬
perity, augment their demands. Greece will become one
great mart, where the manufactures of England will be
distributed to the surrounding districts of Europe, Asia,
and Africa, and to which the returns from these countries
will be directed ; she will be one free port, to link to¬
gether the commerce of the East and of the West.”
Greece needs repose greatly, to heal the wounds inflict¬
ed, first by the revolution, and next by the destructive civil
wars which have raged in the country since the Otto¬
mans were expelled ; and if Otho’s government, though a
simple monarchy, succeeds in maintaining internal peace,
and in securing protection to persons and property, it will
be an incalculable blessing to the people. The country,
ravaged by so many different parties, presents everywhere
scenes of misery and desolation. Most of the villages have
been burnt; the mills destroyed ; the olive trees cut down;
the canals for irrigation have fallen to ruin ; the trade of
Hydra and Spezzia is but a remnant of what it was; and
a large part of the farming stock, the black cattle, horses,
mules, asses, and sheep, have been carried off or slaughter¬
ed. Perhaps a greater evil than any of these is the demo¬
ralization of the people, from the habits of rapine and vio¬
lence contracted in the course of their hard struggle, super-
added to the vices engendered by ages of oppression under
the Turks. A government enlightened and prudent, suffi¬
ciently strong to control the different factions, and the robber
chiefs who head them, is the first want of the country ; and,
under such a government, the energetic, active character
of the people would soon bring back prosperity.
1 Turkey and its Resources, p. 281.
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G R E
GREEN, one of the original prismatic colours exhibit-
1 by the refraction of the rays of light.
Green-Cloth, a board or court of justice held in the
mnting-house of the king’s household, composed of the
rd steward and officers under him, who sit daily. To this
tmrt is committed the charge and superintendence of the
ng’s household in matters of justice and government,
ith a power to correct all offenders, and to maintain the
:ace of the verge, or jurisdiction of the court-royal, which
about two hundred yards every wray from the last gate of
e palace where his majesty resides. It takes its name,
ard of green cloth, from a green cloth spread over the
ard where the members sit. Without a warrant first ob-
ned from this court, none of the king’s servants can be
rested for debt.
Clerks of the Green Cloth were two officers of the board
green cloth, who appointed the diet of the king and his
usehold; kept all records, ledgers, and papers relating
lereto; and made up bills, parcels, and debentures for
laries, provisions, and necessaries for the officers of the
ittery, pantry, cellar, and the like. They also waited
Don foreign princes when entertained by his majesty. But
ese clerkships have been abolished.
Green-House, or Conservatory, a house in a garden,
ntrived for the purpose of sheltering and preserving the
ost curious and tender exotic plants, which in our cli-
ate will not bear to be exposed to the open air, especial-
in winter. Conservatories are generally large andbeau-
\il structures, equally ornamental and useful.
GREENLAND, or Groenland, an immense island
ing to the north-east of North America, and for the most
irt comprehended within the arctic circle. Formerly it was
pposed to form part of the continent of America, but the
scoveries of recent navigators have proved its entire se-
iration from that country by the Arctic Ocean. Indeed,
e very idea of a north-west passage from the Atlantic to
e Pacific Ocean presupposed that such was the case,
rom Cape Farewell, its most southern extremity, which
Dm the mean of nine different authorities lies in lat. 59°
30", it stretches on the one side in a north-north-wester-
direction to Smith’s Sound, at the top of Baffin’s Bay, in
;. 77° 45'. On the other side of Greenland the figure of
e coast is exceedingly irregular. For about ten degrees
may be said generally to run in a north-north-easterly
rection, describing during the first five degrees a consi-
■rable sinuosity, indented by numerous inlets of the sea.
'om latitude 70° to that of 75° the direction of the coast
more directly northerly, and from the latter parallel it
oceeds nearly due north beyond Spitzbergen and the
itude of 80°. This side of Greenland has been denomi-
ted East or Old Greenland, and the other side is distin-
lished by the name of West Greenland. The average
eadth may be about 500 miles. Such are the limits usually
signed to this country. It does not appear to terminate,
wever, at Smith’s Sound. From this point it proceeds
uth as far as the entrance to Lancaster Sound and Bar-
w’s Straits, and thence it stretches in a westerly direction
several hundred miles. Captain Parry, the discoverer,
[lied this tract of country North Devon. To the west of
are situated numerous islands, which the same navigator
titled North Georgian Islands. The principal of these
Cornwallis, Melville, Bathurst, and Bank’s Land, the
undaries of this last being unknown. To the west of
Pjiffin’s Bay and Davis’ Straits, and to the north of Hud¬
’s Bay and Hudson’s Straits, there is a large tract of
untry, probably separated into various islands by narrow
aits. Although these would appear to be disunited
ibm Greenland, they should be included in every descrip-
mn of that region.
G R E 755
The south-eastern portion, from which a vast peninsula Greenland,
shoots off into Hudson’s Straits, has been entitled Cum-
berland. Cape York, Cape Kater, Port Bowen, and so on,
terminate the country towards the north-west. To the
westward of these headlands lies a tract of land discovered
by Captain Parry, and which he named North Somerset.
At the head of Baffin’s Bay are situated Southampton
Island, Melville Peninsula, Cockburn Island, and some
smaller islands. All these various tracts are either insular
or indented by an immense bay and inlets, formed, it is
probable, by the tempestuous seas and currents w hich here
incessantly lash the shores, and which in many instances
are supposed to penetrate across the most solid masses of
land.
In general the discoveries which have been effected in
this quarter of the globe have resulted from attempts made
to discover a north-west passage to India through the Arctic
Sea. The existence of such a communication is a subject
which from time to time has occupied the attention of the
British government for the last three centuries; and al¬
though much valuable information has been obtained by
means of these voyages, the main object remains as yet
unaccomplished ; nor does it appear that although it were,
any important benefits to commerce would be derived from
it. Thefirstdiscovery of Greenland, however, was the result
of accident. About the middle of the ninth century, one
of the numerous Scandinavian marauders who infested the
seas at that period, was driven by a storm upon the coast
of Iceland. The Norwegians %vere not long in establish¬
ing a colony on this island, which increased so rapidly that
in little more than a century it was itself able to send out
colonies to other parts. In the year 982, Eric, a Norwegian
chief, set sail from Icehind in quest of adventures, and steer¬
ing to the south-west, after a quick run discovered land.
Two or three years were spent in exploring the country ;
and Eric being pleased with the freshness and verdure of
the shores as contrasted with the vegetation of Iceland,
and desirous to encourage emigration to the place, gave it
the name of Greenland. On his return, he gave an exag¬
gerated description of the newdy-discovered land, in con¬
sequence of which a fleet of twenty-five sail was equipped
and sent out, laden with persons of both sexes, cattle, and
other necessaries for forming a settlement. Only about
the half of the vessels reached their destination, but other
adventurers setting out, not only from Iceland, but from
Norway, the Orkneys, and other islands, in a few years a
respectable colony was formed, and a regular trade esta¬
blished. It seems highly probabl* that the original colo¬
ny of Greenland began about the southern promontory,
near Cape Farew ell, and gradually extended itself along
the coast in a north-westerly direction. Beyond this first
settlement another proceeded farther to the west. The
former was called (Estre Bygd, or the eastern settlement,
and the latter Vestre Bygd, or the western settlement.
Christianity having been introduced about the beginning of
the eleventh century, numerous churches and convents were
built, and the country was divided into regular parishes, to
which monks and other spiritual instructors were attach¬
ed. The colonists, although compelled to lead a life of se¬
vere privation and hardship, continued to increase, and to
extend to the north. The zeal with which the early Scan¬
dinavians pushed their settlements to the northernmost
parts of Greenland is strikingly attested by a curious mo¬
nument, which was discovered in 1824. It consists of a
stone carved with Runic characters, which was found stand¬
ing erect in the ground on the island of Kingiktorsoak, un¬
der the parallel of 730.1
For some centuries the commercial intercourse between
Greenland and Norway was kept up; but about the be-
* Th,
r
The following is a translation of the inscription by Dr liafer, secretary of the Itoyal Antiquarian Society of Copenhagen
Greenland.ginning of the fifteenth century all intercourse ceased, in Disco Bay. 5. The colonies of Christianshaab or Chris-
’■Y''-'' and the unfortunate colonists were cut off from the rest tian’s Hope, founded in 1734. 6. The factory of Claus-
of mankind. The Esquimaux, the natives of the country, havn, under it, founded in 1752, both in Disco Bay*
whom in derision the Norwegians called Screenings, or They have a good fishery of seals and white fish, but the
Dwarfs, on account of their diminutive stature, attacked whale fishery is more precarious. 7. The colony ofEo'e-
the western colony, which was compelled to seek assist- desminde, or Egede’s Memory, in Disco Bay, founded in
ance from that which lay to the south-east. There can the year 1759 by Captain Egede, and called after his fa-
be little doubt that the scanty population was reduced by ther, Hans Egede. It consists of a great many large and
these savage invaders; but it was more effectually thin- small islands. The proper settlement is on the island of
ned by that dreadful pestilence called the black death, Ausiet. Between this and the Fox Island (Roevoe) there
which desolated Europe from the year 1402 to 1404, and is a remarkably safe harbour. A great many seals are
which extended its ravages even to Greenland. Such a caught here, especially in nets ; but the collecting of ei-
waste of human life which necessarily accompanied this der-down is the most important branch of industry. 8.
visitation could not readily be repaired in a thinly-peo- The factories of Kronprindsens, Eiland, &c. 9. Hunde-
pled country. The colonies, it is believed, languished for Eiland, or Dog Island, both in Disco Bay, are settlements
nearly a hundred years afterwards, but became finally ex- for the whale fishery. The first was settled in 1778, and
tinct about the commencement of the sixteenth century, consists of fifty large and small islands, in which there
This is the most probable account of the fate of the origi- is a great deal of scurvy-grass and good turf moor. 10.
nal settlers ; but a notion very generally prevailed for a The factory of Godhavn, or Good Haven, in Disco Island,
long time that the western settlement only had perished, The settlers subsist chiefly by the whale fishery and the
the eastern one having escaped the calamity, but, from the produce of a coal mine, by which the settlements in Dis-
vast accumulation of ice, had been secluded from all com- co Bay are supplied with that article,
munication with the rest of the world. During the last In the southern inspectorship there are eightsettlements.
century the court of Denmark repeatedly dispatched 1. The colony of Holsteenborg, which was founded in
ships to ascertain if any of the eastern settlers still re- 1759. 2. Kirgurtursuk. 3. Omanarsuk. These settle-
mained on that part of the coast which is now called East ments subsist chiefly by the whale fishery; but about
or Old Greenland, but without success. That any of the a thousand pounds of eider-down are annually collected.
Norwegians originally settled on the eastern shores seems 4. The colony of Ny-Sukkertop is one of the most im-
clearly a mistake, arising from a misapprehension of the portant settlements, on account of the quantity of seal-
words east and west. They do not apply to the shores of blubber which is procured there; and it has one of the
the country, but to the situation of the settlers upon the safest and best harbours in the country. The colony,
western coast with relation to one another. Thus the first which was founded in the year 1755, under the name of
colony, which was planted at the southern extremity of Sukkertop, but in the year 1783 was removed much far-
Greenland, was called the eastern settlement, and the term ther to the south, under the present name, is named after
would naturally be frequently applied to distinguish that three pointed hills, which, at a distance, resemble sugar-
part of the country which it occupied ; whilst the second loaves, 5. The colony of Godthaab, or Good Hope, the old-
colony, which stretched to the north-west, and seems to est in the country, was first founded in the year 1721, by
have been perfectly distinct from the other, although they Hans Egede, on the island of Kangek, which is called by
maintained a mutual intercourse, was called the western the Danes Haabets-Oe, or Island of Hope, but was in 1728
settlement. During the last hundred years the Danes removed to the continent. There belong to this colony,
have formed numerous colonies upon the western side of 6. The factory of Fiskernaes, Fisher Point, or Fisher
Greenland, amounting to above twenty in number, and Cape, founded in 1754. The Danes here carry on the
stretchingfrom the sixtieth to the seventy-third degrees of seal fishery with nets which are fifty fathoms long, and
north latitude. The whale fisheries have greatly contri- often longer, and eight or ten fathoms deep ; they are set
buted to the advancement of the colonies; and from the between the islands which the seals frequent, so that
intimate intercourse which is now kept up with Euro- numbers are taken at one draught. The settlements of
peans, their condition is at present more flourishing than the Moravian brethren are, New Herrnhut, in the neigh-
thatof the ancient settlers. bourhood of Godthaab, founded in 1733; and Lichten-
There are eighteen Danish settlements, and some small- fels, not far from Fiskernaes, founded in 1758. Here
er establishments; the former are called colonies, and the there are many remains of ancient dwellings. 7. The
latter factories. All the settlements extend from Nen- colony of Frederikshaab, or Frederick’s Hope, founded in
nortalik, in the south, to Upernavik, in the seventy- 1742. 8. The colony of Julianeshaab, or Juliana’s Hope,
fourth degree of north latitude, and they are divided into I his, the most southerly, and, on account of a pretty cer-
two inspectorships. The northern inspectorship contains tain purchase of seal-blubber, seal-skins, and foxes skins,
ten settlements. 1. The colony of Upernavik, which is the most important colony, was founded in 1775, and its
the most northerly settlement. 2. The colony of Uma- district extends to the most southerly point of Greenland,
nak, formerly Noogsoak, which was founded in 1758. It Statenhuk, and beyond it to a certain distance along the
is distinguished by its excellent seal fishery, which is east side.
cairied on by the Greenlanders in their kajaks or small ihe population of these settlements has been reckoned
boats, and upon the ice, and by the Danish garrison with at about 7000. For the administration of the colonies
nets, which are let down between the openings of the and the trade, there are two inspectors, and about thirty
ice. I here are here coal mines, which supply the colony superior officers, with a number of subordinate functiona-
with that article. 3. The colony of Ritenbenk, found- ries. All these settlements are situated on the sea shore,
ed Large quantities of seal-blubber and seal- the interior of the country being little known or visited,
skins are obtained from the natives. 4. Ihe colony of Ja- The other parts of Greenland will be described in the or-
kobshavn, or Jacob s Haven, founded in 1741, was for der in which they were discovered,
some time one of the most advantageous establishments We shall now give a brief outline of the discovery of
“ Erling Sigvatson, and Bjarne Thordarson, and End ride Oddson, erected these memorial stones, and cleared the place, on Saturday
before Gagndag (the 25th of April), in the year 1135.”
i6 ot
cci^
jper
orth-
eth
evera
iscov
a the
Ight
art0
traits
iscov
ini)
is us
ie pi
GREENLAND.
757
tncLyie other parts of the arctic regions, which in general has
incidentally resulted from the numerous attempts made
fO penetrate from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean by a
lorth-west passage. During the reign of Queen Eliza-
eth, Frobisher, a distinguished English navigator, made
■everal voyages to this quarter of the globe. In 1577 he
iscovered the straits which have been called after him.
:n the year 1585, Davis, another able seaman, came in
light of high land, which he called Mount Raleigh, being
art of Cumberland Island, which lies on the west of the
traits bearing the discoverer’s name. In 1610 Hudson
iscovered the straits and the bay which are called after
im, in which he experienced a disastrous termination to
jis useful career. To certain rocky islands lying about
he parallel of sixty-four degrees he gave the name of
sles of God’s Mercy. He also discovered two capes,
oe of which was called Digge’s Cape, and the other
/illot Villoughby Cape. In 1616, Baffin, another distinguished
'nr''s jnglish navigator, discovered Baffin’s Bay. A large inlet
' the (f the sea at the top of the former was called Smith’s
ound jound, after one of the chief promoters of discovery.
rom Jrom the period in question until within the last fifteen or
xtee jxteen years, no discoveries of any great importance were
ade fcade in this quarter. In the year 1818 the admiralty fitted
JtH ut two expeditions ; one of which, under the command of
taptain Ross, was destined for the discovery of the north-
est P »est passage; and the other, at the head of which was Lieu-
nant ynant Parry, had for its object to attempt a voyage across
>e po ie pole. On the continent of Greenland the first-named
tviga (ivigator discovered a high mountainous region to the
Drth jirth of Upernavik, to which, from national predilections,
2gav E gave the name of the Arctic Highlands. It is little else
iana Han a mass of rocks, intermingled with immense blocks of
||e. He then proceeded to the northern extremity of Baf-
i’sBi ii’s Bay, which he explored, and estimated Smith’s Sound
beii ti be in lat. 77° 45'. The coast was surveyed, the positions
icerti ascertained, and the appearance of the land, the situation
tlie jjf the islands, and the general form of the bay itself, esta-
•shei lished ; thus confirming the discoveries of Baffin, which
ad fo Rd formerly been disputed. But the most important ad*
dons itions to our geographical knowledge of these northern re-
ons \ [ ons were made by Captain Parry, who undertook several
oyagi nyagesof discovery. Lancaster Sound was all along sup-
osed psed to be only a large bay; an opinion which had re¬
eked Lived support from Captain Ross, who, in the course of his
oyag foyage, made an unsuccessful attempt to reach the extre-
dty o lity of it. Captain Parry, however, thought otherwise, and
) 181 (i 1819 -1820 he succeeded in penetrating through it, and
stabli stablishing what had been much contested, the existence
la pc fa polar sea north of America. During his voyage up the
arrow arrow sea, and nearly directly westward, several head-
ndsi ,nds and wide openings towards the north and south were
escrii 'gscried, and hastily named in passing, Croker Bay, Navy
oard, , oard, Burnet Stratton, Prince Regent and Wellington
'lets, iilets, Maxwell Bay, and the archipelago, to which he
ive tl (five the name of the North Georgian Islands. A narrow
rail, Irait, which forms a continuation of Lancaster Sound,
as ci las called Barrow’s Strait. Melville Island, the most
ester testerly of these, is upwards of a hundred miles in length,
dof lid of about the same breadth, and lies in lat. 75° north,
ere i I ere this enterprising discoverer spent two years, and
aved (raved all the rigours of an arctic winter. The sun dis-
ipear ppeared from the horizon on the 4th of November, and
as no "as not seen till the third of February following. No in-
ibitar labitants were found on these islands, and the vegetable
"oduc productions were few and short-lived. Land and sea
ere c covered by a thick sheet of snow, and the thermo-
eter peter during their stay averaged about sixty degrees be-
w thi iw the freezing point. Bathurst Island and Cornwallis
land, tiland, which lie to the eastward of that upon which Par-
wim T wintered, are also of considerable size. The latter is
separated by Wellington Channel from an extensive coast, Greenland,
which received the name of North Devon, and reaches to v"—’'V'*''
the shores of Baffin’s Bay ; but it is not known whether it
forms a continuous tract with Greenland, or is composed
of one or more islands.
In a subsequent voyage he explored what is denominat¬
ed Melville Peninsula, a coast hitherto undescribed. He
also succeeded in sailing up a narrow channel which se¬
parates Melville Peninsula from Cockburn Isle, and called
it the Strait of the Fury and Hecla, after the vessels under
his command.
A tract of country four hundred miles in length, and
situated on the east coast of Greenland, was explored
by Captains Scoresby and Clavering. It received the
general appellation of the Liverpool Coast, whilst indivi¬
dual parts of it, bays, inlets, headlands, and the like, were
named after persons eminent in science, or after private
friends. There is here a mountain chain, which rises to
the height of 3000 or 4000 feet, forming precipitous cliffs,
which terminate in numberless peaks, cones, and pyra¬
mids. The coast was surveyed as far up as the parallel
of 75°, where it was seen still to extend in a northerly di¬
rection as far as the eye could reach.
The aspect of a country subjected during the greater
part of the year to an intense degree of cold, and also for
several months deprived of the light of the sun, must of
course be dreary and desolate in the extreme. A fall of snow
in the midst of what is here called summer, only because it
is not so dismal as the other parts of the year, is by no means
uncommon. Towards the end of autumn it begins to de¬
scend in a regular succession of showers, which continue
until every object is buried beneath a sheet of dazzling
whiteness. Ice also begins to form about this time, first
upon small streams and lakes, then upon larger ones and
inlets of the sea, and finally upon the ocean itselfj a vast
extent of the surface of which is bound together by a solid
chain of frost.
At Melville Island, Captain Parry found that the ice formed
a thickness of from three to five inches around the sides of
the ships in the space of four and twenty hours. In one in¬
stance, whilst the thermometer was twelve degrees below
zero, he observed it to acquire in that time seven and a
half inches in thickness. Ere the frost has reached its
highest degree of intensity, the air deposits its moisture in
the form of a fog, which freezes into a fine gossamer net¬
ting or into spicular icicles, dispersed throughout the atmo¬
sphere. The surface of the ocean also assumes a very re¬
markable aspect. It steams like a lime kiln, a phenomenon
called the frost smoke, and caused, as in the other instances
of the production of vapour, by the water being still warm¬
er than the superincumbent atmosphere. As the cold in¬
creases both these appearances vanish; the air clears; and
the sea, cooled down to the same standard, becomes a solid
floor of congealed salt water. Winter now broods over the
frozen continent in darkness unbroken save by the light of
the moon and the stars, which serve to reveal the deso¬
lation of the scene. Haloes and other luminous meteors
are also more numerous here than in lower latitudes. But
the aurora borealis, in particular, is highly serviceable in
breaking the monotonous gloom of an arctic winter. This
brilliant meteor plays incessantly in fantastic coruscations,
which have the appearance of very vivid sheet lightning,
and keep up an almost constant illumination. But this
serves only to discover the utter dreariness of all around.
Captain Parry observes, “ The sound of voices, which, dur¬
ing the cold weather, could be heard at a much greater dis¬
tance than usual, served now and then to break the silence
which reigned around us; a silence far different from that
peaceable composure which characterizes the landscape of
a cultivated country ; it was the death-like stillness of the
most dreary desolation, and the total absence of animated
GREENLAND.
758
Greenland, existence.” During this cheerless period of the year, the
natives, thickly covered with bear skins, remain immersed in
their miserable huts, and, crowded around the stove or lamp,
contrive to doze away the long and tedious night. The in¬
side of the hut, all openings in the walls of which are care¬
fully stopped, to exclude the piercing cold, become covered
with a crust of ice; and if for an instant an aperture be
made so as to admit the external air, the moisture within
becomes precipitated in a shower of snow. When the frost
is intensely severe, the rocks are sometimes heard to split
with a loud noise ; and the food of the inmates of these ice
houses becomes frequently so hard as to require to be cut
by a hatchet. It may be remarked, however, that the ex¬
ternal darkness prevails only during a part of the day. Twi¬
light exists whenever the sun is less depressed than eighteen
degrees below the horizon; the limits of total obscuration
occur in the latitude of 841°, at mid-day in the winter sol¬
stice. During their detention at Melville Island, in the la¬
titude of 74° 40', Captain Parry’s party could see to read
the smallest print at noon in the middle of winter. After
the sun has appeared above the horizon, and towards the
end of May, the half-famished inhabitants venture forth in
search of fish on the shores of the sea. In June and July
the sun becomes vertical, and is always above the horizon.
The heat, thus greatly augmented, gradually dissolves the
chain of ice, vast masses of which, detached from the cliffs,
descend on the shores with a crash like thunder. The
icy covering of the ocean breaks, and, separated into vast
masses, is driven about, dissevered, and dispersed, by the
violence of the winds and currents. Some portions, more
firmly consolidated than the rest, remain undissolved, by
which several striking phenomena are produced. In par¬
ticular situations, the ice of successive years is piled up into
immense glaciers, the foundations of which being sapped
by the sea, they descend in prodigious masses, and, being
floated far into the ocean, present to the mariner a bright
but fearful spectacle, by reflecting in varied tints the rays
of light, yet threatening, if come into contact with, to crush
to pieces the stoutest vessel. Not unfrequently they are
borne to a great distance, even into lower latitudes, and at
all times are appalling to the navigator, and dangerous to
his bark, however strongly built. In these high latitudes,
although the summer is short, the temperature is frequently
oppressively sultry on land, which causes great humidity
in the atmosphere; a characteristic of the arctic regions.
During a period of spring and autumn, when the sun re¬
volves in a small but complete circle above the horizon, the
skies assume hues more varied and beautiful than those ob¬
served in any other climate.
The mineral productions of the arctic regions are of
considerable interest to the geologist, inasmuch as some of
the most precious minerals and ores have here been found.
Only the shores of the country, however, have been ex¬
amined, the interior remaining unexplored, on account of
the eternal ice and snow under which it is buried. The
east coast of Greenland is rugged and mountainous, the
average elevation being about 3000 feet. There is a range
called Werner Mountains, on the Liverpool Coast, which
were estimated, by the distance from which they were
seen, and the elevation which they assumed above the or¬
dinary mountains, at about 6000 feet in height. The rocks,
as far as they have been examined, are of the primitive
formation, consisting of granite, gneiss, mica slate, horn¬
blende slate, syenite, and clay slate. These are similar
to the primitive rocks found in Britain and other countries.
There are two formations of the secondary rocks, one
aqueous, the other igneous. The Neptunian rocks belong
to the first secondary sandstone, or coal formation; the
Plutonic rocks to the secondary trap and porphyry series.
The coal formation is similar to that which abounds in
the vicinity of Edinburgh, and contains impressions and
casts of plants which are characteristic of a tropical climate.Gr
On Melville Island, which lies in latitude 75°, specimens
of the coal formation were found by Professor Jameson
to contain impressions of such vegetable productions as
grow within the tropics; a very interesting fact, as con¬
nected with the change of temperature which the earth
appears to have undergone. The most northern part of the
coast of East Greenland examined by Captain Claverin»-
was mountainous, and principally composed of trap rocks'.
The west coast of Greenland is similar to that above de¬
scribed. The elevated parts of the country are for the
most part covered with snow or ice ; and in summer, al¬
though rivers appear, which are fed by the melting of the
ice and snow, they are few in number and small in size.
There are also lakes, some of which are of considerable
magnitude, and supplied from the same source as the
rivers. Springs likewise burst forth, and Giesecke men¬
tions a tidal spring, which rises and falls with the tide,
and a thermal spring, which maintains a temperature of
104°, and flows, uninterrupted by cold or storm, during
the whole of the year. The islands upon this coast, of
which the largest is called Disco, are similar to the con¬
tinent, presenting the same bleak and wintry sterility
upon a smaller scale. Four classes of rocks have been
found on the coast of West Greenland ; namely, primitive,
secondary, tertiary, and alluvial. In the first of these,
various curious and rare minerals occur, such as the cry¬
olite, gadolinite, zircon, and tourmaline, and numerous
precious stones, such as garnets, sodalite, iolite, rock-
crystal, and the like. In the secondary and tertiary rocks,
limestone containing fishes, and embedded amber, have
been found. The geology of the islands and countries
discovered by Captain Parry presents nothing very re¬
markable. The prevailing rocks were found to be primi¬
tive. The lands bordering on Baffin’s Bay, and the islands
lying at the northern extremity of it, are not much ele¬
vated above the level of the sea, the average height being
800 feet, and the highest elevations not exceeding 1500
feet.
The vegetation of a soil which for two thirds of the
year is bound together by intense frost, and covered with
snow several feet thick, cannot be supposed to present
much variety or beauty. Even the hardy race of pine
trees, which in North America during severe cold with¬
stand the fury of the northern tempest, if they make their
appearance at all within the arctic circle, dwindle into
stunted shrubs, which only rise a few feet above the ground,
throwing out lateral branches. But to supply this defi¬
ciency, and afford to the Esquimaux the means of making
their arms and utensils, considerable quantities of drift
timber are frequently thrown up on the barren shores.
The most abundant plants are mosses and lichens; and
these are not only copiously produced, but they possess
a nutritious and salutary quality, which does not charac¬
terise those of the same species that grow in more tempe¬
rate climates. Mushrooms and ferns also find the means
of subsistence here ; and there is a thick tufted juicy plant,
of extreme fecundity, emphatically called scurvy-grass, on
account of its acting as an antidote to scurvy. The dif¬
ferent species of sorrel, especially the rumex digynus^wz
found by Captain Parry flourishing under the snow at the
very farthest limits of vegetation. These are likewise
antidotes to scurvy. During the short gleam of summer
some beautiful specimens of the floral tribe adorn the
northern fields, but the more precious fruits do not ripen
under this ungenial sky. The order alga or sea-weed, es¬
pecially the species or tribe fuci, grows in great abundance,
and covers the Greenland coast with submarine meadows.
The singular phenomenon of red snow, which has excited
so much interest, is now supposed to result from an as¬
semblage of very minute vegetable bodies belonging to
ie
cl«
: i
jserv
Id <
itura
ty °f'
lt,di
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Alth
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ing
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r the
in on
e tb
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ie oci
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ut tl
id k
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ting
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Iwitl
:rme(
lems
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om
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abi
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aha
e-eeb
GREENLAND.
759
He class of cryptogamic plants, and the natural order call-
algcB. The arctic mountains on which Captain Ross
served the red snow are about 800 feet high, and ex-
nd eight miles in length. Although snow is not the
tural situation of this plant, it possesses a great tena-
y of life, and not only preserves its vitality in winter,
t, during the partial thawing of the snow, it multiplies
as to cover a vast expanse with red suffusion.
Although vegetation be scanty and unimportant in the
ctic regions, there is a remarkable profusion of animal
e. The sea, in particular, swarms with living beings,
me of which are of a magnitude far surpassing any
ing to be met with elsewhere. The grand article of
od for supporting these numerous tribes is the genus
redusa of Linnaeus, graphically called by seamen sea-
ubber. These animals are of a soft, gelatinous consis-
nce, and they abound to an extraordinary extent. By
r the most numerous of the medusan tribes, however,
in only be discerned by the microscope ; but so plentiful
e they, that about a fourth part of the Greenland sea is
nged of an olive-green colour by them. This portion of
e ocean is considered as the polar pasture ground, where
hales are always to be met with in greatest numbers;
id here also are found those less gigantic tribes upon
hich whales prey. Animals of the class Crustacea stand
jxt in number and importance. Here are various spe¬
cs of the crab, and above all of the shrimp, whose mul-
tudes rival those of the Medusa, and whose carnivorous
•opensities, as we are informed by Parry, are remarka-
y strong. Many of the zoophitical and moluscous or-
srs, and several species of marine worms, also abound,
slut the cetaceous tribes are by far the largest in size,
id most important to mankind, of the numerous liv-
ig beings which people the northern seas. Of these the
lhale possesses the most enormous bulk, being sometimes
Ixty feet in length. They have even been found ofa con-
iderably larger size ; and there is at present (1835) exhi-
Jiting in Edinburgh the skeleton of one which is seventy-
jjve feet long. Of whales there is a considerable variety;
Snd the catching of them has long been a lucrative specu-
Ition, on account of the oil which is derived from them.
.11 the shores and borders of the arctic zone are crowd-
i with huge amphibious races, which seem to form an in-
irmediate link between whales and quadrupeds, between
,ie mammalia of the ocean and those of the land. Amongst
nese is the morse or walrus, a large and shapeless crea-
; jre, measuring from twelve to fifteen feet in length, and
•om eight to ten in circumference. Seals are very nu-
icrous, and constitute both the food and the clothing of
ic Esquimaux. Herrings are also found in immense
I loals amid the depths of the arctic zone. Amongst land
tiimals is the polar bear, whose prowess and daring ren-
er him one of the most formidable of quadrupeds. The
iin-deer are pretty numerous in the arctic regions dur-
ig summer, and afford a favourite object of chase,
’heir flesh is good, and the skin forms a very comfortable
rticie of clothing. The musk-ox penetrates the arctic
one, but in smaller numbers, and it likewise affords a
holesome article of food. Several species of the canine
ice are here met with in abundance. Wolves in large
j acks are found to brave the utmost severity of a polar
•inter; and the arctic fox is met with in great numbers,
'he dog, however, is the most important quadruped, and
lie most valuable to the Esquimaux, who have succeed-
d in taming and rendering it subservient to them in tra-
i elling and in hunting. Yoked to a sledge, these animals
I an draw a great weight with very considerable rapidity,
li'he air, like the sea, is thickly peopled with appropriate
| ihabitants. The auk, the petrel, and the gull, in cluster-
d myriads darken the sky, and make the rocks and shores
I e-echo with their wild clang. Vast flights of the swan,
the goose, and the duck, also traverse these regions; and Greenland,
great flocks of that species of duck called the eider, whose
down is so valuable, arrive in spring on the most north¬
ern shores of Greenland. Amongst other arctic birds
are terns, which produce the most delicate eggs of any
water bird ; the colymhus (guillemot), whose skin affords
a comfortable article of clothing ; the tringa (sand-piper) ;
the charadrius (plover); and the tetrao (grouse and ptar¬
migan).
The native inhabitants of these countries are the Es¬
quimaux, a race widely diffused over the shores of the
Northern Ocean. The leading features of this people, as
observed by different travellers in different parts of the
arctic regions, possess considerable uniformity; and by
comparing ancient authorities with those of a more recent
date, they appear to have remained the same for ages. It is
believed that the Samoiedes and Kamtschadales, in North¬
ern Asia, belong to the same family. They are not only
similar to them in personal appearance, in habits, charac¬
ter, modes of life, and in the rude arts which they prac¬
tise, but also in the language which they employ. There
are different dialects in use amongst the Esquimaux, but
they all display affinities which prove them to have sprung
from a common root; and this affords a presumption that
an original race from some quarter of the globe has at
some distant period spread over these immense and dreary
solitudes. Hence it is by no means improbable that at an
early period the Esquimaux connected the two continents
which were otherwise entirely ignorant of the existence
of each other.
Like the vegetation of these high latitudes, the human
figure is dwarfish in size, and decidedly below the Euro¬
pean standard. A man five feet nine inches in height is
considered as a person of gigantic stature, and, compared
with the average altitude to which they attain, as possess¬
ing amongst them the same superiority of size which a
person six feet two or three inches in height does amongst
us. The body is somewhat thick, but the hands and feet
are small, and the fingers short. The face is generally
round and flat, with prominent cheek bones, but full and
plump cheeks. They are tolerably well shaped; and the
female countenance, although destitute of all pretensions
to regular beauty, has a frank and good-humoured ex¬
pression ; and if they would allow it to be purified of its
thick incrustation of grease and dirt, it might even be ac¬
counted handsome. The flesh of these people is soft and
flabby, and they have a phlegmatic constitution correspond¬
ing to this habit. The dress of the men consists chief¬
ly in a double coat of the rein-deer ; the hairy side of the
inner one being placed next the skin, whilst to the outer
one there is an ample hood attached, which is drawn over
the head. The breeches are also double, and of the same
material, overlapping the boots, which extend to the knee;
the latter are composed either of deer skin, or, if for hunt¬
ing or travel, of the hide of the seal or the walrus. The
dress of the females is very nearly the same, with some
slight variations in form. The chief distinction lies in
their boots, which are of capacious dimensions, and, like
those of Hudibras, receptacles for whatever sort of goods
may come in the way of the wearer. These habiliments
are rather neatly sewed together, an art in which the wo¬
men display considerable dexterity. The thread they use
is the sinews and some other parts of animals. There is
also some taste shown in decorating them with parti-co¬
loured stripes of skins. Like other savages, they are
fond of ornaments, and contrive also to paint their bodies.
Under such a rigorous climate, much labour is necessa¬
ry to secure subsistence. For nine months the ground is
locked up in frost, and rendered incapable of producing
any root or herb which can constitute a staple article of
diet. They are, moreover, improvident, in consequence
760
GREENLAND.
Greenland, of which, combined with the precarious supply of food,
they are often subjected to severe privation. Yet they
are proof against the lessons of experience, and so happy
is their disposition, that a moment’s gratification of their
wants makes them forget that they had ever suffered from
hunger, or that on the morrow they may again be in the
same distress. Hunting and fishing are their only re¬
sources, and of course their time is spent in pursuing, by
land or sea, the wild animals by which these are inhabit¬
ed. During summer, the deer is pursued with bow and
arrow or the gun. and their flesh and skin are highly prized.
But for the greater part of the year the Esquimaux must
seek their food in the waters. In these are found plenty of
cetaceous fishes, the seal, the walrus, and the whale. For
the purposes of respiration, these animals rise above the
water, and the moment they become visible, the Esqui¬
maux attack them with dart or harpoon, to which they
have sometimes a long line attached. The capture of a
whale is the greatest of their marine achievements. On
these occasions a large body of men assemble armed with
a variety of weapons. The animal, when struck, plunges
under water; but being obliged to rise for air, a fresh at¬
tack is made upon him, until, exhausted by fatigue and
loss of blood, he falls an easy prey. These captures are
shared amongst the inhabitants of the village, all the cook¬
ing pots in which are put in requisition when the arrival
of one is announced, for the purpose of boiling the flesh
of the animal, which is cut up into dainty slices. The
cooking being finished, the feast commences by a person
first extracting a large piece from the pot, and, after se¬
vering with his teeth as much as the mouth will hold,
handing it to a second person, who does the same, and he
to a third, and so on till the whole is devoured. There
seems to be no assignable limits to the capacity of an
Esquimaux stomach. He has been known to devour, in
twenty-four hours, ten pounds four ounces of solid food,
more than a pint of strong soup, and a gallon and a pint of
water.
The attack of the polar bear is undertaken by a single
Esquimaux, assisted only by his dogs, without the slight¬
est fear or hesitation, in which case we cannot deny them
the merit of great personal courage. The dogs keep the
ferocious animal at bay, assailing him on all sides, whilst
the master with his spear attacks the bear, and avoids,
with astonishing adroitness, the furious springs of the
enraged monster. In reflective intellect the Esquimaux
have little to boast of. Although some of them are arch,
ingenious, and jocular, no manifestations of a profound
understanding have yet been discovered amongst them.
In arithmetical skill they are lamentably deficient, being
scarcely capable of counting as far as ten ; and their taste
for music is nearly at as low an ebb. Some of them, how¬
ever, display a constructive talent, in exercising which the
principal tool employed is the knife. Their houses are
built in the following manner: When winter approaches,
the ice is cut into tall square blocks, with which they con¬
struct regular spacious domes, connected with other small¬
er ones, for the purposes of domestic economy. For the
admission of light, a round hole is cut on one side of the
roof of each apartment, and a circular plate of ice, three
or four inches thick, and two or three feet in diameter, is
inserted in it. The light is soft and agreeable, similar to
that which is transmitted by ground glass, and is quite suf¬
ficient for every purpose as long as there is any light to be
derived from without. The inside of the tenement is shaped
with care, and a glossy surface is then given to it by
the affusion of water. The wall soon becomes a solid
mas®, which, being a slow conductor, checks the access
of cold. It may be remarked, that the external darkness
only lasts during a part of the day. “ When after some
time,” says Captain Parry, “ these edifices become cover¬
ed with drift, it is only by the windows that they could beGr
discovered as human habitations. It may then perhaps
be imagined how singular is their external appearance at 'V
night, when they discover themselves only by a circular
disc of light transmitted through the windows from the
lamps within.” The length of the best of seven canoes
belonging to a tribe of Esquimaux inhabiting Winter
Island, was found by Captain Parry to be twenty-five feet
the extreme breadth twenty-one inches, and the depth
ten inches and a half. “ The skin with which the canoe is
covered is exclusively that of the small seal, prepared by
scraping off the hair and fat with a knife, and stretching
it tight on a frame over the fire, after which, and a good
deal of chewing, it is sewn on by the women with admi¬
rable neatness and strength.” In managing these boats
they display great dexterity, even in the most boisterous
weather. As mechanics they have little to boast of; but
the Esquimaux of Greenland appear to be rather more skil.
ful than the people described by Captain Parry. “ The
men,” says Egede, “ meddle with no work at home but
what concerns their tools for hunting and fishing-tackling
viz. their boats, bows, arrows, and the like. All other
work, even of building and repairing the houses, belongs
to the women. As dexterous and skilful as the men are
at their work, so the women are not behind hand with
them, but, according to their way and manner, deserve to
be praised and admired.” Captain Beechey found indica¬
tions of considerable constructive talent in the vicinity of
Behring’s Strait; and Captain Franklin saw amongst the
Esquimaux whom he met at Upper Savage Island, Hudson’s
Strait, imitations of men, women, quadrupeds, and birds,
carved with labour and ingenuity out of sea-horse teeth.
In their moral character the Esquimaux inherit more
than an average share of human frailty. Few savage tribes
have made themselves more notorious for dishonest and
thievish dispositions. Little respect indeed is enter¬
tained for the rights of property ; gratitude is a virtue al¬
most unknown amongst them ; and in their habits they are
exceedingly licentious, connubial infidelity being winked
at as a very unimportant matter. They also display little
or no sympathy or regret for the sufferings and death of
neighbours, or even of relations. The Esquimaux, how¬
ever, are not inclined to war; they are neither irascible
nor revengeful; and they treat their offspring with the
greatest tenderness. From the account given by Cap¬
tain Parry of the inhabitants of Winter Island, they would
appear to possess a higher moral character than that of
any other of the tribes visited by Europeans. In their
domestic economy, however, they are uniformly filthy,
and disgusting in the extreme. “ The Greenlanders,”
says Egede, “ in their manners and common way of life,
are very slovenly, nasty, and filthy ; they seldom wash
themselves, will eat out of plates and bowls after their
dogs without cleansing them, and, what is most nauseous
to behold, eat lice and such like vermin which they find
upon themselves or others. They wdll scrape the sweat off
their faces with a knife, and lick it up.” Captain Lyon’s
description of the interior of an Esquimaux tent is to the
same effect. He found accumulated “ an immense heap
of flesh, blubber, bones, birds, eggs, &c. which lie at the
mercy of the heels of all who enter; the juices forming an
intolerably filthy mud on the shingle floor. From this
profusion of delicacies thus jumbled together, it may be
unnecessary to add that the food of the family is selected
as wanted.” Details similar to the above are given by
others who have visited these countries, but they are too
disgusting to be quoted here.
In their religious superstitions the Esquimaux believe
in a principal female deity, who is called Aywillaiyoo.
She is immensely tall, having only the left eye, and a
profuse allowance of pigtail, which descends to her knee,
4*
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Ki.hing of a corresponding thickness. There is a chief ma-
k1 ifcian, whose business is to invoke this goddess from the
GREENLAND.
761
gpk
fad
des below for the purpose of giving responses to the
estions of her devotees. This divinity has a giant for
r father, who is fortunately, however, only furnished with
e arm. Besides these mutilated deities, there are in
Esquimaux pantheon, Pamiooli, a spirit frequently in-
ed; and a huge bear, whose place of habitation is in
cold bosom of the eternal ice. The natives unani-
usly believe in a future state of blessedness, where the
Is of the departed revel unchecked amidst all manner
sensual delights. They descend beneath the earth
ough four successive abodes, in the last of which per-
t happiness is enjoyed. Here, on the margin of fresh
lies which never freeze, and in whose lucid waters the seal
the walrus abound, the blessed souls pitch their tents,
enjoy perpetual summer. The sun never sets; the
r and the birds range within bow-shot of their habita-
ins, and are easily killed ; the sea is always transparent,
d the whales roll about so very tame, that they are with
l$:Ie difficulty harpooned, and towed to shore. Thus em-
yed in their favourite amusements, and enjoying the
sting by which these are followed, the Esquimaux be-
e that their happy souls will enjoy, in a future state
existence, an eternal immunity from those harassing
es and hardships which they are doomed to endure in
s world. With such fond anticipations of coming bliss
(] these poor savages contrive to cheer a life of extreme
pivation, in a state little elevated above that of the ani-
ills on which they subsist.
feuch are the general features of the Esquimaux charac-
ti and their mode of life, as delineated by various Euro-
mns who have visited the countries which they inhabit,
aam the reports of the Moravian missionaries, those Es-
qjjimaux who are in more intimate connection with the
Ijjines would appear to have become somewhat more ci-
vfized than the rest of their tribe who have not enjoyed
tl' same means of improvement. The following account
ol their character and habits is derived from a German
Mirk of celebrity, In winter the Greenlanders dwell in
buses, and in summer in tents. The houses are built of
llbe stones, between which earth and moss are laid. The
vnls are very thick, and upon them a beam is placed length-
wje, across which rafters are laid. The intervening
sttces are filled with small wood, over which, first a layer
ufieath, then another of turf, is heaped, the whole being
ti ered with old boat or tent skins. Internally this fab-
rj is laid out with some attention to comfort. It is di-
vied into apartments, and two or three families general¬
ly live under one roof. The windows are made of the
cj rails of animals neatly sewed together ; they admit the
lifit, but are impermeable to rain. In every division of
til house there is a fire-place, a lamp made of talc, and
a: ettle of the same material placed over it. By these
fias and lamps a considerable degree of heat is kept up,
^ ich is also increased by the smoke, there being no re-
giar chimney for its escape, and in general no door.
JJe place of both is imperfectly supplied by a low cover-
ei passage of stones and earth, built on the long side of
ti house, and opening to the sea. As soon as the snow
nllts, the Greenlanders quit their wintry habitations, and
efet their tents, which are of two kinds ; one of these is
of a pretty solid construction, and such as forms a fixed
suhmer residence; the other is of a lighter nature, and
easily be removed from place to place. It generally
sists of poles, upon which the skins of animals are stretch-
In their dress, the Greenlanders wear, besides a coat
breeches similar to those already described, stockings
e of the skin of a young seal, shoes of the same mate
tanned, and shirts made of the skins of birds, the fea¬
rs being worn inwards. The men have also a seal-skin
ol. x.
covering when they go to sea, and sometimes a frockGreenland.
made of entrails for the purpose of keeping them dry.
The men wear their hair short, but the women bind it in
tufts over the crown of their heads. The boats consist of
a light frame-work of wood, which is covered with seal¬
skins. There are two kinds of them; one large for the
transport of goods and for the conveyance of women ; the
other small, and fitted to hold only one man. The top of
the latter, which is called a kajak, is covered over with
seal-skin, but in the middle there is a round opening for
the reception of the Greenlander, who, here seated, pro-
pells himself through the deep by means of an oar, which
is furnished with a broad blade at each end. With this
slender vessel he swims over the billows like a sea bird,
and without much dread of tempests. Upon the water the
Greenlander pursues seals, birdiU, and whales. The for¬
mer constitutes his chief wealth. It serves for food, for
clothing, for covering his habitation, and its blubber sup¬
plies him with oil for his lamp. The weapons which he
wields are harpoons, lances, and spears of various kinds,
which he throws with great dexterity. The gun is also
employed in destroying seals, but this method is not so
successful as the others to which he has recourse. The
whale fishery is only carried on by the Greenlanders in
conjunction with the Danes. Some of the lines which
they employ in fishing are made of thin slips of whale¬
bone tied together; and they are often more than 200 fa¬
thoms in length. With these they catch certain kinds of
fish peculiar to the arctic seas. They also spear salmon
and salmon trout; and sometimes build dams at the
mouths of rivers to facilitate the capture of these fish.
Hunting is more an amusement to the Greenlanders than
a source of wealth, and it is chiefly confined to the chase
of the rein-deer. They now employ fire-arms instead of
the bows and arrows which were formerly in use. The
flesh of the deer is a favourite article of food, but the ani¬
mal has now become scarce. A kind of smelt, dried in
the open air, serves the Greenlander for bread and vege¬
tables. These fish are caught in great abundance during
summer, and they are stored up in leather bags for winter
provision. The heads and the legs of seals are preserved
under the grass in summer, and whole ones under the
snow in winter. Various kinds of berries, roots, and herbs
are used as food; and bears’ flesh, together with the tails
and skins of whales, are favourite dishes. Train oil, ac¬
cording to our authority, does not constitute an article of
diet with the Greenlanders; and in their domestic habits
they are not so abominably filthy as the other races of
Esquimaux, although from their poverty and lazy habits
they are very uncleanly. In their moral deportment the
Greenlanders are said to be more amiable than the other
races of Esquimaux already described. They are soci¬
able, open hearted, cheerful, and contented. They live
in great harmony with each other, and a propensity to
thieving is by no means a feature of their character. This,
however, can only apply to those who may be said to be
immediately in connection with the Moravian missionary
stations. They all possess a considerable degree of self¬
esteem, national pride, and vanity; and, like the rest of
their race, they are careless of the future, spending the
best part of the summer more in amusing themselves by
hunting the rein-deer, than in laying up a stock of fish for
the winter. Their religious creed is similar to that which
is professed by the Esquimaux in general, but many of
them have adopted all the external forms of Christianity.
The Moravians, besides labouring in their pious avocations
themselves, have educated some of the natives as mission¬
aries, whose preaching has been productive of good. But
the conversion of the Greenlanders advances very slowly,
and exerts little influence over their moral ideas. They
are inclined to look upon the Christian worship as a use-
5 D
762 G R E G R E
Greenock. less ceremony, whilst they consider criminal punishment
as an unjust abuse of power. They moreover accuse the
Danes*and other European visitors of having introduced
amongst them the double scourge of small-pox and spiri¬
tuous liquors. Their language is remarkable for the co¬
piousness of its grammatical forms. Their particles are
as numerous and as varied as in the Greek ; but the rule
which directs them to introduce into the verb all the parts
of the sentence, gives rise to words of a disproportionate
length. The consonants r, k, and t predominate in this
language, and produce harsh sounds by their frequent
recurrence. The Greenlanders of the north speak a dia¬
lect unintelligible to those of the south ; according to
Captain Ross it is called Kumooke. The Greenlanders
sometimes call themselves Innouk, or brothers ; but their
real national name appears to be Kalalit, and they com¬
monly designate their country by the name of Kalalit
Nounet. Denmark, the mother country, sends out annu¬
ally a vessel laden with provisions and the materials of
trade, and receives in return skins, blubber, feathers, and
the tusks of the narwal. The Greenland company esta¬
blished at Copenhagen estimates its annual revenue at
from L.20,000 to L.25,000 sterling. According to the
statistics of Denmark for 1832, the population of Green¬
land amounts to 7000. This probably only includes those
who hold allegiance to the Danes ; of the amount of popu¬
lation scattered over the arctic territories, no conjecture
approaching to the truth can be formed. (r. r. r.)
GREENOCK, a sea-port town of Scotland, in the shire
of Renfrew. It is beautifully situated on the south bank
of the Frith of Clyde, about twenty-two miles below Glas¬
gow, in latitude 55° 57' 2" N. and longitude 4° 45' 30"
W. In front of the town there is a fine and extensive
bay, formerly known by the name of the Bay of St Law¬
rence, from a religious house which anciently stood there.
Behind the town the land rises into a picturesque ridge
of hills, about eight hundred feet high, between which
and the bay Greenock stretches for about two miles and
a half along the shore; but its breadth is inconsiderable,
although it occasionally ascends to some height up the
sides of the mountain chain. Greenock is not exempted
from the common fate incident to towns in reference to
the origin of their names. Its name is supposed to be
derived from the compound Gaelic word Grianaig, grian
signifying sun, and aig port or bay. This hypothesis re¬
ceives support from the circumstance that the bay in
which the town is built is directly opposite to the rising
sun ; and it seems probable that this may have been a
station where the Celtic aborigines, who worshipped the
sun, hailed his appearance. Others trace the origin of
the name to a wide-spreading oak which once grew upon
the shore; but this theory has few supporters.
Although Greenock is now the first sea-port of Scot¬
land, it has risen to its present eminence since the union
of the kingdoms. Previously to that period it was a mere
fishing village, connected with a barony of ancient date
under the family of Shaw. In 1589 James VI. granted
leave to Shaw, the baron, to erect a place of worship for
the convenience of the inhabitants of the district. In 1594
the estates of Shaw were erected into an independent
parsonage and vicarage; and these again were in 1636
constituted a parish under the title of the parish of Green¬
ock. As it is to its quays that Greenock owes its pros¬
perity, we shall trace their origin, extension, and present
state, together with the commerce thereby carried on,
previously to describing the town.
In 1696 and 1700 Sir John Shaw made application to
the Scottish parliament for public aid to build a harbour
at Greenock; but his applications were unsuccessful. At
this period there was only an insignificant landing-place,
unfit for the reception of vessels ; a disadvantage which
the inhabitants felt so much, that in 1707 they agreedGre i
with their superior to allow themselves to be assessed at ^ v
a certain rate to liquidate the expense of building a pro-
per pier and harbour, which work was finished in 1710-
and in the same year Greenock was established a custom¬
house port, and a branch of Port-Glasgow. For the time
at which it was erected the work was a formidable under¬
taking. But although it cost L.5555, the whole sum was
liquidated in less than thirty years, the trade created by
this means not only bringing an accession of wealth, but
also of inhabitants. In 1783 the harbour-dues amounted
to L.lll. 4s. 8d., and in 1792 to L.812. 9s. Of the origi¬
nal harbours scarcely a vestige remains, successive repairs
anti new erections having obliterated the traces of them.
Six acts of parliament have been obtained for regulating
the affairs of the port; the first was passed in 1773, and
the sixth in 1817.
A dock was built in 1785, at an expense of L.4000; but
from the increase of trade, one of more ample dimensions
was found indispensable. Meetings were held at various
times for the purpose of facilitating this project, and, in
1818, the harbour trustees finally resolved upon carrying
it into effect. The work was finished in 1824, at an ex¬
pense of L.20,000; but the harbours and new dry dock,
together with the appurtenances thereto belonging, such
as the lots of ground where warehouses and sheds might
be erected, or which might be laid out as bonding yards for
wood, have cost L. 119,000. These works are considered
to be as commodious and elegant as any in the kingdom;
and, with the new erection eastward, which has been
recently finished, they are in these respects scarcely sur¬
passed anywhere. The following measurements show the
extent of the quays, and their accommodation :
Feet.
East quay 531
Entrance to harbour 105
Custom-house quay 1035
Entrance to harbour  105
West quay 425
Extreme length from east to west 2201
Breadth of piers  60
Along with the town council, commissioners, who are an¬
nually elected, manage the affairs of the harbour.
Greenock enjoys coasting and foreign trade to a very
considerable extent. Vessels from the Clyde are to be
found in every port to which British enterprise has pene¬
trated. The first vessel belonging to this port crossed
the Atlantic in 1719; but shortly afterwards thejshipping
rapidly increased, for the union had now opene'd up its
full prospects to Scottish industry. With such rapidity
did Greenock extend her maritime relations, that the
jealousy of the traders of London, Liverpool, and Bristol,
was excited. They accused the merchants of Greenock
and Port-Glasgow of defrauding the revenue; but the
charge was triumphantly refuted. The earliest trade
seems to have been in herrings, and it is still continued,
the amount cured annually averaging about 19,000 barrels.
Trading in tobacco was also carried on at a very early pe¬
riod. It was first brought from the colonies, and then
exported to the Continent. The Greenland whale-fishing
commenced as far back as 1752, but it never rose to be ot
any importance, and is now discontinued. Ihe disrup¬
tion of America from Great Britain greatly depressed the
commerce of Greenock, for at that period the most consi¬
derable trade of the port was with that country. At pre¬
sent the principal intercourse is with the East and Vest
Indies, and with North America. Newfoundland an
South America have also employed a considerable quan¬
tity of shipping. The gradual increase ol trade is shown
by the following tables:
G R E
Iccount of the Gross Receipt of the Customs at the Port of
,* Greenock, in the Years 1728, 1770, 1802, 1822, 1828,
1831, 1833, and 1834.
1728 L.15,231 4 41
1770 57,336 6 101
1802 211,087 2 8
1822 263,464 8 101
1828 455,596 13 31
1831... 592,008 0 0
1833  450,425 0 0
1834  482,138 0 0
G R E 763
Account of the number of Registered Vessels belonging to the Greenock.
Port of Greenock, with their Tonnage and Men, for the
Years ending 31^ December 1825, 1826, 1828, 1831,
1833, and 1834.
No. Tons. Men.
1825 241 29,054ff 1987
1826..., 235 2l,634if 1861
1828 249 31,929jf 2210
1831 346 34,563 2328
1833  366 38,740 2633
1834  367 40.733 2658
Account of the Number and Tonnage of Vessels entered Inwards, and Cleared Outwards, to Foreign
Parts, with Cargoes, in the Year ending bth January 1784, till 1835.
1784.
1794.
1804.
1814.
1824.
1827.
1829.
1831.
1833.
1834.
1835.
British.
No.
52
89
165
163
188
196
210
199
268
277
255
Tons.
6,569
14,807
30,802
40,447
46,162
53,898
52,721
49,887
66,638
69,843
67,716
Foreign.
No.
4
17
25
5
11
8
13
15
16
10
21
Tons.
530
3357
5120
1007
3054
2380
3806
4100
3632
2073
5552
OUTWARDS.
British.
No.
63
90
155
186
188
193
211
226
268
284
273
Tons.
7,297
16,953
31,896
43,685
46,857
51,430
53,757
54,236
67,283
71,698
67,759
Foreign.
No.
3
13
20
5
9
7
10
13
15
8
11
Tons.
520
2506
5965
986
2699
2260
3159
3405
3756
2140
3599
S' Although the coasting trade has diminished somewhat
lince 1812, it still gives employment to a number of men,
nnd also to a fair amount of tonnage.
Iccount of the Number and Tonnage of Vessels entered In-
icards from and cleared Outwards Coastwise, with Car¬
goes, in the Years ending bih January 1830, till 1835.
| Iccount of the Declared Value of British and Irish Goods
exported from Greenock to Foreign Parts, in the Year
I ending hth January 1831, till 1835.
1831  L. 1,493,405
1832  1,662,251
1833  1,452,334
1834    1,459,086
1835    1,376,526
! Previously to 1751, Greenock, like other burghs of ba-
pny, was vested in the hands of the lord of the manor, or
laron. The town was now, by a charter from Sir John
Ihaw, enabled to elect a regular magistracy, consisting of
pvo bailies, a treasurer, and six councillors, possessed of
(Brious powers.
Although Greenock has a somewhat irregular appear¬
ance, it contains several elegant streets, and many excel¬
lent buildings. The town is stretching towards the west,
where of late years the most spacious streets have been
erected. A number of beautiful villas are scattered from
east to west, and along the heights behind the town, from
which the view is striking. Amongst the public struc¬
tures which deserve to be noticed is the custom-house.
It is situated in the centre of the quay, where it is seen
to much advantage. The structure is handsomely built
in the Grecian style ; the portico, in particular, is consider¬
ed very elegant. It was erected in 1818, at a cost of
L.30,000. The Tontine is a substantial and handsome
building, containing one large hall and many small rooms.
It was erected in 1801, at an expense of L.10,000. Nearly
opposite to this elegant house stand the Exchange Build¬
ings, which were finished in 1814, at a cost of L.7000.
They contain, besides two spacious assembly-rooms, a
coffee-room, which is excellently conducted; and on the
western side is the Greenock Bank, which was instituted
in 1785, and has ever since issued notes. Besides this
bank there are other two banking establishments. The
town-hall and public offices were built in 1765, after a
plan by James Watt. A public office is connected with
this structure. Amongst other public buildings there is
an hospital or infirmary, erected in 1809, by the charity
of the inhabitants. In connection with this establishment
it may be mentioned, that the medical faculty of Green¬
ock were in 1820 incorporated into a body under the name
of the Greenock Medical and Chirurgical Association.
In 1810 the jail or bridewell was built. It is situated in
a fine open space enclosed by a wall, and is the only place
appropriated to the reception of criminals. In 1820 a
new coffee-room was erected. It is conducted upon the
same liberal principles as the other one connected with
the Exchange. In 1828 a gas-work was constructed at an
expense of L.8731.
764
ORE
Greenock. One of the most extraordinary works of the kind to
be met with in any country is that by which the town is
plentifully supplied with water, and machinery to a con¬
siderable extent is impelled. This consists of an im¬
mense artificial lake or reservoir situated in the bosom of
the neighbouring alpine region, formed by turning the
course of a number of small streams, and making them
pour their waters into a hollow basin prepared for their
reception. From this “ Caspian” an aqueduct passes off
along the mountain range, and for several miles it runs at
an elevation of five hundred feet above the level of the
sea. In the vicinity of the town it pours down a torrent
of water in successive falls, and impels a number of mills
erected on its course. Tdie whole length of the aque¬
duct is six and a half miles; the great reservoir covers
29Tj imperial acres of land ; and there is a compensation
reservoir covering forty acres of ground, besides other
smaller basins. A series of self-acting sluices have been
constructed in a most ingenious manner, by which not
only is all danger of an overflow taking place obviated,
hut every drop of water, even during the greatest floods,
is preserved. The whole of this magnificent public work,
including two expensive filters, was planned by Mr Thom,
an ingenious engineer, and executed under his directions
at an expense of L.52,000.
Greenock is divided into five parisnes, which are respec¬
tively termed the West, the Middle, the East, the South,
and the North. The first comprehends the western part of
the town and the greater part of the country district. The
church is situated close by the shore, in the midst of an
extensive burying ground. It is built nearly in the form
of a cross, and has a small belfry on the west side. The
Middle Parish, which was formed out of the above in 1741,
is confined entirely to the town. The church, which was
finished in 1761, stands in a small square, fronting a street
which descends to the mid quay. The architecture is
plain but elegant, and the fabric is surmounted by a very
handsome spire, 146 feet in height. The East Parish
church is a very humble place of worship, having been
originally built in 1774 only as a chapel of ease. It was
constituted a parish church in 1809. The South and the
North Parishes were formed in 1833. Besides these places
of worship, there are a number of dissenting meeting¬
houses; one belonging to the Original Burgher Asso¬
ciate Synod, built at Cartsdyke in the neighbourhood of
Greenock in 1745, and re-constructed in 1828; a meet¬
ing-house of the United Associate Synod, built in 1758,
in Market Street, but abandoned in 1802 for a more
commodious house; another erected in Union Street in
the year 1835; another in the same communion reared
-n 1791 ; and a Gaelic chapel of ease erected in the same
year. The other meeting-houses or chapels are, one
Jongregational Union, commenced in 1800; a Relief, in
1807; a Methodist, in 1814; a Roman Catholic, in 1815 ;
a Baptist, in 1821; a chapel of ease, in 1823; and an
Episcopal, in 1824. In 1834 a chapel was built for a
sect called Irvingites. Greenock is well circumstan¬
ced with regard to education. It has a grammar-school
master and a teacher of mathematics, under the con¬
trol of the magistrates; but the places in which they
teach are rented from private individuals. It has how¬
ever excellent accommodation for teaching the children
of the poor, besides a school of industry for girls. A
library was instituted in 1783, which now contains seven
thousand volumes. But the progress of literature in Green¬
ock has not been equal to its other improvements ; for al¬
though frequent attempts have been made to institute li¬
terary and philosophical societies, none have succeeded,
and at present the town is destitute of any thing of the
kind deserving such a title. There are numerous chari¬
table institutions, both for the relief of those at home and
G R E
for sending aid to foreign countries. A newspaper w-kp
established in 1802, entitled the Greenock Advertiser W*
and another in 1833, entitled the Greenock Intelligencer’ ^
Both are now published twice a week.
Greenock possesses manufactures of some extent, the
principal of which, however, are connected with the com
mercial pursuits of the port. Ship-building, in which line
of business there are five or six establishments, is carried
on with much success. There are three patent slips, one
large enough to admit a vessel of 400 tons register • but
the other two are of smaller dimensions. Boat-buildino-
is also a considerable branch of trade; and in connection
with these naval works are several extensive roperies and
sail-cloth manufactories. Another prominent branch of
business is sugar-refining, which is here prosecuted to a
greater extent than anywhere else in Scotland. The
first house was erected in 1765, and there are now ele¬
ven. Straw-hat making is also successfully carried on;
and the manufacture of hats from rye-straw, in imitation
of Leghorn bonnets, has been here brought to high per¬
fection. Amongst the other manufactures are those of
silk and felt hats, pottery ware, flint glass, steam-engines,
glass bottles, chain cables, and iron work; and there are
likewise four breweries, two tanneries, two soap and can¬
dle works, besides other smaller establishments too com¬
mon in towns of this size to require particular mention.
Greenock was the birth-place of the illustrious James
Watt, the great improver of the steam-engine. To per¬
petuate the memory of this great man, it is intended to
erect a monument to his memory, for which purpose a
subscription has been raised. To this sum the son of
Mr Watt has added L.3000, to be appropriated to build¬
ing a library, in which is to be placed a statue of Watt by
Chantrey. The population of this town amounted in 1821
to 22,088, and in 1831 to 27,571, exclusive of about 3000
seamen.
GREENWICH, a market town of the county of Kent,
in the hundred of Blackheath, within the lathe of Sutton,
and five miles from London. It is situated on the south bank
of the Thames, and extends along the shore of it. Though
extensive, it is a single parish, but has two churches, and
several places of worship for the various dissidents from the
established religion. The most attractive object is the
royal hospital, for aged, decayed, or wounded seamen. The
manor of Greenwich was an ancient possession of the crown,
and a royal residence as early as the year 1300. It was en¬
larged by Edward IV., improved by Henry VII. and Henry
VIII.; Mary and Elizabeth, daughters of the latter, were
born there ; and his son Edward VI. closed his life in the
same place. It w7as successively the occasional abode of
James I. Charles I. and Charles II. Under William III.
the manor and palace, but not the park, were conferred
on the establishment for the maintenance of seamen; and
in that reign the magnificent hospital was built, on a plan
formed by Sir Christopher Wren.
The building consists of four piles detached from each
other, but so connected as to form a complete whole, open
towards the river, or three sides of a square. The several
divisions are occupied either as the residences of the go¬
vernor or other officers; and there are a hall, a chapel, and
apartments for the accommodation of the pensioners. The
latter are appropriated for seamen, consisting of a cabin
with a single bed, and a long gallery into which each cabin
opens, where free air and recreation may be enjoyed. The
hall is a magnificent apartment, decorated with exquisite
paintings on allegorical subjects connected with naval af¬
fairs, by Sir James Thornhill. This establishment has at
present upwards of 3000 pensioners, besides between 5000
and 6000 others, called out-pensioners, wrho receive stipends
at various rates. There is connected with it an infirmary,
a school for 200 boys, and other institutions, but without
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iousihe walls. The pensioners are amply supplied with food,
re well and uniformly clothed and warmly lodged, and are,
'ry^ lesides, supplied with the sailor’s almost indispensable lux-
try, tobacco. The whole expense of maintenance is about
u.26. 1 Os. a head, but varying with the fluctuation of the
trices of bread, meat, and malt. The funds for the support
f the institution are in part derived from the rents of the
onfiscated Derwentwater estate, but chiefly from sixpence
er month deducted from the pay of all seamen, whether
mployed in the royal navy or in the merchant service,
'Inch is collected at the custom-houses. All seamen and
larines in his majesty’s service, and all seamen wounded in
ie merchant service, are admissible, and are selected by
tie commissioners.
In the Park of Greenwich is the astronomical observa-
>ry, inhabited by the astronomer-royal, and well furnished
ith appropriate instruments. The office has been filled
>r a succession of years, from the time of Flamsteed to
lat of Maskelyne, by some of the most distinguished names
i the scientific world. The Park of Greenwich is an ob-
pct of great attraction, and the hill behind commands a
rospect of a most impressive kind over London and the
iains of Essex. There are well-supplied markets on Wed-
esday and Saturday. The population amounted in 1801
> 14,339, in 1811 to 16,947, in 1821 to 20,712, and in
831 to 24,553.
■ GREGARIOUS, amongst zoologists, a term applied to
ich animals as do not live solitary, but associate in herds.
‘ GREGORIAN Calendar, that which shows the new
rid full moon, with the time of Easter, and the moveable
:asts depending thereon, by means of epacts, disposed
irough the several months of the Gregorian year. See
Chronology.
I GREGORY, surnamed the Great, born at Rome, was de¬
pended of an illustrious patrician family, and the son of the
enator Gordian. He discovered such abilities in the ex-
Tcise of the senatorial employments, that Justin the young-
r appointed him prefect of Rome, and Pelasgius II. sent
im as nuncio to Constantinople, to demand succours against
le Lombards. When he had thoughts of retiring to en-
y a solitary life, he was, in the year 590, elected pope by
ic clergy, the senate, and the people of Rome, and suc-
leded Pelasgius II. Besides his learning and diligence
i instructing the church, both by writing and preaching,
e had a happy talent in winning over princes in favour of
le temporal as well as spiritual interests of religion. He
ndertook the conversion of the English, and sent over
>me monks, under the direction of Augustin their supe-
or, by whom the seeds of Christianity were first planted
i this island. His morality with respect to the chastity
f churchmen was so rigid, that according to him a man
ho had ever known a woman ought not to be admitted to
le priesthood; and he always caused the candidates for
oly orders to be examined upon that point. He likewise
scerted himself most vigorously against such as were found
uilty of calumny and other vices. But, notwithstanding
! 1 this zeal, he flattered the emperor Phocas, whilst the
I ands of that prince were yet red with the blood of Mauritius
id his three children, who had been butchered in his sight,
te likewise flattered Brunehaut, queen of the Franks, whose
! laracter was worse than doubtful. He is further accused
f having destroyed the monuments of ancient Roman
lagnificence, that those who visited the eternal city might
ot attend to the triumphal arches rather than to holy
I lings ; and burned a multitude of heathen books, includ-
ig amongst these the History of Livy. He died in 604.
M all the popes, he is the one who left the greatest num-
er of writings. The best edition of his works is that of
aris, 1705, in fourvols. folio, published under the auspices
I f Denis de Sainte-Marthe and Guillaume Bessin of the
> mgregation of St Maur.
ORE 765
Gregory of Nazianzen, in Cappadocia, one of the most Gregory,
illustrious ornaments of the Greek church in the fourth
century, was born in 328, and having studied at Caesarea
in Palestine, and also at Alexandria, he accompanied his
countryman, St Basil, to Athens. He was chosen Bishop of
Constantinople in 379; but finding his election contested
by the bishops of Egypt, he voluntarily resigned his dig¬
nity into the hands of the general council, which had been
assembled at Constantinople, in the year 381, and died
about the year 389. His works, consisting of a hundred
and fifty discourses or sermons, a hundred and fifty-eight
poems or pieces in verse, and two hundred and thirty-five
letters, the greater part of them interesting, were collected
and printed at Bale in 1550. In the Paris edition of 1609,
1611, in two vols. folio, a Latin version by the Abbe de
Belly is printed opposite the Greek text. The Benedic¬
tines of the congregation of St Maur commenced a beau¬
tiful edition, Greek and Latin, in three vols. folio, of which,
however, only one volume was published, Paris, 1788, con¬
taining the discourses, with a life of the author compiled
from his works.
Gregory, Theodoms, surnamed Thaumaturgus or the
Wonder-tvorker, on account of his alleged miracles, was
the scholar of Origen, and was elected Bishop of Neocse-
sarea in Pontus, the place of his birth, about the year 240.
He assisted at the council of Antioch, in 255, against Paul
of Samosata; and died in 270. He had the satisfaction of
leaving only seventeen idolaters in his diocese, where there
were scarcely as many Christians when he was ordained.
There are still extant of his, a congratulatory oration to
Origen, a canonical epistle, a paraphrase on Ecclesiastes,
and some other compositions, which have been published
in the collection entitled SS. Patrum Gregorii Thauma-
turgi, Macarii Egyptii, et Basilii Seleuciensis Opera Grte-
co-Latina, Paris, 1622, in folio.
Gregory, bishop of Nyssa, one of the Fathers of the
Church, and author of the Nicene creed, was born in Cap¬
padocia, about the year 331 or 332. He was chosen bi¬
shop of Nyssa in 371 or 372, and banished by the Emperor
Valens for adhering to the council of Nice. Fie was ne¬
vertheless afterwards employed by the bishops in several
important affairs, and died about the year 396. He wrote
Commentaries on the Scriptures, Sermons on the Mysteries,
Moral Discourses, Dogmatical Treatises, Panegyrics on
the Saints, Letters on Church Discipline, and various works.
The Bishop of Nyssa yields to none of the fathers either in
the solidity of his matter, the fertility and soundness of his
views, the force of his reasoning, or the beauty and rich¬
ness of his style. Of his works there have been a great
number of editions, the principal of which are those of Co¬
logne, 1537 ; Bale, 1567 and 1571; Paris, 1573 and 1603,
all in folio; also Paris, 1615 and 1618f in two vols. folio,
with a third volume by way of appendix, containing vari¬
ous pieces which had not before appeared.
Gregory of Tours, an illustrious bishop and writer of
the sixth century, was descended from a noble family in
Auvergne. He was educated by his uncle Saint-Gal, or
Gallus, bishop of Clermont; and distinguished himself so
much by his learning and virtue, that in 573 he was chosen
Bishop of Tours. He afterwards went to Rome to visit the
tomb of the apostles, there contracted a friendship with
Gregory the Great, and died in 593, at the age of fifty-four.
His principal work is his Historia Francorum, or History
of the Franks, divided into sixteen books, comprehending
a period of 174 years from the establishment of the Franks
in Gaul. It is written in Latin, which is not only gram¬
matically barbarous, but without force, without expression,
and, if we may be allowed the use of the term, without
complexion. Gregory of Tours had read the Fathers, and
acquired some know ledge of Roman literature ; for he cites
Virgil and Sallust, Pliny and Aulus Gellius. But the lan-
7G6
G R E
(Gregory, guage, formerly so masculine and vigorous, had shared the
fate of the civilization of which it was the type, and had
fallen into a state of extreme debility and decay. Yet it
had in it more of degradation than of barbarism. The Go¬
thic tribes had not yet, by an intimate union, renovated the
nations who had degenerated under the shattered yoke of
the Roman empire. The victors oppressed the vanquished,
without being as yet confounded with them.
Gregory, David, the son of the reverend John Gregory,
minister of Drumoak, in the county of Aberdeen. He w as
born about the year 1628, educated by his father for busi¬
ness, and bound as an apprentice to a mercantile house in
Holland. But as his love of letters exceeded his desire
of money, he relinquished commerce in the year 1655, and
upon the death of an elder brother he succeeded to the
estate of Kinnardie, about forty miles from Aberdeen,
where he resided many years, and had no fewer than thir-
• ty-two children born to him by two wives. Three of his
sons became eminent for their extensive literature, and
were at one time professors of mathematics in the univer¬
sities of Oxford, Edinburgh, and St Andrews.
In the country where he dwelt he wras the first person
who had a barometer, to the oscillations of which, accord¬
ing to the changes of the weather, he paid great attention,
and was once in danger of being tried by the presbytery
for witchcraft or conjuration. He was waited upon by a
deputation of ministers, who inquired into the truth of cer¬
tain reports which had come to their ears; but he so far
satisfied them as to induce them to waive a prosecution
against a man who, by the extensive knowledge he pos¬
sessed of medicine, was a public blessing to the country.
About the beginning of the eighteenth century he re¬
moved to Aberdeen, and during the wars of Queen Anne’s
reign, turned his attention to the improvement of artillery,
and executed a model of an engine intended to render
cannon more destructive. Dr Reid knew a clock-maker who
had been employed to make the model of this engine ; but
as he made many different pieces without knowing their
design, or the method of uniting them, he could give no
consistent account of the engine. Satisfied with his inven¬
tion by various experiments, Mr Gregory desired his son
to show it to Sir Isaac Newton, but to conceal the name of
the inventor; Sir Isaac however was much displeased with
it, and declared that the inventor was more entitled to pu¬
nishment than reward, as it was solely calculated for de¬
struction, and might come to be known to the enemy.
That great man urged the necessity of destroying it; and
it is probable that Mr Gregory’s son, the Savilian professor,
followed his advice, for the model was never found.
When the rebellion broke out in 1715, the old gentleman
went a second time to Holland; but when the insurrection
had been put down, he returned to Aberdeen, where he died
about 1720, in the ninety-third year of his age, leaving
behind him a history of his own times, which was never
published.
Gregory, James, one of the most eminent mathemati¬
cians of the seventeenth century, was a son of the reve¬
rend John Gregory, minister of Drumoak, in the county of
Abertleen, and was born at Aberdeen in 1638. His mo¬
ther was a daughter of Mr David Anderson of Finzaugh,
a gentleman who possessed a singular turn for mathemati¬
cal and mechanical knowledge. Mathematical genius was
indeed hereditary in the family of the Andersons, and from
them it seems to have been transmitted to their descendants
of the name of Gregory. Alexander Anderson, cousin-ger¬
man of David Gregory above mentioned, was professor of
mathematics at Paris in the beginning of the seventeenth
century, and published there, Supplementum Apollonii
Redivivi, 1612. The mother of James Gregory inherited
the genius of her family; and observing in her son, vvhilst
yet a child, a strong propensity to mathematics, she in-
G R E
structed him herself in the elements of that science. He Gr
received his education in the languages at the grammar-^yv
school of Aberdeen, and went through the usual course of
academical studies in the Marischal College.
At the age of twenty-four he published his treatise, en¬
titled Optima Promota, seu abdita Radiorum Reflexorum
et Refractorum mysteria, geometrice enucleata ; cui subnec-
titur appendix subtilissimorum, Astronomies problematum
resolutionem exhibens, London, 1663: a work of great ge¬
nius, in which he gave the world an invention of his own,
one of the most valuable of modern discoveries, namely'
the construction of the reflecting telescope. This disco¬
very immediately attracted the attention of mathemati¬
cians, both in our own and in foreign countries, all of whom
were soon convinced of its great importance to the sciences
of optics and astronomy. As the manner of placing the
two specula upon the same axis appeared to Sir Isaac
Newton to be attended with the disadvantage of losing
the central rays df the larger speculum, he proposed an
improvement on the instrument, by' giving an oblique po¬
sition to the smaller speculum, and placing the eye-glass
in the side of the tube. But it is worth remarking, that
the Newtonian construction of the instrument was aban¬
doned for the original or Gregorian, which is now gene¬
rally employ'ed where the instrument is of a moderate
size; though Sir William Herschel preferred the New¬
tonian form for the construction of those immense tele¬
scopes which he so successfully employed in observing
the heavens.
I he university of Padua being at this time in high re¬
pute for mathematical studies, James Gregory went thi¬
ther soon after the publication of his first work ; and, fix¬
ing his residence there for some years, he published, in
1667, Vera Circuli et Hyperboles Quadratura, in which
he propounded another discovery of his own, the inven¬
tion of an infinitely converging series for the areas of the
circle and hyperbole. To this treatise, when republished
in 1668, he added a new work, entitled Geometrice Pars
Universalis, inserviens quantitatum curvarum transmuta-
tioni et mensurce, in which he is allowed to have shown,
for the first time, a method for the transmutation of curves.
1 hese works engaged the notice, and procured the author
the correspondence, of the greatest mathematicians of’
the age, Newton, Huygens, Halley, and Wallis; and as he
was soon afterwards chosen a fellow of the Royal Society
of London, he contributed to enrich the Philosophical
Transactions by many excellent papers. Through thischan-
nel, in particular, he carried on a dispute with Huygens,
on the occasion of his treatise on the Quadrature of the
Circle and Hyperbole, to which that able mathematician
had started some objections. It is unnecessary to enter
into the particulars of this controversy ; but, in the opinion
of Leibnitz, who allows Mr Gregory the highest merit for
his genius and discoveries, Huygens pointed out consider¬
able deficiencies in the treatise above mentioned, and
showed a much simpler method of attaining the end pro¬
posed.
In 1688 he published at London another work, entitled
Exercitationes Geometricce, which contributed still further
to extend his reputation. About this time he was elected
professor of mathematics in the university of St Andrews;
an office which he held for six years. During his resi¬
dence there, he married (in 1669) Mary, the daughter of
George Jameson, the celebrated painter, whom Mr Wal¬
pole has termed the Vandyke of Scotland, and who was a
fellow disciple of that great artist in the school of Rubens
at Antwerp. In 1674 he was called to Edinburgh to fill
the chair of mathematics in that university ; but he had
held this place for little more than a year, when, in Octo¬
ber 1675, being employed in showing the satellites of
Jupiter through a telescope to some of his pupils, he was
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G R E
fddenly struck with total blindness, and died a few days
ater, at the early age of thirty-seven,
i Gregory, David, Savilian professor of astronomy at Ox-
fird, and termed by Dr Smith subtilissimi ingenii mathema-
tms, was the eldest son of Mr Gregory of Kinnardie, bro-
ter of the before-mentioned Mr James Gregory. He was
brn at Aberdeen in the year 1661, and received the earlier
rt of his education in that city. He completed his stu-
s at Edinburgh ; and, being possessed of the mathema-
al papers of his uncle, soon distinguished himself as the
ir of his genius. In the twenty-third year of his age he
s elected professor of mathematics in the university of
inburgh; and published, in the same year, Exercitatio
•ometrica de dimensions Figuranim, sive specimen metliodi
Us dimetiendi quasvis Figuras, Edinburgh, 1684, 4to.
e early perceived the excellence of the Newtonian phi-
1 Sophy, and had the merit of being the first who intro-
(iced it into the schools by his public lectures at Edin-
irgh. “ He had already caused several of his scholars
keep acts, as we call them,” says Whiston, “ upon se-
ral branches of the Newtonian philosophy; while we at
Cambridge, poor wretches, were ignominiously studying
e fictitious hypotheses of the Cartesian.”
In 1691, on the report of Dr Bernard’s intention of re-
ning the Savilian professorship of astronomy at Oxford,
vid Gregory repaired to London; and being patroniz-
by Sir Isaac Newton, and warmly befriended by Mr
amsteed, the astronomer-royal, he obtained the vacant
ofessorship, for which Dr Halley was a competitor. This
valship, however, instead of animosity, laid the founda-
on of a lasting friendship between these eminent men;
id Halley soon afterwards became the colleague of Gre-
iry, by obtaining the professorship of geometry in the
me university. Soon after his arrival in London, Mr
regory had been elected a fellow' of the Royal Society ;
nd, previously to his election as Savilian professor, he
d the degree of doctor of physic conferred on him by
e university of Oxford.1
In 1693 he published, in the Philosophical Transactions,
resolution of the Florentine problem De Testudine veli-
rmi quadribili; and he continued to communicate to
e public, from time to time, many ingenious mathema-
al papers, through the same channel. In 1695 he print-
at Oxford Catoptricce et Dioptricce Sphericce Elementa ;
work which, as he informs us in the preface, contains
e substance of some of his public lectures, read, eleven
ars before, at Edinburgh. This valuable treatise w'as
published first with additions by Dr William Brown,
d the recommendations of Mr Jones and Dr Desagu-
; and afterwards by the latter of these gentlemen,
ith an appendix containing an account of the Gregorian
Jid Newtonian telescopes, together with Mr Hadley’s
i hies for the construction of both instruments. It is not
j worthy of remark, that, at the end of this treatise, there
an observation which show's, that what is generally be-
ved to be a discovery of a much later date, namely, the
nstruction of achromatic telescopes, which Mr Dollond
d Mr Ramsden carried to a high degree of perfection,
d suggested itself to the mind of David Gregory, from
I fleeting on the admirable contrivance in nature in com-
j ning the different humours of the eye. The passage is
II follows: “ Quod si ob difficultates physicas in speculis
G R E
'67
idoneis torno elaborandis et poliendis, etiamnum lentibus Gregory,
uti oporteat, fortassis media diversae densitatis ad lentem
objectivam componendam adhibere utile foret, ut a natura
factum observamus in oculi fabrica, ubi cristallinus hu¬
mor (fere ejusdem cum vitro virtutis ad radios lucis re-
fringendos) aqueo et vitreo (aquas quoad refractionem
baud absimilibus) conjungitur, ad imaginem quam dis-
tincte fieri poterit, a natura nihil frustra moliente, in oculi
fundo depingendam.”2 * 4
In 1702 our author published at Oxford, Astronomice
Physicce et Geometrical Elementa, a w'ork which is account¬
ed his masterpiece. It is founded on the Newdonian doc¬
trines, and was esteemed by Sir Isaac Newton himself an
excellent explanation and defence of his philosophy. In
the following year he gave to the world an edition in folio
of the works of Euclid, Greek and Latin, in prosecution
of a design, formed by his predecessor Dr Bernard, of
printing the works of all the ancient mathematicians. In
this work, which contains all the treatises attributed to
Euclid, Dr Gregory has been careful to point out such as
he found reason to believe, from internal evidence, to be
the productions of some inferior geometrician. In prose¬
cution of Dr Bernard’s scheme, Dr Gregory soon after¬
wards engaged with his colleague Halley in the publica¬
tion of the Conics of Apollonius ; but he had proceeded
only a little way in this undertaking when, in 1710, he
died at Maidenhead, in Berkshire, in the forty-ninth year
of his age. To the genius and abilities of David Gregory,
the most celebrated mathematicians of the age, Sir Isaac
Newton, Dr Halley, and Dr Keill, have borne ample tes¬
timony. Indeed it appears that he enjoyed, in a high de¬
gree, the confidence and friendship of Sir Isaac Newton.
This illustrious philosopher intrusted him with a manu¬
script copy of his Principia, for the purpose of making
observations on that work. These observations came too
late for the first edition of Newton’s great work ; but he
availed himself of them in the second edition. Besides
the wmrks published in his lifetime, he left in manuscript
A short Treatise on the Nature and Arithmetic of Lo¬
garithms, which is printed at the end of Dr Keili’s trans¬
lation of Commandine’s Euclid ; and a Treatise of Prac¬
tical Geometry, which was afterwards translated, and pub¬
lished in 1745, by Mr Maclaurin.
Dr David Gregory married, in 1695, Elizabeth, the
daughter of Mr Oliphant of Langtown in Scotland, and
by her had four sons, the eldest of whom, David, was ap¬
pointed regius professor of modern history at Oxford by
King George I. and died in 1767, at an advanced age,
after enjoying for many years the dignity of dean of
Christ Church in that university.
Gregory, Dr John, professor of medicine in the uni¬
versity of Edinburgh, was the son of Dr James Gregory,
professor of medicine in King’s College, Aberdeen, and
grandson of James, the inventor of the Gregorian tele¬
scope. His father was married first to Catharine Forbes,
daughter of Sir John Forbes of Monymusk, by whom he
had six children, most of whom died in infancy ; and af¬
terwards to Ann Chalmers, only daughter of the Reverend
George Chalmers, principal of King’s College, by whom
he had two sons and a daughter. John, the youngest of
the three, was born at Aberdeen on the 3d of June 1724.
Having lost his father when only in the seventh year of
1 On obtaining this professorship, he was succeeded in the mathematical chair at Edinburgh by his brother James, likewise an
( ninent mathematician, who held that office for thirty-three years, and when he retired in 1725, was succeeded by the celebrated Mac-
urin. A daughter of this Professor James Gregory, a young lady of great beauty and accomplishments, was the victim of an unfor-
nate attachment, which furnished the subject of Malfet’s well-known ballad of William and Margaret. In 1707, another brother,
liarles, was appointed bv Queen Anne professor of mathematics at St Andrews. This office he held with reputation and ability for
j irty-two years; and, on his resignation in 1739, was succeeded by his son, wdio eminently inherited the talents of his family, and
jed in 170X
4 Catoptricae ct Diopiricce Sphcriccc Elementa, Oxon. 1095, p. 9S.
708 G R E
(Gregory, his age, the care of his education devolved on his grand-
father Principal Chalmers, and on his elder brother Dr
James Gregory, who, upon the resignation of their father
a short time before his death, had been appointed to suc¬
ceed him in the professorship in King’s College. He
likewise owed much in his infant years, and indeed during
the whole course of his studies, to the care and attention
of his cousin, the celebrated Dr Reid, afterwards of the
university of Glasgow. The rudiments of his classical
education he received at the grammar-school of Aber¬
deen ; and under the eye of his grandfather he com¬
pleted, in King’s College, his studies in the Latin and
Greek languages, and in the sciences of ethics, mathema¬
tics, and natural philosophy. His master in philosophy
and in mathematics was Thomas Gordon, professor of phi¬
losophy in King’s College, who ably filled an academical
chair for above half a century.
In 1742 Mr Gregory went to Edinburgh, where the
school of medicine was then rising into that celebrity for
which it has since been so remarkably distinguished.
Here he attended the anatomical lectures of the elder
Dr Monro, of Dr Sinclair on the theory of medicine, and
of Dr Rutherford on the practice of physic. He heard
likewise the prelections of Dr Alston on the materia me-
dica and botany, and of Dr Plummer on chemistry. The
Medical Society of Edinburgh, instituted for the free dis¬
cussion of all questions relative to medicine and philoso¬
phy, had begun to meet in 1737. Of this society we find
Mr Gregory a member in 1742, at the time when Dr
Mark Akenside, his fellow-student and intimate compa¬
nion, was a member of the same institution.
In the year 1745 our author went to Leyden, and at¬
tended the lectures of Professors Gaubius, Albinus, and
Van Royen. Whilst at this university he had the honour of
receiving from the King’s College of Aberdeen, his alma
mater, an unsolicited degree of doctor of physic; and
soon afterwards, on his return from Holland, he was elect¬
ed professor of philosophy in the same university. In this
capacity he read lectures during the years 1747, 1748,
and 1749, on mathematics, experimental philosophy, and
ethics. In the end of 1749, however, he resigned his pro¬
fessorship of philosophy, his views being turned chiefly to
the practice of physic, with which the duties of this profes¬
sorship, occupying as they did a great portion of his time,
too much interfered. Previously, however, to his settling
as a physician at Aberdeen, he went for a few months to
the Continent; a tour of which the chief motive was pro¬
bably amusement, though to a mind like his certainly not
without advantage in the enlargement of ideas, and an in¬
creased knowledge of mankind.
Some time after his return to Scotland, Dr Gregory
married, in 1752, Elizabeth, daughter of William Lord
Forbes, a young lady who, to the exterior endowments of
great beauty and engaging manners, joined a very supe¬
rior understanding and an uncommon share of wit. With
her he received a handsome addition of fortune; and
during the whole period of their union, which was only
for the space of nine years, he enjoyed the highest por¬
tion of domestic happiness. Of her character it is enough
to say, that her husband, in the admired little work, A
Father’s Legacy to his Daughters, the last proof of his
affection for them, declares, that “ while he endeavours
to point out what they should be, he draws but a very
faint and imperfect picture of what their mother was.”
The field of medical practice at Aberdeen being at that
time in a great measure pre-occupied by his elder brother
Dr James Gregory, and others of some note in their pro¬
fession, our author determined to try his fortune in Lon¬
don. Thither accordingly he proceeded in 1754; and
being already known by reputation as a man of genius, he
found an easy introduction to many persons of distinction,
ORE
both in the literary and polite world. Amongst these 0
may be mentioned George Lord Lyttleton, who became J
his friend and patron. An acquaintance, which had been
founded on a striking similarity of manners, tastes, and
dispositions, grew up into a firm and permanent friend¬
ship ; and to that nobleman, to whom Dr Gregory was
accustomed to communicate all his‘literary productions
the world is indebted for the publication of the Compa¬
rative View of the State and Faculties of Man, which
made him first known as an author. Dr Gregory like¬
wise enjoyed the friendship of Edward Montagu and his
lady, the celebrated champion of the fame of Shakspeare
against the cavils and calumnies of Voltaire.
In 1754 Dr Gregory was chosen fellow of the Royal
Society of London ; and as he made daily advances in the
public esteem, it is not to be doubted that, had he conti¬
nued his residence in the metropolis, his professional ta¬
lents would have found their reward in an extensive prac¬
tice. But the death of his brother, Dr James Gregory,
in November 1755, having occasioned a vacancy in the
professorship of physic in King’s College, Aberdeen,
which he was solicited to fill, he returned to his native
country in the beginning of the following year, and took
upon him the duties of that office, to which he had been
elected in his absence.
Here he remained until the end of the year 1764, when,
urged by a laudable ambition, and presuming on the re¬
putation he had acquired as affording a reasonable pros¬
pect of success in a more extended field of practice, he
changed his place of residence for Edinburgh. His friends
in that metropolis had represented to him the situation
of the medical school as favourable to his views of filling
a chair in that university; and this accordingly he obtain¬
ed in 1766, on the resignation of Dr Rutherford, professor
of the practice of physic. In the same year he had the
honour of being appointed first physician to his majesty
for Scotland on the death of Dr Whytt.
On his first establishment in the university of Edin¬
burgh, Dr Gregory gave lectures on the practice of phy¬
sic during the years 1767, 1768, and 1769. Afterwards,
by agreement with Dr Cullen, professor of the theory of
physic, these two eminent men gave alternate courses on
the theory and practice of physic. As a public speaker,
Dr Gregory’s manner was simple, natural, and animated.
Without the graces of oratory, which the subject he had
to treat in a great degree precluded, he expressed his
ideas with uncommon perspicuity, and in a style happily
attempered between the formality of studied composition
and the ease of conversation. It was his custom to pre¬
meditate, for a short time before entering the college,
the subject of his lecture, consulting those authors to
whom he had occasion to refer, and marking in short
notes the arrangement of his intended discourse; then,
fully master of his subject, and confident of his own
powers, he trusted to his natural facility of expression to
convey those opinions which he had maturely deliberated.
The only lectures which he committed fully to writing
were those introductory discourses which he read at the
beginning of his annual course, and which are published
under the title of Lectures on the Duties and Qualifica¬
tions of a Physician. Of these, which were written with
no view to publication, many copies were taken by his
pupils, and some from the original manuscript, which he
freely lent for their perusal. On hearing that a copy had
been offered for sale to a bookseller, it became necessary
to anticipate a fraudulent, and perhaps a mutilated pub¬
lication, by authorizing an impression from a corrected
copy, of which he gave the profits to a favourite pupil*
These lectures were first published in 1770, and after¬
wards in an enlarged and more perfect form in 1772.
In the same year, 1772, Dr Gregory published Ele-
i J
G R E
rents of the Practice of Physic, for the use of Students ;
®vork intended solely for his own pupils, and to be used
br himself as a text-book to be commented upon in his
curse of lectures. In an advertisement prefixed to this
wrk, he signified his intention of comprehending in it the
iliole series of diseases of which he had treated in his
sctures on the Practice of Physic ; but this intention he
not live to accomplish, having brought down the work
further than to the end of the class of Febrile Diseases.
'Dr Gregory became early a victim to the gout, which be-
in to show itself at irregular intervals even from the eigh-
mth year of his age. His mother, from whom he inhe-
sied that disease, died suddenly in 1770, whilst sitting at
jle. Dr Gregory had prognosticated for himself a simi-
death ; an event of which, amongst his friends, he often
iked, but had no apprehension of the nearness of its ap-
jach. In the beginning of the year 1773, whilst in
jfnversation with his son Dr James Gregory, the latter
larked, that having for the three preceding years had
return of an attack, he might expect a pretty severe
ick that season ; and he received the observation with
le degree of anger, as he felt himself then in his usual
ite of health. The prediction, however, proved but too
le ; for having gone to bed on the 9th of February 1773,
|th no apparent disorder, he was found dead in the
irning. His death had been instantaneous, and proba¬
in his sleep; for there was not the smallest discom-
jlsure of limb or feature.
^Gregory, Dr James, professor of the Practice of Medi-
die in the University of Edinburgh, and eldest son of the
afiject of the preceding notice, was born at Aberdeen
ithe year 1753, and there received the rudiments of his
aucation. He accompanied his father to Edinburgh in
|64; and after going through the usual course of literary
I idles at Edinburgh, was for a short time a student at
irist Church College, Oxford, of which his relation Dr
ivid Gregory had been dean. It was there probably
it he acquired that taste for classical learning, and that
Imiration for the character of an accomplished classical
liolar, which ever afterwards distinguished him. He en-
jed early on the study of medicine at Edinburgh, and
|s a student in that faculty at the time of his father’s
Men death, in February 1773. The extraordinary ex-
tion which he then made to complete his father’s course
lectures, was regarded by many of his friends as suffi-
bnt indication of his ability to continue and extend the
jjreditary reputation of his family. He took the degree
doctor of physic at Edinburgh in 1774, and spent the
sater part of the next two years in Holland, France, and
lily. It is worthy of notice, that his most intimate friend
Id companion on the Continent was Mr A. Macdonald,
lerwards lord chief baron of the Court of Exchequer, in
bndon.
JAfter the death of Dr John Gregory, the chair of the
|stitutes of Medicine (then finally separated from that of
Practice of Medicine, of which Dr Cullen remained
ifessor) was offered to Dr Drummond, who was at that
le abroad, and who ultimately declined accepting it.
br two winters the class was taught by Dr Duncan, whose
Dointment, however, was only temporary. In 1776 the
lir was again declared vacant, and on the 1st of August of
it year Dr Gregory was appointed professor. He began to
lil ture on the Institutes the next winter session, and in the
wpceeding year he commenced also the duty of teacher of
inical Medicine in the Royal Infirmary, and continued
tj| deliver at least one course of clinical lectures annually,
more than twenty years.
iFrom the time of commencing his duties as professor
Gregory was continually engaged in medical practice ;,
It his practice amongst the higher ranks of society was not
otensive until many of his pupils had been settled in bu-
vol. x.
G R E
769
siness, and were desirous of availing themselves of his as- Gregory,
sistance. For the last twenty-five years of his life he was
much engaged in consulting practice; and for the last ten
he was decidedly at the head of his profession in Scotland.
Indeed, the boldness, originality, and strength of his intel¬
lect, and the energy and decision of his character, were so
strongly marked in his conversation, that, wherever his pro¬
fessional character was known, it could hardly fail to inspire
general confidence.
In 1778 he published his Conspectus Medicince Theoretics,
as a text-book for his lectures on the Institutes. This work
passed through several editions, both during his lifetime
and since his death, and has been very generally admired,
partly on account of the accurate view wrhich it affords of
the state of medical science at the period when it was com¬
posed, and partly for the ease, perspicuity, and elegance of
its Latinity. The greater part of the work is occupied by
the principles of Therapeutics ; and as it must be confessed
that there has been less improvement since that time in the
investigation of the powers of remedies, than of the princi¬
ples either of Physiology or Pathology, that portion of it
may still be studied with advantage by all medical men.
On the illness of Dr Cullen in 1790, he was appointed
joint-professor of the Practice of Medicine ; he became sole
professor on the death of Dr Cullen in the same year; and
continued to deliver lectures on that subject, to audiences
almost regularly increasing, until his last illness in 1821.
He died on the 2d of April of that year.
As a practitioner and teacher of medicine, it may be
stated that Dr Gregory was chiefly distinguished by his
clear perception, and constant application, of the truth con¬
tained in a maxim which he was accustomed to quote from
a favourite Greek author: “ The best physician is he who
can distinguish what he can do from what he cannot do.”
Fie distrusted all theories in regard to the intimate nature
of diseased actions, as premature and visionary ; but he had
early and carefully studied the diagnostic and prognostic
symptoms, and the various forms of the most important
diseases, and the agency of the most powerful remedies;
and, without entering into the minutiae of morbid anatomy,
he had a clear understanding of the changes of structure to
be apprehended from disease in the different internal parts
of the body. On these points, and their immediate practi¬
cal bearing, he fixed all his attention. When he thought
that these changes were approaching, and could be arrest¬
ed by active treatment, he urged the truly effectual reme¬
dies with the peculiar energy of his character; restrained
only by his strong good sense and ample experience, and
despising all parade of nicety, or variety of prescription.
When he was satisfied that the nature or the stage of the
disease did not admit of effectual cure, his decision of cha¬
racter was equally shown in abstaining from useless inter¬
ference, and confining his views to the relief of suffering.
As a teacher, he was always strongly impressed with
the duty of fixing the attention of his pupils on those
points in the history of disease, and in the application of
remedies, the knowledge of which he had found by expe¬
rience to be most practically important, and the ignorance of
which he thought practically dangerous. The character¬
istic symptoms and varieties of inflammatory diseases, and
the extent to which the antiphlogistic treatment might be
carried in opposing them, were, therefore, subjects on which
he dwelt with peculiar earnestness; and in regard to the
use of those remedies in such diseases, he had acquired, by
long and keen observation, a tact and decision which proba¬
bly were never surpassed. On the other hand, in regard
to those numerous chronic diseases, where remedies are so
frequently ineffectual, he was equally zealous in inculcating
those means of prevention v/\nch he thought most effectual
and most attainable; and whilst he was incredulous as
to the alleged virtue of most medicines in such diseases,
5 E
770
G R E
G R E
Gregory, he omitted no opportunity of illustrating the efficacy of
temperance, even of abstinence, of bodily exertion with¬
out fatigue, and mental occupation without anxiety, in
averting their approach, or even arresting their progress.
From these great practical objects of his labours as a
teacher, no consideration ever turned him aside. His ex¬
tensive reading, particularly of the older authors, never
led to pedantic displays of learning ; his logical acuteness
never beguiled him into useless controversies ; his ferti¬
lity of imagination never carried him beyond the simplest
and most practical views of the subjects of which he treated.
As a lecturer, he possessed the great advantages of a
command of language, which made him almost indepen¬
dent of any written notes, and of a tenacity of memory
which enabled him to detail cases, in illustration of his
principles, year after year, from the whole range of his
experience, merely from having the names of the patients
before him, without the slightest inaccuracy or omission.
The commanding energj'and quickness of intellect which
his lectures displayed, the frank and fearless exposition
of his opinions which they containeu, the classical allu¬
sions with which thej' abounded, and the genuine humour
by which they were often enlivened, rendered them pe¬
culiarly attractive and interesting, and acquired for him
a remarkable ascendency over the minds of his pupils.
In the practice of the profession he was remarkable for
the frankness and candour of his communications with the
relations and friends of the sick; and for the zealous and
even tender interest, always increasing with the difficulty
and danger of the case, which he took in his patients.
This made the more impression, as it contrasted with a
certain roughness of external manner, and a constitutional
hilarity and whimsical humour, which on some occasions, it
must be owned, like that of a celebrated fictitious character,
made him “ not hesitate between his friend and his joke.”
His conduct with his professional brethren in consulta¬
tion was eminently distinguished by candour and libera¬
lity, and the total absence of all professional trick. He
never attempted to make himself of importance, but was
ever ready to give the strongest commendation to the
treatment previously pursued, when he thought it judi¬
cious ; always laying stress on the great and essential
points of practice, and never giving an undue importance
to favourite nostrums, or remedies of a secondary or fri¬
volous kind. Thus the young practitioner, who was at¬
tentive to his duties, and honourable in his conduct, al¬
ways found in him a zealous friend; those only had to
dread coming into collision with him, who were wanting in
professional zeal or professional integrity.
Dr Gregory’s more intimate friends and connections were
strongly attached to him on account of the warmth and
steadiness of his attachments, of a generosity of disposition
bordering on profusion, and of a high and somewhat aris¬
tocratic sense of honour, which made him instinctively
shrink from any proceeding liable to the slightest imputa¬
tion of meanness, selfishness, or duplicity.
He had therefore an utter detestation for all those pro¬
fessional arts by which the favour of the public is sometimes
too successfully propitiated; and this was the true origin
of various controversies in which he was at different times
engaged with his professional brethren, and to which his
strong sense of humour, his fondness for logical disputa¬
tion, and (it must be confessed) a somewhat irascible tem¬
per, led him to devote more of his time and attention than
their importance deserved. For the interests of the Me¬
dical School, and of the medical profession of Edinburgh,
the continuance of these disputes was a matter of serious
regret; but the feelings which led him to engage in them
were too well understood and appreciated, to permit them
to occasion him any loss, either of private friendships or of
public estimation.
No medical teacher or practitioner of eminence was ever G
more ready to acknowledge the imperfection of his art '
more distrustful of medical theories, or even of the alleged ^
results of medical practice, when not in accordance with
his own experience; or more careless of posthumous repu¬
tation. But none was ever more solicitous to give, both to
his pupils and his patients, the full benefit of those princi¬
ples of medical science, of the truth and importance of
which he was himself convinced; and on this account his
professional character had assumed, long before his death
a superiority over most of his contemporaries, of which
those who judge of it only from his own contributions to
medical science or literature cannot form an adequate con¬
ception.
Dr Gregory used to say, that whilst physic had been the
business, metaphysics had been the amusement, of his life.
Of this predilection we have a highly honourable testi-'l
mony, in Dr Reid’s Dedication to him and to his illustri¬
ous friend Mr Dugald Stewart, of his Essays on the Intel¬
lectual Powers, published in 1785 ; and, at a much later
period of his life, in the cordial friendship which united him
with the late Dr Thomas Brown, and the warm interest
which he took in the appointment of that eminent meta¬
physician to the Chair of Moral Philosophy, on Mr Stewart’s
resignation of it, and retirement from the University. It
is proper to add, however, that on some important meta¬
physical questions the opinions of Dr Brown were different
from those of Dr Gregory, and probably never were the
subject of discussion between them.
His own metaphysical and literary works are, A Theory
of the Moods of Verbs, published in the Edinburgh Philoso¬
phical Transactions for 1787 ; and his Literary a,nd Phi¬
losophical Essays, in two volumes, published in 1792. The
main object of the latter work was to explain and defend a
new argument on the old controversy as to the liberty or
necessity of human actions; and whatever may be thought
of the soundness of the argument, no one has ever disput¬
ed the acuteness and power of logical reasoning which he
displayed in defence of it. It must be admitted, how¬
ever, that his ideas of metaphysical inquiry were in some
respects limited. He regarded metaphysics rather as a
field for syllogistic reasoning, than as a subject of inquiry
directed to the establishment of general principles by in¬
duction ; and one of his favourite doctrines, that meta¬
physics admit of no discoveries, if admitted as literally cor¬
rect, would almost imply that the study can lead to no use¬
ful practical results.
He retained throughout life a fervent admiration for the
classical authors, and a severe and somewhat fastidious taste
in literature, which wras formed on the classical models.
Several of the lighter and controversial writings with which
he amused himself, particularly his Memorials on certain
changes in the arrangements of the Royal Infirmary in
1800 and 1803, exhibit very numerous examples of his
ready recollection and happy application of quotations from
the classics; and a number of Latin epitaphs and inscrip¬
tions of various kinds, which he composed at different pe¬
riods of his life, attest an accuracy of knowledge of the
Latin language, and a purity of taste in Latin composition,
which few men have the faculty of retaining throughout
a lifetime of incessant professional labour.
Dr Gregory was married in 1782, to Miss Mary Ross; but
within a few months after her marriage, this lady, to the
extreme regret of all her friends, became decidedly con¬
sumptive, and survived only two years. After her death
her two sisters continued to reside with their brother-in-
law, until they both successively sunk under the same cruel
disease. In 1796, he married one of the daughters oi the
late Mr M‘Leod of Geanies, by whom he had a large fa¬
mily. His second son devoted himself with zeal and abi¬
lity to the profession of medicine. He had entered on
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G R E G R E 771
actice, had already been placed in several responsible si- January 1783, it was restored to Great Britain, to which Grenada,
ations in Edinburgh, and distinguished himself by some it has ever since been attached, although the French, dur- ’'v-'*-'''
ipers on medical subjects, when he was unfortunately ing an insurrection of the slaves, which took place towards
.rned off by a fever contracted in the course of his du- the close of the last century, attempted again to obtain
is, in 1832. But other sons survive, and it is hoped that possession of it. Grenada is computed to be about twenty-
ey may still afford another application of the proud and five miles in length, and twelve miles in breadth at the
: igularly appropriate motto of the family, Nec deficit al- centre, but it gradually narrows towards either extremity.
* r‘ . (a. A. a. a.) It contains about 80,000 acres of land, but the quantity
GREIFFENH AGEN, a circle of the Prussian province actually under cultivation has never exceeded 60,000.
< Pomerania, and government of Stettin. It extends over The general aspect of Grenada is extremely lonely, but
i 1 square miles, and comprehends three towns and thirty- mountainous and picturesque. The interior and north-
I jr villages, with 19.840 inhabitants. I he capital is a west coast consist of continuous ridges of hills, rounded
« y of that name, situated on a branch of the river Oder, in their outline, and clothed with vast forest trees and
] contains 4150 inhabitants, depending chiefly on agri- brushwood. An irregular range of mountains runs across
< Iture, on brewing, tanning, and distilling, and some trade the island from north to south, which in some parts has
1 the river. an elevation of 3000 feet above the level of the sea. From
GREIFSWALDE, a city of Prussia, capital of a circle this main chain several lesser ridges strike off, forming
< the same name, in the province of Pomerania. It is rich and picturesque valleys. The island is in general very
s uated on an arm of the sea, is fortified, and has plea- fertile and well cultivated.
f :it public walks. It is the seat of a university, well en- With regard to the geology of Grenada, a regular defi-
( wed, but not much frequented by students. It contains nition of the stratification can scarcely be given, on ac-
{ 8 houses, and 7970 inhabitants, who are engaged in count of the country being rugged and abrupt. The great
i lining salt and sugar, ship-building, and foreign trade, mass of the mountains consistf of sandstone, greywacke,
' le larger ships anchor below the city, at Wyk. Long, hornblende, and argillaceous schist. The animals of Gre-
. 46. 25. E. Lat. 54. 4. 35. N. nada are few and uninteresting to the naturalist. The
GREISBACH, a bailiwick of the circle of the Lower medium temperature throughout the year is estimated at
] mube, in the kingdom of Bavaria, extending over 308 eighty-two degrees of Fahrenheit in the low country, but in
{ uare miles. It contains four market-towns, 146 villages, the more elevated parts it is of course lower. A consider-
jd 660 hamlets, with 27,870 inhabitants. It is one of able quantity of rain falls, and throughout the year showers
1 2 best cultivated districts in the kingdom. The chief descend. Hurricanes are comparatively mild and infre-
t vn, of the same name, contains only 840 inhabitants. quent, but shocks of earthquakes are sometimes expe-
(GREIZ, a city, the capital of the principality of Reuss, rienced. Of late years the climate has been materially
(the elder branch. It is surrounded with walls, and con- improved. Grenada is watered by rivers and fresh-water
t ns 566 houses, with 6195 inhabitants. The palace of springs, which derive their source from a lake called the
t 2 prince is on a hill adjoining the city, with a fine orna- Grand Etang, which is situated near the centre of the
r mtal garden and orangery. island, at an elevation of 1740 feet, amidst mountain scene-
<GRENADA, an island in the West Indies, situated ry. Along the coast are numerous safe and handsome
t tween the parallels of 12. 20. and 11. 58. N. lat., and bays and harbours. The chief products are sugar, cocoa,
6. 20. and 61. 35. W. long. It was discovered in the coffee, and cotton ; indigo and tobacco are also raised, to-
^ ar 1498, by Christopher Columbus, who found it pos- getherwith luxuriant crops of fruits and vegetables, which
{ ised by a numerous and warlike people, from whom, here grow in great abundance, and arrive at high perfec-
1 wever, the Spaniards were attracted by the nobler tion. The waters abound with fish, and there is also a
j ze which they had to contend for upon the Ameri- profusion of wild game. The island is divided into six
< a continent. The Charaibes remained in peaceful pos- parishes, St Patrick, St Andrew, St John, St Mark, St Da-
\ ssion of their territory until the year 1650, when Du vid, and St George. In the last of these is situated the ca-
rquet, the French governor of Martinique, sent out an pital, St George, or George Town, which is built upon
< pedition, consisting of 200 adventurers, to take posses- a peninsula projecting into a spacious bay on the west or
{ n of it. This they finally effected, first by treachery, lee side of the island, not far from the southern extremity.
i d then upon the principle of wholesale extirpation. The It is embosomed in an amphitheatre of hills, and chiefly
i labitants were divested of their property by a ficti- situated on elevations which rise from the bay; the conse-
t us purchase, and refusing to surrender their natural quence is, that the streets are steep. The houses are well
1 ritage for a few knives, glass-beads, and other trinkets, built, and on the whole the town has a handsome appear-
£ var ensued, which ended in the extermination of the ance. It is divided by a ridge, which, running into the
i fives. The colony, however, underwent a series of re- sea, forms on one side what is termed the Carenage, which
> utions and calamities, but the result was the establish- is a large basin of water, surrounded by wharfs, and in
i nt of the authority of Du Parquet and his lieutenant, the vicinity of which the principal merchants reside. In
1 a few' years, however, the island became vested in the this carenage the ships lie landlocked, and in deep water,
dfcwn of France, after the colonists had severely suffered close to the wharfs. The entrance is defended by a cita-
m the cruelty and rapacity of an insolent governor, del called Fort George, which is built upon a rocky emi-
r many years the colony remained in a state of poverty nence. On the left the land rises gradually to some height,
I depression ; and the Abbe Raynal informs us that, on which elevation the fortifications of Hospital Hill are
1700, the island contained no more than 251 whites erected, and a long ridge, which falls towards the middle,
1 525 blacks, who were employed on three plantations connects this fort with Richmond heights, which consti-
sugar, and fifty-two of indigo. Grenada surrendered tute the background of the scene, and which are also for-
d capitulation to Great Britain in 1762, to which coun- tified. The ridge which connects Fort George with Hos-
it was finally ceded by the definitive treaty of peace pital Hill also divides the carenage from the larger por-
ich took place in the year following. The island hav- tion of the town, which contains the market-place, and
become a British colony, certain stipulations were looks upon the bay. Upon this hill are built some of the
de in favour of the inhabitants; but it does not seem principal houses, the church, and the parsonage. At its
have prospered ; and it was retaken by the French in extremity is the court-house, and, nearly opposite, the Ca-
79. By the general pacification which took place in tholic chapel. Besides the carenage, there is another spa-
7"9
.J l
G R E
Grenoble.
Grenaille clous sheet of water, called the Lagoon, which is separat¬
ed from the former by a reef passable only in boats. This
of itself would constitute an excellent harbour, and it was
at one time contemplated to join the two, but this has
never been effected. The public buildings of George
Town are the court-house, which is a fine building, pro¬
vided with every necessary accommodation ; the jail, which
is of considerable dimensions, having a yard and tread-mill;
the church, a handsome building, with a spire and clock ;
the Roman Catholic chapel, the Methodist meeting-house,
the custom-house, and the offices of the secretary and
treasurer. The market-place is a square piece of ground of
considerable dimensions, surrounded by houses irregular¬
ly built. The other towns of Grenada are, properly speak¬
ing, only inconsiderable villages or hamlets, which are gene¬
rally situated at the bays or shipping places.
Between St Vincent and Grenada there is a cluster of
islands called Grenadines, some of which are dependencies
of Grenada. Of these, Cariacou is the most important.
It constitutes a parish containing 6913 acres of land, and
is about nineteen miles in circumference. It is fertile and
well cultivated, but it suffers from drought. Cotton was
formerly the chief article of cultivation, but sugar is the
staple article now raised. In a good season the average
produce is upwards of 2,000,000 lbs. The chief town is
called Hillsborough : it contains a church and rectory.
The following return shows the different products of
Grenada and the Grenadines in 1830: Sugar, 22,100,953
pounds ; rum, 890,434 gallons ; molasses, 255,679 gallons;
coffee, 26,122 pounds; cocoa, 337,903 pounds; cotton,
97,804 pounds. The following is an account of the quan¬
tities of the three great articles, sugar, coffee, and rum,
imported from Grenada into the united kingdom, in the
year 1832 : Sugar, 188,231 hundredweights, 1 quarter,
14 pounds ; coffee, 8749 pounds ; rum, 103,654 proof gal¬
lons. The official value of the imports into the united
kingdom from Grenada was, in 1806, L.509,010; in 1823,
L.387,546; and in 1831, L.303,906. The declared value
of British and Irish produce and manufactures exported
from the united kingdom to Grenada was, in 1823, L.67,792,
and in 1831, L.68,377. The number and tonnage of ves¬
sels to and from the united kingdom and Grenada, for the
years 1823 and 1831, were as follow :
INWARDS.
1823.
Ships.
36
Tons.
11,206
1831.
Ships.
37
Tons.
11,093
OUTWARDS.
1823.
Ships.
33
Tons.
10,189
1831.
Ships.
37
Tons.
10,766
In 1824 the population of Grenada and the Grenadines
amounted to 29,648, and in 1832 to 28,439.
GRENAILLE, a name given by the French writers to
a preparation of copper, which the Chinese use as a red
colour in some of their finest china, particularly for that
colour which is called oil red or red in oil.
GRENOBLE, an arrondissement of the department of
the Isere, in France, extending over 1320 square miles.
It is divided into twenty cantons, and 217 communes, and
contains 177,690 inhabitants. The capital is the city of
the same name, situated near the Rachet Mountains, on a
beautiful plain, which is watered by the river Isere, after it
has been increased by the stream of the Drac. It is sur¬
rounded by walls and ditches, and defended by a citadel,
which serves the purpose of an arsenal. The cathedral,
the episcopal palace, the hall of justice, and the great hos¬
pital, are the principal buildings. There is an academy
with the power of conferring degrees; a public library of
60,000 volumes; a botanic garden ; a museum of natural
history, antiquities, and medals; and other establishments
G R E
appropriate to the purposes of medical, legal, and military c,
education. There are several manufactures carried on in CT4
the city. That of gloves, for which it was long celebrated ^
has fallen off, but still employs many persons. Watch'
making is another employment for a number of persons
who annually make about 10,000 watches. There are, be!
sides, cotton and linen spinning and weaving, with distil¬
leries for brandy, ratafia, and other liqueurs. It has some
beautiful public walks near the city. The houses amount
to 2406, and the inhabitants to 22,149. Long. 5. 38 19
E. Lat. 45. 11. 42. N.
GRENVILLE, the Right Honourable William Wynd-
ham, Lord, one of the most distinguished statesmen of his
time, was born on the 25th of October 1759. He was
the third son of the Right Honourable George Grenville,
prime minister of England in 1763, 1764, and 1765, and
of Elizabeth, daughter of Sir William Wyndham, baronet,
by Lady Catherine Seymour, and sister of Charles, first
earl of Egremont. He received his early education at
Eton, where, it seems, he was concerned in the grand re¬
bellion under Foster, when the boys left the school in a
body, threw their books into the Thames, and marched to
Salt Hill. The young mutineer was, however, persuaded
by his father to return ; but in a few weeks, it became evi¬
dent that this act of insubordination had rendered it inex¬
pedient that he should remain longer at the school where
it had occurred, and he was in consequence removed to
Christ-Church College, Oxford. Flere, however, he soon
distinguished himself, and, in 1779, gained the chancel¬
lor’s prize for a composition, in Latin verse, on the subject
of the Vis Electrica. Having taken his bachelor’s degree,
he entered himself at one of the inns of court, with the
view of qualifying for the bar ; but his attention was quickly
diverted from the study of law, which few men prosecute
from mere inclination, to the more attractive and exciting
business of politics. In February 1782 he was, upon a va¬
cancy, returned to parliament for Buckingham; and in
the September following, when his brother Earl Temple,
afterwards Marquis of Buckingham, was sent to Ireland as
lord lieutenant, Mr Grenville accompanied him as private
secretary, and was sworn in as a privy councillor of that
kingdom. The period of Earl Temple’s vice-regal govern¬
ment terminated in June 1783 ; but in the December en¬
suing, Mr Grenville accepted office at home, where he was
appointed to succeed Mr Burke as paymaster of the army.
From this appointment we may date the commencement
of his active senatorial career ; whilst his industry and ac¬
quirements, added to strong natural talents, soon rendered
him of consequence in the House of Commons. He be¬
came an able coadjutor of Mr Pitt, his cousin-german, who
was only a few months his senior. Firm at his post, inflexi¬
ble in his determination, and retaining in debate the full
possession of all his faculties, the youthful minister could
scarcely have had a more zealous, active, efficient, and conge¬
nial colleague, or one better qualified to perform well the
part assigned him, and to promote the views of government,
w'hilst he advanced his own reputation. That he wanted
the stately and commanding eloquence of his distinguished
relative, may be admitted without any injury to his senato¬
rial character; but, on the other hand, if he could not con¬
tend with Mr Pitt in oratorical power and dignity, he far
excelled that minister in minuteness of knowledge and ac¬
curacy of detail. To Mr Grenville, indeed, the routine of
office was almost hereditary: he seemed to have imbibed
all the peculiar ideas and methodical habits of his father,
even though he was only a boy at the death of that perse¬
vering but not very fortunate or popular statesman.
At the general election of 1784, when Mr Pitt had re¬
course to the bold expedient of a dissolution, he was cho¬
sen one of the representatives of the county of Bucking¬
ham, after as vigorous and severe a contest as had ever
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GRENVILLE.
ben known ; and, in 1790, he was re-elected without op-
pition. Mr Grenville had scarcely completed his thirti-
< i year when he was appointed to preside over the House
< Commons. This event took place on the 5th of Janu-
i r 1789, when he was elected Speaker, on the death of the
] ght Honourable Charles Wolfran Cornwall. But before
i ir months had elapsed, he was called from the distin-
j ished station to which he had thus been advanced, to
i the more responsible though not more arduous or ho-
i urable office of secretary of state for the home department.
’ lis was followed by his removal to the House of Lords in
v tue of a patent of nobility, dated the 25th of November
90; and thenceforward he became at once the repre-
s itative and the echo (alter ego) of Mr Pitt in the up-
{ r house. But in May 1791, he exchanged the seals of
t 2 home for those of the foreign department, which he
i ;ained until the resignation of Mr Pitt in February 1801.
1 the same year, he was also appointed ranger of St
. mes’s and of Hyde Park, a post which he held till 1795,
i len he exchanged it for the lucrative office, or rather si-
i cure, of auditor of the exchequer. Lord Grenville filled
1 e important office of foreign secretary with equal talent
i d industry during one of the most arduous periods of
] itish history. For this situation, indeed, both his natu-
i powers and his acquired knowledge eminently fitted him.
1 3 was skilled in the details of European politics; he had
s idied, though perhaps not very profoundly, the law of
t tions ; he was well acquainted with modern languages ;
1 could endure the fatigue of prolonged application ; and
I 2 pursuit of pleasure, if at all indulged in, never inter-
i pted his attention to the duties of his office. He loved
siness, as his father did, for its own sake; it was to him
t so much an instrument of ambition, as a source of
msement; his active mind sought, because it required,
ntinual employment; and neither the pleasures of litera-
re nor the gaieties of society could seduce him from his
st. In him there was nothing to dissipate his ideas or
t| divert his attention, and hence he was able to bring his
nd to bear in all its force on the subject before him.
Of these, by far the most important, both in its immedi-
results and in its remoter consequences, was the state
the relations between Great Britain and France, and
fearful question of peace or war which at length arose
t of the mighty convulsion which had taken place in the
ter country. Sternly adverse to the principles of which the
ench Revolution seemed to be merely the practical ex-
ssion, and apprehensive of the diffusion of the same spirit
this country which had sapped the foundations of the mo-
ijrchy in the neighbouring kingdom, Lord Grenville ap-
rs to have been early prepared to oppose, not a defensive
istance, but an active and armed hostility, to the new order
ings which the Revolution had established in France. Re¬
ding these changes with more perhaps of passion than
political sagacity, with the feelings of an alarmist rather
| in the cool dispassionate consideration of a statesman,
scared by the apparent magnitude of the danger,
wed as it was by him through an exaggerating medium,
conceived that the opinions which he dreaded could
ly be controlled or repressed by force, and he contri-
ted his full share to plunge his country into a? war which
dence might have avoided, and which no overruling
essity imposed. Hence, in his whole bearing and de-
tment towards the revolutionary government of France,
displayed a degree of haughtiness, and, in his communi-
ions with the French authorities, indulged in a severity
language, which, being marked with all the characters
public defiance and insult, could not fail to provoke hos-
|^ty in return, and, in fact, accelerated, if they did not
ually produce, the war which soon afterwards followed,
his correspondence with M. Chauvelin, who had been
French ambassador at the court of London previously
773
to the death of Louis XVI., and who claimed to be still Grenville,
recognised in the same capacity, even after that unfortu-
nate monarch had lost his life, Lord Grenville threw aside
the ordinary language of diplomacy, and, in his letters, gave
way to a bitterness of retort, unexampled perhaps in the
intercourse of great nations, and thus afforded to M. de
Talleyrand, then acting as the political Mentor of Chauve¬
lin, an opportunity of which he did not fail to take advan¬
tage, for throwing upon the government of Britain the dis¬
credit of being the first to unsheath the sword in a war of
opinion. Of the tone and temper of this extraordinary
correspondence some idea may be formed from the follow¬
ing communication, ordering the immediate departure from
this realm of the representative of the French govern¬
ment :—
“ I am charged to notify to you, sir, that the character
with which you had been invested at this court, and the
functions of which have been so long suspended, being
now* entirely terminated by the fatal death of his most
Christian majesty, you have no longer any public character
here. The king can no longer, after such an event, permit
your residence here. His majesty has thought fit to order
that you should retire from this kingdom within the term
of" eight days ; and I herewith transmit you a copy of the
order which his majesty, in his privy council, has given to
this effect. I send you a passport for yourself and your
suite; and I shall not fail to take all the other necessary
steps in order that you may return to France with all the
attentions which are due to the character of minister pleni¬
potentiary from his most Christian majesty, which you have
exercised at this court.”
Notwithstanding this insulting dismission of its accredited
representative, the French government immediately dis¬
patched M. Maret, afterwards (under the imperial regime)
Duke ofBassano, to endeavour to resume negotiations, and,
if possible, to induce this country to remain neutral; but so
determined was Lord Grenville not to allow the least opening
towards an accommodation, or, in other words, to push mat¬
ters to extremity, that he persisted in refusing permission
to the French envoy to proceed beyond Dover, contrary,
as was generally thought at the time, to the opinion of
Mr Pitt. The precise amount of responsibility to his coun¬
try and to posterity which he incurred, in thus cutting off
the last chance of peace, and urging the nations of Eu¬
rope into a sanguinary contest of twenty years’ duration,
it is not for us to determine. He will be judged at the
impartial tribunal of history, when the men of this age, who
have been more or less influenced by its prevailing opinions,
feelings, prejudices, or animosities, shall have been gather¬
ed to the countless generations that went before them, and
when the verdict cannot be affected by any of those causes
of error which insensibly influence and pervert contempo¬
rary judgments.
In 1795, Lord Grenville had an opportunity of display¬
ing at once his loyalty and his talents as an orator, on the
occasion of the attack which had been made upon the king,
George III. whilst proceeding to the House of Lords to open
the session of parliament. He brought in a bill to provide
for the due protection and safety of the royal person ; and
as this measure gave rise to a protracted and stormy de¬
bate, it afforded his lordship ample scope for the most
loyal exertion of his rhetorical powers. As the war party
were then in the ascendant, Lord Grenville had the satis¬
faction of finding himself supported by a large majority ;
and therefore he followed up his success by bringing in
another bill to suppress seditious societies, and prevent the
formation of any such in future. Associations having it
for their object to promote a reform in the representation
of the people in parliament were then considered as sedi¬
tious, and proscribed accordingly. Lord Grenville actively
co-operated with Mr Pitt in carrying through the union
774
GRENVILLE.
Grenville, with Ireland, and also united with him in giving to the
Irish Catholics those assurances which mainly contributed
to the success of the measure, and on which the powerful
body in question afterwards founded a direct claim to eman¬
cipation. But these two ministers soon discovered that they
had promised more than they were able to perform. The
king entertained religious scruples which it was found impos¬
sible to overcome ; their colleagues, supported by all the
prejudice and bigotry of the time, took the same view of the
matter with his majesty; and the public mind was not yet
prepared for that great act of national justice which the
Irish Catholics had been led to expect at their hands. Be¬
sides, it had become indispensably necessary to make peace
with revolutionary France, which had triumphed over the
coalitions formed against her under the auspices of Mr Pitt,
and had established republican institutions on the basis of
victory. In these circumstances, the Pitt ministry resigned,
and was succeeded by that of Mr Addington, afterwards
Lord Sidmouth, which concluded the shon-lived peace, or
rather armistice, of Amiens. But as the new administra¬
tion rested on no solid foundation, and moreover occupied
an anomalous position, application was soon afterwards
made to Mr Pitt to join the parties then in power. He
refused to accede to this proposal, however, unless Lord
Grenville were included in the arrangement; and as this
condition was rejected, the negotiation proved fruitless.
Meanwhile, the incapacity and weakness of the Adding¬
ton administration became every day more apparent; and
as the king entertained the strongest disinclination towards
Mr Fox and his party, no long time elapsed before Mr
Pitt found himself obliged to yield to the urgent necessi¬
ties of the state, and resume office. In May 1804, he
again took his seat as first lord of the treasury, but with¬
out having stipulated for Catholic emancipation, to which
he was understood to have been distinctly pledged. Lord
Grenville and Mr Windham accordingly refused to join
him; and from this time until Mr Pitt’s death, his lordship
took a prominent part in the ranks of opposition.
On the demise of Mr Pitt was formed that short-lived
administration which, though intended to combine “ all the
talents,” and thereby to unite all the means of good govern¬
ment, has been ridiculed by some political writers as ano¬
malous, visionary, impracticable, and stigmatized by others
as monstrous and disgraceful. Of this ministry Lord Gren¬
ville, who had joined the Whigs in 1804, w-as placed at the
head; whilst Mr Fox, whose thoughts were bent on en¬
deavouring, if possible, to bring about a peace, reserved
to himself the situation of foreign secretary, as best suited
to the pacific views with which he was animated. The
junction of these eminent statesmen in 1804, and after¬
wards in office, seems to have been dictated by their agree¬
ment on some great questions, and their disposition to sa¬
crifice lesser differences of opinion, and all personal conside¬
rations, to the important object of advancing those grand
principles in which they coincided. But still there were va¬
rious differences of principle amongst the members of this
administration ; for not only were Whig and Tory, alarmist
and reformer, to coalesce, but during the war, and for the
sake ot carrying it on towards a better issue, they who
were the authors of it were united with its constant and
sturdy opponents. Yet some of the wisest men of the
time approved of the union, because lesser things should
yield to greater; and upon one Or two great questions there
was a fortunate concurrence of opinion. But there were
others who thought differently, and by them its failure was
of course ascribed to the heterogeneous and discordant
elements included in the attempted union. An important
obstacle to its duration, however, was created by the reli¬
gious prejudices of the monarch, directly opposed as they
were to the measure of relief which Lord Grenville consi¬
dered himself as pledged to bring forward; and, indepen¬
dently of other causes, a party equally zealous with the so-
vereign in their resistance to the Catholic claims proved too
powerful for the continuance in office of a ministry resol¬
ved at all hazards to attempt the removal of the disabili¬
ties affecting persons of the Roman Catholic persuasion both
in Great Britain and in Ireland. The Grenville administra¬
tion was, accordingly, dismissed, after having been in office
only during the short period of thirteen months. We may
add here, that Lord Grenville suffered not a little in his
popularity by obtaining an act of parliament to enable him
to hold, along with the premiership, the profitable but near¬
ly sinecure office of auditor of the exchequer, which had
been conferred on him by his kinsman Mr Pitt in 1795
and which he retained until the time of his death.
After the breaking up of this administration, Lord Gren¬
ville did not accept of any prominent office in the state.
In 1812, when the resignation of Lord Castlereagh and
Mr Canning left Lord Liverpool the only secretary of
state, performing the business of the three departments
official letters were addressed to Earl Grey and to his
lordship, proposing the immediate formation of a combin¬
ed administration ; but nothing came of this advance to¬
wards a coalition of parties. Earl Grey and Lord Gren¬
ville were both in the country when these communica¬
tions reached them. The former at once declined all con¬
nection with Mr Percival and Lord Liverpool, and there¬
fore did not proceed to town. The latter, who was in
Cornwall, set out for London immediately on receipt of
the communication which had been addressed to him ; but
the day after his arrival he declined the proposed alliance,
on the ground of his inability to view it in any other light
than that of a dereliction of principle. This appears to
have been the last tender of office made to his lordship.
He continued in opposition to the government during the
war ; but upon the final defeat of the French in 1814, he
congratulated the country on the prospect of peace, and,
in the following year, supported ministers in their resolu¬
tion to depose, if not to outlaw, Napoleon. From this
time he ceased to take so prominent a part as he had pre¬
viously done in parliamentary discussions ; but, on impor¬
tant occasions, he came forth with all his wonted vigour,'
and sometimes, we regret to add, threw the whole weight
of his talents and authority into the scale in favour of
principles which could scarcely have been expected to
receive his countenance and support. In a speech which
he delivered, in the House of Lords, upon the 30th No¬
vember 1819, on the Marquis of Lansdowne’s motion
for an inquiry into the state of the country, and more
particularly into the distress and discontents of the ma¬
nufacturing districts, he came forth in the character of an
alarmist, and, mistaking the discontent arising from se¬
vere suffering for the indication of a revolutionary spirit,
proposed as the only fitting remedy for the evil an in¬
creased restraint on the liberties of the people. The lan¬
guage employed by Lord Grenville on this occasion is no
doubt expressive of sincere conviction ; but the natural
strength of his understanding was unhappily paralysed by
panic, and the arguments of the speech are not grounded
on facts, but on what he is pleased to term “ universal
notoriety,” whilst the documents produced contradict
most of his positions. The ministry of the day, however,
were fortunate in obtaining the sanction and co-operation
of a statesman like Lord Grenville ; and, as his speech on
Lord Lansdowne’s motion was printed and extensively
circulated, they were thereby enabled to reap the full be¬
nefit of his support.
Towards the close of the year 1809 Lord Grenville was
chosen as chancellor of the university of Oxford. His
predecessor, the Duke of Portland, having died on the
30th of October in that year, the candidates who appear¬
ed in the field, besides his lordship, were the Duke of
Gmifi
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G R E
lie, >eaufort and Lord Eldon. The election commenced on
lie morning of the 13th December; and on the evening
f the 14th, when it closed, the numbers declared were,
r Lord Grenville 406, for Lord Eldon 303, and for the
uke of Beaufort 238, giving a majority for Lord Gren-
lle of 103. The number of persons entitled to vote
mounted to 1282, of whom 1037 polled on this occasion,
ome days after his election, his lordship received by di-
oma the honorary degree of doctor of civil law ; and his
istallation as chancellor took place on the 3d of January
Lord Grenville was a man of very considerable attain¬
ments both in literature and in political science. In 1804
3 edited the letters which had been written by the first
arl of Chatham to his nephew, Thomas Pitt, afterwards
ord Camelford, when at Cambridge. He enriched an
ilition of Homer, privately printed, with valuable anno-
Itions ; he translated into Latin several pieces from the
I reek, the English, and the Italian, which were circulated
inngst his friends under the title of Nugce. Metricce;
d, in a pamphlet, he defended his alma mater against
e charge of having expelled from her learned pre-
nets the illustrious author of the Essay on Human Un-
irstanding. Besides several speeches and other lesser
impositions, Lord Grenville also published, 1. A New
an of Finance, as presented to Parliament, with the
ibles, 1806 ; 2. A Letter to the Earl of Fingal, 1810 ;
On the supposed direct Advantages of the Sinking
|and, 1828. This last publication, forming the first part
a general Essay on the Sinking Fund, which his lord-
ip, however, did not afterwards complete, is in several
spects a remarkable production, and in none more than
this, that it contains a manly and statesmanlike avowal
a change of views, on the part of the author, regarding
e important subject of which it treats. In the preface,
Iter stating that the portion submitted to the public con-
|ins only one part of the essay which had been intended
r publication, and that severe illness had stopped the
ogress and prevented the completion of his design, his
rdship goes on to say: “ Under these circumstances, it
is not been without much hesitation that I have deter-
ned to lay before the public this portion of a work in
respects so very imperfect. I should certainly not
ve done so had I consulted only the feelings of an au-
pr. But my original purpose was of a far higher order,
was directed to the hope of contributing what might
| practically useful in a discussion of very urgent inte-
ist, and great permanent importance to our country 
is, however, just that I should here distinctly avow,
^at I have availed myself, without reserve, of the lights
inch have been thrown upon this subject by many wri-
^'s of the present age, to whose praise nothing could be
a ded by my enumeration of them. And I am particu-
1'ly bound to acknowledge, that it was by the well-known
liatise of Dr Hamilton that my thoughts on this matter
ire, I believe, first directed into their present channel,
it I am not aware that the question has ever yet been
iced before the public exactly in the same point of view
which I have here considered it; and with respect to
distinguished writer whom I have named, there are
t a few of the topics on which I have most dwelt, and
ae others which I have not had occasion particularly
notice, respecting which his opinions, if I rightly ap-
jshend them, differ, 1 regret to say it, very much from
G R E
775
mine. He adds, that, throughout the inquiry, he has Grenville
not scrupled to question many long-established and deep- '
ly-rooted prepossessions; that truth alone is his object:
and that without the free examination of previously re¬
ceived opinion, no branch of human knowledge can ever
be advanced. In short, his lordship surrenders as un¬
founded and fallacious the principle upon which the act of
1786, establishing the sinking fund, was established; and,
though he is anxious to guard himself against any impu¬
tation of injustice towards the authors of that measure,
he nevertheless shows that the views by which they were
guided are erroneous, that the only real sinking fund is
that which is supported by a surplus revenue, that the ef¬
fective operations of Mr Pitt’s fund were supported only
by surplus taxation, that the reductions of debt thus ef¬
fected are mere exchanges of equivalents, and that these
results were in no degree varied by the application of com¬
pound interest to the operations of this fund.
Although Lord Grenville was the contemporary of some
of the greatest men that have ever adorned this country,
yet his talents were not eclipsed in their presence. As a
statesman he was remarkable for boldness and persever¬
ance, two qualities which are rarely united; and, though
on some subjects he entertained narrow or prejudiced no¬
tions, on others he displayed enlarged conceptions com¬
bined with sound practical views. As a speaker, he was
perhaps one of the most powerful debaters that ever ap¬
peared in the House of Lords. There was a command¬
ing energy in his delivery, as well as in his style, which
never failed to arrest the attention, and often succeeded
in gaining the admiration, even of those who differed from
him in opinion. It has been said of him that no orator,
perhaps, ever produced so strong an impression by his
manner during the first ten minutes of his speech ; but
the want of variety was a defect which, after a time, be¬
gan to be perceived, and which in the course of a long
address seldom failed to impress itself rather painfully on
his hearers. As he always took care to prepare himself
on every subject on which he spoke, his speeches were
full of matter, and, if deficient in flexibility, he never
wanted information. He possessed not the animation,
the acuteness, and the indignant sarcasm of Lord Grey;
but during a long period he was considered as second
only to that noble person as an effective speaker in the
Upper House ; and, after the year 1804, they were asso¬
ciated as the heads of the opposition, with whom negotia¬
tions were carried on during several emergencies, when
it became either necessary or politic to make overtures
with a view to the formation of a new ministry.
On withdrawing from his parliamentary duties, Lord
Grenville spent the evening of a long and active life at
his seat of Dropmore, in Buckinghamshire, where he so¬
laced his retirement with the pursuits of elegant literature,
and died on the 12th of January 1834, in the seventy-fifth
year of his age. Lord Grenville married, on the 18th of
July 1792, the Honourable Anne Pitt, only daughter of
Thomas, the first Lord Gamelford, and sister and sole
heiress of the second lord, who was killed in a duel with
Mr Best in 1804; but as he left no issue, the barony of
Grenville has in consequence become extinct.1 (a.)
GRESHAM, Sir Thomas, an opulent merchant of
London, descended from an ancient and honourable fami¬
ly of Norfolk, was born in 1519. He was, as his father
had been before him, appointed king’s agent at Antwerp,
It has often been said that the secret of the authorship of Junius, which is supposed to have been deposited in the shelves of the
'aJ7 Stowe, would be disclosed after the death of Eord Grenville, when, as was alleged, there would no longer be any reason for
hholding the revelation from the world ; and it has further been presumed, that to his nephew, I .ord Nugent, would probably be
k tided the agreeable task of satisfying the public curiosity on this much-agitated question. We understand from good authority
i rever, that there is no foundation for this surmise, and that the authorship of the celebrated letters bearing the signature of Junius
Mijikely to remain as great a mystery as ever.
776
G R E
G R E
Greville. and in 1551 he removed to that city with his family. This
employment was suspended on the accession of Queen
Mary ; but on a proper representation being made in his fa¬
vour, it was restored to him. Queen Elizabeth conferred
the honour of knighthood upon him, and appointed him
her agent in foreign parts. About this time he thought
of providing himself in the city with a mansion-house,
suited to his station and dignity; and with this view he
built a large house on the west side of Bishopsgate Street,
afterwards known by the name of Gresham College. His
father had proposed building a house or exchange for the
merchants to meet in, instead of walking in the open
street; but this design it was reserved for the son to exe¬
cute. Sir Thomas in fact went beyond his father. He
offered, if the citizens would provide a proper piece of
ground, to build a house at his own expense ; and this of¬
fer being accepted, he fulfilled his promise, and built an
exchange upon the plan of that at Antwerp. When the
new edifice was opened, the queen, on the 29th of January
1570, came and dined with the founder, and caused a
herald with a trumpet to proclaim it by the name of the
Royal Exchange. In pursuance also of a promise to en¬
dow a college for the profession of the seven liberal sci¬
ences, he by a testamentary disposition bequeathed his
house in London for that purpose ; leaving one moiety of
the Royal Exchange to the corporation of London, and
the other to the mercers’ company, for the salaries of seven
lecturers in divinity, law, physic, astronomy, geometry,
music, and rhetoric, at L.50 per annum each. He left
several other considerable benefactions, and died in 1579.
As to the college, it was afterwards pulled down in con¬
sequence of an application to parliament from the city,
and the excise office erected in its stead. The lectures
are read, or rather hurried through, in a chamber over
the Royal Exchange. Sir Thomas Gresham had the hap¬
piness of a mind every way suited to his fortune ; he was
generous and benign ; ready to perform any good action,
and to encourage the same disposition in others. He was
a great friend and patron of John Fox the martyrologist.
He was acquainted with the ancient and several of the
modern languages ; he had a comprehensive knowledge
of all affairs relating to commerce, whether foreign or do¬
mestic ; and his success as a merchant was proportioned
to his general attainments, for in his time he was esteem¬
ed the highest commoner in England. He transacted
Queen Elizabeth’s mercantile affairs so constantly, that
he was called the royal merchant; and his house was some¬
times appointed for the reception of foreign princes upon
their arrival in London.
GREVILLE, Fulke, Lord Brooke, a poet and miscel¬
laneous writer, was born in the year 1554, and descended
from the noble families of Beauchamps of Powick and
Willoughby de Brooke. In company with his cousin Sir
Philip Sidney, he began his education at a school in Shrews¬
bury ; whence he went to Oxford, where he remained for
some time as a gentleman commoner, and then remov¬
ed to Trinity College, Cambridge. Having left the uni¬
versity, he visited foreign courts, and thus to his know¬
ledge of the ancient languages added an acquaintance
with the modern. On his return to England he was in¬
troduced to Queen Elizabeth by his uncle Robert Gre¬
ville, at that time in her majesty’s service ; and by means
of Sir Henry Sidney, lord president of Wales, he was no¬
minated to some lucrative employments in that principality.
On the accession of King James I. he was installed
knight of the bath ; and soon afterwards obtained a grant
of the ruinous castle of W arwick, which he repaired at a
considerable expense, and where he probably resided dur¬
ing the earlier part of this reign. In the year 1614, he
was made under-treasurer and chancellor of the exche¬
quer, a member of the privy-council, and gentleman of
the bed-chamber ; and in 1620 he was raised to the dig. Grt,
nity of baron by the style and title of Lord Brooke of
Beauchamp’s Court. He was also privy-councillor to Kinw
Charles L, in the beginning of whose reign he founded an
historical lecture in Cambridge. Having thus attained
the age of seventy-four, through a life of continued pro¬
sperity, and being universally admired as a gentleman
and a scholar, he fell by the hand of an assassin, one of
his own domestics, who immediately stabbed himself with
the same weapon with which he had murdered his mas¬
ter. Notwithstanding Lord Orford’s flippant and depre¬
ciatory estimate of Lord Brooke’s talents, he appears to
have cherished a taste for polite learning, particularly for
poetry and history. His principal works are, 1. The Life
of the renowned Sir Philip Sidney, London, 1652, in
12mo; 2. Certaine Learned and Elegant Workes of the
Right Hon. Fulke Lord Brooke, written in his youth and
familiar exercise with Sir Philip Sidney, London, 1633;
3. The Remains of Sir Fulke Greville Lord Brooke, be¬
ing Poems of Monarchy and Religion, never before print¬
ed, London, 1670, in 8vo. Lord Orford erroneously attri¬
butes to him “ Five Yeares of King James, or the condi¬
tion of the State of England, and the relation it hath to
other Provinces,” 1643 ; a work which was evidently writ¬
ten by one of the Presbyterians, and which was republish¬
ed with additions in 1651, 4to.
GREVIUS. See Grjevius.
GREW, Nehemiah, the first vegetable anatomist and
physiologist of this country, was born at Coventry about
the year 1628. He was educated as a Presbyterian; and
on the change of the national form of religion, at the
restoration of Charles II., he was sent to study at some
foreign university, where he took his degree of doctor of
physic. He settled first at Coventry, but removed after¬
wards to London, where he obtained considerable practice
as a physician; and at length succeeded Mr Oldenburg
in the office of secretary to the Royal Society. In this
capacity, pursuant to an order of council, he drew up a
catalogue of the natural and artificial rarities belonging to
the society, under the title of Musceum Regalis Societatis,
1681. Besides several papers in the Philosophical Trans¬
actions, he also wrote, 1. The Comparative Anatomy of
the Stomach and Guts, folio; 2. The Anatomy of Vege¬
tables, of Roots and of Trunks, 1682, in folio ; 3. Tractatus
de Sails Cathartici Natura et Usu; 4. Cosniologia Sacra,
or a Discourse of the Universe, as it is the Creature and
Kingdom of God, folio. The works of Grew were trans¬
lated into French and Latin; but, as it appears, by no
means correctly, at least in the latter of these languages.
He died suddenly, on the 25th of March 1711.
GREY, Lady Jane, an illustrious and unfortunate
lady, descended of the blood-royal of England by both
parents, was the eldest daughter of Henry Grey marquis
of Dorset, and Frances, daughter of Charles Brandon
Lord Suffolk, by Mary, dowager of Louis XII. king of
France, and youngest daughter of Henry VII. king of
England. Born in the year 1537, at Broadgate, Leices¬
tershire, she discovered an early propensity to all kinds
of literature; and having a fine genius, improved under
the tuition of Elmer, she made surprising progress in the
languages, arts, and sciences. She understood and could
express herself with propriety in the Latin and Greek
tongues ; she was well versed in Hebrew, Chaldee, Arabic,
French, and Italian ; and she performed instrumental mu¬
sic, and was excellent at the needle. We also learn from
Chaloner, that she accompanied her performances on a
musical instrument, with a voice exquisitely sweet in it¬
self, assisted by all the graces that art could bestow. D
the year 1553, the Dukes of Suffolk and Northumber¬
land, who, after the fall of Somerset, had reached the
height of power, began, on the decline of the king’s health,
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G R I
777
fcl think of preventing that reverse of fortune which, as
tkigs then stood, they foresaw would happen upon the
tjtth of Edward. To attain this end, no other remedy
m s judged sufficient but a change in the succession of
t : crown, and transferring it to their own families, by
r (claiming Lady Jane Grey queen. The excellent and
aliable qualities which had rendered her dear to all who
l^J the happiness to know her, joined to her near affi-
r y to the king, exposed her to become the tool of an
a bition notoriously not her own. Upon this account
s 3 was married to Lord Guildford Dudley, fourth son of
t > Duke of Northumberland, but without discovering to
1 r the real object of the match, which was celebrated
\ th great pomp in the latter end of May, and so much to
t ; king’s satisfaction, that he contributed bounteously to-
v rds the expense. The young king Edward VI. died in
Ulv following; and our fair scholar, with infinite reluc-
t ice, overpowered by the solicitations of her ambitious
f ends, allowed herself to be proclaimed Queen of Eng-
1 id, on the strength of a deed of settlement extorted
f m Edward by her father-in-law the Duke of Northum-
1 Hand, which set aside the succession of Mary, Eliza-
1 th, and Mary Queen of Scots. But her regal pagean-
I r continued only a few days. Queen Mary’s undoubted
i ht prevailed ; and the unfortunate Lady Jane Grey,
i th her husband, being committed to the Tower, were,
< the 13th of November, arraigned and found guilty of
1 yh treason, and, on the 12th of February following, be-
] aded on Tower-hill. Her magnanimity in this dread-
! I catastrophe was astonishing. Immediately before hei
:ecution, she addressed herself, with amazing composure,
the weeping multitude, acknowledged the justice of the
w, and died in charity with that world which she had so
uch reason to execrate. Her writings are, 1. Four La-
i Epistles, three to Bullenger, and one to her sister Lady
atharine, printed in a book entitled Epistolce Helvetica;
eformatoribus, vel ad eos scripts, Tiguri, 1742, 8vo ; 2.
j gr Conference with Fleckenham, Ballard; 3. A Letter
i Dr Harding, her father’s chaplain, printed in the Phce-
x (vol. ii. pC. 28); 4. A Prayer for her own use during
t confinement (see Fox’s Acts and Monuments') ; •>. Eoui
atin Verses,written in prison with a pin; 6. Her Speech
i the Scaffold, Ballard.
Grey-Hound. See Mammalia.
GRIERSON, Constantia, one of the most learned wo-
■ en on record, though she died in 1733, at the early age
* twenty-seven, was the daughter of poor parents resident
. the county of Kelkenny, in Ireland. She was an excel-
nt Greek and Latin scholar, and understood history, di-
nity, philosophy, and mathematics. She proved her skill
L Latin by her dedication of the Dublin edition ot Taci-
is to Lord Carteret, and by that of Terence.to his son, to
I horn also she addressed a Greek epigram. She wrote
lany elegant English poems, several of which were insert-
1 by Mrs Barber amongst her own. When Lord Carteret
as lord lieutenant of Ireland, he obtained for her husband
Ir Grierson the patent office of king s printer ; and to i e-
ard the uncommon merit ot his wife, caused her life to be
icluded in it.
GRIFFON, or Griffin (Gryphus, rguvp), m the natu-
< il history of the ancients, the name of an imaginary bird
i f prey, of the eagle species, represented with four legs,
dngs, and a beak; the upper part resembling an eagle,
nd the lower a lion. This animal, which was supposed to
ratch over gold mines and hidden treasures, was conse-
f rated to the sun; and the ancient painters represented
he chariot of the sun as drawn by griffins. According to
Ipanheim, those of Jupiter and Nemesis were similarly pio-
ided. The griffin of Scripture is that species of the eagle
[ailed in Latin ossifraya, or osprey. Ihe griffin is be-
[uently seen on ancient medals, and is still borne in escut- ^
vol. x.
cheons. Guillim blazons it rampant, alleging, that any Grimaldi
very fierce animal may be so blazoned as well as the lion ; n».
but Sylvester, Morgan, and others, use the terms segreiant
instead of rampant. The griffin was also an architectural
ornament in constant use amongst the Greeks, and was
copied from them, with the other elegancies of architec¬
tural enrichment, by the Romans.
GRIMALDI, Francisco, an eminent painter, generally
known by the appellation of Bolognese, was born at Bo¬
logna in 1606, where he became a disciple of Annibal Ca-
and proved an honour to that illustrious master.
From the school of Annibal he w ent to complete his stu¬
dies at Rome, and improved himself daily by copying the
works of those artists in which he observed the greatest ex¬
cellence. He died of a dropsy at Rome in 1680, and left
a considerable fortune to his children. The genius of Gri¬
maldi directed him chiefly to landscape, which he executed
most happily. His colouring is strong, and his touch light
and delicate; his situations are uncommonly pleasing, and
the leafing of his trees is admirable.
GRIMMA, a bailiwick in the circle of Leipsic, in the
kingdom of Saxony, containing five cities, ninety-three vil¬
lages, and 18,460 inhabitants. Ihe capital, of the same
name, is a city situated on the Mulda, containing five church¬
es, 560 houses, and 3500 inhabitants. Several manufac¬
tures are carried on, for cloth, flannels, hosiery, cotton arti¬
cles, linen; surgical, mathematical, and musical instruments;
and especially tobacco-pipes, ot which some millions aie
annually made.
GRIMSBY, Great, a borough-town of the county of
Lincoln, of the hundred of Bradley, in the division of Lind¬
say, 171 miles from London, and thirty-six from Lincoln.
It "stands at the mouth of the river Humber, opposite to
Hull. The harbour having been injured, the trade declined;
but some recent improvements have produced a revival.
It is an ancient borough, and now returns one member to
parliament, but formerly two, who were chosen by the free¬
men, which privilege was obtained by being born in the
town, or by marriage with the daughter of a freeman. It
had formerly two churches, but only one remains, which is
large, in the form of a cross, and contains some handsome
monuments. There is an excellent corn market on Thurs¬
day. The population amounted in 1801 to 1524, in 1811
to 2747, in 1821 to 3064, and in 1831 to 4225.
GRINDELWALD, a town situated in one of the most
picturesque valleys of the canton of Berne, in Switzerland.
This valley is, however, 3100 feet above the level of the
sea, but is surrounded by the lofty Wetterhorn, Schrech-
horn, and Grindelwald Mountains. It contains 5000 inha¬
bitants. , n .
GRINDING, or Trituration, the act of breaking or
comminuting a solid body, and reducing it into powder.
Grinding is also used to indicate the rubbing or wear¬
ing off the irregular parts of the surface of a body, and re¬
ducing it to the destined figure, whatever that may be.
Grinding, in cutlery, is an operation universally undei-
stood, by which edge-tools are sharpened. According to
the usual practice, this operation is attended with consider¬
able inconvenience, occasioned by the extrication of heat
from friction. The steel very soon becomes ignited when
the friction is performed on a dry stone; and even when
immersed in water, the operation must be slow, to prevent
the water from being thrown off by the centrifugal force;
whilst, on the other hand, if the water be poured on the
stone from above by means of a cock, the quantity will be
too small to preserve a sufficiently low temperature. But
let the quantity of water be ever so great, if the instru¬
ment to be sharpened have not its point or edge so held as
to meet the stream, it will almost inevitably be rendered
softer#
i To remedy these defects in the common mode of grind-
3 F
73
G R I
'n-?a< ’ !,n^’ 7r ^'lc^°^son made an experiment with a grindstone
y from ]\ ewcastle, of a fine grit, ten inches in diameter, with
Grisgris. a block of mahogany, having emery on the face of it. The
grindstone and block were fixed on an axis, to be applied
occasionally between the centres of a strong lathe. Both
were cylindrical, and of the same diameter; the wood was
grooved in opposite directions, that the emery might be
lodged therein. The face of the stone was left smooth,
with a trough under it to contain the water. The cylinder of
wood was faced with emery and oil, and the stone*was used
with water. A file was the instrument ground, and it was
proposed to efface all the teeth. The mechanism of the
lathe produced the rotation, by. which the grinding appa¬
ratus made five revolutions in a second. The operation of
the stone was slow, and the workman found inconvenience
from the water in the trough being soon exhausted; but
the emery cylinder cut rather faster. The friction operat¬
ed by quick changes on the whole surface of the file, yet
it soon became too hot to be held conveniently by the un¬
covered hand; and even when it was held with a cloth,
such was the rapid increase of heat as to decompose the
oil, which emitted an empyreumatic odour. When the
stone became dry, the file was tried on the face of it, which
soon became blue, and then nearly red hot. After this
both cylinders were covered with tallow, and emery was
sprinkled upon the wood cylinder, ivhen the same instru¬
ment was again held to the stone in rapid motion. The
friction at first was scarcely apparent; but the pressure of
the tool soon fused the tallow, and the stone cut very fast.
When the tool after some time began to be a little heated,
it was removed to a new zone of the cylinder, by which
means the temperature was diminished. Similar effects
accompanied the use of the wooden cylinder.
When oil was used upon the cylinder of wood, the heat
occasioned by the friction raised the temperature of the in¬
strument and of the oil; but when tallow instead of oil
w as employed, most of the heat was absorbed in fusing that
substance. The increased capacity of the melted tallow
absorbed this heat, which became latent, and did not raise
the temperature; and when the tallow already melted be¬
gan to grow hot, as well as the tool, the employing another
zone of consistent tallow reduced the temperature.
GRINS'! EAD, East, a borough-town and extensive
parish of the county of Sussex, in the hundred of Rush-
monden and rape of Pevensey, twenty-nine miles from
London. It is situated on an eminence, and its tower is a
prominent object to a large extent of country. It was a
burgage tenure borough, and returned twro members to
parliament; but has been disfranchised. The houses were
the property of the Duke of Dorset, but are now in posses¬
sion of the Earl of Plymouth, to whom they descended by
marriage. There is a market, chiefly for corn, held on
ihursday. The population amounted in 1801 to 2659,
Vp1.1811 .t0 2804, in 1821 to 3153, and in 1831 to 3364.
I he assizes for the county are held here alternately with
Horsham.
GRIPES, in Medicine, a colic or painful disorder of the
lower belly, occasioned by irritating matters, or by wind in
the intestines.
GRISGRIS, a superstition very prevalent amongst the
negroes in the interior parts of Africa. The grisgris, ac¬
cording to Le Maire, are certain Arabic characters mixed
with magical figures drawn by the marabouts or priests
opon paper. Rabat affirms that they are nothing else
than scraps of the Koran in Arabic; but this is denied by
Barbot, who brought over one of these grisgris to Eu-
lope, and showed it to a number of persons deeply skilled
m oriental learning, none of whom could find in it the least
trace of any character they understood. Yet, after all, this
might be owing to the badness of the handwriting; and
the words are probably of the Mandingo language, though
G R I
the characters are an attempt to imitate the Arabic Th
poorest negro never goes to war without his grisgris ! £
charm against wounds; and if it proves ineffectual
priest transfers the blame on the immorality of his con
duct. I hese priests invent against all kinds of dangers aJ
provide in favour of all desires and appetites, grisgris hv
virtue of which the possessors may obtain or avoid whatevi
they like or dislike. These, according to the marabouts, de¬
fend them from storms, enemies, diseases, pains, and mk
fortunes ; and preserve health, long life, wealth, honour, and
ment. No clergy in the world are more honoured and re-
vered by the people than these impostors are by the neo-roes-
nor are any people in the world more impoverished by their
priests than the negroes, a grisgris being frequently sold at
iree slaves and four or five oxen. The grisgris intended
for the head is made in the form of a cross, reaching from
the forehead to the neck behind, and from ear to ear- no
are the arms and shoulders neglected. Sometimes thev
are planted in their bonnets in the form of horns; and at
other times they are made like serpents, lizards, or some
other animals, cut out of a kind of pasteboard. There are
not wanting Europeans, otherwise intelligent seamen and
merchants, who are in some degree infected with the weak¬
ness of the country, and believe that the negro sorcerers
have an actual communication with the devil, and that they
are filled with the malignant influence of that evil spirit
when they are seen to distort their features and muscles
make hornd grimaces, and at last imitate the appearances
exhibited by epileptics.
GRISONS, one of the cantons of Switzerland, called by
the inhabitants Graubundten. It has been composed out
of three confederacies, called the League of God’s House
the League of the Ten Bailiwicks, and the Grey League.
1 hese, with some other small portions, had long continued
independent states, until 1798, when, after invasion by the
r rench, they were formally united into one state, and ad¬
mitted as such into the Swiss confederation. It is one of
the largest of the cantons, being about 3010 square miles
m extent. It is bounded by Glarus, St Gall, and Austria,
on the east by the Tyrol, on the south by Austrian Italy
and the canton Ticino, and on the west by Uri, It is a
most picturesque country. The Alps reach the height of
11,000 feet, with a line of perpetual snow of from 8200
to 8400 feet. There are said to be within the canton 240
glaciers and 56 waterfalls. The valleys are strikingly beau¬
tiful, and in them both the Rhine and the Inn have their
sources. Ihere are five of these greater valleys, distin¬
guished as the Hither Rhine, the Farther Rhine, Enga-
dine, the Albula, and the Brettegau, and nearly 150 smaller
valleys are connected with them, each with its peculiar
features. The chief products are those of the dairy, which
aie exchanged for corn, of which only half as much is rais¬
ed as the consumption requires. The chief trade is by
the passes of the Alps with Milan. The inhabitants are
about 83,000, of whom 40,000 speak a lingua-franca, the
old Romana rustica; about 30,000 speak German, and
13,000 Italian. The Roman Catholic church has 33,000
adherents, with six ministers and eighty-six parish churches.
The Protestants are 50,000, of the Helvetic confession, and
have six colleges, with 132 parish churches; but the pas¬
tors are so poor that they are often compelled to have re¬
course to manual labour or trade to support themselves.
The government is a pure democracy. The three divi¬
sions, as in old times, are still adhered to, and deputies,
twenty-one from each portion, meet, and all have sepa¬
rate presidents, and are assisted by councils annually elect¬
ed. The contingent of men furnished by the cantons to
the Swiss confederacy is 1600, and of money 12,000 francs.
The annual revenue was, in 1831, L.21,590, and the ex¬
penditure L.20,100. The public debt is now nearly ex¬
tinguished. Chur is the capital of the whole, as well as of
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tl League of God’s House ; but the League of the Bai¬
liwick has for its capital the town of Davos, and that of
tl| Grey League the town of Dissentis. Chur contains
0 inhabitants, and is on the great road from Germany
ombardy.
iRIST, in country affairs, denotes corn ground, or rea-
or grinding.
GRIT, or Gritstone, a kind of stone which is used for
biIding, and for millstones or grindstones, .and sometimes
fclfiltrating water.
GROAT, an English money of account, equal to four-
pice. Other nations, as the Dutch, Poles, Saxons, Bo-
hfiians, and French, have likewise their groats, groots,
hen, gros, and the like. In the Saxon times, no silver
bigger than a penny was struck in England, nor after
Conquest, till the reign of Edward III., who, about the
yir 1351, coined_grosses or great pieces, which went for
fdrpence each ; and so the matter stood till the reign of
ry VIII., who, in 1504, first coined shillings.
iROATs, in country affairs, oats after the husks are
n off, or great oatmeal.
ROGERS were anciently such persons as engrossed
al merchandise that was vendible; but now they are in-
eiporated, form one of the companies of the city of Lon-
dli, and deal in sugar, foreign fruits, spices, and other
ancles.
IGRODNO, one of the provinces of West Russia, for-
nldy a part of Lithuania. It is bounded on the north by
Ytllna, on the east by Minsk, on the south by Volhynia,
oj the south-west by Poland, and on the west by Bialy-
slpk. It extends over 11,792 square miles, and is divided
irp eight circles, containing 108 towns and 936 villages,
v\4h 842,500 inhabitants. The latter consist of Lithu-
ajjans, Poles, Russians, Jews, Germans, and gipsies. The
n )ility are chiefly Poles, the traders are Jews or Poles,
tl i merchants Germans, and the labourers and peasants
I huanians. The chief city, of the same name, is situated
o the river Niemen. It is an ancient town, with palaces
a the great Lithuanian nobles, now in a state of decay. It
tains twelve churches, of which nine are Catholic, one
ek, and two Lutheran, with 800 houses and 5000 inha-
nts. Long. 23. 46. 20. E. Lat. 53. 40. 48. N.
jrROENLAND, or Greenland. See Greenland.
PROGRAM, a kind of stuff made of silk and mohair.
GROIN, that part of the abdomen next the thigh.
?Groin, amongst builders, is the angular curve formed
II the intersection of two semicylinders or arches, and is
ej her regular or irregular. A regular groin is when the
iiersecting arches, whether semicircular or semielliptical,
all! of the same diameters and heights. An irregular groin
ijvhere one of the arches is semicircular and the other se-
ifl Jliptical.
iGROLL, or Groenloo, a town of the Netherlands, in
t® circle of Zutphen, and province of Guelderland. It
sinds on the river Slink, and is strongly fortified as a fron-
dr town on the side of Westphalia. It contains 2100 in-
ll jitants.
[GRONENBACH, a bailiwick of the circle of the Up-
d * Danube, in the kingdom of Bavaria, extending over
l|5 square miles. It contains three market-towns, fifty-
t| a villages, and 155 detached agricultural establishments,
fi 11,492 inhabitants. It is a poor district, mostly covered
h woods. The capital, of the same name, has only a po-
ation of about 1000 persons.
GRONINGEN, one of the provinces of the Nethfer-
ftds. It is bounded on the north by the German Ocean,
the east by the mouth of the Ems, the Dollart, and the
gdom of Hanover, on the south by the province of
enthe, and on the west by that of Friesland. It ex-
ds over 806 square miles, and contains 159,321 inhabi¬
ts. On the shore there is a tract of land from eighteen
GRO
779
to twenty miles in breadth, which, by being well drained Groningen
and embanked, bears excellent crops of oats and some bar- II
ley, and feeds a great number of cows. The butter and^rono^u^
cheese is however inferior to what is produced in the pro-
vinces of Holland and Friesland. The land farther from
the shore is generally sandy heath, producing much turf,
and yielding with much care, on a large extent, a supply of
potatoes. The province is divided into three circles, viz.
Groningen, Windshotten, and Apingadam.
Groningen, a city, the capital of the province of the
same name, in the Netherlands. It stands on the rivers
Hunse and Aa, the waters of both which run through the
city, and fill the ditches which surround the walls. It is a
well-built town, very strongly fortified, with broad streets
and good houses. It contains 6000 dwellings, and in 1819
27,800 inhabitants, who were lessened by the fatal fever
which visited the province in 1826, so as in 1831 to be only
26,069. There are manufactures of linen and woollen
goods. The university contains nineteen professors, and
commonly 200 students. The commerce chiefly consists
of the export of oats, butter, cheese, and turf. Long. 6.
34. E. Lat. 53. 10. N.
Groningen, a town of the Prussian province of Saxony,
in the circle of Oschersleben. It stands on the river Bode,
and contains 421 houses, with 2354 inhabitants, employed
in flax and wool spinning. Long. 11. 6. 27. E. Lai. 51.
36. 3. N.
GRONOVIUS, the Latinized form of Gronov, John
Frederick, a learned scholar and critic, was born at
Hamburg on the 10th of September 1611. His father,
who was councillor to the Duke of Holstein, having been
appointed syndic or town-clerk of Bremen, carried his son
to that city, where he went through his early studies with
great distinction. He then visited the universities of
Leipsic and lena, and proceeded to Altdorf, where he stu¬
died law under the learned professors who had conferred
celebrity on that school. After the death of his father he
returned to Bremen, and having settled his affairs, he, in
1634, repaired to Groningen to enjoy the benefit of the
society and instructions of Antony Mathieu, a great juris¬
consult, and the friend of his family. Here, however, he
remained only a short time. For, being desirous to ex¬
tend his knowledge by travel, he visited the principal ci¬
ties of Holland, in order to converse with the learned and
explore the libraries; passed, with the same design, into
England in 1639; and the year following proceeded to
France. He stopped several months at Paris; received
the degree of doctor of law at Angers ; and then travelled
into Italy, whence he returned, through Switzerland and
Germany, to Deventer, where he was offered the chair
of literature and history. In 1658, he succeeded Daniel
Heinsius, the celebrated professor of belles-lettres in the
university of Leyden, and died in that city on the 28th of
December 1671. Gronovius was a man of equal learning
and modesty, and, as he was naturally disinclined to con¬
troversy, he avoided those literary disputes by which so
many then sought to obtain distinction. For a correct list
of his numerous works, we refer to the Biblioth. Erudit.
Prcecoc. of Klefeker, and to the Dictionaire of Chauffepie,
and shall only mention the following : 1. Diatribe in Statii
poetae Sylvas, Hague, 1637, in 8vo; 2. De Sesterciis sive
subsesivorum Pecuniae veteris Graecae et Romanae libri
iv. Deventer, 1643, in 4to; 3. Observationum libri iv.
Deventer, 1662, in 12mo; 4. Laudatio funebris Joannis
Golii, Leyden, 1668, in 8vo; 5. De Musaeo Alexandrino
Exercitationes Academicae, inserted in the eighth volume
of the Thesaurus Antiquitatum Grcccaram; 6. Lection es
Plautinae, quibus non tantum fabulae Plautinae et Teren-
tianae, verum etiam Caesar, Cicero, Livius illustrantur,
Amsterdam, 1740, in 8vo; 7. Notes on the treatise of
Grotius De Jure Belli et Pacts. Gronovius also revised
780 G R O G R O
Gronovius. the text, and published editions with notes, of Titus Li- works, forty-six in number. The most celebrated, as well Gr#,
''■''V"'-'' vius, Statius, Pliny the Elder, Justin, Tacitus, the Senecas, as the most important, of these, is the Thesaurus Antiqui- |
Aulus Gellius, Phasdrus, and Paulinus, almost all of which tatum Grcecarum, Leyden, 1697 and the following years, Gri*
form part of the Variorum collection. (a.) in 13 vols. folio. For this invaluable collection he adopt- ^vv
Gronovius, James, son of the preceding, and one of ed the plan traced out by Graevius in the Thesaurus Anti-
the most laborious pbilologers of the seventeenth century, quitatum Romanarum, Utrecht, 1694, in 12 vols. folio,
was born at Deventer on the 20th of October 1645. At an Both works ought to be united ; and, to form a complete
early age he had read all the masterpieces of antiquity, and collection of antiquities, there should be added, 1. flovus
appreciated their beauties; but this precocious discern- ThesaurusAntiquitatumRomanarum,by^>d\\ex\gre,Vixg\x^
ment was not so much the result of natural genius as of 1716, in 3 vols. folio; 2. Utriusque Thesauri Nova Sup.
obstinate perseverance. Having resolved to travel through plementa, by Polleni, Venice, 1737, in 5 vols. folio ; 3. /«.
part of Europe to acquire knowledge, and visit the old scriptiones Antiquce totius Orbis Romani, by Gruter, Am-
f’riends of his father, he came over to England, where he sterdam, 1707, in 4 vols. folio; 4. Lexicon Antiquitatum
remained several months, during which he occupied him- Romanarum, by Pitiscus, Leuwarden, 1713, in 2 vols. fo-
self in collating the manuscripts in the libraries of Ox- lio. Gronovius published new editions of several authors
ford and Cambridge. He then returned to Leyden, and already commented on by his father, such as Seneca the
there published, in the year 1670, an edition of Polybius, tragic poet, Aulus Gellius, Phaedrus, and others; and he
with notes, amongst which he inserted those that Casaubon also edited Macrobius, Polybius, Tacitus, Pomponius Me-
had on his death-bed bequeathed to him. This first edi- la, Cicero, Ammianus Marcellinus, Quintus Curtius, Sue-
torial effort did him much honour, and well merited the tonius, Arrian, Minutius Felix, Herodotus, Cebes, and
offer, which was in consequence made him, of a chair in the some ancient geographers ; the poem of Manetho on the
academy of Deventer. But entertaining the intention of stars; the Dactylotheca of Gorlaeus; the Lexicon of Har-
continuing his travels, he declined the proffered situation, pocration, &c. the greater part of which, enriched with
and almost immediately set out for Paris, where he met corrections and notes, form part of the Variorum collec-
with a most distinguished reception. The death of his tion, though, in general, not held in much estimation,
father obliged him to return a second time to Leyden; The other productions of Gronovius consist of Theses,
but as soon as he had arranged his affairs, he again set Discourses, and Diatribes, of which a list will be found in
out, along with M. Paats, ambassador of the states-general, the Memoirs of Niceron, and also in the Bibliolh. Erudit.
to Spain ; and having seen all that is curious or interest- Prcecocium of Klefeker. (a.)
ing in that country, he embarked for Italy. The Grand GROOM, a name particularly applied to several supe-
Duke of Tuscany retained him in his states by appointing rior officers belonging to the king’s household, as groom
him professor in the university of Pisa; and Gronovius of the chamber, groom of the stole,
profited by the facility he had of visiting Florence, to form Groom is more particularly used for a servant appoint-
a connection with Magliabecchi, who placed at his dispo- ed to attend on horses in the stable. The word is form-
sal all the treasures of the Medicean library. At the end ed from the Flemish grom, a boy.
of two years he prevailed on the grand duke to accept GROOTE EYLANDT, a large island on the north
his resignation; visited Venice and Padua; and traversed coast of New Plolland, and on the western shore of the
Germany on his way to Deventer, where it was his inten- Gulf of Carpentaria. It was so called by the Dutch navi-
tion to settle. But scarcely had he arrived in that city gators who first visited this gulf, and is about sixty miles
when the curators of the university of Leyden tendered from north to south. It is generally barren and unpro-
him a chair, and pressed their offer so urgently that he w’as ductive on the coast; but towards the interior is covered
induced to accept. His opening discourse increased the with wood. It extends from lat. 13. 39. to 14. 17. S.
high idea which had been formed of his knowledge ; and GROOVE, amongst miners, is the shaft or pit sunk into
the curators, to testify their desire of retaining him, imme- the earth, sometimes in the vein, and sometimes not.
diately raised his salary to four hundred florins. Grono- Groove, amongst joiners, the channel made by their
vius was very sensible of this mark of esteem, and con- plough in the edge of a moulding, style, or rail, to put
stantly refused the propositions which were made to draw their panels in, in wainscotting.
him to Kiel, to Padua, and to other universities of Ger- GROSE, Francis, born about the year 1731, was the
many and Italy. If he inherited the erudition of his father, son of Francis Grose, a jeweller of Richmond, by whom
he had neither his gentleness nor his moderation. Never the coronation crown of George II. was filled up. Young
was there a man fonder of disputation, or more unjust to- Grose obtained an independent fortune by the death ot
wards the adversaries whom, for the most part, he raised his father, which happened in the year 1769. He was then
up against himself by his asperity and haughtiness. It paymaster and adjutant in the Surrey militia, but dissipa-
would be tedious, if not disgusting, to enter into details tion so far prevented him for some time from giving pro-
respecting the quarrels he had to maintain with Fabretti per attention to his duty, that, in his own humorous mode
on the sense of some passages in Livy ; with Feller and Pe- of expressing himself, he kept but two books of accounts,
rizonius as to the manner of Judas’s death; with Vossius his right and left hand pockets. The losses which this
on Pomponius Mela; with Bentley and John Leclerc on thoughtless conduct occasioned him awakened his dor-
the corrections of Menander ; with Kuster on Suidas, &c. mant talents, and he resolved to turn his attention to li-
The scurrility he indulged in these discussions, which did terary pursuits. Having received a classical education,
not always terminate to his advantage, and his exorbitant he united to it an excellent taste for drawing, which in¬
vanity, caused him to be compared to Scioppius, and pro- duced him to commence his Views of Antiquities in Eng-
cured for him the unenviable distinction of a place in the land and Wales. He began this work in numbers in 1773,
work of Mencken on the Empiricism of the Learned, and completed it in 1776; and by it he obtained both re-
But though the temper of Gronovius was thus violent, his putation and profit, which last his unpardonable prodiga-
heart was sound, and he loved his children with so much lity had rendered extremely welcome. In 1777 he added
tenderness that the grief occasioned by the loss of his to his English Views other two volumes, including the
daughter accelerated his own death, which took place islands of Guernsey and Jersey, finished in 1778. All his
at Leyden on the 21st of October 1716, in the seventy- expectations were fully gratified by the publication of this
first year of his age. In the Memoirs of Niceron will be work; and during the remainder of his life he continued
found a notice of his life, followed by a catalogue of his to publish others, which in general increased his reputa-
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on as an author, and tended to augment his substance. Gross, or Grossus, in our ancient law writers, denotes Gross
i the summer of 1789 he paid a visit to Scotland, and in a thing absolute, and not depending on another. Thus, II
790 began to publish in numbers, the Views taken by villein in gross, villanus in grosso, was a servant who didy^^T^*
dm in that country. He next proceeded to Ireland, with not belong to the land, but immediately to the person of
view to give a similar description of that country ; but the lord ; or a servile person not appended or annexed to
n the 6th of May 1791, whilst at Dublin, in the house of the lord or manor, or an accessory of the tenures as an
Ir Horne, he was suddenly seized at table with an apo- appurtenant, but, like other personal goods and chattels
lectic fit, and immediately expired. He was buried in of his lord, at his lord’s pleasure and disposal.
Brumcondra churchyard, near Dublin. Although his li- GROSSASPERN, a town of Austria, in the province
mature was very respectable, it was exceeded by his of the Lower Ens. It is situated on an arm of the Danube,
ood humour, his convivial turn of mind, and his friendly and remarkable for the battle fought there on the 22d and
isposition. Both at home and abroad he was always in 23d July 1809, which led to the capture of Vienna by the
ie best company, and his knowledge of the world was French. It contains 110 houses, and 710 inhabitants.
) extensive that his conversation was useful and enter- GKOfeSGHANAU, a town of the circle of Lausatia, in
tining. He was free from the malignity and pride of the kingdom of Saxony. It is situated on the Lousebach,
me authors ; for as he felt the independence of his own and is one of the chief seats of the linen manufacture, es-
lents, he scorned to depreciate those of others. Of the pecially for damask tablecloths and napkins. _ It is 1000
ost careless, open, and artless disposition, he was often feet above the level of the sea. The population is 4600.
e prey of the designing, and more than once embarrass- ' GROSSENHAIN, a bailiwick of the circle of Meisen,
d himself by placing too implicit confidence in the probity in the kingdom of Saxony. It contains two cities, two
f others. A tale of distress never failed to touch his heart, market-towns, and 229 villages, with 24,729 inhabitants,
nd to bedew his cheek with tears of commiseration. His It is a fruitful district, but much of it is covered with fo-
rorks are, 1. The Antiquities of England and Wales, in 8 rests. The capital, of the same name, is a city standing
ols. 4to and 8vo ; 2. The Antiquities of Scotland, in 2 vols. on the river Roder, which runs to the Elbe. It contains
to and 8vo; 3. The Antiquities of Ireland, in 2 vols. 4to 620 houses, and about 5000 inhabitants, amongst whom
nd 8vo, a posthumous work edited by Mr Ledwich, 1794; are calico printers, weavers, dyers, stocking makers, and
. A Treatise on ancient Armour and Weapons, 1785, in other trades. Lat. 51. 18. 6. N.
ito; 5. A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, GROSSWARDEIN, a city of Hungary, in the circle of
785, in 8vo ; 6. Military Antiquities, being a History of the Hither Theiss. It is strongly fortified, and is the seat
he English Army from the Conquest to the present time, of a bishop, and of the several civil and military boards of
786, 1.788, in 2 vols. 4to; 7. The History of Dover the circle. There is a Catholic ecclesiastical seminary,
lastle by the Rev. William Darell, 1786, in 4to; 8. A with ten professors, and several religious houses for both
Wincial Glossary, with a Collection of Local Proverbs males and females. It contains 1200 houses, with 6768
Ind Popular Superstitions, 1788, in 8vo; 9. Rules for inhabitants. Several natural warm springs in the city are
)rawing Caricatures, 1788, in 8vo; 10. Supplement to visited by patients. It has considerable trade m the pro¬
be Treatise on ancient Armour and Weapons, 1789, in ducts of its vicinity, the chief ol which is wine ; and mar-
to; 11. A Guide to Health, Beauty, Honour, and Riches, ble is furnished from some valuable quarries. Long. 21.
eing a collection of humorous advertisements, pointing 50. 45. E. Lat. 47. 2. 50. N.
ut the means to obtain these blessings, with a suitable GROTESQUE, in sculpture and painting, something
atroductory preface, 8vo ; 12. The Olio, a Collection of whimsical, extravagant, and monstrous, consisting either
Assays, Jests, and small pieces of Poetry, highly charac- of things which are merely imaginary, and have no ex¬
eristic of Grose, though not made by him, nor all of his istence in nature, or of things so distorted as to excite
omposition, 1793, in 8vo. surprise and ridicule. The name arises from the circum-
GROSS, amongst us, means twelve dozen. stance that figures of this kind were anciently much used
Gnoss Weight, is the weight of merchandise and goods to adorn the grottoes in which the tombs of eminent per-
nth the dust and dross, as also of the bag, cask, chest, sons or families were enclosed. Such was that of Ovid,
kc. in which they are contained; and out of this gross whose grotto was discovered near Rome more than a cen-
reight allowance is to be made for tare and tret. tury ago.
END OF VOLUME TENTH.
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